Muse

I came this close. I was the GOP golden boy, the great hope. I've got connections and ins and outs. I was on the cusp, but I just couldn't engage voters. I didn't have that cult of personality thing, I guess. It's hard, connecting with people in a genuine way. I know. And I tried everything. Believe me, I hammered the race thing, I hammered the gender thing, the trans thing, the border thing, the homeless thing, the war thing, the election thing, the abortion thing, the climate thing. The thing about induction stoves, Israel, library books, vaccines, pronouns, socialism, BLM, CRT, the CDC, DEI, 5G, everything. All of it I did. Nobody, just nothing. People are just numb these days. I don't know why.

TBTL! First of all, I'd like to see the chef face to face. These are the best Cajun chicken niblets I've ever had.

hey this is sergeant morgan down at the precinct we got a report that a guy in a hot dog suit was running a moke south of cheese and heard you guys might know something about that give us a call back you don't have to make rude noises that's all right i don't mind i i like not having fun

i like your idea of fun i mean our idea of fun i like not having that are you even listening to to our story yes well listen to this we have a story to tell so listen okay and write it down

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live this is a disaster i mean this is something that should not happen my name is luke burbank i'm your host you're still doing a podcast Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where, boy, we went through it here last night. Tell you what, power went out, wind was whipping, I was out fighting the elements in the middle of the night in the dark with a flashlight. It's crazy. And now, as I'm talking to all of you, it's absolutely gorgeous. It's blue sky. It's, well, it's beautiful. Huh, it's just beautiful. Putting me in an excellent mood to bring you episode 4,621 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I watched Stand By Me last night. So who needs a movie? I've been on a real Rob Reiner kick, if you can't tell. And we will get into that a little bit. Also, we're going to talk to this guy. He's the longest running co-bro of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. we don't we don't try to sort of i don't know overestimate our abilities on this show or you know shoot for the moon but he does want to answer the essential question of our age here on this wednesday edition when was the last time you your pants been a while he's andrew walsh and he's

joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke how bad was your power outage uh

Real bad. In fact, considering I kind of live in ex-urban America, I'm in the county, by the way, which I never expected. It's like one time my neighbor was just shooting a gun off of his porch. And I was like, is that legal? Is it legal to be that insane? And I called the non-emergency number and they looked at my address and said, well, you're in the county. And yes, that's legal.

Oh, I see. You're not unincorporated. Is that what you mean in the county?

i don't think i've ever known what unincorporated means it just means that i'm not actually in a city now my address your address is i know but in fact i have it written down right here do you want me to say it on the air sure why not but that's so yes my address lists a city but when you call the non-emergency police line to ask if it's strictly legal for your neighbor to fire off their weapons they say you're not in the city you're in the county it has different rules that

That is true, of course, because sometimes when we're thanking donors, we'll say, hey, where is this community or whatever? We'll look it up and it'll say this city or whatever, the name of this area is an unincorporated whatever county somewhere in, you know, somewhere in the country. So that's interesting. So you're unincorporated. So you can do anything? Like literally like you're on the high seas, you can do anything?

And I can say anything. so but but the thing that's been i guess a pleasant surprise about being all the way out here in this unincorporated area is that my power has never gone out once since i've lived here and usually it seems like when you're out in kind of the rural areas that can be a little more yeah you know a little more uh prone to that kind of stuff it's never happened to me before well that's not true maybe the quickest of blips but it's never been like what happened last night which was nuts I'm fast asleep it's like one in the morning all of a sudden I just start hearing the wind is just

howling just whipping and i kind of sit up i'm like oh i should turn on the light and see what's going on i go to turn on the light no light and then i look through the darkness out of onto the deck because my number one concern in life is the hot tub cover and um sure enough it's missing i'm like oh man because the last time it went blowing off i watched it happen so i could go retrieve it i had no idea how long it had been gone luckily it had gotten hung up on the picnic table that's on the deck so it hadn't gone far had it gotten past that picnic table it would be in the columbia river like without a doubt some wizard of oz shit serious wizard of oz kind of implications so now it's just like i'm like this okay the power's out this is the last thing i want to be dealing with right now i'm in like shorts and a t-shirt i go to sleep in my exercise gear so that when i wake up i don't have that as an excuse like i'm already in my shorts and my t-shirt so it's like okay i'll just go do the treadmill but anyway i'm not dressed for going outside in howling wind and sideways rain uh so i i like throw on some shoes grab like some sort of a jacket thing with a hood pull it up and just run out there and it's like it's like one of those movies it's it's like something from like you know one of the horatio hornblower or like it's It's something from Moby Dick. Let me pick a better, more well-known nautical type of book where it's just, you know, I don't know if it was actually lightning, but it felt like it was like, and it's like the wind is just blowing so crazy, and the rain is just pelting. And I go out, I'm standing on the deck, and I just look over, and I can't tell. It's just maybe down a couple houses from me. I just see a purple explosion, like a transformer going up. And then I look across the Columbia River over towards the town of Rainier, Oregon, and I just see purple explosions. I see two purple explosions across the river and then areas of houses just go dark. Don't, don't, like, like, pluribus. Totally. It was, like, very cinematic. I was like, oh, man. So, again, I got lucky with the, this also explains to you, Andrew, why I always prioritize the wrong sort of stuff, like, why the aesthetics of things are far too important for me. So remember, I've already talked about it The other day, this cover for the hot tub went flying Because I don't have it properly attached down For reasons that are boring and have to do with how the hot tub is seated in the deck Because it's flush with the deck I cannot clip the hot tub cover into the clips On the physical body of the hot tub that it's supposed to clip into Because those are below the deck, if that makes sense So I need to figure out a better system I haven't figured out a better system It hasn't been an issue until a couple days ago

But what I did the other day was I got a piece of plywood, and I put that on top of the cover, and then I got a big cinder block, and I put that on the piece of plywood, and it held it down beautifully. No more problems. But Andrew, do you think old Lukey B likes looking at a cinder block and a piece of plywood on top of his-

That is so funny because I was thinking about how you, in your story the other day, that line has sort of lived with me because there are things around my house that have driven me crazy for a long time. And I think, oh, I just need to take care of that. And I think I even told you some of these things. Zeeves and I are now consulting with some folks. We might actually do a bit of a reno down here. But I just think about how I live with these things. Like we have this just really gross part of our kitchenette downstairs. The whole kitchenette is gross. and it's like this part where the particle board has like swollen up from water damage and then it's like peeling away and it just gives me the bad feeling every time I see it and I just think like you would have you would just see that and you would just call me and say we can't do TV tell today I just ripped apart my entire kitchenette and like you wouldn't live with that and like and the other day when you were talking about this cover you were just very briefly I think in the intro of the show you said I put a cinder block on it You know I love to see a cinder block And that's all you said and you moved on But I remember that it stuck out to me Because it was like you can't live for Like a week of rain With a cinder block

It lasted less than 11 hours Even though there was a You know there was a pronounced chance Of the wind returning I talked to myself The thing my brain said was It's probably not going to get that windy again Which was me lying to myself So that I could have uh uh sort of like an excuse to remove this janky cinder block and weird piece of plywood off of the cover because every time i would walk by the sliding glass door and see that it would give

me a bad feeling so you can't have a room that overlooks a parking lot at a bonvoy property

exactly yeah well here's i did now now i am proud is would be overstating it but i did do i did do one thing when i took the cinder block and the wood off yesterday that was not the dumbest thing which is I did.

take them all the way back to their location which would be under the deck for the plywood and over around here off of the madrona hill studio for the cinder block i put them to the side so that you couldn't see them but i stacked them neatly and i thought in case and boy did that come in handy last night at 1 30 in the morning as there were purple explosions going on all over the the neighborhood and the region so i i so i get that back on there by the way it's still on there i I could take a picture of it and send it to us. Oh yeah, that'd be funny, that'd be good. It's a very, very unpleasant to look at, but it will be staying there for the foreseeable future. Anyway, so then I come back inside and I immediately realized like, I have no, considering that I do live kind of out here and that power outages are a possible thing. I've got one flashlight that's not a particularly, I mean, I didn't know where the flashlight was. So that was kind of good. And it did have batteries in it, but it's not like one of those, You know those big square ones that use like a crazy huge battery?

Yes, I saw somebody walking their dog with one the other day, and it had both light coming out the front like a flashlight, but also had like sort of like a... Flashing thing or something? Well, the side of it was almost like a fluorescent light sort of, like you could read by it or something like that, and I noticed that this person was using both at the same time, which seemed both cool, but also I worried about their battery life. Go ahead.

I bet you anything that those things are so much more efficient now because of whatever the technology is but like that always as a kid that to me seemed like the most robust flashlight you could have just because it was so much larger than the other ones you carry it like a jug exactly so like i don't have one of those i just have like a little kind of small typical flashlight which i went and got and then um and then i just like got back into bed and And I thought, well, we'll see how this goes. And I'll give the local power authority a lot of credit around here because I have at least 10 emails in my inbox telling me that the power had gone out. That thing hit my inbox like three minutes after the power went out and then telling me when the power was going to come back on, which was wrong. It didn't come back on. They said it's going to come back on at 3.30. It didn't. It came back on for good at about 5.30 in the morning.

But it kept updating you, though. So even if the first one is wrong, it's kind of like, and I'll bet you that might actually be a good use of, if not AI, automated systems. That's a good, like, hey, we are working on this. We acknowledge it. They don't have to field a million calls from people reporting the same outages.

