Muse

Listen, every day at around 2.30, my armpits get sweaty. OK. And I used to hate raising my hand in class to answer a question. But one day, I had to say, who cares? I have swampy armpits. And I'm going to answer all the questions I want. I'm swampy, and I'm proud. Tina, where are you going with this? I'm saying just because you think something is embarrassing doesn't mean you have to be embarrassed by it. We all have our swampy pits. My swampy pits is swampy pits. Mm-hmm.

Have you tried dad's deodorant? It's like military grade.

grade. He gets it on the dark web.

TBTL! I'm a man of few words. But those words will count. And so will my actions. You, like, are definitely... You're the real thing that a lot of people say. So, do you think if you weren't, I mean, if you were less fake, do you think you would be, or you could, or you have a desire to?

If you feel uncomfortable at any time, give me the sign. I keep losing it, Dales, And I don't want to make it there anymore. All you have to do is study it out. Just study it out and you'll see. You haven't done your homework, buddy.

Hey, you know what time it is? It's time to get real. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show just might be too beautiful to live. It implodes into nothingness. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. I'm an activist and house party enthusiast. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio. perched high above the mighty Columbia. Bring it back home, baby. Bring it back home. Where my goodness gracious does it feel good to be back here. It's been over a week since I've been up here in the fog. We've got the fog. Staring, peering through the weather at the Columbia River. And yeah, it's my favorite place to do the show probably. And it's nice to be here at least for a couple of days. As we've arrived at episode 4,000, I was moving my bell. Okay, here's the deal. The bell was over here. Let's do a little audio adventure together. You know, I ding a little bell usually when I mention the episode number, and the bell was over to the left side of the microphone. And so I could have just said, we're at episode 4,604 in a collector's series. And I bet you anything that would have sounded just fine. But instead, I picked the bell up to move it over, and in the process to do kind of one of these jobs so that we could do this instead now imagine if it would have sounded like this and if that i'll i'll look for your email feedback as to if this is an improvement this is what i was trying to achieve as we arrive at episode 4604 in a collector series i am guessing that that was indistinguishable if not worse the thing that i was trying to do anyway oh boy hi everyone welcome to the show you're entering a world of pain i'm living in a world of pain right now called logistics i've got a fairly substantial piece of bathroom equipment that sounds weird when you say it that way it's a vanity it's like a sink and a cabinet that goes into a bathroom and it's right now it's getting caught between various entities that do this kind of thing and it's getting it's uh it's getting real surreal real fast and uh i want to talk about it also speaking of the surreal nature of life here in the the last the twilight of 2025 i'm having streaming problems my friend i don't even own a television i can't get my beloved ms now via my beloved fubo and it's got me it's got me twisted uh like a t So we will discuss that. Oh, and hey, you know what? I know I just was talking about a lot of negativity, but I'm going to get the nose up on this negativity train and mention we've also got a really fun announcement that we'll do today on the program with the help of this guy, longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

He does about everything you could. I mean, he is a five-to-six-tool player here on the program, but now he's up to a seventh tool, and here's what he can do.

Hell, I can get you a tow by 3 o'clock this afternoon with Neil.

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

They used to call me the seventh tool in high school, honestly. I think it was a compliment. Maybe not a compliment. No, I'm pretty sure it was a compliment. You know, I'm a big fan of public transportation and how it gets me from point A to point B around this great city of ours. But I got to say, they need to figure out their polling system a little bit better. I get emails from both Sound Transit, which runs, like, the trains here, the light rail trains and other special buses. And I believe I also get emails from King County Metro. I get emails from two different sources about.

My public transportation usage. And I even said, yes, send me more of these. I like filling them out. That's fine. But I think they just keep sending me the same one over and over again. Like, don't forget, fill out this survey and you could win. Oh, now they're up to $250. They were offering me a gift card of $100. And I was like, yeah, I want to be in for that.

They're not getting the hashtag engagement. Yeah.

Dynamic pricing model. Exactly. Exactly, working in our, but now, so I feel like I just keep filling out the same thing, but they want me to fill it out again, so I'm going to do it here on the show, Luke. I only take one sound transit service, and it's the one-line link light rail, okay? So I'm just going to go ahead and do that. Is that the one you take to the baseball games, or you e-line it to the games? I e-line it to the games most often now, because it's easier to get there to the bus stop than it is to get to the train stop, but I still use the train quite a bit. Now, it says, how often have you ridden the light rail in the past three months, Luke? How like maybe maybe about one day a week, maybe two or three days per month or one day per week.

Do I use the train? Does it depend on baseball season or not?

Well, again, usually the E line is getting me to baseball. I'm taking the usually if I have to go to the university district for something, I'm going to say I take the train about once a week. That's an exaggeration. I don't want any of our listeners to tell on me. That's a slight exaggeration, but it's more than two or three times a month. So I don't know what to do with that. So I'm going with that. And then maybe I'll commit to using the train more often. But anyway, I'll just keep...

Are they asking you, like, if you're not using it a lot, what it is that, you know, what they could improve, what they could do better, differently to make you want to take the train? Where are they trying to get to with this?

Just literally how often do you take the train? I guess, like right now, and so this is irritating. All right, this is irritating. This isn't even what I want to talk about today. They want to know, what year did you start writing Sound Transit? Like, this is a bad question. I'm on board with this organization. What you're looking at is a bad question. What you're looking at is a bad question. I have no idea. Luke, what year did you start brushing your teeth? That's such a bad example.

Probably, I'd say, 2017.

I think it was slightly earlier than that, right? That's a bad example. Do you brush your teeth? You're very conscientious about your teeth.

I am, but I was noticing today on the treadmill that I think they're getting a little brownish area with points, even though I am a very, very—I mean, the thing is, toothbrushing and white teeth are not always necessarily correlated. Some of it's just aging, maybe drinking coffee, whatnot. But I was literally having this thought this morning, because when I jog on the treadmill here in the Madrona Hill studio, I'm staring into a mirror to try to think about form and stuff, but then I end up just like Mr. Ed with peanut butter in his mouth. I just start kind of going... I start moving my lips around and checking out how the old chompers are doing, and I didn't like what I was seeing this morning.

I'm literally going to write whenever Light Rail opened, and I'm going to see if they accept that. I almost put in parentheses weird question, though, but I don't need to be antagonistic at this point. But I do think that's a weird question. Like, people don't think about when they started taking a bus based on a year. Well, unless it might be like, well, I got my new job in 2022, and so that's when I started taking it. But it just seems like, oh, it won't accept it. It only wants a number. Please enter a year from 1999 to 2025. You know what, Luke? I think I'm going to bail on this. They've insulted me. But on the other hand, it's $250. That could get me out of a few jams, you know? Yeah, seriously. I need that money. What if I just keep writing, there's a Hidden Valley Ranch party in my mouth?

Honestly, it might cut through the noise. They were like, we're getting a lot of AI responses. Someone built a bot somewhere, but then we've got this other guy who just keeps talking about Hidden Valley Ranch. On the bus, yeah. It says 2009, I'll go with that. I'm the absolute worst person when it comes to remembering anything important in my life in terms of years, like the year that I started doing this or that. There's a couple of bedrock ones. I know that TBTL started in 2008, only because it's just come up so many times in our conversations. Am I right?

It's the end of 2000? No, no, no. Beginning. The anniversary is in January. I just saw it on my calendar. It's like January 7th or something. I don't know what you're getting me. But yeah, okay. So it was beginning of 2008. All right. Yeah, we came in hot.

We ushered in 2008. Hot, hot. But then today is my sister Rachel's birthday. And I was trying to remember how old she was turning. I was texting with Becca. I was saying, oh, yeah, it's my sister Rachel's birthday. She goes, how old is she? I go, okay, hold on. And Rachel, by the way, is a listener. Rachel's got, you know our Friendship Wisconsin billboard sticker? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I got a bunch of them. Does she need some? No, she's got them because she's a supporter of the show, and she's got it on her. She's a waitress at this really cool pizza place, Italian restaurant in Bainbridge Island, on Bainbridge Island in Washington, and she's got that sticker of us on her, whatever you call that booklet that you have when you're a server, you know? When you're taking orders, like? When you're taking orders. Oh, cool. And there were some 10s in the restaurant recently who saw that and were like, wait, are you Not only am I a 10, I'm a bro of one of those, I'm a sis of one of those co-bros. But what I thought was, man, for all the people that don't know what TBTL is, they must just think, my server has a personal injury attorney sticker on her booklet. Because it's like, it continues. Cranky? Bored? To bobble and bottle and even boggle the mind of what it means. If you know, you know. But let's be honest Most people don't know But this is how I was This is what I had to do to reverse engineer Rachel's The year that Rachel was I believe it's 35 Let me move this bell over here I think it's 35 It sounded better in the first place This is how I got there When I was a junior And played basketball At Jesus Creek High School Our basketball team Would high five Rachel We would run out, circle the court And I remember Rachel standing on one of the bleachers, like the kind of low ones, you know, like, you know, they had the typical gymnasium bleachers. She'd be standing on the lowest one that was basically kind of right by the sideline. And I remember running by and the whole team high-fiving her. And she's a kiddo. Teeny, tiny kiddo, just a tot, but like just the cutest tot you've ever seen. And I think she was about three at the time. and so i was a junior in high school so i would have been probably like 16 maybe at that time yeah 16 because that basketball's in the winter time so that means about 13 maybe she's 36 i somehow the math my point is this is how i had to do the math of her age was how old was she when i was high-fiving her as part of the basketball team and then what does that mean in terms of our relative age difference and then what would that mean now that's how i got to that number which may have been wrong anyway but like as opposed to just a knowing someone's age or b being good with like years and when things happen and when people are born and i'm so all that is to say if i get that if i get that um survey from sound transit slash king county metro buses i mean i got nothing you'd be like when did i high five the e-line high five when did donald whitehouse and I get on the whatever they used to call the bus that ran along Aurora and go to Aurora Village to see the James Bond movie Octopussy. Oh, that's right. That was the first time I took the bus by myself. And you went all the way up to Aurora Village, right? Yes, Culturally Edmonds. Kitty Corner from the Arby's. That's Culturally Edmonds. Speaking of people who are Culturally Edmonds,

can I throw one? Please, do me this kindness. We have late breaking news. I know you noticed today, Andrew, probably that I took my time getting on the line for the show, and that's because I was on the phone again with Rick Steves. There's something going on with me and Ricky Steves because he is now going to be on LiveWire December 5th at Benaroya Hall. So if you were on the fence about coming, please come see us Friday night, December 5th. Rick Steves will be there. I say this because he is not just culturally Edmonds, very much Edmonds and lives there. Now, from that, I guess, minor announcement too, can we do our other announcement, Andrew, that we've been talking about?

