Muse

Check out these hidden gems in Highland Park. Nah, I'm done gatekeeping. The best authentic Mexican taqueria in Highland Park is Homestate. This is real LA street food. Nothing says tacos like brisket. I wanted to try a legit Oaxacan beer so I ordered the Shiner Bock to wash down these Tijuana Panthers. It's my lunch break. Please don't tell my boss at Allbirds. Mmm, you can taste the agave plant. I've been gatekeeping this next hole in the wall for far too long, mendocino farms if a wildfire hits these bricks are fire resistant so the last thing standing in highland park will be mendocino farms the sandals here are table to farm and cage free nah the watermelon poke salad is gas damn look at this green juice slime but the cheat code is getting a half sando half soup for dipping purposes this is busting like some hospital food twin i got gatekeep once and hated it so i'm about to spill some tea if you get homestay and mendo back to back and say the secret password culture you get eight dollars off jenny's ice cream tell them mendo sent you the home state to mendo to jenny's pipeline is about to go stupid twin so tip well uh i'm not really sure what these places are i'm only familiar with new brick buildings

that look like an orange theory tbtl If it so happens, I am on a first-name basis with some of the most influential, some of the most powerful people in this business.

So, get Chuck Woolery on the phone. I love to peel the strawberries. It's nothing like when your lips contact a skinless strawberry.

I don't even know what that means.

No one knows what it means, but it's provocative.

he's my devil my dark lover my alter ego sometimes i think he's my conscience i should

have prepared but i just watch tv i could really use a win here

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live i'm so excited about this show my name's luke burbank I am your host. Never let me slip, because if I slip, then I'm slipping. Coming to you from Midtown Manhattan. That's right. Not the same hotel that we were recording at the last two days. I have moved about four blocks. Did I take a lift? The four blocks between my different Midtown Manhattan hotels so as to avoid wheeling two suitcases through what is Notoriously the most annoying four-block stretch of maybe anywhere in America. You bet your sweet patootie I did. It's also very loud where I am. Like, I'm in a different hotel. I'm a few floors up. But it's near where guys like to play drums on buckets. And I'm really happy for them that that's working, that that's a business model that is successful for them. But it's fairly constant, I've noticed, since I've been in this room.

Too loud and too specific.

Hopefully, we will be able to get through this show without too many interruptions. This show that is at episode 4591 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I am here in New York City. A day that New York is in the news. I've got lots of news. Based on the election of Zoran Mamdani last night as mayor of this fine city, New York City. I'd like to talk about that, I guess. Also, of course, some of the less covered news, pigeon theft from a guy who is trying to battle wage theft to a guy who's trying to commit actual pigeon theft and is honestly getting off kind of light. We'll talk about what's going on here in the Big Apple. And also, we're going to do something kind of special today.

This is special. This is special.

We will do some early Blurs Day messages. That's right. We're doing the blurs days on a Wednesday because our our Thursday TBTL got a case of the Fridays. So we'll we'll celebrate those birthdays together today. If, by the way, if you didn't get yours in in time because you were waiting until Thursday, just send them in. And we'll we'll celebrate any late stragglers next week who we miss this week. I'll tell you somebody that we would we couldn't even do the show without him. And so we're never missing him because he's always here and thankfully always standing in as the longest running cobra. of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he was king of the tuck tuck sound he's andrew walsh and he is joining me right now good morning my friend good morning were you

slowing down your introduction to me because you saw i was finishing an email and don't say no

because that would be the sweetest thing ever also that would be a high level of professional

ability courtesy as well yeah it seemed like well because i you don't know this i guess but i was just getting to the end of an email that I was furiously typing out and I was doing that thing I was just

signing it with the all cap thank you with a lot of use and i know that right as i was getting near the end you started slow walking your intro to me and it felt like we were very much in sync

i would love to get the props on that i would love to get the credit that was just a little bit of i guess you could say serendipity um but i do think i could do that if need be maybe we can work out some system where you're letting me know, you know, like basically stretch. I mean, this famously, did you ever use any of those hand signals and talk radio in your days in the booth?

I'm stretching. What I'm doing is I'm putting my fingers together like I'm holding a not even a rubber band, but more like a silly putty, and I'm pulling it apart like that. Is that what you used to do? Yes.

Stretch. The number, nothing would strike terror in my heart as a host like looking through the glass and seeing a producer doing that that's a really good point i only think about it some guest had not shown up yeah i don't think that i've done

it i don't think i've been subjected to that that's a really good point that i was thinking that you were gonna say that you did that to hosts as well but no you had people doing that to you yeah that seems irritating i mean sorry every host i ever worked with but also you were a host

of the Andrew Walsh show, and there must have been some point at which Nick had to say, hey, the guest isn't here. Hold on, just kind of keep

tap dancing. It was always implied that I had nothing to say. It was like stretch for three hours, Luke. It started at seven, and it was just a continuous silly putty string.

I was reminded being here in New York City, I love that we have this absolutely historic election last night of Zoran Mamdani, and I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the Joey Reynolds show on WOR Radio, which i believe ran from maybe midnight to 4 a.m uh during the week back in the day back in the uh like the the late 90s when i was out here interviewing for the job i was in the list i was in the cab the other day and the guy had wor on the radio it's just like a am talk station here in new york and i was i was i was being reminded of the fact that i had that job paid more than $24,000 a year or something in 19, uh, maybe 99, probably 1998, 1999. I came out here for this job interview, but what it would have involved is producing for again, an amount of money that would make it impossible for me to live in any one of the boroughs of New York, um, or any of the parts of Jersey that are close. Um, it, it also involved producing a show. I think it was at a minute it might have been five hours i think it was five hours of live radio overnight and i didn't know a lot about talk radio at that point i had worked at kvi i guess what i knew is that i there's no way in god's green earth i was going to be able to produce that amount of overnight radio that sounded like a living hell to me that sounded like three in the morning no one's calling in larry king is drunk and things you know the the wheels are coming off the operation um i don't know how that was how it might that might still be on the air they might the joey reynolds show might still be going for five hours overnight on wor i don't know but my i'm just saying my hat is off to whoever the producer is there who has to probably constantly go stretch stretch stretch joey reynolds it's it's 2 30 in the morning and we have no callers and we've still got to do this for two and a half more hours well i have some

good news for you joey reynolds is an is on wikipedia not a was on wikipedia so that is good right there that's always very very good yes uh joseph pinto better known as joey reynolds is a long-time radio show host and disc jockey reynolds uh do we have disc jockeys anymore i guess we do does anybody consider themselves a disc jockey i think they're still called djs even

though they the discs have have not been jockeyed for years yeah i guess that the discs have gone

unjockeyed nobody's jockeying my discs luke it's a real problem nobody clipped that wow he has worked for a lot of stations oh my gosh so can i actually before we switch off of this i'm interested in this what tell me more about this show this was not conservative talk radio that was your background at the time this was just like kind of whatever pop culture-y kind of yes nighttime radio

it was just kind of you know it sort of does now to me as a i guess a person who's a little bit older and i think i like things that are quirkier but at the time i think what i wanted to do was work somewhere on something that had like like that had like the the high prestige guests i wanted to be somewhere where it's like we're getting on the important people who are writing the important books or these important politicians or actors or whatever the deal is i didn't want to be like we're gonna go a full hour between 2 a.m and 3 a.m with the like you know the guy who

uh you know makes a certain kind of a cookie down in um you know lower manhattan from sal's cookies and he's gonna come on and talk about his whatever you know like like the quirkier side of life because the only way you can do a show of that like literally that many hours a night that was what stopped me in my tracks at that time i think i was producing three hours of live radio and that seemed like a lot of work and this was like i think maybe five and i just thought i just imagine how unbelievably, um, unhurried the conversations would have to be to fill that much time that I just thought, like, I don't want to do that. And the irony, Andrew, the irony is here I am having a very unhurried five day a week conversation with you for, so, I mean, I've basically created the Joey Reynolds show here, but we call it TBTL, but that whole vibe of just kind of like, we're hanging out, we're talking, we're not in a rush. There's nothing of any high stakes is happening here like that was what was kind of turned me off about the idea of of doing of producing that show and uh and and yet here i am voluntarily for many years now maybe going on what like 17 years or something doing that thing here with you well don't forget we

well you were able to book msnbc's or ms now's chris hayes on election week 2025 like don't make

it sound like we're not booking the big guests i mean that was you know that was again to use that word that was fairly serendipitous that we were talking to him can we talk for a little bit about this ms now thing because i noticed when um when we were at chris's house when i was in his studio he's got this you know he's got this great podcast why is this happening and i was i was impressed at how on it this company is about the change of the name so you know it's been called msnbc they're going to start calling it ms now they had he had a little kind of sign that was his his logo if you will for his podcast why is this happening and it says msnbc almost in an imperceptibly small letters in the corner like nothing you could see if you're watching a video of him you know that from him interviewing a guest or whatever in the way background there would be this picture of him this kind of illustration of him and it says msnbc and they had already sent him the replacement that said ms now in the same tiny font i was like wow they're really getting ahead of this. And last night as the election results were rolling in, I was sitting on my bed in the hotel room watching the results like a like a kid, you know, opening his Christmas presents early or something like it was. It was very heartening results to see. Now, they didn't have Kornacki on MSNBC. They had Ali Velshi doing the election map. I thought Ali Velshi did a great job, but I did not appreciate NBC poaching Kornacki from MSNBC. I know they've been doing that for a while now, but that just feels like a real New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers kind of move. Like Kornacki, you know, you've simply, you simply visited the election map. Steve Kornacki was born in it. Like he is the bane of pushing those districts and interpreting the information and he started doing that on msnbc and he got so good at it and became such a weird quasi-cultural phenomenon that now on this special day this is msnbc's day to shine then they come in and pluck kornacki and they bring him up to the big to the network level away from all the people who he knows and loves the only people he's ever known and loved i don't like it andrew i don't like it at all and that's not a knock on velchi i thought velchi did a

really good job well first of all i'm writing a headline right now tbtl's luke burbank compares There's Kornacki to Bane. Yes. And then let's see here in quotes underneath.

Yes. So I look at it slightly. TBTL's Burbank claps back at Kornacki. Colon. Fam. What is he like? Bane? Fam? Luke Burbank no longer gatekeeps his opinion on Steve Kornacki.

I was gatekept once. I didn't like it. Do you want to shout out that comedian actually at the top of the show, that tape we played?