It did me a world of good because it just made me feel like someone knows this has happened. So first email is at 12.40. Dear customer, PUD is aware of and working on a power outage impacting your service. Please refer to the information below. Then they've got my address, outage description, investigating. Estimated restored time, 2.45 a.m. Then I get another email that's updating that time. And then, you know, anyway, I did have a moment when I was trying to fall back asleep where I was like, how do they, like, you know, there's a lot of people losing their power around here. I saw a lot of purple explosions. Doesn't that mean that transformer is cooked? like how are they getting my power back on that quickly like something happened a power line snapped uh or a transformer blew up something happened so that there's no more electricity coming to my house and if you ask me to fix that that would take me probably a year yeah but you you know they're not asking you well there's that's good but what i mean is like okay again And they don't have – there's not a crew of hundreds that work for the local utility here, right? And so my neighborhood is out of power. Well, how many neighborhoods are out of power? And if all of those neighborhoods need someone to come out and, like, pick up a live power line that's flopping around, somehow cut it, stitch a new one in, and put it all back up so that I'm able to listen to Morning Edition on my Sonos, I was like, how are they even going to do that before next week? It just seems like each one of those events, even for the trained professionals, should take some time. Whatever blew up in those Transformers, I mean, are the wires fried? Like, how did they get this thing going in four hours? That was actually pretty impressive. And during the weather event, which is ongoing. Yeah, and it's friggin' pitch black outside. I mean, I know they have flashlights.

They have the really big kind. They have the really big kind that you carry like a jug. But also, and the wind is whipping and everything. Yeah, I mean, when our power—

Yeah, I wouldn't want to be in a cherry picker in that wind.

Seattle was not hit with this. It was mostly, like you said, kind of rural areas. But when the power does go out, usually it is, like, first of all, it's up here in north Seattle usually. And usually it is those Transformers blowing up. Sometimes you can hear them. I know a friend of mine says he can see them sometimes from where he lives, even a little bit further north of me. And so, yeah, I don't know. But here in Seattle, like, I think there are hundreds of people.

go out because they need to

get the grid working again. Well, that whole department got in trouble. Remember that a couple of years ago? No. No. What are you talking about? City Light. Not a good culture according to various lawsuits. Yeah, like a real kind of like a very toxic culture of like kind of hazing people and a lot of City Light employees from certain crews being wildly drunk while trying to fix power outages. What? No.

You didn't see this? No. Gorgle it in the Seattle Times.

It was a very, I mean, I don't mean to make light of what sounds like a really hostile work environment for the people who brought the lawsuit, but yeah, it was a whole, sounds like, according to the allegations, just like a really kind of, like, super, almost like if you were going to make a sort of NYPD sort of, if you were going to make a gritty TV show about the brotherhood and sisterhood of the police and how it's like, really like the wire kind of shit, like they go out and they're trying to like control crime and solve crimes, but they're also closing down the bars. every night and being themselves drunk driving home from the bars and being real mcnulty kind of action you know yeah like that kind of a deal that but people whose job it is to fix the power

in the city how has cbs not made this show for after football this is such a good sunday night cbs show i love it it's like cop land city power yes city power that's it but who is that as tom

sellick is to blue bloods yeah who is their kind of aging star that only your parents are vaguely

jimmy smitz is city power peter krause is already taken right he's a fireman in one of those shows i think the guy oh yeah he's on the fox one under house or krause oh you know you and i had this conversation genevieve has always had krause so i say that and it oh i never even pronunciation but i don't know i never examined it until you said oh i think it's krause and now i don't know I get my information from two sources, Luke You and Genevieve I would trust Genevieve

Those are not equally reliable sources, sir Yeah, he's on Totally, he's on that Fox one Where he's like a fire guy I think he's either with Angela Bassett Oh, is it Angela Bassett? Yeah, I think she's maybe I don't know if she's the cop side of it He's the fire side of it But yeah, like City Power With Donnie Wahlberg Is City I just keep going back to Blue Bloods, oh, I think she's on a new one. It's crazy. America has an insatiable, Americans of a certain generation appear to have an insatiable appetite to see what Donnie Wahlberg is up to.

Okay, I want to listen to this. This is the only source I trust more than you and Genevieve when it comes to pronouncers.

Vision actors can seem larger than life. They can take on a kind of inflated...

This is from... David Bianculli? Oh, this is Morning Edition from 2001. Luke, this is pre-9-11. This is from August 14th, 2001. Oh, my God. What's right around the corner? America waits. NPR's Susan Stamberg talks with Peter Hume. Let's listen to the rest of the lead.

It's easy, if they're very good at what they do, to think an actor is his or her part. Each Tuesday this month, NPR special correspondent Susan Stamberg is asking actors about getting jobs and going for auditions. This week, the guest is a star of one of HBO's biggest new hits.

The show is Six Feet Under, about a family of undertakers in Los Angeles. Hilarious, dark, brilliant. Six Feet Under is a kind of sopranos for the bereaved. Yes, and it's another HBO dysfunctional family. Nate Fisher, the eldest son, played by Peter Krause, gives a snapshot description of...

I guess she knows her stuff, Susan Sandberg.

I don't know why or how she knows that, but it's Krause. That's so interesting because it looks, maybe the E must make it into Krause.

Oh, you know what? That's right. Genevieve speaks some German. She learned German at an early age. Maybe that's why she knows that now that I think of it. Well, there you go.

Veeves for the win. And by the way, dude, I have just been taking so many L's lately on stuff that I've been so convinced of my rightness. I just got absolutely owned on Sunday. Wait, you got mixed nuts right, though.

Don't take that away from you.

Mixed nuts. But I had to Google it, but I was like, I don't, I was like, I feel like if that was Rob Reiner, I would have known it considering how much mixed nuts discourse there is on this show. But, um, so on Sunday morning, okay, two, well, two things happened. Uh, and my mom was really, really like not letting me off the hook. So one was fairly minor. It was the question of if my brother, uh, David and his wife had purchased or leased their most recent vehicle. And I heard them say, we went to the dealership and we, they said something like, well, then we got a car. And I just, because I'm old fashioned, when I hear about going to the dealership and getting a car, my mind thinks you bought it. But in fact, they had leased it. My mom on Saturday night was like, yeah, they leased a new car. I was like, I think they bought it. And then the next morning when they were all over and my mom said something about their car, did you lease it? And they were like, yeah, we leased it. And she was like, I knew it.

Well, let me ask you about that because I am an adult man now. I am starting to push past middle age here. Oh, way past. Yeah, that's right. What am I, living to 100? Of course, my grandma lived to 101. Anyway, yeah, we have similar lifestyles as well. um i uh but but my dad leased vehicles his entire life he might even still lease it and it was like because him and his brother my uncle like owned a company together so they would like kind of get their vehicles through the company somehow you know and they would lease them and they would tell the tax man that they no i'm just joking the more i describe it it sounds like they're up to something shady but no i just know that they they liked cars and they probably a business advantage to leasing. You should write it off in a certain way. And so they would, but I know that leases were big, but I never quite understood it or the idea of lease to own. And I'm not asking you to explain all of that to me, although I guess you want. But if you're leasing a vehicle, just back to this specific example you're giving, I still imagine that it's a similar process. You would still go to a dealership and shop for cars and look at them and maybe take one for a test drive, right? Why would the experience be different?

It wouldn't be. I just assumed mistakenly that they had purchased the car or agreed to purchase the car on payments as opposed to agreed to lease the car and the difference is when you're done with the lease you have to give the car back and the theory behind a lease is you would have lower payments like basically a lease is for someone who says look I'm always gonna have a car payment in my life like I'm not gonna buy a car in cash and by the way the average new car the average cost of a new car is $50,000 now I just heard that the other day on like marketplace or something which is just i mean it's just my parents could have bought our first house in seattle in green lake for 72 000 yeah yeah i was thinking that it's

like there are people listening who probably bought their first house for less than that yes

absolutely so um no wonder most people are gonna have a payment for life and so if you already are just like if you think of your car cost as like a payment that i just always have that's i have a cell phone bill, I have a car payment, then the idea of the lease is, one, you are not owning a depreciating asset. You're not buying something for $35,000 that's immediately worth less than $35 and just becomes less valuable the longer you own it. You're just making a payment on something that you're using until you're ready to get the new version of that thing, and then you just keep paying for it. That's the sort of thought behind a lease, as far as I understand it. And like my car i initially leased it but because of the weirdness of the pandemic i actually had equity in the car when my lease came up this like never happens in normal life but it did because of like the chip shortage and like yeah just the whole thing where when my lease was up on my car i could then i contractually had the right to buy the car for an amount of money that was much less than it would have cost me to buy the car without that contract like if i just walked onto the lot that day and i wanted the same car so i actually had like it somehow allegedly made some financial sense for me to purchase the car outright so i now own the car that i was previously leasing okay let's get that was a pretty small that was a pretty small l and i was frankly my feelings were hurt that my mother was was lording it over me but then she really got me good on the next one which was we were sitting around and we were talking about my other sister elizabeth's wedding and that she and her now husband, Jason, had performed a song together at their wedding. Like, I don't know if it was part of the reception or part of the ceremony, but they sang a song to each other. And my mom was like, yes. And the song was, If I Were a Carpenter. And the thing about my mom is, my mom has never delivered the name of a song without singing the song. So my mom would not say, oh, it was If I Were a Carpenter. It was, If I Were a Carpenter and you were my lady. And she was like, and I just thought that was so great because Jason was a carpenter and I was like yeah mom except that's not the song they did they did the song Jackson by by Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash and because the thing of it was I don't I was not very familiar with the song Jackson before I heard them sing it my sister and her husband and so that it was it was very formative to me because I was like I didn't know much about that it was before that Johnny Cash biopic came out that really kind of revived that song with like i don't really know that song yeah it's uh you know we got married in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout i'm going to jackson oh oh yeah of course oh my code oh yeah we're going to jackson goodbye that's all she wrote but that song really popped back up in the culture from that movie and you start to see people doing it at karaoke and start to hear it a lot more i just remember not knowing much about it hearing my sister and her husband sing it and thinking what a cool song so i was like sorry mom it's johnny cash june carter cash song it's jackson and she goes i don't know and i was so

confident that sitting there having coffee Sunday morning I call my sister Liz on speakerphone now by the way was my sister Liz and her family coming to my house that day yes but I didn't even want to wait I couldn't wait to be so right and I put her on speakerphone and I was like hey Liz could you um could you settle a little debate here what song did you and Jason sing at your wedding she goes uh it was um Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash if I were a carpenter oh wow And I was like, talk about, this is why you play the second half of the game. I was leading in the first half of that answer. I was like up 21-0. I was like the Patriots at the Bills last week. I was Dave Portnoy doing a victory lap.