Can we do that? Can you just keep your finger off that for one second? because i had a thought you were shouting out listeners earlier and i wanted to shout out listener trevor who is my neighbor here in the neighborhood who i saw at that uh snacks show and josh faddam's show on um on sunday evening are we any closer to knowing how his name is you know i feel like i heard it again okay and maybe it was um i think maybe it was josh faddam which reminds me i think i saw a text come in that i never even quite opened i think our buddy hauser found a link to that donahue parody josh had did which i might play for you here or maybe just send along to you because it's very visual but it but uh i couldn't find it on the fly yesterday so i just wanted to say shout out to josh thank you for letting me or offering to let me borrow your truck when i ran into you on the street a couple of years ago um wait not josh um listener trevor i meant shout out to josh sorry also shout out i just didn't know josh adam offered you a

truck he did offer me a truck buried the lead he offered me a truck but anyway i just i kind of

forgot i forgot about that yesterday and it was really cool to see um trevor and and i think i think rebecca although that might have been rachel i'm sorry that's a blind spot for me that how old is she confusing she's 30 she used to hi-fi josh faddam when he would come out

from i could use that truck by the way yeah i need that well more on that in a minute first Let's do it. the announcement. We are going to be hosting a virtual TBTL holiday party on December 19th. It's Friday, December 19th. It's going to kick off at 5 p.m. West Coast. And it's going to be much like we've done in years past. It's just going to be a chance to get together virtually with each other, maybe pour yourself a little cup of holiday cheer and zoom it up together You know, decorate your little square If you care to Bring the holiday pets around Hang out together And enjoy some holiday cheer With me and Andrew and John Sklaroff And the tens of listeners It's going to be Friday, December 19th That's all we can tell you about it right now Because we're still figuring out the other details

No, no, that's good It's going to be 5 p.m. Pacific time I don't know if you mentioned that and I missed it I did Okay, so that's 5 p.m. here on the West Coast 8 on the other coast You can figure out if you're in between. And, yeah, it's going to be via Zoom. So you need to sign up in advance in order to get your invite via Zoom. And by the time you hear this, there will be a link at the top of tbtl.net. And you just click that link, and that's how you sign up for the Zoom on December 19th. That's right, the TBTL holiday party. Oh, and also we're asking folks if they want to participate to bring some stories along with them, right?

Oh, did we lock that in now? Yeah, we're interested in your holiday traditions.

Now, we've been doing these Zoom parties for a while now, and so I think most of our listeners know the deal. There is no pressure to participate, in other words, in order to, like, you don't have to, like, raise your hand and talk on these things. A lot of people like to just chill on the line, enjoy the vibes as we chat with some of the other revelers. But if you are somebody who wants to chat with us, the question that we're sort of organizing this all around are holiday traditions, whether it's something you do personally or you and your family does or did. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Maybe especially ones that maybe are a little bit outside the norm, although that's not necessary. But that's I've already got mine.

I've already got mine in mind. I feel like, Andrew, it might be. Well, I don't want to say that. I wondered if it might be a stretch for you because I don't want to say stretch, but like, I feel like your relationship with the holidays is I get the sense you enjoy them, but I don't know how much you mythologize them in your own mind the way that I tend to.

Sounds like a man who forgot that I have a holiday sex swing.

save it for the holiday party and i want you sitting in it when i see you on zoom at 5 p.m

west coast i would like you sitting in it please i believe it's a reprise of a joke i told you like literally 10 years ago i remember i made you laugh part of making jokes to me didn't we you said one time you're like why do you look forward to thanksgiving and i said because it's sex day or something along the lines of that but anyway um yeah no we're gonna keep it clean for the kids That kind of blue humor, that was just for the podcast. That's because you guys know that I like to keep it raw on TVTL. But during the holiday party, it's going to be very family friendly.

Absolutely. Yeah, bring the kids. It's going to be a blast. Maybe I'll see if I can get Bubbles up here. I feel like the last time we did this, Bubbles lived with me when I was at my place in Portland, and it was kind of fun. People like to see the cat. I'll try to zhuzh up the whole experience here. The reason I said I could probably use listener Trevor's truck, Andrew, is because I am in a situation right now with the delivery. When this all happened, when I realized the magnitude of how badly I screwed this up, I thought of you, actually, Andrew. No, no, let me finish. Let me unpack that. Let me unpack that. Let me unpack that.

I love it as it is. I love it as it stands.

No, but the point of that is not that you would have screwed it up. The point of it is you would not have screwed it up. because of how you approach these kinds of things versus how I do and when my approach can really bite me in the tuchus. So I'm having this next week or in a couple of weeks, my dad and I are going to tackle kind of one of the final projects here at the old Madrona Hill studio, which is there's one teeny tiny bathroom that was actually the only bathroom in the house when I got it. And it is exactly as the people who owned this place before me left it which is to say the paint color is a little not to my liking and the general decor is not great so we're going to kind of remodel that bathroom a little bit just put some new uh fixtures in and whatever one of the things i'm going to be putting in is a new they call it a vanity i've always thought that's the weirdest name right for like although wait am i i actually might be wrong about that when i say vanity what do you think of as a um as far as like a piece of furniture, if you will, in the bathroom, a thing that would go in your bathroom. Would you think of a mirror? setup or would you think of a sink setup well the weird thing is i think of them both combined as being the whole vanity thing but now that you say that i don't know if i'm right about that we put one in downstairs we ripped out the sink and we bought a sink and the cupboard below the sink and a mirror above it and there it's not all one unit but i'm trying to think what and then in between the two we installed sort of an old kind of a faux retro sliding um medicine cabinet if you can One of the small ones that sort of is like boxy above the sink. And it's funny, and I know we use the word vanity a lot, but I just feel like the whole setup. Have you been Googling it? What is it?

I just did to kind of double check in my own brain. And what the internet is kind of making me think is that basically the thing that has the sink in it and has the cabinets and the drawers and whatnot, that's what's called the vanity. Which I've always, in my mind also, if I picture a vanity, there's a mirror involved because it's got the word vein in it. It seems like the vanity would be mirror, mirror on the wall. But no, it has to do with the other thing. So I've got this vanity that I ordered, I don't know, a month ago or something that's going to go in this little tiny bathroom remodel that we're doing. And it's a fairly, like, the logistics of it are actually kind of complicated more so than I realize. Like, it isn't something that, like, FedEx is just dropping off. It has a marble, you know, the sink, the countertop, if you will, is marble. So I guess it probably weighs a couple hundred pounds. And it's not just going to be delivered by like FedEx or UPS or certainly the U.S. Postal Service. It's got to come from some other, you know, probably on a semi-truck or a fairly large truck. But there's kind of like, there's the people I bought it from who are now, by the way, they're out of the game. They got nothing to do with it anymore.

This is a retail company.

This was a retail company. I bought it online. It also, I bought the vanity that's in my newer bathroom that I remodeled is from the same company, and it's the larger version of this vanity. And the reason that I wanted these two bathrooms to kind of have similar, like I wanted them to echo each other. So I went to the same company because I know they're reliable, and they did a good job last time. So I bought the smaller version of the same thing. But they are no longer involved in the game. Now it's in the hands of these logistics companies. And it's not just one. it's the logistics company then it's the delivery truck people and then somehow it's some one more like fulfillment layer there's a company called Diamond Delivery that's supposed to be dropping it off right it's on a truck it was supposed to be on a Diamond Delivery truck then there's a company called Custom that's like kind of somehow in the middle of the between the delivery truck that's dropping it off and then a company called atlas that's the like shipper so you got the company i bought it from you've got the the shipping company hired by the company i bought it from that's called atlas you've got custom which is a in-between layer that does not have the truck but is also not the shipper and then you've got diamond delivery diamond dave delivery which would be great that would be amazing if david lee roth showed up i would you know i would

have been around for that if i knew and then there's like red rocker delivery and they're

oh competing both great by the way group both great delivery outlets yes absolutely i don't think it's even fair to compare the two they're different but great but so i get i start getting messages like a week or two ago about this delivery and they're coming from like different numbers and they're saying like and then by the way they look not unlike spam messages because they're texts and they're kind of i could try to find one on my phone they're like kind of auto-generated though they're kind of auto-generated they're kind of a mess of like a link like a link a phone number some writing but it's cut off like the kind of thing that the that the spam of the internet is always trying to like throw at you anyway you know what i mean it's not like hi it's michael from uh custom delivery logistics we have your vanity you know it's like it's not written that way it's just like a kind of a jumble of information but so i got one of them and it said they were going to deliver this thing last week and i was out of town last week so i called the number and i got a super nice person i gotta say this i've been able to get people on the phone over this whole thing surprisingly effectively and they've been pretty nice about it so it's not really so much that it's like the these the customer service like sort of sucks or whatever it's just i get somebody on the phone last week and i said hey i'm actually in dc this week and my concern was if they delivered it to my house and it was sitting in the rain potentially for a long time that was not going to be great for it it's made out of wood it's white oak and so uh the person said was really nice she said oh yeah we'll reschedule it for monday when you're back i was like oh perfect well actually

yesterday i was not back i was in portland i was filming stuff i was doing the show from becca's house with you and actually as you and i were like on the air as it were at about 11 o'clock i start seeing a phone call on my phone from battleground washington and i'm like i don't know what that is but i bet you it's related to this delivery thing well what nobody told me at any point in this process was i'm supposed to physically be here to sign for it that makes sense it does although i get so much stuff delivered i mean i used to it's lessened now but then in the in the height of it i was getting so much stuff delivered and what i do remember is when it's like you got to be there to sign for it they definitely tell you a lot they're like somebody needs to be present to sign and i feel like i would remember that because i'm gone so much that that would have been a factor for instance last week when i talked to the very nice person on the phone and said can we move it to monday at no time did she say yeah just make sure you're there to sign for it that would have like yeah no that isn't you i for a delivery like

this i think it makes sense but yeah you got to let somebody know yeah and it's not in the like

none of those jumble texts i got said like somebody has to be like there's nowhere in the paperwork of this thing or the text chain or the emails where it says you have to be present to sign for this because again if i would have seen that or if i ever would have heard that i would have really factored that in because i want to get it so yesterday the guy tries to deliver it and i'm not here and he tries to call me from his cell phone from battleground watch i don't answer it because we're doing the show and so then i just see i was also by the way i'm tracking this whole thing on some other website that's had the logistics website and it's like out for delivery you're the next to be delivered to and then all of a sudden it just says goes error at the time i didn't know what error meant because it didn't say error no one was here to sign for it just says error and then it says next uh and it says delivery window move to december 2nd which is next week which i'm also going to be out of town i'm going to be in miami so i call them yesterday after i'm done with all my filming and everything i call like i don't even know who i guess i called custom and they were very nice and they looked it up and they were like yeah the problem was you weren't there to sign for it so they couldn't drop it off but they can now it's back at the terminal so it's gone back to the lake the terminal sounds bad sounds like it might get back on a ship on a ship and go to china again terminal never has a bad connotation luke right so it's like they're like yeah it's back at the term and i gotta i can't overstress this guy was really cool about this like he was invested he was like okay here's what you got to do he's like we can't and i'm sorry this is if this is boring to everyone but it comes back to andrew basically how i need to be more like you so i think this will hold okay oh i'm back in i'm back in okay i just woke

up again i'm sorry what's that sorry i'm trying to earn this 250 bucks from sound transit go ahead

go ahead yeah um so i just want to see you at your desk with one of those perpetual motion birds that's just clicking submit on this Sound Transit thing.

