Muse

Dougie, are you the guy to talk to about them things? Them things, Mr. Salvatore? Yeah, you know, them things on the pillow. Uh, hair?

Jeannie, get some more of them things!

Yeah, all right. You know them things on the pillow. Initials. Them things at night on the pillow. Mints! Yeah! Pillow mints. Yeah, them things. We like them. Yes, of course. Uh, why didn't I think? stupid yes how many would you like how many a lot a lot it shall be tbtl

everybody calls it garbage most people call it a problem we call it our challenge rated

by independent research the most popular west coast program in the history of radio can you

Can you say hot dog? Egg dog. Thank you, baby. Hot dog.

Egg dog.

I was just trying to find E.T. Hey, E.T. Classic Spielberg. Weaver of Dreams. I love when his finger lights up. That's how you can tell he's an alien. And his face.

And his face. I love to peel strawberries. It's nothing like when your lips contact me. A skinless strawberry.

I don't know if it's video games or what, but it's so unfair to, after something like this, to blame people in the backseat or say they deserved it.

Sure, it's done in the name of comedy, but is debasing ourselves really that hilarious? Flashes of Quincy.

Well, alright, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, a show that just might be too beautiful to live. Notice me, senpai, notice me. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. I'm back, baby! Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is an absolutely gorgeous Monday, the 5th of January. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. The January sun is sort of shining down on the mighty Columbia River, which is still at very, very high levels after all the rain, and other sort of precipitation. But we are looking at an awesome show today here at episode 4,634 in a collector series or a collectivist series. I don't know where our politics are on this Monday. Let the fun begin. I was enjoying some holiday times away from the daily sort of drumbeat of the show recently, which meant I've been living a whole life outside of the narrative of TBTL, And I'm excited to talk about it, including some movies that I saw, including Marty Supreme. So who needs a movie? Also, the I would say probably greatest embarrassment I've ever suffered on an airplane. This is embarrassing! Happened to me departing from Los Angeles recently during the Christmas holiday. And then just this very morning, actually, as I was on the treadmill here at the Madrona Hill studio, I had an absolute breakthrough when it comes to how I'm dealing with my garbage cans.

Garbage. All I've been thinking about all week is garbage. I mean, I just can't stop thinking about it.

And by the way, I know one person who's probably extremely excited to hear about my garbage breakthrough. It's this guy. He's the longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. This guy is a four and a half foot tall pile of awesomeness. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Welcome back. It's so nice to see you. It's good to see you. It's been an exciting time. I don't know if you heard tell of Friday's show, but we did something very fun on Friday where we just played literally a 30-minute montage of listener phone calls. It was one of my favorite TBTLs of all time. No offense to you, but the listeners... I mean, I could also, honestly, I could take today off, too. Yeah, no, honestly, we have a few more.

I was not ready to come back to real life this morning, I'll tell you that much.

Is that true? Sometimes you're kind of like hopping and ready to come back.

I was excited to talk to you. I really was. Because what I noticed is when I'm, you know, when we're not doing the show, sort of Monday through Friday in the typical fashion, I have so many moments where I'm kind of like, oh, I want to tell Andrew about this on the show tomorrow. This is happening. We're constantly collecting content. So I miss talking to you. I miss being on the show. but there was just a million other things from like my other job life related to the television stuff and my radio show and all that that I've just been kind of like you know out of office on and I just kind of knew that like this Monday was going to hit extra hard for me as far as like owing a lot of people a lot of emails and and just becoming again a productive

member of society well i found a way of course it doesn't sound like your issue with time away from work is that you get your sleep schedule quite as messed up as mine when i'm left to my own druthers or devices i uh i thought you're gonna say something else that starts with a dr

drinking well or drugs or drugs yes but when you said druthers so much of that is also the word Drug? The first three letters are the same.

Because we did have some shows on tape during the holidays, and just here and there, had a strange couple of weeks, and I was basically on my own schedule. I think, on average, my bedtime was like 3.30 in the morning. That's not the latest. That's not an outlier. I was going to bed between...

There were some 1 a.m.s and some 5 a.m.s.

Oh, there were some, yeah, well, 4 a.m.s. I remember at one point looking at the clock and being like, it's 4.15, you've got to go to bed now. How is it that I have to force myself to go to bed at 4.15? So I'm actually kind of glad to have a little bit more structure. But one thing that I learned, if you're dreading a potentially tough Monday, especially maybe having to actually wake up at some kind of a decent hour for the first time in a while, what you need to do is get absolutely hamboned on Saturday. So that Sunday is just a slog. I got accidentally hamboned on Saturday, which I didn't really know that was a thing, but it is. It involves the Eagles. It usually does.

It involves the Seattle Seahawks playing a pivotal game and playing pretty well, at least from the defensive side, and then being at the Eagles. I had a sense because you and I were texting at the beginning of the game, and I thought I was sad and relieved I wasn't at the Eagles with you because I think I would have gone right down the same path.

Yeah, and I don't even know exactly what happened. And I mean, the game was, you know, at 5 p.m. here. It wasn't like a late night game on the West Coast. But then, yeah, I was there with a group of friends. Well, that's Rolling Thunder for you. Playing darts, exactly. And then it was one of those things where I don't think in the moment I realized how hard I was going until the next day. And like, you know me, Luke, I'm not somebody who's like kind of, I've had a beer or two in my life.

I'm not somebody who goes around like kind of like clutching my head and saying, oh, I don't see you wearing your sunglasses indoors because you had three beers.

It's just not my move, but my gosh, yesterday, I was just like, what did I do on Saturday? So the good thing was, I went to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour, I think before 1 a.m. yesterday.

That's four-dimensional chess, my friend. That's exactly right.

Yeah, so we've all learned a valuable lesson here.

We have, because if you knock yourself down so hard on Saturday night, then it's all you can do to stay awake until about 7, 8 p.m. on Sunday night, and then come Monday morning, like this Monday morning, and you probably got a good night's sleep. I did. And you set your sleep schedule.

Although my goal was to go to bed, like you said, like, oh, I'll go to bed at like 10 or 11 or something. I was heading towards that until it got to be about midnight. And then I was like, oh, let me start working on some VHS tape. So I still went to bed around 1 or something last night, but it's still way more reasonable than it was. And so I'm actually kind of, I'm happy. I'm feeling kind of squirrely today.

Good. No, I am, all in all, I'm very happy to be back. I think it helped that I was listening to the Ezra Klein show during my jog, and he was talking to—this was really hard for me, Andrew. Speaking of podcasts and kind of like, you know, the last two weeks, which were kind of, for a lot of people, holiday weeks, and a lot of the shows that I listen to that are very sort of news-based, they all kind of went on hiatus, whether it was, you know, the guys over at Pod Save America or the Ezra Klein show. I don't think Chris was fully on tape, but our friend Chris Hayes' show, Why Is This Happening, All of these shows that are just like They're all appointment listening for me And they were all on some sort of Modified schedule or kind of Doing evergreen material Until What's that?

Until we kidnapped the head of state

I was going to say Everybody kicked in Yeah right Maybe the ones you're listening to I haven't seen an emergency pod save Did Chris put another episode out?

I'm not sure I was just sort of assuming That maybe that's where you're going with that Sorry to step on you I thought that everybody was going to be like, well, I guess vacation is over.

I think on the TV side, definitely, and probably, I'm sure the daily, I mean, it's almost like, yeah, I'm sure that the New York Times audio, which, by the way, not a fan, not a fan of them bringing everything back in-house. Oh, yeah. Like, all of their audio, so now you can't, because remember, I loved, you didn't, you never had access to it.

No, they never made it for Androids. You had a perfect New York Times app that, like, had all kinds of content in it.

It was great. It brought in all kinds of other, like, you know, magazine content. I was really, really a power user of it. And then they just decided, no, actually, there's just going to be a tab on the regular New York Times app that says listen. And that's.

where all of our audio is going to go but it's just it's kind of glitchy and it's not always super intuitive just is it more ai too how is the actual reading is it different oh you know what that's a good question i still mostly use it for shows that are like audio shows i don't listen to as many articles i will listen to sometimes the great read but i'm still i'm still holding on to i'm like the last person fighting you know in some pacific island about like i don't really like the ai voices and if i start to listen to an article and it's the ai voice i am less inclined to stick with it i'll try to find some but then sometimes you get lucky and they have a real human reading and they've kind of produced it up a little bit and then that's what i tend to gravitate towards but um i was listening to ezra uh this morning do it was an evergreen show but it was one that i felt very uh connected to as we go into 2026 because it was he was talking to this guy who was a sort of a Buddhist monk and has now, I think, co-written with his wife a sort of book. I think he's written a couple of books about just like the uncertainty of life and ways that we can try to sort of make, not make peace with, but accept the fact that life is going to be uncertain as opposed to trying to make, like defeat every bit of uncertainty in life all the time so that we never have to feel that discomfort because that's what I find myself doing. I don't like things feeling uncertain. I don't like feeling anxious. I don't like not knowing how, how life is going to go. And, uh, and one of the things they said was something along the lines of like, life is a question. It's not an answer. So that's what I'm trying to hold onto this week. In other words, we're not going to get life answered and then never have to be worried again. Cause like, there you go. We've answered it. It's like, no, this is, it's always going to be uncomfortable. There's always going to be questions. How do we, how do we figure out how to be okay within that uncertainty? So that is, that's what I'm moving into 2026 with and I'm feeling good. So for all of my Sunday scaries, I'm actually, Monday I'm feeling okay, thanks to a little Buddhist wisdom.

Oh, that's nice. I was scrolling through TikTok or something. I don't know why I'm saying this. I just feel the need to respond to your story. And what I'm about to say, I don't even want to stand behind.

Andrew, you can also just be okay with the uncertainty. That's true. What's going to happen next on the show?

What if I just didn't say anything? Well, you have a long show sheet. You wouldn't even hesitate. But I was going to say, I was just like, I don't know, randomly scrolling through the ticky-tockies, which you know me, I don't do a lot of. I don't like live on TikTok.

Man, I did so much of that during my break.

Oh, did you see that I posted a TikTok? Do my TikTok show up in your algorithm? Whoa, I don't think so, because I would have clicked on that. Yeah, it was, I'm working, what I'm trying to do is instead of doing all the dances that other people are already doing, is I'm trying to make my own TikTok dance. Ooh, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. I think that might really sort of, you know, go viral. It's called the Shirtless Mumbo Jumbo. It's a little thing I do. No, it's not. It was just I was digitizing a lot of VHS tapes over the weekend, and there was a clip. Oh, shoot. I'm already on a tangent on a tangent. You know what? Forget what I was going to say because it was just haterade anyway about me scrolling through TikTok and seeing something that was like, eh, is that Buddhist wisdom or is that just malarkey? But what I was going to say to maybe turn the nose up on that negativity train is me going through VHS tapes. What I found was, so you remember the old TV show Taxi, right? Oh, sure. But I think of that as a 70s show, right? I didn't really look this up. I think it's 70s, maybe into the early 80s, although I'm not entirely sure. But what I found on one of these random VHS tapes that I picked up at a garage sale at some point was a retrospective where it was already the 90s and you had, I can't remember the name of the woman who's on Taxi. I want to say Margot Jenner, and I don't even think that's a real person.

No. Are you thinking about, was it, oh, Phooey. She has, was it Mary Lou Henner? Mary Lou Henner. What did I say? Who, by the way, you know about Mary Lou Henner, right? I know that she was in taxi. She was actually pretty close. You had the M. You had the general length of the name. I don't think Margot Jenner is that far away from Mary Lou Henner. I'm going to give you half a point for that.