You were the equivalent of the internet meme of a horse that's really drawn well for the front half. The back half is just a terrible sketch.

I would have said, Luke, bet your entire 401k and all of your worldly possessions right now on the fact that you're right. I would have said, easy money. That's free money right now. Because when I hear Johnny Cash or June Carter Cash, I'm like, I'm in. It's done. We win. And then the second half of the answer was exactly what I didn't want to hear.

So is there a reason why you thought it was Jackson other than just a simple mix-up? I thought you were going to say something like, oh, no, Jackson was somebody's first dance or something. Like, maybe you did hear it that day. They have done that song together at karaoke multiple times.

So I've seen them sing that song. It just wasn't at their wedding. Which also kind of makes sense because the actual song, Jackson, is, you know, it's basically like, it's kind of like a guy and a girl that are fighting and they're kind of being a little bit tough on each other. and he wants to go to Jackson and, and basically, you know, probably talk to some other gals and she's not liking it. It's like, it's a tonally, it would be a kind of odd song to sing as part of your wedding ceremony versus the other one. But I just had seen them sing that song and I had just combined the, them singing that song into the wrong context. But again, it's just another example of a time where I was so, I would have bet my life on that. Like I could tell you exactly what I was wearing, what it smelled like and felt like at the wedding reception while they were singing or at the wedding ceremony while they were singing this song. I was there. I watched it happen, except that's not what happened. And I don't like that feeling and I feel like that's happening more and more to me these days. Are you sure they

didn't sing Hurt? The Nine Inch Nails

cover in the style. It was a Reznor number. In the style.

I hurt myself today. Memorable wedding. Memorable wedding.

They just sang the very end of Girl from the North Country.

There's a true love, man.

You hate that song so much. I hate the ending of that song with every fiber in my being.

I've always liked it. And now I don't know that I've gone back and listened to it since you spilled your haterade all over it. And now I don't know if I can even go back and listen to it. But I remember being shocked by that record because of Bob Dylan's voice. I didn't realize that he had that kind of – National Skyline. Isn't the whole record in that sort of register for him? I think. Or a lot of the songs are. It's got Lay Lady Lay on it. Yeah, that's got – So I remember being surprised by that record.

Tonight I'll be staying here with you.

But I always remember thinking I liked when Johnny Cash came in because I think that was another surprise to me. I didn't know much about Bob Dylan before I heard that record. And I remember I was living in New Hampshire at the time. And I think a lot of people I worked with, like, and there's a part of New Hampshire called the North Country. I think I went to, God, what was it? Newbury Comics, this place that I loved, a record store and comic store. And I remember buying it and being like, oh, and being into it and then not really thinking about it that much in the intervening years and decades. And then I'm over at your house a couple of years ago for the Thon. You're just like, what is with that terrible song? I'm like, I thought it was a classic.

You know what it is? it's not unlike it's not unlike that horse the badly drawn horse the big i have no problem with the song until the last like they kind of go into dueling banjos at the very end and um and that's where the song uh that's where it really falls apart can i i know this will get us banned in certain places can i just play you the very end of the song sure yeah i don't know and where latvia stands on this sorry yeah sorry eastern europe be damned let's see here so this is wow wow wow

wow holy cow is that super loud yeah that hit really hard over here wait a sec is that just the friggin that's what is the harmonica i'm hearing is that just a harmonica or feedback

what in the holy hell sorry about that remember me oh you know what this is not the same one that sorry okay here's the johnny cash version and then sorry about the uh the uh The unpleasant audio Oh yeah It sounds to me like It sounds like Me and Camaro Kev When we were at our limit Doing karaoke at the Mandarin Gate or something like it just i don't know and i really like johnny cash obviously and i'm i am a bob dylan fan and i i mean i was like crazy for that that record i was obsessed with it when you when you and john were here for that fawn for whatever reason so i i i do like all that stuff just the ending of that song strikes me as like i just to me it's weird that they did that and then the producers were like yeah that was good okay well we've got it i think well we're good even

listening to it right there i thought you were gonna say oh i guess it's not as bad as i thought

Well, it was a little, it was less bad than I thought.

Like, that sounded nice to, like, I like, I mean, he sounds like a Muppet, certainly. He's singing, it's what I call his Muppet era. Of course, he went through his Christian era, and then this was his Muppet era. And again, I don't know. I wasn't allowed to listen to him during his Muppet era. I'm not, he was a chaos Muppet.

Yeah, that didn't, listen, Andrew, we've already agreed, this is the week of L's for Luke. I'm taking a lot of L's here, and I'm just adding that to the list, because it was not as bad, it's not as bad as I remember it being, but it's still, it's not the highlight of the record for me.

But there is a little detail here that you pointed out to me that I'm sort of trying to Google on the fly. And you just, I think, experienced it because originally, so that song was an early, tell me if I'm wrong. I'm saying this like a statement, but I'm going to go up at the end because it's a question, Luke. So that song, Girl from the North Country, or wait, that's not Girl from the North Country, right? That is Girl from the North Country. But he did an early version of that when he was more in his folky years or even folkier years, like his New York era, what do you call it? Yeah, Cafe Waugh. Yeah, right. And then he comes back and redoes it on this album, which I'm trying to remember. It's Nashville Skyline. Nashville Skyline, right. You just said that. Okay. And so is that another reason? Because I don't think, I think this is the first version I heard, not being a Bob Dylan head. so do you think it's also somewhat sullied or impacted by the fact that maybe you were a fan of the original version first

no I can't take that kind of I can't give myself that kind of credit as far as being like so sort of so familiar with the work of Bob Dylan that that's the thing that threw me and again I like Johnny Cash and I generally like that song up until the like dueling hobos at the end

but I assume we cannot name this show dueling hobos

I feel like hobo has fallen out of fashion. I was thinking about that.

People experiencing hoboness?

Because, like, I was, you know, we had John Hodgman on Livewire a little while ago, and I was going back and reviewing some of his work and his career, and, like, the whole sort of hobo, like, he's a man who built his career on hobo studies.

I forgot about that.

And now we don't really say that because it's kind of considered sort of disrespectful to folks or whatever. But I thought, oh, man, well, that's too bad for him. those books are probably out of print now and never to be printed again anyway canceled yeah uh one other quick thing before we thank some donors Andrew uh they had a we had a real all timer this morning on OPB uh because you know we've got holiday travel coming up and of course what do you do when you're a when you're a radio station really of any kind any sort of news station what do you do when there's holiday travel coming up you reach out to AAA oh sure okay yeah for a quote about holiday travel. And what does AAA say? They're like, you know, a lot of holiday travel coming up. We spoke with so-and-so from AAA. They had advice on what to do. And it was like, the advice from the person at AAA was, check the weather forecast before you leave. And also make sure you leave yourself enough time to get where you're going.

Oh, thank you.

Pack your patience. Thank you, AAA for that. Thank you for that incredible piece of wisdom that it would have never occurred to me to check the weather before I leave on my trip. And also to make sure I leave enough time to get where I'm going. Like, do you think the people, and again, peace and love to the people from AAA. But do you, I mean, do you think when they get the call from the local radio station that it's time to do this, it's time to do this interview? Do you think they just like, they go, yeah, okay, of course, sure. Yeah, yeah, just, you know, call me back whenever and I'll give you the quote. We'll talk about it. Great. And then they hang up the phone and they just go, they just slump in their chair. just like i have to do this completely useless bit of theater once again no i don't think so

i'm probably stoked i think they're fine with that's her job i think they probably like the occasional radio hit i'm surprised okay first of all i read the show sheet also it was johnny cash doing it that's my that's bob dylan as a muppet doing the

You're a AAA spokesperson. I know what you're doing.

I know that everybody does their own version of Bob Dylan. He's one of the most sort of imitated voices, famously. But I do think that I'm the only one who does it like that.

You know who does it? I'm Bob Dylan. Keep talking.

I'm a freewheeling Bob Dylan.

I want to return to this in a moment. But keep going with what you're doing.

