Muse

So let's fire up the Batmanmobile, go to a taco stand, and eat some feelings, OK? OK, I just, I think it's Batmobile. Batmanmobile. Batmobile. That's what I said, Batmanmobile. You're putting the man, there's no man. It's just Batmobile. Batmanmobile. Batmobile. Drop the man. Batmanmobile. Batmobile. Batmobile. TBTL.

hey somebody has run out on the field some goofball in a hat and a red shirt now he takes off the shirt he's running down the middle by the 50 he's at the 30 he's bare chested and banging his chest now he runs the opposite way he runs at the 50 he runs at the 40 the guy is drunk but there he goes so look why don't you download my blog it's free of course we do appreciate donations. I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty rascal. Crash into me. Crash into me.

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said, you have reached the end of your free trial membership at BenjaminFranklinQuotes.com. What a wise man. What's on the agenda, my friend-a?

Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Life's a potty. Wipe your body. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Oh my God! He admitted!

Coming to you once again from Washington, D.C. Here in our nation's capital trying to get these clowns to cooperate, you know what I mean? I don't know if that's going to be successful or not. In lieu of that, I'll just help present episode 4,601 in a collector's series of TBTL. on this very show some number of years ago I don't know if it was some number of years ago maybe it was some number of months ago it all kind of blends together if I'm being honest at some point we reported on what was described as potentially maybe the first space crime that had ever been reported to law enforcement

voters cannot travel for the vacuum of space

well now we have an update on that space crime and what really actually happened so we'll talk about that a little bit Oh, and we're going to talk to this guy. He is the longest-running co-bro of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, and he is a newly minted Dungeons & Dragons-adjacent enthusiast. You play to win the game! He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke.

You know what I'm just remembering now? And this time, just in time, I feel like, One of our favorite things on this show about 10 years ago was when I discovered a little audio drop. It wasn't even really a drop. It was like one of those little sound boards. And it was holiday-related because it was the sound of a turkey gobbling. And I think we loved it so much because you hated it. And so I speak in the Royal Wee.

Well, we loved it so much. I think you loved it so much.

Well, wee. Oh, I heard somebody say that.

Oh, you and the listeners?

Yeah, I think me and the listeners loved it. Also, I heard somebody, this is a little bit Burbankian, or modern-day Burbankian, I would say. I heard somebody on my favorite local sports radio show misuse the Royal Wee, and I, for a brief, I did not do this, but for a brief moment, I almost texted with a very, because I'm a fan of the person who did it, but with a very gentle correction. I did not do it, but they said we, but they were speaking on behalf of the team. This is a host, a radio host. And I think she said we, but she meant the Seahawks, so she said the royal we. And I'm like, ooh, that's not what the royal we means. The royal we means.

What does the royal we mean exactly? I think. Now, here's where I. It's a thing Prince Andrew's not allowed to do anymore.

Oh, my God. It's topical. That's what? It's like you never know where the show's going to go, but you keep it topical, Luke, which I really appreciate. That's amazing. I'm trying to drain the swamp while I'm here, but it's not going well. That's what you call it when you go to the bathroom, which I think is really gross, by the way.

Drain the main swamp.

But I think it just means when you— No, I didn't correct, and I'm pretty sure what it means is when you use the first person plural instead of the first person singular because I, a king or a queen, speak on behalf of the people. So we say, we would like a croissant. Uh-huh, that's the royal we. I think so.

But really, you're just, you really mean yourself, but you're calling yourself we.

Exactly. You're not saying we speaking on behalf of a team when you're not on that team, which is how this person uses it.

Do we want the soup of the day?

Do we want the soup of the day? Well, guess what? It's turkey. It's back, baby. That's not what I've heard. Meals like spiced turkey meatball pitas with bibbed lettuce and carrot salad. That's what I've heard it is. I feel like the turkey drop. How about some meat? Do you like turkey? Who are you calling turkey? I feel like my turkey drop, which brought so much delight to the people of TBTL land. A decade ago, I always forget about it now until it's actually Thanksgiving Day or the day after thanksgiving and a whole i have to wait a whole year but now we're like we're kind of the proper amount of time away for me to break that out right what are we we're about almost exactly one week away from thanksgiving yeah on this a week and a day yeah so are you getting excited

and thanksgiving is really late this year so you know me i'm um i'm i'm pretty into christmas stuff but i'm also pretty into not rolling out the christmas stuff for myself before thanksgiving because i don't know i just like it to feel special and um and uh and you know whatever obviously there's the whole overly grumbled about thing of like the stores rolling out the christmas stuff in you know september or something but this year thanksgiving is really late it's at the way end of the month so i've almost had this feeling of like shouldn't it be thanksgiving meaning then i can get into my like i really want to set up my christmas tree i want to start i have that one of those frazier fur diffusers that i think you and vives have as well but i like i that's that's a christmas time smell in my house and um but i almost feel like this year because thanksgiving is almost an extra week late i feel like i might i might forgive myself if i decide because there's there's another mitigating or i don't know if it's mitigating factor i don't want to get a text from you correct me oh you'll get it mitigation there's another factor in how i'm thinking about my holiday celebration, particularly my Christmas celebration. So I'm here, I'm walking around DC. There's lots of Christmas trees that are up in the, you know, in the stores and restaurants, a lot of really beautiful lighting actually. And, um, it makes me happy, but then I catch myself and I say, I'm not allowed to be happy about this yet because it hasn't been Thanksgiving. But like I've already mentioned, Thanksgiving very late this year. And then also So I'm going to be traveling. I'm going to my family's thing next week for Thanksgiving, per always. But then I'm going to go from my family Thanksgiving to probably flying directly from Seattle to Miami, Florida, baby, for a TV story that I'm doing. And then I'm going to spend that week in Miami. I'm going to stop off in Phoenix.

This is immediately after Thanksgiving. I'm sorry. I kind of lost the time.

Yeah, the week after. Yeah, this is also a chance for you to put this on your calendar.

No, I wasn't asking because of that I was just, I kind of So this is like, you'll spend Thanksgiving weekend You're not like flying out on Thanksgiving night Or something like that

No, I'll spend the Thursday and the Friday Basking in the, what does he say On Christmas vacation The kith and kin Of a warm holiday celebration With my family and my daughters coming up It's exciting But then on like Saturday or Sunday I haven't decided which one i will need to fly from seattle washington to miami florida then i'll be so i won't have gone home that's the key point so thanksgiving comes and now i'm not going home i'm flying to miami i'm in miami for a few days thursday morning i get up bright and early i fly from miami to phoenix where i'm going to do wait wait don't tell me on thursday night in phoenix december 4th and then i fly to seattle december 5th because by the way i want to mention live wire at benaroya hall friday december 5th with guess who andrew lindy west and megan hatcher mays podcast will be some i was going to pitch them on maybe doing a little tmtb of the dog crossover too while they're in town because we're actually bringing megan out for this oh okay um yeah it's going to be a really really fun show uh mohanadel shaky will be their super

funny comedian um is the jury you you had texted me privately about another guest that you were thinking about trying to get is that off the table now i'm we're we're hearing that that special guest

is busy on that night so we're still trying to implore them but um but right now we know that it'll be lindy and megan we know it'll be mohaned we know it'll be the broody brothers and we know that there are tickets available uh so please if you like me and you like lindy west and megan Hatcher Mays. Come see us Friday night, December 5th. You can go to LiveWireRadio.org for tickets. Okay, all this is to say, Andrew, I am not going to probably be back at my house until a full week and a couple of days after Thanksgiving. I'm not getting back to my house until at the

earliest December 7th. Yeah, because you mentioned that Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is on a Thursday, so that's going to be exactly one week after Thanksgiving. Yeah. And then LiveWire,

the next night. That's a Friday

then, and that's here. seattle and then back home the night i may need on saturday i think i might have to do some uh you know uh listener relations which is to say hanging out with some livewire supporters and doing some things livewire related it could be here in seattle here there in seattle where you are so it could be um december 7th before i get back to my home and that means i've now already missed a fourth essentially i've already missed a quarter of christmas times at my house and then it's like sunday december 7th i'm trying to set up the tree i'm trying to get everything together i just i'm almost wondering if i should break with my precedent and actually set all my christmas stuff up before i got it like before thanksgiving which again is never happened in the olden days

but this might just be extenuating circumstances i heard that john sklaroff is going to donate to LiveWire in order to get our weekly meeting on the books. You're not laughing at that. It was just a joke about your meeting with...