To what extent do you agree or disagree that Sound Transit stations and stops, including crosswalks, streetlights, sidewalks, and rail crossings, are designed to keep passengers safe while they wait and travel? Do I strongly agree that they keep those places safe? Somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, strongly disagree, or I'm going to write a damn email disagree? Well, where do you come down on that? um i almost want to click don't know no opinion i mean it seems safe to me i never feel unsafe i guess that's how i guess i'll just answer strongly yeah i mean i think you can give your honest

answer you don't have to necessarily try to forecast into the minds of other people and what their feelings are because ideally they'll also fill out the survey and they'll represent

their experience yeah i'm gonna say i strongly agree okay go ahead go ahead so now so so this

guy is actually really helpful oh by the way and please don't at me everyone i'm also in my car sitting in bumper to bumper traffic trying to exit portland while this is happening so i've got the guy on speakerphone but it is like it's one of those things where like the um what do you call it the shipping numbers and the confirmation codes are coming fast and furious and i'm just kind of like i'm trying to like in a very safe way uh you know write down like grab a pencil and kind of steer with my knee a little bit but keep my eyes on the road and also traffic is moving very slowly i'm not going 50 miles an hour i'm not even going five miles an hour so it felt like okay i can do this without endangering everyone i'm writing these things down on like a piece of scratch paper the guy is like look here's the deal we are not the people who we don't have the truck we don't are not the people with your vanity right now we are the we're we are the people who tell the person with the truck where to go so what you need to do is get in touch

with atlas and he goes and you in the next hour they need to send us an authorization reauthorizing us to re-deliver it tomorrow which is today now right tuesday because if it doesn't get here today then it's going to be like next week and i'm not around next week and then it's going to be the following week and then the terminal is going to start charging me storage and geez yeah because this is now on me because i am taking delivery of this well after the original date which goes back a couple weeks now it goes back to whenever it was i was in dc so i'm like okay thanks man here's what i gotta tell him you tell him you just like stepped out for a minute and i go yeah but by the way no one ever told me i needed to sign for this and he's like he's like yeah yeah i know they don't sometimes but just tell them call them and tell them you just stepped out for a minute and you missed them and you need them to send us the reauthorization but it's got to be in the next hour so we can reauthorize the delivery tomorrow tuesday which is i'm here all day and also you You know, this is my last chance to get this before this gets really out of control. So then I call Atlas, and I will say this. In Atlas, I'm getting a person on the phone who definitely sounds like maybe English is not their first language. Most of us at this point can kind of sense when this call appears to be moving outside of the United States. And that's the sense that I'm having. Although the person is helpful, although they're also on some weird headset. I'm on my speakerphone in my car. They're on a headset where I kind of can't hear them. you know it's kind of auto muting or something it's like and i'm like they're like hello you know atlas and i'm like can you hear me they're like yeah i can hear you can you hear me i'm like sorta but so i tell them i give them the whole spiel same thing i'm like look it's delivered nobody told me i needed to sign for it i wasn't here but the people at custom are telling me you have to you know send it and and she's giving me this real kind of boilerplate sort of response like well we have to it's a reshipment fee and we have to email them about the reshipment fee and blah blah blah and like and I will try to do it but and I'm just like feeling like I'm not getting what I want to get is somebody who's like I gotcha like I'm on the case and I'm going to like take care of this for you and don't you even worry about this for another minute that was not the feeling I was getting and yet Andrew yesterday yesterday was November 24th right it was at But this is like, what is it, 2.40 Pacific Time. So right after I'd called them. Dear Luke, this is from Atlas International. Dear Luke, thank you for contacting us regarding your delivery. We understand you are not at home during the initial delivery attempt and that a re-delivery fee needs to be approved for the carrier to deliver the item tomorrow. Please be assured that we will send an email to the carrier today to approve the re-delivery and ensure your order is scheduled for tomorrow. I mean, how's about that? Pretty good customer service.

That's good customer service. Did it say something about a fee? Did you say something about a fee that I misunderstood there?

I'm trying to get, yes, there's a fee that I don't know what it is yet that is in question that I am trying to get someone who's not me to absorb. Okay. Because even though I wasn't here, which is technically my fault, no one ever told me that this was signature required, which I feel like is their fault.

Okay, yeah. So they're going to try to absorb that then.

Well, that's what I would, if you read this, if you read this email from Mia, At Atlas International, Mia said, We understand you were not at home during the initial delivery attempt and that a re-delivery fee needs to be approved for the carrier to deliver the item tomorrow. Please be assured that we will, and this is in bold, Andrew, bold, send an email to the carrier today to approve the re-delivery and ensure your order is scheduled for tomorrow. Okay. That's like a slam dunk.

I'm not hearing anything in there, though, that says, I guess I just don't understand the language. I don't hear anything in there that makes it sound like you're not responsible for that fee. It says a fee needs to be approved. I don't really know what that means. But how

about this? Please be assured that we will send an email to the carrier today to approve the re-delivery. To me, that to approve sounds like they're going to eat that cost. You also mentioned that you were not aware, I'm continuing now, you also mentioned you were not aware that a signature was required for delivery. We completely understand your concern and will review this matter with the carrier to clarify the signature requirement okay that also sounds to me like okay we're we're we're gonna make sure that the carrier knows next time they got to tell you to sign it this is all to me feels like they're on my team like they've basically said yeah we're gonna just send this thing back out to you at no cost to you or you know i don't see them saying anything about i have to pay for it so i get up this morning i'm all excited i've got cartoon bluebirds flying around me because I'm going to finally get my vanity. I mean, I've had personal vanity for years, some would say decades. And then there's...

I'm waiting for my sociopathy to show up.

you know and so then i'm like i don't but but what i'm not getting is a flurry of like weird text messages from the other people which is usually the way that i'm like in in the past is how i've kind of figured out that uh that that this thing was on the way in other words it's not mia from atlas sending me an email it's weird random text jumbles from diamond dave's delivery or something and i get up this morning and there's there's no weird text messages from diamond dave saying hey you're next on the list or even saying you know i wish they all could be california girls or running with the devil and so i'm like oh no so then i call custom delivery they're the people below atlas but above diamond dave's delivery and i get a different but very helpful guy on the phone and i'm like hey here's the whole story i give him the whole story again and i go i have this email from mia saying that they've emailed you to reauthorize it he's like yeah but then we send them back what it's going to cost and then they have to reauthorize the reauthorization and until they do that we don't tell diamond dave to bring the thing back to you it just stays at the terminal and i was like well what's the chances of this all getting reauthorized today by the various parties and then coming out to me he go i'd put it at less than 10 oh geez Appreciate the honesty And so that's basically Where we're at now There's no way this thing's getting out here today No it doesn't sound like it

I'm not going to be around next week to sign for it I thought you were going to tell you that they're socking you with a fee But we don't know that yet Because I still think that I'm not as confident about that language as you're reading it But I might not be I'm just fully understanding the situation That a fee approval I don't see anything in that message you read That says it sounds like they're waiting for a fee to be approved I don't know what that means, but does that mean approved somebody to pay the fee for you? Like, I don't know. I would just be careful with that one.

Well, I'm obviously employing a bit of magical thinking with how I interpret the text message or the email from Atlas. But what it's not saying is the fee is $100 and we need you to pay it before we can authorize this, which would be one piece of information. Which I, you know, I guess, to be honest with you, I hope they don't hear this. I would probably pay that because I want to get the stupid thing up here. But, like, I read that to be that they're going to try to eat the cost. That's what I'm hoping. But mostly what it is is now we've got three different entities, and they're now just—and also we're going into a—it's a holiday week. That's the other thing that's really complicating this, is that, you know, you've got Thanksgiving, and then you've got a de facto holiday. How do you feel about everyone calling it Black Friday, like not even retailers? I went into a place called Laughing Planet yesterday. which i love it's a portland it's a local little i guess you could call it restaurant in portland but they make a lot of really healthy yummy food they make a lot of like bowls and you know anyway would recommend laughing planet love it they do this broccoli bowl that i like crave sometimes and i'm rarely in portland at lunchtime so i went there yesterday and as i'm going in they had like they were like talking about some new menu item they're rolling out but the poster in the door said, becoming Black Friday. I hate it. And I thought, why are we calling, we're Laughing Planet, why are we calling this Black Friday?

Yeah, I hate that. I hate that it's just becoming more and more of a thing, and probably 20 years from now it'll even, maybe even the original roots of it as just being a sale day, like it might just be known as Black Friday. Yeah. And like, you know what I really hate about it? It's very dark. If I could future trip a little bit more, I feel like Prime Days are going to be doing the same thing. Like I, that's connected mostly to one company, but now because they came out on this day of sales, which I never partook in that really anyway, not really a bargain hunter in that way, but, and I also, whatever, I just don't care. But like, I feel then a bunch of other companies are kind of have their, I don't know, they try to piggyback on Prime Day so that they're not getting screwed out of people spending money on things. And, like, honestly, I'm not trying to sound like – I don't know if you've heard, but, like, there's a socialist epidemic going on in this country, Luke. I've heard it's communist. Oh, yeah. I mean, from New York to Seattle, my friend. No, I'm, like – but the capitalism of it all is just so – it's grinding me down, my boy.