I don't need you. I can just make myself laugh with my Bob Dylan impression. Anyway, I thought that you had – I looked at the show sheet, You wrote something like, oh, more helpful travel tips on the radio this a.m. And I thought I was looking at that quickly this morning and I thought you were listening to a.m. radio because what you just described is way more of an a.m. radio kind of thing, you know, or the kind of news wheel radio, commercial radio that you and I used to work in. I can see Dan Restione at the desk saying, OK, we got our guy at Triple A. OK, we're rolling now. So tell us what you should do. Well, you're going to really want to pack your patience. It's still Bob Dylan. And then, you know, really leave yourself enough time, whatever. And they just, like, churned those things out. I'm kind of surprised that public radio gave in to such, I hate to say it, and all due respect to our friends at OPB who have suffered enough from members of the TBTL hosting community this week being stood up and whatnot. But I do expect more.

I did get an email about that, by the way.

Yeah, give us some closure on this.

Tell us what happened here. It was great. It was thanking me for my participation in the listening exercise. It was to everybody.

Okay, quick recap. You got these emails that said, hey, thanks for participating in this listening session at Oregon Public Radio or whatever, or media or whatever they are now, or B, broadcasting. And you never responded because you never signed up for it. And then the other day, yesterday, two days ago, on the show, you're like, I'm supposed to be at this thing right now. They think I'm there, but I never said I was going to go, so I'm just not there. And you were worried that your absence would be felt. I guess it was.

It was felt so sort of deeply that they continued to keep me on the list to say thank you all for your participation yesterday. So for all they know, I was there and gave useful feedback.

Go get your lunch voucher.

I know, right? I missed out on a free lunch. Okay, quickly on the, we may have played this before, but James Austin Johnson from SNL, he's got a great bit on Bob Dylan. He does a great Bob Dylan impression. I don't know if this is the particular interview where he talks about it, but he has this great kind of sort of riff on the Bob Dylan of Nashville Skyline, which is just like how insane it would be if like Taylor Swift or somebody who's very famous these days just showed up on her new album and was just like,

This is how I sing now like a new voice. Yeah, like a new voice and whoever was like, okay

So here's James Austin Johnson talking to James Fallon on the tonight

You should you should listen because his voice is a little terrifying is there Is there an era of Dylan that you like doing the most? Oh, there's too many to pick I mean I love the modern rough and rowdy ways the last record so good. Oh good It was fantastic. But the Bob Dylan that we love is the Greenwich Village Bob Dylan

Would you be up for showing us your Bob Dylan appreciation? Yeah, I could walk you through some. Through the decades. I love how natural Jimmy Fallon's questions are.

Just off the dome. What's that? I love how natural Jimmy Fallon's questions are. He's like the bad NPR host who can't even pretend he's, like, not reading anymore. It's just sort of like, oh, are there any eras that you like specifically? Just like, here, I'm just going to lazily set up everything that they told me to set up before the show.

You're not getting invited to my next carpool karaoke party.

Damn it. With the holidays coming up, maybe could we hear Bob Dylan singing Jingle Bells?

Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, we could maybe start it off with that folky Greenwich Village Bob Dylan. Here, let me get this harmonica here. This will be helpful.

OK. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. Oh, what fun it is to ride.

He's always giggling on these songs

James Austin Johnson's yes, yes, I mean you and I have been obsessed with him since he was just wandering around Los Angeles Doing Trump impressions in his phone. Yeah

He's I think Calvin Coolidge said that

Like some professionalism, please Bob, but then he did how about the crooner when he did the crooner kind of

The Lay Lady Lay, the National Skyline Bob Dylan, he had a completely different voice all of a sudden.

It's like, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.

And it is to write, but you know what I've always been saying. That's great. That's wonderful. I love that guy.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank some donors. These folks are donating to TBTL, and it's the only way this show can happen. This is 100% listener-supported podcasting. Folks like Kara Tillman out there in Austin, Texas. All right. Thank you, Kara. Thanks, Kara. Lisa Belonger is in Nina, Wisconsin. Did we go through Nina, Wisconsin?

It doesn't ring a bell to me, but I had to look this up. I was on a different page there. I was going to try to do a bit where I thank everybody by mentioning a Bob Dylan song. And I was going to say, Kara, you're a real Mr. Tambourine man. And then the whole idea just fell apart on me. So I got distracted. But Nina is not spelled N-I-N-A, as I pictured it in my head as you said that. But N-E-E-N-A-H.

It looks like, I'm on a map here. Well, it looks like it's on Lake Winnebago, or it's close. It's close to Lake Winnebago. So it's not too far from Appleton. It's a bit north from Oshkosh. It's well north of Fond du Lac I love that they named a lake After a big van Yeah, isn't that great

After an RV

Thank you so much We really appreciate it Lisa, also thanks to Rebecca Pappas Who's in Seattle, Washington I don't need to look that up on a map

I know where it is too And I heard there was just very, very few power outages Here last night in Seattle But mostly up north here I was worried about my sump pump Last night, I was down here playing darts, and I could hear the rain just hammering the house, you know, and I kept looking at that sump pump, and I was like, if the power goes, I've just been worried about the sump pump maybe failing, but it's been fine, but I'm like, oh, wait, if the power goes out, we don't have that thing on a generator. If the power goes out for an extended period of time and this rain continues, we'll be in some trouble. We have been, I'm knocking on wood, I'm knocking on microphones. We have been very lucky so far during these storms.

if i wanted to do the ultimate i'm not going to do this oh no but if if if i wanted to do the ultimate like aesthetic move with the with the power situation at my house i could i found out i could pay out of my own pocket to have my power lines buried oh yeah because right now when you pull up to my house i've got a big old power line coming off of like a power pole down to the madrona hill studio and then i've got another one going to the house and i don't really love the look of it's a little busy and it is a thing you can pay to have them buried and then of course there's there's less likelihood of them being a problem but in fact it's not the the power lines going to my house into the madrona hill studio that's not where the power outage is happening the power outage is happening somewhere down the line so that wouldn't even necessarily really protect me from power outages it would just look better do you know that some of the funnest memories

well that's a really broad statement but I have such fond memories of a time when we lived out in the country and we had these power lines I don't even really remember the power lines but they cut across our property we had a lot of land like 7 acres or something which is a lot by my standards and we lived out in the country and there were these power lines that apparently went the length of our property kind of right down the middle of it and I don't really remember that as much as I remember my parents deciding that they were going to have them buried underground like you're describing. The reason this was fun was it feels like this was a project. In my head, it feels like it took years. It probably just took one summer or something. During that summer, we just had this big trench down our... I don't remember anybody out there working on it. I have no memories of the actual construction. I just remembered this muddy trench that we... Not muddy, but like dirt trench that we had right down the middle. That feels like real army man potential. Luke Burbank, Tonka trucks, army man, but especially the Tonka truck thing. I just remember I had that big metal Tonka truck that had the arm on it. It was kind of a backhoe. It was like, what do you call it? It had a backhoe and something else on the front end loader, too, or whatever. It would spin around. I just remember spending hours and hours. It's just like I love the idea that I could just an entire summer day could go by with me just sitting there in the dirt by myself playing with toys.

See, you had much more of an imagination than I did. And this portended not great things for me, which is that I need so much stimulation all the time. This has been an issue for me in my life because I'm always trying to distract myself with one thing or another.

I was never that kid who could just kind of like sit in my backyard. I can remember like the one time I did something like that. I had some kind of Hot Wheels cars or something. And I remember sitting when we lived over kind of actually not far from the Pinehurst pub. Okay, yeah. If you want a locator. I do. And I remember sitting in the backyard and there was some kind of dirt mound. And I was doing something with the cars on it. That was it. That was the extent of my, like, that was the one time I ever actually used my imagination to play by myself. The rest of my time was always like, can we go somewhere, or can I go to a friend's house, or can we, like, I just always needed a lot of stimulation.

Well, I remember that was a very special summer because I'd play with my toys out there, and also it was my last summer at home because I would go off to college the next year. So it just really stuck out in my memory.

Gabe Strand is supporting the show today from Grand Marais, Minnesota Nice, are you confident with Grand Marais? No, after this whole Peter Krause thing I don't know what to believe Susan?

I'm having a tough

I've never got tough weeks, sir Well, you said it with confidence

which I really like

Yeah, well, I've got I'm nothing if not confident Wrong, yes Confident, also yes

Here, let me play something for you that I just stumbled on today I don't know if I should really play this because this was sent to me not for TBTL. This was sent to me years and years before I was doing TBTL, maybe even before TBTL was around. I don't know. But I stumbled on this. This is my friend a long time ago, maybe 20 years ago now, recording his niece singing a song.

Okay. I have confidence in sunshine. I have confidence in rain I have confidence that spring will come again Besides what you see, I have confidence in me

It goes on from there. Do you know this song? Strength doesn't come in numbers. Oh, you know it. It's from Sound of Music. Oh, I didn't know this is mine. Strength comes from nights of peaceful slumber when you wake up. Wake up!

Oh, she does yell wake up at one point in this. Okay, gotcha.

Yeah, because that's Julie Andrews.

Oh, I thought it was like a church song. I thought it was like a youth church song or something.

It's my church, the church. Of Julie Andrews. So I've been going off about how my memories are clearly not to be trusted, but then sometimes I'll also pull one out that I just can't even believe I did. So when I was a kid and we lived in Eureka, California, and I was very young, though, still, we went to my mom and dad with me. Liz probably wasn't even born yet. So I would have been under the age of four. We went to the JCPenney's in Eureka, California, and bought the Sound of Music album. It was a double album. I remember being in the JCPenney's as we were buying the Sound of Music on vinyl, which is like, how did my three-year-old brain even process that or make a memory from that?