No, that wasn't disapproval for me. That was me trying to do the math on that first week of December. Just because I'm in Miami doesn't mean that we can't have our meeting potentially.

No, and that's fine. I don't think we have anything super burning and pressing. I just thought it was funny. You're like, well, I'm meeting with donors. I was like, oh, that would be a good way to get on your calendar. I see. that's that's the joke there which but by the way before we even get into your like sort of personal conundrum about this stuff which is kind of personal that's kind of like whatever whatever you decide you know you have these rules but it's for you but i never really kind of considered this idea of where thanksgiving falls in the like on the calendar or within the month of november because i always figure oh it always hovers around the same few days and of course one of those days sometimes falls on my birthday as it does this year but i never really thought about like oh that's late or like whatever so I just looked it up and you're right I just had never considered this before like Thanksgiving can be any time between the 22nd and the 28th and so I don't know I don't think it's always linear so I don't know if that necessarily means that next year it'll be the latest on the 28th and then it'll reset I don't think it's the lines are as clean as that but I had never really thought because I don't have a super I don't have concerns about when to enjoy christmas music or or that type of thing like it doesn't i just want to make sure that i get all of the toys that i put on my wish list for my birthday that's all i really care about but you're right i guess share your birthday with thanksgiving yeah that is a

pretty big swing though you're right like that's a full week exactly and so there's a lot of kind of extenuating circumstances by the way are you i think i've asked you this already but i mean And are you and Veeves doing like a Friendsgiving or something? What's going to be happening? I know we're still a ways out, but do you have a day planned for Thanksgiving?

You know, we're not doing our usual this year. Usually, I would say maybe two out of three years, we'll just do Thanksgiving at our house. And anybody who wants to come over can come over in our friend group. And that's usually, or no, that's always a lot of fun. And like Veeves likes to make the whole menu. And then I'm in charge. I'm always in charge of, what, mashed potatoes and sautéed Brussels sprouts, and I think that's mostly my responsibility, maybe cocktails. But usually we do that a couple of Thanksgivings in a row, and then usually we do something weird or different on another Thanksgiving. A couple of years ago, we went to the – what's the bar that our former colleague at Cairo Radio runs? It's kind of a dive bar with a pretty long – the Streamline. The Streamline. Streamline Tavern. They have a big Thanksgiving there for all of the regulars. And one of our friends is a regular. So we went there one year for kind of a potluck. It was a little, you know, it was a little Bukowski-esque. You don't want to do that. I wouldn't want to do that every year, but I really enjoyed it for, you know, that. And I would do it again. This year, our friends, our mutual friends.

They hand you a set of gloves with the fingertips cut off when you walk in.

Is that just kind of a hobo, kind of a hobo look?

kind of tom waits meets bukowski meets uh yeah just a kind of a life lived rough i guess

have you ever i think you have have you seen the movie barfly that is you know i haven't but i

should i was aware because it's mickey rourke right yes it is good remembering i was aware of that movie as a child but without knowing what the term barfly meant without having ever been inside of a bar like it it was something that I would see the VHS tape at when I'd go to rent a movie at Cregan's pharmacy or shop and save and I always so it has a picture of Mickey Rourke on the cover and I always knew for some reason there's a movie called Barfly with Mickey Rourke in it I didn't know that it's actually Bukowski related and also I hadn't spent a good 20 years of my life posted up in dive bars which gives me a lot of lived experience to reflect back on while watching

that movie it's also got frank stallone in it it's one of the rare frank stallone vehicles

I wonder if Norm MacDonald's obsession with Frank Stallone was good or bad for Frank Stallone's career. Do you remember that whole thing? No, I don't think so. About once every other weekend update on SNL, somehow the punchline would just be Norm MacDonald going, Frank Stallone! He was obsessed with the idea. There's probably a supercut somewhere of Norm MacDonald. And by the way, these were not gentle jokes about Frank Stallone. They were all basically at the expense of Frank Stallone, because I believe Frank Stallone fancies himself a singer, an actor, Barfly, maybe. Have you seen Barfly and was it good?

Yeah, well, I went through a big Bukowski phase, of course, in college. So I watched the movie probably a couple of times in college, but I haven't seen it since then. But I did enjoy it. It's got Faye Dunaway in there, too. And I think even Jack Nance, I think I have a vague memory of that. But I was the only reason why I brought it up because of talking about having gone to Thanksgiving at that bar. but there is a so Bukowski's works of course sort of they center around drinking and specifically alcoholism although he doesn't use that term and in a way that both seems appealing to a lot of young men who are reading it in college like myself but also is like a very kind of like literally living paycheck to paycheck if you even have a paycheck kind of lifestyle waking up in apartments that are above bars and that kind of thing.

I believe you described that exact apartment a few episodes ago. We were talking about that. Flickering neon lights.

Right, yeah, where I always assumed I would live for at least part of my life. But there is a scene in Barfly that haunts me as a depiction of people who have given their life too much over to alcohol, because you and I have both appreciated at various times of our life the romanticism. I've given much of my life. Yes, the romanticism. enough of my life of being a regular at a bar like that and but there's this one sometimes you go in luke and you know this in real life and you see somebody who's older than us and probably don't have too many years left but you know that the years that they do have left they're going to be spending at that bar and have spent basically every hour at that bar leading up to it and sometimes

louie it can give you a little uh louie at the tattletale is i think who you're describing yeah

Whom I don't know. But anyway, there's a scene in BarFi that might even be the opening scene, which is maybe why it's stuck in my memory so much. But there's a very old man at the bar. At least I remember him that way when I watched this in my 20s. And he orders a shot. And I think he has tied some sort of a kerchief or scarf around the wrist of his drinking hand. And he put that scarf around the back of his neck. I think I have this right. We need to look this up. to steady his hand so that as he raises the drink to his lips, he can also use his other hand to use this pulley mechanism behind his neck to get the drink to his lips without spilling it because he has the shakes so bad. Wow.

I will tell you something about that character, Andrew.

He's about at his limit. I know a man who's at his limit. You just described it. I can't stop talking in that voice, by the way. God, it's so stuck in my head. But anyway, I do remember that from Barfly, and that just being indelible in my brain.

Yeah, and that is, I mean, so is Mickey Rourke essentially sort of playing Bukowski?

Yeah, he plays the Bukowski character, which I think is like Henry Chinaski or something like that. Oh, sure, yeah. He always writes himself into his books, and he gave them, I think it's Henry. I might be wrong about that. But anyway, we're not doing that.

So this year, are you barflying it? Are you doing like a Chinese buffet? What are you doing?

Well, you know what we're doing is something that I have never done on Thanksgiving before, and I've only done it once before in my life, we're joining our friends at a Brazilian steakhouse thing.

You're going for meat sweats?

Where they bring the steak. Yeah, meat swords. Yeah, they bring over the meat swords. You have a little green and red card. I assume that's still how they do it. I don't know literally where we're going, somewhere in Seattle, but it's kind of become a tradition with our friends' family. And they invited us. We're like, yeah, let's do that. And again, I think next year, taking one year off of the traditional Thanksgiving will make us very thirsty for a traditional Thanksgiving next year. But I'm looking forward to this this year, both because I haven't been to a Brazilian steakhouse on any day of the week since my early 20s. And I remember going one time and saying to Vives, we're going to do this all the time. And then 25 years passed like that.

Yeah, the first time that I ever even found out that was a thing was in Vegas. They used to have one of those in the Rio, and we called it Meat Swords. and it became this whole you know thing for our friend group when you know camaro kev and tune and all them when we'd be down there we'd always have to do meat swords one night um i didn't know that it was and then i remember being somewhere else eventually and going like they also have meat swords here and then learn like yeah that's called a brazilian state

house and they do it that's a very common thing and in fact the one at the rio kind of sucks it's called it was called samba grill it's like like you'd be much better off probably with a fogo de chow or the best named one oh my gosh andrew is that what fogo de chow is that's what fogo de chow is oh i didn't know that i didn't know you're about to chow on some fogo is that where we're going i wonder my guess would be probably fogo de chow oh no kidding okay um but I just remembered this I think it was actually here when I lived very briefly in Arlington if I'm remembering this right there was because you know it's Brazilian is the kind of I guess you could say kind of country of origin for this style there was a Brazilian steakhouse near where I was in Arlington again I could be mixing up my various places I've lived but I think it was out here in Arlington where it was called the grill from Ipanema that is a solid name for a Brazilian steakhouse, as far as I'm concerned.