I'm trying to figure out what I was even conflating that I ended up with Margot Jenner. But what is the thing? You're probably thinking Margot Kidder. I was. That's what I was thinking.

80s Superman. Yes. And then, you know. Thank you. Mary Lou Henner was one of those people. Actually, she's still alive. I don't want to erase our friend Mary Lou Henner from this planet prematurely. But Mary Lou Henner is a person who has. She's with us.

She is, not was.

Mary Lou Henner has this incredible savant ability to be able to tell you what day any date was. She has a perfect memory. She was on 60 Minutes. This isn't just some weird internet rumor. They did a whole special on these kinds of people on 60 Minutes. them happen to be mary lou henner aka margo jenner and she has a part she has total recall of like everything that's ever happened to her in her life and she's also one of those people that if you said like july 6th 1972 she'd go tuesday her brain just knows that for some reason that

information as long as she was around right she doesn't just remember because i'm looking at this now it says in a 60 minutes interview uh she was interviewed for her superior autobiographical memory ability. She claims she can remember almost every day of her life since she was 11 years old. So I wonder if that's... I would love

Maybe she's not. Also, I might be

Well, I'm reading between the lines here.

I might be conflating the date thing, because there are those people, too, where their savant ability and maybe she just has the perfect memory. Maybe she's not the calendar lady. But there are these calendar people that are really interesting, too, which is they can just tell you automatically what day of the week any date was in the last whatever since we went to this calendar or something.

I'm watching the 60 Minutes now, but I don't know where to drop this, to needle drop it in order to play the proper audio in here. So they're starting with a little clip here of her. I think they're giving her some background about... Does she remember back when her name was Marilyn Jenner? Let me hit play on this, but I want to come back to the clip that I found online. Okay, as you want.

Do you remember it? Oh, that was the fourth episode that we shot, and I had the blue dress on. Alex? See, that was going to be my first question to you.

Oh, what dress? Do you remember what color dress you wore to the party? Yes, yes, yes.

Oh, and I remember Tony's line, how come we can't go to the party too? How come we can't go to the party too? You know, it's like things come back, a line to Alex, you're maybe my best friend. You're maybe my best friend. And he turns around, you know, it's like the episode will come back to me, and I remember

Mary Lou is one of just 10 people in the world who've been tested and proved to have superior autobiographical memory.

October 1st, 8th.

Total recall of every day of their lives.

Extremely impressive.

Delta airline flight 191 crashes near Dallas, Texas. Oh, I know exactly when that happened because it was August the 2nd of 1985. It was a Friday.

Such a gift has never been documented before. And scientists like Professor James McGore are excited about where it may lead.

One of them said it's like a Google search, that you put it in and it just sort of, and there it is. And it's the year and it's the month and it's the day and it sort of narrows in and it goes bang and they've got it. And this all happens very quickly. It just, there you have it.

That's how they explain to you how they do it.

Does he think Google goes chicka-chicka-chicka? I want to set my Google to do that. I would like to hear it clicking away in the background. As it looks stuff up. You know how sometimes when you get stuck in kind of a phone, like a phone help situation, have you noticed those ones where when it's giving you a, like sometimes when it's giving you an AI program or a sort of a bot, but it adds in a typing sound effect? Have you ever got that one? Oh, yeah. Yeah, now that you say that. So that you feel like they're looking it up?

I think.

I think so, yeah But it'll sometimes Be like, you know Hi, I'm Greg, your assistant Can I help you? Reservations, okay, let me check that out Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I have heard that before Like Greg is freaking typing Like Greg has a corporeal form That needs to type Greg, you live in a computer and we all know it

Whoa, I'm sorry about the extraneous audio there I didn't know that my computer was up

So what was the Mary Lou Henner content that you were uploading to the internet the other day.

It was more taxi-related. So basically what I found was not, and I'm going to try sending you a link here because I want you to watch it because what we're doing on this audio program today is analyzing physical body language of two actors in the 90s talking about their acting in the 70s. Because like I said, I think that Taxi was a 70s show, maybe early 80s, but what I found was a tape from, I want to say 1993. Hold on, let me ask Google.

That's me trying to make a typing sound effect.

I heard it. I heard it. It was there. But what I found was a broadcast from 1993 that was like a retrospective hosted by Mary Lou Jenkins. I really did blank on it there again. Mary Lou Henner. So she's kind of like she's the only one who's like kind of modern day. And she's looking back at Taxi, which is so interesting because I'm watching it in 2025, which is so much further in the future. You know what I mean? Like from the point she's recording that to the point I'm watching it, more oceans of time have passed than her look back at something just like a decade or more.

earlier essentially uh but they're showing a bunch of clips and what i learned and i use i want to use this word advisedly but what i learned is that when christopher lloyd is not playing an out of his mind wacky character he was what you might call a zaddy there is this footage of him and tony danza in the 90s what's that i said all caked up just i don't know that he's looking sexy he's he's just like he's got this casual calmness about we think of doc brown right or we think about the weird mechanic that he plays on taxi yeah or just like these really out there characters that are very big but apparently he is like a very reserved guy and that's what this whole clip of him and tony danza they're driving around on the golf cart on a golf cart like just like on some back lot somewhere i i love that clip i i didn't i don't know if i saw that you posted it you were just you were did i watch it you i mean it sounds like you know it and i found it on vhs it's not like i just retweeted it so you might be being fed my i'm being fed your

content yeah it's delicious it's really delicious right that was great i didn't realize that was you i totally saw that clip i watched it and i did not understand that you were the one posting it yeah from a vhs like is your account um not uh like andrew walsh does it have some other or Was I just not clocking?

Well, you should note my avatar is Toomgis. Dang, if I would have noticed that. It's radio-free Walsh on TikTok. I've only got like three videos up there, and most of them are VHS-ed.

Well, that 100% came into my awareness because of you, and I thought that clip was great. I love their vibe.

Their vibe is amazing, right? So again, they're in the 90s looking back at the 70s, so it seems like they're older or whatever. But actually, like, like Tony Danza is just like he's like a he's like a golden retriever around Christopher Lloyd. He clearly loves him to death. But they're riding around this golf cart. And Christopher Lloyd is just like he's wearing like what it looks like a denim or a light blue button down shirt. But it's like the top three buttons maybe are unbuttoned or top two, certainly. But not in a show off. He would just in this incredibly casual way. And he's got his arm around Tony Danza, and they're just reminiscing about how Tony Danza would always talk his ear off, and Christopher Lloyd was a really quiet kind of guy. There's also a clip in there where Christopher – I didn't post this, but Christopher Lloyd said that he really did not want – when he moved from New York to L.A., he said, I will not do television. I am a serious New York actor. Wow, that's funny coming from money! Exactly, and he ends up in that role in Taxi, which then sets the stage. The fuck's the capacitor! But he is so casually sexy, and they both are. I mean, also Tony Danza's just built, you know? And so, like, there's this clip of them, and I'm like, you guys. Like, I was shipping them to, again, use old slang that I barely understand.

I really liked that video. And, again, it's very strange that – because sometimes something will pop up when I'm scrolling TikTok, and it will ask me if I want to start following someone who's clearly in my contacts. so it knows i've at some point stupidly probably allowed tiktok to like also you know scrape my content or my contacts rather somehow yeah i keep telling it not to but then it keeps finding people in my yeah i'll be like hey do you want to follow this person and it'll just be a random person who's in my phone but who also has a tiktok account uh-huh um and i i don't feel like it's done that with you or i would have hit okay but yeah somehow the other day i guess shortly after you'd posted that i was just scrolling and i saw that footage and i had no idea that you were the person and this is one of those times where it's like there's no way i saw it from some other person who also was looking this up on v exactly that's why i got excited there i was like okay

then you really did see no that's like the algorithm fully original event that you orchestrated

like that's not a piece of tape bouncing around the internet yeah you probably saw it and thought

it was actually tomb guess because my avatar is yes you were like oh well tomb guess is just

digitizing tapes again have we i mean with god pitchers and catchers what 35 days away 40 days away it's time for start thinking about tumgis again um because i hope so although baseball is the season for too much good stuff well i will say though don't you feel like tumgis

his silence was violent shadow banned yeah absolutely i have not seen any tumgis content

in a long time i took a picture at the am pm in longview washington where i was getting gassed this summer because they still had some tumgis they were still a poster on the outside of the ampm that featured our boy tumgis and i like i documented it i think i forgot to send it to you all but it was like you know because we've looked this up before on the show we've been to the ampm website i feel like it's one of those things where it's you know it's a sort of it's a state's rights issue it's there's no strong federal leadership on the question of tumgis it's kind of like store by store it's like what do you feel like doing with your am pm are you going to leave up a tumgis

poster uh like in one of those you know sort of outdoor large kind of poster frames that just could sit on the side of a particular ampm for a long amount like does ampm corporate control the turnover on those kinds of posters or is it up to the like the franchisee i do think i had

cousins who used to go around i think they worked for beer concerns or something in the midwest where their jobs were to go to stores and in various places and like kind of update advertising or at least like give the owners or operators like options to like hey you want to put this miller light sign in your store or what have you so but i will say that job but tumgis i mean i do know that it's a national television campaign and he is he was notably absent last year so i don't know

not not on the ampm website last time we checked so it's not like they've it's not this kind of thing where like basically tumgis didn't get canceled as far as we can tell it's not like there, they're not trying to scrub all mention of Tumgis from their website, like Tumgis got caught in some sort of a, you know, law enforcement situation. It's just kind of like, they're just not emphasizing Tumgis, but he's still kind of hanging around in the

background. I'm looking now, I'm trying to find him on the AMPM site now. When I type in AMPM Tumgis, I don't know if this is what we really want to do with our time here, but first of all, if ever there has been a mascot, who would likely be Cancelled it would be I mean his name is too much good stuff

But you let's be honest also Would not meet the Would not meet the legal standard for being culpable I don't think that you could prosecute I think Tumgis would probably End up spending the rest of his days in some sort Of a like a you know An asylum he needs help I don't think yeah I do not think he would be Competent to stand trial yeah that's a really

From Tumgis and also do you remember A kind of a I don't know if it's subtle or not but i'll call it a subtle part of that campaign was that ladies love cool tomb guess like in those commercials they'd be like and they'd be sort of flirting with him you're it's like man okay tomb guess can get it andrew i found it okay he's a zaddy he's all caked up

actually tomb guess might be all caked up if you turned him around his buns his buttocks might actually be like honey buns that's a really good point i found the photo okay and i as a time stamp on it this is what we love about modern technology okay longview washington august 17th of 2025 at 12 57 p.m i snapped a picture of tumgis in a poster on the side of this am pm and actually the poster does not look super crazy like sun faded and it says your phone's full of savings deals and prizes get the am pm app and guess who's holding a smartphone it's our boy tumgis

and he's holding it and that he does have his aren't his hands am i right his hands are sticky buns? Right, and his hair is licorice? I believe that is true, yeah. I am on the AMPM website right now. How do you spell Tumgis again? Is it I-S?

T-O-O-M-G-I-S like too much good stuff?

If you search traditional spelling if you search Tumgis, unless I'm spelling it wrong there are no results for Tumgis on the AMPM website anymore. I think he's being scrubbed. Wow, I wonder. And again, you're right though.

It's like nothing would surprise me as far as off-the-field issues for Tomb Gist.

He feels like the Russell brand of mascots. I mean, easily. That's rough. I don't mean—you know what? I've gone too far. My apologies to Tomb Gist.

