Muse

Oh, oh, Seth. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Seth. Seth, why are you, Seth? Come here, come here, come here. Come on, buddy. What's going on, buddy? Just talk to me about anything. I don't want to play basketball anymore. I love that you play basketball, but if you don't want to play basketball, you don't gotta. Really? No. I don't know. It's just my heart hasn't been in it for like the last year and I found something I love so much more. You're happy? You found something you love? That's all I need to hear. I'm over the moon. What is it? Stop motion animation. like rudolph i mean it's not all christmas i know i just see the christmas ones and they're always just like santa can't do it tbtl you're talking about socialism no i'm not i'm talking about not

covering every square inch of populated america with houses and strip malls until you can't even remember what happens when you stand in the meadow at dusk what happens in the meadow at dusk

everything everything everything it's beautiful it's beautiful doggy butt doggy doggy doggy butt

doggy butt doggy butt doggy dog doggy butt oranor oh that naughty old elf must be one mean bastard to give us this so early flashes of quincy well all right hello good morning and

Welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It tastes like soot and hot water. I'm hooked. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

Carol, hold my calls.

Coming to you once again from Miami Beach.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

It sure is, my friends. It sure is. I was talking to the Lyft driver the other day who was from Argentina, and he was talking about how he was going to be going home to Argentina in a couple of weeks and staying down there because he said, well, it's summer in Argentina, so the weather is just perfect. And I thought, my friend, have you looked outside? It's 80 degrees and blue skies here in Miami, and it seems pretty nice. Seems like a nice day to bring you episode 4,611 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I was also out on a dive boat yesterday.

I like turtles.

doing some snorkeling and filming it for television that's a tuna bro and we were very close to the shore i mean we were i don't know maybe a few hundred yards offshore um and it didn't seem like we were in the wilds of the ocean and yet it was a rollicking ride that had a lot of people vomiting off of the side of the boat tell you how my last And I was shirtless also. Not, I don't think that's why people were vomiting. I would say if that was part of it, it was a small part of it. It was mostly because the boat was rocking back and forth. Oh, hey, speaking of Lyft drivers, I was in yet another Lyft last night, and I had a conversation with the driver, and he asked me a question. It was actually quite charming, and I was happy I was able to give him what I think is the answer he was looking for. Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? So we will get into all of that and so much more with the help of this handsome young stranger. The longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Can you hear me okay? Can you hear me at all?

I can.

You sound a little bit like you're in a tunnel. I do. I sound weird. I wanted to try something. This is very unlike me. Hold on a second.

Yeah. I like this. It's kind of edgy. This is experimental.

Very unlike me to try this at the last minute. Literally, Luke, I was listening to your introduction. Nice introduction, by the way. I enjoyed it. I was along for the ride. And my eyes just wandered across my studio about 45 seconds ago. And I saw this microphone that I'd given up on a long, long time ago. It's like a professional, nice microphone. But I never thought it worked well with the boards, the audio equipment that I have in my thing.

Yeah, I don't think it does.

Yeah, even now, does it not sound good to you? No, it sounds terrible. Does it really? Yeah, it sounds like mud.

It sounds really muddy. I don't mean that figuratively. It's like your voice sounds muddier than normal.

Oh, I noticed that also the, here, let's just do this. So literally 45 seconds before you introduce me, I'm like, what if I just swap out the microphone that I use every single day for this show? Is it cleaning up a little bit as I'm turning this knob? It's sounding better.

It's sounding a little better.

And I was like, why?

don't i use this microphone is it truly a bad microphone i thought the perfect time to test this yeah would be as you introduce me at the very very top of the show without any backup plan and the backup plan right now eat that microphone is for me to unplug this again and plug in my other one which is actually more comfortable but does it sound workable can we use this mic or do

i have to throw it back in the river now it's better than when you started i don't know what you tweaked and what you i mean speaking of microphones yeah i'm you know i'm doing something I don't know if any of the listeners picked up on this, but I'm doing something a little different this week. I'm using a different microphone here in my hotel room in Miami for a couple of reasons. One is that it's just easier to hold. I'm using a microphone that is just the shape of it is more conducive to handheld. It also has a longer cable, so I can kind of actually recline on this bed. Hope everyone's picturing that. Mostly clothed. reclining on this bed but i can i can sit in a slightly more comfortable way while holding this this particular microphone but it is not the one i usually use and i don't think it sounds worse than the other one but it sounds slightly different i don't know if this show can handle both of us doing microphone experimentation at the same time andrew you gotta eat that microphone i

gotta admit i totally forgot that when we did the show i think on monday you said you were using a different microphone i didn't i didn't think that my microphone experimentation over here was related to your microphone experimentation. Maybe you got jealous. Maybe somewhere in the back of my head you planted a seed. Maybe I got jealous. Maybe I'm like, look at that. Look at me, Louie, over there with his casual microphone. I'm going to go. You know what the kind of microphone I'm using right now is, Luke? It's the kind that we used to use it.

All right, let's go cameras on.

Cairo radio. Oh, you're going to see the back end of this thing. This thing is. You're not going to be. This is going to be like the. I'm going to show you a picture of my cap. See the one that I'm using? See, I've got this.

I've got this stylish green foam pee popper.

Yeah, that looks good. That's the thing that you took to Australia with us. I remember you doing some field interviews with us.

Oh, are you rocking a Sennheiser right now, my friend? No, this is one of those RE. But it's not made by Sennheiser, huh? No, it's... Oh, I always associated that with them. Electrovoice, EV. Electrovoice. These are the ones that are kind of typical. They're big in the public radio world. If you're in a nice, newer public radio station studio, there'll be a lot of those microphones, don't you think?

Yes. Well, this is like, classically, and this is what I like to think of first. This was the microphone, who had the gold version of this? Rush Limbaugh? This is the Rush Limbaugh microphone, only his was gold. So this is like a classic, classic studio radio microphone.

From the EIB Studios, excellence in broadcasting. talent on loan from god can you tell somebody used to work at a conservative talk radio station

i love that so anyway this is i don't know why i'm doing this right now i guess it does seem to get the job done though like if we needed to use this microphone absolutely well you whatever

you did improved it greatly over like the first 10 words okay yeah of your mouth which it sounded a little distorted a little bit um less than super clear this is a i don't want to say it's a bummer

I think it smells a little bit. Was Graz using this thing? Why does this?

Graz with gas. Sorry, go ahead.

I remember there were, Graz is a radio host around these parts. Long, long, long time. Dave Grosby. Sports radio host. I only kind of knew him near the end of his career before he retired. But there were rumors that you did not want to use a microphone after him. Oh, I didn't know that. Because he apparently would eat a big hoagie or whatever and then just talk, just like you say, eat the mic, talk right into it. And then I heard rumors that you do not want to go near those microphones for a while after he's done with it or wipe them down first.

I loved when when Grosby was over there on KJRAM and they also had Mike Gastineau, the gas man. And they figured out that these two guys had an energy. They had a dynamism that couldn't be denied. And so they each had their own shows. But then there was one hour that was an overlap, I believe, that was called Gros with Gas.

Oh, I like that a lot. Actually, I like that formatting, too.

no it was great it really was and i and it was um gastino would do like this kind of list thing at the end of the show he would kind of do this like almost like what the what stugatz does over on the lebitard or used to do or whatever which is like the weekend thoughts or whatever that

segment's called oh yeah weekend observations god i miss those geez it would just be this thing that

grosby or sorry gastino would do would be this kind of like maybe four minute long like round up of both sports and pop culture he was just kind of like i mean it was scripted but it was kind of also riffing and he would i feel like he would play little drops anyway i forget somebody out there might know what i'm talking about it was really good radio really really

good radio unlike what we're doing right now andrew which is a little bit of a bummer because i feel

like we may have gained some new listeners oh no and i started with a janky mike and mike talk

so uh i just want to say to any of my new friends i've made here in miami who might be tuning in today um i'd like to tell you it's usually things are a little bit crisper a little more focused than this but they're not damn this should have told me this is what we do that we had guests

If I knew we had guests, I wouldn't have started this way.