His name is Carmen Christopher. He's on The English Teacher No English What's the show that I actually Really keep meaning to watch because it's got a bunch of people I like it's got Brian Jordan Alvarez on it I think it's just called English Teacher

I don't think I know this at all

So he's one of the teachers On that show It looks like a really really funny show actually He was also on that Joe Parra show We play a different intro tape of him He's the one that we're sitting around the campfire and he says like my mom needs a new liver that's carmen christopher she's hanging in there

i didn't realize that was him okay and i've never heard of this show called the english teacher i'm

looking at it now so that's interesting the clips that i see it looks really funny he's um yeah carmen christopher is a very he's also he shows up and and i think you should leave stuff he was in friendship he was part of that crew of friends he's the guy who says he says a really funny his name is really funny at the end of friendship remember remember how when the well i don't

want to spoil it but that last big climax scene and there's something i forget now the specifics of it but there's something about what i think his name is on the show that was just or like you know in the movie like they're introducing themselves or something there's something with carmen christopher's character's name and friendship that was like the last little lanyop of comedy yeah for the whole movie but um yeah he does these great videos uh where he's just basically completely sort of parodying a certain style of tiktok video which because i'm terminally online and terminally looking at tiktok i've been given two weeks to watch andrew they've said it's terminal um i know what the forms are i like i really enjoy tiktok parody because i spend too much time looking at the actual thing that's being parodied and uh there's a certain kind of like i'm walking around a neighborhood and i'm introducing you to all the cool stuff video except his is what if that guy was in a very gentrified neighborhood now like highland park but all he went to were things like mendocino farms and other massive like regional chains and if he kept talking about how he wasn't gatekeeping everything fam

to get that oaxacan taste he drinks a shiner bach shiner bach the agave it's so it's so it's really it's really really good stuff okay so back to cornecki so it was my understanding so i want to use slightly different because you were talking about about nbc plucking him now i could be wrong about this but i would use different terminology it's almost like nbc maybe they hired him bogarting him because i thought that's right i could be wrong but i thought that i read that when the first news actually happened that like as ms what is now msnbc breaks away from nbc and you know you have a lot of people who worked for both it was my understanding that nbc was keeping steve kornacki in the divorce but i guess he could spend some holidays with ms now possibly uh depending he does get two election day presents so that's kind of good no you know what i didn't

even think of i'm still thinking about msnbc and nbc as being connected but they're not i mean only in like the most tenuous of ways that there's something having to do with the spinoff that is still maybe it's nbc shareholders or something but it's they're effectively separated now or will be and you're absolutely right of course of course they just basically he got called up to the show Kornacki did and now he lives there I don't know why I expected to see him on MSNBC and again I do think that Ali Velshi did a really really great job uh it was fun to see somebody poking counties and seeing numbers that didn't make me want to fill my pockets with rocks and walk into the Columbia River like it's been a while my friends it's been a while since I've gotten to see that and like it was you know it was the complete opposite and unfortunately I guess you could say the stakes are not quite as high this time around as they were in the last election cycle but that experience of like watching somebody poke and if people don't know what i'm talking about they have these election maps now that are highly digital highly interactive highly uh sort of up to date so that you're always and we we live in an age where you always want more information and more data points and things and so you've got somebody in front of this big digital map poking these little tiny areas of a state and telling us in this county here's how donald trump did last time and here's how the republican candidate is doing this time and here's how the here's how kamala harris did there versus how this and it's all this it's basically this way of for me of trying to allay my anxiety by seeing trends that are positive by seeing that um by seeing that oh well the democrats are now over performing kamala harris from from 2020 and and in fact the the republicans are underperforming donald trump and that means that maybe our nation has somehow collectively gotten its shit back together like that's what i'm looking for with that data and the in 2020 i knew very very quickly as many of us did that things were trending in a very bad direction because we were seeing all of these counties where we wanted if you were voting like i did you wanted one sort of thing to be happening and it was never quite happening it was never quite oh we're over democrats are over oh kamala harris is overperforming where joe biden was here etc so that was tremendously um gratifying last night and kind of felt felt really nice i will say um seeing the ms now and i don't want to just say this because we're friends with chris hayes or whatever i didn't feel tremendously jarred i don't think it's that jarring like i know some people point out that it might be almost like ms as it refers to a woman you know ms or whatever and like i know there was some people were kind of having some fun with it when they first announced it i have to say like i'm not just trying to like i don't know be a apologist for the network that our friend works on but like it it feels like i read a story in the new york times that they're spending 20 million dollars i think it's 20 million dollars on the campaign

to rebrand it and let everyone know it's ms now and i was looking at it i was like i i would have i would have done it for a hundred give me a hundred dollars and tell me it's ms now and i'll just start calling it that in my mind like it's and then they were playing these promos last night during their election coverage and chris was introducing some of them and he was saying look i just want to tell you we're gonna it's going to be called ms now you don't have to do anything different he said that oh yeah i didn't know literally he said he was like you're just gonna keep watching this tv channel you're watching right now the shows are the same the schedule's the same the only difference is we're going to be saying ms now instead of msnbc and like i mean that's just kind of been it i've i guess what i guess what i'm trying to say is i have been i've been sort of not very riled up by this considering i'm a power user of msnbc regular viewer of it but i thought that would seem and i'm very quick to want to criticize corporate culture but i to me it seemed like an okay solution to the problem like we're just going to call it ms now and you know and and whatever i mean i'm sure i'll call MSNBC for a long time accidentally but it just seemed like the idea that it's costing $20 million to tell people that now it's just got a couple different letters. By the way it's got two different letters. It's only the O and the W right? They've changed. I have a

confession to make regarding MSNBC. I've been gatekeeping a story from you Luke which is only kind of quasi related. I was gatekept once and I did not like it. That's only like quasi related this conversation but the reason I'm thinking about it is because i did watch some msnbc last night for the first time in literally a year because first of all i don't have cable so i don't have easy access to msnbc uh last night i didn't really watch the results come in because genevieve and i were recording but as soon as we were done recording like all of the results all the major results were basically already in and so i got a text from our buddy hauser who was letting me borrow his fubo during the the baseball post season and he said oh i'm watching on msnbc you should watch too i'm like oh that's right because i think he's canceling his fubo so he's like we got to use it we got to use as much as possible so i'm like okay so i have a little laptop set up in my dart area and i'm kind of just throwing darts i had a day where i was well this is unimportant whatever i just had a day where i was very productive but i was sitting in my chair all day long yesterday and it felt so good to stand. I know that sounds nuts, but like, so I was like, okay, I'll just like kind of, I'll turn on MSNBC, watch the, like kind of the speeches, the victory speeches and throw some darts or whatever. Genevieve was downstairs. She was keeping an eye and we both were on the local results, which were still coming in at that point. But all of that is to say, it did sort of have a nostalgic feel for me to be watching MSNBC. The last time I followed MSNBC was the audio only feed on my phone that i listened to one year ago on the night of the presidential election results coming in and luke that was a bad night for me how did that go by the way i don't i'm trying to remember what the outcome of that was i got it written down somewhere but one thing i told as awful as that night was luke you know what i never told you i set my kitchen on fire that night this is the one year anniversary of me setting my kitchen on fire sort of that tells you

that tells you how shaken up we were by the results of that election that i set my kitchen on fire did not enter the discourse the following day now it was i'm exaggerating a tiny bit i did

set my oven on fire i mean literal fire flames and i'm realizing now and it's weird that i'm making this connection right now isn't that exactly what happens in the little cartoon the one panel cartoon of the dog with his kitchen on fire and he's saying this is this is fine this is

fine yes because i believe you this is find yourself sir what i what i was doing that night

was it became i think that it was pretty clear early on that things were going badly it was very clear early on and so it was like how much of this will we follow but i was still listening to the msnbc audio feed on my phone i was drinking as you might guess and i was listening to it and then i remember thinking god damn it i'm just gonna make that frozen pizza i think we had a frozen pizza in the freezer or something and i i just remember being i mean as we all grieve in our own way i was just so full of despair i remember being like i well i can't describe my feelings that night but they were really bad and it turns out that things were even worse than i thought they were going to be on that night uh for the second administration but i was just like i was just in such an ugly way i i just don't i don't know i just remember my whole brain being this toxic black cloud and i remember at one point being like just make that fucking pizza that's in the freezer or whatever and so i pull it out and i start heating up the oven i'm like uh you know preheating the oven and it starts to smoke a little bit you know how sometimes when you have some gunk on the bottom of your oven and it starts to smoke shit that makes the house smell bad i've actually God.

got some of that going right now which means my i could clean it or i could just stop cooking anything in the oven and that's what i'm going with or you could just move you know that's that's

i'm considering it so i look in the oven and i think that i had roasted a chicken you know in the prior week or something and i think i didn't realize because sometimes your oven just gets a little bit dirty and it needs some care but you can just kind of power through it but i peek in the oven i'm like ah shit there's like a whole bunch of either grease or butter or something like that that had like kind of spilled out of some sort of a baking tray at the bottom of the oven i'm like oh that's kind of rough and again my whole and i'm listening to the election results and i'm drinking and i'm angry and i'm just like everything just seems terrible and i'm like well this is getting worse and worse it's smoking so much that i don't want to power through it even if it would work it'd make the pizza maybe taste bad or something this is worse you're essentially

smoking a pizza which i promise you you're gonna see someone on instagram telling you that that's

the only way to make a pizza that's how you get to 12 hours absolutely um so anyway this is where i make a really really bad decision instead of like letting it cool down and just saying i'll deal with it later this is so dumb this is you do not do this i'm like you know what this is a self-cleaner function and i'm trying to think maybe i'd use it once or not and you know what that does that just locks the oven up and puts the oven to extreme temperatures like 800 900 i think possibly some ovens go up to 900 like extreme heat and that's how it that's how it's quote-unquote self-cleans it just chars everything in there and then you can go in and vacuum but the thing is you're not supposed to self-clean when it's that when it's that deep of a of a spill in there right and so and i didn't realize that i wasn't thinking i was just angry and so i just like fine i just take out the pizza i mean the pizza's not in there yet it's just preheating and so i just turn i just put on uh self-clean and what do you think happens as the oven gets hotter and hotter the smoke turns to flames and i'm looking in my oven and i have my oven has become a fireplace and i'm trying to think was this my new did you take a picture of this no i I wasn't in the mode for that. And you know what it must have been?

You weren't contenting, Andrew, and that was your mistake.

No, I wasn't contenting. I didn't even tell you the story for a year. I'm trying to think if it was our new oven. I feel like it must have been our old oven. I think it was maybe our new oven was coming right after that or something, because I think I would remember this differently if this was our brand new oven I was doing this to. Yeah. I know that we got our new oven around this time, around Thanksgiving. So let's just say it was the old oven. But now I have it full on fire. For the first time in my life, I have to find the fire extinguisher in an emergency. And luckily, we have them under two different sinks. And at first, you know, everybody who's in any kind of a relationship, romantic or otherwise, but shares a home with somebody probably has a moment of, do I have to involve somebody else in this right now? Or can I get away with this?

I'm definitely doing everything in my power to not alert the person I live with that this is what I've just done. On this of all nights.

On this, the worst of all nights, and now I literally have flames going up. And then, that's right, it got to the point where the flames and the smoke were so bad, I couldn't be in the kitchen. Like, you hear about houses burning down and, like, the inhalation and all this stuff. Like, I've never had anything even close to that sensation before, but this got so bad. We did not end up deploying the extinguisher. I know that because that would have been a whole cleanup in and of itself. I think I just was able to stop the self-clean, turn it down. I obviously did not introduce water into the situation. I might have grabbed some flour. Yeah, that's a big one they talk about.

Is that because of if it's an electric stove? Grease.

It was a grease fire.

It was a grease fire, so the water's not going to help that, I guess. I don't think so. I've always known that you don't throw water on a fire that's happening with the stove, but I never knew why that was.

Yeah, I think because water and grease will just separate. Somebody could explain it better than me. I don't know. all I know is that it's not a good thing to do and it can just like spread it. It could just splash around essentially. So I know I didn't use water. I do remember at some point being like, I got to loop Genevieve in on this. She's downstairs in her own just misery cave, like sitting in front of her computer screen watching the world burn while I'm burning the kitchen up. So I'm just like, there's a fire. I'm like, can you find the fire extinguisher?

What was her, do you remember what her response to that little breaking news was?