Is he the Russell Wilson of—no, because Russell Wilson, for all of his— No. For all of his—for all the corniness of Russell Wilson, I don't think we think Russell Wilson's getting up to anything that would get him in trouble. In fact, even the other day, I was where I was Sunday. I was watching the Giants game and like, you know, famously, if you are a follower of the NFL, like Russell Wilson, he plays for the Giants, but he's been demoted and they've got this guy, Jackson Dart, who's their quarterback, who's kind of everybody loves. And he's kind of, you know, he's a flashy player and he's a, you know, anyway, he's people are all excited about Jackson Dart and the everybody's moved on from Russell Wilson from Mr. Unlimited. And I saw this play where Jackson Dart did something good. And the most excited person on the sideline was Russell. Yeah, I was like, good for you, man. Like, you love to see that. Like, that's that made that made me happy. But he gave me – I think what's going to happen as potentially Russell Wilson has finished his career playing in the NFL, many speculate, I think the more time that goes on, the more that I will reflect fondly on him. The worst of it was like the moments before he was traded to the Broncos. And then pretty much right after that, my feelings around the guy started to improve incrementally every day, and they continue to.

Well, at the risk of getting into it, because I feel like if you and I open the door to football talk after having not talked in a while and a lot.

lot of amazing football going on like um we could slip into some dangerous territory here early on a monday but it is interesting that the seahawks if you look at all of the some of the biggest names in recent seahawks history yeah i think it really speaks well of the organization and this is kind of obvious how they moved on from people at the exact right moment things were just like were wincing like oh no what's going to happen post russell wilson and then look what happens to Russell Wilson, our friend Gino Smith and Pete Carroll just lost his job today there in Vegas. And I, you know, and Gino has something to do with that, too, I would guess. I don't know what his future hold. And you would know more about DK than me. I don't think he had the season that he hoped, but I think that was maybe injury involved as well.

But anyway, OK season, I think maybe I want to say 900 yards or something. I don't think he had a thousand yard season. But yeah, it's like in Frogger, you know, like the Seahawks. and I guess we can assume that's basically John Schneider and then maybe the owners, they jumped off of every lily pad at exactly the right moment.

Yeah, even though you're like, is this smart? I mean, obviously it was a big celebratory weekend for the Seahawks, so I was kind of reflecting on that a little bit this morning, listening to some sports radio and just like, wow, you and I were really bracing. I remember you saying, I was trying to remember exactly how you put it, but I think it may be last season or the season before when we lost the head coach and we didn't really know our future of quarterback. You're like, I think we're going to be in the wilderness for a while. And my God, did the Seahawks luck out. That wilderness did not last long.

Like, my goodness. No, that was, yeah. And we'll talk maybe a little bit later if we get into the Badlands, which I'm guessing we will after having some time apart. Maybe we'll throw some Seahawks chat in there and spoil Marty Supreme. In the moments before that happens, Can I tell you about this frigging mathematical breakthrough that I had this morning regarding my garbage situation? Oh, yeah. So, you know, the way it's set up here at my house, so you come down the end of a road, and there's literally a sign that says end of county road, and then that's the beginning of my little driveway. The sign should say that, end of county road,

beginning of Luke's little driveway. I like that.

Well, we'd have people showing up. i'm a public figure we can't i can't be uh uh you know fully alerting people as to where i am but um so what i have to do each week is is uh so then my my parking little area kind of above my house i that's where my garbage can is and then i take the garbage out and then i you know i try to remember on wednesday night by the way no pressure because actually when i get to the end of this story i think the pressure will your responsibility will be off but like you were going to email me

I was just reminding you. I was texting you. You were going to remind me. Because we have the same garbage night. It's supposed to be Wednesday night. Of course, the holidays threw all that into chaos, too. I don't know if it did in your neck of the woods, but Wednesdays were Thursdays. Thursdays were Fridays. Cats were marrying dogs.

Yeah. It was pandemonium around here. But so what I do is I fill up the garbage can, and I had people over. We had a big family get-together. I had a lot of stuff going on. so my garbage can was especially full so it was one of those weeks where it's like there's no margin for error here like this needs to get taken this week or i'm going to actually be kind of in trouble to try to go another week without it so um and uh and you know there was one night or there's one week that i almost forgot i was out there wednesday night at 10 o'clock you know dragging it up the little hill so i um but up so where i take it is i wheel it up my kind of gravel driveway and then just a little ways up this road and I put it out by where my mailboxes are because also again what happens is like the mail that I don't get the mail delivered to my actual house like they I don't have a mailbox on my house it's it's well I can tell you how many steps it is Andrew it's exactly uh 70 steps up to the mailbox how do I know this it's because I actually I walked it off today because I had this breakthrough not only was I getting into Buddhism on the treadmill, but I was getting into efficiency because I realized something. So my garbage can is still right now up by the mailboxes because I took it up there last week and then I was out of town, I was doing things. And so I just got back the other night and I hadn't gotten around to going up and taking, bringing the garbage down to its kind of like intermediate home. And so as I'm on the treadmill and my mind is wandering as I'm actually being very un-Buddhist because instead of like just being radically present, I'm radically thinking about what going to do right when i get off the treadmill and before we start this show and my thought is because i knew the garbage had filled up inside my house right so i was like okay i'm going to go downstairs while i'm still all sweaty and gross from the treadmill i'm going to get those two bags of garbage out of the kitchen garbage because i have one of those kind of dual ones that kind of holds two things i'm going to walk and i what i was doing it was one of those like like the canoe with the grain and the fox and the chicken and you're trying to figure out how to get it off the street what i was puzzling out of my mind was when i get off the treadmill do i walk up to where the mailboxes are and bring the garbage can down and then go into the house and get the garbage bags and then go back out to where the garbage can is and put it there or do i go into the house and get the garbage and bring it to where the garbage can is going to go I was obsessing over, and this is actually something my brain does weirdly, for a person who's not very efficient and not very strategic, I get kind of paralyzed by these kinds of questions sometimes, which is like, what is the most efficient way to do this? Like, I know that I have this, it's not a problem, but here's the thing, the garbage can is up by the mailboxes, the garbage is in the house, the garbage can is going to come down to its intermediate point, what is the most efficient way to do this? So I'm not just backtracking a bunch.

Okay, so just to be very clear here, and I know you've explained this, but I just want to be very clear. So you took out the garbage at some point, probably for pickup on Friday morning of last week, I'm guessing with the holiday schedule. And you've just left your bins, this sounds judgy, I don't mean it twice, but you've just left them basically at the curb. We'll just call it the curb, right, where the pickup. But you're not going to just leave it there a few more days. You want to bring it back to where it lives.

like well i mean that was the plan now let me clarify something also where the garbage can where the place that i bring it to up by the mailboxes is sort of no man's land it's not really someone's yard it's just kind of this like forgotten little strip of ground where like it's not like it's in front of somebody's house it's not like it's at a curb it's kind of just out there it's kind of just not it's like they don't it's like it doesn't even matter andrew it's like not really uh but it is a place where the cop said no one was gonna miss it the cop said it's

like not even a um yeah but it's a place where i know um but that's where the um the truck pulls up though so it's by a road in some way like it is by a road for our but i want to be clear it's

not like it's not like the can is sitting or the you know the whatever the bin is sitting indirectly in front of someone's like front yard or where someone parks or anything like it's It's this kind of very utilitarian area that's just, like, again, it's just a kind of a no-man's land.

But you don't want to leave your garbage bins there all week long because it's somewhat unsightly. Because why? I'm asking you. Sorry, that was a question mark. So is this the question? Or should you just leave your bins there all the time? Oh, okay. This is the breakthrough.

The breakthrough is if I just leave my garbage bin up there, which, again, And that's why I was going really hard on the explanation about, like, it's not in front of anyone's house. It's not, it's not like, it's, in fact, at most it's in front of my house because my house is the closest thing located by where near the garbage bin is when it's at the mailboxes, if that makes sense. I did the math. It is, right now, it is, if I, if I do the thing where I put the garbage can in the kind of, like, closer to my house area, that's 35 steps from my front door. let's say that two times a week I bring the garbage out and put it in there so that's 70 steps round trip so that's 140 steps but then I also have to wheel the garbage can up to where the mailboxes are which is round trip another 140 steps which equals 280 steps total. A week. Now a week. 280 steps a week for the system I've been using. And you only have one bin? I only have one bin And it's a Krong bin? Boy don't I wish my daughter's career by the way is now at the point where i'm very jealous of her she casually mentioned the other day because she has this job at kcrw and c in los angeles where she was like oh yeah i was introducing krong bin on stage the other day oh wow a kill for that gig um so uh if now what i ended up doing today because i am considering i am pursuing maybe the path of just leaving my garbage can up there is i what i did was i went into the house i got the garbage bags I walked all the way up to the mailboxes, which is about 70 steps up there. So 140 steps round trip. And I put those garbage bags in there. I, my math is that if I basically go back and forth to the mailbox area, basically, if I go back and forth to the further area twice a week, that's 140 steps, two times, it's exactly the same distance. It's 280 steps. It's the same amount of walking as I've been currently doing. There's one major difference. i never have to worry about if i remembered to take the garbage out and i also don't live in an area like i know one of the things that you are concerned about is like people throwing dog waste in your garbage can when it's been no one will ever like somebody did that this week by the way Oh, no, really? Yeah, yeah. Somebody said, Merry Christmas. Like, worst case scenario? Like, in other words, you got your clean bin back, but it had dog poop in it. Yeah, I was pulling it back.

Yep, they were like, Merry Christmas. Here's my dog's poop. Why don't you just hang on to this for a week for me? I could have thrown your whole week off, dude. Yeah, no, but look at me. I'm here. I'm powering through. You are here.

But, so, yeah, so if I just leave it there. By the way, another thing is, in this neighborhood, because there's some of my neighbors that live, my neighborhood is so confusing. When you hear me talk about it, it sounds like I live in rural America, and yet I live in a cul-de-sac, essentially. Some of the other neighbors, they wheel their garbage bin up. They have to get there picked up at the same place mine is picked up. And they often leave their can out for a week at a time. It's kind of a place where people tend to leave these things.

It's kind of like dropping your kids off at school. You have a little area where you're all dropping off your kids, and they're waiting for the school bus. Only these are bins, and they're waiting for the garbage can. And some of you are just leaving your kids out there all week.

some of us love our kids more than some of us have entire Twitter accounts and Blue Sky accounts dedicated to telling the school that we've dropped our kids off and some of us haven't seen our kids for weeks and we're unbothered my child is an honor bin I have one of those annoying ones it's like a dinosaur is eating, have you seen those ones a dinosaur is eating someone's stick family

so let me just ask you this and I think the answer to this

I can already hear I know what your take on this is but please no I don't I don't really have a

take because I don't I can't quite picture it yeah I know it's confusing and and so no I don't have a take other than like whatever is the most convenient but I was going to say like obviously I know you are somebody who like line of sight and view and curb appeal and all of these things are incredibly important to you I mean one of the last conversations we had on the show was about how like just for one night you had to put a cinder block on a tarp to keep it from blowing away and that blew up your dwell vision of your home for 12 hours or whatever. So I know that the answer to this question is like there's not a downside of keeping your garbage bin there because it's unsightly in any way in regards to either your view or people's view of your home, right? So are there any downsides of leaving it there?