You know, I think you were actually buying Highway 61 Revisited. You're wrong about that, actually. I just talked to your sister about it.

Yeah, I bet you did. um connie pearson is in westminster colorado and is one of our donors today thanks connie and then sabrina richter out there in spokane washington they're getting kind of hit hard too with this weather right am i right about that yeah it could well i think that is that does the blizzard watch extend oh right right there's a blizzard watch it's crazy like looking at the seattle times this morning and and just like the headlines it's like you know flood watch in the western part of the state as rain and wind pummel blizzard watch in the mountains it's like you know it just feels pretty apocalyptic right now out here yeah yeah it does look like yeah a lot of power outages out there in spokane because what we usually get what we usually get is it seems like so on the west side of the state you get a lot of rain because the clouds come in heavy with with with water but they can't get over the mountains because the weight of the water is keeping them at a lower altitude they dump all of their water on us then they go up over the mountains and that's why the east side is called the rain shadow no i have heard that yeah and so they get much less of it but um anyway yeah so uh thank you so much for our donors for making tbtl possible today we could not do this without you hello and welcome to top story i watched stand by me last night i'm really on one with these rob reiner movies also just i know i've been saying this each day but like i don't know if it's because the news cycle just continues with this story of people paying their tributes to him of people i just see like random people on tiktok who were like rob reiner's assistant in the 90s i have not heard one person who knew rob reiner and his wife personally say anything

other than anything negative about them. And in fact, it's... Well, there's one notable exception. Well, sure. Yeah, exactly. I don't want to give that any more oxygen. But yeah, it's just what I've been thinking about as I've been watching... Again, it's not even famous. I mean, you've got Billy Crystal. You've got all the famous people that knew Rob Reiner that are really remembering him fondly. But then you just have random people who are like, oh yeah, I used to be his personal assistant and he was unbelievably kind to me in ways that were unnecessary or people that were like, you know, On a set, but they were not a particularly famous actor at the time who were like Rob Reiner came up and just made me feel so comfortable and confident like I could do this. And like he just seems like a guy who was just moving through the world, improving every single situation that he was involved in, which is just incredible. So I figured I would watch Stand By Me last night because I have not seen that movie since I was probably 10 years old. And that's, you know, for people my age, it was a big movie because it's a coming of age film. it's got way more Richard Dreyfuss in it than I expected

I've never you know I'm looking at this now I don't think I've ever seen it and this is a weird place to take it but have you heard of the movie The River's Edge or just River's Edge which is like a they're both kind of similar right they're involved of finding a body or something and I think that even though they're both dark I think River's Edge is especially dark and gritty and I was thinking like I was just now looking like well which one came out first I can't believe they came out in the same year and River's Edge has you know not as quite of a loaded cast but it does have Crispin Glover Keanu Reeves and Ioni Sky and then and then then Stand By Me I didn't realize has Will Wheaton in it yeah Wheaton uh Will Wheaton everybody the in the starring roles are super famous as adults

you know they all got and this was really the movie that launched all of them it's it's River phoenix it's uh will wheaton it's jerry o'connell and um and cory feldman are kind of this little crew of kids and then it's all narrated by richard dreyfuss kiefer in there i'm just seeing kiefer sutherland in there he's a bully oh okay yeah um and uh but yeah i mean it's you know and it's also kind of interesting because it's it's set in i think the fictional town of castle rock Oregon but I think it was maybe shot I think it was shot in like um it was shot up near Astoria Oregon which was this was during the heyday of people filming in Astoria Oregon because like uh of course Goonies was famously filmed there and I think Kindergarten Cop was also filmed there there was a lot of stuff going on in Astoria but then the town that they're in is called Castle Rock which became the name of Rob Reiner's production company I think it was Castle Rock

productions well castle rock is the you know that that is like oh is that the stephen king thing that's the stephen king so so but i this is what i maybe it started with a because i always thought associated with castle rock productions being related to stephen king because it also is castle rock maine i was shocked when you said castle rock oregon because i didn't realize that castle rock kind of they they said it in various places in the country but castle rock in fact a series came out recently called castle rock stories or something like that so castle rock is sort of a stand-in for tons and tons of Stephen King settings.

I guess the confusing part of this is that Stephen King's original story was set in Castle Rock, Maine, but Rob Reiner moved the setting to Oregon for the film. Oh, okay. Castle Rock, Oregon, in the film Stand By Me, is actually the real-life town of Brownsville, Oregon. Okay. A charming small town that director Rob Reiner chose for its nostalgic, untouched 1950s feel. And today, fans can visit iconic filming spots, blah, blah, blah. There's a Stand By Me day in Brownsville. So I guess it wasn't shot up near Astoria.

Interesting, though.

Another L for L.

So this is what I've always been wrong about. I always thought that Castle Rock Entertainment was somehow held by Stephen King, which doesn't really make sense as far as these things go. But it was Rob Reiner named his production company that later, and then that production company did go on to produce a bunch of Stephen King's works, I guess. But that was his.

Yeah, they were good. Stephen King apparently used to, he would license his books to Rob Reiner for $1. Huh. Interesting. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, that's cool. They just had an agreement. It's like a handshake. He was like, I trust you're going to do something good with these projects. I'd rather you have them than someone else. And they'd just be a $1 thing or something. Wow, wow.

Which is kind of crazy. But Kubrick had a very different deal with him. He never did.

Yeah, right, exactly. Anyway, Stand By Me, you know, I'll tell you this. Movies where you have a cast of very young actors who are doing a lot of the lifting, they're tough for me. Yes. And I would say this. I think kid actors have gotten better I don't know what I don't know what that's all about how that's happened but I feel like we've had I'm not can't even give you an example Andrew which is why this is fairly meaningless what I'm saying but like I feel like in the past 10 years I've seen some cinematic performances from kids that I've been like whoa You

Well, what about, how about The Sixth Sense? Or I was going to say, no, more recent. I came out wanting to say The Last of Us, but that's not it. The apocalyptic show that was a video game. Uh-huh. It is The Last of Us, right? Is it The Last of Us? I thought that was, I'm getting confused. There were two projects around the same time. Is that it? Well, yeah. But that, The Last of Us, yeah, yeah, that is the show I was thinking of, and I'm blanking on the actor's name, but she was amazing in that, or is she a little bit older than what you're thinking?

I guess she's—I thought she was really great, by the way. Bella Ramsey is the actor you're thinking of.

But that doesn't quite fit what you're thinking of.

Written by Craig Mazin, a one-time TBTL guest.

Oh, for what was he a guest?

Craig Mazin—well, this guy's fascinating. He—I don't—I can't remember. I knew someone who knew this guy, and this guy—they said, oh, you've got to have my friend Craig Mazin on. He's great. He also wrote The Hangover 2.

Oh, okay, yeah, I'm looking at his—

Which is kind of like, you know, and it was one of those things where it was like, well, are we, if we hadn't been recommended to talk to this guy, would we be trying to talk to the screenwriter of The Hangover 2? Probably not, but he is just such a good guest. He's just like, he's got great stories. But here's what else he's famous for. He was Ted Cruz's roommate at Harvard. And he's been the guy who was like, Ted Cruz has always sucked, including when we were Harvard roommates. then he went on to write he wrote the chernobyl show on hbo which was great like he's really like established himself as a really top level screenwriter um and now it's probably too fancy for us to have back on tbtl but there was a time when we could get craig mazin on this show it's

really interesting to see his chart you know his like filmography and television listings here because they kind of color code the various roles produced like if he wrote it directed it and produced it and most of them he wrote there's a couple of directorial things here and there and then the last of us director writer creator executive producer like this is his project and so fingerprints are all over i'm sorry i've gotten us away from um stand by me but i was going to say i have not gone into the second season i loved season one of the last of us i think i was hesitant there because i think i was confusing it with this is us um oh yeah which is very different but um i remember when season two came out i was still you know like maybe i still haven't fully pulled out of it but i was in an especially dark place with the news of the world and the country and where we were and i was like i this is an escapism for me right now i don't want to go back into this even darker apocalyptic world whereas now i feel like i'm just desensitized and numbed enough uh to go back but uh have you caught up on that because you really like the

last of us too right yeah you know maybe i've been in a i've as evidenced by the fact that i've now watched three full movies in the last two nights which is rare for me i've been in a bit of a mode just since i've been home from my recent travels and because it gets dark at 4 30 where i'm just like i don't know i i feel like hunkering down with with movie and television content in a way that i kind of often don't maybe it's also because we're in a weird sports lull there's no yeah There's no baseball. There is football when the Seahawks are playing. But the rest of the time, it's like, well, what am I going to look at with my eyeballs? And so anyway, this would be maybe a good week for me to re-engage with that because I really liked it. Obviously, we talk about that bottle episode all the time, the Nick Offerman one. But I didn't stop watching the show because, well, I'm just so angry.

Oh, did you not quite complete season one?

I didn't complete season one. And, and, and, you know, when I got all, it just takes, it takes almost nothing to just drop this little seed of doubt in my mind about a show. And it's so sad because it's like, I should just push through the things I don't particularly love. When Pedro Pascal's brother comes back, comes back to the, like, you know, what do you call that? You know, the, the, the compound, the refuge, whatever, the city, New Boston, or what are they calling it?

