Muse

Wow! What's this? This is the North Pole. No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is.

No, it's not. Where's the snow?

Why are you smiling like that? I just like to smile. Smiling's my favorite.

Make work your favorite. That's your favorite, okay? Okay. Work is your new favorite. Fine. It's time for the announcement. Okay. Okay, people, tomorrow morning, 10 a.m., Santa's coming to town. Santa! Oh, my God! Santa here? I know him. I know him. TV, TM!

I don't know what it is, but as soon as you bring some carbs or some bread into the room, especially if they, like, hot out the oven and buttery, I just turn into a monster. You have never seen somebody f**k up a piece of garlic bread until you've seen me f**k up a piece of garlic bread. You will lose any bit of respect you ever have for me.

Hey, you either get it or you don't. And I don't. But I am so excited to be a part of it. I feel a real need to express something, but I don't know what it is I want to express. Or how to express it. Boop, booty, scoop, scoop. Boop, boop.

well hello good morning and welcome everyone to a special thursday christmas edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live my name is luke burbank i am your host and right over there my number one elf it's mr andrew walsh good morning and merry christmas thank you sir i just

realized i'm pausing an email i was writing to do this show with you luke and it just yeah you know

I would heaven forbid this get in the way if you're busy emailing schedule.

How on brand, this email that I was about to write to somebody, it's about chimney repair. And I didn't even realize that here it is, Santa's big day. I would argue today is, it's got to be one of the biggest days for Santa on the calendar year. This is Santa's big day. This is Santa's big day. I mean, it's right there in the song. Yeah. I mean, honestly, though, would silly sidewalks, city sidewalks. yeah would will really christmas eve be his big day yeah you know what well yeah he's putting in

the work on christmas eve and then today i guess it's just sit back and let the plaudits roll in yeah i guess yeah and this depends on you know if you're more into the distribution of the presents or the getting the credit and just sitting back and i assume drinking a pepsi cola are they the I think Coke. It tells you how great that worked. Remember the old, I've told you this joke a million times, that I think Rich Hall, the comedian, used to do this joke that was like, last year, Coke and Pepsi spent a billion dollars on advertising, a billion dollars, so that this could happen. You go to a restaurant, can I have a Coke, a Pepsi, all right? Sure.

Yep, yep. Except, are you okay with that? Like, Genevieve will say no. Genevieve will say no, I will not. She only drinks Coke. She's from Georgia. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, that must be part of it.

Coca-Cola runs in that woman's veins.

Yeah, it really does. In fact, it's become a problem. Her blood tastes like root beer, according to Dr. Spaceman. But, yeah, what do you think, what does the Bible say? On the 365th day Santa rested? Is that what they say?

Okay. Yes. Santa moved over the darkness and the waters of the earth. Yes. And said, let there be presence. Here's what we're going to do today. This is kind of fun. we are going to actually play for you all in case you missed it or in case you were there and you really want to hear what it sounds like on the imaginary radio our tbtl holiday hang the zoom that uh as as it happens andrew we're recording this before the event yes so we're if you're hearing this it means that the event went well and that we want to play it for you but as a point of fact you and i don't exactly know in this moment what has unfolded what kind of holiday merriment has unfolded we know that the plan is to talk to people about their holiday traditions either ones that they're still doing or maybe ones from when they were kids or whatever and uh we thought well that would be actually kind of a fun thing to present as a special christmas edition of the program so that's what we're going to do right here yeah i'm looking

forward to this i'm looking forward to the party because as you said as we record this uh the party hasn't quite happened yet so but because of that i do feel like i should do one thing here and i'll cut this out if we don't need it but i i'm going to do this here in the clear i would like to sincerely apologize for my behavior at the tbtl holiday party that was not behavior becoming of a podcast host and it's not who i am as

a person and i'm going to be taking some time uh to spend with my family just taking a step back for the next few hours to spend more time with my family and sort of decide what comes next

all right well i guess i got to do one now too so we'll get this in three two one i apologize for nothing i absolutely stand by everything i said and did during the tbtl holiday hang and if you have a problem with that take it up with the courts because it's now in their hands

are you still wearing the Merry Christmas are you still wearing the pasties by the way that's my follow up question under the sweater yes I thought you were going to say I apologize for Andrew's behavior anyway I am excited I'm excited for the party and I'm excited to be able to share this with everybody so this is it alright so take a listen to this

it's a little holiday hang with the tens of listeners and us recorded on December the 19th So enjoy and Merry Christmas. All right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the TBTL Holiday Hang. Thank you so much for coming out on this Friday night. My name is Luke Burbank. Very proud of my Mela Kalikimaka pennant that's behind me. This entire setup that you're seeing, I dragged all the equipment in here to the house rather than moving the Mela Kalikimaka pennant that I bought off of Instagram. Right over there, looking incredibly festive in their hats, would be Andrew Walsh and Genevieve. Hey, you two. Hi. Hey, everybody.

Happy holidays.

Sounding and looking great. So, Andrew, I understand that you made an emergency trip to, was it Fred Meyer, to get some festive wear? What was your afternoon like?

I did this a couple of days ago. In fact, I'm a little bit disappointed because I know that I went to Fred Meyer about 10 days. So it was the 15th, whenever that was. 10 days before official Christmas time. And I thought, you know what? I got to spiff this place up a little bit, get some holiday decorations. And I thought, all I want is garland. You know, I pictured like maybe gold or silver garland like you put on a tree. They were already totally out 10 days before Christmas, Luke. I thought I was doing, I thought I was like being a good boy for the first time in Christmas history, but I was not. So we got this instead. So you mean, when you say garland, are you thinking tinsel kind of the- Yeah, not the tinsel that drapes, but the stuff that—

Not like this.

No, that's it. Yeah, that's garland, right?

Oh, yeah. I think—listen, this has been my week of losses, Andrew. I don't want to carry it over into the holiday party, so I could be wrong. I've always thought of this as tinsel, but maybe—no, you know what? Maybe tinsel is loose. Yeah, tinsel's loose.

It hangs off the tree like icicles almost. We called that tinsel when I was growing up as well, but I think it's kind of like what do you call a sandwich? What do you call a soda? You know, it's very regional.

I mean, the real question is, is Garland a sandwich? That is what everybody's been asking.

What's your favorite Christmas Garland movie? Mine is Die Hard, obviously. That's right, obviously. Have you, a couple quick questions before we get this thing rolling. Veeves, have you secured the tree? Have you fully Christmased out the house yet?

It's fine. Andrew's always worried that it's going to fall over. It is tilty. It's a tilty guy.

You are so defensive. He just means, did we get a tree? Have we secured a tree for the home? Sorry, you said security.

There's been no conversation on TBTL.

This has not been a topic yet for the record.

Oh, yes. I secured it in the sense of purchasing it. And I feel that it is secure in the sense of being upright also.

But the thing that you need to know about us as a couple is we're having a good goddamn Christmas. Wait till the eggnog kicks in.

It's a tilty guy. Sometimes they're tilty guys.

It is a tilty guy. It's sort of using. You know how.

It's not leaning on the wall.

And this is. This is. It's funny that you said secure there, Luke, because you opened up a conversation. that you didn't even know that Genevieve and I had been having. But you know how, and this is very relatable to everybody and where everybody wants us to start this party, is you know how sometimes when a football player catches a pass, but maybe they use the ground to secure it, and sometimes it's a question about whether or not it's actually a catch? That's what's going on with the Christmas tree right now. Is the wall securing it? Maybe a little bit. It's definitely not making any football moves. That's why I say, did it make a Christmas move? It did. We made a Christmas move. It looks good, though. Genevieve decorated it all up. We have a lot of ornaments on there from the listeners that they've sent us.

We have so many great ornaments from listeners with Bingo and Bananas. I think we've got Tim Robinson doing the zipline.

The zipline. I think you're only here for the zipline.

Yeah. We've got so many great listener ornaments. Thank you.

How about you? How are you feeling? Are you ready, Luke, for the holidays? I'm pretty ready. I went and I got some wrapping paper today at Target, which actually brings me to the...

The sort of theme of tonight, which is holiday traditions, because what we're going to be doing is talking to folks about their favorite holiday traditions. And mine definitely involves wrapping all of my presents on Christmas Eve. And when I was a little kid, as I've talked about on the show many times, we didn't really, we didn't do like a kind of a typical Christmas thing when I was very young. But then over time, we integrated more Christmas stuff in. my mom was able to get the camel's nose under the tent and we had like there was christmas um there was like wreaths and things we didn't have a tree but then also there were stockings and we were like allowed to do gifts but they would go in the stockings for some reason and when we finally started to have a little bit of a christmas tradition going in our family i remember and i've told the story a number of times but like going to craigan's pharmacy and just getting a really unbelievable sort of assortment of gifts for everyone in my family. I believe I got one of my sisters a purple, a giant purple feather that was also a pen. I got my dad a laminated sign that said to error is human to really screw things up. You need a computer, which featured a guy that had a dot matrix printer that was printing off far too much paper. And I remember sitting in my little bedroom on 77th street down in the basement, sitting on the floor um wrapping these presents and listening to the radio version of a christmas carol which i believe actually had lionel barrymore maybe playing scrooge and uh it was the first time that i really got to do kind of christmasy things and i just loved it so much and for many years after that i found that radio that radio production or that you know radio christmas carol thing and i would listen to it and i would sit physically in the same uncomfortable position like into my 30s sit on the floor in an uncomfortable position wrapping presents and listening to that because it was such a strong initial kind of Christmas memory for me so that's I don't know if I'm going to do that this year because let's be honest I don't bounce back from that kind of stuff anymore like me on the floor for an hour and we might not get me off

of that floor you can get to the floor congratulations I dropped it but I can't I dropped a dart the other day I just bought a new set of darts honestly you know there's a good observation that just flew by in the comment section of the zoom somebody said it's a bold move to get a sign maker a sign