I hadn't thought of any until you just mentioned that it was unsightly. In other words, like, I think of it as being, again, and this is kind of slightly confusing because it's very hard to picture all of this, but I was just kind of like, I don't know, people kind of leave their bins out there sometimes for days at a time. It's not blocking anyone's view, and it's not, if anything, like I said, the only person who would really note it would be me as I'm driving home, but it's also not really in front of my house. Like, so I think of this as being an elegant solution because it involves the same amount of walking that I'm already doing, but it takes away this one bad outcome, which is I forgot to move the garbage can from its temporary or from its regular home to its on the day that the garbage goes out home up by the mailbox.

Which is huge, but also I would say the advantage is, don't you kind of, this is maybe rich coming from me, but I don't really enjoy the experience of rolling bins around. I don't at all. I find them to be very awkward. You have to make sure you don't accidentally hit the back of your ankles as you're dragging it. If it's raining out, you might kind of angle it, and then water potentially could kind of spill off into your shoes or whatever. I think that as much as I'm obsessed with it, I don't enjoy the activity of rolling these big bins around.

so that's a second in the plus yeah particularly when the weather is lousy as it is this time of year i guess so i i thought of this as the perfect solution or at least a great bit of efficiency although i guess what it would i guess it would be possible that my neighbors um because the the cluster of mailboxes is three i think it's three or four mailboxes so in other words where my garbage bin would be living now permanently would be next to where three or four of my neighbors have to go and get their mail you know on a daily or every few days basis so i guess if enough time went by and somebody was like i don't like looking at that garbage can every time i come over to the mailboxes that maybe would be the one downside but this is a very i have to say it is a very chill well other than my neighbor Brian getting mad at me once years ago this is generally a very chill area like I haven't had any run-ins with anyone nobody seems that hung up on you know I don't know it's not the kind of place where someone's coming over and going like what are you doing with your garbage cans right now there's no sort of HOAs here there are no rules about what people can do and everyone just seems to kind of live and let live yeah so I don't I don't see my neighbors getting kind of mad about it but I guess that would be the one downside would be if somebody somewhere felt that it was as the youth now say non-aesthetic have you heard about this whole thing about just the way that the term aesthetic has just like in rapid sequence has like, it's totally just like evolved into a completely different word for people under the age of 30?

No, I mean, that's a word that you and I talk about a lot and I struggle with my latent lisp. But it's also a word that is an important word in the dictionary, I feel like. There's not a lot of other words to kind of talk around it or replace it with. So are people bastardizing it or what?

well i mean i i'm just looking up the exact um definition of it and aesthetic i've also always struggled with aesthetic as far as like exactly the right context to use it in but it's become a very very big word for people under the age of 30 like something being non-aesthetic or something being aesthetic but then i saw somebody post on tiktok the other day like they were so bummed they were like, all these pictures of me got taken before I was aesthetic. Almost like it's a verb.

Well, yeah, it's still an adjective.

Which I guess the adjective of it is concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty. But I've seen a couple of think pieces about how the word aesthetic now amongst the younger folks has just kind of become a catch-all for anything having to do with how you look or how something looks or if it is or is not aesthetic or if a person is aesthetic. It seems like it's kind of become, like it's really broadened the use of the word which again we always kind of come back to this if the people that you're talking to know what you mean when you use a word then in a way that word is functioning you know properly or at least that's what the idea of language is to tell people things and if what you're saying is telling someone something then it's sort of fine but it's it's

funny that word of all words has really taken off well it sounds like and i'm only hearing this from you. But if I can interpret what you're saying, it's all you need. And this is going to take it to a really interesting place, which is diagramming sentences. But it seems like it went from being a noun, which is what is the aesthetic here? What is the vibe? What is the aesthetic? What are you putting out there? How does it look? It's like it's a noun, an aesthetic. And it sounds like kids are now using it as an adjective. This was before I was aesthetic, which is not how traditionally how that word is used. I'm not putting judgment on that, but it sort of sounds like it went from a noun to also being used as an adjective now you're exactly right how aesthetic here's from

npr how aesthetic became an adjective ha look at me i should i should work in public radio oh and it's funny the person being interviewed is shane o'neill it's you it's a me andrew sorry who is it oh it's just somebody named shane o'neill who i know from wait wait don't tell me shane o'neill is a washington post kind of style correspondent but yeah uh so there's a little bit confirmation i'll uh everybody go if you want more on this go to uh npr.org and listen to the all things considered interview with shane o'neill but yeah i've i've been noting that because again i spend too much time looking at tiktok which is a real hotbed for this kind of morphing of the

term aesthetic yeah yeah but anyway so back to your bins although it sounds like you want to wrap up there so are there any the only downside you can see would be if a neighbor gets annoyed but you could also just sort of be open to that criticism and if somebody absolutely you'll change it but like aside from that it sounds like job done right like there's no i i think so i'm

gonna try it out i'm gonna see how it goes i mean yeah the only thing about the neighbor situation around here is we don't have like a neighborhood newsletter or whatever you know you guys seem to in your hood have like a little bit of a sort of communication framework that doesn't really exist here so much i mean i have my my immediate neighbors brian and bob we've got each other's phone numbers so we'll kind of i'll text back and forth with them about stuff but the rest of the neighborhood it's just kind of on a waving basis it's just kind of on a like you give them a wave when you're you know driving and they're kind of out mowing their lawn or whatever so it could be if somebody got mad or was annoyed it could simmer for a while because like you know what i mean and the people that would potentially get mad if anyone would, would be the people whose numbers I don't have. So, um, but yeah, I may give it a try because again, it removes,

you could put your name or address on it, I suppose, or this doesn't really solve anything, but I like the idea of googly eyes. What about just getting yourself a couple of big ass googly eyes and sticking out of the top of that thing?

I think that might lighten it a little bit. Anthropomorphize of the bin.

I just feel that it'll go over easier with everybody if they're looking at a bin with big googly eyes.

So you're saying make it more aesthetic? You're saying aesthetic it up? Aesthetic up my bin?

That's what I'm saying. Thank you, baby.

All right. Let's take a moment to thank some of our donors. These are the exceptions.

generous, thoughtful, and honorable people who are donating their own hard-earned money to TVTL, and that is the business model for this thing. The show would not exist without the kindness of folks like Tyler Fournia, who's in Lake Stevens, Washington. Hey, you've clocked some time in Lake Stevens, have you? Sure have. Back in the olden days Because of my friendship with Camaro Kev And also basically JD from the Stack of Dimes podcast Who are from Lake Stevens In the early days of our friendship I feel like we would go to Lake Stevens a lot I don't think I don't think that Camaro Kev was actually I don't think he was like living with his parents Although it's possible I mean we were like 21 so that's crazy to think about that like we were so young when we met that it was totally possible that like that's why I was going to Lake Stevens because that's where Camaro lived because that's where Pat and Dale lived

now is that the Vikings is it the Lake Stevens Vikings that sounds familiar that sounds familiar anyway go you Vikings and

thank you very much Tyler thanks Tyler thanks to Eleanor McNeil who's in St. Francis Wisconsin Oh, how religious. Thank you, Eleanor. Yeah. Thanks, Eleanor. Lisa Arboleda is in Camas, Washington. I know where Camas, Washington is now, Andrew, now that I'm a southern Washington resident. Tell me exactly. It is exactly on the right... I say that I'm in southern Washington. Camas is really in southern Washington. It basically looks across the Columbia River at Oregon and has a lovely little downtown area. The Safeway, Lisa, if you're ever visiting the Safeway in Camas and you're admiring the signs on the gas station, just know that Walt B. put those up.

I want to tell you something. I learned something about it. I'm trying to figure out if I'm doxing somebody by saying this because I don't think the property is in the family anymore. But I was talking to somebody, a very close family friend over the weekend or the holidays or something. and I didn't know that she grew up in Iowa and she was telling me how she grew up there and they still go back there from time to time to vacation in the summertime at a lake or something like that and we were just kind of BSing about it and she mentioned that she grew up in Iowa and that her dad was a farmer and they had this big plot of land or whatever and then she just mentions that and I'm going to mess up his name but the boxer Rocky Marciano Okay. That's a boxer, right? Am I saying the last name correctly? I believe so. Marciano, I think. Anyway, he died in an airplane crash. I did not realize that, but he died in an airplane crash on her family's property, or I think maybe right on the very border.

Oh, the plane crashed into the property.

Yes, or maybe right on the very border so that it was partially in her family's property and partially in another family's property or something like that. And I found that to be incredibly shocking. I also found it to be shock. i don't know why i was so shocked but i also was shocked to learn that it was also just like two hours away from where like uh buddy holly and uh i was gonna say the big bopper the big

crash was yeah yeah yeah the midwest was a rough time i think for uh plane crashes in the in you

know probably inclement weather and all i'm guessing weather so both of these crashes happened about two hours away from each other the the the big bopper one like that isn't really related to the story but what i found fascinating about it was after i talked to this person about it and she was telling me about that i was like so fascinated but then i was also like oh well then i can go on google maps right now and just see exactly where you lived or or what so i like looked it up because you can go on wikipedia and look up his plane crash and it'll give you an actual longitude and latitude right latitude and longitude attitudes and longitudes i can't remember

lat is fat so latitudes go like east west and longitudes go like up and down but what about attitudes it's all about attitudes and latitudes that's what i'm saying but anyway i just the

story clearly has no power out other than it was interesting that kind of that fact got stuck in my head so later on i was like well let me just go on google maps and then with the technology you can kind of walk around a little bit right with the the street view now you couldn't get very close to this particular thing because it's very rural area but it was it was fascinating for me to say, like, okay, well, I've literally pinpointed exactly where this all happened.

Now, what's confusing about it, too, is there was a Rocky Marciano, who you're talking about, who died in the 1969 Newton, Iowa crash, as it's listed on Wikipedia, and he was apparently undefeated at the time. But then you've also got Rocky Graziano. So you got a Rocky Marciano.

Graziano, but then there was a different guy named Rocky Graziano, who was the subject of the Paul Newman film, Somebody Up There Likes Me, which is a pretty famous film of the 1950s. But then you've also got Rocky Balboa, which is the Sylvester Stallone movie, which is not the same as Somebody Up There Likes Me. I mean, it's a wholly fictionalized kind of boxing movie. But I feel like we got too many boxing Rockies for me.

It's confusing. Yeah, well, so is Rocky Balboa, did he choose that name for this fictionalized thing because it's a bit of a composite, maybe? I mean, it is a great boxing name. Yeah, Rocky Balboa. I mean, just Rocky, anybody named Rocky.

Yeah, I don't know if I could, I don't think I would live up to the ideals of being named Rocky. I don't think I would live up to the toughness.

Yeah, it looks like, so Rocky Marciano, if I'm saying his name right, you said Marciano, so maybe that's right. But he was born Rocco, so his actual given name is R-O-C-C-O. And if you're naming your kid that, you're probably preparing them for a lifetime of boxing.

Now, the surname, now I'm reading from the Rocky Balboa Wikipedia page. Okay, so let's see. The inspiration for the name, so this is the Sylvester Stallone character, right? The inspiration for the name, iconography, and fighting style came from the boxing legend Rocky Marciano.

Okay.