Well, it's certainly a good show title. I don't know how I feel about puns in my restaurant names, but...

Oh, man, but you know what's funny, too, is that Becca has a gift certificate to Fogo de Chão. And, you know, I'm not a meat eater, typically, but I also do not describe myself as a vegetarian. Like, you know, I may have some turkey at Thanksgiving, and I keep saying to her, one day, one Saturday, we're going to get a wild hair, And we're going to go use that Fogo de Chow gift certificate because that thing's worth its weight in meat. And I'm going to just like I'm going to call it a cheat day and I'm going to just like basically eat 10 years worth of meat in one day. Well, that reminds me.

Well, first of all, I think the only Brazilian steakhouse I ever went to was in New Hampshire because I know that that was the age I was at. It might have been in Boston, but I don't think I think it was in New Hampshire because I remember it was kind of a work thing or I was at least there with people that I worked with, which just I'm a little bit worried about having. the brazilian steakhouse experience anywhere but new hampshire because it sort of seems like that's like the cultural hot spot for that kind of thing new hampshire i'm just joking obviously well known well-known locusts of meat swords but speaking of the cuisine opportunities in new hampshire when i first started dating genevieve she was vegan and had been not for a long long time but maybe a year or less and then we started dating and like first of all i was just you know i had very midwestern sensibilities i was a young person i and i wasn't like very adventurous in the places we would go and she would come up to new hampshire and like she didn't have any vegan options so on the occasion that we would go somewhere she tried to stay vegan for a while then eventually i think sort of gave up on it she should have given up on the relationship she'd have such a more healthy lifestyle now if she hadn't stuck with me and instead um given up the healthier ways of her life but i always worried about her like living this life of more clean eating to then jumping off too quickly and that's what all of that is to say i'm worried about you going from not eating much meat at all like yeah maybe once a month or so i don't know i you and i don't check in on that i don't know what it is but very little it's kind of zero to 60 here yeah then going full meat like

couldn't that cause problems well we may find out someday andrew if i um if i if i wake up on that saturday morning with that wild hair i'm also a little like becca has only known me in the period of my life where i'm not um eating a lot of meat swords and again she has promised me that she wouldn't judge me like i had a stake with her some years ago when we were in um santa barbara California we ended up out in Solvang and we went to the um uh the Hitching Post which is the restaurant that plays a big role in the movie Sideways and I had been to that to the Hitching Post many years previously like when Sideways was out and I went to the Hitching Post and I think I literally ordered like a glass of wine that Paul Giamatti's character is having and like I almost like just cosplayed him like I think I got a steak and a glass of wine this was like many many years ago so that always and I just remembered loving it so then when Becca and I were in that area I said let's go to the hitching post and i got a steak it was very mediocre for the record but um so i she's what she's never seen is like the version of me in let's just say my late 20s early 30s where me and my friends are blacked out in vegas doing meat swords that's like that's a version of me that is extreme and is it just it was not sustainable for me for like a bunch of reasons so you know she's seen me have fun and she's seen me eat a steak but she's never seen if i just pinned back my ears and just basically went after that fogo to chow like he was a quarterback in a third and long situation she might really speaking of reconsidering relationships she might really wonder uh if she made the right choice i feel like it's a

version of me that she hasn't seen and Dottie that she shouldn't see yeah I don't understand

I uh I'm watching the scene now with the shaky guy he's tying his scarf around so it's just a scarf it's like a winter scarf and he tried to take his first shot but it spilled all over the bar because he's got the shake so bad and now he's just tying his winter scarf to it's not the opening scene I watched the opening scene and it wasn't in there and so there he is yeah he steadies it behind his neck it makes me sad it makes me not want to drink your see it sounds though that like you describing your behavior in this relationship is what i would have been encouraging genevieve to seek out in a relationship as you know what i mean like when we first got together she was the one i'm open to a thruple by the way wait are you taking genevieve you're not taking me i'm assuming i uh fine quadruple all i need is a stool yeah we'll get you a dartboard you never have to leave the basement anyway yeah but no that's good you're you're not you're in a mode where your relationship is leading to like maybe better habits than you're if you're left up well it is because she has good

like really she is a very and and i say this sometimes about my sister liz too like and again i think my sister liz would say you don't know the half of it but i always think of her as being effortlessly sort of kind of just talented at things.

Put together, yeah.

Yeah, she just has, she's got these great kids and this great husband, and she has had a couple of different careers in which she's been very successful in both of them. She's now an English teacher in high school. She, they built this beautiful home. She's just growing vegetables somehow. And then when we're having dinner, she's just throwing in some vegetables she just picked, but in making something that's like delicious and also healthy, but doesn't seem like you're missing out on anything. like that seems to be her general way of being in the world again she would probably tell you that you know there's a lot of anxiety that goes on for all of us that we the rest of us don't know about but i also feel like with becca that's her thing around the lake she just like she's the kind of person who could very happily have a glass of wine and then not do that for three months and have no thought about it and then have another glass of wine or like or whatever you don't even have a shot of tequila like she just is untroubled with that kind of stuff and then also the eating just like very clean healthy eating so what ends up happening is either i've got to sneak off to the hotel lobby to pound a wendy's burger or i just have to like live that lifestyle and so it's

gone more like just live that lifestyle being in love means going downstairs to the burger that's

where that came from i was like why did i pick wendy's that is a isn't the human brain a marvel andrew i was like some are mine i was so well it's a marvel in the wrong ways is what my doctor I was picking up, I was, I was, I was picturing in my mind that scene from 30 Rock where Jenna tells Tina Fey to basically never, ever let the person that she is dating know who her real self is and says, love is what? Going downstairs to use the Burger King bathroom. But it's something else first. It's like love is, maybe it's love is never letting them see who you actually are and going to the Burger King to poop. for some reason that was absolutely what i was channeling in that moment by the way i can report that the grill from ipanema is still very much in business here in washington dc so maybe it wasn't in arlington or maybe they had two different branches but i also don't know if it's i don't

think it's meat swords andrew not anymore it's just a regular restaurant that does that one no i'm looking at the menu right now yeah i'm sorry do you do you feel like it's changed or

you misremembered it i think i i think i assumed because i had had my awakening because i had been woked to brazilian steakhouses i went from not knowing that they were a thing to thinking the only one was samba at the rio to thinking anything that says brazilian steakhouse is one of those meat sword places that when i saw the girl from ipanema brazilian steakhouse i just assumed falsely that it was meat swords i want to just warn people if they come to dc and they're all excited to visit the grill from Ipanema, it's not meat sort. It looks good, but it's not meat

sort. That is why you are no longer on the Chamber of Commerce of D.C. You don't know what's going on in the local restaurants. Well, a couple reasons. That's one of them. Also not living

there is a big part of it. I'm settling into this hotel room lifestyle, by the way. I've been here a lot this week. And I told you yesterday on the show how I'm developing kind of a bit of a rear window type of relationship with these people that work across the courtyard from me. you said you think it's the kaiser family foundation is that right that's i think that's i need to um i need to do a double check of that but i think it's i think it's kaiser family foundation i feel weirdly starstruck when i see something in the world that i've heard about as a underwriter of npr yeah right all you need is an aaron chair like we went right like becca and i were somewhere we're driving and we saw a sign that said lemelson and i was like like the foundation foundation oh i don't know that one i don't listen to npr as much as i used to the lemelson foundation psi sims uh these are all big names in my mind because i hear them every morning but so when i saw kff kaiser family foundation i was literally kind of starstruck by the door

but i was very excited by the way i hit the radio jackpot on sunday is something that you would appreciate when i turned on um morning edition and it was aisha roscoe and i turned it on right before the quiz like I don't know that news clock I don't know when it comes on I happened to turn it on Sunday morning and it was right right as the quiz was coming on I'm just like my goodness the radio