for christmas oh i mean yes there were so many things about these presents that were not particularly thought through i think my main sort of um you know my metric or whatever you want to call it for this was is it under a dollar and that was that i think i probably had about eight dollars total for the whole thing and so yeah it was i'm sure all of these different gifts were kind of silly in one way or the other how about you veves and andrew do you all have any holiday traditions

christmas traditions well christmas was really a big deal in my house growing up we weren't religious at all but it was almost like the less really i feel like because like you come from a really or you know you grew up in a really christian household and it was like not it sounds like christmas sort of had to be integrated like secular christmas kind of had to be integrated For us, it was like secular Christmas, like all the way, like to the max. But the biggest, and there's a lot of traditions associated with that. But the one that really stands out to me was picking out the tree, which is why I still kind of make a deal of it with Andrew where we have to, I only want, I love your tinsel tree. And I think if I could have like a beautiful, like mid-century sort of artifact like that, I would love it. But since I don't, I really like to have a real Christmas tree. And I like the experience of going to the tree lot and looking at every conceivable tree and thinking about it and like testing the needles to make sure it's fresh. I think that really comes from, I would say from as early as I can remember. So like from being like a tiny toddler or younger, maybe, until I think I went away to college. Every year, all five members of my immediate family and I would go to, usually would go to the farmer's market in Atlanta. and it was a very big night it was like a big ordeal not ordeal but it was like a really big like sort of like sarah was like sort of a ritual and my mom was really the lead because she had it has very clear ideas about what she wants for a christmas tree sure and it has your mom ever a

two christmas tree kind of gal not in the house yeah not in the house i grew up in but i think

the house she lives in now where she has space for that she is and i think my sister who may or may not be hearing this i think also is a two christmas tree year which is really astounding

because i know how small her house is but uh-huh because we used to live in it because we used to

live in it yes um precisely but my the the tree we would have to get for the for our family house had to be it was a fraser fir that was very very important only one of fraser fir it had to smell right the smell is the best yeah and it's very and they also has like a sort of a us stiffness to it and it's like got a my mind has to be a very specific shape like very particular amount of density versus height and this was key and when we when we got it wrong when we guessed wrong it was always a little bit of a sadder christmas the you have to you have to get a tree that when it is installed in the living room the angel which sits on the top and it was always an angel it's horn because it's blowing a horn the horn has to blow has to brush the top of the ceiling so you got to do a lot of like sort of backwards math from like how tall is the tree how much you're going to cut off to give it a fresh cut then like up from the top of that how much do you need how much clearance do you need for the angel's horn to get to the top of the ceiling so it's always like you know we would hold our breath is the angel's horn gonna kiss Is this going to be a good Christmas or not in the Haas household? Yeah, it's kind of like, is the groundhog going to see its shadow?

No, there's a real science to it because I didn't grow up really in a Christmas tree culture when then I had Adelaide. And I wanted to sort of, you know, create this tradition for us of getting a Christmas tree. We would go to this place on Capitol Hill called the Chicken Soup Brigade, which was a tree lot. And I think it benefited people that were dealing with AIDS and HIV. And I remember I had seen in When Harry Met Sally, which was my main Christmas modeling in adulthood, that they got a Christmas tree from a lot and carried it to, like, Sally's apartment. And so I thought, well, that's what we'll do. But I also wanted a really big, awesome tree. So first of all, the tree was so heavy for a four-year-old to carry with me. so we would like go like three steps and then we would have to sit down and like wait and get our strength back and then keep going it took us like hours to get it four blocks home i also didn't understand that the base of the tree was far too robust to fit into the christmas tree stand so it involved me she had a like a um a tool set there was like a little kids like a fisher price tool set it was me trying to cut the base of the tree with a fisher price oh my gosh saw like in this apartment on capitol hill just sweating she's hiding now behind the couch like and that was our last christmas together um and i understand why anyway uh you know who else is here with us is our friend john sklaroff a tbtl employee numero uno john what are the uh holiday traditions that that you grew up with or that you practice now with your uh with your wife and and dog

yeah yeah yeah hey everyone uh first i'd like to say happy sixth night of hanukkah uh sorry it's not festive here it's green so maybe grinch the walls i don't know um no as far as uh traditions go i also did not grow up with a tree we do have a little tree downstairs now that we use because i did marry a lutheran woman okay so we do we do have a little tree that we set up and some decorations uh but for me the the the best holiday family tradition is making latkes and not just making them right like obviously i think a lot of jewish families do that obviously for hanukkah uh it's the the the uh thing that's very specific i think a lot of families probably also do this too but when you drain the oil from the latkes it has to be on a brown paper bag that you would get from like the grocery store uh-huh so like not like paper towels or like a like a rack or something there's something about the paper bag and maybe some ink coming up onto the the locker or paint you know that just really makes it like a perfect bite um and then of course what was the grocery store that you grew up uh a and p a and p in york town in scarsdale new york no not from scar listen scarsdale is way too bougie for where i grew up john we had a and p is where i was too oh yeah down down south that's cool yeah so a and p was our local one um and yeah so it had to be on that on those brown paper bags and then obviously uh your choice of applesauce or sour cream to top you could do some with like you know you could kind of go one or the other i guess for different ones but that's that's that's uh the thing i remember most do you make

latkes to this day like are you a pretty proficient latke maker i can make them but it's one of those

things where um we don't have like the biggest house here in saint paul so if like i deep fry anything like our house smells like yes for three days and so i really when i go back to new york where my family's now in utica i buy all the products and bring them to my sister's house and encourage her to make them in her house so that can get smelly um and she she actually it used to be my uncles that would do it uh when we were little and we're doing big family hanukkah parties and now my sister has really she's she does great she gets them just just the right

amount of crispiness to them yeah nice did you get a lot of the the the real sales pitch for hanukkah when i was a kid

was that it's like eight days of presents versus one day of presents. Was that your experience as a kid?

Yeah, but like in my experience, at least, and compared to my friends who celebrate Christmas, it was like a pair of socks might be one day and not to like.

Oh, that was Christmas in the Burbank household. Mute my mother. Keep her muted. Lock it down. I'm so sorry. You get one sock.

Yeah. You get an eighth of a sock each night. i think like where my my friend next door steve would get like a new nintendo and i would get like a sock and on the on the eighth day what my parents would do which is always really cool because i have two older sisters is um they would do one present for the three of us that was like a bigger present um so one year i don't know if you guys remember these it was like a three-in-one table tennis uh billiards and um air hockey table they were oh nice they're quite small like they're four kids so we got that one year another year when um my sister came home from her first year of college and she had a t1 internet connection at college so she had like a thousand songs on her computer we got like a cd burner and some blank cds and stuff like nice yeah nice yeah

that's okay before we get to the holiday traditions john what is the what's the plan for folks that are here hanging out on the zoom that want to talk to us what should they be doing

so the order of operations are real simple if you have some tradition you like to share and talk with everyone raise your hand don't do it in your screen don't do it in the chat there is a button i see a few folks already doing it so thank you but for folks who don't aren't not as pro zoom proficient if you click the react button at the bottom of your screen there's a button that literally says raise hand with a little hand going like this click that and then i'll know you want to be on screen when i select you i'll spotlight you like this so you'll be one of the the videos on feed and then you can unmute yourself at that point. We're just, as far as muting goes, it can get a little unyieldy sometimes so I just ask nobody to unmute themselves until you are spotlit and then I, because I'm drunk with power tonight and a little bourbon, will mute you when I take your spotlight away. So just so you know, that's kind of how it goes. John's got you handled. John's got you handled. No, that's a weird thing to say. Especially today with the news that's been breaking today. This holiday season

John's got you handled

John, is there something about should we be looking for your name in those files I was going to ask you guys that

before we started the Zoom officially we don't want any breaking news during the Zoom

I was completely, I mean I know what you're talking about but I haven't been able to see any of that because we've started this holiday hangout at exactly my Chris Hayes watching time usually 5pm West Coast, I'm fully locked in but I'm going to have to wait until after this to watch that

i got like two text threads blowing up on my phone on the side here one is a group of friends joking making jokes about that and the other is the nicks update or the nicks updates which last i saw they're beating the sixers so okay equally as important uh andrew and genevieve what are you

working on john if you want to go ahead and maybe sort of uh figure out our uh kind of queue of folks here andrew and genevieve i saw you toasting what are you working on in the snacks and drinks

department there i'm going to answer that question in one minute but i'm going to say one more little piece of business here that I don't think we've let everybody know before they start opening their mics or raising their hands is we are hoping to use tonight's audio as an episode of tbtl next week hopefully maybe even on Christmas day so assuming that all the technology works and we think it sounds okay this could end up being a podcast so I can't imagine anybody coming on to this zoom call and saying something that they wouldn't be comfortable then having on a podcast but I just wanted to let everybody know in advance that you might end up being even more famous.

Also, try not to do your thing in mime, I guess.

Yeah, also, yeah, exactly. Don't nod. Just actually use words.

Also, Andrew, I just, when you said that, remembered I'm supposed to be recording this here at the Madrona Hill studio. So I've started now recording, but I don't think any of this will be in the show anyway.

I got a backup recording rolling here. I got a main recording here. And I am, as John is getting drunk on power, I'm getting drunk on bourbon and eggnog. I just ran to Sprouts for some fresh eggnog and some bourbon. And so that's what we got going on over here. I was hoping you could hear the clinking. Can you hear the clinking?

I've got a whole situation going on here. I am working on, I've got my Hollerhorn Distilling little glasses that I got when I was back in the Finger Lakes region of New York. And what I've got in there is Canada Dry Fruit Splash, which is, I mean, the technology behind what they can put in Canada Dry now is really something. They're still doing that special at the grocery store, which is buy two, like, 12 packs of soda and get three of them free.