Although his surname, coincidentally, also resembled that of middleweight boxing champion Thomas Rocky Graziano Barbella. Oh. Just saying. There's a lot of Rockies out there, and they're all involved in boxing for some reason. Thank you again, Lisa, and thanks to Kyle Burroughs, who's in Auburn, Washington. Kyle Rocky Burroughs. well you know what i do think that um greg the mutt haugen was from auburn washington greg the mutt haugen was a was a famous northwest boxer who passed away last year but who um who i remember hearing he would call in he really was i think from auburn greg the mutt haugen i remember he used to call in to sports line with wayne cody when i was a kid and like talk about his upcoming fights and stuff then we also had a boxer in the northwest named um vinnie panzienza who was known as the pansmanian devil oh that's great vinnie the pans the pasmanian devil visi pazzy and vinnie pazienza i only knew about these guys i didn't watch boxing i couldn't follow it but i just knew they would call in on like a desolate thursday night on sports line and just be like

talking to wayne cody and just be clear wayne cody that was a local sports broadcast right

yeah that's incredible they were just like the guys that were from there was all this weird sports stuff that would happen like they would have a guy named gary gary something he would call in with the long acres report long acres being the the horse track um before it was called emerald downs before they built a new one and called it emerald downs and i just remember this guy gary would call in from long acres like every night and just like be talking endlessly about all the horse because wayne cody now just for people that don't know and i'm pretty sure that gabrielle hung in boston massachusetts knows about this because gabrielle is listening to the show she's donating to the show she knows the history of this the time slot that tbtl occupied in its radio days but like when i was a little kid i would listen to 7 10 a.m from uh from 7 to 10 at night from 7 p.m to 10 p.m i would listen to a show called sports line with wayne cody and i just loved it i would just play it all the time but it was like a five nights a week three-hour sports show and it was like there probably wasn't enough to talk about particularly in the like you know the doldrums of the winter time that's when they would do hot stove league about the mariners the marriage would just be so bad every year it's like how are we going to get three hours out of talking about the mariners off-season moves under ownership by george argyros like just it was rough and then you had wayne cody who really redefined being checked out as a host he because he was also he owned a restaurant in linwood called cody's he was famous for his womanizing his gambling and his kind of just like jet he was just like a he was a man of large carriage who just like would apparently just he had huge appetites in every sense of the word and like he was also the tv sports guy on cairo tv so he would be kind of like doing his sports line thing before he sauntered over the station to do his tv hit at 11 like he was really living

it up hold on hold on i've got a i gotta play the fact that you haven't encoded so to speak some code i haven't come across any cody at all so up your alley dude this is cairo's wayne cody broadcast retirement in seattle this is a tv feature from lake union 1996 say goodbye to

way oh listen to those cheers here he is the man of the hour thank you bud how are you boy this is

It's fun. I know, and it's cold out here. Next time I retire, I'm going to...

I'm going to retire in the middle of July when it's nice and warm. We've been here since 5 o'clock, and we've had hundreds of people come by, and it's like 40 degrees. People are honking their horns. I feel like it's a charity going on here, but it's just retirement day, and I'm happy about it. Everybody's trying to make me sad, and I'm not. I'm going to have a great time. You're not going to miss all of us? I'm going to miss you all, but then I can watch you on television, listen to Bill and Jane and all my friends on radio, and I can sit at home in my BVDs all day and just eat my good tuna salad on my diet.

Okay, I'll try not to imagine that. Now, what is this? Are you signing these?

Oh, yeah, I'm signing them. I'll sign one for you. Will you? Oh, yeah.

Let's go see what some of these folks have to say. Hi there. How are you?

This is the Karen Cam, by the way. Do you know what the Karen Cam is? No. Well, I'm assuming this woman's name is Karen. She must have been a part of the 7 Live team. Your name?

Mary Raich. And you say you watched Wayne for a long time. Yeah, ever since he first came here with the Seattle Sounders. He always devoted equal time to the different sports. A lot of the others, when they had an overlap, you know, especially baseball and soccer, they'd always go baseball and forget the Sounders, where Wayne tried to make it more equal. And I've always appreciated him for that. What's your name?

The original Sounders. That's interesting, too. And the long tradition of people who follow soccer feeling like they're just not. Feeling slighted. They're just feeling slighted. That is the number one characteristic of a soccer fan.

Well, the thing was, it was crazy and full circle that many years later when I got hired, Jen Andrews and I got hired by Cairo Radio, which at the time was only on the a.m. dial, 7, 10 a.m. They were hiring a replacement show for whatever, you know, there had been many iterations of different things, but we took over the sports line time slot. We took over from 7 to 10 p.m. And then ultimately the Andrew Walsh show would also live 7 to 10 p.m.

Well, that is how most people remember that time slot, certainly.

By the time you were doing the Andrew Walsh show, were they still simulcasting? Are they still to this day simulcasting? No, no, 710 AM.

No, that's a sports station now.

Oh, duh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's the station I listen to almost all the time. That's the local sports, yeah.

There was this period of time where we were on 710 AM and 97.3 as they were. But when we started, the very first broadcast of TBTL was strictly on the AM radio, which is, like, wild to think about.

It's funny. I mean, it's not interesting, but I will say it. I mentioned to you that I was listening to 710 this morning, and they were just reminiscing, Brock and Salk were reminiscing about, first of all, what a great sports season. this like literally we just if you're looking at football and baseball and i don't know what happened with the other sports but with football and baseball you're talking almost not at all about the sounders i know i realize i'm really stepping into here my apologies for not following the other sports more closely i don't know what the storm did this year um but uh anyway if you're talking football and baseball like it's the most successful seattle sports season in memory right like two division titles like that's never happened in the same year before i guess uh but they were But Brock and Salk were saying, yeah, it wasn't like 2008, and they went over what happened in 2008. It was something like, I remember them saying the Huskies were winless. Oh, the Tyrone Willingham era. Oh, you remember that? And then also, like, whatever, like, I guess the Seahawks maybe won four games. The Mariners were just miserable or whatever. And one of them, Brock or Salk, said, boy, that was a strange year to decide to start a sports station. And so that was 2008. And you guys were started on the radio in 2008. We were founded. So you must have, you were talking kind of about that exact era of when it was transitioning over from that simulcast, you guys were just talk radio, then they simulcasted a while, then eventually, I guess, Mike wasn't the original program director, was he? Mike Salk? I don't know, but whatever. They decided to start a sports station there during that absolute miserable time of Seattle sports.

Yeah. I mean, the only thing good that happened in 2008 was the election of Barack Obama and the founding of TBTL. That's absolutely right.

Which, by the way, wait, holy shit. Is today the anniversary of TBTL? Oh, wait a second here. I got it on my calendar. It's coming up. No, Wednesday. Oh. Wednesday is, let's see. So this coming Wednesday, we got to do something special. It's January 7th, 2008. It's the 17th or 18th anniversary of the show. Well, it's January 7th, 2008. That's all I know. I'm not going to do the math here because it will be rough stuff.

I've already done too much math in how many steps it takes for me to take my garbage out. That's right, yeah. Yeah, well, that's exciting. And nobody's more excited about it than Kendra Peterson of Seattle, Washington. I wouldn't be shocked to hear that Kendra was listening on day one of TBTL. Lo, those possibly 17, possibly 18 years ago coming this Wednesday. Because that's been one of the amazing things about our listeners and our supporters is just like how long running the relationship is. I had my, I sort of call him my nephew. It's Becca's nephew.

uh alexander who came over to hang out a little bit while i was on my break and like he is just i mean he is a certifiably brilliant 13 year old like the kid is off the charts in terms of his sort of intelligence but also in terms of his just kind of like like he's also a very like fun to talk to like sometimes a kid can get real smart and let's just say it's it's not great for the kid like you're very smart but you're also like a little bit annoying to be around he is so not that it's amazing this kid is just like he said he's a very exceptional kid but he was because he can't they came out here and he was looking around the studio and he had so many questions about tbtl he was his mind was absolutely blown at how long we had been doing the show and about the fact that it's supported by the donors and that it's voluntary and like you know but this is a business model that works so um did you get him to kind of sign up for a big newsletter and

I'm softening him up.

It starts with getting him interested in the show, and then it moves on to, well, you know, donors are how this can happen. Get him on the email list.

That's important.

Get your mom's credit card and read me the number over the phone. We need that security code, sweetie. That's Faze. Don't forget the back, those three little numbers on the back, Alexander. That's the important part. That's where the money is. That's right. So we're on step two, and we'll get him to step three pretty soon, I think. So thank you to all of the other donors that we mentioned today who have moved on to step three and are making TBTL possible. We could not do this without you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I had something happen when I was flying home from visiting Addy in L.A. for Christmas, which, by the way, was really fun. Although, boy, was the weather ever lousy down there. It was like everywhere I went, there was an atmospheric river.

I had heard about flooding I was texting with our friend Kat and I was in such a news blackout that I didn't realize that they were dealing with some real flooding down there yeah it was wet

and kind of a bummer because that had been the case in Washington and Oregon and then I'm getting on a plane I'm going to California to see my kid for Christmas I'm like well this will be nice I'll catch a little sunshine catch some rays and it's like nope also going to be torrentially raining down here I got to see our friend Leanie oh nice she had the i hope it's okay for she's been posting about this but like she had the most interesting gig going in la which is like there's this whole gilmore girls experience that goes on i think it's on the set where they actually filmed the tv show and and um so they bring in all of these performers to kind of like do reenactments and and kind of make this whole immersive experience i think it's on the warner brothers lot or something where it's like you get to live in Gilmore Girl town. And Leanie was like a traveling troubadour within the world of this. So she's walking around with a guitar and a harmonica and she's playing songs, some of them related to Gilmore Girl, some of them not, I guess, anyway. So anyway, that was fun to see Leanie. But so I had a nice time and then it's time to fly home and I'm playing that game that I always do where it's like, am I going to get upgraded or not? And I'll mention it's a pretty short flight from, this was I was flying out from LAX back to Portland so my level of concern my level of anxiety around if I'm getting upgraded or not is directly related to how long the flight is if it's a two-hour flight I don't care uh very much you know it's it's going to be over quickly if it's cross-country if it's a six-hour flight then it certainly improves the experience to get to be up there in first class so this was a flight I was pretty zen about I was in coach but I was in an exit row which is i've often said that the that the front of coach row six is the first class of coach but i would add the exit row is also kind of the first class of coach even maybe more so now

arguably more so i think they've rearranged things i used to want the bulkhead all the time too now i think yeah they even charge you more to be a hero who takes a emergency row seat it does involve

embarrassing public speaking which is you have to say yes you have to give a verbal confirmation In front of God and everyone on the plane That you are willing to Open the door if you need to And as I've said before on the show many times That is the most nervous I get for public speaking Your voice cracks I'm just always like, okay, it's three people Away from me, it's two people away from me It's one person, it's now, yes! It's like so much stress But anyway, so I was like, cool I mean, I'll take the exit Row on a two hour flight I'm good, I'm set But then, and I didn't get upgraded And it was something kind of like it seemed a little funky with it because there was a person ahead of me and I could see you can see a little bit of information about the other people that are on the wait list. Right. So the person that was ahead of me had a sort of a specific first three letters of their last name. And then there was a person a couple of spots back who had the same last name.