You don't enjoy the idea of national, if not holidays, at least days, having their entire existence defined by something that enriched Jeff Bezos.

Yeah, and then Black Friday. Black Friday's always been gross to me because it's also associated with crowds, deal hunters behaving poorly. Can I say, by the way, I'd watch that show. Well, you have to get your parents.

to approve it if you're under it. Deal hunters behaving poorly. It was a VHS. It was a three VHS set you could get.

Yeah. Can I just say quickly, too, the thing about the term or the name Black Friday that's so weird is its origin is retailers are getting into the black. They're making so much money on this day that they're becoming profitable. But as you point out, it's also really become like this day where we talk about people stepping over each other to get to an Xbox, which is very dark and very kind of like so it's but that's not even as much part of it anymore

right because everybody's shopping online so that's part of the origin of it but it's black friday does it still mean people are lining up like i feel like i'm sure there are people who do that but i do i feel like with commerce becoming e-commerce it's not even like that

anymore it's just it's just a weird word it's a weird way to describe it like you know when you talk about black like there's a day it was like black tuesday that was like a day that the stock

market in the 1980s just collapsed thursday i want to say maybe black thursday no tuesday

it's just one of those things where it's a considered a you know its origin is a positive we're getting into the black we're profitable but now it's just like it feels to me like oh that was a dark day that's a dark day when when we're all just like spending a bunch of money to try to get a bunch of single-use shit that's i'm also in a weird mindset with this because i've been believe it i've been looking into all of this kind of more locally made stuff yesterday i was at this place in portland called cycle dog where they make leashes and collars and things for dogs out of old inner tubes from bikes because inner tubes are not recyclable because of the way that the rubber is like vulcanized i guess whereas tires are they make this great shit it's really cool and it actually looks really good and it's really functional i'm talking to the people i'm talking to the people that are sewing it in the back room i'm watching them and it's really got me thinking about something i think you're much ahead of this uh much ahead of me on this andrew of just kind of like trying to not buy so much single or you know what i mean just cheapo stuff that i'm not going to have for very long because i want it in the moment but um i've been thinking about this a lot lately and i get anyway i just the whole black friday yeah i hate the black friday thing

the prime day even the and then the giving tuesday which i i've that always seemed forced to me that's like the couple of days after black friday when the non-profits try to get into it although if

you want to support live where are we going to promote that but here's my thing about the giving

tuesday thing is i feel like it's the worst day to send out a note for somebody saying hey could you give because like it's the day that everybody's inboxes are filled with that i would i would do it two weeks earlier two weeks later and say well things are slowed down now i want to say something about the internet i think of black tuesday first as well but i was googling while talking and when i typed in black tuesday for some reason black thursday showed up i guess technically there was a black thursday then a black tuesday but everybody thinks of black tuesday first and i should have relied on my mind and just agreed with you instead of looking at the internet, which made me sound like an idiot going around saying Black Thursday. Was Black Tuesday in the 80s? No, I think it was maybe a Black Thursday set up, Black Tuesday or something. I was scanning and then I was mad at myself. What about Black Sunday, the Cypress Hill record that I used to have? Oh, that's right. On cassette tape. Sunday, bloody Sunday. When the shit goes down,

you better be ready. I want to go back to

when the ship goes down, when the shipping goes down for a second here.

Thank you for getting us back on track.

Actually, I wanted to share with you a very, very short mystery story about shipping that I think is interesting. But before I get to that, wait a second. Didn't you want to praise me some more or something? What would I have done different in this whole thing? You would have. I would have never left. I would have just been at home.

This would have been something that would have been. First of all, you would have asked the question, do I need to be here to sign for it?

I don't think I would have. Honestly, that gives me too much credit, I think. I appreciate it. Well, let me put it this way.

I don't know if this is more or less credit, but let me put it this way. I bet you would have wanted to be home when it was delivered.

probably i did have you know i i i had a little adventure in so the babysitting i had an adventure in babysitting those tbtl greatest hits vinyl is hopefully i mean we're still still uh in the process i think that they're going to be finished being pressed in maybe about two or three weeks now so we are getting close but if you know this luke i don't think i mentioned this to the listeners But they needed to send us some test pressings of the album just to make sure it didn't have any of the artwork on it or anything, but just like they had to send us the actual vinyl ahead of time so I could listen all the way through and make sure there are no issues before the whole thing is pressed. And then we send it out to our listeners. And those I suddenly got an alert one day that those records were coming, I believe, the day before I left for Cleveland or maybe two days before I left for Cleveland. But then it said, I have to be there. It did note very largely, it said signature required. So I saw that, and boy, did that F up my day, though, because, and it really made me go back to, you know what, we do need a better doorbell system, even if it's a ring doorbell or something, because all we have is a door.

that people can knock on right now and um and i had to record with hannah that day and i was like but i'm waiting for these records to show up and they did something dirty which was it was like fedex or something and they gave a time window i had never had a time window before but maybe because it had a signature requirement i was like okay well then i'm like hannah we have to push off the recording i'm talking to you upstairs right now i was like i kind of got obsessive i'm staring out the front window because i know if i'm anywhere else in the house i could miss the knock and then I keep checking it and then we're outside the window, it never shows up I check the website again and then it says oh, the window has now been extended until 10 o'clock at night or something and so I was in this paralysis for my day because I needed to come downstairs, put on these big headphones and record with Hannah but I was never going to know if I was going to miss the delivery person and so we ended up, I can't remember, we ended up recording and then I just came upstairs but I did this thing where I tried to lure the delivery driver around the house i put a sticky note on my front door that said delivery driver because i knew a signature was required and i needed these records before i left for cleveland or maybe it was arizona i can't recall but i was going on a trip and it was going to set the whole project back by potentially a week if i couldn't accept these things so i put like my phone number on a sticky note and said or come around to the basement door and i put all these sticky notes around the side of the house and so like you know that far side where the dog is trying to lure the cat into the dryer and it says cat food but it's spelled F-U-D with crude arrows I put crude arrows on sticky notes all the way around the house pointing down to the basement door which would be where I was recording but I don't know if they would do that I mean honestly it seemed like a trap I don't know that I would have trusted my own notes

well see I think what you've illustrated there is that you take these things Much more seriously than I do And I bet you that you got that album Eventually and signed for it and that all Worked out right? Yeah it did Did they come around to the basement or did you

Catch them upstairs? Basically I recorded They never came during the recording So I took my laptop upstairs and then I went upstairs and did work and now Things were getting, I remember it was getting dark Because it gets dark early now and so anyway But I was just sitting at the kitchen table or the dining Room table and then the fella showed Up and oh it was right after Thanksgiving or halloween because i offered him some halloween candy and he said no but he seemed amused by it

so that's my point is that you once you i mean again maybe the difference was the signature required but i just feel like these are the kinds of things that you just take more seriously and you schedule around and you're kind of thinking about it's on your mind and i tend to just be kind of like i don't know i'm in portland and uh battleground washington and and like it most of the time it sort of works out for me but then this is an example of like how it can go because the other problem with this for me now is not only am i out of town the following week then the week after that is the week we're actually working on the bathroom and we're trying to get it all done because i'm having a big family holiday get together on the 14th the whole burbank clan is coming together and i'd really like that bathroom to be functional because there's gonna be a lot of people here um and so it might not even have a sink in it if and not to mention how much am i paying in storage at the terminal oh one of the things we got started this whole thing talking about trevor's truck one of the things the guy said to me yesterday uh on the phone was he was like you don't have a truck do you that you could go to the terminal and get it and i was like nah unless they can if they unless they could like fit it in a the back of a mazda cx-5 or whatever it's like so i guess maybe when my dad's here we could try to go to the terminal with his truck or something but it's just like this is my point is that my takeaway from all this is i should try to be a little more uh attentive to these situations and also dot i's and cross t's and i've just gotten away with so much inattention over the years and it kind of generally irons itself out but this is an example of where my inattention is really gonna is really

kind of biting me in the butt well i but on the other hand though you're getting the big projects done whereas i just look around i mean you talk about that and i think about my kitchenette down here i mean there's so many things that need remodeling and redone here but i just don't do it at all because i get um because i'm just too lazy i was talking about that with hannah on spotless yesterday that i just i i keep things neat i keep things clean for what they are but then i look around there's a million things i want changed but in order to change those things i know We have to live through a period of chaos, and I hate chaos so much that I'd rather live humbly but securely. Genevieve and I need to replace this fan. Genevieve bought a nice new ceiling fan for us, and we opened up the box. We started to look at some things and start to put together a plan of how we're going to replace this fan in the ceiling. But Genevieve one day said, well, let me take it down now because it'll be so ugly that it'll prompt me to want to get the new fan installed. But I said, no, because then if we don't get the news,

fan install then we have a hole in the wall for a while like and i don't like i don't want i don't want a hole in the ceiling and she says well the hole in the ceiling is what what'll get it done

and so anyway that's my you'll be absolutely shocked to hear that i go with the genevieve approach like for instance so on saturday the saturday after thanksgiving my parents are stopping by here because they live here now and on their way to their timeshare in seaside and we're demoing that bathroom and now we're not even gonna be able to work on it for another week plus but like we're getting that thing demoed because then then we're stuck yeah you've pulled on that thread but i know what you mean it's that's a dangerous game dano because if you then don't actually follow up

then you're just living in squalor for no reason and also you also the thing that looks like a horrendous hole in the ceiling or whatever it is that you you feel like oh i can't live like that it also it starts to bother you less and less with each passing day and then you run the risk

of just having a hole forever so first they came for the ceiling fan and i said nothing let me just

tell you this and this is not a super long story but i do think it's interesting and it's actually genevieve's story but she ordered one story today about how i should be more like you so this story should be how you should be more like me all right let me see if i can i'll see if i can work that in to the end but uh genevieve ordered something very simple via ebay i believe which was a shower curtain um and i think it she got a notification saying that it was gonna show up in like a week or something you know how it is and you keep getting the updates right it's gonna it's here it's left it left new jersey i feel like it's always leaving new jersey anyway um but while she's getting these updates saying when it's going to arrive it just arrives and she opens the door one day and it's sitting on the on the porch and the interesting thing the first thing that seemed a little bit funky about this was it wasn't in any kind of packaging at all it was like somebody had gone to target or something and bought it bought like a shower curtain you can kind of picture with the shower liner kind of thing and a little thing and then had a then there was a label on it with our address or whatever i didn't see this but she told me that she was like that was just sort of a weird way to package and ship something but also why not let less packaging let it got here why not sure no problem they're just a little bit weird but genevieve said but the funny thing is is this arrived yesterday but i keep getting updates that your package is on the way you know and i can't remember what service this was whether it was ups or the postal service but she keeps tracking this tracking number and it keeps saying okay it's making its way to you now and she keeps thinking but i already have my shower curtain it arrived and she's really curious she's like maybe i'm going to get two shower curtains and so now i'm kind of curious about it too and i'm tangentially kind of watching along and then the other day i think on saturday she said well i got the notification that said it arrived and she said you didn't happen to see a shower like a second shower curtain or something arrived today i'm like no we haven't had any delivery she's like but look they took a photo of it and then they show a picture of a box and the box is way too big for a shower curtain i think and then visa's like i can't tell if that's our front porch or not because you know it's mostly a picture of the box and you see a little bit i'm just like that is definitely not our front porch that is like a looks like a stone porch there was a little decorative stone just just in the corner of the photo that's not even i think the door was i'm like you saw just a tiny bit of the door and I'm like, I think that's a wooden door, not a painted yellow door. And so anyway, I'm just like, that is – so they were tracking a package, giving Genevieve updates, delivered it, took a photo. All the information seemed right. But then Genevieve starts, like, enhancing, enhancing, enhancing on the photo, and it looks like it's a Getty – I'm sorry, a Yeti cooler. I almost said a Getty cooler.