Well, what happened was, or what has been happening throughout the course of the week is I've been meeting lots of nice people. Many of them related to the story that we're filming. Other people I was just sitting by at dinner the other night, and we started chatting, a lovely couple. And then I got an email from the husband who had sort of Googled me, I guess, and figured out, like, oh, my TBTL email address. And he said, oh, we're going to check out the podcast. so you know that's living large in my mind i met a bunch of really cool people yesterday we went on this dive boat to um to film this underwater art installation which also serves as a surf break and also as a um coral reclamation project and i was talking about the podcast with some of the folks there so some of them might be tuning into this i'm not exactly sure how many new sets of ears we have going on here but um but yeah this is the show everyone this is uh this is what it

sounds like now now you're doing this with your shirt on we should point out which is not how a

lot of these folks know you this is yeah it's for the people that i met on the boat yesterday like imagine a less upsetting version of yeah okay that's so that was a plot line going in to this this shoot that we were doing out on this dive boat which was somehow once again i was going to be shirtless on national television this has happened one other time i would say as a nation we're still recovering from the first incident that was when i did a cold water swim in san francisco this was a warm water swim in florida and andrew when i tell you i got on the boat and i looked around and everybody else had wetsuits which would have solved the problem right away in fact a wetsuit it's not only are you not shirtless you have essentially more clothing

on than in normal. You're like Batman. You could have put fake abs in there like you were

talking about. Oh, golly. Yeah, I wish I would have thought of that. And then there was one guy who didn't do the wetsuit thing, and he just had on a swim shirt. And it looked great on him. In fact, there were two. There was two people. One guy that worked for the boat and another guy that had these stand-up paddle boards that were electric. So they were powered stand-up paddle boards so you could just get on them and ride around. They were very cool. But two of the guys on the boat that weren't in wetsuits, they just had a swim shirt on. I thought, why in the world did i not just get a shirt that is designed for swimming not a t-shirt that i'm wearing in the pool but a a shirt that's it's because that's what everybody here does because it's so sunny here so much of the time no one's trying to catch rays like it's not like seattle where or portland where it's like when the five days that it gets nice everyone just like just strips down to nothing and then just walks outside into the sun into the vitamin d that's not the move here because it's constantly sunny so you're actually wearing like a swim shirt and and a hat and doing things to actually try to mitigate how much sun there is and so it wasn't until i was sitting on the boat that i thought this whole shirtless debacle for me could have been avoided if i would have just gone to one of the local stores here and there are many and just bought like a black t-shirt that's meant it's made out of a material that you swim in yeah the irony is

that you were talking about being shy doing this but you're like well it is what it is you instead looked like a guy who really wanted to pop your tea off i was the only shirtless person on the

boat and it exactly looked like i was allergic to shirts because i thought i was my physique was so good you brought your bongos with you i believe i sure did time is a flat circle um so that was a little embarrassing that i didn't think about that i did end up having to just kind of go go shirtless but luckily mostly i was just swimming around and then that was its whole own thing because everybody else on the boat was um like scuba certified so a lot of people had on you know they had like scuba tanks with oxygen in them and they had on like the whole get up and the so they were going down you know this was about 25 feet deep in the ocean is where this installation it's basically like a bunch of cars like in a traffic jam except they're made out of marine concrete and they're meant to grow like there's coral that gets locked onto them and it grows more coral and all this stuff so the people with the scuba gear they could swim all the way down and just hang out down there and they could actually put attach coral to it and they could just kind of like engage with the thing i was holding my breath so i was just trying to like get enough breath at the surface and by the way though The ocean is rollicking. I'm looking at the ocean right now from my hotel room, and it looks very placid and very flat, and yet somehow when we were out there, it was not. This boat was just going back and forth. And again, many people, including our sound guy for the shoot, God love you, Steve. Steve was trying to record the audio for this while also throwing up off the side of the boat. There were many people vomiting.

Are people vomiting into the water that other people are swimming in?

Well, I mean, it is all the same ocean.

I mean, I know that you didn't swap out oceans, but I mean, in the same, were these events happening at around the same time in the same area? Or was it like, oh, there was a place where everybody got sick and then you guys went somewhere else and you were swimming?

No, we weren't moving the boat based on people losing their lunch, but it was pretty discreet. Like it was, they were going off the side of the boat. There was literally these two areas that the captain, when he gave us the kind of spiel before we left the marina, he said like if you do feel like you have to throw up we have these vip sections and it was like vomit in place or something you know he had some kind of like joke about so the people that were that were having seasickness they were that was kind of far away from the back of the boat it's a really big boat so it didn't seem like these were co-mingling what i didn't think about a lot until today when i was talking to somebody else for a different interview for the story where she said i wouldn't have gone in there because of the sharks uh and i was like i am glad i did not

because you know i mean i used to be very phobic yeah that's right i was just thinking as a human being you don't want to be around sharks but no that's a that's a real fear of yours you were saying that even at an age that you're a little bit embarrassed about you avoided swimming pools

because of your with my own daughter well yeah i i would get out of the swimming pool at my grandma's condo in belfew because i would say i know there's not a shark in here but if there was

Could you imagine like me in heights like you're in the water you're fine you're fine and then suddenly the all the thoughts just pile up on top of you that's what happened on your roof when

we're watching the Blue Angels and then more embarrassingly and definitely not winning me any father of the year mugs when I lived down here in Florida for about a year and Addie was visiting we would be in the ocean and she would be in the ocean because she loves the ocean and I would be standing about shin deep in the water and my whole move was i want to be close enough that if she starts to drown i could get her but i don't want to be so far in the water that the sharks can get me apparently i was okay with the sharks getting my daughter yeah i mean that's kind

of uh that's kind of a type of self-defense really like they'll get her first which will buy you some time her meat is younger it's tastier you got a sign like those cows that say eat more chicken

Exactly. Eat more Addy. And it's like, you guys don't even want any part of this grizzled old 24-year-old, 25-year-old Luke. But I'm really glad that I didn't even think about that. I was dealing with too many other things. One, being shirtless. Two, the water was very, very choppy. And, you know, I've been scuba diving, or I should say snorkeling, like two times in my life. And it was just in Hawaii in one of those little, I don't know if you and Vives did that or have done that when you've gone, but you know, there's those really nice, very calm little protected areas where you put on a mask and a snorkel, uh, you know, and you just, you swim and there's turtles in there and stuff. And it's like, it is extremely like low, low stress, low danger. That's the only kind of snorkeling I've ever done. I'm not like, this is not a regular thing for me. And I haven't done that in years. And now here we are on this rollicking boat. And this is there's there's like 40 people on the boat that are there for various reasons for this this organization called Reef Line. That's really cool. People that are supporters of it. There were scientists from the University of Miami. Did you know the University of Miami is private? No. Didn't you just assume that it was like a state school in Florida that happened to be in Miami?

Yes. I'm trying to sort things out in my head. The hurricanes. Because I listen to so much Levitard, and they talk about the U so much. It's huge. And they talk about donors. It's a private university. And I am trying to wrap my – I am now trying to recontextualize every conversation I ever heard about the U on the Dan Levitard show. I'm going to need about five days to sort this all out. That is shocking.

Isn't that kind of mind-blowing? I have always assumed until last night I learned that the University of Miami is a private institution. and um because you know they were the co-national champions with my beloved washington huskies in 1991 because that was back in the days when not at you like there was no playoff so the huskies never played miami and they were both undefeated and so the decision was just to cut the baby in half and and and make us co-national champions so miami has always been very much on my radar the miami hurricanes it never occurred to me it was a private university which it is i just learned And I'm doing –

I'm now also trying to figure out, like, oh, is this one of those things where there's a University of Miami and a Miami University that I've been confusing? Well, there is of Ohio. There is of Miami of Ohio, of course, which is confusing to me growing up in Ohio. But, yeah, I'm just making sure that this is the logo and the mascot and everything that I'm thinking of when I think about the University of Miami. Yeah, the Hurricanes. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I had no idea it was a private university. But anyway, there was researchers.