If that makes sense. So those people were clearly together. And, and in fact, actually, you know, you know, maybe what it was, no, I'm sorry. I think I was first on the upgrade list. And there was two people behind me that had like a specific kind of thing going on with their last name. And I've been in this situation with Becca before where I've booked our tickets together. And what happens is if you're the person that's got all the like status and stuff, and you're flying with like a partner or spouse or whatever, a kid, if you get lucky and there are like two seats available, maybe both of you will get upgraded but if only one is going to get upgraded you'll actually miss out because they don't want to separate you and that's also just generally how I feel like I'd rather just stick around in coach or have me and Becca both get upgraded rather than just one of us goes up there or just I go up there so what was kind of weird was I saw these last names I was like oh those two people are together but I bet you they're not gonna get two seats so probably it'll end up being me i end up being when the flight is is boarding i'm like the i'm still on the upgrade list but those two names are gone those two names have somehow moved up i was like huh all right well who cares whatever it's a short flight so i'm now in line and i look up at the reader board and would you believe at the 11th hour they have actually upgraded me to first class i'm in seat 1f which is my very favorite seat up there at the front of the plane It's the bulkhead of the front of the boat. I mean, it is. It's the first class of first class. It is the first class of first class, my friend. Like, you are on a window, but also the person next to you does not have to get up in order for you to use the restroom. You're the first row of people that the flight attendants talk to. So if they're running out of the good food, they'll probably still have some when they're talking to you. It's like everything's coming up Milhouse. And so I just remember being like, oh, that was kind of cool. i was not expecting that but i will absolutely take it so i get on the plane and i put all my luggage up in the sort of first oh that was another thing i wasn't checking any luggage for this trip so i've got you know my suitcase and other stuff but it's all with me so i put that all up i get seated and listen i'm going to be honest with you if you're a person that flies and you are generally speaking not in first class which is most of us let's be honest there is that moment of boarding the plane particularly if you've got kind of a crummy seat where you're walking past all the people in first class as you go towards coach and you're just kind of like eat the rich yeah a hundred percent and that's my feeling on the many many times when i'm not in first class which is still the majority of the time i'm like i i'm like these people are so freaking smug up here in first class as i go back to you know steerage and let me just tell you, as a person who's sometimes in first class, you're right. We are smug. I feel qualitatively different as a person when I'm in first class. I feel like all my life decisions have been good, and I feel like everything is working for me. There's something about sitting

up there as everyone else is getting packed like sardines into the back of the plane that does make me feel superior. I wish it didn't. Maybe now that I'm a Buddhist as of this morning, maybe 2026 buddhist luke will not feel that way but 2025 flying home from la luke i have to admit he felt that way and i'm chatting with my neighbor who also i notice is a higher class person than the person i'd be talking to in coach it's just everything is just a little more elegant up there and um so they get the entire plane boarded and it was one of those flights where you know the thing is sometimes off with the like temperature on the plane when it's just sitting it hasn't pulled back yet like they're not running the engine on it so there's no like the air is not moving it's a particularly warm kind of moment on this airplane i'm sitting there i'm waiting for us to push back i don't have a care in the world and one of the gate agents comes down this kid he's like in his 20s comes down and he's got a ticket printed out and he's talking to the one of the flight attendants and they're talking and they're kind of pointing in the general direction of the part of the plane i'm on but i'm not thinking too much of it i've got my headphones in whatever and then the guy comes over and in my opinion with not enough apology in his voice says we had a paying customer this is the exact term he's holding a ticket to show me something it's a printed out ticket and what it says on it is canada air by the way it doesn't say alaska airlines has something to do with a connecting flight and it's got whatever the it's got a sharpie has crossed out what the seat assignment is supposed to be on this canada air ticket and it's written my seat one f is written by hand on the ticket and the guy says to me uh there was a paying customer who needs your seat so we need you to move back to coach and i was like oh okay um well can i go back to my old seat and he goes what was your old seat and i was like it was the exit row and he goes it's like scrolling through he's like no no that seat's gone. Can I interrupt for one quick second here did you say you're talking to somebody who handles luggage about all of this no the gate agent oh the gate agent okay for some reason i don't know why i i was picturing somebody i thought part of the story was that this wasn't a usual person you'd interact with okay so this is the

person who yeah the person who like loads you on but they're not going to stick or this is somebody

who's not going to be sticking around for the flight it's not one of no okay gotcha okay they're

also the person who essentially told me through the magic of the computer like they're the team They are representing the team that told me that I should go sit in seat 1F. You know what I mean? But they're also not the people that will be flying on the plane with me. And again, he comes down. A couple of things I didn't love about the interaction. Again, not enough apology in his voice. Not enough like, hey, I am so sorry. This really sucks. But we had a computer glitch. And now we need to evict you from your seat. I didn't love his general tone. I really didn't love that he said we have a paying customer who needs this as if I'm not a paying customer. as if I, as if I bestow away on the plane. And then the fact that he had given no thought to where my new seat in coach was going to be. They had given away my old seat. They had given away my exit row of coach, which was a seat that I was, I didn't have any problem being in that seat the whole time, but now that was gone. And he didn't seem at all upset about the fact that they had given away my other seat and that my new seat andrew was like row 22 middle that was my new last that was my new seat and what i had to do was stand up and get all of my shit as the entire plane is boarded now we are sitting there and i have to get all my stuff and in front of everyone on the plane i have to wheel all of my stuff wheel my luggage and all my bags all the way to the back of the plane and try to find some new home for my luggage and stuff oh yeah after they probably have already done that thing of course and look like i got caught what trying to sneak into first class there's like no obviously explanation to the passengers on the flight of what's going on now where we like ripped this guy out of first class and had him on this like you know sort of walk of shame to the back of the plane and also throw into that i am now sweating profusely because it's about a million degrees on the flight and i'm super embarrassed and he says to me kind of casually as he's again without enough apology in his voice moving me back to the back of the plane middle seat he says well i'll put a note in the file and you can call them and try to get a refund you can call them and get a refund for your flight so i had that in my head i was like well this kind of sucks but i mean i guess if i get the flight for free that'd be kind of nice so anyway i do the walk of shame back i'm somehow mad miraculously managed to find some place to stuff all my luggage and like sit down in this middle seat between these two nice people where of course they're also bummed because they thought that a minute ago they thought they were going to have that that rarest of experiences where there's no one in the middle seat everybody feels better about that but no there is me and i'm sweating profusely and i'm like hi everyone and like um so and i finally by the way the end of the story is

i finally get home and like a day or two later i call alaska airlines to see about getting the refund on my flight and guess what that guy has not in any way noted this in the file i mean are you shocked to hear nobody knows anything about this this is news to customer service so the guy and i'm gonna blame him the guy who somehow allowed me to get upgraded to first class somehow allowed my coach seat to be given away somehow then made the executive decision to take me out of first class somehow failed to notify alaska airlines that this whole thing went down and it was kind of embarrassing and kind of a mess up on their part do you think that he

even had any intention of doing that or was just saying i don't think so i am my current theory is straight up lying but just kind of like yeah yeah we'll get your money back and then just was just saying it to smooth things over and didn't give it another thought.

And you know who was nice? The first-class flight attendants who came and found me during the flight and were trying to give me free alcohol. Oh, that's nice. That I declined on. But, like, they were like, hey, were you the guy that was in first class? And I was like, yeah. And they were like, that was so bad. We're sorry. Do you want a free drink? And I was like, no, I'm good. And they were like, you sure? I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. But it was, like, at least some acknowledgement from them that had kind of gotten done dirty. But, yeah, I don't think, and I will, by the way, probably see this kid again because i fly in and out of lax fairly commonly he's on my list man

well wait what happened when you when you went to try to get the money back did they did was it just like kind of a pain in the ass but you did get your money back or they're just like no we don't

know what you're talking about i got a person on the phone who sounded like they were the alaska airlines phone equivalent of the guy i'd been dealing at at the gate in lax young on a script not particularly

particularly emotionally invested in the process you know what you mean like you can just tell almost from word one when you're talking to customer service if this person is going to be helpful or not and i don't want to put it all on an age thing but i do think there's a sort of generational component to it sometimes so she was just kind of like um there was no record of this well let me talk to my supervisor but again heavily on script like saying a lot more words than needed to be like kind of like this like well let me talk to my supervisor to see what alaska airlines will be able to do about your inconvenience that you recently went through and we apologize for the inconvenience but like no there's no heart behind it there's no commitment there's no like hey you know what oh boy that sounds boy that sounds embarrassing because i said i was like the main thing about this was it was just really embarrassing to have to go to the back of the flight in front of everyone and also lose the seat i had that was better not to mention by the way they could have told whoever was on canada air sorry we gave your seat away you have to go to coach and you should get a refund yeah i guess they could have also done that difference

right and i need to kind of remember that because you were you're you're on the wait list because of your status level and everything but other people just straight out pay and if you just straight out pay for that first class ticket that gives you the priority i will say like when did

they pay for that ticket like did they pay for it five minutes ago like the whole thing was a

mishigosh it was their mistake um yeah the embarrassment part kind of surprises me i thought the story was going to be like and then you pouted or threw a fit and then and now you regret like I got to admit like I would be bummed and again you're lucky that it was just a two hour flight not a flight to New York or something I would be bummed I mean keep in mind you're talking to a man who one time was sitting in the second to last row soaking in the aroma of the of the bathrooms on the back of a plane whose name got called up to first class Andrew Walsh we have a first class seat for you I say goodbye to my compatriots at the back of the flight I roll my bag all the way up to first class there's a man sitting in the seat that they just told me that was now mine and I said you're in my seat I was just called up here he said no I I'm in my seat my name's Andrew Walsh and I said my name is Andrew Walsh but this man was wearing clothes that indicated that it was obviously him who belongs in first class he was the first class and not me the fact that he had luggage and not a uh stick over his shoulder with a little handkerchief on the end of it really told me that it was he was certainly the Andrew Walsh they were talking about but like that and then having to roll all the way back to where I had come when I said sayonara suckers I'm taking myself on a first class balloon ride I know I was very nice but I mean the people almost applauded me when my name was called because we were so jammed back there like and even that was more fun one of these crabs got out of this bucket yeah right and i had to go all the way back to my terrible terrible seat uh because there was a better andrew walsh on the flight that was a little embarrassing that's brutal i forgot

about that and that is i would put that right up there and maybe even higher because this is kind of like striver there's you're kind of striving and then getting repelled and keep in mind i never

i never assumed i would be in first class i wasn't trying to get first class it was just like a golden

ticket only i didn't even buy a chocolate bar right i did see somebody else do that i think who might have been in first class was they gave the flight that was a big theme on a big plot on this show for many years was giving the flight attendants you know like chocolate that was purchased in the airport as a gesture to hope that they would then like maybe sling you some free drinks or whatever on the flight but um no yours that's rough what you described i forgot about that i just you're right i internalize like this is a whole world that i i overthink about and whether it's about the upgrade or whether it's about what people's perception of me is i just the the the walking back to the back of the like basically having them come up and remove me from first class and send me to the back it felt it was a blow to my ego um that was uh that was painful and also it was just the way it happened because it was like i never asked for this i mean i kind of did i was on the upgrade list but like i would have been perfectly fine with in fact i wouldn't have loved it but i wouldn't have even cared about being the middle seat in 22 like if that was the only seat that was left it would have been like i mean i could have dealt with almost every version of this other than this one and then which was to be told you should sit here and then to be told oh actually like what i felt like happened was somebody and what i really needed to do is get eyes on the person who took the seat from me i would like to see what their vibe was because what i think happened was somebody read this kid the riot act because i just not i've never seen this happen on a flight before where somebody has assigned a seat and then their the plane is boarded and everyone is sat and then they come up and they go now you can't have that seat anymore like that the whole system is

to keep that from happening like if someone else was in line in front of me because if they had bought the ticket then it's like well then they would have just been in line in front of me or that would have just been their seat how that seat was given to me and then taken away from me and the fact that 1f was written in sharpie i think that somebody possibly a canadian ticket again canada air was what was printed on there blue jays fan probably it may have been vladimir guerrero jr could have been george springer like i think that they alejandro kirk

oh man he didn't even need first class alejandro kirk could sit anywhere on that plane his feet wouldn't touch the ground this is my aziz and sorry um could could i jump on the chocolates

thing because i was thinking about you and i don't unfortunately i don't know if a lot of people saw this hey dummies video because i accidentally included it in a newsletter a couple of weeks ago that got flagged as phishing and spam for some reason um but i if you you might recall this i had an appointment to get my enhanced id right so this is for the real id act in order to to fly here in washington state our old uh driver's licenses don't work at the airport anymore you need to carry either this enhanced id license or your passport and i've been using a passport But I needed a new ID anyway, my old photo, my old address, everything about my old ID sucked. So anyway, so I go in, but the first appointment I could get, if you'll recall, was I believe 345 on Christmas Eve. So not only on Christmas Eve, but like near the end of the workday on Christmas Eve. And I don't know if I had this notion when I was first telling you about this, but at some point I got the idea I should take them a gift. I should take them some chocolates or something, whoever it is. and so but of course i don't i i had this plan for weeks but i don't think to go get the chocolate until christmas eve and so i go to this chocolate place that i've used by my house before chocolatey i want to say it is and they're the woman who runs it is a very very sweet woman

but wait can i ask you a question yeah did you go to there do they have a retail location on aurora

or is that just a production facility it's kind of it's a retail location very small little place Some of those places are coffee shops as well. This is not a coffee shop. It's just because I think there's maybe three or four around town, one in Wallingford. This is just a very small little chocolate shop that I used to get some chocolates at sometimes.