I love the way she says master when she's introducing Will Shorts she says Will Shorts is you know he's a puzzle editor at the New York Times and puzzle master here on weekend edition listen for it next time she always says master in the funniest way i love her voice so much it reminds me to just like lean into my weirdness when doing radio which i know you'd be like you haven't been so far but like maybe more for live wire like obviously i'm not very buttoned up no matter what the circumstances are but i love those like i just love quirks and i love people being themselves and i think sometimes with live where i feel like i have to be like this tbtl this feels too i'm being too much myself probably but i think i can let even a little bit more of my hair down on live wire because when i hear that kind of stuff on the radio uh i really like it but i'm so i'm looking over at these folks now i'm on like day three of just and i'm having because i'm working a lot from the hotel room this week i have a lot of cbs stuff happening that's not the piece we're shooting it's it's like other it's another piece that's going to go up this week i've been recording live wire from the room i've been doing tbtl with you so it's like i'm in my office they're in their offices and like i watch them like one woman like grab her coat and her purse and like go off to lunch and then she comes back with her salad and she sits and like right now she has like she has her jacket still around her shoulders because i think it's maybe a little cold in the office you know like i'm just seeing how and then there's a guy i know that you would think that i would have a strong sense of what this means but i don't think i've ever fully thought of what the idea of the corner office is these are all very nice offices but only one of them is the corner office and the guy in the corner office he seems happier i see i see him what he what by the way just went and got like a diet coke or something but before that i saw him be nice on the phone strolling around walking around in his corner office which is too you know it's it's it's all glass on on both sides of the corner and he was talking on the phone and like walking around and staring out his window in the way that i feel like i would do if i was in a corner office and then you got the guy next to him who just has a regular office which if i'd never seen the corner office i would think that was a pretty sweet office because again it's got floor-to-ceiling glass um if i was given that office at a radio station i would really i'd be pretty stoked about that but now i see the corner office and i'm like oh that's why they're always talking about getting to that corner office and i do think there might be something to it i think the corner office guy is enjoying his time at the kaiser family foundation more than everybody

hills is that makes me cringe because did i one time on this show i i don't remember when i started hearing the term c-suite but it was one of those things that i had never heard i didn't know what that meant until very recently did one of us on the show and i'm willing to take the bullet on this say that it's c for corner office i think it's i think a bullet would be extreme what well i take my job seriously i guess you don't i um but it means that i'll never get that corner office Because I think the C means you're, like, a CFO or a CEO, and, you know, that's what the C is, not corner office, right?

Right. I think, yes. But, again, whichever I'm willing to, Andrew, I'm willing to pull a Clint Eastwood from In the Line of Daisy.

Ah, famous movie.

jump jump in front of the bullet that you were about to take on both of our behalf because c-suite is one of those terms that like they just started using five years ago and then they acted like oh we've been all using it forever and i resent that i feel like we need to there needs to be an announcement like because that's the kind of thing that you'll hear kai risdahl saying right or somebody who knows from business the c-suite and but it's like um hold on like i've actually worked a few office jobs my life no one was calling it the c-suite that is a fairly recent invention and that's okay but you need to give the rest of us some time to catch up and don't use it like it's a thing we're all saying because some of us are not saying it yet that's so funny

because that goes against what you and i usually argue about like on public radio or something when they over explain something now c-suite means the batman is a caped vigilante you know what i mean And I think at this point, you would say that. at this point people know what c-suite means but you're saying there was a point where maybe you

could have used a little bit more explanation i have been as are you andrew a part of a genist genistration i have been part of a generation that has stood astride many huge developments in fact not to get all you know patting gen x on the back or whatever but i do think we are we've had this interesting life experience of living a significant amount of our life with no internet and no cell phones and then now living an even more significant part of our life with that like like addy just doesn't have my daughter just doesn't have a super strong sense of pre-cell phone world you know and um and uh you know similarly i have lived in the time before and after the term c-suite was invented yes i clearly remember a time in my life where no one was saying c-suite and and you're right you could also think that that means corner suite because it has the

word sweet in it yeah i feel like maybe at one point i feel like i was stumbling around i'm like yeah what does c-suite mean oh maybe it means corner office i i hope i'm making that up i hope that's not true by the way i just texted you something i know you're trying i saw this is that too sad of a show pick i sent luke the uh screen cap of the old man at the bar in barfly who's using his scarf to steady his hand as he grimaces and takes a drink is that just too

depressing to put on tbtl.net i don't think so i mean i think people can handle it also i'm just wondering about the casting because this guy does have the nose is really selling it for me it's got really one of those gin blossoms kind of thing going that's not always associated with drinking by the way i think that's a bit of a misnomer i think it can be but but it can also not be um but i wonder like i could see one of two things for this actor either is a person who you know was maybe has struggled in his life with this or has spent a lot a lot of time in bars and they went in and literally just like cast him right off of a bar stool or has been sober for 50 years and is like a well-regarded new york theater actor that is like hasn't touched real alcohol in many years i could see it being either one i've told you the story before of when we grabbed two random bar flies to be in that beer commercial that i was in um when i was in that Molson commercial a million years ago, we went up to a place called the last chance saloon in Wayne, Alberta, and it had been scouted by the location scouts for this commercial, which was supposed to be about some young American, you know, 20 somethings on this incredible journey of discovery in Canada. And we drink a lot of Molson. So we go into this bar and they needed someone to play the bartender and there was no one in there for some reason, or the bartender didn't want to do it, which is crazy by the way, because it's probably paid like 15 or $20,000 just to be the bartender in this thing because i think you'd be a principal at that point and so they grab one of these two it's like two in the afternoon and they just grab one of these two like drunk dudes off the bar we're the only two guys in the entire bar and they have him pretend to be the bartender and he had said i think one of our producers had said we're going to ring the bell you know which is like a free round of drinks if you guys do this we'll ring the bell for you or something so he's like okay so he stood back there and just pretended to be the bartender which didn't involve doing very much we weren't they wanted us to do a shot on camera but then they learned from legal that you can't be doing a shot in the i was gonna say

i'm kind of surprised especially for a beer commercial right they wanted it to be like

this is a wild this is an unexpected wild adventure at this bar well they weren't allowed to have us doing a shot in fact i don't even think they could show us drinking the beer we just always we were drinking it but it was always like i think when they cut the commercial it was we're always holding the beer we're interacting with the beer you never see us actually glugging it down but in in lieu of shots they had us eat those like pickled eggs that are like in the big you know jar that was supposed to be the like the crazy thing that we did at this bar but i just remember when we were finally done and they packed up all the lights and again i think this guy was in line for a fairly significant amount of money for because he had to sign all this paperwork like this was this guy's a lucky day and one of like the last producer was trying to walk and this guy blocks the door he shuffles over and he blocks the door he goes you said you were gonna ring that bell he's like uh yeah okay he goes back over rings the bell puts like a 20 down on the bar and leaves like yeah jimmy was gonna get his free shot come hell or high water no matter what i've

been doing a little bit of research over here first of all what do we found that um i was curious why beer commercials i'm like is that right do they rarely show people actually drinking i'm trying to picture most beer commercials you don't see somebody actually holding the beer up to their mouth do you right probably i don't think you're allowed to it says here that it's not against the law but it's an industry standard not to and this is

They probably want to avoid the heat, so they're just policing themselves. Now, are you allowed to use a scarf to lift a beer to your mouth?

That shot I just sent you was actually a commercial for Jim Beam. This is an AI overview, but it says, why do beer commercials avoid showing people drinking? You have industry self-regulation. You have network standards. You have avoiding negative implications and just production reasons, like showing somebody drinking a lot. Well, you can always put something else in the bottle. But yeah, I was just like, when you said that, I'm like, yeah, I feel like I can sort of picture like maybe like a summery, sunshiny commercial where somebody is like holding a Budweiser up to their mouth and drinking it. But I think I'm just thinking of Mountain Dew commercials, to be honest with you.

Oh, you're back to mixing up Mountain Dew and Budweiser again.

Give me a mountain with nothing to do. Still my favorite song from the summer. Also, I was researching the fella who was drinking using the scarf as an aid in Barfly. The actor's name is Joe Rice, and I'm on his IMDb page, and his credits include Barfly. Okay. That's it.