They should name it something different, don't you think? I do think it's misleading. I think that they're cosplaying. They're trying to get away with something here. And I don't know what to do.

Well, because most private universities have a name that – there's something about how most private universities are named that just kind of tells you. You know, Rutgers. Yeah. You don't get confused about Rutgers. You know that it is a private university or, you know, like there's lots of examples. You don't usually name a private university just for the city it's in. Yeah. In my experience.

Yeah.

Although I guess the University of Cincinnati, the Bearcats, I guess that's probably private too. I don't mean the scales have fallen from that. why do you think that's private what now i don't know because it's not because probably if it's a state school it would be like you know um you know well ohio state university it doesn't have the name ohio in it just like usually when it's a state school is it are we getting are we getting

eyes on the university of cincinnati i'm looking at university of cincinnati founded in 1819 the university of cincinnati thrives on academic excellence that's not what we're asking though I'm trying to figure it out because University of Miami right away it says the University of Miami is a private research university. Cincy, I'm not getting a specific answer on that question yet. Well we had researchers

on the boat from the University of Miami and there was a whole bunch of people on this boat for a whole bunch of different reasons and they're all fairly aware of the fact that there's also this TV shoot that's happening so there's kind of a bit of an audience now for what I'm doing and we're doing and i'm like i'm sitting there about to jump in the water and i'm thinking again a i don't like being shirtless b i haven't done anything like this in a long time also this is unlike the thing that i've done before because we're in the the rollicking seas of the atlantic ocean and i don't even know if i'm going to be like up to the task like i don't know if i remember how this all works and i'm supposed to like snorkel around and they're going to film it they've got two different camera people underwater filming us and also I'm with the founder of the entire thing and she's like she's a certified scuba diver she's very comfortable in the water she does this all the time and she's like okay great here's what we're going to do we're going to go out and then we're going to like I'm going to count to three we're going to hold our breath and we're going to swim down to the cars and I'm like okay I don't even know how long I can hold my breath for

this is like I'm blanking on his name what is the name of the guy in Mission Impossible is it Ethan? Tom Hanks? I mean Tom Cruise it's Tom Cruise and he plays a guy named Ethan right? Have you seen any of those movies? He has to hold his breath for like forever he has to do something underwater in a big water wheel thing I don't know if any of this sound I don't know if what I'm talking about is like iconic or it just happens to be the movie that Genevieve dragged me to and that happens to be the thing I remember but he has to hold his breath underwater for i think several hours and i'm pretty sure he does all of his own stunts

so i feel like you have i'm just thinking about what a different franchise it would be if tom

hanks was the star of mission impossible it would be a different feel oh by the way i did check it before um and it is a public university cincinnati public research university versus private so i don't know what the confusing well that's i don't mean to derail us again but i just wanted to let you know thank you i appreciate you closing the leap on that okay so anyway so you have to go all

the way down to the cars yeah so i'm i'm like i'm jumping in the water i'm also not sure what the water temperature is because i'm the only person that's pretty much not in a wetsuit somebody who jumped in in the wetsuit said oh it's frosty and i was like oh shit i just thought you know it's florida it's blue water it's going to be fine is it also cold um the good news was the water was not overly cold uh for me it actually felt really nice it was really comfy but now we're like the the waves are just tossing us around and we're swimming over to like above the area where these cars are that are down on the the bottom of the ocean people are and i just find on you from above it's hell from above vomit raining down and like i uh i just had one of these moments where i thought like i did not think this through like i kind of had a sense that we were gonna snorkel a little bit but I just I thought what if I can't do this like what if I have forgotten how to snorkel what if I can't swim what if I get too scared what if I can't swim underwater what if I can't hold my breath long enough like these are the thoughts I should be having a few days ago not as I'm sitting here in the Atlantic Ocean with like up to five cameras now trained on me this other person that i'm interviewing like i was like how do i find how do i get myself to these spots without any forethought and only now am i going like was this a good idea are there underwater cameras yes there was we had an underwater camera person who was with the organization reef line her name is nola and then we had one of our cbs camera people olivia who was in the water with what we call an osmo which is like a small handheld camera that's on a little gimbal and it's like they had the hardest jobs well actually no olivia had the hardest job because she also didn't have a breathing apparatus nola had a breathing breathing apparatus so nola could go all the way down to where the cars were and just be breathing in the scoot with the scuba tank olivia had to do everything it's like ginger rogers she had to do everything we were doing backwards and in heels heels like yes she's got a camera she doesn't have any special oxygen tank so now she's trying to like swim down near the cars and then film us as we're swimming down to the cars and then like get it all on film which is like a really hard thing to do because mostly just the lung capacity aspect like basically in order to get down to where the cars were by the time you got down there you were like if you were me anyway you were out of breath i know a guy who's out of breath i was about to say that and the first again this is where this intersection of like me wanting this to look good on camera and also me wanting it's sort of like when i drove the monster truck uh and i crashed it because i was really i really wanted the people at the monster truck monster jam university to think i was like a cool reporter this thing kicks in for

me where like i'm just so vain and i want it to be cool i want to look cool that then i do something and i realize oh that wasn't a great idea so the first time we we we go three two one and i take in a big breath and i swim down to where the car is and i get down there and i like kind of touch it for a quick second and it's very cool looking by the way i mean it's a bunch of cars but i get down and then i realize i'm totally out of breath and i look up and the surface of the water is so far away i also have fins on so like when i'm swimming down i'm actually like i'm making way faster progress than i normally would you know then i don't realize it because i have this device aiding me so i'm like at the car and i look up and i'm like i'm sorry to interrupt uh

you mean flippers on your feet or something else yeah okay gotcha yeah flippers just the kind of

you know what i'm yeah swim fins or whatever they call those things and so i'm like down there and i look up and i go like oh wait like i didn't think about the return trip like i'm i'm out of breath now at this moment and so i kick towards the surface and i'm just going and going and going and it's still like 15 feet away it's still like 10 feet away like eight feet away and now i'm just like completely out of breath and i wouldn't say that i was like in fear for my life or anything but i was like i was i was pretty let's just say i was pretty out of breath by the time i got to the surface like i surfaced like freaking ariel from the little mermaid or something i shot out of the water you're probably panicking a bit at this point i kind of was panicking the more times that we did it and of course because this is the whole thing with doing television uh it's always can we get one more and that makes sense you know it's better to have more it's better to have more takes than fewer takes but it's like we end up doing it like 10 times trying to dive down to the cars trying to film it and and then we'd be like okay we got it and and also i don't have a life preserver on so this whole time i'm also just treading water in the ocean you know what i mean there's nothing there's not i don't have anything creating buoyancy for me it's just you know it's just me treading water and and whatever so i'm pretty tired by the end of it and they just keep going can we get one more or like you know one of the camera people has a different idea for a different angle and so at one point me and the woman i was interviewing um i collided with her down at the bottom and i was really like because we were both down there and then we were both trying to go back up but we kind of went in the same direction then bumped into each other and i was like above her and i was like did i just kill the founder of reef line because now i'm struggling to get back to the surface and she's i've basically knocked her down on the ocean floor now i'm the founder of reef exactly now i'm in charge of this public art project so um it ended up uh being actually a really fun experience and being in the ocean was great i actually would like to do it when i'm not being filmed i like to go back to this thing and just swim around because it was it was really lovely the only part that was creating anxiety for me was being shirtless on television and everyone just watching me do this i'd like to do this again in a low stakes kind of environment just for fun for uh recreation but um but yeah so that was the uh that's how everything and then yeah people were throwing up left and right including you

the artist who created the whole art piece he's from argentina and he was visiting this piece of art for the first time his own piece of art just puking all over his own art i mean the irony he he scuba'd down there so he had the tank and everything he got to see his stuff it's actually very cool there was a sand dollar on top of one of the cars which he which he was going to bring back to one of his kids in argentina um but then after that triumphant moment he then was one of the many people who were just absolutely seasick just hurling off the side of the boat i know that

you know what you're doing in these stories better than i do occasionally having said that i feel like this is the story that should have jason momoa in it if you would just take a little bit of editorial feedback on that instead of having him in a story about metallica yeah no this is this This is the time for Aquaman. Yeah. I feel like you should have had a producer interview him underwater as you stormed off. Well, next year's Black Carpet.