I thought you were going to say it's a Getty image of a porch.

No, that would be really interesting. No, that would be – that would really be a mystery, right? i think that somehow a tracking number just got totally jacked up like i don't know how to explain this somewhere else like i hope that somebody got their cooler i mean we were sort of like damn i know dog it'd be pretty sweet to get those yeti coolers they can cost a pretty penny that been pretty cool you gotta fight a yeti for them yes you do but uh anyway so i have no it was just such a strange thing to be following this package that says your shower curtain is going to arrive Your shower curtain's going to arrive. We're like, it already arrived. What's going to show up? And then to say, okay, it's been delivered. Here's a photo of a Yeti cooler on somebody else's porch.

See, I had a totally different theory of the case, which was there was some glitch in their matrix so that it got delivered early, but then they didn't realize that for some reason. So they're, you know, this company, whoever, you know, is supposed to be sending the shower curtain, is like, hmm, shower curtain's on the way, shower curtain's on the way. and then the day that it supposedly arrives of course the shower curtain could not there could be there can't be a photo of the shower curtain on your front porch because it didn't get delivered that day because it had already been delivered and then they just went with like a google image search of box on porch and that they basically were like they were basically lying pretty like driver would have done that you know thing like that maybe or something like somehow that i think

your i think your theory makes more sense but mine was just that like basically they have some stock image that like basically basically they're running it the way i would which is i don't know man i'm supposed to be putting something here but i don't have it but like also it says it already was there i just everyone stopped yelling at me let me upload a faked photo of something on a porch and just hope that no one's hosting a podcast about this enough wouldn't that be hilarious if it

literally had a getty image watermark on it like that well that's what i would be hilarious i just

was thinking of like you know what would i do in that situation if i showed up at the house and i look around in my truck and there isn't anything with that skew number on it because it's already been delivered but i don't want to get hollered at and i just don't want it to be like a ding against me i'm just going to say i delivered it i'm going to just google box on porch i'm going to crop it and then upload it into the system and just hope that it never gets back traced back to me. Speaking of, do you know this morning, this very morning, Andrew, I inadvertently intercepted and intersected with the supply chain of my neighbor's stuff, which was this car pulls up. I'm coming actually from the house out here to the studio to do my little jog in the morning, and a car pulls up in my driveway. And I tend to know what these kinds of cars mean which is their private citizens who are doing amazon runs yeah yeah i see those which is also that is just that whole world is shocking to me because she she opens her trunk and she's got the amazon vest on she opens her trunk and there's a couple of boxes in there but then also in the back of her car just like the back seat of her car she's like a random smattering of all different kinds of amazon things and like i'm just looking at it thinking so and this is back to my other point about like, I really may consider trying to kind of do what you and Genevieve have done, which is to kind of cut the cord with Amazon. Because I'm looking at the back of this car, this like Ford Fusion or something, and there's just these random things in there. They're all sealed up, Amazon bags and boxes. And I'm thinking, how many of these things are under $20? How many things are under $15? And how in the world can it be profitable to have this person randomly driving around this area with these random things you know a ups truck it's scaled it's got lots of stuff in it lots of big boxes it's a route i mean that that the math of ups maths for me with the delivery fee that's built into things or charged same with fedex this is a random lady in her ford fusion with like six things in the back of her car many of which i don't think probably cost that much money how is this how is the math of this working other than people somewhere far away making it for far too less this woman who's delivering this not getting paid enough the i mean you know what i'm just i'm giving you the old i'm giving you the old katie wilson here andrew but i'm known communist known activist communist yes but here's the worst part of this whole thing this woman gets out i i'm thinking i don't even remember ordering anything from amazon but who knows probably she gets out she scans the white bag it's like one of those white, you know, not mylar, but plastic bag. She hands it to me. Like, thanks so much. I walk into the Madrona Hill studio. I greedily open it like a raccoon. Do I open it like in a nice neat fashion where I maybe cut it with some scissors like you probably would or whatever? No. I like just tear right into the middle of it. Well, that's never

gotten you in trouble before in any relationships. So that's good. I still think about that camera case to this day. You've told that story. I couldn't even remember what the thing was. I know that somebody had dinged you for this behavior.

vintage leather camera case cover that i was giving as a gift covering a camera with a big slash across the lens cover because i cut it over with a knife honestly in this case a knife would have been better i tear this thing open and i pull out a grow light oh and now i was like i have ordered some christmas lights recently that i don't know how far out they are but i was like is this from the same company and they just like and then i grab the there's two things in the bag and the one is a grow light and one is like some other box that i don't it's a small cardboard box i don't recognize what the product is and i'm like wait what and then i'm just trying to think like maybe these are the christmas lights but it's also a grow light company and that's how they have the box but i just like i like look at the plastic bag that i've torn now and i realize oh shit this is my neighbors it is just brought to the wrong house and luckily the amazon the woman who's working for amazon is still out there so i run out and i'm going like hey this isn't for me side note there is a language barrier you know uh tu ingles esta mejor de mi espanol you know like i'm like she's helping me i'm trying to meet her in the middle it's not working because i'm trying to say hey this isn't for me this is probably for my neighbor this isn't my address all in my very limited spanish and so i'm in the back

is ruined now and i'm just like i feel bad for this woman because it's like you can't take this bag to some you can't like where does this go now there's a grow light and this is a neighbor though

that was is within distance of you maybe it just makes sense for you just to drop it on their porch

with a note that is a hundred percent what i should have done it's not it's a neighbor it's these neighbors that i have never actually spoken to but i have waved at if that makes sense i've got the bees i got bob and brian they make a lot of appearances on the show they're my most immediate neighbors they're the guys that i know i've talked to them many many times we cool these are some neighbors who are a little further back they seem generally friendly um but we have never really like spoken extensively in person had i had my thinking cap on i would have just been like let me handle this but i didn't i was like i think this is for my neighbor and then like the bag's all torn and she's like and she's like it's not this one and i'm trying to say i don't want to dox myself i'm trying to figure out how to say their address in spanish and i don't know how to say a number that high in spanish okay so instead of like it's their this won't give anything away their address is 311 and i don't know how to say 311 in spanish so i'm like i'm like can you just i'm trying to trace uno uno yeah i'm like it's trace uno uno you know like i'm trying to and so i give it back to her and then but also i'm just thinking like does this now does this go in a landfill because i did this because i ripped this bag because it's not like the i didn't take

anything out of the box like a bird not accepting her exactly bird i've touched this i've touched

this chick and now the mother will reject it really i'm just like but but nothing bad has happened to the stuff i didn't nothing's out of the box it's just the plastic wrapping is ruined now and i give it to the woman and i'm pointing i'm like that's like you know trace uno uno and And she's like, okay, okay. And then, hell, if she didn't just drive right over there. Just drop it off? Drop it off, which I think is a good outcome. Yeah. I'm hoping that they, my neighbors, are just like, they don't care that the bag is completely ruined. They're like, I got what I ordered. By the way, I should have known it was them immediately.

She might have stuck a note if she had a moment in her car or something.

In Espanol?

Oh, yeah, good point. So, hey, listen, I just realized something here. And I'm sorry, I'm being a little bit pushy. You have a delivery coming? that you've got to be signing for? No. We've been talking for an hour. We have to thank the donors. But this is the problem with when I step away from TBTL. I let good stories go to seed. As we're talking about this, there's something kind of, I don't know. I'm not trying to be degrading about it, but when you talk about just a person's regular car just filled with, like you said, cheap junk being delivered and how that ties into the gig economy and everything. It reminded me of, I guess, maybe the most amazing Lyft driver I ever had when I was in Cleveland recently. And I don't think it's a huge, long stem winder, but if we can maybe come back around to it. Yes.

Can we do this? Can we thank the donors? And then we'll do that. That'll be the rest of the show. And then tomorrow we can talk. I can talk about my streaming issues

I'm actually curious about that but I think you want to know about this guy who gave me a ride

I do, I want to know about him so I'm saying I want to hear about that I want that to be the rest of today's show the stuff that was on the list for today that we haven't gotten to we'll port over to tomorrow because much to discuss with my lack of MSNOW access it's really kind of messing with me like legit I've been regularly googling how do I stream MSNOW and I've been regularly getting not very clear answers. So I do want to talk about that coming up, but maybe some donors first, and then let's talk about the world's best Lyft driver. Best.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank those donors. These fine folks are keeping TBTL rolling with their Voluntary donations of dough It's the only way that this can happen Five days a week And we want to thank Sidney McElroy Who's in Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan Ah, Sidney I mean everyone's name On this list brings me joy But Sidney's name brings me a special joy Sidney has been part of this show Since of the earliest days Of us being A podcast only product I remember i believe i saw sydney maybe in chicago at shuba's many a year ago and just being appreciative like feeling like we got this is working we have listeners in like michigan you know and the early i mean this was like the early days of me feeling like oh this might actually we might be able to continue i mean i would 17 years seemed excessive i wouldn't have thought we're gonna do it for 17 years so sydney i mean Thank you. I'm going to be honest.