So it's door number one.

Yeah.

Sounds like Joe was asking him to ring that bell.

I think so. I think we have our answer.

all right let's thank some donors these wonderful generous folks are supporting tbtl i'm sorry uh andrew i'm just so distracted by every little thing that's going on over at the kaiser family foundation how do you feel about this move first of all these people are supporting tbtl with a

donation and we really appreciate it. Not the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Not yet, but I mean, I don't know. Could we do more healthcare reporting? Yes, I think they want me on that beat. Does John Pincus of Chicago, Illinois want us on that beat? Certainly. Thanks, John. Also, look who it is. It's our friends, Kim and Sam Walter, over there in St. Petersburg, Florida, not far from where I'll be, missing my Christmas tree.

Oh, that's right. You'll be slinking around their neighborhood

I mean, I'll be in the same state. It's a big state. Thank you, Kim and Sam. Thanks also to Stephen Shore of Brooklyn, New York.

Hey, Stephen. Stephen writes in from time to time.

No, this is my new obsession is I keep mentioning that these offices are all framed by these big, beautiful windows, which I love. But I see this one guy walking around in his office. And I'll mention that the sun is not, it's kind of a cloudy day. The sun, it's not like a bright sunny day where the sun would be hitting the window in a way that would be, you know, kind of a hassle. This guy just has his shades on his big, beautiful window are just like 50 percent of the way down so that I can. All I can see is his lower half of his like he's wearing a suit and he's walking around in his office. He's Donald Duck in it. Well, he more the opposite. He might be like those kids that broke into the amusement park. Right. The guy that shirtless because he has pants. He's got pants Oh, he definitely Has pants

Side up

But what's weird is It just seems like all that would do Is obscure your view Of seeing anything else It seems like a weird amount I kind of understand the shade being all the way down Maybe some private conversation is going on Maybe, I don't know, you just work better that way It's a weird amount of the shade To be down, in my opinion Like halfway down so that you can't see when you're standing up you're just looking at a shade but your knees would be able to see

do you consider me a disruptor I don't consider myself to be a disruptor but I did just think of something that could be a disruptor in the shade

let me tell you this you're not disruptive which is good

well sort of I disrupt the show from time to time when you're trying to end the show and then I just have a last minute thought that's kind of disruptive but anyway what about shades Luke that you could pull from the bottom up would that serve a purpose but i'm trying to figure out what purpose it serves i mean kind of to your point like maybe i mean i guess if you want to donald duck it around your office which i wouldn't recommend anyway but these could be for home i suppose but like is there a reason why you would maybe want to kind of well you used the word mitigate before right mitigate the light coming in to a degree but not ruin your view

I think it would be a very specific moment in time. And when it would be, would it be the sun is either rising or setting and it's low in the sky to where, and in fact, this happens at my house when the sun sets. I have to, depending on the time of year, I have to pull one of the shades down in my kind of like living room, dining room. area because the sun is really coming in intensely but what would be nice would be if i could pull my shade up from the bottom because let's just say the sun is in the lower half of my sliding

glass door window especially because you're up on the hill with the river below you so the sun is in the bottom half of the window it could conceivably be in the bottom half of the of the

window and what i could do is pull the shade up from the bottom it would block the sun but i would be able to look over the shade and still see the river and all the pretty stuff that i like the hills and all that so that would be that's a very specific window of time and also where you're like oriented where your room is oriented but um but it could look cool too like from the outside

if you had like cool modern like what i like is a top bottom option you know kind of like what is it in football the run play option is that what is rpo yeah this is like the the tbo you know if you had the nice kind of modern change that you can kind of pull down by hand or something like that but you could also pull it up and it would be nice clean lines i will say this and i don't want to get judgmental especially as we thank our donors who maybe some of them live this way but for me we were talking before about kind of depressing scenes and in like yeah i mentioned the old man at the bar but also a depressing like i don't i'm not a huge fan of mini blinds anyway but of course they're you know there's a spectrum of quality to low quality mini blinds and most of that I've dealt with in my life as a renter have been like kind of cheap, low-budget mini blinds, which kind of put a bad taste in my mouth for a while. But we have some cheap ones that are half broken here at our house, but like mostly maintaining until we replace them. But one thing that I can't abide is a crooked mini blind.

Oh, yeah.

You know what I mean? Like when it's like- And I'm looking at them, Andrew. Oh, really? I'm kind of surprised. I was picturing that very, everything you're describing, I'm picturing like the cover of a New Yorker article where it shows all the busy people working and all the different windows and one person's on a standing walking desk and one person, you know what I mean?

It is that. They have very tasteful lighting. They have very tasteful office furniture. The one miss is they went with those kind of like, you know, mini blinds, the kind of like metal ones, you know? And some people don't have theirs down at all, but then there's just one office who will remain nameless because I don't know their name. Otherwise they wouldn't. And they've got their blinds all the way down from the ceiling to the floor and there's clearly like i don't know if it's like a side of their desk or something where there's just like stuff is poking into the mini blinds so it's you know what i'm talking about yes it's not it's like smashed a little bit it looks like a sad face

i'm gonna take a picture of it maybe that's a better show pick we're only we're only doing

depressing photos for show pick options yeah right we've gone from the uh we've gone from the guy from barfly to like an unintentional sad face in a mini set of mini blinds yeah i'm with you like i feel like the roman shade is an affordable and i think superior option to any

mini blind situation don't you think is that what i is that what i was sort of describing before this kind of a sleek thing that kind of will pull straight down it's a pure it's like a yeah like i

always think i associate them with ikea i think that was the first time that i was i'm sure that i'm sure they predate ikea but just like yeah it's usually fabric and it's you know it's like a it's a rectangle the size of the window but then you can pull it up and it stays in place at its you know closed position and then you can just let it out as much as you want and it's just because the thing like you point out with the mini blinds is they're always getting kind of like bent yep or off somehow off kilter and it's very very unsettling it's very unsettling from the inside and the out yes i thought you were gonna say and again peace and love if this is a choice somebody's made in their life or had to make at some point but the other one that really gets me is well first of all just having the shades down all the time for me i'm obviously very i need a lot of natural light for some medical reasons called my brain but like the shades down all the time or the curtains closed all the time that one kind of i would feel sad if I was in that home environment but even more so the we're using a blanket as the curtains so we've just tacked up like a comforter and that's just covering you know and again you got to do what you got to do I guess but like just what because the thing about that that bums me out is like you're never pulling that down like by definition it's not designed for that job so it just means that's you're just keeping that up that's just kind of what that's you know you're not going to be looking out the windows at anything as long as that's the thing you're using and again everybody can live whatever life they want but for me that would be really really challenging like i am i'm loathe i put i can't believe this has turned into blinds talk so quickly and so thoroughly but um i put up some blinds in my bedroom well would you call them blinds yeah they're blinds they're basically i have three windows three big windows in my bedroom and uh these blinds that pull down inside each one of the window kind of like Bang. or something areas that the windows are i have probably pulled down any one of those blinds maybe one time in in a year and a half like that's how much i don't want even though i'd probably sleep better because in the summertime it's getting bright really early it's waking me up like that is i have some weird emotional dependency on not feeling like my the blinds are being or like my my view of the outside is being blocked for some reason that is a very

that feels very unsafe to me you're also an exhibitionist right you like people to see what

you got going on uh quite the opposite that's why this is such a difficult personality type for me i am both very you know what i did uh this morning after my little jog because this is a perfect okay and then we'll get back to thanking the fine donors like our friend john lynn in spokane washington beautiful spoke over there in the inland empire thank you john andrew do you realize literally this morning i had the exact the two things you just described obviously jokingly intersected here in this hotel room wait wait wait wait wait what did i describe i mentioned

an exhibitionist me being an exhibitionist and the other thing i'm needing to have a lot of

natural light oh okay so i don't want to close it makes me depressed to close the curtains in this hotel room it feels almost like claustrophobic to me or something even at night like i don't even like doing it at night when there's not even anything to see right but i get back from my jog and i'm gonna take a shower and i don't want to close the curtains because even the curtains being closed while i'm in the shower unaware of what's going on here so there's something i'm telling you there's something about this that is like it represents something more to me than the actual deal with the curtain i don't know what that is but i'm also very much not an exhibitionist and very much do not want anyone who's working at the Kaiser Family Foundation to catch a glimpse because they can look into here just as much as I'm looking into there right yeah so I take I also am weird and I like lay my clothes out before I take a shower I don't know what I think is I don't think I don't know what it is I think I know about fashion before the shower that I won't

know after the shower but you lay them you lay them on the bed so it's like a little shadow version of yourself and you come out of the shower and you lay down on top of it except it's like a

version it's a shadow version of myself that has been cut in half because the sweater does not go on top of the pant like above the pants oh that's what it's not a perfect representation of me it goes the first thing is underwear and the next underwear is pants and then but in the legs of the pants like in the where the like opening is with a below the crotch area on the bed i will put a ball of socks like a you know a darned pair of socks i'll put the shoes under the pants on the ground and then i will put the sweater as i'm wearing today and then the t-shirt that goes under the sweater on top of the sweater i will set this up before i take a shower and then you

fill it with a bunch of foam and pillows and then you set it up outside the door and you put the little do not disturb who's lonely now yeah and then you dance and then you dance the dance macabre