They're paying you to take it at this point. It is bananas.

I can't afford not to get that. And then I've got some of this. I've got a little eggnog going. as well which um and another hollerhorn glass which um i you know i forgot how good eggnog is like i don't consume a lot of it in my life but i've been i've been drinking it directly out of

the carton today because it's that tasty oh and then andrew another thing i saw when i went to

the grocery store today these are the iced oh party animals that i that i that i was mentioning on the show so i've got like a nice little bowl of those so i'm like totally set here i'm very excited. I will say, speaking of glasses,

Genevieve said to me the other day, what did you say about we're using these little glasses that Genevieve got? I think they're little retro glasses. Adorbs. And you said that you're going to let me use them? Or you said you might let me use them today?

I say we. I had to replace a couple that your big man hands broke. I get angry

when I'm drinking eggnog. I understand.

I don't wash as many dishes, so I'm unlikely to break as many dishes. But after we broke two of these little cute like silver rimmed little roundies, I said, sorry, you are on, you're on no touching the round glasses.

Yeah, she takes my ID. I'm like, can I have one of those glasses? She says, yes, but you need to leave an ID that I'll give you back at the end of the night.

I feel like the only sort of Benjamin Franklin quotes dot com thing that I've ever said, that I've ever invented, and I'm still very proud of it, is never wash the wine glass you've been drinking from. Because I have shattered hundreds in my life. So, all right, let's talk to somebody who's hanging out here at the Holiday Hang about a tradition. John, who do you got for us?

Yeah, first up is, I think, a long-time listener to the show. I've seen his name a bunch. We got Lee Lambert. I'm going to spotlight you. Lee, go ahead.

The one, the only, Lee Lambert, Cascadia Bike Club. Close, Cascadia Bike Club. Okay, fine. We'll take it. But consider expanding to all of Cascadia.

We're trying. As soon as we take Western Oregon and B.C. and make it one state, we'll call that Cascadia.

Okay, excellent. They're there for the taking, and I don't think they'd be mad about it.

Yes, well, we can – yeah, so I have a kid-focused tradition. And, Luke, one of the reasons I resonate with you is I grew up in a similar kind of – so it's a kind of status, sparse Christmases and kind of things put together. It was – and so I never got to go see real Santa. And so we'd end up at some random Santa. And so when our kids were born, it's important for us to go see real Santa, which is at the Nordstrom's in downtown Seattle.

Oh, that's elite-level Santa in Seattle. It doesn't get better than that. I can't even afford to see that Santa.

Yeah, that's an A-plus Santa.

Don't even think of him, Andrew. You don't even have the money to think about that Santa.

The real commitment is waiting in the line. And so when our kids were little, before cell phone waiting lines, we'd have to do them. I'd go down at like 6 in the morning.

You'd get your spot in line, and then your family wouldn't even be there yet. You would just be holding the line, as it were, or your spot in the line.

Correct. And we take great joy in it, and I'd show you the pictures, but we're kind of late on getting set up. So trust me, we have a lot of pictures from all the kids, and we're seeing real Santa. And my son is a sophomore in college now. And he asked, do we have to go see Santa this year? And what is the answer? The answer is yes. And I think good traditions. You have to figure out how to get out of traditions. And so what I told him is when he's no longer on our health insurance.

Well, we'll see what happens to the ACA subsidies. Maybe off quicker than he even could know. See, Lee, I love hearing this because with my daughter, I also have all of these holiday rituals that are so important to me because I didn't necessarily grow up with them like we would take her um to the her with this was her mother's idea initially but we stayed with the tradition with the bellevue square santa which is a far cry from downtown nordstrom but we did have the good fortune of having the same santa for like five or six years and then they changed santa's and it was a it was a whole situation because we had all of these photos of her growing up sitting on the same dude's lap and all of a sudden it was like slightly

different santa i mean no disrespect but that's because that's the fake santa everyone knows the

real Santa is downtown Seattle. You get what you pay for. You get what you pay for. But then the other thing was, I remember, because we also go to the Nutcracker every year, another like enforced ritual of mine with her. And there was a period in her teenage years where she was like, are we going to the Nutcracker again? And then in her 20s, she was like, we're going to the Nutcracker again, right? So I'm sure that your kids are appreciating these rituals maybe more than

they're letting on. Yeah, I hope so. Just one little point of longtime listener privilege. You might remember our daughter singing the Let It Go song at Chateau-Saint-Michel a number of years ago. Well, this year, her high school musical coming up in the spring is going to be Frozen, because that's how the world works. And she is eyeing for a...

a big part i look forward to um you know sending a video to the group of her actually re-singing one of these wonderful songs that we had to hear thousands of times incredible that's that's such

a full circle moment don't have her reenact the time that she just absolutely like roasted me remember when we did a picnic far far away from where we normally did it and i forget what the topic was i believe she was instructing me on something that i wasn't allowed to bring up on

the show anymore yeah were we swearing too much i remember her giving us a hard time about something

i might even have tape of it here i know andrew i think um uh you would identify there was too much scatological talk you guys oh yes yes uh poop too much well even kids can be wrong about

stuff and and that's okay well yeah send us that tape uh lee and uh and happy holidays to you and your family and thanks for uh thanks for chiming in tonight all right thank you good to see you All right, John, who do we got next?

Yeah, so it's currently the temperature in St. Paul, Minnesota, is real fuel negative four right now. So I'm going to go. It's been a brutal few days. So I'm going to go someplace a little warmer and go to our friend Laura, who's Laura is down in St. Pete, Florida.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, wow. Hey, Laura. Look at your professional setup. What's going on here?

Hi. Yes, I am. Am I unmuted? Oh, wait.

You're unmuted.

Okay, good. I just had a little box. Sorry. Okay. um yeah so yeah um i am as you can see i'm i do i have a podcast i talk about little um uh political stuff here in saint pete and then what's your podcast called for saint pete's sake oh that's a really good name that's really good thank you yeah so as you can see i'm um i have three cats um that's why my tree is only half lit right now because my girl cat has decided It does look like it's suffered through some sort of an incident.

I mean, it looks great. The part of it that's illuminated looks beautiful.

Yeah, so my little tradition for the holidays is I'm not a huge holiday lover. December is always a little bit hard for me. It's just kind of a hard time of year, and it always has been. So I got into, as most people in our generation did, got into Rent, the musical Rent, when I was younger. And so, like, I listen to the soundtrack of Rent every year. That's my Christmas music. Like, the Café Bohème song, like, obviously 525,600 minutes, all of it. That's my Christmas traditions. Nice.

Now, do you have the rule with that, like I do, with all my Vince Giraldi stuff, where, like, I've got to wait until Thanksgiving before I can go into my listening of my Christmas music? Or do you have those kind of rules around your Rent listening?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, well, you can technically get into it around Halloween because there is a Halloween song in there in the second act. So, yeah, but I generally wait until after Thanksgiving.

Have you seen the musical Rent staged somewhere?

I have. My brother is a was a director for theater and drama in Bethesda, Maryland, over by D.C. So he had he just had so many wonderful, talented kiddos that he taught throughout his years. And his high schoolers put on a production of Rent for one of their summer productions. And I got to go see it. And they did really, really well. They were so well done. Were you singing along the whole time?

Did you have to contain yourself in the audience?

Yes, my mom was with us, and she was like, Laura, it's not your show.

I know what that's like. Love it. Well, Laura, thank you so much, and happy holidays down there. Merry Christmas and St. Pete. And I'm going to tune in for St. Pete's sake. Oh, thank you. That's such a great name for the show, and I want to know what's going on down there. Awesome.

Well, thank you so much. Y'all have happy holidays, too. And I loved seeing Bingo for a moment.

Yeah, he's about to cause some trouble right here. I'm afraid. Are there any lit candles? What do you want to say? What do you want to say? This is a good guy. Mr. Bingo. He's a good guy. He's a little bit jealous. This is sort of his space. It is now, as we have this party, it's what, 5.30 our time? This is the time that Bingo usually gets this chair. What's that word? I think maybe I've said this to you on the show before, Luke. Hot bunking. Yeah, are you familiar with the term hot bunking? and it's not as sexy as it sounds. Yes. Also, this is going to be a very PG-13 rated holiday party.

Oh, is this the like on a fishing boat thing?

Well, maybe on a fishing boat. I know that my mom was a flight attendant. And so sometimes I know flight attendants would hot bunk. In other words, they would share an apartment, but they'd be on opposite shifts. One would be day shift, one would be night shift. So you actually share a bed, but at different times of the day. And that's the situation with me in this chair and bingo. He gets ready for me to do my work And then the chair is his for the evening and we're kind.

That's why we got to kind of keep this moving because this is sort of his time. I do think like submarines and boats and stuff, you see, you hear it there too.

It seems like there are a lot of parts of the day where Bingo feels a tremendous amount of ownership over the room. Because sometimes if you and I are recording late and it's bird time, when Bingo comes in and watches YouTube birds on your computer, he's also quite upset that we're still trying to do the podcast.

Was it off air or on air where I asked you to flap your arm? Who can remember? I said, just flap your arms so that you look like a bird, and it'll just solve all my problems. Yeah, no, I'm getting squeezed out of this place. It's more and more his office, honestly.

Yeah, we understand. John, who's next?

Yeah, let's go to, looks like Sally and Piper. Am I, it looks like, here we go. I'm going to pull you up here, and you can unmute yourselves. Hey, Sally.