You made a commitment, Sidney, and you're sticking to it, and we appreciate it.

We sure do. Thank you, Sidney. Thanks also to Erica Peterson, who's in Las Vegas, Nevada. That's one of your favorite places to be going to, to see BBW comedy. BBC, I believe.

Big Black Comedy is coming up. Big Black Comedy.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to that trip. I cannot flipping wait to hear about how that show goes for you.

That's going to be fun. That's going to be fun. Anyway. Thanks, Erica.

Thank you, Erica. Yeah. Maybe you should go. Erica should go to the show, too. Just to be, Eric, I need you there. I'll let you know when I'm there. Yeah, I need a I need a like a another set of eyes on this whole thing so that they can I can compare Erica's version of events to your version of events.

This is a comedy show that we're going to in Vegas. I've never been to Vegas before. It never mentions who any of the comedians are. It just lists famous black comedians and says, if you like them, you'll like these guys, too. And then it has an AI picture, literally an A. That is the most bananas part of the whole thing. And then they have a sizzle reel where they show comedians doing bits, but you never hear any of the jokes. I think that's put music over it and they never identify any of them by name. I'm looking forward to it.

I am. I am as well, Andrew. Thanks also to Mimi Halligan, who's in Haverton, Pennsylvania. I don't know if I know where Haverton, Pennsylvania is.

And is it definitely Haverton? Do you know that? Or Havertown? Or Havertown? Havertown?

Well, can you say town when there's no W in it?

There is. I'm seeing a W. Am I looking at this wrong? I'm seeing a W.

You're looking at it right. I was looking at it wrong. It's got to be Havertown. Andrew, I just erased that W with my eyeballs. Of course it would be Havertown. My bad. Sorry.

I mean, sometimes town is pronounced... Please, you listen. You don't have to bail me out of this one. I'm not trying to. Now I want to know, honestly, but I can't find a reliable pronouncer here. Call the Tim Hortons and ask them how they pronounce it. Call the Waffle House.

Actually, the Wawa would probably work. Mimi, thank you. I'm sorry. I probably mispronounced your town of Havertown, Pennsylvania. Sue Ladd is in Santa Fe, New Mexico. That's one I can say. I can say all the letters in Santa Fe. I've been thinking about Santa Fe a lot because I've been watching Pluribus.

Yeah, that's right. I promised you I'd catch up. I'm still a show behind. I didn't watch the latest.

I watched, wait, oh, well, this is good that we've got a push today, because I, last night, watched The Chair Company so we could compare notes.

Yeah, Chair Company I'm up on, but Pluribus. I know, I thought I was watching The Chair Company and you were watching Pluribus. No, I'm sorry, I did forget. I think, let's see, I watched The Chair Company with Genevieve, so I needed to get her caught up on that, so I've now seen that show twice, I think.

I was, last night, I was like, okay, I'm going to work, I'm clocking in, watching The Chair Company, like, as if that's that hard. But, okay, good. This actually works out because I want to talk— Do you have the bandwidth to watch Pluribus tonight?

I think so, yeah. And by the way, I don't think I did watch— I just totally made something up in my head. I just told you that last night, Genevieve and I re-watched The Chair Company so that you could see it. No, that was an idea that I had, but we did not do that last night.

I know the feeling, by the way. Listen, I almost bought a bowling alley once. You're right. I remember that. The exact same premise.

Anyway, that was weird. My brain just glitched out like that routing number.

We'll text about it later to see if we can get up to speed so we can compare. And I think also, by the way, there's another pluribus that drops. Is it Tuesday that comes out?

I think it comes out on Fridays. Oh, okay. I will say this. Even after watching the first three, I have an overall thought about the show that I want to run by you. But, oh, you're leaving. Did the thing just arrive? No, no, no.

I'm just trying to make. It's cold here. And I'm trying to make the, I have a little, you know, like a Vornado little space heater. And I'm trying to, it's supposed to go allegedly to 90 degrees. It's only going to 56.

You mean like as far as the readout, you mean? Yeah, the readout says 56. That's not warm. That's not great.

It's not warm. I think that's what the room is right now. I think it's not able to make the overall area here in the Madrona Hill studio warmer than about 56 degrees, which that's almost air conditioning at that point.

Oh, my God, Luke, space heaters plays into the story I'm about to tell you.

Oh, good. Okay. You know who loves space heater stories? Sue Ladd of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and also Rachel Langan, Lundmark of Olympia, Washington. Hey, thank you, Rachel. I'm going to be driving right past you, Rachel, on Thursday, heading to—or actually, sorry, Wednesday night for the old Burbank family Thanksgiving. So I will wave to you and thank you again for your donation, as I will thank Dorothy Crutcher down there in Culver City, California. I will not be driving past Culver City, although as I sit in this room where it's 56 degrees, I wish I was in Culver City because it has to be warmer than 56 degrees in Culver City.

My old stomping grounds. I have such interesting memories of Culver City because I remember that was where I was.

i landed when i first moved to la and i so it's a mixture of being in a very in a very different environment living by myself for a few months being very anxious about work stuff but also loving places like johnny's pastrami and what was the little what was the little bar there in culver city and i don't i think oh there's a few there was the backstage no but it wasn't like that cozy in no this was a um i feel like i feel like it also was called johnny's but not johnny's pastrami but it was something like that but it was like old school elegance and i was there one time reading my game of thrones books and then like a man in a white suit and a woman and i believe a white dress came out of the back from nowhere and just started singing and seemed to shake everybody's hand it was like i went back in time but it was a tiny little place it closed a few years oh yeah yeah yeah the piano bar the piano bar johnny no something it's not that but it didn't i believe they had their own instruments that like they brought that's why i don't know if It was a piano bar that, like, I'm not 100% sure that you and I are talking about the same place. But I'll do a little bit of research.

It's not – oh, God, this is annoying for the listeners. It's not Dan Tana's because that's a place – that's an Italian place that I love to go to, like, on, like, Sunset or whatever that's over in, like, Beverly Hills area. But it has a name like Dan something, Dan Flashes.

Dan Flashes is it.

Is it Tremblay's?

You know what I feel like it was? I feel like it was called Dear John's Dear John Dear John's I don't think that's a piano bar and is it true that it closed no I'm wrong about that well it reopened and it wasn't the same I've been to it on both sides of the reimagining how long ago was that like in the past five years or so

it probably the Dear John's of legend was the whole time I lived in LA and that was one kind of vibe and then when i moved away at some point i want to say maybe five years ago the news was it's going out of business and we were all bummed and then it was like oh no it got bought by someone but then they kind of zhuzhed it up a little bit like it got bought by some younger people that like kind of made it a little bit i feel like the last time i went it was a little bit i went there for dinner and i liked it i mean i just the sign is the same and the building is the same but i felt like it was just had been updated a little bit because of the new ownership so it was losing a little bit of it's like oh gee dear John's yeah

it was a little bit like we're going to be we're just a little bit trendy and so we're going to lean into we're going to carry on the tradition but in a more modern way whereas when I walked in there one time I just walked in there because I just wanted to read my book and have some drinks and some food and I sat at the bar and then I suddenly realized like what an experience this was like these people came out again like kind of like a couple maybe in their 70s or whatever and I didn't know what their deal was what their background was they shake everybody's hand everybody's excited to see them i think it might have even been around the holidays it was just it was like one experience i had in there that just blew me away yeah no that place

is uh is legendary and uh and i'm i mean i'm glad it's still look i'm glad it's still happening even if it's a little bit yeah cooler than it used to be because i'm looking at some photos right now the food looks improved okay the food is definitely food was the food was rough when i

really go there but the interior the first time i thought you meant it was rough under no no i

mean that would have surprised me yeah round one as i call it like the og dear john's the food was like very much nothing to write home about but but um this the photos of this food now on the new website i'm gonna call it new it looks much elevated much more elevated but the but the interior of the place looks pretty much unchanged that's great i'm looking at that bar that you were sitting at those red tablecloths the whole deal so i'm getting hungry dorothy we'll meet you at Dear John's. And then Johnny's Pastrami. We're going to do both. And then any other places in Culver City that have John in the title, which would be probably a shockingly high number of places. Anyway, thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. We could not do this without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. I just realized something that when I heard you saying you were forward proing, you were saying you want to talk about this lift ride or the super ride and then i said world's best as we were going into the donors and you said world's best so yeah i remember what i said he definitely wasn't the world's

best lift you probably said most interesting or memorable i don't know best i don't know what i said but laid on me what happened and again i know that the show is a little bit long now so maybe this now we're good stricture will be will be good for this story but one thing that i've know yet yet i'll start with a macro statement uh one thing i've noticed about lyft uh when you're using lyft or uber any kind of rideshare stuff in cleveland it just hits different i don't think that people use it as much there as they use it here in places like seattle of course seattle is one of the earliest cities of rideshare services so it just seems like maybe more part of the culture here, not to make it sound like Like, you don't get lifts in Cleveland. You wait maybe a little bit longer. But when I say a little bit longer, I mean instead of, like, calling a car and having it show up at my door in, like, literally one or two minutes, you have to wait seven or ten minutes. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, like, a little bit slower. And there's something about, and this could be the Midwest-iness of it all, but, like, I think the drivers in Cleveland always want to chat more. You definitely feel like you're just in the back of somebody's car. Like the type of car you can get is much more slapdash. Sometimes I'm in like a pickup truck sometimes. It's just, you know. So when I was there in Cleveland, and the story's getting a little bit dusty, and so I'm sorry if I'm a little disjointed as I try to remember the details. But there was one night where I was meeting two different friends, some friends for dinner and then going to another location to meet some friends for drinks or a friend for a drink. And so I had to take three cars that day, one to get to the restaurant, one to get from the restaurant to the bar, one from the bar back home late at night. And the first one and the third one were pretty unremarkable. The middle one, though, the one that picked me up at a restaurant and then took me to a bar, which was maybe 10 minutes away, was such an incredible ride. and i want to be generous to this person and not and not i mean he this was a man who had it was like he was in a competition for hard luck stories this fella seemed like he would have been a character in some sort of holiday movie that was made by the kids in the hall or mr show because he wanted to like as you get in the back of a car it seemed like almost like a john candy-esque like story of woe only he wasn't like john candy character would have been more like kind of cheerful about it all i get in the back of this guy's car and it's kind of a small car and i get in back seat passenger side and the passenger seat even though there's obviously nobody in that passenger seat is pushed all the way back and this is a small little car and so and