She said, I'd divorce you if you existed. No, I remember her being just like jumping to the moment. Like she, as far as I remember, she never gave me any grief about my dumb decision.

leading up to that moment because I think I was probably self-flagellating anyway yeah and I anyways I kind of don't remember but I just remember her kind of like oh my god okay I'll get the fire extinguisher from down here because we have a sink upstairs and a sink downstairs and I think I was like yelling at her while I was scrambling looking for the fire extinguisher under the sink upstairs intellectually I knew that we had one under both sinks but in that moment and you're like, did I move it? Do we just have one? Have I been imagining? So I'm kind of knocking over a bunch of cleaning stuff.

How many fire extinguishers do you think I have in my house?

You need to get one, Luke.

I have seven.

Oh, good. Oh, I thought you were going to say that you're living there. They're everywhere.

Good. People comment on it. No, I had some moment, some evening, some dark night of the soul where I thought, after all of this work and money to try to make this little house a home uh if it were to catch on fire i would be so bummed like so incredibly bummed because of all the process of getting it kind of the way that it's all set up now and i took that anxiety and i just turned it into just hammering hammering amazon.com and purchasing like a comical amount of fire extinguish so that like every time you turn around there's one i think you even noted one maybe oh yeah you did have one photo no no we

We were on a Zoom call, I think, and I noticed you had a fire extinguisher that was up on your mantle, almost displayed or something.

I know. That's how many I have. I'm trying to turn them into art so that, like, it, you know, it may—I just—I decided that I wanted it to be the case that if something were to catch on fire, like you're describing, any direction that somebody turned, they would just, like, find a fire extinguisher. Like, you could not panic so hard that you would not be able to locate a fire extinguisher because they were going to be, like, basically omnipresent. To the degree that it's a little weird now, and I have put some of them in a closet because it was too many. But that's my fear, is that something will catch on fire and I will go into such a panic that I will lose the ability to think rationally.

Yeah, and that's where I was in this darkest of moments. I think what ended up happening was I turned off the oven, the flames died down on their own, I let the oven cool off, but it became so smoky. And again, these were flames, flames, you know what I mean? I'm not exaggerating that part.

And were they coming, did the flames leave the interior of the oven? Did they ever, okay, so they were contained at least.

That's why when I said I set the kitchen on fire, I was exaggerating a bit there. But it was like looking into a fireplace through the glass door of the oven. And then when it finally died down and I had to start airing the place out, the rest, well, certainly immediately afterwards, I couldn't be in the kitchen. It was the first time I ever had so much smoke in a room that it was burning my eyes and lungs and burning everything. And again, Genevieve was very cool about this whole thing, was glad it didn't get worse. I think we just had other things on our mind, right? And so she went back downstairs and I just had to open. I think this was during a period where our storm door on our front door was broken too or something. I might be wrong about that, but I think I had to make sure the cats were downstairs so that I could just open the front door. and there was no screen or anything like that i just opened the front door and i opened our kitchen window and of course it's november it's cold outside and it just took forever i think even still the next morning the house smelled like smoke and and and this was all just happening on election night and i just remember thinking like could this be more perfect i mean just like

that sort of trying to get the smoke out and then eventually presumably like i guess you couldn't open the oven for a while still because it was still like probably in locked cleaning mode just like doing any of the the small tasks of life that are not particularly fun on a good night that's where i'm i'm not i don't think i'm built for uh i think i'm built for tough times because like i don't like doing a lot of stuff just normally and then you throw on the end of democracy and then i've also still need to go find some um you know brillo pads and some uh you know bon ami hasn't scratched yet and get to work on it like just the the mundane tasks of life when they're happening against the backdrop of what feels like such a macro threat to life as we know it and to just justice i just i don't do well in those situations i don't know what i would have done but i think you handled it better than i did well that's why i was in such a fuzzy that's why the oven fire you set last night was kind of fun that well that was a celebratory fire

yeah you're roasting marshmallows well that's why i don't think this would have happened if i were in a different mindset you know what i'm saying like i do think there's some causality here i think i was just in this mode of just like i i don't know i can't handle it whatever put on self-clean let right let well no you wanted to self-clean america yeah exactly like i just like i think that if i were in a more regular state of mind i'd be like whoa i must have spilled some butter in here.

or some chicken fat or whatever it was, and I would have probably let the oven cool down and I would have put on a podcast and I would have known to go in there with some rags and clean up the worst of it and then maybe do a self-clean after that if need be. You just can't self-clean a puddle of oil. And I just think that I was in some sort of a screw-it mood and just probably that led me to do that. I also got to say, I didn't discover self-cleaning functions on ovens until pretty late in life, and they're really awesome. Like when used appropriately, like there's so, I don't know if you ever use that.

I have never deployed the self-clean option. It to me is like, it is, it's sort of literally and figuratively the nuclear option. It's like, it feels to me like I need to go, I need to put on, first of all, I need to put on a high-waisted tweed suit and a fedora and get a pack of cigarettes because I'm Oppenheimer at that point. I am, I'm starting a reaction in the kitchen environment. I need to go hide behind a couch. I need to go hide in a hut behind a couch. You've seen Oppenheimer, I believe, right? It seems like...

You're wearing those glasses. You're wearing those dark glasses.

The ramifications of what you have said in motion, you know, it's, I have become oven cleaner, I believe is the quote.

Famously. Well, I am really sad that this is the story that you're hearing related to self-cleaning ovens. Because I got to say, I made a mistake this time because there was way too much gunk in there, and that's not how that works. But especially, you must have a modern stove, right? You just redid your whole kitchen.

I have the same kind that you do. Oh, really? LG? Well, yeah, mine is an LG, and it's got that ceramic, that blue ceramic inside.

I do like that blue. Isn't it funny how you just add a little to this?

Is yours, is your LG part of the, what's the name for these? Because they're technically, like, it's technically Wi-Fi enabled, right? And it's got like Insight Or something It's like the LG Insight Network of things Because my stove is one And my microwave I've never gotten them successfully to Talk to each other or even Maybe I don't know stage a mock wedding With me as the bride Other things that you would do if you get all of your kitchen appliances to come to life Cinderella style But yeah it's like Think I'm looking to see here I don't know It's the Think network but the Think is a Q It's like T-I-N-Q is what I think the name for the way that you could. If you have the same one that I do.

Yep, I see it now.

And I think here's what you're supposed to be able to do with that bad boy. Like if you're on your way home with the kids from soccer practice like you are so often and you realize that that oven is supposed to be preheating, you can start preheating from your phone.

I don't know for sure that we have that. Like ours definitely has some sort of Bluetooth technology, if you can believe it. I hope you're right about this. Here's the deal. I am not somebody who likes to read instruction manuals and never feel the need to, but I really need to sit down and just watch a quick video or read the manual for my oven because I'm not – we love this new oven. We hated our old one so much, and we love this new one, but I'm not using any of the functionality that a modern oven allows. You know, I'm not using whether it's Wi-Fi because I thought that, like, my understanding of, like, the quote-unquote smart features on mine were very limited to, like, well, you can hook it up to your phone and the app will tell you maybe you can set a timer or something. But I didn't think you could actually control the oven functions. I hope I'm wrong. And as I say this, it sounds like I probably am wrong. I just haven't, like, I kept thinking, like, well, one of these days I'll get into that. i'm still very confused about like when to use the air fryer function versus the convection oven for when it was that one i was using air fryer all the time and now i realize i'd rather just take my time things are coming out better in the convection or in the in the conventional oven

settings we've got the greatest scientific minds of our era trying to understand the difference between convection air fryer yeah etc and they and by the way they're stumped yeah absolutely stumped at this point yeah we must have the exact same oven because mine allegedly has those features i've never used any of you just use bake mode i just yeah i just use it like what i think of as a regular oven i love that it has that enamel that blue enamel inside it fills me with it sparks joy i know i love each time i each time i open the oven but short of that i've never i haven't done and and um well here's something i a while ago i haven't had this haven't had her come by in a while but i started hiring someone on the sort of rare occasion to come over and actually like just do a little bit of house cleaning at my house i'm a pretty tidy guy but what i'm not what i don't naturally think to do is deep clean and clean in all of these little nooks and crannies of of my house and so what usually happens is this person comes over and i'm always i'm a little sheepish when she comes over because i i wonder if she thinks like is this a prank because the house is totally clean right there are no dishes I don't know.

in the sink there's no like but then what she does is she goes around she once she steams the floor oh geez she she does something where after she's like vacuuming it's a hardwood floor she steam it's the cleanest i've ever seen a hardwood floor and she cleans out the inside of the of the stove and it's super duper clean so for now and but again i this is maybe maybe once a month not even that because i've been traveling a lot but like i also if you want to know this is so bad i really hope my mom doesn't hear this i love you mom i love you so much but usually when this person would come by would be on a friday that's the part of their schedule that i'm in and a lot of times that friday would also be a friday that my parents were passing through town and we're gonna like stay for a couple of nights and i kind of feel like i don't want to get the house cleaned like really cleaned right before my parents show up because they are basically feral and it will be a waste of the deep cleaning because everything will be like just so and then deep clean and then all of a sudden it's just a woohoo party going on there's just like I feel like when my parents are well I feel like when they come into my house because oftentimes I'm not there I might be doing the show with you I might be already out of town and they'll come through i feel like the first thing they do when they get into my house is they move every single thing by half an inch like they make it a goal to just go and just slightly move everything like hey you know oh that chair usually goes in this direction what if we turned it around what if we uh and that thing they just move everything i think it's most of my mom honestly but they just like every single thing in the house gets slightly adjusted in some weird way that i then have to go back through and move it back to the way i like it i swear this is a plot of a

thurber book or something like that or i think i mean i don't all or something where people are driving somebody is being driven just by like changing things a tiny tiny bit yes this exactly

like it's this kind of it's this kind of thing designed to make me go insane because everything is just a little bit a little bit not how i left it or a little bit messed with so what what the reason that i haven't had this person come by for the last couple of times has become has been because she was going to come by on the day or the day before my parents were going to be there and staying over. And I was like, I don't really want to, I don't want to waste it. It's like the, for me, the perfect expression of having this person come by and clean my house is she does this before I'm going to be home by myself for a week. That's what I want. I want to just be like enjoying it. I want to be like going, golly, it's clean around. Gosh, there is no dust anywhere. I paid for it I wouldn't be able to enjoy it But she does clean out The oven And man that thing is spotless