Well, you know the production facility used to be my dad's business, Signworks.

Oh, no kidding. Well, I don't think this would be the place. No, this is very, very – well, it's very close to what we were talking about where the pharmacy used to be. Was it Bregman's Pharmacy?

Yeah, it's between 77th and probably 77th and 78th on Aurora.

Maybe. Do you think that maybe all I saw was the small shop and in back of that or something, there's a big production facility? Because it didn't have that vibe to me.

Yeah, no, I think the setup there, the layout is, sorry, this is so in the weeds, but it's so- It's interesting if that's literally your dad's shop that I buy chocolate at. I think that the, yeah, 7708 Aurora Avenue. so basically what you have is the where you went in and bought something it used that used to be called don's group attire that used to be this because it's kind of like a long narrow kind of like a narrow little like um sort of i don't know what you call it you know room thing in the building that used to be called don's group attire that was where this guy um he had his little business and that would be like if you were like you know if you wanted for your remax agents if If you want everyone to have matching blazers or something, you get it at Don's Group Attire. And he was just like a little old man with a comb over who just looked like a guy who ran a company called Don's Group Attire. He then moved his business somewhere else. And then my dad's partner, a guy named Jerry Lee, the sign painter guy, literally was living in there, which was not legal. That was like his apartment for years. And then next to it is where SignWorks was, which is a big, a much larger open kind of warehouse space. And so Chocolati, I think, has both spaces. So I think you went into where the retail is, but if you were to go next door, you would be in Old Signworks, which is where they maybe make the chocolates.

I just sent you a photo of the lobby of this place, or like the little area where you go into shop. And you can see that they just took these, like, display cases for chocolates and stuff and sort of blocked off the front. So it seems very small to me in there.

It was Don's group attire.

But they're blocking off the rest of the building that I do not see. So you can see where I was.

So if you went out the back, so if you went through the back door of this little building.

Like if somebody were chasing me, if somebody were chasing me and I run in, I'm like, I need your back door.

But you would go through the back door and then you would be in a little kind of like enclosed loading dock area. And to your left would be the SignWorks production area, like the warehouse where I would use.

the Burbank sawdust sucker where I would like vacuuming and sweeping up sawdust a day and night. And if you went to your right, you would actually go into my dad's office, which was exactly like this. You really have a front door to Aurora. So where my dad's office was, which was like where the sign cutting computer was that would cut vinyl letters and stuff. And it had like the world's funkiest bathroom because there was zero feminine energy had ever entered this area. So it was like, And there was like, it just smelled like burned coffee and guys who needed to visit the gastroenterologist. Anyway. So you went to Chocolati to get to DMV some chocolates.

So all the point, I go to Chocolati, it's closed. All of it is to say so. But I'm looking for a place to get some chocolates because now like my appointment is in a few hours. And I'm like, well, I kind of give up and I'm kind of getting into my like, this is the problem with Christmas. Everything closes kind of mode. I didn't stay there for very long. I used to have that attitude for the entire holiday season when I was a younger, angrier man. But I'm like, oh, you know what? You know what's close to here is that fancy grocery store that I can't afford called PCC. Do we know what PCC stands for, by the way?

Yeah.

I was wondering.

People's Cooperative Co-op or something?

So it's like a nicer, you know, it's kind of an upscale. Very small, the one on Aurora, but kind of an upscale.

Puget Consumers Co-op.

Really? Okay. But, you know, so it's sort of that kind of vibe, like kind of an even maybe nicer Whole Foods or whatever. So I'm looking around in there to see if they sell chocolates. And I'm picturing what I want. I don't want some elaborate, you know, like heart-shaped box or something like that. I just want a little like kind of token. What about edible underwear? Yeah, so I was looking for some edible. That was next door to. Oh, I'm sure you can find that on Aurora. Yeah, you certainly can. I could draw you a map. But anyway, so I go into PCC, and I feel like too many of my stories lately have been about what a cheapskate I am. But I grab a little box of – it's not C's Chocolates, but it's another local brand chocolate maker. And they have a little box of caramels, and maybe there's like, I don't know, nine of them in there. It's like a perfect little square, right? And it's not too big. I'm like, oh, I'm going to grab this. And I'm like, oh, well, how much is it? And it's like $45. And I'm like, I'm not spending $45 on nine caramels, you know?

So then I'm looking for, God bless them, the DMV person.

For the DMV, right? Yeah. And I also don't even know if they, you know, they might just take all, if anybody brings them food, which is probably pretty rare, maybe just throw it away anyway, because can you trust the public? So anyway, so I look around and I see, well, they have these much smaller things. I'm like, it was like some sort of a, I don't know, peppermint-y chocolate thing, but it was some sort of fancy candy that was made locally. And I bought a box of four chocolates for $20 before tax. Wow. And he ended up seeing it on the cruise. He's like, are you in love with somebody at the DMV? I'm like, no, it's all they had. But I did sort of, in the back of my head, think.

What a great cover story, by the way, for you. What is obviously an affair.

What is obviously an affair. But I was sort of, in the back of my head, like, each one of these little bite-sized chocolates is $5. Like, you know, I only bought a package of four of them, I think, or something. But it was a small little gift package. I'm like, well, this is the best I can get right now. So if I had been, I feel like Chocolati, I could have gotten some pretty nice stuff that, I don't know, when I buy it from the woman there, it's just she's so sweet and she's always, well, it's a chocolate shop. And it's just so nice and like kind of accommodating or whatever. And so I had wished I had gotten my shit together. But I still went to the Washington Department of Licensing there in Shoreline, Luke, and I've got my little box of chocolates and I'm like.

So you didn't go to the, well, you say Shoreline. So because there's a green, is the Greenwood one still there?

That I don't know. It was the one that was to get this enhanced license thing. So where it was, was, you know, where like that town and country grocery store is. It's like where Greenwood and Aurora kind of meet in a weird angled way. That's like a no man's land. It is. And I'm starting to learn, but there's like a Chipotle there. So that's got, it's got an anchor Chipotle. But I'm starting to learn like, and also I want to check out that town and country. We have a friend who works there now too. And so like, I'm kind of, I'm interested in that area. So anyway, that's where it told me to go at 3.45 on Christmas Eve. And I got into this into the Hey Dummies video because I wanted to record a before and after. So I'm in my car and I'm holding up the chalk because I'm like, I'll see if the DMV people will take this. I go into this place, Luke, and I get there super early because I didn't want to be late. I'd been on the calendar for so long. I arrive at 3.30, I want to say. Let's say I get in the parking lot at 3.20. I do my little Hey Dummies video. I go into the DMV at like 3.30. I still have 15 minutes before my specific time slot, right? And by the way, I'm confused why that's the time slot because I go in there. That was the first available, right? I go in there. It is empty. It is just row after row after row of empty. empty chairs and all of the bank you know like all of the like little teller areas maybe there's 20 of them and they're all numbered where somebody can maybe help you they're all empty i go and somebody greets me at the door and says do you have an appointment i'm like yeah for 3 45 but i'm early and he's like well we're not really busy he hands me a number he hands me he's like when they call your number go up to that that like window he hands me the number as he's handing me the number they're calling my number i go in there and i did give her the chocolates and the woman she was a younger woman than me i'm gonna put her in her maybe 30s or something and uh she accepted the chocolates uh great graciously but but not over the top but she what was your what was your rap like what did you say as you handed her the chocolates i said hey sweets uh no i um i said i went in there i had all my paperwork too right i was so nervous about like getting rejected so I go I am in love with somebody at the DMV and I want them to reject me but I just did not want my paperwork to be rejected but I go in and so I say hey I'm here I'm early I have an appointment at 345 Andrew Walsh and I said also I think I just said here I got you this these oh I do think I said fancy chocolates because I think I wanted her to know that they were fancy but what I liked about it was since I got at the grocery store it was a sealed box you know there's no tampering or

whatever and the same for the flights that was one of the things when we were trying to bribe the oh yeah always make sure that it's sealed so they're not like smart yeah i didn't know you

guys had talked about that i remember that but you know i was a big listener at that stage when you guys were doing that but uh what i liked about it was so the size of the box of chocolates was like i don't know maybe the size if you were to put a cigar in a box you know what i mean so it's kind of a long narrow box like this and so i was glad that it was something that i could hand through the window pretty easily i think i think there was glass between us i can't remember so i just sort of slid it through and just said, hey, since I made this appointment so late on Christmas Eve, I thought I would bring this for you guys. And I know I pluralized it as well. That's smart. I was wondering about that. So it didn't seem like kind of too creepy if she wanted to share it with her coworkers or something. And that was it. She said, oh, sweet. And then we just go on with our business. By the way, I got out of there in five minutes. I got out of there at 335, 10 minutes before my appointment was supposed to even begin. And I will say, when I was saying goodbye, I'd already forgotten about the chocolates. And she gestured. She said, oh, and thanks again. And she sort of held them up a little bit. And so I think that it did land. I don't think it I didn't you know, it wasn't transactional in that I got anything special. I don't think this woman would have given me any different service had I not showed up with chocolates. But I'm glad I did. It would seem like a little gesture at 345 or as the case may be 330 on Christmas Eve.