Actually, am I wrong? Unless you're talking about a different scene, I'm pretty sure that his brother lives there and is Pedro who rolls into town, I think, by my memory. That's totally possible.

There's just this scene with them at a bar that I just was like, ooh, this show has been so good up until now, and then this one is a little clunky for me, and then, okay, fine, but that happens, then move on. Do you think Johnny Cakes was a great moment for The Sopranos? no but i still like the show like i need to just push through when one scene doesn't hit for me

right now i should get back on it what does he say riding down the new hampshire highway we're granite state highway with the wind in your hair and i lived in new hampshire at the time i'm like

nobody calls it that dude oh my god i love you johnny cakes um anyway i should i start i should start re-watching that because i do love me a post-apocalyptic kind of a you know adventurous his tail and all of that. Anyway, stand by me.

It was, I enjoyed it. You know, I think what Rob Reiner said about it is he said he didn't think it was his best film, but he thought it was the film that most represented him.

Oh.

Which I thought was an interesting way to put it. I mean, it was also one of the first movies he directed, so he probably still had a lot to learn at the time. And I enjoyed it for the scenery. It's set in the 1950s. I just kind of liked the look of everything. I liked that it's shot in the Pacific Northwest. Like I said, the kid acting is a little bit tough for me just because it's not sort of hyper-realistic in the way that adult acting can be.

It's especially interesting there, though, because I thought you were going to say kid acting wasn't as good back in the day. But, boy, you can really see the talent. I thought that you were going to have a butt in there because all of these people, as we just mentioned, grow up to be really accomplished actors.

Well, I mean, do they?

Well, let me put it this way. I recognize all of their names. Yes, but I think for... Yes. They became well-known actors. They became well-known. I actually think... Is Kiefer Sutherland... Do I like him for non-acting reasons? I always like Kiefer Sutherland. Is he not a good actor?

No, no. Okay, that's a good point. But what I would say is Kiefer Sutherland is older than the main cast. Okay, okay. He's like a bully who's older than them. the core cast are all probably like maybe 12 years old or something yeah and they are like i said i think river phoenix was a really good actor i think he's the best actor in the movie of the

age cohort he's in oh yeah and then cory oh of course cory is not really a great actor he was

just a famous kid actor famous for like license to drive and things like that and now he's got this very interesting music career i don't know if you've seen clips of it is it michael jackson related it's sort of spiritually there's a lot of michael jackson in there he often dresses like him he does some dance moves it's not michael jackson music he's not covering the songs of michael jackson it's all original cory feldman numbers and why it's so interesting is because he has been at this for years and is it is a serious undertaking for him in other words it isn't like he's just put out a couple of albums that sort of didn't go anywhere it's like he and he tours with a huge band and he's now been doing it so long that it seems like he's pushed through into this kind of weird world of like he can sell out like a 700 person venue or maybe 500 person venue with people who are i think mostly coming kind of ironically like i don't get the sense there's a lot of people that are like really big cory feldman music fans like have all of his music and play it you know in their car while they're driving around just because they enjoy it but there's this whole culture of like going to cory feldman shows becoming friends with other people who go to the cory feldman shows like it's such a strange presentation though just the whole thing that he's doing but again like he's been at it now for like at least 10 years like he tours i think very regularly and has been doing it for a decade and has kind of through it would seem through sheer force of will made it into a thing.

I wonder if he'll play the sphere. Let me ask you a question about the sphere in Vegas, by the way. I've been there. You've been there. And I'm about to ask the dumbest question, especially in 2025. What's the shape? Because that thing's been around for a long time. But if you could describe how it looks from the outside, how would you describe it? Now, when you, this is so dumb. I think I know the answer to this. I'm embarrassed I'm bringing it up. But when you hear that somebody is like, you go to the dome to see, like, a U2 or something like that. Are you seeing U2 or are you seeing a U2 concert movie? You're seeing U2. You are seeing U2. That's what I always thought. Yes, you're seeing U2. They actually had, like, a residency there. It wasn't – I always thought that, and then I heard something recently that made me think, wait a second, am I an idiot? When people say they went to the Sphere to see U2, were they seeing U2 or a U2 movie? They're seeing U2, but they also made movies there. They also did the new Wizard of Oz or something, right?

Yes, so that's why it's a little bit confusing. Like, when I was there, U2 was not playing. In fact, nobody was playing. So what Becca and I went and saw was a movie, a film shot by Darren Aronofsky that was specifically shot to play in the sphere. And it's just kind of, it's almost like a nature film. And it's obviously, like, from a cinematography standpoint, it's incredibly beautiful and immersive. and um and and it's really fun to watch it in that in that environment the other thing that i've said about the sphere is that they have the most helpful staff of any facility of that kind or size i've ever been in it is very clear that on day one the management said we are going to make sure that every single person who's here wearing like a sphere polo is going to be like unbelievably helpful really knowledgeable about things eye contact asking you hey can i help you out with anything how's it going like that is the most well-trained staff i've ever experienced in my life i would trust them to run the u.s government i mean i would trust anyone to run the u.s government right now over the people we've got but especially the staff of the sphere they went around to every

Chick-fil-A in the tri-state area and just hired away all the staff. Poached their top performers. It was really sad for the franchisees, unfortunately, because they were left scrambling as all of the employees just kind of marched towards the sphere.

I've been on this movie-watching kick, and I've been on this home-cooking kick. I made the easiest thing last night that I was so weirdly proud of, which is i made some vegetable rice soup oh that's again it was so rainy and cold okay so there when i used to live in portland there was this place called vegan thai basil around the corner for me and i used to get this vegetable rice soup from them and i was like this is the best soup i've ever had in my life and it's so simple it's just chopped up vegetables i would ask them to add broccoli to it it's just chopped up vegetables and rice and a really like umami broth and i've been saying to becca i was like can you teach me how to make that soup she was like yeah although it's probably pretty straightforward and so yesterday i was like again it's getting dark at like 4 25 right now and i was just like and it was raining and gross and i was like i just want something cozy while i watch chris hayes in a half hour and so i was like well let me just see what i have and i went through my vegetable drawer and i had like everything that i needed for this soup because I have rice always on hand, and I sent you a picture. I followed a New York Times, like, well, recipe. It was for chicken, vegetable soup with rice. I just didn't put the chicken in, and I did it on the iPad, Andrew. It was so, it was great.

That's right, so did you tell us that you ended up having it? No, I didn't. I was embarrassed to admit. You said you were iPad curious the other day. You said you wanted one for your kitchen, but they're kind of expensive, so you're like, for a unit task, if I'm only going to use it for this thing, so did you just bite the bullet and just get a new one,

I did because in buying it at the Apple store It was actually cheaper than buying it online From like Amazon or something Which is kind of wild

And you just bought whatever the most simple one was

I bought the most simple one that doesn't have cellular on it It only works with Wi-Fi It's the lowest amount of memory

Because all you're going to use it for is basically Recipes and taking photos at concerts Right?

Taking photos of my family at the Grand Canyon Standing in front of other people Holding it up while I take photos of my family Those are the two things for it But, um, no, it was great because it was like, I actually didn't even, this is the funny part. I didn't really need the recipe, but I just wanted to utilize the iPad. If that makes any sense, because I understood the assignment. I was like, okay, I have some leeks that are, that I just had in my fridge. I had carrots, broccoli, um, what else? Celery. And so I knew what I was going to do. I was just going to like sweat some, sweat some garlic in the leeks just to kind of do a little kind of base, get a little flavor going. and then throw in the other vegetables and just get them cooking just a teeny bit before I add in my broth. I had vegetable broth. I have something called better than bouillon, which is just flavor bomb of like vegetable, you know, vegetable something. And, uh, and I had a bunch of, um, vegetable broth and I just threw it all in there. And then I, the one thing I wasn't sure of, do I need to cook the rice in the rice cooker and then put it into the soup or just throw the rice in? And it turns out that's what I did use the New York times for is you just throw the rice uncooked into the soup because it's going to cook in the broth. Then I just simmered this thing and then when it was... Now, I did mess up one thing, which was I put way too much rice in because that rice, it was calling for three quarters of a cup and I was like, that doesn't seem like anything. So I was like, I put in more like a cup and a half. So what I have is a rice

porridge. Yeah, you got to add more. But you can fix that. Do you still have more broth?

Yeah, what I'm going to do for lunch today is I'm going to take a scoop of my porridge and then I'm going to I'm going to heat it up in a different saute pan With more vegetable broth So that I've got the right ratio And what I've just learned for next time is like Don't overdo it on the rice Like actually do less rice than I think I need

Because you want broth

I want broth and right now the rice has now absorbed all the broth But for last night anyway It was so delicious and comforting And exactly what I wanted And it was just from things that were in my house And again not a complicated meal But one that I think I'm going to make a lot this winter because it's just like a delicious, it keeps, and it was easy to do. Those were like little moments of triumph for me when I'm able to cook food from things that I already have inside my house.