Hi. I got on thinking I could talk about some things, but I lost my mom a few weeks ago. i want to share the christmas cookbook they made for us in 2006 and it has all her special holiday recipes in it but grace was going to share something this is my daughter just hi grace

that's a that's a really that's an amazing name for a kid it's my daughter's middle name so i have your name tattooed on my arm but i want to clarify it's unrelated

okay there you go um well i guess i'd say this one's really quick but at my dad's house every year um we watched the ron swanson yule log on the tv wait i don't know what this is i mean i know

what ron swanson is and what a yule log is but what how does this play out okay so it's nick

offerman obviously and he just like has um like he's just sitting in front of a fireplace and it's like a 10-hour video and we watch it to see when it like loops we can never figure it out

Oh, I love that.

The other one is my mom.

So is he talking?

No, he just like sits there.

Oh, I see. So, wow, that's fascinating. And so you can't figure out exactly when this thing loops because he doesn't like he doesn't shift in a way that's perceptible.

No, it's like at least an hour until it like loops. And the other one is my mom every year, she will wrap my present. She doesn't do this for my sister. or my brother but sure um but she'll instead of like santa she'll put random celebrities on there and so the first year it happened she just like put a bunch of 2010 like disney actors so for the past like i don't know six years i've gotten a present from nick jonas

last year she elite jonas he's the nordstrom santa of jonases yeah no she remembered kevin

last year and also nick but she forgot joe which i thought was really funny this joe racer will not

will not stand um now can i ask grace did you grow up in a household or at least when you're doing christmas with your mom where there was a big kind of santa and and you know want to be careful i don't know who all is watching this what ages folks are but there's let's just say there are some households where the santa lore is is really strong and then there are households where the presents are from nick jonas what was like as a kid because for instance i was with my daughter it was important to me that some guy at the north pole wasn't getting all the credit because i was i was i was working hard to buy these presents uh so what was the scene like when

you were a little kid um so here it wasn't like as big of a deal here as it was at my dad's house i'd say so at my dad's house from as long as i can remember um so we do christmas eve there and he just christmas eve so we'll get the we got taught that he like santa would fast track to all the divorced parents and uh deliver theirs first and then go back to wherever they were so

like the santa tracker was always wrong obviously sure obviously yeah norad doesn't know what they're talking about but there's a there's a lot of children of divorce that santa needs to cater to

so we my sister and i would get forced upstairs and my dad would start like or santa would start banging pots and pans for a good like five minutes and then all the cookies would be gone we were told that my my stepmom and my dad would be hiding in the pantry and my sister and i were upstairs and my sister finally got to be downstairs with everyone when she was like i don't know when she she was 10. I didn't get to be downstairs with everybody until I was 14. Wow. Now, Sally, can I

just ask, and again, if it's tough for you or emotional, you can certainly pass on this, but is there a recipe that's in that book?

or is there one that you particularly love from like your mom's repertoire?

So peanut butter balls are the big favorite for everybody. So if I don't make at least a hundred of those, things go awry. But I made also spinach ball appetizers already and we're working on a few other things.

Is everything a ball? Everything's a sphere. Is that kind of how your family does it?

It really is ball forward to use the pathways.

Just again, Sally, it is a family party. I just wanted to remind you of that. Andrew's the one that brought up hot bedding, and now it's a ball-forward Christmas.

I will post some of the recipes to the Facebook page.

Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. Yeah, that would be awesome. As an aspiring home cook, I'm always looking for more recipes. As also now a person who has a dedicated iPad for the kitchen, now I need to stock that thing full of recipes, so I'm getting my $300 worth. Well, Sally and Grace, thank you so much. Sally, I'm so sorry about your mom and Grace, about your grandma, and we appreciate you being here with us tonight.

Thanks for all of us.

Yeah. Happy holidays, guys. I just want to mention that most of my presence as a kid came from Dennis Kucinich. That's what was – growing up in Cleveland, that's what was signed on most of my guests.

I met Dennis Kucinich once.

Me too. I think I embarrassed myself.

How did you fare? Oh, not much better. I mean, listen, I don't want to get into talking about bodies, but I think he was more of an elf on the shelf. I feel like you could fit a Dennis Kucinich just in the corner of the room and he could make sure that none of the kids were sneaking looks at their presents. Is that the premise of Elf on the Shelf? I don't know.

I was actually just talking to a mom friend of mine and I asked if she does Elf on the Shelf and she kind of rolled her eyes and said like, yes, I didn't want to get into it. But my daughter absolutely loves it. And the premise is the elf moves around on its own, you know, when unobserved. And then the kid is not allowed to touch the elf. And so my friend had a little holiday party and her daughter was so concerned that one of the guests might touch the elf and break the rules that she had made a very elaborate sign that was like in front of the elf. Like, this is my elf on the shelf. Do not touch her. She is not allowed to be touched. My friend said she also catches her daughter singing to the elf sometimes.

Oh, I love that. That's pretty cute.

This is my friend Monica.

Oh, yeah. That's great. That's an incredible. whoever thought that up that is really really clever to get the kids to try to you know sort of behave and follow the rules and also that now they're developing a whole relationship with the elf um john who else uh would like to share some holiday traditions with us tonight yeah i'm going

to call up here our friend mick shell you can hey hey buddy hi there hello well i was going to uh

I regaled the time when my dad took us to see the Kansas City Chiefs play in the 1971 game in Chillicothe, Missouri.

Was that a Christmas? Was that like around Christmas time?

It was on Christmas. It was awful. It was snowy. All the Kansas City tins, you know, no. And Chillicothe was not much in 1971. one but instead I want to show you my now beautiful beautiful angel this goes on top of your tree no goes it goes on the mantle when my son was about seven years old we broke the tree topper for the audio only people I just want you to know I'm I'm holding up the most awful feathered white angel you know who

it looks like that um the guy who's like a psychic on telemundo who was very very popular i don't know like constantly i've never seen a photo of him without just like the gauziest liz kind of liz taylor white diamonds kind of camera frame that's who this angel looks like plastic head

here's a little star there's fur there's sequins and when he got to be about 10 years old he realized he'd made a horrible mistake and so for many years when i took it out for the doctor who people i made it into a weeping angel where i put the hands up and this is something from doctor who

those people will know you're getting love in the the com the emojis are flying fast and furiously here on the zoom with other people who know exactly what you're talking about but in 2020

my friend gave me a dr anthony fauci bobblehead oh that's who that is i didn't know that is if that was carl castle or bernie sanders yes and and so now at christmas the angel holds dr fauci so grateful that we all didn't die

And my son is still terribly embarrassed by his angel, but we love it. So that's my story.

So that sits on the mantle, is the Telemundo angel holding, cradling Dr. Anthony Fauci.

He is. And we have an absolute gay pride treetopper. It's, you know, a full pride thing up there. And he really likes that one. That's nice. He's also 29 years old now. but but we love to tease him about that he had to have this angel does it need to brush the ceiling

like the uh no angels uh horn in genevieve's home growing up you guys don't have that same

no no and but when i grew up we had a cat that would always climb the tree beware of me bingo

climbing that tree yeah he's really enjoying sitting underneath it but he's been a really good boy so far he's just a few times kind of touched a few ornaments uh tentatively but he has been really good about just loafing it up on the tree skirt underneath it well hopefully he

won't learn to do this so anyway just make sure all right michelle you as well so nice to see you thank you so much all right next up john who are we talking to yeah going from the twin cities

again to presumably somewhere warm this is jesse who's i think everywhere is warmer than the twin cities we have a christian from thunder bay who i'm not gonna go okay that's that's fair that might be we got jesse in california i hope it's warmer out there in emeryville hi jesse it's not

at all no what's going on what's happening in emeryville right now uh nothing it's it's it's

you guys are happening nice uh it's it's cold it's weirdly cold here in california but we're i'm right by the water it's it's is that bay area is that emeryville yeah it's it's the east bay we're like a weird little town that lives between oakland and berkeley okay gotcha nice yeah it's

great it's wonderful i like your setup there you've got some christmas lights and balls and things you're embracing the balls forward to christmas oh sorry it's uh with all of us oh Oh, it's a tree. Okay. Did you, did you orient, you orient your, your, your zoom framing to integrate the tree in the background for, for visual purposes?

I appreciate you calling me out for that, Luke. Yes, I did.

Good looking out. I did the same thing. Game recognized game.

I, yeah, exactly. I was sitting, listening to a record before this. And I was like, you know what? The tree should be behind me. It shouldn't just be my weird, like, you know, kitchen or whatever behind me.

So yeah, totally agree. What were you listening to?

i was listening to um i don't want to curse a band called f up oh oh never heard of him

a christmas album presumably what's that a christmas album presumably exactly yeah yeah

it was very holiday adjacent um they're like a weird little like punk rock hardcore band but i i had my record player you know what's up andrew yeah sure it means festive up is what i got um

by the way i bought the the charlie brown christmas album i have it on vinyl and i've been playing it here and it is such a hassle because it goes by so quickly then i have to go across the room and turn it over i also have that album on like spotify and sonos i can play it everywhere in the house with the greatest of ease but i have to do this ritualistic thing of

putting it on vinyl for some reason nice i i listen to a lot of records and like it it's it's a pain in the ass like it absolutely is is a a hassle to have to like get up and change it

and everything but i love it you do end up listening to tracks you wouldn't listen to if it were easier to skip and and the whole record yeah yes precisely what's your holiday tradition

you want to talk about jesse mine's pretty simple we every year we wrap presents and we watch the national lampoon's holiday vacation which i think is the best movie that ever uh other than i agree that like top shelf movie is princess bride rip uh you know rob reiner but i agree with that sentiment this week but uh it's definitely um the holiday vacation movie and and it's weird i'm i'm child free by nature and and and just by choice and it's the weirdest thing in the world is every year i have to explain to my family how that one character in that movie i relate to the most is uh julie julie uh louis dreyfus and her husband that's a pain in the butt man like they ruin their stereo and their good time like they're trying to play the holidays too jesse i've been

thinking so much recently about how i would love a standalone movie about margo and todd's origin story subsequent to the living next to the griswolds whatever but i am absolutely team margo and todd can you imagine how much you would hate clark griswold if you live next door to him

what is it what is their famous line why is the carpet all wet i don't know margo could you imagine coming home and the guy's in his hockey mask with a chainsaw

threatening you presumably and randy quaid is rolling up on the regular shitter's full

you've got some bangin olofsson stereo and i just mean real randy quaid in real life i don't

mean the character oh yeah no absolutely the character and the human being in real life is and they just wanted to move to the suburbs and have a quiet holiday together there's nothing wrong with that and i i relate to that a lot and that's what i bring to the holidays so i think

that's a that's a solid choice jesse yeah i did not get into again because of the home i grew up in uh you saw national lampoon on the video cover that was not coming into the burbank household

that whole scene where he's looking out chevy chase on the cover that wasn't that wasn't coming

Well, it's more like when he's – actually, speaking of Melakalikimaka, when he's looking out the window at the swimming pool that he's fantasizing about, I believe there's a little nudity, maybe brief nudity there. Oh, that's not Christmas vacation though, right? They're on a – No, it is. It is. It is? Oh, okay. His Christmas bonus is what he's going to buy a swimming pool with. Oh, okay. Jelly of the month club.