That's what I'm going to lead with. All right. Let's thank our donors. these wonderful generous people are keeping tbtl rolling along with their voluntary donations it's the only way this can work 100 percent listener supported podcasting right here my friends we don't have money to buy crazy ocean billboards which i was seeing yesterday andrew

like this is are you sure i've never seen anything like money for that that sounds like

last billboard we did was a pretty big disaster in and of itself i mean what would be better than

and putting a billboard for TBTL at the bottom of the ocean. This is crazy, though.

They have these barges here in Miami that just have a huge digital billboard on them, and the barge just floats around like where we were, like a few hundred yards offshore, with this digital billboard just advertising to anyone who's on the beach. I've never seen anything like that.

So it floats around, but the billboard... You said for the people on the beach. I got a little bit confused there. So the billboard.

Yeah, well, it's it's that's, you know what I mean? That's who it's in. Have you ever seen those planes that fly around and they pull a big banner?

Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I was picturing.

It's that, but it's floating on the ocean and it's enormous. Like it's like I can see them from my hotel room and I'm not on the water. I'm, you know, three blocks away from the water, but I can read. There's a billboard right now that's advertising Espelon tequila.

You know what my issue was, was I was picturing these submersed. And I don't know why. That's why I was confused. I thought you were talking about some sort of special.

Ask Aquaman.

I honestly thought, like, this is such a specific group of people that you're trying to advertise to. I thought you meant it was for the people who are scuba diving and that there's advertisements for people and that they were being towed around underwater. And I'm just like, this is such a specific. What would it advertise? It would have to advertise scuba gear, right?

Yes. Otherwise, what are you doing? Pretty much, yeah. Scuba gear, is it? Or scuba training.

Scuba training. Yes, exactly. Or fish food for the fish, maybe.

Maybe fish food. I don't know. Maybe metal detectors. Sometimes people go in the water with metal detectors.

I want to get into that. We had some listeners who got pretty hardcore into that a while back. I don't know if you remember that. I think maybe, I want to say Bobby and Will, but I could be wrong about that. But it sounds really tempting to me. I feel like once you get a metal detector, I could be wrong about this, I feel like it's not something you do casually. you're either in or you're out on metal detecting you become that guy well you know i did a tv story

about these detectorists these people that are seriously in the lifestyle of of metal detecting and i'll tell you the devices that they use they're nothing like that thing you might have picked up at radio shack as a kid or whatever i mean literally the kind i had as a kid a little some high power you know devices and they find it's amazing the stuff that they find It sounds so tempting. All that is to say, the way that the TBTL business model works is that people like Christian McKee of Portland, Oregon are donating money to the show. And here we are. Thank you, Christian. Thanks to Rachel Howard Till in Woodland, California.

Nice. Thank you, Rachel.

This is a really nice geographic distribution today. Andrew, I'm loving this. We've got Portland, Oregon. We've got Woodland, California. We've got Robin Burlingham, who's in Saskatoon. Nice. Saskatchewan. Oh, we just went international, my boy. Yeah. People don't tuck in their blueses like in Saskatoon. And then we've got Morgaine Gilchrist Scott, who's in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Nice.

Thank you. And I always ask this, and it's always awkward, and is it Morgan? Or Morgaine? Did we ever get clarity on that? I mean, you went with Morgaine. I'm wondering if you know that confidently, and I just forgot.

No, I just went with the spelling. There's an E on there. I'm assuming that that E was put there for a reason. And I apologize.

I think I do this every single year. It's part of why Morgan donates. Yes, exactly. We got an A and a B on that.

To hear us butcher their name. Thank you, Morgan, or Morgaine. And also thanks, Maya Swains in Seattle, Washington. Beautiful Seattle, Washington. A lovely town. Indeed. Absolutely. I love that place so much that I'm going to be there on Friday night doing Livewire at Benaroya Hall. Maybe I'll see you there, Maya Swains. I don't know if Catherine Jory is going to make it from Huntley, Montana. That's kind of a trip, although you're invited, Catherine. Would love to see you there as well. Catherine, also supporting TBTL today. Thank you so much to all of our donors. This would not be a thing without you. We appreciate you. hello and welcome to top story well i don't know if this is a top story andrew but i did find it kind of interesting last night i get into the lift i was going to this um dinner that was being thrown for the um artist who had made the the underwater art sculpture that's also the coral reef and um i get into the lift and the guy is playing the guy's listening to the radio and he's playing delilah no nice and i was stoked because i love delilah uh i love that show i mean i don't listen to it on the regular but i find it very comforting and i love that it's still on i love that it's on in miami and that it's popular and i was like oh you're listening to delilah he goes yeah my dad used to listen to this and i really i just love it and just like really into it i was like oh that's so great and i was like you know i actually work in radio and she's from seattle which is where i'm also from and and he goes oh really he goes well i need to ask you something he goes are the calls real like you would know better because you live in seattle or because i work in radio oh yeah that's true and i could just tell in his voice that like he was going to be pretty crushed if the calls to delilah were faked and i told him with confidence they are real because i do believe they are real and then i explained him what's not real uh is and i don't know if you're up on these morning shows andrew that do all of these like phony phone calls but they don't tell you that they're phony it's always like someone's calling in after the world's worst date and then the person who was on the date with them is calling in on the other line and disputing their account of things or like there's a bit called war of the roses where you supposedly send roses to to somebody you're dating then they have to try to guess who sent them and they're guessing the wrong person because they're cheating on you it's all this like basically like commercial radio morning shows have just turned into these phone calls that's the most popular thing in morning radio and they're all fake they're all actors i'm sorry by the way you love these things yeah and

not only is it disappointing to know that they're fake but also tell me if i'm wrong about this but they're not even like local they're not even like well this station is setting it up it's basically there are just national companies that are just feeding the same content to morning hosts around the country on any given day right and that really yes that's the real crappy part sorry for the

language yeah totally like that's yeah it's not even like if if the local station if they had some producers like putting together these really convincing kind of funny spoofs or whatever i would tip my cap to that but yeah this is just like pre-programmed crap that you can buy throw on your station and again it's really really popular so i told him i was like i do think the stuff in the morning is probably made up but i go i am here to tell you my friend the calls to delilah are very real it's somebody wishing their you know their their their husband is overseas you know serving in in iraq or afghanistan and they're dedicating this song to him i go those are real people they're really doing that and he goes yeah but how does the husband even hear it in afghanistan and i was like that's a good point yeah it's probably not going to hear it but i do I can tell you, friend, that these songs of love and these dedications and these stories of heartbreak that people share with Delilah, I am of the opinion that those are real people, not paid actors. And I was happy to tell him that.

You didn't tell him about the TuneIn app that you can listen to local radio stations around the world with? Oh, really? Well, I don't know. There are various—I use one called TuneIn that allows you to listen to radio stations from wherever. The problem is it gets blacked out during sporting events, but that wouldn't really apply here. I was never a big Delilah listener. I want to like Delilah because I love the format and I love the idea of it. I'm pretty sure when we were in Wisconsin, Wisconsin 106 had Delilah at night. And I listened to a little bit for the first time in years. But I think that, I don't know if it was the trappings. The music isn't really for me. Yeah. And so it's hard for me to stay with it.