it's leaned back a little bit too so i get in and then i have this like thought like should i just not say anything it's a short ride or am i going to say something about this and so i ask him i'm in there for about a minute and i ask him hey would you is there a way to move this seat forward a little bit i remember even saying no problem if not i'm just a little bit cramped down here and he's like oh yeah no problem he like reaches over and he kind of grabs it's not automatic right So he grabs something in the seat and moves it forward. But as he's doing that, this is why this is relevant, if it is at all. He says, yeah, this is a rental. I had a, whatever year it was, like, I was driving, like, an Escalade or something like that. Some sort of big, fancy SUV. I don't, you know, I don't know cars, but it had some sort of major brand name associated with it that made me think it was, like, a higher class car. He's like, yeah, hit some black ice. Now, a little bit more context for this is. Call that Black Thursday. Well, some people call it Black Wednesday, Luke. This is, it's just turning to winter on this particular night. I know it sounds weird to say that, but like, I swear to God, this was the day it went from fall to winter in Cleveland because it had been nice in fall the day before, but now the temperatures had dropped precipitously and all over the news was that snow was coming. Everybody was concerned about this big snowstorm. I was a little bit concerned about getting out the next day. so it's not snowing at this point but like snow is kind of in the air right and i and he's immediately saying yeah this is a rental because i wrecked my other car on black ice last winter and it's going to cost and it was it cost me like six and a half thousand dollars or something to get it repaired and i'm already a little bit confused like why if this happened last winter why are we still driving this rental but what i also learn and this is what kind of got me thinking about this gig economy is like this is a rental through lyft and i've talked to some other people about this as well i mean it is amazing how these companies seem like they should be illegal what they i mean isery at its absolute most insane clear so you know that so we don't even have to

get into that right now well it's like a listener how about how about 20 seconds on it for the listeners which is these companies like uber and lyft will rent you or lease the car to the driver so if you don't have a car at all but a clean driver's license you could be a driver for one of these companies. But the problem is it is so expensive to lease the car from them that you end up just driving a crazy amount of hours in order to just make the payment on the rental car every week. And they don't even let you drive very many personal miles. So in other words, it's not just like, well, I'm driving all week, but I get a car out of it because when you're not, when you're not flying your little flag, that's a personal mile and they're very limited on that. You're just trapped in this world.

Your first night of work is basically for the company. Like the first half a night, maybe your first four hours or five hours, you're just driving for the right to drive the car. It's an absolute trap. It's such a trap.

It's really awful for the driver.

And again, I feel bad for this guy. I mean, this guy, his stories were so over the top, it's hard not to laugh about them. But also, I do feel bad for this poor SOB, as my dad would describe him. So he puts the seat forward. He's like, yeah, this is a rental. had this like you know whatever it was maybe a just cadillac make some sort of suvs like i had something like that well yeah an escalade is a cadillac okay there you go so i think i do think it was an escalade and he tells me it's like but i hit some black ice and like six thousand dollars repair or six to eight hundred or something like that and i i'm trying to move the conversation i'm like oh you're a little bit nervous about driving tonight because i'm like i'm thinking because the snow is coming i'm not worried about anything i'm like okay buddy he's like just sort of like a little um is irascible where i don't think that's a word yeah a little irascible

but he's whereas like everything you say is slightly the wrong yeah like we're not kind of like are you worried about tonight i'm not i don't i don't worry about anything and i only

mentioned that because i don't this isn't a spoiler later on much later as he's dropping me off he's like hi i wonder if it's gonna snow later i'm like yeah it's gonna snow later everybody's talking about it that's why i asked you i didn't say any of that but he like didn't even know that snow was coming tonight and we were just on different levels sort of but that's not the point of the story the point of the story was he's telling me about his financial woes with this truck I kind of am not following it he starts telling me how the place that's been fixing it again Luke for almost a year now has now put a lien on it because he still owes him $2,200 but they say they're not going to finish the job unless he pays but he doesn't want to pay and it gets into this whole thing which sounds like really sad but also he's telling me how he keeps writing to these companies it's very much like your story before about the about the delivery no but there was something going on with with lyft and him renting this car and how he's not getting answers and how he's on the phone with them all the time it's just like this guy it sounds like he's got a lot of negative energy sounds like the world has not cut him a lot of brakes but he's just kind of starting off with all of this but he also sounds like he's a complete pain in the ass right right then we're driving and i don't know how this comes up and he's like yeah it's cold i gotta start heating my apartment the heat the heat doesn't work in my apartment that's right he says he's talking about how his truck is busted he's like then i find out that this piece on my thermostat or i think maybe my furnace breaks and they tell me it's going to be like eight hundred dollars to fix that but i don't have that because i don't have any money and all my money is tied up and getting this truck fixed so i'm heating my house now by turning on all of the gas burners in my stove and putting a box fan there so it blows around the apartment and i am like makes me thankful for my little 56 degrees you're what now yeah and he said yeah i'm he's like no i got a whole system i'm like i think the very first thing i said was you don't have any pets do you he's like no i don't have any pets i go okay good i'm like you got to be really careful man i'm like you got to be careful man he's like and i'm not i'm not trying to get too involved here but to the degree that i want to talk to him just like you got to be careful he's like i got a whole system i got a whole system but like i can't leave him running when i'm gone so it's gonna be really cold when i get home tonight and then i i light four of them to heat it up fast and then i go down to two for the night and i'm just like dude that is dangerous i'm like why don't you just get a space heater oh no the space heaters don't work that i i had one it doesn't work as as well as this i'm like there's no way yeah there's no way this is better

than a space heater we're talking about energy transfer here there is like i promised you a space heater would heat that place better than yeah and honestly like this story doesn't really

have a power out and and really that's the peak of it when he's telling that it sounds like something like somebody's making a modern dickensian story about how he heats his house that way but then he goes on and into talking about how two sundays ago or three sundays ago he's driving this lift car that you know he has to drive to pay off basically and this is very i'm trying to remember when his week started it didn't matter but he has to drive all the way to the east side which is far away from where he's kind of headquartered or where he lives and then he gets a flat tire he goes to put on the donut but there's no donut in the rental car so he calls lift and lift they send out roadside service and he tells them you got to bring a tire there's no donut they're like we don't do that and he's like fighting with them about that he has to like they the tow truck comes and only tows him to the nearest garage which is on the east side he has to take another lift home but he's like i can't afford it i got five dollars in the bank he's like the lift won't give me a ride home from this place where their car got a flat tire and they don't have a donut that i can replace it with and he's like i got to call my sister in grand rapid so she can send me 20 so i can call a left to get home. And again, part of the reason I was thinking about the story is just like like you said, the usury and the and the just the the way these these gig economies just hold these people over a barrel. And it was so, so sad. But he was also an incredible character. He mentions he mentioned that. Oh, that's right. He was really sad. He mentioned the beginning that his mom had just died and now he's going back. And so it's sort of like maybe he was living with his mom. It was just volunteered out of nowhere. But it was like he kept on he kept on trying to up the ante of how sad his life was. And then he somehow switches. The last conversation we have is how young he looks for his age. He said, just had my birthday. I'm like six. I'm like 50. I'm 59 or I'm 61. I can't remember what it was. But I look like I'm 45. And on the apps, I just don't even tell my age. And all of a sudden, we're into dating apps. Yes. He never says the dating apps. He just says on the apps. And, like, almost all of this for about eight to ten minutes has been one uninterrupted flow of conversation coming one way, basically, from him to me without me giving any prompts. You know, one thing is just leading to another, leading to another. But he starts talking about it. He's like, then, you know, people are like, you look good for your age, but I don't put the age on there. It's not lying if you don't give your age. But then, of course, the women meet me and they say, well, we'll have a good time. But then they find out, I'm only 40, you're 60, I can't do that. And then they all break up with you. And he's just like rattling on all of this stuff.

Was it Mike from the chair company?

It was that level. That's what I'm trying to say here. And I'm not doing a good job with the story because there's no narrative arc. But this guy was an incredible character who I both legitimately do worry about, but also wonder how much of this was bullshit. I don't know. I mean, obviously exaggeration, like you definitely, you know, I think there is something there in this is so anecdotal, but I do sort of feel like there's more emphasis on tipping, maybe like whether it's when you get one of those cars where it'll have a little sign on the back of the headrest that says work for tips or like various things. And I do feel like I hear more sort of sad bastard stories from folks there. And also because the rides there are so much cheaper than what I'm used to here in Seattle because of surcharges and all the stuff in Seattle that are based around worker protection. I'm for that and everything. But it's like a ride in Cleveland is so much cheaper that I always err on kind of like leaving big tips for these folks, especially when they seem a bit hard on their luck. And they all do, by the way. like they're all working like the woman who drove me out there was talking about how she's driving late but has to get up super early for her real job in the morning you know like all of the folks are just who are driving these cars are just at least the ones that i met in cleveland i just seem like they're barely keeping shit together so i try to you know be conscientious of that when i'm tipping them and so i don't know how much he might have been exaggerating this stuff but it just it was amazing how it just like one sad story after the other made you sad in different ways

Right, because it's like, obviously, somebody who's going through that stuff, your heart goes out to them, and yet also there is a point at which it's just kind of like, I don't want to victim blame, but it's like, all right, there are probably some different decisions that you could make in your life that might mitigate at least some of this. which is not to say that when people have you know when bad stuff happens to people it's their fault because they didn't just like bootstrap enough but there but there's it's weird when that tipping point happens in your own brain because usually the initial whatever the context is the initial like if you're talking to somebody at the bar or whatever somehow you end up talking to somebody maybe it's on the airplane and it's like oh man this person's got some this person's really going through it or they're really having bad luck and then when you hear like the eighth story that just is like topping the seventh story about how kind of like how kind of how unlucky they are it's weird how your mind shifts to like okay but kind of like what role are you playing in some of this

and also i mean it was the dating stuff that had nothing to do with his financial situation that i was also like he's talking about like first of all why are you even telling me about this i didn't bring this up you brought this up and it all just started with you had a birthday you look young for your age and now you're telling me about women being mad at you when they find out your actual

age i'm also like what i think they're more mad about the fact that he's heating his house from

the stove i think they're more mad about like anything that he said from i feel like when they

go in the house they're not they're less mad about him being 60 than they are about how he's

they're not going to the house luke he's not they're not going to the house that's what i mean like the moment he sits down at a panera bread i think they're getting up so you're saying he did

look 60 that's exactly what i'm saying yes ah what also what an interesting this is why people are so, people are so fascinating. We're all on this.

journey and we're all kind of we're all doing it our own way and yet there are similarities and and there are and there are real differences but like i also can i also know what you're talking about where like i've talked to somebody who let's just say maybe by their own description as you're as you're saying with this fella by their own description kind of like they're charlie brown trying to kick the football but then there are also these other areas that they're just like they have an amount of confidence that i can only envy yeah right yeah like you know what i mean Like, this is all in the same person of, like, you know, all the stuff you've already discussed about how kind of financially strapped this person is, et cetera, all this. And then it's like, and yet he self-reports being a handsome devil. Yeah, right?