No, but I realized I can't be getting dressed in this hotel room unless I'm willing to close the curtains. So I then take my pants and my underwear into the bathroom with me and the t-shirt and I pile them up in a way that did not make me feel great, but in a way that was on the sink area of the bathroom so that when I got out of the shower I could clothe myself before I came out into this room. because I did not want to be in this room naked with the curtains open, but I also did not want to close the curtains.

You don't, see, I use, if there's room and if it's not too slidey, I feel like the top of the toilet tank can be a place to put socks, underwear, and a t-shirt for your preliminary dressing.

That would feel precarious to me, I feel like. Although it wasn't like the, you know, it's a hotel room bathroom, so it wasn't like there was a ton of room on the uh by the sink either it was all precarious but it was all because and the thing is it's like is somebody from the kaiser family foundation gonna look over here i don't know no one's looked

over yet but it's not only that i mean the thing for me is just like well it takes however much time to get dressed let's just put on the on the upper end of let's say it takes you 10 minutes because you're puttering around which i don't think that it does but yeah the idea that you can't even shut the blinds for five or ten minutes while you quickly get dressed i know shocking

thing to me i'm only now like i'm not doing this just for effect or to try to be interesting on the show because i'm doing the opposite oh it's not yeah don't worry about that but but i like it's weird it's only now that we're having this conversation am i realizing like that is odd behavior to literally not want the window the curtains closed for even that amount of time like that's that's again that's like that's not a rational decision that's about something else with me some kind of and as i talk about the clothes laying out thing that's also a lot of More OCD behavior than I think of myself as having

Actually you're right I wouldn't usually

use that term to describe you but um that does sort of sound a little ocde although i think you also i i should say i should be careful i think people kind of tend to call things ocd and it's got a pop culture uh definition as opposed to like the the clinical definition which people struggle with but um i do something and then it's one of those things that i didn't think about either until you mentioned it when i'm in a hotel room i like to get dressed in the ice room the room with the ice machine in it do you ever do that oh yeah and it's sort of like you can stretch out a little bit you meet people potentially yeah actually in all seriousness i'm pretty sure i might be keeping the ice machine industry in business and i don't even travel that much but i've never run into anybody else using the ice machine and i'm using the ice machine like multiple times a night usually to keep beer or something cold when i'm in a hotel room i absolutely considered going

to the ice machine last night i was i was going out to get some food and i'm you know i saw the sign that's like ice that way and i remember like i never get ice at the hotel it never occurs to me the one time that i can remember it specifically was camaro kev loves to get ice at the hotel room it's like you're very similar in that way it's like his favorite thing about it and i remember he and i went to see a fight at a casino i think it might have been called little creek that was down kind of south of tacoma actually over towards like the shelton area where sister hannah lives but we didn't stay at that casino hotel we stayed at um a different casino hotel oddly or maybe what we did was we we ended up staying at this like this casino hotel that was like right in fife that's just a building that has slot machines only like it doesn't have table games and stuff and so what i remember was we went to the fight we did whatever we did we ended up back at this hotel room and we were both quite inebriated and quite uh exhausted and i remember just like waking up in the morning and feeling like death and then going over and filling a cup up with ice and putting water in it and that like saved my life uh-huh and i was like why don't i the first thing that camaro kev does when he gets to a hotel room is he beelines it for the

ice machine i didn't know this about him we gotta we gotta ask him about it next time yeah ask him

about the um the time that we stayed at the um i guess it was is it technically the muckle shoot but it's like their it's not their big one it's like this weird standalone one that only has

slot machines now you can't hear this luke right now but i have just destroyed the recording and i need to acknowledge it i um i'm sorry about that you didn't hear a bunch of music just start playing did you no i uh bingo just came in here it was very cute i mentioned yesterday on the show that he taps me on my foot uh to wake me up in the middle of the night and scare the heck out of me um that's right i should mention bingo is my cat not my not my adult brother or anything like that sniffer um my sniffer but i did forget that so we're recording later than usual today so we're in the mode usually you and i are done recording by this time and then bingo comes in here after the podcast like he waits for the podcast to be over but then he's like this is his playground and he jumps on things he jumps on my board and he mutes things he's just doing all this stuff but what he does is he silently just came in the room right now and then just he reaches up and he taps me on my elbow he just did that right he just he literally does he just reaches up and goes tap tap tap i'm like oh okay so anyway he's in here now and he thinks it's time to not be podcasting but it's his birds time i think i've told you about this right have we messed up your schedule bingo so the computer that i use to talk to you on and we're not we can't see each other today it's just kind of a black screen is the same computer that he he just he just sits down properly in front of it when it's time to watch his birds and i put on a birds youtube video for him it's this live stream of birds which by the way one of the funnest things about the live stream of birds that i learned recently is it also has live chat so you have people who are just putting on a 24 7 bird video but then people talking to each other about it and there's always some kid in there who's just like boobs boobs farts farts and then there's other people who are just kind of like my cat doesn't like this another person says my cat's hitting the screen and it's 24 7 of people commenting. So it's mostly people

talking about their cats watching the birds because that's what this is mostly used for.

Yes, exactly. That's what's in the chat. And anyway, so I just tried right now to put on birds for them because you and I aren't looking at each other anyway, but it auto played a commercial. My YouTube blocker isn't working and so I can't get it going. But I didn't hear it. Does that mean it's on the recording or not? No, we have it. It's on my recording over here, but you didn't hear it because of the whole way I have this whole thing set up. The reason you can't hear yourself come back to you means you also can't hear any audio coming out of this so to the listeners that's what you just heard to bingo I'm sorry we'll be with you shortly we're thanking the donors right now long does bingo watch the birds for a long time a long time he hangs out in my office a lot now i do think even though he didn't play with bananas a lot when she was around i think not having her to sort of monitor at all times has just freed up a lot of his afternoons i'm not joking and he's a little obsessed especially on these days get away oh my god bingo just burned his ass on a candle oh my god hold on hold on a second yeah yeah yeah oh my goodness i don't know how much of this we're leaving in but i can tell you what happened was totally your call like i mean oh my gosh so i was worried about this today i put a candle in here which i don't usually do and it was kind of in this part of the table that he sometimes launches off of to get up to this window and i was like well cats know to be afraid of fire

that's what i always wonder about with with like bubbles and stuff is does their self-preservation kick in where they know not that's it's hot they can feel that they have nerve endings but did he

fall onto it or something what just happened was it's kind of on the corner of the table but pushed in a little bit because i'm pretty careful with candles or so you you wouldn't think from what just happened but um i did think oh that's kind of where bingo goes when he launches himself off the table but i just figured whatever i'm in here it'll be fine and then in here i'm just a moment ago i'm talking to you and i guess i'll leave this in but it was very scary he turned he sees the candle but then he turns around to jump off the table in his you know he's a long-haired cat or a medium-haired cat and i watched as the can he was his ass was near the candle flame and i watched him suddenly like start to singe his his um hair and it smells like burning hair in here right now and i just picked him up he's okay the only thing that he knows is that i just freaked out he's can he's like he's a little freaked out right now because i freaked out i don't think he felt it at all but i saw it i saw a bunch of like kind of smoke puff up it was just like one of those things where i'm looking over there i'm talking to you i'm like oh i better move that and then before i even like could get my before i could process that thought suddenly i