Well, I mean, unless you want to... save the best for last by vanessa williams oh i kind of on the hour every hour it may not be musically for you it's one of those kinds of things that you have to get into it like you can't get into it at 49 you know what i mean like i grew up with it more or less and it's very nostalgic for me and again it's like the music is not for me the schmaltz is not for me but something about it is very comforting because i've just i've heard some version of delilah for years and years and years of my life so i sort of love it but that's the reason i love it because it reminds me of if not my childhood my teen years or whatever um whereas if i just turned it on now at age 49 i would kind of go this is definitely not for me the the weird thing is

sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see sometimes andrew

the sun goes around the moon sometimes the sun goes around the moon i kind of want to hear that i could see you having a phase with that song i feel like you you kind of what was the there was another song of that era that i feel like you were really into a few years ago oh like a while

back it was like 10 years ago now luke because i remember exactly when i got into it um i did go into like an unironic an unironic I should say um soft rock phase when I was in LA it was so early in my tenure in LA I believe it was Genevieve was not down in Los Angeles yet and it was New Year's Eve and I remember I was hanging out with a friend and then she dropped me off at my weird little Airbnb at like 9 p.m. and I still had like three hours left before midnight but I also don't really care about midnight on new year's eve that much or whatever and somehow i got into it what well i know i ended up building a playlist around the one song that i was obsessed with but i remember the read um became uh a big part of that who did the read um uh her name the read is a song yes um by um oh luke this is the worst uh uh it's the nouns i heard somebody say this the other day

Oh, Mike Schur. Mike Schur, great television creator, said he and his wife were talking the other day, and he said, it's the nouns. That's what goes first. It's persons, places, and things. Oh, no. And he just, his nouns are going, and I think it's happening to us.

Okay, I don't think it's called the reed, but I did remember the name of the person I'm thinking of. It's Bette Midler. What is one of Bette Midler? Oh, Bette Midler. The Rose? The Rose. Does she sing about reeds in the song The Rose?

Not that I remember. Some say love is a river. Yeah, and isn't there a line that flows to the sea?

Yeah, so what are the rose lyrics here? No, that's actually really good. Let me see here. The rose, I swear she says something about the reed. I need to be right about that. I believe you. Okay, the first line is, some say, love, it is a river that drowns the tender reed. Now, the fact that I would call it the reed is a problem. That is an absolute problem. I will admit that. But at least I'm not. After what I just did to you, to the listeners, to this show, I needed to at least have a kernel of truth to the read. No, you were right. That's in the lyrics. So that was good, yeah. But what was the song that I was obsessed with? I will tell you in a little bit as I look through my playlist here.

Just to wrap it up on the Delilah thing, again, it's weird because none of it is particularly of interest to me except, again, The happiness I felt when I got into that lift and he was playing Delilah was palpable for me. Something else that has brought me a lot of happiness.

It was Didn't We Almost Have It All. That is a song that on New Year's Eve 2014 going into 2015, for some reason I listened to that on repeat that evening in my weird little Airbnb in a somewhat depressive state. Didn't We Almost Have It All by Whitney Houston. Then I built a playlist that followed up with The Rose. and then let's see here Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper Oh, dude I have openly wept to Time After Time So good, when she whispers it

No, actually, you know what? Yes, that, but maybe more It might have been True Colors Oh, yeah, both of them Both of them really get me but I have this memory of being I think Becca and I were driving somewhere and True Colors came on and it was one of those things we were singing along to nostalgic music there were some like i don't know if it was like a playlist or a pandora station so we kind of didn't know the next song but then be like oh remember this one and we were singing along and enjoying it and i swear to god true colors came on and i was just trying to sing it but i kept getting my voice kept catching because i was like feeling i was going to cry but i wanted to keep singing the song but i was just like just quietly crying looking out the window while true colors is playing i i can totally relate to that i honestly

can. I also want to share some more on here. I'm not listing everything, but there's some sleepers

on here is sometimes when we touch by dan hill the honesty is too much yes i've never understood that line sometimes when we touch yeah the honesty is too much i don't know what that means and also probably but premature ejaculation oh geez louise don't worry you already said crap and the other one i just want to shout out while we're talking about delilah is Peebo Bryson If ever you're in my arms again That's a good one And I needed the good microphone to sing that as well Yeah, absolutely

Well, throw Vanessa Williams on the list Yeah, I think I will Vanessa Williams Ooh, you're so divine Just wanted to put your name in my rhyme Do what you like That's what Digital Underground does Oh, do what you like

On the song Do What You Like Okay, now I'm going to sing that From the beginning all the way to the end Isn't that a nine-minute rap song or am I

I believe it is a very, very lengthy song i see guys and girls dancing do what you like do what you like um itch if you like we could do this for a long time and it would just get worse for the listeners so i'm going to switch back to something that may or may not be more entertaining which is us talking about the chair company finally the the wellspring of content from from whence today's intro tape springs from like rudolph the great tim robinson's santa can't do it they're all just like santa can't do it uh first question i have for you uh well first thing i will say is i there may there's going to be some spoilers in here if you're watching the chair company on hbo uh you might want to um uh check back in 15 20 minutes i guess but um uh first of all was that the last episode

of the season was that the season finale that was the season finale this is why you're confused because it was an eight episode season and a mystery was introduced in episode one and it was so perfectly wrapped up and cleaned up and packaged up with a bow at the end of episode seven i thought episode seven was going to be the last episode of the season because i was like well that seems right it ends like it and even the show ends differently instead of cutting to black i mentioned this the last time we're talking about it episode seven ends with a long shot on on tim robinson i keep thinking about what you said about how you've never connected with a

character as much as where he's crying but admiring himself in the mirror for his selflessness he's

he's looking himself in the mirror while holding a loved one crying both because he can't do what he wants to do but also he's doing the right thing so he's both so proud of himself and they just linger on the shot of him for like a long time while the credits roll and you're like what a great little way to wrap up this weird season and a lot of things were answered it's still a weird show it's still a surreal show but then you're like wait a second aren't there eight episodes and yes you're right there are eight episodes in this season and so this last episode that dropped it just opened up so many more questions it was just kind of like uh yeah and guess what nothing makes sense nothing makes sense we're just going to start a million new threads of absolute of just absolute madness thank you i thought the at the very end the person in the

mask i thought when they took the mask off it was going to be jim downey's character oh interesting

That would be an interesting twist.

Because I was still my, you know, the mind is trying to seek a rational explanation and a rational framework at all times. And I kept trying to find a rational framework for what was going on. And there was none to be found. It's just a, it's a guy with an obviously enhanced face of some kind who's revealing himself to be the boyfriend of somebody else who's been a kind of a central but also side character in the show. and it just I mean I guess what our takeaway is that there's going to be a season 2

right? Yeah there's definitely going to be a season 2 I guess the announcement that it was you know cleared for a season 2 whatever the industry jargon is I'm not in the industry but it was maybe not re-upped re-upped yeah I think re-upped would work there I think that news broke between episodes 7 and 8 well obviously I believe and I would be I'm sure I could be wrong about this but my guess is this entire show was probably in the can certainly all shot and if if not fully edited before the season premiere even began right like i don't think of this show as a show that is still like in production while episode two is airing they're working on episode eight i'd be kind of

surprised by that do you have any thoughts on that well i was the one that was wondering if They went back to the clothing store Back to Tremblay's Because that guy was such a breakout star And you were like no That's would be definitely written like this so i guess i mean i'll i will defer to you on this um as far as what the like how in advance the show was all thought out what here's what i will say if they if this is how they wrote the final episode you know from the get like if this is always how the final episode of the season was going to go they really were playing with fire thankfully they've got they've got renewed that's the word we're looking for by the way sure yeah

Yeah, because they but the thing is, I'm also wondering, do they just not care? So the question that we're asking is, is did they say this is how we're going to end our season? We're going to wrap things up in episode seven and then just add a whole bunch of brand new information, new characters, new weirdness, new surreality. We're just going to add all of this in episode eight. And we don't even know if we're going to get renewed or not. Did they do that?