Yes. And he's, like, he's proud of how he looks. And, of course, like, the women, it's not about his personality at all. I'm trying to think even if he said the girls or whatever. I'm trying to remember how he talked. It was a very interesting experience. But, yeah, like somehow it's just the age. When they find out the number, they're no longer interested in me.

It has nothing to do with the other stuff.

Buddy, yeah, like I think. Come on. We're all adults here. Anyway. I wish him the best. But honestly, that story of he's like, oh, I got a system. I turn on all the burners with a box fan. And I'm just like, oh, my God. I worry, Luke.

well it's it i i'm i wasn't just not just because we were talking about the fact that i can't quite get the madrona hill studio up to heat here as i'd like but when i came home on whatever day i got back from my trip you know the well actually even just monday because i was gone so i turned all the heat off in my house and i came back and i had that experience of like it was last night i got home last night and it was like oh you know it's chilly in here let me try to turn on i've got a mini split that creates heat i've got this pellet stove that does heat i've got a few other things i got a sniffer who i let out um and uh and i was like i was i was turning these things on and it was like taking a little while to heat up and you know the thing is that's kind of like how thermodynamics work i guess if you walk into your house if it's 40 degrees outside and you walk into your house and the heat has been totally off maybe what i should have done is i should have been running the mini split you know at like 60 degrees while I was gone so that there's a baseline of like kind of generally I didn't do that so it was just like it was like cold it was like being outside and then it was taking a while for the heat for the room to become comfortable so I'm like sitting under a blanket and I'm like doing a little more work on my laptop and I'm going into this weird thing that I do where it's like I messed this house up like I didn't have you know I didn't have an HVAC system installed because I was told that the mini split system is fine and da da da and like this is not how like this doesn't this doesn't feel like a warm cozy house right now it feels like cold and like I've somehow I have because I am totally I'm like a hundred percent responsible for everything that's good and bad about this house now you know because of because it was all my idea every every design decision was all me and again in this day and age most of the time like this house never had any kind of a central hvac like it never like you

and veeves probably have those vents in your floor right uh yeah kind of uh we have vents around not baseboard but yeah vents around on the wall and stuff yeah well baseboard is electric right because

that's the actual at the base of your wall that thing that's is that what you have or do you have

the thing that's a vent that's we have we have various vents around the house okay are they are

they pretty effective like when you turn the heat on does the house warm up pretty nicely yeah you

know what the funny thing is is sometimes when you stand close to it it feels like it's cool air coming out but it actually warms the house interesting well i just because this house

never had that kind of whatever that's called you know forced air heat i guess maybe it never had that it had just like it was like basically i didn't make this house worse that's for damn sure it was worse when i got it like it had a couple of non-functioning heaters that were those kind that are built like they're in the wall but you got to go turn them on by hand individually not individually and they're heating up these coils and they're those are they were old they're fire hazards you know it's like but somehow in my mind i just like went into this mode last night that was just like i i did not think this house through i did not think i don't know anything about home construction or like heat distribution this is never going to be cozy it's weird because i don't I don't think of myself as a spiraler But I start spiraling So then this is what I do next I go on the website So I have a heater in my bathroom The bathroom that I redid That's an infrared panel heater Are you familiar with these at all? Only if you mentioned it once It's kind of an interesting concept So this is kind of a I don't know This is sort of a popular new thing I guess But it's like a flat panel of glass That is like white or black or whatever.

and you plug it in and it's the reason that it is considered more efficient than like a space heater one it's totally silent which is pretty cool um whereas you know any other space heater used is going to ultimately have a fan because that fan is what's then distributing the heat that's coming off of the like electrical you know coils or whatever and the way an infrared heating panel if you call it that works is it's the weirdest thing dude it's like it's like very It's still hard for me to understand. It doesn't heat up the room. It heats you up when you are inside of it.

Isn't that crazy? You know what this is like? This is like those bone-conducting headphones that everybody always tells me to get. I feel like we have these devices now that are like, it's like, no, no, no, the room isn't warm, but you are. No, no, no, there's no sound being made. It's rattling into your skull, which, again, everybody says that they love them. I've gotten more recommendations for bone-conducting headphones, but I'm not trying to diss on them. Tell them the bone-conducting headphones. Yeah, I just can't wrap my head around this. No, no, the room is cold, but you are warm. That sounds scary. It sounds like a microwave.

Okay, so that's what's so nuts about this. So I have one of these in my bathroom, and it works great. So what did I do yesterday, Andrew? spent about a thousand dollars worth of bone conducting infrared heating panels to put around the rest of my living room in these and and and entryway and basically parts of the house that would not get warm yesterday no matter how long i was running the fire and the thing eventually like you know 45 minutes in the place was toasty but it's like i don't know i just i i panicked i panicked and i bought a bunch of infrared heating panels and they do work they do work that's the crazy part when i go in my bathroom i feel warm and i'm levitating but

when you walk but when you walk into your bathroom do you feel warmth like like the ambiently yeah

i can't tell the difference yeah that's why it's craziness because it's like it seems like it's

gonna sell you these pills that are gonna tell you that you're warm you know what i mean like I'm not trying to rag on this thing. It sounds like it works for you. But it's sort of like, oh, well, no, we don't sell heaters. We just sell you pills that confuse your body so that you think you're being warm or something. It's so strange.

That's effectively what it is. It is crazy, and also it kind of works. I walk into the bathroom. I'll go into the bathroom to pee in the middle of the night, and I'll feel warm. I'll be like, oh, that thing is on. But then when I'm not there, it's not heating the room. It is not expending energy to raise the ambient temperature in the room. But it is the case that when I walk into the bathroom, I feel physically warm because this thing is bombarding me with some kind of invisible heat pills. It's the strangest. I like that that's canon now.

How does it work? Well, invisible heat pills.

I'm not even here to advocate for it. I'm here to advocate for mental health solutions so you don't spiral and buy $1,000 worth of heat panels. but you know what it was is i'm having this family get together for christmas and and by the way there is the house is going to be warm there's gonna be 25 burbanks in here watching the seahawks play the indianapolis colts and screaming our heads off like it is not going to be cold but i have just like when i was in when it was like sibling fest was going to be happening and i started to like spin out i'm spinning out now about this christmas thing which is oh everyone's going to come over and it's going to be freezing and and and like it's going to be uncomfortable and we're not going to have a fun time, which is not realistically a threat. But my anxiety goes to this crazy place with stuff like this.

Your family is going to be warm because they throw off a lot of BTUs. They do. Burbank thermal units. Oh, man, dude. The BTUs are going to be off the freaking charts.

But there's something about that guy. Oh, you know what other thought? Okay, and then we'll wrap this up. Because I've got to go do a hit with KLCC while you're posting today's show, Andrew. But that's neither here nor there Is that TV or radio? It's the public radio station in Eugene, Oregon Spread the good news of Livewire down there And TVTL But when you mentioned the lift driver And the blasting the heat from the stove I had the thought last night When I couldn't get the house warm I wasn't going to do this And I wasn't going to use this as a reasonable way to heat my home But I thought, huh I bet you if I turned my oven on full blast And left the door ajar it would actually warm this place up more which is something you hear about in again like Bukowski sort of situations

and newspaper reports

and also no no no I'm not and also I'm not on gas it would be I also don't think that my I don't think my stove will let me do that because it's one of them LG's that you have oh so it's too smart I bet you it's too smart for I don't know.

And also, I'm on electric, and I'm not going to do that. But it's funny that that thought went through my mind last night of like, well, that's a thing that people have done historically. It's not a great idea. And then today, as if I manifested it. You know what? It makes me think, Andrew, that I can just imagine things and they'll happen.

Some people do. Some people imagine things. You know, I need to rewatch that.

You made me think I could make things happen.

It just occurred to me that we have something going on tonight that might prevent me from watching Pluribus. But I'll let you know.

Tomorrow can be 100% share.

But we can also still have, because I still want to ask you something about Pluribus. Yes, and I'm happy to answer it. You know, it did not occur to me, and this is maybe where I'm, I mean, either way, it's bad news bears. But I've only been picturing this guy with a gas stove. Uh-huh. Do you think he was turning on electric burners?

My guess would be electric because based on— throw off probably more ambient heat well and it would be less of a um it'd be less of a gas you

know natural gas leak hazard it must have been electric this makes so much more sense because i have a gas stove i'm like i know that kind of it heats what's above it but i was picturing a

fan sucking those flames towards it kind of being pushed by the air exactly i'm picturing the fan

kind of like the fan is sucking the hot air from the flames or whatever, like kind of in front of it. That's terrible. But I mean, listen, all of the scenarios are bad. Yes. But electric burners makes so much more sense than gas. This whole time I've been picturing gas. I'm just like, this man is going to do, something terrible is going to happen in that apartment. I assume it's an apartment.

Now my fear is, isn't it weird? what i pictured was the the box fan is is on the stovetop or the range but it's blowing across the burners the elements instead of sucking the air from the elements i had it i had the opposite of you no no i'm not saying you're wrong about the thermodynamics i'm just saying that's how i pictured it and then my fear is in the night the because you know it's plastic You know this box fan is plastic And it's just Falling onto those like red Hot and then just Melting and then like that whole Situation like you said none of it's

Good yeah it's It's bad news bears I hope that guy's okay

I do too I do too And but yeah Gals of Cleveland don't go back to the

Apartment please do not go They know everyone's sake nobody is going

Back to his apartment yeah I don't they don't even need that piece of Advice yes this is this system

is self-regulating i believe yes the safest people in the world right now are the people who are not

going back to his apartment all right that's going to do it for today's episode of the program but we are going to be here tomorrow uh trying to figure this life out together um so please join us for that in the meantime have a great tuesday uh stay warm everybody and uh but safely stay safely warm

yes and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all but especially that one guy Power out.