Well, I told you I was making something the other day, like a curry that I'd never even made before, but I kind of stopped on this recipe. I was scrolling through Blue Ski, and I was just like, oh, wow, this actually looks good, and it just hit me in the right. moment and i i was like really psyched and this is genevieve gets credit for this although it's something that i often complain about is like buying buying some odd spice and buying a whole bunch of it when you only need one teaspoon and then we have it for the next like 20 years um until finally it's so far expired that i'm allowed to throw it away but honestly i was pretty psyched that we had most of the stuff including like the one can of coconut milk that i needed and like all these other things i was like man i think i had like literally everything maybe except for the chicken needed which and again that's where i love and i know we kind of tease a little bit but like that is the difference sars makes having a fully stocked grocery store that is literally i don't know how long it takes me to walk there seven minutes maybe you know what i mean it's like more than five but i don't think it's ten and the fact that i can like without getting in my car just like put on my headphones go to the sars and then come back with chicken and the fact that it It also has huge international sections, means I can almost buy anything there. You can do stuff like that right on a whim. Anyway, I have taken the story about your soup.

Will you buy like a rotisserie chicken and chop it up for that, or will you buy a chicken that you're going to then roast to use it in the recipe?

For that, that's usually chicken thighs, that particular thing. I don't buy – I used to buy more kind of pre-roasted chickens. I haven't kind of done that in a while. Sometimes I'll do that if I need stock. If I need to make stock, I'll buy one of those things and then maybe, you know, like kind of trim it down and then make stock out of it. Bone collector in the house. The bone collector. In fact, you're kind of, I have some, I've just been kind of eating unhealthily lately. I was in a situation where I didn't have food in the house, so I'd like made myself spaghetti and meatballs the other night, but it was like late at night. And I had frozen meatballs and then I just made like, I don't know, what do you call those half penne pasta things? They're really good. They're like little tubes, but they're like short. Anyway, I just had a bunch of that. But I basically carbo-bombed myself like right before bed, and it was tasty, but I hated myself. And then I haven't had anything else in my house for 24 hours, so I've been just eating that. And so yesterday I'm like, I got to eat something else. So I went to the store and I bought myself a bunch of just like chicken and broccoli to roast tonight. But now you've got me on this soup thing, and I'm thinking about this. I know this isn't what you made, but I'm thinking about the Italian wedding soup that I made. last year and I'm like damn you might have just blown up my whole plan for my early evening here

I know it's not a freezer feast but you could also do that for football watching tomorrow night I mean I don't know if soup and football go together

doesn't seem as great to me also I always have plans to like snack during football games and then I rarely do sometimes I do if I make like a bunch of wings for just me and Veeves or something then I will sit down and eat them during the game but I always think like during the day I'm like, okay, I'm going to get all this food, and we're going to watch football and eat the food. And then the game starts, and I don't even eat it. It'll be like two hours later, and I'll cook a pizza or something like that. I don't know. Maybe I just need – I love it at other people's houses going over there, and sometimes they have something that they call Pizza Mountain. Oh, I know those people. Do you know those people? Those people sound really fun. They're good people.

Good people. As long as there's not an interception by the UW against Arizona, in which case you witness what the kids would call a crash out.

I forgot that you have a painful memory associated with Pizza Mountain.

I think that was a different Pizza Mountain. I can't remember if that was the same or different Pizza Mountain, but I just remember being drunk and yelling things that I'm, you know, I'm hoping that it wasn't our good friend Mike Frizzell's in his last thoughts on this planet because it would be a rough memory of me. I was very embarrassed by my behavior that night. I literally don't exactly remember what I said, but I just remember looking over and seeing horror on the faces of the people I was with.

I'm trying to think, do you think I was there for that one? Because I always think that Andy was there. But you're saying, Mike, but maybe this was before I knew Mike because I wasn't on TBTL at the time, and he might have just been a friend of yours that I didn't really.

I think, yeah, I think there was different. I think Pizza Mountain made a couple of appearances.

Okay, yeah, maybe I wasn't there for this particular one. I don't know.

This is my box. This is my box. I never travel without my box. Oh, what's in the box? In the first drawer, I keep my magic stones. Oh, what's in the box? Licorice! Licorice! Blood, sweet, licorice! Blood, sweet, licorice!

Have some.

What I like about that intro is it's not creepy at all.

No, definitely not. It just makes me feel really comfortable. It's definitely not David Cross singing This Is My Box from Amal and the Night Visitors.

That sound is usually preceded by this sound. Or no, I'm sorry, not preceded. It's followed by the sound of me grabbing an exacto blade because it means I'm going to open some packages that I found in the TBTL PO box when I went to check on it yesterday. By the way, if you would like to send us something, and there's no pressure to send us anything.

But if you do need to send us something, the P.O. Box is 33687. Just send it to TBTL, P.O. Box 33687, Seattle, Washington, 98133. That is what our friends – I've got two things I'm going to open here. By the way, I have a whole bunch of holiday cards, Luke. Some of them are addressed to you and me and John. Some of them are addressed to us individually. I will get you and John your specific cards. So we'll be going through those, but not on the air because there's too many to go through. But I did get two packages, it looks like, and this first one is from our friends August, Stephanie, and Jake, of course, August being a little Augie.

Is that baby Augie down in Portland?

Baby Augie, exactly. Oh, these are great. These are great. These are, I think you should leave Christmas tree ornaments doing the zipline. Exactly. Did you say you have one of these?

Yes, I got some of those last year, and I gave them out to people, and they were a big hit. This is wonderful.

I did not have one, so I will be putting that on the Christmas tree. Thank you, Augie. I know that you're the one who picked that out. That's wonderful.

That's been a huge advance in ornament technology is that you can now take almost anything that's a photograph or a moving picture, and then they'll, I don't know, laser cut it somehow in some sort of a plastic, and you've got yourself an ornament. It's really opened up a whole new world of ornaments.

It's very exciting. And I have another package here I'm going to open, and this will be it for the day. This was sent, I think, a while back. My apologies to Max here in Seattle, who sometimes disparagingly calls himself Other Max, which I don't know if I like. I don't know if he says it disparagingly, but I feel like, Max, you are Seattle Max to me. And you sent this a while back. You told me about it, and I finally have it here in my grubby little hands. and it says on the back of the envelope, Luke, what's in the box within boxes crossed out and it says envelope. What's in the envelope? Oh, it's not licorice. It's not licorice. This is a nice little card, handmade TVTL art on the front of it. Love it. And it says, Andrew, since you mentioned you've become a D&D curious, that is Dungeons & Dragons curious, or at least that's how I interpreted it, I thought you could use this. Also, I got a 3D printer and wanted an excuse to make stuff. either way happy rolling signed other max in seattle um and so i think i know what this is going to be look at this case can you see this look at this yeah that's like a carrying case on the outside it says no mountain too tall and good luck to all kind of embossed in the side of it inscribed yeah in there yes it's actually is that dice and then if you open it up it looks like it's going to be a dice holder, I think, is what's happening here. There's no die inside there, but I thought... Do you think...

Is that like 3D printed?

Yeah, so this is clearly 3D printed and then it uses magnets to sort of clamp itself. Dude, you could keep your weed in there. I could keep my weed in there and my die, my multi-sided die. I feel a little bit bad. I dropped the ball on that game. I had gotten, I restarted it a few times. I'm talking about the video game called Baldur's Gate 3, or as we like to call it, look at the Baldur's Gate on this guy. And I started playing it, and having no experience with this type of game or Dungeons & Dragons in general, I really found it to be a bit of a learning curve. But then I really tackled it, and I was playing it. I restarted the game a few times, but then I got to a part where I felt like I knew what I was doing, but I had three failures in a row for lack of it. Either from rolling the dice and not getting what I wanted or very clearly achieving something but then not finding the right key and I was in this cave for a while and I couldn't get through the door and I'm like, one of these orcs I killed must have the key, but I couldn't find it. And I just had three of those in a row. And I'm like, I just don't have the energy for this right now. When I play games like Minecraft or something, I want it to be like, my brain is sort of my brain is just sort of like takes the back seat a little bit you know what

i mean yeah you want you want to kind of turn your brain off just enough yes and this required

too much brain have you tried doing it on ketamine and so what i did was i got some ketamine and then i really hampered my my roles i gotta be honest anyway i've been thinking about it i have not told my friend libby who's been sort of my guide my sherpa through this and so i uh i haven't broken the news tour yet i think at some point i will get back into it and but i'll probably just start the adventure over again i do really like that box though like it's really nice right whether

or not you use you you actually use it for your dnd die like it's cool i love that it's got the little inscription on it and stuff and kind of of multicolored depending on how you hold it to the light it's really something it's really very cool very cool i know you wouldn't call this 3d printing though luke i didn't hear your your diatribe on that i just saw it why would i not call it 3d printing oh is this not true i don't know i saw it on the show sheet i thought you were taking exception at calling things 3d printing when it's not well printing and then i thought you addressed it when i was out maybe

that did happen my issue with that is when they say houses like homes are being 3d printed that's big buzzword and people love to talk about it and to me and what I've seen with these homes that are allegedly 3d printed is it's just a way of delivering the concrete in a in an unusual fashion which is instead of like pouring you know building forms and pouring concrete walls for the house or doing a traditional house which would be like a big concrete slab and then you frame it using wood this is like uh you know a extruder that's extruding a block like a like a toothpaste you know you're squeezing toothpaste out of a tube but it's concrete of some kind and you just keep it just keeps doing that over and over and over again as it's building up the wall incrementally and then that's the house is made out of this this whole thing that to me doesn't really feel like printing as much as it's just kind of a it's a new and creative way to to pour

the concrete for a house interesting yeah i don't know i don't know enough about that i was just i made that comment just based on a uh like a bullet point that you had on a show sheet a couple of