That's interesting We had a housekeeper very briefly In Los Angeles And we had lived in a relatively Small apartment, like two bedroom apartment Or something, but it was just nice I think she did very basic things She'd come in and just do what you'd just think of as basic housekeeping You know what I mean? she'd clean the floors hardwood floors as well um you know one of the things i liked is even though i keep my spaces really neat anyway if you do have a little pile of something the pile had to be moved to clean underneath it anyway so then you come back and everything is like especially tidy as well as like wiped down and clean but when you when you hired this person did you have to have like kind of a conversation say what i'm looking for is i got that stuff i got the counters i got the main stuff i need you to do the more nitty-gritty stuff like the oven because like i don't think like our housekeeper ever like went in the oven or anything like that i think i said to her i'm

fairly i'm pretty tidy but i'm not good at a lot of you know like i said details so she cleans the sink out really really well that's good because there's because again that's the thing there's not and and what i try to do is make sure that i don't because she's only there for like maybe an hour right so i try to make sure that i have not left out anything that's going to be take up time out of the hour for something that is not a good use of this person's time so for instance i don't want her or need her anywhere near any dishes situation whether it's the dishwasher whether it's dishes in the drying rack whether it's dirty dishes i have a system for that also all my dishes go in very specific places in the cabinetry in the cabinets and that's a whole other thing like i just know the system because i set it up i don't want someone else to be standing there like looking up into the cabinets trying to figure out what the system is um so i like i try to make sure that i've removed every all the stuff that i do on the regular i try to make sure it's all done so that what's left for her to work on is again stuff like steam cleaning the floor or really getting the like the sink because i have these stainless steel like undermount kind of like farmhouse kind of sinks like it's two sinks and i try to keep them clean this is just turning into spotless now i try to keep them generally

pretty clean but but there's always you know there's always i could do it much better and like i said you know she's a professional she knows what she's doing it's also one of those things where i mean i don't know if it's inappropriate or not to the amount of money this person charges is 25 an hour which i feel is too low that's incredibly affordable it's it's wild it's it's like and so i why doesn't she live with you i was i asked and she um she politely declined i said like um you know uh i i basically i was like how much do you charge she said 25 i said that seems kind of low to me she goes no that's just what i charge i was like okay so now i always like well you said that to her well i'm just thinking no i appreciate that i

think i would too like driving to my house in a truck truck it's got to eat gas yeah like and you're tipping though you're leaving a big tip i'm sure well that's what i'm doing now on venmo

by the way my venmo is private but if anybody saw it they'd be like why is luke giving this random lady a hundred dollars every three fridays um and it's because i'm like so you know i am definitely trying to make up for uh you know make up for for what i think is her charging a too low of amount uh by tipping her but I guess my point in that is and this has sort of come up before on the show somehow this feels related but not related to Zoran Mamdani actually this idea of like a living wage and also the work that people have to do a lot of people have to do in a in a city environment or even outside of a city but like um you know it's weird to me that this is one of those things where I you can hear it in my voice my discomfort around talking about it because I feel like it's the bougiest thing I've ever done in my life and it involves me paying somebody $50 potentially, like if she was there for two hours or if she was there for an hour and change and I'll round it up to 50 or whatever it is, you know, it's probably $50, probably once a month when it's all said and done. And yet it feels like the kind of thing that I need to be so careful around talking about. I feel so, cause we didn't grow up with anything like that. I have never in my adult life ever hired someone to do any kind of cleaning at my house on the regular and there's so much other stuff that i spend 50 on i don't know why this is the one thing that makes me feel like i'm in the one percent and i have to be like i'm i'm like in weirdly embarrassed about it as a topic i have to keep saying how she's not there every week and how mostly and i'm even telling you how much i'm paying her so that you know that i'm i don't know why this is a very uncomfortable thing for me to talk about because i associate it somehow with being like a rich person.

I can't articulate it better than you, but I understand the discomfort there. And I would share it to a degree as well. I don't know if it's about the, I think it's the human connection. I said, I can't be articulate about this. So why not keep talking? I'm listening. But don't you feel like it has something to do, not with how you're spending your money, but the fact that it's like you're spending it on this particular service that a human being, I think it has more to do with not the spending habits, but just the responsibility maybe that it's like, well, why can't I clean up my own messes or something? I feel like there's a psychology there that goes beyond just the money and just like, well, this is what rich people do, but also the idea of having people who are serving you in this way.

It's the closest thing that I would ever have to a butler or a somebody who's like, I don't know if we use this term anymore, but you said a servant of some kind, because every other job that you might hire someone to do in the home environment, it kind of makes instinctive sense. it's like child care well it's really really it's it's an intense thing to take care of children and you might work outside the home and so we're gonna nobody thinks it's weird if somebody has child care for their children when they're working or whenever they're doing whatever or i'm hiring i'm you know less now but i was hiring people left and right um to come build things at my house and fix things and and whatever because i don't know how to do i don't know how to mud and tape sheetrock very well and so that's like yeah of course you hired someone for that anything that seems hard yeah good we hire people for and we don't it's not like oh yeah you had to hire a plumber yeah my sink was backed up you had to hire a plumber it doesn't feel like at that point you've abdicated your responsibility in life but there's this one thing which is like yeah i didn't really feel like cleaning my toilet properly so i i'm paying someone maybe not enough money because that's the circumstance of their life and they're here doing that like there's something you're right that's very there's the human connection with that and also like the human decision making i guess process to say yeah i'm i'm gonna i'd rather spend 25 then and by the way i want to be also very very clear if you think i haven't at least given the toilet a pretty good once over before this person gets there you do not know me i would sooner die than have this

person get to my house clean the toilet and be like oh this guy you're not taking out the toilet

brush and brush and using toilet cleaner you mean really because not a toilet cleaner on that then like i would understand if you took a paper towel or a balled up thing of like toilet paper and sort of did some preliminary wiping around the rim just in case you know it had accumulated anything and just like you know trying to make it seem not gross but if you're taking out a toilet brush and getting that thing wet then nobody's very improve upon that very minimally i'm here i'm not putting

in any you know what she's got that i really like she's got i don't know one of those little um it's like a sticky blue thing that kind of it's like a it's not 2000 flushes blue which by the way one of the greatest commercials for my were they playing that in ohio when you were a kid

was that the one that had the little sailor man in a boat in the back of the tank no you know

what i'm talking about right i don't think i know that this is the guy who invented it and he's extolling the virtues of 2,000 flushes blue because it's going to last for 2,000 flushes but he was always like you know I'm David Marks and I invented 2,000 flushes blue and then he's like flushing a toilet and I always thought it was funny how he said 2,000 flushes blue

with a bit of an accent is that almost a New York accent? Yeah it was some New York

thing it didn't seem like it was like he wasn't from Seattle right and I just always thought 2,000 flushes blue was like the funniest thing when I was a kid

That does ring a bell. I know that my, like, I don't think we had those kinds of things that the stuff that you'd either put, I think usually those would be discs that you would drop in the tank, right? And then you flush it, then the water would be like this very artificially blue color. And we didn't have that, but I think like one of my grandparents did. I think Grandma Klink Klink did, Grandma Simsek.

I think they're a great idea.

It's cool. I remember it was like so much fun when I was a kid. You couldn't stop flushing the toilet 2,000 times.

But what this, what this gal does is she like sticks on a little, there's also this version of it where it's like a little gelatinous disc and you've got an applicator that's like a long tube and you stick it to the inside of the toilet bowl so that as the water comes through, it gets a little bit of this cleaning solution on it. And then over time, the thing just like washes away and washes off. So she does a little bit more like she's got the gloves on. She's going, you know, probably up into the crevices. What I'm just trying to make sure is that she never has the experience of coming, opening the toilet seat and just kind of like shuddering. Like, I want to make sure that there's a minimal amount of any other kind of unpleasant visual indicators in that toilet.

So I just found something incredible here on YouTube, Luke. I don't know if you're familiar with YouTube. Please let it be 2,000 flushes blue. No, I'm going to let you look that one up because I was like, who's this little sailor man that I remember floating in a boat in the back of commercials? And that's for Tidy Bowl? And he was the Tidy Bowl man, so I wanted to see if I could find a commercial and I was able to find a montage of commercials but it actually opens not with one of the original commercials but a parody of the commercial luke from none other than mama's family i believe here oh man vicky lawrence yes or i think this is i think this is mama's family let's take a listen to this it'll it'll start with whatever this parody is and it looks like in this version she opens up the tank of her toilet and the tidy bowl is man man is in there in his little boat but he's also got a stand-up base for some reason so this is going to we're going to start with the parody and then it'll roll into the real one i think could this just be the carol burnett show i think it wasn't carol burnett in mama's family i think i'm just confusing the two well wasn't she oh this is going to be bad

i always thought that mama was a character that was on the carol burnett show but wasn't that also vicky lawrence and then it was its own show that was just all mama's family like maybe almost a spinoff from the Carol Burnett show?

So that was Vicki Lawrence was on the Carol Burnett show. Is that why I get them confused?

I think so.

Because I don't know the difference between Vicki Lawrence and Carol Burnett. In fact, I couldn't even keep them both in my head.

They're definitely different people. Carol Burnett used to, I called them the same person. I combined them into one person. So is this a, what are we, are you bailing on this? No, I'm not going to bail.

I'm going to tell you this. I'm going to play it for you, but I just need to figure. So I did just go to Wikipedia though. Mama's Family, American sitcom, starring Vicki Lawrence as Mama. The series is a spin-off of the recurring series of comedy sketches called The Family, featured in the Carol Burnett Show, and Carol Burnett and Company. The sketches led to the television film Eunice, and finally the television series. They were sketches. It was Vicki Lawrence, you're right that it was Vicki Lawrence, but who am I seeing here? I think I'm seeing Carol Burnett. I think what I'm seeing here is a Carol Burnett sketch. I really feel like I should have just played a commercial not the parody of this but I'm in too deep now she hears something I think she hears this music I think it's diegetic and now she lifts up the toilet tank

lid and she sees I'm the man from Tidy Bowl okay now she flushed the toilet and the scene ends which I guess if you flush the toilet that does sort of screw the Tidy Bowl guy because he's not in the toilet bowl he's in the tank so what does happen to him when he's flushed that's a really good question

I guess he's just got to avoid that drain right or he's living with the alligators

he's got to spread out his arms and legs and try so hard not to end up in the bowl because that's rough stuff. All right, let's get to the actual commercial here that follows this. I don't know how chopped and screwed this is. I picked the wrong video, man.

I'm fed up with scrubbing.

Excuse me, but you need Tidy Bowl.

Here. Oh, it's you, the Tidy Bowl man. Will this help? Sure. With each flush, Tidy Bowl releases strong cleaners that help keep toilet bowls staying free. How do I know Tidy Bowl's cleaning? The sparkling color tells you that it's working hard. Tidy Bowl's powerful and safe on plumbing. that's great comes in lemon fresh blue or pine scented green with tidy bowl you'll scrub less

safe on plumbing too yeah you know lemon blue oh the classic andrew i'm looking at this now this tidy bowl stuff i didn't this what they were not playing this in the pacific northwest or i was not watching during the right time this is totally new to me um and fascinating this is this is a major uh pop culture blind spot for me this guy standing in a boat next to this basically upside down jug of of cleaning solution that's going to slowly let itself out into the toilet water

supply can i ask you a question it's a little bit of a personal question does it make you want to buy a tiny boat it kind of makes you want to buy a tiny boat doesn't it very very possibly um okay

now this is not going to pay off but can i just i've found two thousand flushes blue okay uh and And I don't know if this is, again, I think this is the commercial, but here, let me play it for you here.

These blue toilet bowl cleans only last about six weeks. 2,000 flushes blue lasts up to four months. Drop in 2,000 flushes blue and it cleans and keeps the water blue up to four months. 2,000 flushes blue or original clear.

I believe that's Al Eisen of 2,000 flushes blue fame.

Can you play that same one again? Because it sounded like he said six squeaks, which I kind of like as a measurement of time, even though I know that that's not what he actually said. Did you already close it out?

I did, but luckily the internet, like the North, remembers. And it's going to take me back to where I was a second ago. But yeah, he was sort of, to me, he was spiritually connected to the I'm not only the president, I'm also a client, or whatever. I'm not only a client, I'm also the president. You know, the hair club for men guy. These were like bald guys, probably from New York, who were kind of quirky. Here we go. This is back to our buddy, Al.

I invented something amazing. 2,000 flushes, blue plus bleach.