I'm out of it with the bonus.

Another W for Luke. Nice.

i was talking about this with my partner this week when we were watching it wrapping gifts and i was like that moment was the moment that like you know as a growing up i looked at my mom was like i shouldn't be watching this with you like this is weird you know like he's you know it's but i got

to that movie so late but i would put that in my top five christmas movies i think it's just incredible and like when he's trapped in the attic and they're playing that i think it might be also a ray charles song like the rate there's a ray charles version of winter wonderland they play when harry met sally that i think is one of the elite christmas moments in a movie and then when he's up there trapped in the attic watching these old movies you know and stuff and trying on weird outfits like i get legitimately emotional watching that scene every single year dude i

watch that scene and go man it's so sad and my wife will like sit next to me and be like why is he wearing a weird like shower cap and stuff don't take me out of this moment this is how

it's because chevy chase wanted to do that in the scene and the director didn't know how to talk him out of it so would it be funny if i put this on okay sure do it do whatever but yeah it's a great

moment but there's lots of great moments in that movie and i think it should be part of everyone's

holiday tradition it's great absolutely even when it's a little nipply out in emeryville california

emeryville california where it shouldn't be it's california it should be nice and warm and i should be surfing somewhere not talking to you guys so well come on now there's time for

all kinds of different things in life including surfing and being part of the tbtl holiday hang that's right thanks jesse happy holidays merry christmas happy holidays guys all right john

do we have a another contributor here i'm going to show my personal bias because i'm in part because i'm curious as to where i'm going to call them amalia in upstate new york amalia where excellent

in upstate new york i am in god sit up um and half moon i'm not familiar where is that it's about halfway between Albany and Saratoga did you say half moon capital region yes half moon on that when I was came up on the supporters oh well thank

you oh yeah we're reading your name as a donor well Amalia thank you for supporting the show and thanks for zooming in from half moon New York what is a holiday tradition that you that you want to talk about I mean besides the

basic watching muppets christmas carol every single christmas okay um mine was actually one i remembered when i heard about this uh get together and i completely forgot about it and it just popped in my head um when i was a kid me and my siblings we had a nativity scene in our house one of the little tabletop ones and we had all little the wise men all three of them and we put them around the house so it's kind of like a 90s version of elf on the shelf and they moved around the house moved around the living room every day and had an order of where

to go and we had a chart of where they went every year and i love that my sister was really pissed

because she was the youngest and so she'd get the one that was kneeling down that was considered the

That was the low status wise man.

Yeah. I always got the first choice because I was the oldest.

Nice.

But yeah, we had a whole.

Were you going with frankincense, gold, or myrrh?

Frankincense.

Oh, yeah. Okay. I don't know.

But yeah, that was the one I remembered. And I don't know where that nativity scene is now. Probably gone because it was at my parents' house. But it was just, I found the chart when my parents were moving.

now what did the chart keep track of except of the locations

on a circuit every year yeah they had a circuit like it would be on the shelf and then it would be on like in front of the fireplace and then it would be on the kitchen table the wise men were on progress yeah and then at the end of it on christmas they made it to the graffiti scene

i see okay they were on their journey right to to to the uh uh to the manger that is the most

that's the most original and also the most lovely christmas tradition i've ever heard of i love it so much i would like to go back and because we were uh knee deep in uh in crushes uh in my house

really for a friend family that didn't lean into the into the christianness we even have one of

them upstairs really yeah we have a crush we have a crush believe it or not we just have a little tiny one but yeah we're crushing it we were crushing how could you know because i never told you found out i've got a crush on you we were crushed there was we were crushed i'm not

I'm not religious. I just creche a lot.

There you go. Show title.

You got it. Yeah. And yeah, I wish that my sibling, because I'm the oldest of three, too, and I wish that we had had that tradition with one of our major scenes, because that would have been so fun.

That's pretty awesome.

I also have just learned this term creche, which comes up constantly on Shetland when i'm watching it with my parents it illegally pirated uh scottish mystery show and they're always talking about the creche and i don't think i ever knew what they were talking about and now i know yeah yeah i love shetland are you up on the new season have you i have not watched the new season well reach out to my dad he'll send you a thumb drive i also watch it with my dad oh i love it it is uh scenery porn oh that's what i was telling andrew on the show i don't know amalia if you heard that episode but it means just the shots of the it's beautiful it's incredible yeah absolutely well amalia uh merry christmas happy holidays and and thanks again for uh thanks

for being here tonight yeah yeah happy holidays now i don't want to i don't want to put my finger in the scale here but i do need to say that i'm seeing are you are you are you keeping an eye at all on this uh chat that's going on in the zoom luke because there's an uprising going on john Am I right?

In fact, I have 99-plus new chats that I haven't looked at.

Yeah, I just cleared mine, too. It looks like people are getting restless in the chat, John. About what?

There is. I think I'm being cyberbullied within an inch of my life because they're demanding Susie Burbank. Can I, before we get to Susie—

I knew that there was going to be a coup during this broadcast, and I knew exactly who was going to run this junta, And it was going to be my own mother, Susie Burbank, who is the only person unmuted when we were about to start the broadcast and is now aligning the listeners against us to take over the show. What is going on with this?

Yeah, she's, you know, that's what the people want. Can I use, again, drunk on power here and maybe a little bit of bourbon? Before we get to Susie, can we squeeze in one other person just because I love the traditions we've been hearing. A lot of great Christmas traditions. I need another member of the tribe here to share some traditions, just for diversity's sake. And so I'm making an assumption here.

This is the last safe place for DEI, is TBTL.

Yes, I'm going to show host by two white Gen X dudes.

But we will allow Jews to talk about Hanukkah.

Now I feel weird about it. I'm going to call Max from Brooklyn. Hey.

Hey, Max. Max, I've been thinking about you so much lately, Max, because I've been getting a lot of Richard Dreyfuss in my life. because uh i just watched stand by me which sure is is is a lot of i didn't remember how much richard dreyfus uh was in that and he's been you know featured in a lot of like kind of memorials and things remembering rob reiner so yeah now just so you know anything richard dreyfus uh related makes me think of our friend max well i'll tell you right now i'm very

as i continue to drink this whiskey i'll tell you what i'm going to be doing my own imitation

as i slide further down into my chair that makes genevieve bill maher for those just listening

andrew was sinking down in his chair exactly max is building a giant tower of mashed potatoes to fully commit to the dreyfus all right so uh in terms of holiday tradition and thank you

can i give a quick point of clarification the reason i said that is because max was in a production of the shark is broken which is this incredible play about the the stars of the movie jaws who spent a lot of time waiting for the like i don't know if you could say animatronic but the shark device to operate and um and and uh and so max played the richard dreyfus and has helped us out immensely with various richard dreyfus

related audio uh you know imaging for the show so anyway that's the backstory on that

um yeah it was a blast and i'm currently in frigid frigid wisconsin um rehearsing a production of the lehman trilogy which is a whole other thing wow um can people come see this when it goes up where wisconsin anyone in wisconsin i'm uh doing a production at milwaukee rep So anyone near Milwaukee, please come out. I would love to see you and drop me a line.

We've got to get you on Wisconsin 106.

There we go.

Get that lock in that friendship Wisconsin contingent. We do know a guy. What's a holiday tradition, Max, that you love or that you remember lovingly?

All right. So I'm going to go super Jewish on this and give you – I'll tell you, I'm going to give you a very brief Talmudic lesson, but it speaks to the human condition. this is like your sports talk but i'm going to answer your question with a question so so growing up uh traditionally we all see the menorah lit uh one candle at a time the the candles grow through the eight nights but i learned from my rabbi there is another tradition there were these uh uh dueling rabbis these conflicting rabbis hillel and shammai and shammai is the one who ultimately won we all see it go from one candle to eight but hillel is hellel is he like

hillel house yeah absolutely yes that's the guy that's the hillel from hillel house yes that's

that's the hillel from hillel house so he was a a sage a scholar a rabbi and he said that the miracle of hanukkah was that the oil lasted for eight nights which means the oil lasted longer than we thought but it must have dwindled so we should start with all eight candles lit and every night we reduce by one candle and this is the the human spirit part of it i as the obstinate oppositional uh teenager that i was at 12 i decided no i'm doing it the hillel way and i started with everyone else in my family we all had our own menorahs everyone else started with one candle

not me i started with eight so you were counting down you were going like night one is all eight candles lit and then it's going down to one candle on the final night yeah did your um did your parents

allow this oh yeah they were very encouraging this is one of i mean my parents have been very supportive throughout my life but also do they know about tbtl they do i my my dad attempted it

i'm not trying to i'm not trying to recruit them as listeners i'm just wondering if they know how kind of what a factor in your life this odd thing that happens out in the seattle area is

Oh, yes, they know. I have shared the Alvin and the Chipmunks art with them. Yes.