I mean, it's gutsy.

It is gutsy. And also, do they care, though? Because, like, they could also start season two and in the first ten minutes of season two just wipe out everything that happened in episode eight, right?

Well, this is the thing. I mean, are you legally, are you allowed to end a series the way that they did legally? No, I don't think so. Under the laws of America, can you take a kind of a noir show that sort of, you know, is going in one direction as far as the mystery that's being solved and then just like open 20 new weird mysteries in the final episode with no intention of ever solving them? I mean, legally, are you allowed to do that?

Only at the high or in the high seas, I believe. Are you at the high seas or in the high seas? Is it international waters or not? International waters on the high seas, you're allowed to do it, but not here in the States.

I mean, listen, if there's a group of, we'll call them filmmakers, if there's a group of people who make a show, who would be most likely to just decide to end the show on a million weird question marks? It would be these guys. So, you know what I mean? Like, I could see them just being like, wouldn't it be funny if instead of solving the mystery, we made five new mysteries and we had no intention of solving? Wouldn't that be a lark?

Like, episode eight begins with a wedding scene that has all new characters. we have no idea who any of those people are we we meet a father of the bride who smoked too many cigars so he can't I think got drunk and also probably yeah maybe they were just using a euphemism and then somebody ends up getting shot in that opening scene we that guy kind of comes back around we hear the name later at the end right but that's it yeah but well by the way

yeah that that scene where the guy comes over so that the father of the bride who's just kind of embarrassed himself at the wedding he's sitting at the hotel bar and he's being cut off because he's too drunk and then this guy comes and sits next to him and is sort of saying oh that speech you gave did you write that that's music that's poetry and then he's like i think i could i'm gonna be out in la and i could ask about and he's basically kind of like hyping this guy up to make him think that he's some sort of creative genius and you know what that reminded me of so much was moon river rock i don't know my q zone i feel like this is one of those sketches that's like an oddly a blank spot i don't want to say oddly for you like you you've done anything wrong but i feel like i always bring it up and it seems like you may not have seen it but it's from i

think you should leave which one there are definitely sketches in there that for some

reason don't stick in my brain very well i think it okay here's how i think it starts i think it might start as i think it might start as a back pain a back surgery ad it's like now i can play tennis now i can do this and then tim robinson's care is like now i can pick my daughter up over my head or i can pick my son up over my head or something right yeah and i think that deteriorates into a crazy divorce thing where also if i'm remembering right the tim robinson character has also been spending all this money trying to become a recording star with this fly-by-night agent played by um connor o'malley yes i remember you telling

me about this on the show and i had to go back and re-watch it yes and he's telling him like it's oh

this song is going to be a hit we just got to fly jerry dale in from indianapolis to produce it and like basically this other guy runs in and is like you told me you were going to give me that song and basically the joke being that you've got this like producer who's preying on the insecurities or the dreams of stardom of these like middle-aged men and telling them they're good singers and recording this music for them that's not going anywhere it was just funny to see the character on the chair company doing a slight version of that that's all yes connor o'malley

by the way i heard was in town a couple of weeks ago here in seattle doing live stand-up and i have a friend who went to see him and i was like wasn't any good because i i think of him i'm like was he like screaming all the time and he's like no it was really good and it wasn't him just screaming all the time he said it was incredible as a matter of fact and that he has does such a good job of just like really like letting the pauses just linger in this way that the audience would be on the edge of their seat but like that could be really bad stand-up

up in the hands of a less experienced comedian but it was just he just had this sort of confidence and was able to pull that off and so anyway conor o'malley i actually regret not seeing him live

i have seen clips of his stand-up or his whatever you'd call it his sort of one-man performances and they look really really good yeah like he's got a lot of like you know powerpoint stuff that he puts up there and he i think a lot of times he'll it'll be like for some or all of it it'll be like he's pitching some kind of a lifestyle system that you know that's super duper funny and crazy the more of it he sort of unfolds and reveals and stuff but like yeah he is i think those those shows in seattle were sold out too like i think he's really uh i think he's really having a moment because of uh because of you know showing up on shows like i think you should leave and and is he he's not in the chair company he's one of the voices of those crazy radio yes who by By the way, Mike is still listening, too, I think, in the final episode.

And, okay, I mean, this is just all the spoilers since we've already spoiled everything. Like, I just, Mike has a body in his house, chained up in the bathtub.

Well, I think that was like a mannequin, right?

I don't think so. I think it might have been the guy who was wanting to go into the mayor's hot tub in episode six or whatever.

See, again.

I could be wrong about that. I don't know who it was, but I think it was, I can open it up here. I don't think there was a mannequin. I think we find out that Mike has somebody chained. The show is just, episode eight is just unrelenting, throwing absolute new material and new mystery at you. It doesn't answer any questions. Well, it actually answers a little bit of questions about Mike's relationship with his family, which ends up being pretty dark.

Well, okay, so this is my major question about this. Did we like this episode? I'm trying to figure that out

The other day, on Monday You had it on the show sheet that we should talk about it And I said, you know, I'm a little embarrassed I did watch episode 8 But I'd watch it after coming home from the bar late at night And even though I know I watched the whole thing I can't tell you anything about this episode And I was kind of embarrassed about that In fact, you had texted me This is an off-air conversation, so let's have it here You had texted me, you said, hey, I didn't get any props For introducing you with a really funny clip from episode eight of The Chair Company on Monday. And I didn't tell you this in text because it was just hard to have the conversation where I was in an underground bar where my texting machine wasn't working very well. But the reason I didn't want to comment on it was because I was really kind of embarrassed that I watched an entire episode of a show and I didn't remember anything about it because it makes it sound like I was blackout drunk and I wasn't blackout drunk. And so I'm like, I gotta rewatch this. And I've been watching these episodes usually twice in a row anyway. Because I enjoy them, they're funny, and there's a lot of stuff that flies by quickly. But last night, I sat down with Genevieve at a proper time of the evening to watch this show, and it ended again, and I was again like, wait, what happened? I don't remember anything. There's something about episode eight that there's so much new stuff. Is it a vampire that takes him into the garage to show him a new shape? Who is that guy? And why does he, do you remember the jump scare scene in the middle of the episode? Oh, yeah. where he goes into some stranger's shed who apparently is baby the dog's or Minnie Mouse's real owner, who's apparently a bad dog owner.

And then everyone online is mad that he gave the dog back?

Yeah, exactly. But what happened, he's like, I want to show you a new shape. And he takes him into a shed, and then all of a sudden we see a flash of him looking like a vampire or some sort of ghoul.

And then Tim Robinson wakes up on his couch, right?

He just wakes up on the dude's couch. Like, what happened there? Like there's just in any way, my point is I'm less embarrassed about not remembering anything in this episode because it does not stick to the brain.

it is just well it's almost like they they thought wouldn't it be a funny meta joke if a show that is ostensibly a noir mystery in fact really just ended with a bunch of new weird things being generated and no satisfying answers because what part of what makes a noir compelling as the reader or the viewer is that you want to know what the solution to the mystery is you want to know what the real story is and when that is when you finally find that out it's a in fact there was a whole issue or a whole episode of this american life i think it was called i hate mysteries and it was it actually starts it's very clever by the way it was um one of the producers was filling in for ira glass the starts the episode starts in a classroom where a teacher has this exercise she does with her students where she's got something in a box and you can rattle the box you can shake it you can listen to what it is but you have to try to guess at what is in this box and nobody could guess it in the classroom and then instead of telling them what's in the box she just says there's just some things you can't know that's a life lesson

the kids revolt like these are these are like first graders they're so mad about not finding out what is in the box and this is what they did that was very clever on the show they don't tell us the listeners of this american life what is in the box until the very end of the show you gotta listen to the whole show it was really is actually very they do tell you at the end of

the show i thought you're gonna say they don't tell you at all like we learned i thought they

They weren't going to – they had Tori Malatia actually do the reveal. Really?