Oh, you know what? Sorry, this is a different commercial.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It was funny the way he said six weeks.

Here we go. Here we go.

These blue toilet bowl cranes only last about six weeks. 2,000 flushes blue lasts up to.

That's the sixth movie in the Chipmunks movie.

2,000 flushes blue lasts up to four months. The bowl cranes only last about six weeks.

only lasts about six weeks i wonder how allies is doing i mean i have a feeling allies and might be a was i just looking looking at him on video here also i don't want to get into talking about bodies and hair and things like that but he he really was from an era where guys of a certain age were i think more bold i i feel like the era of the comb over don't you think that the the world of the comb over has really come to an end i think for the particularly for kind of guys

of a certain age yeah because he is he combing over in this is that what you're saying so much

i'm saying he has the classic he's got the classic comb over where it's like he's got his hair is gray it's it's very thin on top but then he's grown it super long but then he's combing it over but like it just so happens that i froze it i'll send you this as a show pic andrew maybe if we don't already have one sure i froze it just randomly froze it on youtube in this exact moment where it's like this comb over is fooling absolutely nobody yeah that's why i never understood those and yet it was a real default setting for lots and lots of guys and then i feel like i don't even know if the term comb over was in use but it was just a known thing that a lot of older guys were going to do this with their hair and then we started calling it a comb over it started to become kind of this thing that we sort of joked about became a story when rudy giuliani finally like fixed his which i don't know if you remember this but you know he giuliani was he he cut his hair differently and it looked a million times better and i think he might have been on oprah this is back when he was still america's mayor see everything comes back to new york city mayoral politics today see what i'm doing here i remember he was on oprah and oprah was complimenting how much better his hair looks.

and he refused to admit that he used to have a comb over he just kept trying to play it off as my barber cut my hair different it was like listen brah it's all right you had a comb over no shade but it looks a lot better now and we all like it but that was i remember it being a big story that rudy giuliani wasn't having his comb over anymore and now i think because of just like it's just it's it's more acceptable for you know just to kind of keep your hair short maybe even shave your head or whatever there's different hair systems there's lots of hair transplants now this era of like a lot of guys of a certain age having this very unconvincing comb over like you just don't see that i was just i was going to tell you about this i was just in the weekly editorial meeting the show meeting for cbs sunday morning over at the broadcast center and it's you know it's a bunch of different people actually of all kinds of different ages but there's certainly there's enough fellers of a certain age that work on the show or are involved with CBS stuff none of them had comb overs, no comb overs nobody's combing over anymore

it looks worse there would have been three as I'm losing more and more hair, my only issue is when my hair gets longer and it gets like stringy and it exemplifies it magnifies I guess I should say the baldness even more in a very unsettling way and that's what a comb over is right it's like leaving are you taking photos

of me of my bald head as i said no of al eisen no you just i would never do that without your

permission the show pick today is just going to be a huge close-up of where i've got these two little patches of hair hanging on in front why won't you guys just go away like the rest i was

but like you know i was um i was uh if you rub some two thousand flushes blue on there

i just blew myself i yes you did but anyway yeah i mean for me it's just like i i can't shave my head because i also have a beard and that's a consideration and that's a you know a lot of men do that and they look good but like it's just i don't think that would look good on me shaved head beard and i don't want to lose the beard if i lost everything i would just be really upsetting looking for folks i got to think about the other people's experiences as well i've told you this

you're not going to enjoy me you're not going to enjoy this piece of feedback so just try to tolerate it try to survive it try to get through it but like one of the big takeaways from our TBTL-a-thon week in Wisconsin when we then did a meet-and-greet with a bunch of wonderful TBTL supporters and friends who came out to that kind of barbecue thing. I heard repeatedly from people, Andrew is much better looking in person than I expected based on how Andrew describes himself on the show.

In a certain way that works, because somebody did, I can't remember who it was, but somebody did say, you describe yourself as a troll, and they're like, you don't look that bad. I'm like, well, then I guess setting those expectations. It's working. It really works, right? But all of that is to say, yeah, the comb-over look just, and again, everybody can make their own decisions. Like, we were even talking the other day, like, you know, there are people who wear wigs, and I'm sorry to use, I'm not saying this to dunk on him, but I just think, like, as a public figure, Rick Riz, the baseball announcer for the Seattle Mariners, I guess that's a toupee, right? Well, I don't know. But it's getting, it's covering more and more and more. And the last photo I saw of him on the side, it, like, goes down, and, like, I'm not saying that to make fun of him. He can wear that. I think like my grandfather wore a wig and I think he wore it like it was a hat sort of. And so if that's what makes you feel comfortable, that's what makes you feel comfortable. I'm seriously, I'm not in the I'm not I'm not in any position to be making fun of people's fashion choices, if you would call it that. But having said that, it's not convincing. You don't look at him and say, wow, Rick really has a good set head of hair. You know what I mean? Like literally anybody who sees him knows that he has a big thing of hair setting on top of his real head, you know. And so like to me, it is an interesting decision. And I've told you before, I'm a little sensitive about I like to wear hats. I've worn hats my whole life. But I really my only sensitivity about my baldness is that I don't want people to think I'm purposely trying to hide it. And I'm just like, you know, known in some circles as hat fishing. Exactly. That's true. I didn't really. Oh, I thought you're making that up right now.

it's sometimes i would see like women on you know like tiktok or whatever that would say like they go on a date with a guy he's wearing a hat the whole time and then you find on like the second or third date that he is balding or bald or whatever and they call that colloquially hat

fishing yeah and i do instead of catfishing and again i can't weigh in on that world because i'm just i never dated in that you know i'm not of that or i wasn't of the age at the right time to be doing that but i would not probably do that like if i can't know you would so hard for me imagine myself being on the apps i just don't think i think i would just be in my basement playing darts and just listening to podcasts by myself instead of with genevieve you know but like i i would be very i think self-conscious about like if i'm hiding it all the time at what moment does the real me come out and that does seem like a pretty uncomfortable situation to put yourself into mid love making here's johnny dramatic

automatically remove your Mariners hat. Um, speaking of this meeting that I was in, and I'll try to keep this quick because actually, you know what, let's do this. Can we thank some donors? And then I'll just tell you about my experience. Cause I haven't been in something like this in a long, long time, like a real actual staff meeting at a place that I really actually kind of work. And it was, uh, it was interesting. all right let's do the donor thanks right now this is where we take a little moment out of the show to thank some of the folks who are supporting this thing voluntarily voluntarily they they've heard us uh pleading with them reminding them that this is listener supported podcasting and they could have just been like yeah someone else will take care of it they're not that they're not that kind of person they're not somebody who just says like I've got mine. You better go get yours. They say, hey, you know, a rising tide lifts all ships.

Even tiny little boats in the back of a toilet tank.

Just like the one that I'm saving up for. We want to thank Chad Norman in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Hey, Chad. Thank you, as always.

That sounds very pleasant. Up there on that mountain in South Carolina. Yep. Natasha Donovan is in Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. Now, that also sounds... I can promise. I've never been there, Andrew, but I can tell you right now, that's friggin' beautiful.

Natasha, thank you for being our hurdy-gurdy gal. Okay, now you're going to need to unpack the... I get that. That was a Donovan reference. Oh, Donovan is the last name. Natasha Donovan. He's right there. Hurdy-gurdy man. Thank you, Natasha. Yeah.

I thought that was a Salt Spring Island reference maybe he had written about. Have you heard of Tofino? If you haven't, Andrew, there will come a day where Genevieve is going to walk into the studio or some other part of the house where you are, and she's going to say, we've got to go to Tofino.

No, what is Tofino?

It is an absolutely beautiful little kind of area of British Columbia that's just renowned for its natural beauty. It's right there on the water. It's on, I think it's on Vancouver Island. I don't know if it's its own island near Vancouver or if it's just an extension of it, but it's like, when I see pictures of it, I'm like, I need to move to Tofino immediately. I've never even been there, but I'm ready to move there. And knowing that Genevieve and I are similar with these things sometimes, at least we get... I feel like Tofino's going to cycle through everyone's Instagram page again at some point, and you're going to hear from Genevieve that you guys should think about making a trip to Tofino.

Well, you know what? Genevieve came into the studio and told me that we're going to, in January, something that is advertised as BBC, the big black comedy show in Las Vegas. Genevieve is planning a trip for us to Vegas in January for our anniversary and she was looking at all kinds of shows we could possibly go to I thought we might go to one of those with the high step and kicks kind of show girls kind of situation I don't know what you call that stuff but instead she said hey we're going to the big black comedy show I said what is that and it's Vegas's freshest comedy production get ready to laugh out loud but when I opened it up It looks like and I'm pretty sure if you Google this, Luke, I'm pretty sure it's represented by an A.I. comedian. I'm pretty sure the face of this and the B.B.C. is ridiculously large, which I believe is more than a double entendre in their advertising of this. I believe it is marketed specifically towards adult humor and they won't say anybody who's actually part of the performing. So that's good. So it's just going to be kind of – and when you watch the video, they don't identify any of the people who are in it. I don't know if you're on it. Oh, yeah. This fella is AI, right?

Yeah. I want to be careful with how I talk about this for all of the very obvious reasons, mainly being that Caitlin Woodleaf of Eagle, Idaho has asked me to be careful when I talk about BBC comedy shows. but like i'm i'm having a hard time understanding what it all about this advertisement worked on genevieve because it is you're right absolutely and guy who is ai in front of a brick wall there's also ai there's he is so unconvincing as something someone who is funny as a humanoid It's, as a human, like, it's the opposite of, it doesn't even, it doesn't even get close to looking like something that would be funny, and then you go through, and you're not able to actually see, because I thought, when you said the Big Bad Comedy Show, I thought, okay, it's going to be a selection of black comedians, Andrew's going to start naming them, I'll recognize at least a handful of the names, and, uh, I. can see that being a really fun night this looks like something absolutely right out of ai hell

where i am so excited to report back on this luke because the little blurb is your exact take um

what's that was this also your take on the situation well i was just i i thought it was so

here's the deal and i don't i really don't want to in any way like kind of make it sound like i'm throwing genevieve under the bus i i've never been to vegas before we genevieve plan any trip that i take Genevieve plans down to the last detail I don't do anything so I definitely don't want to make it sound like I'm unappreciative I'm actually looking forward to this just to like see what something like this is you know because again like there's no headliners I originally thought it was going to be the same as you like oh these will be some folks that I've heard of and then some folks I haven't but their description I love this the big black comedy show is Vegas's newest and funniest production they might not be household names like Dave Chappelle Cat Williams or Kevin Hart but this rotating cast of up-and-coming comedians are every bit as hilarious now do you think that is true they are every bit as hilarious as Cat Williams Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart Cat Williams by the way I was thinking about him during the show yesterday because he had a dream of buying a Washington State decommissioned he did you know what and he didn't buy it I failed

you as a co-host and a scary monster to mention that when we were talking about buying fairies that, yes, Cat Williams was on the record as wanting to buy a ferry of his own.

In Washington. When he was stuck here, I think because he hit somebody in the head with a microphone and then because of legal issues he couldn't leave for a while. So he started reading the Seattle Times, heard about a decommissioned ferry, and then floated on Twitter that he might be interested in buying that ferry. I don't think it ever happened.