Another thing people may not always know is that along with all of his incredible acting ability, Max is an artist. And that Alvin and the Chipmunks that's on all of your tambourines was a Max Walkowicz creation.

I love how much this is like Tesla versus Edison, by the way. Are you familiar with that kind of rivalry? Like, I really feel like this is a Tesla-Edison situation.

We could go down the whole other rabbit hole on that. I did a play where I basically played a version of Tesla.

I had a feeling you were going to know more about that than me. Like, I've already exhausted my knowledge on the topic.

Max, is this how, like, the only way that I sort of intake information anymore is I get assigned a CBS story on it, and then I know way more about it, an esoteric topic than anyone really cares about. Is that what happens with you with acting roles, basically?

absolutely that's one of the reasons i love uh doing the job i do is i get the opportunity to learn about so many different things go down all kinds of rabbit holes uh talk to lots of different kinds of people to learn about um subjects we on the the show i'm doing right now which is about the downfall of the lehman brothers it's about the history of the lehman brothers bank and uh We had a financial expert come in and got to ask him questions. I get to learn every day of my job. It's one of the great benefits of being an actor.

That's great. What's the name of the show that you're in at the Milwaukee Rep?

It's called The Lehman Trilogy. Okay. It's three actors talking, and don't be intimidated, but it's three actors talking for three hours, but it's a riveting story, and we all play at least 15 characters apiece. It's a blast.

And you don't, like, the memorization doesn't, that does not daunt you at this point. Oh, it daunts me. Oh, it daunt. It doth daunt.

But, I mean, can you just say, like, oh, how do you get a reservation in this place? You always know somebody. Can you just owe you? You could just make it up. You could just really make it up, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Max, happy holidays. Happy Hanukkah. And thanks again for all that you do for the show. we really appreciate you having you as part of the family thank you and thanks john everybody go see max in uh milwaukee at the milwaukee right man that's like a legit theater i always forget how friggin legit max is an actor i know um all right well is this happening john are we

allowing the bloodless coup i don't know i've endured some blood here uh yeah right yeah so we're gonna bring in not just suzy burbank but we have another person in the frame with her oh Oh, there's Walt. Susie, please unmute yourself. It's a family affair.

Hey, Mom, I was a little worried. Hey, Mama, can you hear us? She has to unmute herself.

Okay, Mom, you've got to unmute yourself. Are you able to do that from your end, John?

I can ask her to unmute. Let's see. Let's see, Mom.

If you go up, just imagine you're at Bible study fellowship during the pandemic. There you go, Mom. We can hear you now. I was going to say, I wasn't sure, Mom, if you knew how to do Zoom, but I remember you were doing all your Bible study fellowship stuff on Zoom during the pandemic. So you kind of know

how this goes. Right. Got it. Yeah. Although I was going to say that I had to chat with someone about like what's on the bar that's going to cause us to raise our hand. Oh, you were trying

to find out how to raise your hand digitally in Zoom. Yeah. Then I kept hitting raise, but then

Then it would say lower hand, and I would hit that, too.

Well, John was texting me and Andrew, and he was saying, your mom has had her hand raised for a long time. Are you okay with bringing her on? Oh, wait, she just took her hand down. No, no, no. But now I've learned that that was an accident. You wanted your hand up the entire time.

I thought that was what the completion was when it says lower hand, you hit that afterwards.

I thought it was telling you what to do, not inviting you to do it. I understand.

Yes.

Mom, can I, before we get to what it is that you wanted to talk about, Can I ask you a question that I don't think I've ever actually asked you, which was, what was, like, growing up on Ripley Street in Philadelphia, and I see we have Nancy, who's in Delco, so this will be particularly relevant to all of our kind of Philadelphia, Delaware County area folks. Like, growing up in Philly as a kid, what was the Christmas thing like in your household, growing up with Grandpa Jack and the whole thing? Like, what were they, did you guys decorate the house? I know he used to only get the tree on Christmas Eve day or something.

Yeah, Christmas Eve. like like it's six o'clock at night and the reason we got it that late was because they all the the lot the boy scout lot the um they would knock them down to two bucks a tree ah so uh would you then

so he'd bring it in christmas eve at 6 p.m and then it'd be just like a rush job to decorate it

your uncle chuck and your uncle larry would have to help and they'd walk it two blocks home oh wow

i'll put it on top of a car and wouldn't you also get like didn't you used to also get socks and

underwear or something yeah not very much i used to feel like and maybe that's why i didn't do christmas all that big you know when you were growing up because i am i remember getting calls from my girlfriends and they would like be telling me all they got what'd you get and i'd always be like super embarrassed because we hardly got anything for christmas yeah i remember okay

i remember peter williams calling me and saying he got a car what yeah well he was 16 you know his parents just didn't want to drive him around anymore but he and he was like i got i got a car he was like what did you get and i was like um a matchbox car yeah yeah well i'm sure that the

The tens know the whole story that we didn't really celebrate Christmas for years. But, you know, Christmas, as much as I kind of love it, it's extremely stressful. And it was always stressful, even as a kid. And you were saying how you would go to Craig's and get, you know, you'd have like, you know, three or four bucks or whatever.

Dad, do you have any memory of that sign I got you that said to error is human to really mess things up, you need a computer?

No, not really. I absolutely remember. Wow. so you're right you're right you did because that hurts it was sitting dad we had that remember that

remember you had that computer you had an apple 2e clone that right that was the first computer we had in the house my dad built his own locking cabinet so that if someone broke into our house they couldn't steal our apple clone meaning it was like a knockoff of an apple computer in like what

It was the most valuable thing we had. It really was. Except for us people, of course.

Well, I don't know. It was more important than some of the little kids. I mean, those can be easily replaced.

While we're here, though, while we're talking about computers and potentially computer hygiene, and I don't know if this is the appropriate place for me to have the talk with you, Walt, but you're protecting yourself, right? You're using a VPN. What are you using? Are you using Malvad when you're downloading from the BitTorrents? Are you protecting yourself?

uh yeah i use uh surf shark but i think surf shark is uh chinese so i'm gonna go to an american

wow mom here on christmas eve eve of all these mole mole that is that the the i've seen i didn't know what mole that was it's a mole with like a heart like a hard hat on right oh yeah that is the logo yeah i've seen that logo in places like on the sides of buildings and i never knew what

it was referring to so that's a vpn it's a vpn it protects your ip if you're out there doing legal things that could be misinterpreted as exact problem you can you can log into uh what

is it iplayer or i something another from the uk and you sign up for an account and then you can watch all the british movies you want on your we all knew this is where the holiday party would

would end up. My dad sharing content theft tips with Andrew. Sorry, Susie. Sorry. It's me and Walter here. So, hey, so Mama, as the, you know, I think in our own family, the way that I've always told the story was that you, even though you're saying Christmas was stressful, I think you also kind of liked us having a Christmas event in our family. And because of some of the teachings of gospel outreach and stuff, it was kind of not a thing for a while. But then I felt Like, you were always the one advocating for it. Do you remember when we finally got that Christmas tree from Chubby and Tubby? Like, were you pretty excited?

Yeah, I was glad. I was glad because I didn't have bad memories of Christmas. I was going to say, like, I don't know if anybody has seen or read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It was that kind of thing that, you know, was like Christmas Eve was a really big event because we'd get the tree, you know. And then we put a lot of tinsel on it. We were talking about tinsel earlier, or you were, Genevieve, or Andrew, I guess. But anyway, we'd decorate the tree, and then we would have little gifts, you know. So it was like, and I guess I kind of like took that into my adulthood when we did start celebrating.

You've always kind of thought of Granddad Jack as a real sort of Johnny Nolan type, right? Like Franny Nolan's dad from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, kind of a charming guy with a drinking problem, wearing his little paper dickies and things like that yeah yeah and also like you know you'd give

him a comb for christmas and he'd say how did you know this is exactly what i wanted it was sweet

yeah that's really sweet well that's probably where you get your appreciation from mom because you're very very appreciative when you get gifts and stuff so i mean that like i mean you probably

got that from granddad jack probably i got a lot of things from him yeah i got the alcoholism from

too which i would rather trade but oh well i'll point out 20 20 years sober now mom 21 how many years 19 plus incredible that's that's so impressive mom i'm so proud of you for that

when we were talking about what everybody was drinking okay what do you have it it's awesome

oh yeah um it's a that's a ginger beer that you guys love where do you get your ginger beers from these days uh guess luke uh grocery outlet

you love grocery genevieve's a big gross out fan right

grocery bargain market that's the jingle that's what the brian's called gross out but i think

that's kind of rude well a little bit but genevieve says it with love like you all it takes is an

open heart gross out is my i love gross out you have to go in with an open heart you you have to

be ready to experience whatever it is that they're selling at a deep discount that day you can't go in with a like it would never work for Andrew because you go in with a specific purpose of

what you're gonna get yeah and I don't go into a grocery store just seeing what the universe is presenting to me that's not my move but I will say even as a nickname gross out which I've heard from Genevieve only and again as a fan I don't take it that insulting but like the official name of the discount grocery store I go to is called SARS. It's a disease, and that's what they named it. It's not even a nickname. So I feel like, you know, everything's on the table.

I have a whole thing. I have a thing with Grocery Outlet that the one that's down in Longview that I've been to before, and maybe this is all grocery outlets, but they have all these signs outside that's like more salad for less lettuce or more something for less.

bread i'm constantly trying to think of ads for them that use this kind of format you know what i mean like i'll just find myself walking around the house trying to think like more chips for less uh more cheese less cheddar right that's i feel like that one's just sitting right out there in the open they haven't used it yet but i really i want to try to help grocery outlet to up their game with their little their little kind of get bread if you're low on bread there you go mama

Yeah, yeah. I was going to say that they used to be like way cheaper and they've kind of gotten, you know, up a little bit in their price. A little uppity, you know, everything is more expensive.