Are you serious? They actually brought him in? Oh, that's awesome.

Well, they just had him on the phone, but he just says what it was. Actually, first he says a really dumb joke, which I like Tori a lot. I know him. Tori's the best. But they go like, okay, what is in the box? And he goes, this is Tori Malatia. And he goes, your mama. Just kidding. And then he says what's really in the box. I was like, we didn't need the yo mama joke.

Yeah, that's kind of a strange tone. By the way, I do have it dialed up to the scene where there's a man in this bathtub, in Mike's bathtub, in Mike's awful apartment. As Genevieve pointed out, she's like, I can't even stand the sounds of Mike's apartment. You mean how everyone's yelling all the time outside the apartment? There's this always muffled sound of music thumping through walls, that real muffled sound. And there's always somebody yelling. It's just so stressful. Any scene that's shot in his apartment, you just hear the chaos outside the walls of it. And now we're seeing like the world's most depressing bathroom and this fellow who I think is the guy who was in the bar trying to convince the mayor to let him use his hot tub. You remember that scene in an earlier episode.

Thus, that's getting out of the bar before the local media could see Tim Robbins and holding him to account. That's right.

And I believe this man looks like he's either been drugged or knocked out. It looks like he might have a little bit of blood on his jaw. he is zip tied to the old prison style toilet next to the tub and there's something in the sink that looks like a plastic bag with some blue things in it and it looks like the bag is bloodied it is so so upsetting you were on you were going somewhere though and i interrupted you you were going to be talking about how like were you making the point that noir is good when it does wrap everything up or that it traditionally doesn't because it's been my it's been sort of my experience that a lot of noir doesn't wrap everything up.

Oh, well, you know more about the genre than I do, particularly as a reader. I think you read a lot more noir than I do or have. So maybe that's a misunderstanding I have. I guess my point is. It feels maybe. OK, so maybe maybe the answer is that's more in the tradition of noir that we're not getting an answer at the end. Maybe they're being very, very faithful to how the genre works.

Maybe. And I'm not 100 percent sure I'm right about that. I feel like I mean, I've given examples before. I think the big sleep is a famous one, or Raymond Chandler does not. I always have to make sure I'm saying Chandler versus Chandler. Carver, Chandler. I always pause. Same with right field and left field when I'm talking about baseball. I always have to pause.

How do you do – what's your mind to do for Chandler versus Carver? Because I've got thoughts.

In this particular case, I just threw one out there, and I happen to be right on the first go.

I go Carver because Carver was – he was in like – he was actually up on the Olympic Peninsula, right? Like, he did some writing in Port Angeles and stuff.

Oh, I didn't know that or I didn't recall that. That's awesome.

But Carver was not the noir guy Chandler was, right?

Yeah, Carver was the guy who was like what we talk about when we talk about love and all of those middle class, middle age books.

So I think when I think of Carver, I think of basically Port Angeles. And then I think of Chandler. I remember the Chandler family owned the L.A. Times, and I think of L.A. as noir.

Oh, yeah, that's great.

So that's just like my little memory device of Chandler versus Carver.

Yeah, that makes sense because Chandler was L.A. Noire, right? When I think of Carver, I think of Wendy's Carvers. Have you heard about this? It's basically like a Wendy's. Is it just like a fancier Wendy's? It's like a fancier Wendy's where they serve ham. That remains one of my favorite scenes because it duped me. It was such an awkward scene when they first start talking about Wendy's new Carvers. I told you this on the show last week, or yeah, I guess last week. I really thought that they were leaning into some product placement. Like, I believe that Wendy's really did have this special new Wendy's Carvers coming out.

I mean, I don't know what's been tougher on the listeners, the Mariner's stretch run where this show turned into a baseball podcast or the debut and now eight episodes of The Chair Company where it's turned into a chair company podcast. But I guess I could say to all of you who have not enjoyed this, your long national nightmare is over, at least for another year or two until this thing comes back. I will say, Andrew, even though this is the show that I have been the most confused by but have enjoyed the most, I feel like this is what it must be like to watch Twin Peaks.

Well, it's interesting. I've been reading. I didn't do a lot of reading about this season. I was just watching it. but then because that last episode was so confusing this morning, I did read a couple of kind of reviews of episode eight and. And I think people who are very reluctant to do the incredibly cliche thing of comparing everything to David Lynch, and I'm not saying that you're doing that here. I just mean that, like, for the longest time, for decades now, when something is a little bit weird, people are like, that's Lynchian. And it's just a little bit. It's kind of like the Wes Anderson thing, too. Like, there's two. Oh, if it's a little bit twee, it's Wes Anderson. It's like, well, no, let's be a little bit. Let's not just say everything that's twee is Wes Anderson and everything that's surreal is David Lynch. because that's not true right but i feel like people even like i know one of the writers i was reading today whose name i don't recall was kind of like i'm so loathe to do this but this is the closest thing to like a twin peaks i mean it's more comedic not that twin peaks didn't have its own dark humor as well but it really does seem lynchian because it's bringing in it's bringing in nonsensical stuff that is both both um not just not just surreal which is part of it but like otherworldly in a certain way now like again with whatever happened in that shed yeah you want to

see a shape a new shape yeah like it's no longer i mean that felt very much like you know what blue velvet or something where you're going to some room and there's this key thing or whatever the

hell's going on in that movie yeah and even the way even the way like he i think the way it's shot before he goes into the shed and kind of doesn't want to go to the shed so yeah i'm i'm with you on that i guess to go back to your questions like did i like this episode eight i think i'm trying i don't know how to put this in words but i really did appreciate that this show was really weird like absurdly weird throughout the season but that it did follow a certain line uh it within the universe it did make sense to itself mostly mostly and knowing that at the end they just wanted to take the etch-a-sketch and just shake the whole thing up or maybe that's a bad example that that would erase it I guess but just like just kind of like take the Lego set and just smash it all into pieces and then start building weird things at the very very end I was I gotta say I was a little bit disappointed because I was like well I like the fact that you showed you could do something really weird but that did follow some sort of linear thought that it's not just I don't I feel like this gives it people who don't like weird things just because they're weird I feel like episode 8 sort of gives them an excuse to say ah that shit's all just weird and maybe I'm just like defensive of it or protective of it in some way but i did love it i'm loving having this conversation with you of reminding you of all the crazy shit that happens in this episode so i guess i did like it but i was really shocked even watching it through a second time that this is

what they decided to do i think that i i think this show has been really good for me because i think it has expanded my sort of ability to enjoy something that i don't really know what's going on the whole time because i tend to just be very linear and literal with the kind of stuff that i watch and read the stuff that i enjoy i just like it when the characters are doing stuff that i sort of understand why the character is doing this or saying that and i enjoyed this so much even the crazy ass eighth episode i mean just just this part that i played the other day of the jim downey character they're trying to figure out what should happen to tim robinson for having pushed his boss at a um i mean what would you even call it it was a site visit at a site visit where there's an r some kind of a like rc tonka trunk club that's tonka trunk club that's whatever just just jim downey saying what he thinks should happen to the tim robinson character i don't think he should be fired just moved down three or four rungs or five like that made me laugh so hard like here's what i think i can watch something that makes that that confuses me and doesn't always make sense as long as they're dropping in enough stuff that just i'm just so delighted by this show like i kind of to me the plot is sort of secondary and there's just like there were no episodes throughout where I didn't get at least like five truly hilarious experiences as a viewer and so you know again I think it's kind of been good for me because I feel like I will be more willing to watch something that doesn't always make a ton of sense to me as long as I'm generally enjoying it now also the bar is kind of high because that other thing better be if it's comedic it better be making me laugh a lot during the episode that's the thing with David Lynch it's like the stuff that i've watched i actually the idea of david lynch as a person i was such a big fan of i really i thought he was fascinating i loved his take on art and architecture and the weather and all this stuff but i didn't i didn't personally find the humor in something like twin peaks that other people did um but as far as the chair company goes they nailed it for me because even when i didn't know what's going on i don't really care that much because i'm always just getting something memorable.