The thing about this, there will probably be some comedians that night who go on to have really bright futures. um but the fact that they that this show is specifically designed so that um there are no specific comedians being promoted ever that the what is being promoted is that their skin will be a certain color that seems to be that will be the number one kpi for anyone performing that night and uh that seems to me like a way to um put some comedians up who will have let's just say varying abilities of of being funny and being comedic what i would do if i wanted to see a comedy show in las vegas this is a real thing because i'm now just like scrolling through vegas.com i would go see carrot top i mean i think carrot top is kind of having a moment where he you know obviously was he was very popular for a time then he became kind of like the punchline the kind of joke of what you don't want to be as a comedian and then i started to see a little bit of a rehabilitation of his reputation or like a rethinking of him where i'd start seeing him on like joe rogan this is before the rogan thing was politicized you just see carrot top kind of showing up on podcasts and he's actually like kind of a likable dude he's just kind of like you know he was basically a victim of being a prop comic and then just his own success you know being on the tonight show a lot and then having a vegas thing which was kind of considered uncool at a time i feel like seeing carrot top in vegas is the most Vegas thing you can do if you want to go see Vegas-y comedy?

First of all, it's interesting that you skipped over a huge part of the Carrot Top story, which is at some point he got swole as hell, and I feel like that has something to do with the reinvention of Carrot Top as well. Not that everything is...

Well, I think that was part of the fall of Carrot Top was like, what is going on with this dude? At least, it was my brain's reaction was like, okay, he's out there in Vegas just absolutely getting shredded and And and and and still like pulling out a golf club that has a urinal on it or something, you know, so you can pee while you're golfing.

I got to be honest with you. And this might, you know, I could I could take this back down the road. But I am more interested in finding out what this show we're going to is going to be like than going to a Carrot Top show. Like the idea of going to Carrot Top doesn't sound if Genevieve had come in my office yesterday and said, we're going to see Carrot Top. I would be like oh really this I think is so funny because there's clearly a double entendre going on here that Genevieve was fully unaware of because she's an innocent child and so I had to explain that to her that this is going to be kind of adult comedy too that I don't think that she's was kind of realizing I think for her it was like we're doing this Vegas adventure which is very un-Andrew and Genevieve and so while we're doing it like why not just jump into the sides of us that are doing things that we would never do you know and this just she's like and also i think affordability had something to do with it as well she's like what why spend tons of money on something you know i would assume that carrot top would be more expensive because he's not a lot more maybe maybe not on the same website and you'd be surprised

there's a lot a lot of shows to fill

for old Carrot Top.

Right, yeah. I mean, maybe I'm wrong about that, but I honestly, for whatever it's worth, I saw this, and I saw this AI comedian in front of a brick wall, and I am way more curious about this. Like, I am less curious about what Carrot Top will bring. I mean, I guess there's a chance that I could end up being surprised and charmed by him. I'm not even trying to throw Carrot Top hate out there. I mean, you're the one who introduced him into evidence. I'm not trying to speak ill of your favorite comedian, but I uh this one has a lot more mystery around it to me oh it sure does so I'll have it's a

literal and figurative black box and I will be very very curious to hear how the show went and also if you unwittingly became part of the show yes oh wow that had not occurred there is a very high degree of possibility around that my my oh that's introducing something and that would be really i would really really be interested in how that oh i gotta raise that to genevieve because i gotta say like that you again that do not sit near the front my no that's

a really good call that should put panic in me like when we went to the magic castle somebody called on me a couple of times because we were sitting in the front row and genevieve said it was kind of embarrassing because i so i was giving out that like do not talk to me i don't want to be part of this thing and then he picked on me and then I wasn't game enough it just the whole thing like I ruined the energy of this guy's show and he finally moved on but like I do not like that but again in this situation I sort of feel like LA I lived LA that was just an evening there you know I sort of feel like Vegas Andrew doesn't have to be accountable to regular Andrew you know what I mean like nobody knows who I just feel like there's gonna be such a sense of anonymity for me in did i say that funny anonymity no yeah um sorry i'm high as hell right now do you know that the kids are calling it gardening by the way yes hannah brooks it took me so it took me so long to

figure out what that meant because i would see people on tiktok and they would be talking about doing gardening and i didn't immediately put that together as what they were talking about and i just thought well maybe they're into like growing things and then and then i had to finally like eventually I kept seeing it in ways that I knew I know you're not talking about like you were just outgrowing tomatoes it's got to mean something else and then I finally was like oh green garden oh that's okay that's getting high yeah and I think

Hannah said it was sort of it's part of that TikTok language of getting around any kind of censorship or flags of mentioning drugs or the other things you can't mention

right we can do all that here but we can say whatever we want thanks to Matthew Morita of Kapa'ea Hawaii hey I'm

going to oh Matthew it's our bud

yeah it is by the way i'm i hope i'm reading that right if you notice andrew in the notes our system seems to really be struggling with oh yeah uh the the the the writing of and i guess maybe the use of apostrophe in kappa as so i'm hoping that i yeah the spreadsheet did something i said that right matthew appreciate you so much man also we appreciate lexi janicek of grand rapids minnesota i told you on my theme of oh yeah grand rapids minnesota i almost

corrected you because i wasn't looking at it and i was like oh yeah i mean that's what it says

there twist yeah no twist ending yeah no but we got i yeah when i read that andrew i thought i was reading michigan i mean i guess i read it right because i'm just such a professional yeah how much longer do you need me to talk while you're sending an email right um but like i was thinking grand rapids michigan when i was saying grand rapids minnesota i wonder who had it first i

wonder who wore it better well i don't want to get into judging who wore it better no but um

but what we can say is grand rapids minnesota is the place because it's where lexi janicek is thanks lexi and then lindsey randall is out there in nashville tennessee home of the very very competitive vanderbilt vandy's football team which is really fun to see they are really good this year they have this really fun quarterback love that vandy is doing well love that uh that we've got fans in nashville and just love that andrew this is a thing that is still working when i was when i go to these um when i make my like maybe yearly or a couple of times a year like little appearance at the uh cbs headquarters at the broadcast uh center i'm always like people are how you doing you know like the other producers there and and the folks you know the editors and the like i'm always like fine are you still they never know how exactly to try to understand tbtl

what they here's what they know about tbtl i'm embarrassed that they know anything about tbtl

which is not a good sign i try to keep it to an absolute minimum what they know about tbtl is that um when we're filming things i'm a real pain in the ass with my schedule because every other correspondent they go out with is like i work for cbs sunday morning i'm here to film you tell me where and when and i'm always like how's good we could we could we could we roll at two or could we roll at 6 a.m. and then stop rolling at 10 and then restart rolling at one like I have a lot of like holds on my day when I'm you know when I'm out there filming with them but it's like I can just tell that like I think people are generally positive about it they think it's kind of cool that I have this podcast but they don't really understand it and they're I a little surprised like today I was there at this meeting and I said I got to get out of here because I got to go do my podcast and they were like oh wow you're still doing that and i'm like yeah i am and we're still doing it thanks to the donors so um uh thank you all for making tbtl possible all right uh i'm not going to even fire the whole top story sound effect thingamajig i'm just going to tell you that i was in this um this i didn't realize actually this shows you how this shows you how not plugged into the world of cbs broadcasting i am i didn't actually realize that there is this editorial meeting on wednesdays and what it is is everybody who works on the show who wants to be there I guess who cares about how they're perceived by the bosses which would be my way of saying this is the first one of these I've attended in like 12 years, first and only How big is this? This has been my question this whole time. It's big. Well, first of all, it's a conference room that's totally full of people and people are standing around the outside of the conference table and then it goes all the way outside into the hallway, it spills out and then there's a big screen and on Zoom there's like 40 more people on Zoom wow many of them are at their desks in the building but you can't physically go into the the conference room is too small for the meeting so it's a and it's everybody's representative there's people in europe there's people overseas and other places who are like god knows what time it is for them but like basically what happens is this is this is the meeting after the the pieces have been selected that are going to be in this week's show the producers and sometimes correspondents are then kind of in a way re-pitching the stories to the bosses there i mean the shows are in the schedule so they've made it that far but now is like a kind of a almost like a redo where the producers have to kind of like sell the bosses on why this story is actually interesting and good and why it should continue to have the amount of time it's budgeted for that's like the big fight and um and so you know it's obviously the kind of thing that i should know about i should have been should have been going to these forever but like my relationship with this job has always been i'm gonna go to the place they're asking me to go and interview the people and i'll let the producers handle a lot of the like going to meetings stuff a lot of the like advocating for

the pieces like i sort of liked a little bit i kind of like the idea of being like and and by the way with all the stuff that's been going on with all of the like you know installing barry weiss with the editorial and all the stuff that's been going on with cbs it's been mildly relieving to just be like yeah i don't know you know people like oh how's it going for you i'm like you know i don't know because i don't i don't interact with any of the stuff that isn't the making of the tv stories that's just pretty much what i do and then the rest of it i just let the chips fall wherever they're falling and that's been probably a way of me just kind of burying my head in the sand it was it was interesting to be in the meeting where decisions are being made and to realize that for again however long i've been doing this correspondent thing for them however many emmys i've won andrew and it's been a lot i've got to be honest with you i've never been in this meeting once just going here's why this is a good story like it's that's mind-blowing to me that i never asked hey how do i get on the meeting because nobody ever made me you know again there's producers that are on the meeting and and they're often on there they're advocating for the piece that's going up on a given week so it's not like it's not mandatory attendance but the fact that i didn't just in the interest of professional development think i should try to be on this more just as a i will tell you what it has created is a certain sense of mystique around yeah right because because the way the meeting starts i'm standing out and i'm thinking like i'm gonna like i'm gonna watch like five minutes of this and then i'm gonna bounce because i gotta do tbtl back here at the hotel but i'm standing like out in the hallway and i hear my name i hear the boss of the whole show a guy named rango and we have luke burbank here and everyone turns around and when i tell you andrew how mortified i was like please don't please don't everyone look at me i walk into so then they like get in here so now i'm going into the inner sanctum i'm now invited into the conference room you were kind of more in the hallway crew i was so on the periphery of this i was not only in the hallway i was down the hall around the corner i was as because i was like there are real professionals here who come into these offices five days a week and work really hard to make this and i am just kind of a like a carpetbagger who's passing on through i don't um i don't want to be taking up a spot i don't want to be it somehow it felt to me like i was injecting myself into something i didn't belong in which is funny because i work there and i do put stories on television but so they're like get in here and i i kind of push my way into the conference room and an applause goes up oh my gosh and they were excited like we have two we have two correspondents here because mo rocca was also there it was a it was a big deal to have two correspondents i was told wasn't mo originally that kind of your connection to yes yeah 100 and he'll never let me forget it it's really honestly it's kind of messed up i think it was all a hustle so did he sort of like in this moment so mo kind

of puts his arm around your neck sort of almost gives you a little noogie in front of everybody

like kind of yeah like uh you gotta stop taking up all my air time buddy remember i'm the one who he's kidding a little too hard that's classic mo if you've seen him on tv you know that's his

energy he's kind of over the top right isn't he sort of and very butch he's over the top and very