Yeah. They used to have a senior discount morning once a week on Wednesday mornings or something like that. Knocked it. They decided. Dropped it. And it wasn't that much. It was 10%. Hello.

Okay. I don't want to. I don't want to.

It's a Merry Christmas, right?

Absolutely. Hey, Mom, I was going to say, I just recently found out as of today that you and Dad are going to be here on Christmas Eve or at my house Christmas Eve. I'll be in L.A. with Addie.

Yeah, I'm going to stop by to pick up that.

If you want to stay here, I mean, the tree will be up. If you want to hang out, you're invited.

That's really sweet. We've got to get back home.

Okay. Because Rachel's here and all. Okay. Well, love you.

But whether you like it or not, I'm going to drop a little gift off under your tree.

Okay, Mom.

I know you said no gifts. I did say no gifts. We had that discussion. Yeah, you said no gifts.

I did, and I meant it, but okay, Mom.

This came from Leavenworth, so it didn't come from the Goodwill and Silverdale.

It's a good thing you're supporting Leavenworth, though, because... Sorry, I talked over your joke.

Where did it come from in Leavenworth, Mom?

What's that?

Where did it come from in Leavenworth?

Oh, it did come from a thrift store. But it wasn't cheap.

I believe it. Okay, I'm looking forward to it, Mother. Okay, I love you both.

Anyway, love you guys.

See you guys later. Bye. Merry Christmas. Sorry to talk over you, but did you hear that Leavenworth, which is, you know, like kind of, you know, Christmas village here in the Pacific Northwest, or at least in Washington state, is having a, you know, having tough times this year because all the flooding.

I've heard the town itself is more or less back to normal, but it's the Highway 2, you know, it's totally washed out. So it's like getting there is a chore.

So good to support the thrift stores there.

anything we yes support the thrift stores of america and nobody's doing it more than my mom i love it uh hey john do we have maybe one or two folks that have been waiting around that we can uh hear from before we kind of climb into our sleigh and yeah sure i'm gonna try to trot out every tired holiday and christmas related kind of uh reference sure sure since you specifically

called her out as being in the delco if i did that right let's go to nancy i think you did

hey nancy where in delaware where in delco are you i'm in media media media pennsylvania yep yeah i think we've have we've read your name as a donor right uh not yet okay okay no pressure wow that's a flex that's what i got to start doing with every person is like oh i remember

you from well no because whenever we didn't get to the dazzling donors yet so when you get there

oh i see i see what you mean right so you have donated i see it because i feel like your your name often causes me to go into this sort of little discursion about the names of places in pennsylvania including media and intercourse and how there's a lot of you got a lot of names

of places where things are doing there's all kinds of funky all in that uh that amishy area

in the middle of the state it's all yeah yeah well what what's behind you by the way i'm looking

behind you squishies so this is um this little buddha squishy okay my son always calls his grandma because it looks like a grandma to him it does a little bit yeah but then i found this one the next year and it's a little mrs claus mrs claus smooshy with apparently the same you know

What holiday tradition did you want to talk about from media or from from media, Pennsylvania?

Oh, OK, you get to choose. Do you want adorable or do you want slightly disturbing?

Disturbing. Disturbing. How about both? How about both?

OK, let's do disturbing. So every year my mom, friends and I get together and we do the white elephants, but we do it in like January. because the theme of Our White Elephants is all the gifts that maybe we won't use. Maybe they're inappropriate for us or just ridiculous or whatever those things are, right?

Is it re-gifting? Is it things that you've received?

Absolutely. It's things like the mother-in-law buying lingerie for the daughter-in-law. It was beautiful lingerie, but I'm not wearing that in front of her.

So that's a thing, do you mean that as, is that, are you? just kind of making up an example that's one example one was a big huge tub of beer cheese one was um what we called a jaundiced jesus it was this beautiful ceramic thing but his face

was very very orange just um you know late stage liver failure jesus yeah so so that's the theme

there we're all re-gifting things that probably should have never been given up to us in the first place but one of us has a family which apparently has taste and knows her well and buys her only great gifts so she participates by looking on like the free sites and just getting ridiculous things like just you know just whatever yes so i would like to share with you my i picked her last

year now now nancy what are the rules on this is this like two steels and it's frozen what are we

dealing with you okay not a single person chose nobody was trying to steal it from you yeah no no no no okay so let me see if I did how to do this excuse my messy house um okay oh wait I gotta

pull it back more hold on what are we seeing here this looks to me like a burled piece of wood that's got a tremendous amount of resin on it and it has like a airbrushed painting of, it looks like, I don't know, like a Sarah Faw, maybe Nancy Sinatra. With a cat in front of you? Airbrushed under a tremendous amount of resin? Looks like Alice Cooper. With a cat? With a cat over her face? Or a husky? Or is that a

It's a bird. Oh yeah, the cat's on the bottom and a blue jay. Oh, there's a blue jay in her hair. You'll be able to tell me what that bird that is, but yeah.

Wow.

So that's, I have had that in my house for a year.

I mean, I assume you have that hanging up in the living

room somewhere it's between my washer and dryer just waiting for this year to rewrap it do we

know the story of the of the of the woman who's being portrayed no this was it this is what we

got this nancy i gotta warn you if you're gonna do if you're gonna bring that much information if nancy if you're bringing that to this year's white elephant you gotta disguise it in the wrapping because it's gonna be too obvious what it is so you gotta have it somehow not obvious Okay, good.

What are you doing? You just have like a large box you're going to put it in?

Well, so I host, and I actually have a couple little pieces from throughout the years. Like our very first one, I ended up with, you know those water globe things for the plants?

Yeah. Uh-huh. Yes. You put them in upside down, and they slowly water them.

Yeah, and they're terrible, and they don't work, and they're a pain in the ass, right?

That's what I got my mom this year. It's used.

I got a case of them the first year. Oh, God. So I still have one left over. So I'm planning this year on doing the little, like, the kitschy, like, you know, you find one gift and it sends you to a different place for another gift. Smart. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Then that way, it could just be behind my couch or something and we won't have to worry about it. Brilliant. Just sending them on a scavenger hunt throughout my home.

Okay, now here's my question, Nancy. Was that airbrushed portrait of possibly Nancy Sinatra? Was that the upsetting one or the heartwarming one?

Well, here, let me show you the other one. So my adorable son, when he was little, he was, I don't know, maybe three, for Halloween, we always did Halloween stuff together, right? he would pick what he wanted to be and then we would coordinate so one year he wanted to be santa claus for halloween solid choice right i know it's been adorable and that year just so happened to be the year where we got snow on halloween and so came these awesome pictures

oh we're seeing photos we're seeing an adorable photo a tiny little santa claus with a lot of beard there's what they don't they don't make the santa beard for a baby so when you put a regular size santa beard on a young child i probably made it too big but

that's also his t-shirt he was wearing suspenders and a and a white and he's how old ish in this three oh maybe four so cute awkward crooked face oh my god it's so cute so cute and he's how old now this this child 17 oh wow 17 my goodness so graduating is he a senior or has he junior okay

and uh and how does he feel about the photo

um he's this is the year where he came back around gotcha gotcha gotcha okay so a little embarrassed of it in his tweens to her and yeah he's he's just making the round and it will

eventually be his tinder profile yeah he will realize the essential adorableness of it he was

asking if i had the the digital copy scan of yet it's already happening

That's too cute That's an amazing thing And then it snowed on Halloween That's really magical It was crazy

Well Nancy, thank you so much For all of your support of TBTL And for being here And good luck unloading that painting If we can call it that Let us know how your system goes

I think you should reconsider that That belongs in the boudoir But it's your boudoir, your choices, I guess. Nothing says balls forward Christmas.

How big is that P.O. box, you guys?

You know what, Nancy? We just shut it down. That's the move. That is the move. Make that Andrew's problem.

That is a threat.

Thank you, Nancy. All right, thanks. Happy holidays.

Thanks so much, guys.

All right, John, maybe one or two more before we skeedaddle?

Yeah, for sure. I'd just also like to put a plug in if there's any Minnesotans in here. Don't ever ask a Minnesotan about the Halloween blizzard of 91 because they make it their whole personality. And I say that as somebody who moved to the state and loved people from the state, get over it. It's a Halloween blizzard.

You got there in the 2000s. 2019.

Okay, yeah.

So it was a long, long time ago, but it sounds like it made a big impression on the folks.

Every elder millennial Gen X Minnesotan has a story about the Halloween.

Did the person who was coming and taking that snowblower from you? Tony. Did he talk about it?

It didn't come up, although I'm sure if I mentioned it, it would have. But Tony, who works at Grumpy's in Northeast Minneapolis, he's a 10. If you're in the area, go by and ask for Tony. Really, really swell guy. As far as listeners to share a tradition, let's go to Kristen, who I believe is up in Canada.

Oh, is this Thunder Bay, Kristen? Thunder Bay.

Yes. Hey, Kristen. Good to see you. Yes. Yes, I'm a transplant here, so I've only been here for four years. But last night we got about three inches of snow, which if you convert is 25 millimeters per inch. So, yeah, you've got to go to the metric system.