months ago i do think we're calling too many things 3d printed but you're okay with this though i'm okay with this because it was sent by a listener and maybe even made by a listener so i want to be really careful it was made by max thank you max in seattle yeah yeah exactly thanks max and thanks to everybody for mailing stuff to us and for the cards yeah we have a lot of cards i've only look I don't want to sound like a sad sack, but I actually haven't checked my mail in a couple of days. I did get what I think is like a financial aid check for one of my neighbors in my mail. Like the reason I know that is because it's got the name of a local college on it. And you know how sometimes when you get a check in the mail, you can see that it's a check? Yes, yes, you can tell. Like just the quality of the paper. so like i don't check my mail very often and so because most of the important stuff i just get like you know via email and digital and stuff now so i went up there and i bring down this whole big stack of mail and i'm leafing through it and tossing out the stuff that's junk mail and then i see in there my i assume like one of my neighbors may be sort of like grown like children who are of the age where you might go to the local college and that presumably that person's name on it and then what is a check and again i don't know how much the check is for i but i felt terrible because i don't know how long that was sitting in my mailbox right and so then i'm like i took it up and put it in their mailbox but i was just like i wonder what's going like i wanted to somehow i wanted to see them and say i have your son's check but not because i stole it

did i tell you this goes back a ways now maybe like mid-summer or something that I was getting mail from somebody who lived here When this house was divided up into two Kind of apartments or whatever The basement where I do the show out of It's a very small space And like I I've never been comfortable with the notion That somebody was renting out this basement part As a standalone living space

Ironically it's one of your favorite places to be But you also wouldn't want it to be your entire home environment

But I also have a whole kitchen upstairs And a bedroom upstairs You know what I mean And so anyway, I don't know how many people lived here. We get occasionally envelopes with previous tenants' names on it when it was a rental property. And I would get some from one name that I would see over and over. Sometimes it was usually junk mail. Every now and then like a delivery of something that I didn't quite understand why she was still getting deliveries here. And I had asked neighbors about her. I want to be a little bit careful. I don't think she would know about the show, but especially this deep into a Wednesday episode. But I'd heard like maybe a bit of a quirky person who like kind of ran a business out of here, too. And it's sort of questionable. Yeah, whatever. And so anyway, I'm not going to go into more detail than that. But I got something in the mail that looked like it would be important in some way. And I don't. Oh, no. You know what it was? I accidentally opened it. I wasn't looking closely at the envelopes. I opened one up, and it was something from a company. I don't know if it was a financial institution this time or something else that said, hey, listen, we've been trying to track you down. We have this check for you for $75 or maybe $100 or something. Please fill this out and get this unclaimed property. And so on the off chance, I'm like, well, I have her full name. Let me Google her. And I found myself on one of those kind of quasi-Zergnetty websites that gave me some contact info. And so I just tried two different emails that popped up, or one email and one phone number. and I just tried texting and she responded almost immediately to the text. And I remember being very careful in my language, like, hey, I want to be very clear that I'm somebody who lives where you used to live now. And I got this note. I know this coming from a stranger that sounds a little bit scammy. I can scan it for you or take a photo of this and send it to you so you can get your unclaimed money, you know. And she responded. She's like, oh, yeah, that would be great. And then we corresponded a little bit and she asked how some of the neighbors were doing. And then And a couple of days later, I got another one from, like, American Express or something. I'm like, hey, these people say they owe you money too now, so do you want to fill this out? And so, like, you know, over the course of a couple of weeks or something, I think maybe she got, let's say, $200 to $250 or at least requests to claim this money, which I assume she followed through with. But I think because of – I don't know what she did. She clearly is maybe a bit of a chaos muppet herself, because I don't know why we're still getting this stuff here after living in this house for three years. But I think the fact that those came to our house and then maybe were followed up upon by her has re-stirred up this idea that she still lives here. And she clearly has other financial loose ends because, and I don't know if these are connected or not, Genevieve says that a creditor came to the door and gave her kind of a hard time, gave Genevieve kind of a hard time the other day saying, are you so-and-so? I'm trying not to use this woman's name. A creditor?

That sounds like somebody was trying to serve a subpoena.

Or something like- Was it a process server? I don't know if it was a process server. You know how sometimes you get a phone call from somebody at a phone bank, and they're just like, I'm trying to reach so-and-so, and you're like, they don't live here, and they automatically assume that you're lying because they're trying to.

Yeah, I've never heard of a collection agency coming to your house, but I would be.

Genevieve said it was like a collection agency. That's what she said.

Wow, that's next level. I've never heard of it. And I've had some collection agencies after me. Yeah. I've never heard of them actually physically arriving at your house. That's pretty wild.

Genevieve said that the person kind of didn't believe her and he was kind of pushy about it. Because I think with that job, you get probably lied to a lot or something. And I don't know if it was a repo situation, but they're like, are you so-and-so? Genevieve's like, no. And she's like, no, no, no, we own this house. But this person kept asking questions in a pretty pushy way. They thought they were being scammed or needed to make sure that they weren't being lied to and that Genevieve wasn't this person. And I was thinking about it just last night. All of this happened over the course of the past six months or so. But then last night, I was thinking about that. And I'm like, I wonder if things were maybe a little bit dormant because she hadn't lived here for a while. But then maybe just by the very nature of me saying, hey, you should try to track down this money that you're getting mail. Suddenly, like, things are being responded to. It might have awoken a sleeping debt giant or something. And now, I mean, to have literally people coming to the door saying, I'm looking for you is crazy, right?

I have never, I mean, famously, I had to pay, before I bought my first house, I had to pay. i'm talking thousands of dollars in parking tickets that had gone to collections like so i've been in i've been pretty far into in arrears to uh you know to some of those uh collection agencies and uh yeah i'd never it never crossed over to like a person physically arriving at my door that's that's wild or at least that you were home for yeah i guess so i guess i guess so but yeah that's um that's not sucks for genevieve too like also that's one of those moments where it's like i would be like on the one hand i'd be like well i can show you my id so you know i'm not this person but on the other hand i'm like i don't need to show you my id exactly like it's like i didn't do anything also i mean again i don't even know what the exact nature of this person being at the house was but i have a pretty low opinion of the whole industry of buying debt and then trying to strong arm the people who owe the debt you know that's i think a pretty predatory kind of level of this industry as well um so it's like on the one hand i could be like well i could prove to pretty quickly that i'm not the person that you're looking for but on the other hand why do i need to like get out get off my porch you know it's kind of how i would feel do you feel differently if you

call them a skip tracer though i love that phrase a skip tracer isn't that are you here are you here to bone jack me isn't that the old-timey name for like somebody like a private i like a basically like a repo person was a skip tracer because you're looking for people from johnny dollar

Johnny Dollar, expense report investigator?

I don't know if I got it from yours truly, Johnny Dollar, the man with the action-packed expense report, or I think it's just used in a lot of those kind of, that era kind of noir because, you know, private eyes, private eyes, what does it say, like a private eyes?

It says a skip tracer is a professional investigator who finds people who are hard to locate, often because they've skipped town to avoid debts.

Yeah. Ooh, that's great.

You call him a skip tracer and suddenly you're like, oh, that's not so bad. No, I mean, I would honestly, like, I would want to be a skip tracer. That sounds pretty exciting, pretty exotic.

All right, let's get it. out of here all right yeah let's uh go ahead and call it good for today but uh guess what we're gonna be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio i think i'm gonna be pretty torqued up tomorrow about the football game i was just thinking that not trying to not trying to make this a football podcast not trying to make anyone have the worst day at their job but i'm i haven't quite decided what my plan i mean the likely plan is i will watch the game by myself like a freaky pacing monkey tomorrow here. That's what I want to do. I'm not going to say it's the season because the Seahawks will still make the playoffs if they lose, but it's a pretty big kind of fork in the road as to if we're seen as one of the dominant teams in the league or if we are kind of an also-ran. And there's a lot of plot lines about old Sam Darnold and the Rams, et cetera. So I'm already starting. I'm feeling my anxiety level already build.

I'm so glad this game is on a day that I can watch it.

Yeah, right.

Which is awesome, so I'm really looking forward to it. But also Thursday night football is cursed. And it's just something that Thursday night football always just scares the hell out of me. Injuries on short rest.

Were we watching Thursday night football at Buckley's when Russell got hurt and Gino had that fumble or whatever it was?

That's a good question. I think that was either Monday night or Thursday night.

Definitely a week night.

It was definitely a weeknight, but I also think of that one in Arizona when you and I were at a PRPD conference, and we got some people, and we posted up at a sports bar. I want to say, was that Phoenix, maybe? No, maybe Minnesota? I don't know.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, Minnesota. It was like the bulldog in Minnesota. Didn't Stu come out?

Oh, I think you're thinking, I don't think Stu was at this one. When Durs showed up, and his boss was giving him a hard time because he skipped out on a meet-and-greet cocktail at the public radio conference. They had to skip trace him. And I was like, come on, lighten up. But that was when Sherm got injured, and it was just like a disaster. I don't know. I just think that Thursday night football, generally speaking, is just a cause for concern.

Well, I'm knocking on wood because maybe this can be a new chapter for Thursday night football and our beloved Seahawks. So anyway, well, I'm sure that'll come up again tomorrow. In the meantime, thanks for listening, folks. Have a great Wednesday. Hope you're doing okay, weather-wise, wherever you are, and that you haven't forgotten, no mountain too tall, or good luck to all. Thank you. Really great. That was a great adjustment.

Power out.