From one of the characters.

Yes. And also, as a show, it does explore some aspects of human nature. One thing that I'm thinking of now is his boss is named Jeff, right?

The Lou Diamond Phillips character?

Lou Diamond Phillips. I think that's Jeff. I don't want to get these names confused. But anyway, I think there really is, over the course of this season, an exploration of how certain men, and even men in power react to other men and what it means to be manly. And you see that play out in kind of a subtle, I mean, in a relatively subtle way. Like, you know, something that happens several episodes ago, you know, begins with him just being, you know, he's out camping or just enjoying the outdoors in some sort of very luxurious way with these other men who are also like leaders of companies or whatever. And just like by one kind of alpha male kind of just like it's just somewhat degrading what he does for a living just sort of like changes the course of how he looks at himself and then when he gets a little bit pushed by um ron and then like you see him sitting in this meeting and sort of like you see it it's eating away at him as the people who work for him see him as a lesser man in a certain way and they don't hit you over the head with that for a show that hits you over the head uh with a lot of other things too so there's like some real explorations in there too i also by the way this next thing i did not think of and it seems so obvious now i'm sure you did or maybe you did but one of the people i was reading today mentioned that like um the jim downey character he's in this wheelchair but he's in the wheelchair for as long as he wants to be in the wheelchair after he had an accident and got trapped even though he couldn't he survived by eating food out of the freezer he couldn't pick what he ate though he survived though even though he couldn't pick what is he a chair it's the chair company and never even occurred to me that his chair could be tied up

into this as well yeah that's such a good point yeah you know i'm with you like i also think it it does explore in its own way yeah a lot of topics of like masculinity and family life and the sort of workplace stuff like it's sort of subtly it's subtly skewering and kind of i don't know highlighting all of these little ineffable feelings and moments of kind of i don't know on we frustration like joy like all of these little moments of life that happen to all of us they this show does a really good job of like of like creating those moments on screen whether it's something that happens to him at the office that's frustrating or whether it's like the guy the guy who works at the building and is not supposed to take the the inside chairs outside and then he gets caught with the outside chair or the wheelbarrow right the wheelbarrow sorry he's

like don't tell anybody i took my wheelbarrow outside and ron is like i just don't care there's

just like all these moments that are just funny and relatable to me and yeah so i mean it is yeah there's a lot going on there and i'm i'm uh i'm glad that we got to take the ride and i'm looking forward to uh to whatever they come up with for the second season you know what i meant to tell

you um speaking of noirs that or i guess neo-noirs that famously don't hold together or make sense is I started reading Inherent Vice over the weekend. Oh. And I got to say, do you remember, I know that you're not a huge fan of the movie. Well, I only watched like 35 minutes. 35 minutes. And I'm kind of proud that I was right about something because I've never read any Thomas Pinchon before. And I had not read that book, but I've watched that movie all the way through once, but I've watched the beginning of it kind of a bunch. I just love it as a vibe. And there's that narration by a woman who ends up being a minor character in the movie, and you were like, I don't really like that narration, and you were familiar with the actor who reads it. I was not familiar with her background.

Yeah, she is a harpist, Andrew. It's the nouns. Oh, yeah, now I'm putting you on the spot. She's married to Andy Samberg. Okay. Joanna Newsom.

Oh, Joanna Newsom. Oh, yes, yes, so I do know that name, and I didn't recognize her as an actor in it, but anyway, I remember saying to you, oh, I kind of like the narration because I think it captures some of the humor of the book, I'm assuming, and I said, But I bet you those are lines from the book that was the way that P.T. Anderson was able to actually get. And it's true. Luke, the opening of the book, like I'm about 50 pages in and just around page 45 is the first scene that I don't recognize from the movie. It is almost like reading a novelization in reverse. And it's like those opening lines are literally the opening lines, the opening like page of the book. And I gotta say, I am loving it so much It makes me like the movie even more Because it makes me understand The humor in Inherent Vice I always thought it was a little bit funny And a little bit sort of droll And kind of removed from the story of this doper private eye But it is written in a way that I laugh out loud reading the book And again, I'm only like 50 We'll be right back.

pages in and I know it's supposed to be one of the most incomprehensible plots like there are guides that like kind of diagram out all the characters I think there's at the end there's going to be like 138 characters in this sprawling noir story as he's like chases around a guy who was supposedly kidnapped but probably joined a cult or all these things and it's got all of these sort of benchmarks of classic neo-noir stuff from Southern California but it's also sort of a parody of it at the same time it's really great I'll probably never finish it

Well, good for you, though. This is something, Andrew, that I admire about you, and we call this the Count of Monte Cristo factor.

I just put that up on the bookshelf, by the way. I took it off my bed stand, and it's up on my bookshelf

where it will never come down again. I'm impressed. In fact, today we were having a conversation. We were waiting to set up some GoPros, and we were talking to somebody who, she's sort of a historian here in Miami, and she mentioned something about Grant, like as in Ulysses S. and then our producer on this story a guy named mark who i really like and he's like a really smart guy but also really unassuming but he was like oh yeah i read that ron churnow uh biography of grant and he goes it was intense and i'm like in a million years like that's the kind of thing i want to do but i never will sit down and read the entire ron churnow biography of grant i would watch ken burns who did one on grant i think that's how we were talking about it i would read a magazine article about grant i would read the first 30 pages of the ron churnow book i do not have the and this is just a matt this is just a failure of imagination and a failure of willpower on my part but i do not have the other than a book i have to i have assigned to me for my job as the host of livewire i will generally never get to the end of these like the fact that you got to the end of the count of monte cristo was impressive the fact that you're you're re-engaging with Inherent Vice and enjoying it. It's very impressive. It is really good.

Really, I mean, I think that the story of Inherent Vice is that it's somewhat impenetrable. And the plot, I think, does become impenetrable in a certain way. But it doesn't mean the writing is impenetrable. You know what I mean? And I think that that might have been one of the reasons why people are kind of leery to jump into something like this. Or who's the other guy, too, who wrote Underworld? Don DeLillo. Don DeLillo. I think, you know, I'm always like, when I hear those names.

Yeah, I've read like the first 10 pages of Underworld. I've read the first 10 pages of White Noise. I've read the first 10 pages of some of the greatest books ever written, Andrew.

Now you get to hear me give you updates on where I am in Inherent Vice for the next four years. Absolutely.

That's, I would say, generous. It could be five. It could be three years, Andrew, or four years, or maybe five, or possibly seven. All right. That is going to do it for today's episode of the show. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. I will be in Phoenix, ideally. So I'm getting up real early, getting on an airplane, and I'm hoping that it is adhering to its scheduled time, which will put me in Phoenix in time to do tomorrow's episode of TBTL. I'm going to be getting, I'm getting picked up at the airport, Andrew, by our friend Nora McInerney, who would not take, yeah, we can talk about this on tomorrow's show, she would not take no for an answer regarding picking me up at the airport, she said it's her favorite errand.

Midwestern hospitality, I know she's not in the Midwest anymore, but.

And it's so sweet. I was like, I'll take a Lyft and talk about Delilah. Like, this will be paid for by someone in corporate America. She was like, send me your flight time. I will be there. I said, I have to go right to the hotel to do TBTL. She goes, I will be efficient. What do you want to drink? How about a Diet Coke? Nice. This is a real conversation we've been having. That's very sweet. Well, tell her I said hello. That will be probably the first airport pickup I've received from a non-professional in 10 years, Andrew. so we'll have much to discuss tomorrow on the program in the meantime thanks for listening everybody have a great Wednesday please take care of yourselves and remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

this is hard to do

truly I love sweet Ron but everybody should have seen this coming the job was always too much for him He was floundering from day one, and frankly, it was scary to watch. I don't think he should be fired. Just moved down three or four rungs or five.

Power out.