Is Thunder Bay, Ontario the kind of place that's pretty much snowed in all winter? or not snowed in but is there once it snows is there going to be snow all year there's pretty

well yeah so so this year has been we we've been getting snow for the last few weeks but um but yeah so the the uh the definitely going to be um iced in so um so i grew up in uh richland washington very different place go bombers and yeah and i i was i was falcon so you know hamford um but uh okay so um the the most astounding thing i learned moving here was that like lakes freeze and you can walk on them and you can go ice fishing which is really magical like like water doesn't freeze in the pacific northwest so so that was a whole uh learning learning it's

the whole premise of the show ice road truckers right which is is this road frozen enough for

these truckers to drive upon one of my most cherished memories of me and genevieve in our very very earliest days of dating was the first time genevieve walked out on the ice on lake

winniposaki right i didn't know ice could freeze i mean i knew it but like i didn't know did it do

that whoop whoop sound when it like sort of cracks in like i don't remember this ice this ice was

like feet thick i mean it was like walking on concrete but i just couldn't get over the idea that I was standing over open water.

Yeah, it busts your mind open a little bit. It busts my mind open, exactly. Like unicorn explosions.

I grew up walking on frozen ice in the Midwest, but this was the biggest lake I think I'd ever walked on. But the thing is, we were there during an ice fishing festival, which means trucks were on the ice. Hundreds of people were on the ice. Snowmobiles were on the ice. And Genevieve is walking out on the ice like she's like she's walking on a tightrope and i said what are you worried about i mean there's a truck right over there it's holding up the truck you're fine and genevieve said i'm very dense that body dysmorphia is real truck is spread out and i'm very dense and i'm gonna shoot right

through and i said sweetie when you're up in like uh like uh the cn tower in in in toronto or somewhere else where they have the glass bottom and you can look down you're like i know yeah

We've decided that that is not for Andrew. The Space Needle has that now.

Well, we can't put you out on a second story.

Kristen, can I ask a quick question about you being from Richland, Hanford area, where one of your parents involved in research?

Yes, my dad worked out at the N-reactor. He was not part of Oppenheimer and all that. My parents moved to the Tri-Cities in the 70s, so it was post-World War II.

But it was related to the project?

Definitely. Well, mostly the cleanup of the Superfund site after that. But it's fine. Everything's great here. I don't glow in the dark anymore because I haven't lived it.

Be careful on that ice. You might be the first one to melt through.

It's like straight through like uranium.

Some kind of superheated human.

Yeah, exactly. So some of the traditions I wanted to share that I've been doing is last few years, I've really gotten in, I love science. So I've really been getting into making eggnog, like boozy eggnog. So the magic of alcohol and inoculation against eggs is that when you take raw eggs and you put them in alcohol and you stick them in your fridge for a couple of weeks with some sugar and some cream, you get magic eggnog. So that's something I've been making the last few years.

and I wait. So you're like, are you fermenting something? Well, it's not fermenting because

it's basically the alcohol is killing the, the, and what's the alcohol that you're using?

Uh, whiskey and brandy and rum. You know, what's interesting is I'm working on a, this is a virgin eggnog because I had the thought, like, I don't, it seems weird to me to put whiskey in it, but also I used to drink a lot of white Russians, which are not dissimilar, right? Right. Exactly.

And as you're trying to have more of a damp January, you're trying to, like, slow down a little bit.

Sure. But so what do you end up with with this whole process that you're doing in the refrigerator?

You make – well, I got – with the recipe, I end up with about two gallons of eggnog. And so I make it – I give it out to people because I don't drink that much.

It doesn't separate, though? Like, that's what I was thinking about is, like, it seems like it's so dairy-based than mixed with a whiskey thing.

So it's just yolks. Yolks. But if you separate the egg whites out and use them for something else, then it tends to be okay. The first year I made it, I couldn't quite get the ratios right, but then I found another recipe that I really liked. So, yeah, it all combines together in a nice miasma of boozy cream and sugar.

What do you do with the egg whites?

I ended up making – what did I make with them? I made some egg white omelets, but you could also make, like, into, like, dog treats or other things. If I was really bold, I'd probably make some sort of, like, meringue. Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

Peaks. It's all about the peaks.

You've got to get the stiff peaks. Nice.

Wonderful. I've solved the problem, Luke, of mixing eggnog with whiskey. I've just gone full whiskey at this point in the party, by the way.

Honestly, I'd be more inclined towards that than eggnog and whiskey, because it seems to me like, well, I wouldn't put whiskey in milk. You know what I mean? Like, I would drink whiskey. It's good, though. I love a little whiskey and eggnog. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's amazing. Maybe I'll try it.

Oh, the other thing is, like, you know, bourbon is officially, just like the, like, champagne is from the sparkling region of France, you can only get bourbon in the United States. Right.

It's a regionally protected product. Exactly.

So then that's why you can only have, that's why I have whiskey instead of bourbon in it. Some of my family members swear by fireball and eggnog.

Oh, I could see that too with a little bit of cinnamon.

I imagine that would be really delicious.

Yeah. It just occurs to me, Luke, I think your whiskey of choice would usually not be a bourbon, right? You were an Irish whiskey person. I was a Jameson guy.

Well, actually, what I really got into for a bit was called Toki by Suntory. So it's a Japanese whiskey and it's very light. and this tells you that you should probably take a moment to think about your relationship with booze which was I liked it because I could drink more of it and be less hungover so I was like you know what this whiskey has going for it is I can have a lot of it and it hurts me less the next day

what I really like is the downstream effects aren't as bad

I don't drink anymore I just drink Suntory that's like my uncle Steve who decided to grow a ponytail late in life we can talk more about that later but I remember he had a drinking problem him, but it was all okay. He stopped drinking. He only drank beer at a certain point, but the amount of beer that this fella drinks was astounding.

Whenever you're starting to make a system for the alcohol you consume, you might have a different relationship than you should with the

alcohol. Well, now I'm just fully addicted to animal cookies. That's my new addiction, everybody.

I know we're a little bit tight on time here, but Kristen, as we say goodbye, I just wanted to say that I did get your latest email. Last year, you sent in a list of vocabulary words that you learned.

during, or at least that stood out to you, during TBTL. So this year we did get your list again. You collected a bunch of vocab words that you heard during TBTL.

I get into my Google Keep list

and stick it in there. The plan is to try to get that into the show in the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned. Thanks for sending it in. Yay!

Thanks so much for being my friendos in my earbuds and being so awesome. I really appreciate that. Absolutely.

Thanks, Kristen. Stay warm up there in Thunder Bay. All right. I think that is going to probably bring us to the end of this session. Again, I've got to get through this bowl of animal, iced animal cookies. And I know you guys have a lot of just now straight whiskey to drink and bingo. And trying out your new dart set, Andrew.

Right, exactly. I actually discovered, Luke, you played Nintendo with the original NES with your friend Peter, right, growing up? You didn't have your own, I don't think, but you played with Peter?

We didn't, but one time he went to India with his family. They were not people who were from the South Continent originally. They were white folks, but his dad was into this guru called Meher Baba. So they went on like a family pilgrimage of discovery, and where they messed up was they left us the Nintendo. I love this. It took like a month, and his scooter, which I crashed. Oh, yeah, I knew that story. And then we had to rebuild. Me and my dad had to rebuild a different version of the scooter and hope he wouldn't notice. and we had the Nintendo in our house for like a solid month and my sister Sarah became one of the world's greatest Tetris players of all time I've never seen anyone play Tetris the way that this kid did so that was the time that we had a Nintendo in the household

the reason I bring it up is because the other day I don't know if it's the holidays I'm feeling especially nostalgic or what it is but I remembered playing a video game maybe it was my first non-Super Mario video game for the NES. It was called 1943, The Battle of Midway, I believe. 1942 came out like five years earlier. They came up with 1943. It's that plane game where you're dropping bombs, right? Well, I think you're shooting. I don't know if they have bombs. Maybe you're like belly gunning or something. Yes, and the other day I found that they have an emulator for that online and I looked in my collection of technological bric-a-brac and I found this usb nes controller and i there is i plug this into my computer and i learned yesterday that i can play 1943 with this almost original looking nes controller on my computer and i have been looking forward to my friday night i've been looking forward to this party but then post

party i am going to be battling midway my friend up down up down a b b hold down like if you want of like super speed on on mario brothers andrew that i might actually get myself that same emulator and then can we because we need to spend more time talking to each other yes i could see us on a friday night just playing that 1941 game on our respective televisions talking about it so great

it really did there was so much i'd forgotten about it yet it also just came flooding back that muscle memory from 40 years ago luke like 40 like what like 38 years ago it just came flooding back so that is that is the rest of my evening in fact i might not even be around for tbtl on monday depending on how well it goes uh it's a christmas miracle vives thank you so much for

hanging out with us we always love having you on the show you're the best so good to see all the tens really happy holidays to everybody between genevieve and my mom being on the show that's honestly the two biggest stars in the tbtl constellation they'll take me and andrew if that's all there is but they'd really like to see they'd like to see genevieve my mom and to a degree tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff john thank you so much for running everything tonight and being so awesome always yeah thanks yeah glad to be here and i just like to formally

apologize to andrew all the uh booze talk uh i put a little more bourbon in my cocktail than i expected so if i was blowing out my microphone earlier i apologize no good you sound great and

also in all seriousness far too early for anxiety leave that for tomorrow you've got all tomorrow

morning to beat yourself up enjoy tonight and and very quick shout out for real because no joke like i i said to luke off air today i'm like i i guess we're just rolling in remember we're just rolling this into this because you have taken care of all of the technical details of this tonight and that goes on john john has a little bit unnoticed and so i just want everybody to know that this is a john sklaroff production and i really really appreciate you making it so easy on us for real

yeah i'll put that on the cv no happy to do it love seeing the chat like people were just having a great time it's been really uh this is what it's all about the show the holidays the community so

it's been really great well thanks again everyone uh happy holidays merry christmas happy hanukkah and uh we i say this all the time but i really mean it we appreciate you we would not be here

you um so thanks again bye everybody have yourself a merry little christmas let your heart be