kind of a bully really yeah a lot of physical a lot of physical hazing um but so then i'm in now i'm in the inner sanctum now i can't just like leave that's why i was texting you i'm still at cbs we're gonna need to push this recording back because i'm now in the media i can't leave early yeah but then of attention yeah and i'm like i'm also but this is the thing andrew i'm enjoying the feeling of actually being in the room where the decisions are happening and just like learning stuff about this this show and this job that i've had for a long time that i just never even took the time to learn just kind of like one of the things is they you know so each story gets presented as to well here's what's good about it here's here's why it deserves to be to remain in the show rundown and then there's some housekeeping things like okay what is the title going to be and they were having this big i don't think this is too much talking out of school because there's like you know there's a title that's showing on the screen when the story is introduced and the debate was there is as of right now there's going to be a profile of an actress an irish actress who i guess is becoming a big deal but who i hadn't heard of and it's a profile that seth doan is doing he's our correspondent in um in italy he does a lot of european stuff and um the question was this this actor i i don't remember her name but she's like very big in europe and in ireland but is in america maybe not as well known although like about half of the meeting knew of her half of us didn't and the whole debate was around if it was disrespectful to this actor to say introducing so-and-so as the title card so we're going around and around about is it okay to say introducing the title card uh introducing her versus in conversation with because to say introducing her is to act like people don't know who she is maybe that's just our blind spot so believe it or not as geeky as it is I love these conversations like this is the stuff I miss about actually working on a staff at a show and everybody knows everybody and everybody's got like inside jokes and our editor Emanuele's got this insanely cute dog that he brings around that i didn't even know he brought around and everyone's playing with the dog i think the dog was named apollo maybe anyway that's a great name and we're just like it's just fun being in the room with colleagues like again i just didn't realize that i actually i really kind of missed that for about 25 minutes yeah and in about the 26th minute is when somebody very nice guy actually from i don't know if it's technically it or not it's some division of paramount that controls the system that we use to book crews to book you know a camera person and a sound person i don't do this but if i did if i was a producer you'd used to be in something called sharepoint oh yeah and they're like that's a microsoft sharepoint that's we're here to let everyone know that we are phasing out sharepoint and we're bringing in it's like called like wolf edge or

something it literally has a wolf in it and we're transitioning to wolf edge and here's the system for and here's what we're going to do and starting on this date and there is mandatory training and i tell you andrew i could not get out of that conference room fast enough like it was i experienced every kind of experience that i've had in a conference room in my life one of really enjoying the camaraderie of my colleagues enjoying kind of seeing the process and even getting to have a small say in the process as we were all kind of debating some stuff and then also just being like i don't i i i don't i please don't make me go to the mandatory meeting about transitioning from sharepoint to wolf edge or wolf ledge or whatever wolf ledge definitely sounds like a casino that you'd be interested in that or a show on the bbc that i'd only be getting limited access to through my stupid brit box app which by the way i cannot highly un-recommend that enough don't get fooled people if you like me are a public radio listener and you hear these brit box ads it is not what it is cracked up to be it's the leavings it is just random leftover episodes that they for some reason feel like letting us watch for ten dollars a month or whatever it is but um no it was a it was a it was a kind of a you know what else actually was just this is like super duper full

disclosure and probably oversharing what was really nice about being there was it felt like it usually feels when I'm there because I've been hearing reports you know we had layoffs last week there's all this stuff with the editorial there's a lot that makes me have apprehension about the future of the show or maybe my future at the show or whatever and just being there with everybody and seeing all of these folks that I've known and worked with for many years and just like going through an editorial meeting and then finishing up with a couple of awkward jokes as we break camp and we all move on to go do our thing that we're doing how long was the whole thing about an hour an hour probably yeah it felt deeply normal to me like it felt like a normal meeting that happens at a tv show that's not getting canceled it didn't feel like a chilling effect which is no there was no i was wondering and again this is really getting into like a lot of behind the curtain stuff but like you know i've been out on the west coast mostly and i'm i'm like reading things in the new york times about what's happening to the network and the show and and all of this and it's like well what's the vibe like and i've just been like oh actually vibe is the vibe the vibe is exactly like it always is it's people are working people are putting stories together we're putting the show up each week i it didn't feel funereal which was like a massive relief to me just like the energy was the same energy that i'm used to and i sure hope that that's kind of how things stay you know just like um us getting to keep doing the job that we like doing and playing the you know playing this for people um i was trying to make like a joke kept getting stepped on and then i finally just had to abandon it at the end when they were saying um so after we had this whole debate about if it should be introducing this actress um they were talking about whatever wolf ledge or wolf something and then they were talking about how how it should be how people should find out about or whatever and i said is introducing wolf ledge disrespectful to wolf ledge no but everybody was talking nobody heard it then i did then i then andrew i really rolled the dice you tried it again i waited for i waited for another opening i tried it again also no one really heard it slash checked it registered it and then i just then i called okay

good good i was gonna be like somebody in the movie theater like don't go in there don't go in door number three.

There's nothing to be said before you go into BBC comedy. Don't go in.

There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll. You can't 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 nothing but one day.

All right, you probably have CBS stuff to do. You're in New York through the end of the week. Is this right?

No, I'm flying home tomorrow.

Oh, good.

I'm going to be cutting it close, too. It's going to be dangerous. Be careful, though.

You can't say dangerous anymore, can you? I can't. You can't say dangerous in the regular way.

Honestly, if I'm going to lose a word, I can deal with it being dangerous. I don't think it was usually in my lexicon.

yeah you just say or my lifestyle yeah right but no it's 100 it's been it's been russell

wilsonitized but um no i'm going to be recording some commentaries um i actually one of these commentaries that i'm recording tomorrow i don't hate they're basically like tips and tricks for watching the super bowl or being at a super bowl party if you're not a football person okay but it's mostly just excuses to make jokes about how dumb i am and and and and like and how superstitious i am and things like that it's me laying out that jinxes are a real thing so like if you say that the person is definitely going to make the field goal it means that they're going to miss it and it's your fault but if you say they're going to miss the field goal they're also going to miss it and it's your fault there's no there's just it's a very complicated thing so it's basically me just talking about mostly my football weirdness um so that'll be kind of fun but yeah i'm i'm taping those tomorrow in the afternoon after jane paulie is done whatever her deal is i guess she needs to use the studio for some reason and then i'm going to be doing one of those moves where it's like jump right in the taxi cab head right to the airport and i hope that i make my flight so we

will see genevieve's got me nervous i gotta fly to ohio soon and uh she's got me nervous saying all the there's TSA delays or anything have you clocked I did not experience that flying out here

for what it's worth I think it's very hit and miss I've heard that in Texas maybe it's even Houston specifically they've had some real issues of late but um I think that uh I mean listen hats off to everybody at the federal level who is working and not getting paid I mean I just don't understand how how this is happening in this country but also how folks are trying to make it through and you know the fact that an airplane can take off right now safely and then land somewhere else safely so that I can like do my stupid Super Bowl commentary is because people are working for no money right now. So thank you to those people, really and truly.

It's a good reminder for me to be very gracious to those folks as I'm going through the TSA security. Alright, let's do some Blur's Days. This is where people wish themselves or others a happy birthday message. You can send me your Blur's Days. Andrew at tvtl.net is my email address. Put Blur's Day in the subject line so that I don't miss it. And we are doing these, if you're clocking these, we're doing these a day early today on a Wednesday so that I can get to the airport. The first one comes from listener Jessica who says, Happy Blur's Day to my amazing 11 Mark, who has been listening to TBTL with me for the past 15 years and even went to the live show in Philly with me. Oh, nice. Oh, that was Mark's dog.

They let dogs into this hotel.

He got that dog. Mark's got that

dog in him. Wait, it wasn't Astro.

Apollo? Apollo.

Oh, Apollo, but Astro was a famous dog, remember?

Yeah, that would be a good name for a dog, too, like in 2025. I think it's gone away, now it's come back.

A friend of mine, yes, a friend of mine in the early 2000s, he had a dog named Astro. That was a great dog name. From the Jetsons, right?

Yeah, now that you say that, I had some regret and then some non-regret with our cat Bingo. I really like the name Bingo for him. Meow. Oh, there he is. Wow. Hello, Bingo. No, no, no. I need the mic now. I need the mic. And we named him Bingo immediately. I think we had the name maybe in the back of our head. And if we met a cat that seemed Bingo-ish, maybe go with that. Bongo was also in the running. But anyway. Was Bingo in there? I don't think Bingo was in there.

Bingo, Bingo, Bongo?

When we brought him home, I think it was maybe that day or the next day, we noticed that he had like a, well, we noticed, we saw right away, But he's got this black circle just around his face. And it was a very distinct circle at the time because he's a cat that looks like a kind of a Siamese cat. But the black around his face was almost a perfect circle. And after we had named him Bingo and were comfortable with that, at one point, one of us said, oh, we should have named him Spaceball. Because there was just something like Spaceball-y about his little round face, like a little moon face or whatever. Like, oh, Spaceball would have been a great name for the cat. but then as time went on that circle essentially has gone away like all of Bingo's little features as a kitten were much more distinct and then as his hair grew out now he's just sort of like it's just a fade from the darkness to the lighter fur so if we had named him Spaceball it would have made absolutely no sense so I actually spent a couple of weeks really regretting not naming him Spaceball and now I'm so glad we didn't name him Spaceball and now he's my little Bingo

yeah he definitely looks like a Bingo and moves like a Bingo Actually, he kind of moves like Jagger.

Right. Yeah, he moves like a bongo. Did I finish Jessica's message? Did I even start it? Happy Blursday to my amazing 11, Mark, who has been listening to TBTL with me for the last 15 years and even went to the live Philly show with me. If Mark hasn't listened for a while, he always asks, how are the guys? Usually after making fun of my Tonight Pants or my TBTL Drops references. Anyhoo, here's to Mark. an amazing father and husband can't wait to foist more TBTL merch on you in years to come Luke we forgot to mention the merch

okay why don't we mention it now and later why don't we mention it well maybe on Monday's show we got merch everybody we got new merch we are excited

about it we can we have to wrap up the show but yeah we're supposed to mention this at the beginning of the show today we created a I'm not even going to say well should we say what it is Should we give it a little hint? Yeah, of course. Or just go to the merch store. Okay, yeah.

The problem is I don't have my special. I wish I had my music for what the new merch is referencing.

Oh, right. Well, I will just keep. If you find it, I'll kill the music underneath me right now. You got it?

I think I've got this here. Okay. So, if you remember, when we've been talking for more than an hour, and I want to just start talking about some especially boring stuff, I have decided by a professional executive fiat to just start calling it The Badlands and therefore I'm allowed to talk about whatever I want and we said oh we need like one of those kind of a Clint Eastwood good the bad and the ugly songs for that anyway we called it The Badlands and whoa sorry I have the full one I've got the full one here just bear with me this is going well I think so why is it that we why don't we sell more merch andrew what's wrong with what's wrong with our approach the fact that he has this that el ropa okay the fact that el ropa has that He must have loved the Cisco Kid kind of reference, that joke, so much. I mean, it makes no sense to have that and then the El Ropo, good, the bad, and the ugly thing. He just put them together because he couldn't pick one. He couldn't decide which one was better. You know what I mean? Like, they're a very, very incongruous pair. Okay, so here we are in the Badlands. And guess what you can now buy at tbtl.net by going to the merch page at tbtl.net. You can buy T-shirts and mugs and water bottles and all kinds of fabulous stuff with the new TBTL Badlands logo on it. I think that it turned out really well, by the way, Andrew, and that was 100 percent because of you. Nice work on that.

The announcement worked out well. Oh, no, the actual merch. Oh, yeah, the logo. No, no, no. I think people are, I'm sorry. I think we're announcing. I am so confused as to what's going on now. Is it fair to say introducing the Badlands, Luke, or should we talk about that? Is it hurtful?