saw him go and oh my god the candle he didn't make physical kind of melting his fur well no he

just it only took a split second because but he's got such light long fur that he turned around for a second and his ass hovered over the candle flame and the flame seriously just singed and i just picked him up he's okay it didn't get anywhere near i don't even think he knows honestly um i have some explaining to do to genevieve when she gets home i i kind of wiped it away but his hair was singed on like kind of the back half of his of his leg there and but i honestly think that he's only freaked out right now because i freaked out he's like looking at me like what's wrong

with you i don't think he's well that's what's so unfair about being a parent andrew yeah is like you did a good thing for bingo and he will just it'll go down in his memory bank says my dad was being a jerk this guy hates candles no this guy this guy doesn't like me having my

afternoon fun no he's all right boy i'm sorry we were just talking about my guy and then that was really scary for me i'm sorry i'm glad that was a drama in real life that actually happened i guess

we'll just leave you know leave it all in it's up to you this is a this is a this is a personal

moment between you and your cat's butt no we'll we'll leave it in i'll defer to you it seems like a lot of work to try to figure out how to edit that out at this point but um apologies to listeners who i probably just freaked out but also maybe you'll remember i mean you'll remember this

the most interesting moment of the show in probably months if not years like i was this

whole i was on the edge of my seat this whole four-year consideration campaign we've been on with the golden globes for our podcast is really yes i appreciate your commitment to the bit also

zach labby in mcfarland wisconsin also appreciates your commitment to podcasting andrew that's because zach is yes we're still doing the donors zach is one of our donors today thank you zach and then thanks to jennifer fishman in rochester vermont bet you it's lovely bet you it's getting cold up there in rochester yeah but just starting to turn now from fall to like feeling a little

wintry did i tell you that i watched fall turn into winter before my eyes when i was in cleveland and boy did it remind me of i i the very first snow of the season no matter where you are is it can be beautiful like i remember being in chicago for the first snow when i was flying out of there after a tbtl event once and i felt very lucky but when i arrived in cleveland i was only there for you know four or five days but when i first arrived it's still very much fall weather and i was like oh maybe i should have brought this heavy coat but just a couple of days later it was already snowing i know the day i flew out it was snowing the day before i flew out it started and uh it was like below 30 it was like 29 degrees and it's just like you could just feel it like i can't explain it a fall day feels different than a winter day even if the temperature is about the same and boy it was just and it's it was something about that man cleveland winters are tough and And just getting the very, very.

beginning taste of it i was like i am i'm glad to be heading back to the west coast yeah i'm

definitely here in dc feeling i told you about my uh my freezing cold jog with uh the other day that was a bad idea so i'm just definitely different out here than it is in the pnw right now anyway thank you to all of our donors for making tbtl possible um you know we would not be able to do this without you so thank you really and thank you honestly for keeping bingo alive think about it it's a real it's a wonderful life no donors no podcast andrew you weren't there to save bingo

luke this room and again he's not there's nothing visible that i can see right now and he's fine this room reeks of burning cat hair right now that's a pretty distinct smell

I'm trying to think of the times when I've been around burnt hair, like just something catches unexpectedly or whatever. It is a very, very specific and very pungent smell, isn't it?

It is. I don't like it in here right now, but we have the window open for Bingo, too, so it's for both of us now.

Yeah.

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

all right i got a quick email for you uh today andrew because i know you want to get out of the um the hot zone there it's really where it's bad man where things smell bad uh and where it was very stressful there for a moment for you yeah maybe i'm smelling i might just be smelling my

own stress right probably adrenaline i don't know what it is probably adrenaline and again

so i'm talking about bingo bingo just no idea no idea that his entire life was in danger So I got this email From a listener Bill And the subject line was Regarding syrup Maple and otherwise And I thought oh boy I'm in for a clarification Because we talked the other day about The difference between maple syrup And then like pancake syrup This blew my mind

I've still been thinking about it I just always thought when you say syrup That isn't a specific like you know Boysenberry or one of the flavors that you get At an IHOP or whatever I just thought Syrup is maple syrup I used it interchangeably I didn't know that there's a more generic version That you called I think table syrup Or pancake syrup

Well and the reason that I noted the difference was because Like I said We had you know regular I guess We'll call it pancake syrup around Mrs. Buttersworth Or let's be honest the generic version Of we somehow had a more Racist one than Aunt Jemima Because we couldn't afford the regular Racism of Aunt Jemima um and so my mom would sometimes get like maple syrup and it'd be in a smaller bottle it'd be in a glass bottle and she'd always be like this is the good stuff this is you know this is like really high quality and my feeling was it was never intermingled with the other syrup because we as kids were just dumping a bunch of it on everything and like that maple syrup would be in a special like cabinet and it would be a treat and i don't think we would ever get to eat it i don't think and then what happened was i went through my whole life not eating maple syrup and now i don't really like maple syrup as much as whatever we call the other stuff the table syrup that's actually and in fact you know what i will mess with and you want to talk about i've been talking about how i'm trying to eat less processed food in 2025 you want to talk about something that's highly processed imagine like a mrs butterworth table syrup with extra butter flavor they sell that so it's like the syrup itself has some kind of highly highly synthetic butter flavor in it so that you could both butter your like your waffle or your french toast or whatever your pancake and then you're hitting it with syrup that is both sweet and buttery

I can't you know as somebody who goes in for a sausage McGriddle at times where they infuse the bread with syrup I guess I can't really speak ill of anybody who chooses that path

but so Bill said hi Luke OMG Maple syrup is made from the sap of maple trees. It takes a lot of energy to reduce sap to maple syrup. Thus, it is more expensive historically. My mom would never let her five children consume the expensive maple syrup and would instead provide AJ's. I don't know what AJ's is. That might be a brand wherever Bill grew up. AJ's or Mrs. Buttersworth's syrup. Love the show. Love the banter. Keep us laughing. Bill.

Is this our Canadian friend Bill or a different Bill?

I don't think it's Bill in Toronto. I think it's a Bill of a different name.

Kingston now, I believe, yeah. It gets confusing, though. Uber-gen is Uber-gen. Bill in Toronto is Bill in Toronto, even though neither one of those apply anymore. Those are my rules. This is Bill S. Bill S, I see. So anyway, but sort of the point of that being— I felt very validated.

that this was a thing that was apparently going on in at least two households in, I'm presuming, North America at the time, which was the moms hoarding the good maple syrup and then just giving the kids the Mrs. Buttersworth.

I guess so, but it's interesting because what it led to, and I know I'm just repeating what you said, but it led to you not craving the good stuff, but actually not really wanting it. Craving the bad stuff. Yeah, the stuff that you grew up with. Because also, I mean, that makes sense though, I think, because as we mentioned you're not somebody who's going out what do they always call that that part of the menu that is it from the griddle right isn't you go to a breakfast place or a brunch place and they have you know whatever and then they have off the griddle or from the griddle and that's where you have your your pancakes and waffles and stuff like that and i just don't see you as a guy who's going off the griddle very often not a ton but you know more than i used to

in this weird way which is like i've told you that my like right now i have in this room a handful of what by that i mean like probably five or six little mini i know this isn't off the griddle but go with me little mini reese's peanut butter cups that are individually wrapped they had them in the lounge here that little area where i go to get my coffees and stuff and i was like i'd like to have a couple of those before i go to bed that seems like a sweet treat now there would have been a time in my life where i would have like never even brought those into the room with me because i was like that is if i eat two of those i'm gonna gonna eat a thousand of them or something but i would also have like gotten loaded and eaten an entire large pizza on the bed by myself like i had some pretty sort of chaotic food stuff going on of like a sort of denial like extreme denial and then like extreme indulgence which i'm sure someone's come up with some terms for that. But, um, the mode for me in 2025 has been more like, yeah, a little bit of everything. Like I am, I am mentally in a place where if I felt like having a pancake off the griddle, I would have a pancake. What I would probably have is I'd probably have half of that pancake. I would order it. I would eat the amount of it that I felt like I wanted. And then I would just stop there. This is again, theoretically. And then I would just go on with my day. Whereas i used to have a thing where it'd be like i either wouldn't order the pancake or i would order three pancakes and eat all of them and then be mad at myself again none of this is healthy well can i