Is it disrespectful to say introducing the Badlands?

No, okay, here's the deal. We really did make a cute little logo for the Badlands, and we have now put that on hoodies and T-shirts. They actually would make really nice-looking little camping hoodies or T-shirts and water bottles and mugs and everything that you said. Plus, we have our usual store items up there, things that say TBTL and the stickers. But we did add that just this week, and we've been meaning to mention it. And I keep forgetting, and I apologize for that. No, it's on me. I do want to say one thing, too. We are putting this up here just as an option for you guys if you're looking, especially John was very thoughtful to say, hey, the holidays are coming up. People like to look for things for loved ones. who are tbtl listeners but just so you know this is not a fundraising effort for us we don't make money off of these things so don't don't um you know rush to the store because you think you're supporting tbtl just rush to the store if this is a need or a want that you have i just kind of want to be clear about the tbtl thon being very different from what this is this is not yeah

this is not the thon and honestly we don't really make any money we just think it's fun for people to be wearing tbtl t-shirts and drinking out of tbtl coffee mugs if possible out in the world um also another thing is if you if you got the tambourine that's got this sort of alvin and the chipmunks version of me and andrew and john that our friend max from right here in new york city designed uh that's also a t-shirt that's right how did i forget about that that's in addition to the badlands shirts and by the way i'm really proud of i think it was john's idea and then you actually kind of you were the one that did the design on it andrew but the tbtl badlands logo the official tbtl badlands logo it's as if you're entering a national park and there is a badlands national park and it says but you're entering the tbtl badlands so i actually am very like from a design standpoint from just a sort of uh i don't know aesthetic that word gets overused i think that they look really cool i like i'm very proud of yeah that that logo because it looks like the

National Park sign with that classic font on the colored hoodies and T-shirts. They just look like kind of park ranger-ish in a good way, kind of. I don't know. It has a nice, cozy sort of outdoors vibe to me personally that I really like. So, yeah, do check that out if you guys are looking for things. And once again, thanks again to Max for creating a really amazing piece of art for the chipmunks. Absolutely. Also, happy Blur's Day to Mark.

Oh, we haven't thanked him yet.

Okay.

He's got that dog in him.

Jared says, happy Blur's Day to my wife. Can you let her know, quote, you are my soup snake, the office reference. I love you so much. Happy Blur's Day and 12-year anniversary. So happy Blur's Day to Jared's wife. Jared did not include his wife's name, which maybe, you know, that's for personal reasons. But I'm just hoping there are no other soup snake references in the Blur's case. Ann says, happy belated birthday to Sebastian in San Diego, who turned 18 on Monday. Seb is funny, kind, thoughtful, and a very talented musician. I am proud of the young adult he's become. Aww. And I'm so excited to see what the next chapter of his life brings with lots of love. Auntie Ann in Massachusetts. Cute. I could go for some Auntie Ann's now. Those were the pretzels, right? In the mall?

Oh, I had a, um, full-on hot pretzel the other day from a New York street vendor. Like, we were walking, it was mustard. Yeah, nice. I mean, it was weird, though, because, like, I figured, isn't that, wouldn't that be, in your mind, wouldn't that be the most natural thing? I mean, I think, honestly, it was maybe the only option. I go to buy this pretzel. It's near Central Park. This is when we're watching the marathon. We're kind of trying to get back somewhere to the, I guess, the starting line. I'm hungry. I walk by this stand that's selling all kinds of different things, including pretzels. And I go, one pretzel. And he just hands it to me dry. And I go, can I get mustard with that? And he goes, come back here. I have to step behind the cart where he then just gets out a thing of mustard that he's also using on hot dogs or whatever. And he just, like, hits this with some mustard and hands it back to me. But it's like now it's like a large surface area that I'm trying to keep the mustard from falling off. Remember when you were a kid and you had those boxes with a marble in them and you could kind of go up and down and you try to get the marble to go through the course? A maze, if you will. That was me with this mustard trying to keep it from falling. And I thought, how is there not like a little cup for this? Or is it seemed to be genuinely surprising to him that I wanted something to put on this hot pretzel. But don't you think it's weirder to just raw dog a hot pretzel, like a hot pretzel without any kind of a sauce of some kind on? It just seems like that would be really weird to me. But that seems to be how people are taking their hot pretzels here.

Well, listen, I've eaten a lot of just non dipped soft pretzels in my lifetime. When I was a kid, I didn't even really like mustard that much. And I would never use a cheese dipping sauce, which I think would be the other natural option there. But I was a weird kid and I, you know, didn't have any condiments on a lot of the things I ate. But at this day and age, yeah, you'd expect to have at least the option, and it should be a little paper ramekin or something. Yes, that was exactly what I was expecting. The little cup that the pills come in in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, right? In fact, they should have a whole One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest theme for this whole hot dog cart, Luke. I have an idea. Do you have this guy's contact information? About Brandon, making it sort of about.

Uh-huh, I can find him.

But, yeah, no, that's weird, and I really dislike that idea of, yeah, carrying this thing around, and you're trying to, like, kind of, like, balance it. That seems very, like, walking and eating already is a little bit tough for me.

It was, well, at least it's not electric yellow mustard that will stain forever if it gets on you. But it was kind of good, actually, because what it meant was I only ate half of the pretzel, which is the amount of pretzel I needed, you know what I mean? But, like, pretty soon I got tired of dealing. What I really wanted was, like, two bites of a hot pretzel in New York City. and so once I had done that I was like this is a mess it's getting on my hands it's like I tore off a little piece for Becca and then I was like okay now we're just tossed actually you know what I gave it to the birds I left it out for some pigeons which seems very also on brand for this city so I hope they like mustard

it's kind of funny it doesn't really matter to the audience at all but your camera froze a while back and you're just leaning into the camera and you're looking really really intense but You're frozen like that on my screen. It's intimidating. Oh, great. Oh, there. It just stopped. Yes, I'm back now. You're not as intimidating anymore. I kind of liked that. Trapped says, I want to send out a happy Blur's Day to my awesome wife, Heather. She's having the big 5-0 on November 12th. That's my wife. She's an OG 10 that has successfully converted me to a 10 as well. Nice. That's so hard to do. That's points. We're giving out a million points for that. She now gets one recruiting point. Oh, yeah. She has also, unfortunately, converted me to a Mariners fan. So now I better understand. So now I better understand the heights and joy and the depths of despair.

I think it's going to be joyful for a few seasons. I hope so. That's my prediction.

I mean, a friend texted me today and said, I hear the Mariners are in the Scooble market, which is a nice thing to say. But wouldn't every team at this stage say that they're in the Scooble market almost? Like, who wouldn't be in the Scooble market?

True, true.

I don't know what the report is, though. I don't know.

I've been seeing that for a while. I mean, that is just pure, well, maybe there's some new news there. I mean, obviously the thought was that Terrick Scooble maybe is going to want more money than Detroit can pay him or wants to pay him. And so then that means someone else gets to have him. And who would that someone else be? I mean, presumably the Dodgers. but it would be cool if it was the Mariners. That'd be amazing.

I mean, after all, we already kind of owned them.

Hey. No, that was rude. See, I don't have my rim shot either.

No, that was rude, too, our Detroit pants. I'm just kidding. It was a good series. All right, Max in Seattle says, writing in to wish myself my annual happy self-blur's day. Nice. I blurs myself. Wow. This year I entered into the depths of the end stage of the twilight of my 30s. I didn't pre-read that. That got me scared. I wasn't sure where we were going with that.

of the end stage of the twilight so he's turning 39 i'm guessing i'm doing everything in my power

to make this one a good year and feel happy with myself i'd like to give a shout out to my fellow scorpitens oh i never have heard that before but i like that scorpitens are we in scorpio

scorpio town right now is that we must be i'm i'm basing that It's strictly on Max's message here. Keep up the good work. What we do is so important. Now, it does say when we do is so important. I don't know if that's a joke about astrology. Is that an astrology joke or is it a typo? I don't know enough about it. I'd like to give a shout out to my fellow Scorpio 10s. Keep up the good work. When we do is so important. I think that's a typo.

No, no, no. I think that's a...

That's a...

Yeah, because when you were born is so important.

When we do is so important. Okay, good. I like that better, and I'm glad that I corrected it. Just glad that I'm doing everybody justice today with these blurs days.

Hold on, I need to talk about the merch more, but let me get this song dialed up.

Oh, and we've run out of music, which I've already restarted twice. Riley says, I'm writing, it's like a 17-minute file, by the way. Riley says, I'm writing to wish a happy blurs day to my fiancé, Minnie. Minnie is a smart, sweet, and funny person, a loving cat mom, and a talented gardener. Oh, we're just talking about gardening. The cats and I are lucky to have her in our lives, and we all hope she has a great year. I'm not even starting the music again, by the way. You guys are getting this.

This is my gardening ambiance.

I love that. Happy Blur's Day, Minnie, from Riley and your friends at TBTL. And finally, Molly says, a very happy belated Blur's Day to Laura. I have so much fun living vicariously through you on Instagram, and I love to see that you're doing well. We got some positive news on election night, so let's hope the momentum continues to work in our favor. That's from Molly. That must have just come in today. I didn't even realize that.

Yeah, that's got to be breaking news. But piping hot, fresh breaking news that, yes, for at least today, we're enjoying reading the newspaper and seeing all the think pieces about how the Democrats have their mojo back, as it were. All right. That's going to do it for today's episode. But, boy, we went a while today, didn't we?

And this was probably not a day that you could afford to go. I'm looking here. Oh, no, no, I'm good. We are so close to two hours here.

Good. Well, you know, we just have to follow where the spirit leads us, my friend, and that's where it led us. I've been staring out here on Times Square. Actually, where my room is located is very cool for people watching and also for just, like, sign watching. but one of the recurring ads you know how basically the way it's set up is all these giant digital billboards will just show the same four ads just on a constant like one minute loop and the one that keeps coming up is for the ringer podcast network run by bill simmons yeah that's where bill just went and i'm a fan of bill simmons's work i like him and everything but like one of the podcasts that's on his network is uh it's the spencer pratt and heidi montag they were on that show the hills and it's called they were called spidey that was like a combination of their names and uh like the fact that the spidey podcast is being promoted in times square once every 45 seconds and uh and we're not andrew that's tough for me to take

that's kind of dispiriting so i wonder if bill simmons could use some of his budget to promote tbtl genevieve's a huge fan of his uh rewatchables podcast that's the that's the show that they're

that they're promoting yeah they're promoting the rewatchables and then and then all of a sudden it's spencer pratt and heidi montag so anyway can i before you wrap up i want to tell you something

you said that you have all these like flashing lights and you're having a very manhattan-y moment i will tell you that the the camera on your computer that we're talking on is sort of probably at desk level so you have it sort of tilted upward so i mostly can kind of see your can you see the lights behind yes and i've been watching all show i even was considering asking you know about it i've been seeing because you have a a white looks like maybe painted ceiling or maybe a tiled ceiling and i've been watching the colored lights flashing they're the reflection of those signs in the uh in the you know the one you're getting is it's kind of unfun it's coca-cola

it's not what i'm seeing okay that the red is the is coca-cola oh i can almost see the bottle

now i'm not even joking is there a bottle kind of in the middle of it oh look at that yep yep

there is there is that's exactly what you're saying it's all about reflections tb tell is It's famously a visual medium, this podcasting that we do. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Power out.