just jump in and say i think my comment though was less about because you and i have eaten together a lot in our travels and you have pointed out like there was one time where you know you i always talk about how i've eaten too much and then like when where were we where you got up and went to get a whole second meal and you came back whether a second sandwich or something and so like i'm not even trying to say like you'd be watching what you're eating because i mean i think that you obviously do have you know whatever relationship you have with food but like i just don't i'm just surprised that that is what you would crave like i for me like again i'm not saying i don't order from the off the griddle section because i'm doing a healthier alternative i'm doing something that is worse for me to my to my arteries you know what i mean because i'm i just don't i assume you're like me that that is not what you're craving off the menu the stuff i'm craving is more bacon more sausage more eggs you know i have always said that if i could snap my fingers and

eat all of the savory salty stuff that i want with no repercussions and it meant i could never have sweets again i'd be fine with that i would make that trade but also yeah that's the other thing for me is i don't know where the pancake fits into my breakfast plans because it is a breakfast unto itself but yeah if i'm at a ihop or a denny's or something i'm really looking forward to getting some eggs over medium i'm looking forward to some hash browns you know i'm looking forward to like if they've got a veggie patty of some kind i want all that and then the the pancake at that point like if i eat all that i'm probably not going to be hungry enough for the pancake i i don't for me personally really understand how the pancake fits into the overall breakfast meal experience unless it is itself the whole meal yeah and that's and that's

what just doesn't appeal to me too much again i'm not trust me i'm not getting like um uh cottage cheese and and and fruit or whatever like you know what i mean i'm not choosing healthier alternatives it's just like for me that isn't that doesn't seem as satisfying to me like i'm gonna get a stack of pancakes i think when i was a kid i was more like that but now all the

literature you know you're like you see the commercials and it's like a kid in a big stack of pancakes and you you're taught that that's the ultimate indulgence as a kid or one of the like that and a banana split sundae how many banana split sundaes have you had in your life i bet

you can count on one hand i can't because it's zero um so i guess i'm just making a fist i don't really like bananas so that's my even as a kid well that was one of those i think i ate them on my cereal and stuff and then i phased out but i don't think i think i was more of a like i get

a root beer float or a chocolate sundae or something i feel like in all of the movies and tv You of our era when we were little kids i felt like little kids they always had little kids that were really pining for a banana split yeah it was always the thing the kid was like looking forward to all day and you know and like i remember like finally some being somewhere and having access to a banana split and being like it's fine like i was i was taught that it was the absolute high watermark for things you could eat as a kid.

I wouldn't go in for either, but honestly, if I had to eat a banana based... I don't know what situation I have found myself in where I am forced to eat a banana based dessert. It's a sort of

take-in five. It's a saw... They've kidnapped your family. It's a saw 17. They kidnapped Bingo. They're holding a candle right near his butt. And if you don't eat this banana, the Bingo gets it.

i really thought i'm just sort of still processing that honestly what i saw was i thought i saw my cat catching fire yeah i didn't think i saw my cat singeing himself because i just saw a big like kind of poof of smoke and i saw the flame grow and i thought his ass was on fire for a second and it wasn't but i'm just i'm sorry that i really he thought it was gonna burn his body honestly i really thought that i had to like i thought i was gonna have to go jump on my cat or something because he was on fire which i shouldn't do that but i'm in this situation it's saw 17 right and jigsaw has ridden in on his little tricycle thing and he's got a banana split in one hand i'm chained up for some reason i don't know i chained myself up honestly i was just looking for something to do and then he has a banana split in one hand and then one of those frozen bananas dipped in chocolate that you can get at cedar point or something in the other i

money in the banana stand. I'm going to probably

take the frozen banana. Maybe because the main thing I don't like about bananas is its consistency.

See, I'm going banana split. And the reason is, I feel like those frozen bananas... The problem is, I've had the good version of that, which is called an ice cream sandwich. It's called like an ice cream bar. So you have like the milk chocolate that's around the ice cream. And that's really good. When you're biting through that chocolate, then all you're getting is a banana in the middle of it. I feel like that's a downgrade. from the vanilla ice cream covered in chocolate.

You're talking like a Dove Bar kind of thing. A Dove Bar. There's a perfect example.

So imagine a Dove Bar. Imagine the chocolate-covered banana. Yeah, chocolate's great. The chocolate and the ice cream is great. But when I'm biting through that chocolate into what my mouth and brain have been trained to think is going to be something that tastes like ice cream, and it's just a banana, just a thing that grows in the ground, how much could that cost, Michael? I'm disappointed because I've been trained in the other context that it's going to be ice cream but it's going to be delicious and then at that point a banana is a step down

and you grew up like wasn't your grandfather like one of the famous banana diggers of the 1920s they go through the fields like kind of digging up all of the bananas that were growing in the ground I remember that no I understand it but I'm talking you know but for me as a man who doesn't like bananas I know that one of these is going to be banana based and again Jigsaw's like when you're down here you'll float too and I'm like okay Jigsaw that's the wrong movie

just think about like for anyone else who likes bananas what a good day that is to be in the Saw movie oh yeah that's the best one for them like compared to the other things that Jigsaw is doing like oh my god Becca would volunteer oh yeah chain me up I don't care when you were feeding me bananas yeah and I'd be like

can't you just do brain surgery on me while I'm alive or something do one of them thingies

last thing and then we gotta get out of here I gotta decompress

I gotta call Genevieve

I gotcha man I understand that I hope that doesn't sound like I'm making light of it I don't think you overreacted and I totally understand what you're saying which is you observed what felt like and could have been by the way if it went on for one more second an actually really dangerous thing for bingo yeah and that your body just dumps adrenaline into that situation to help you deal with it and then when the danger has passed you're still sitting with all that chemical feeling and everything so like and i'm just thinking you didn't sound crazy on the recording i'm really

i'm both very curious and very nervous about listening to what that sounded like just sounded like your your cat was on fire i probably screamed into the microphone but i just keep thinking like what if i had gotten up for a moment and because this this little jump that he does he does it multiple times a day right it's just it's his big jump i always say that's a big jump for a little kitty and it is a big jump for a little kitty and i i just feel like what if i had just gotten up to refill my water bottle or something and he had done it i think everything would have been fine i think he was about to launch himself anyway and i would come unclear but because also do cats

I'll see you next time. This is a real question. Do they instinctively, do animals instinctively have a sense of stop, drop, and roll? I don't know what he would have done. We were taught that in school. The only reason, yeah, like you would think, again, I don't even want to imagine this. I know you certainly don't want to imagine this, but it's something that could have gotten really out of control really fast because they probably don't know instinctively how to, let's use our favorite word again, mitigate that. The Secret Life of Walter Mitigate. Oh, good. It might be a show title. It's worth its weight in meat. It just got bumped for a new show title. But, like, seriously, that just... I don't know if Bubbles instinctively would have... Sorry, Bingo would have instinctively known what to do if that would have gotten worse if you were out of the room. I feel like dogs would roll more. Cats don't roll. I mean, Bingo kind of rolls. Yeah, I do think a dog would be more likely to roll instinctively. I don't know if something would kick in a survival mechanism or not. I'm just glad we don't have to... i'm glad we don't have to find out through real life experience anyway did you have a one last thing that you wanted to add to the show i was just going to recommend cottage cheese for people i know you don't like cottage cheese but um 2025 has been the year of cottage cheese and i am loving it jerry if you are someone like me who does enjoy things that are cheesy and creamy and all the stuff that andrew uh generally eschews give cottage cheese a try give it a day in court I had probably maybe ever in my life my parents weren't cottage cheese people maybe I'd had it once or twice as a kid mostly I avoided it, it seemed weird to me but I am eating so much of it and it is so good that's all, that's what I wanted to say alright, well thank you everyone for listening, we are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you I'll be continuing to observe the oh shoot, you know what The light is wrong now. I'm not going to be able to get a picture of our depressing blinds. Well, we have our depressing bar fly, so don't worry. There you go. As long as it's depressing. Yes. So we'll see you 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. Wishing you power purring and mega meow moments always. bye for now power out