and i guess like you know the the moral of the story is that there certainly probably are actually a lot of things like that that if you if you could do them on december 24th like the place you don't want to be december 24th is like uh where i was which was the crate and barrel in beverly hills that was a an absolute mob scene because basically i was trying to get addy this coffee machine called a mocha master it was real jingle all the doors andrew because earlier in the week my holiday plans were a little unclear but like eventually we because i didn't addy had some stuff going on then her plans changed and then we ended up deciding okay i'm going to go to la and she really wanted this particular kind of coffee machine that's kind of all the rage right now called a mocha master and i could not locate one of these things anywhere. I couldn't get it shipped to me in time. I couldn't find anyone that would ship it to the hotel in LA. And I basically called, was calling around and I found that the crate and barrel in Beverly Hills, California had literally one left. So I said, can I buy it over the phone and can you please, uh, you know, store it away from me and then I'll come pick it up on December 24th when I arrive in LA. The woman said, sure. But she, I don't think she was trying to be a hassle, but she was like the best way to do it is to go through the website and buy it and then make sure it's going to this store or whatever make sure it's the one you're buying it from this store i was like okay so then i went under the crate and barrel website i did the whole thing i bought it and um it was confusing though because i'd been on their website looking at so many different stores like that was looking at the one near portland thinking maybe they'll have one and i could just fly with this coffee machine or something so i get off the plane on december 24th and like i get in i'm getting in an uber and we're on our way to this uh crate and barrel which is the opposite direction of my hotel it's kind of far away it's actually not a cheap uber ride so i figure i'm going to call this location and just triple check they've got my thing and i call them and the guy that i get it's like we have no record of this i was like he was yeah we don't what's your transaction number or whatever i go well actually i never got a confirmation from crate and barrel for this he goes yeah we don't i don't see that order anywhere and i was like um well i have i can look at my credit card and i can see that i was charged by crate and barrel for this coffee maker so i was like so i know that i paid for it so that indicates to me that it should be here and he's like yeah we're looking around i'm not seeing it and um and then i was like okay really well so then i i get finally get to the store and i go in and i'm like i'm showing them my that i have a charge for it but we can't find them looking for it and then finally i'm like yeah i made the i i made i bought it online but i bought it from this store i was talking to someone that's what she told me to do and he goes oh it was an online order i thought you ordered over the phone i was like no i was on the phone but ordering online he's like oh that's a different

area so he goes and he gets it he finds it oh no shit i didn't think that was how that was gonna work out it was in the online whatever but the other thing is um i had been i had talked to somebody different on my phone call in the uber on the way to the crate and barrel of the many things i was discussing with them i was like hey can you gift wrap this if i go if we can find this box can i get it gift wrapped and the guy goes the other person i was talking to on the phone says we can either just put it in a crate and barrel box for free or we can wrap it it's twenty dollars i said okay well let's just first see if we can locate this thing so i get there my point is that this crate and barrel was a zoo at 4 p.m they probably closed at 5 p.m christmas eve day everyone who's coming in is in a panic there's like the online order pickup thing and everyone just like everyone's stress level in there is at 11 because it's the it is literally the 11th hour for doing this kind of stuff the workers are obviously burned out that i'm also assuming that the clientele at the beverly hills crate and barrel is especially chill especially chill about having their needs met so these poor employees are just probably fried from just like dealing with entitled beverly hillsians all you know for the last week and i was trying not to be one of those people but first of all i get in there and again we cannot locate the package and i'm like and he's like i'm sorry i just i don't think that the order went through i was like i know but my credit card got charged so i know that it was purchased and we're going around and around and then i finally we figured out that oh the whole time they were looking in this other area over the phone purchases instead of through the internet purchases and they locate it so now the guy brings it back out i was like oh this is amazing thank you i go well now can i just go ahead and get the box um you know i'll just take the free box to kind of like have something to present this to my daughter and and the guy goes uh yeah i don't we don't have any boxes that are this big and i was like oh well the person on the phone said that we had that you guys had boxes for this. He goes, uh, I don't think we have boxes this size. I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll take the $20 gift wrap. And he goes, it's $30 for the gift wrap. And I go, oh, I'm the phone on the way over here. He goes, oh, he goes, when did you hear it was $20? I go 10 minutes ago in the Uber. And then finally I just went like, you know what? Let's just say the guy's name was Sam because he had a name tag. So it was, it went from like, sorry, sir, we don't have this order. you're wrong to like oh we do have the order we were looking in the wrong place to we don't have a box we can put this in even though the guy told a different guy told me there was a box to the gift wrap is actually $30 not $20 to well who when did they tell you it was $20 and I was like I felt this thing in my brain starting to break where it was like I was gonna have a classic holiday meltdown where it was just kind of like so much of this has been more of a hassle than it

needed to be my friend like the fact that we couldn't communicate about where it was the fact that there apparently aren't boxes the fact that it's not 20 but in fact 30 the fact that you're not just gonna throw me a bone here and wrap it for 20 you don't even like crate and barrel you

work here well i wonder how much agency they have there because you want to talk about the total opposite end of this and i'm sorry if i'm cutting you off no please that's most of the story this i I mean, this is so, so silly, but I was at the pet store, you know, like PetSmart or whatever is in my neighborhood, and we have a little toy for Bingo, which is pretty classic. It's like a plastic stick, right? And then you can screw on various toys on the end of that stick. We have one right now that's a bird that makes kind of a squeaky sound when you shake it, and he loves it, but he also loves to chew on the stick itself, and it's a plastic stick. It's not one of those nice little metal ones that whips around. It's a different kind of toy. all of that is to say bingo is chewing on it it loses its structural integrity I can tell it's about to break so I go to buy a new one we buy a new one I don't know every few months or six months or something and so I go to PetSmart I buy one it's literally $1.99 or at least that's what it's marked as on the shelf I buy it I bring it home I'm trying to take the sticker off it by the way why are we using nuclear grade sticky to put a price tag on a cat toy I'm sorry.

It's unnecessary. It's like they have the tag wrapped all the way around it. You know I hate sticky stuff. I hate stickers. That's why I always have – I need a belt that always has a Goo Gone gun on it. So I'm, like, getting ready to, like, I'm taking off –

Now, Goo Gone versus Goof Off.

Yeah, Goof Off is stronger. The same company? No. Goof Off is stronger. I think Goof Off is stronger. I think it's good for, like – I think it'll take – I think it's going to be more quick to take paint and stuff off as well. I have them both. I mean, you need them both. but anyway so i'm actually taking the the the price tag off of this thing i haven't gotten to the the goof off part of the process yet but as i'm taking it off the the top pops off if you can picture it's just a shortish black stick then on the very end is a little threaded little capper right and then you're going to screw the toy onto the thing i didn't even buy the new toy we had the toys i just needed the stick but the the the threaded capper that you would screw the toy on comes right off and I'm like well this isn't going to be good for a cat who's going to be grabbing at it constantly like it's totally useless it's only two dollars I don't really care I'll just go buy another one but I'll see if they let me return it so and I'm totally fine if they just say hey listen you can't return this thing for whatever reason but I had used Genevieve's loyalty card number or whatever so when I go in I'm like hey this is a new one this is my old one the old one's broken can I just swap this out and I mean I was hoping the guy would just say like sure like don't even look it up right and there's a line behind me this is like two days ago there's a line behind me i'm just like it's a two dollar thing just let me swap it out or tell me no and i'll buy it he's like okay let me look into your account then he finds it he finds proof that i had actually bought this first one and then um and he was fine he wasn't like rude about it he didn't seem super you know it was whatever he's fine but uh then he he's like okay i've swapped it out and then he said and i see as he's like marking my return or something it was on sale or something he's like it says there's a 17 cent difference so in other words the one that i had bought might have been on a tiny markdown or something so i now owed pet smart 17 cents oh my god in what world did this fella say does does this fella not say they say there's a 17 cent difference don't worry about it get out of here kid yeah i like the cut of your jib so he just

waits for me to pay 17 don't spend all that free moolah in one yeah and i'm like and i didn't say

anything about it i was just like uh okay like i guess so then i'm like do you take cash i'm like i don't want to put 17 cents on my credit card for some reason i guess i'm just old um so i gave him a dollar and then i walked around the rest of the day with like tons of that jangling around in my pocket so anyway it made that longer than it needed to be well no but like also is it possible

to just remind me did you have the receipt i didn't have the receipt i never take a receipt

there because i always use a loyalty card number and it's genevieve's phone number i don't we might both have our phone number registered it doesn't matter sometimes i was wondering about this

supposed discount like if it was one of those things where he could actually observe that you

had gotten it on sale yeah that's a good point too why wouldn't you just acknowledge the fact that this was a sale item that I bought that was defective. I wasn't returning it because I didn't like it. It was a defective item.

Right, and a lot of times, if you try to return something and you don't have the receipt, what they'll do, and let's say it's on sale or whatever, like sometimes if there's a discrepancy, but you don't have a receipt, they have to go with the cheapest price because they have to assume that you maybe bought it on sale, and they're not going to give you, you know, they're going to give you basically the lowest price that they've had offered of late. But anyway, yeah, that $0.17 is so weird.

what a weird number and yeah i mean luckily i was going in there with like absolutely no expectation no expectation if you think about it this two dollar stick is less than half of one of the chocolates in the box that i gave the dmv it's one bite it's one bite that is less than half of a

chocolate here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man It's not from a female.

All right, we didn't get to Marty Supreme today, but maybe tomorrow we can get into that. I actually have a lot of thoughts. I saw that on Christmas Day. Me and Addie went and saw it in Los Feliz. And I know you saw it as well, too.

New Year's Day for me, so it's a real holiday film. I mean, there's not a lot to say about it. It's a pretty straightforward ping-pong movie. Yeah, sure, absolutely. I mean, we can dispense with it pretty quickly, I would think, or dispense with it pretty quickly. Hey, I mentioned to you that on Friday's show, we did what I really think was lovely. We heard from tons of listeners, and we got our voicemail line down to zero unheard voicemails. Oh, man. But I did have a couple of voice memos in my email that I forgot to include. So we will share those throughout the week. But for today, since we've gone so long, I just want to share this email that we got from listener. I'm trying to see if they want to stay anonymous here. No, it looks like they signed it.

from listener Denise and this is in response to one of the top five lists that we talked about last week which was a top five list from our friend Jamie down there in Mississippi who was talking about top five underrated adult fears or something like that or like basically things you can do in adulthood that has a negative effect or whatever and one of those adult fears is accidentally including somebody on an email list that doesn't belong on that email list and then sending something in the body of the email that could be embarrassing. And I got this note from Denise that says, I wanted to add my own story about including people you shouldn't on emails and texts. My son was on the swim team in high school, and I was a parent volunteer on the booster board. We mostly organized fundraisers for various activities, like the end of the year banquet my husband died during the season i'm sorry denise and my fellow board members sent me a lovely wind chime unfortunately i was included in a group email about how they were going to recoup the money that they had quote blown on the gift i felt terrible when someone realized that i had been included on the email the person who had written that reached out and couldn't have been more apologetic she was mortified and i actually felt worse for her it was a careless mistake but we've all had them no real harm was done and all was forgiven but i it does sound like just like you're reading one of those things and i'm sure the person didn't mean it that way but you don't think that the gift recipient is on the email so you just say well how are we going to recoup that money that we blew on the wind chime and you're somebody who's

in deep grieving yeah and you're just what a punch to the gut i mean i just honestly though what kind of a person would see that as would use that term blown even if the person wasn't seeing it yeah like i would never that's just so insensitive to like everybody involved like what a weird like that person sounds like on even if they were apologetic now i don't know if the person who was apologetic to denise was the person who also had used the term

blown yes it sounds like so yes she said the person who wrote that word when somebody really when the person who wrote that word couldn't have been more apologetic i mean i guess it's better to

be apologetic than to not be apologetic but the fact that you would ever use that term around this particular topic even when you didn't think the person was on the email is so strange to me that you would see buying a wind time for somebody who's grieving as blowing money yeah i know that's crazy to me like i would have a very hard time i mean amidst the grief and everything that obviously uh denise was was i'm sure going through that would be tough for me to um ever sort of like have any kind of normal relationship with that person again because i would just be like that's a dark view into how that person perceives people and grief and and you know finance and stuff like that but that's old luke though new luke buddhist luke understands how you can forgive honestly you know what that would be let me think about this you're absolutely right that would 2026 luke would be like um you know this this is the situation it's all about radical acceptance this is the situation that's happening right now i'm embracing suffering you know it's like i'm you become okay with suffering you become okay with the fact that this person on the swim team email was being rude so step back from a reactive state um speaking of change in 2026 and i'm sorry to

bury this all the way at the very end of the show and yes this is the very end of the show in fact i'll even start the music to make sure that this is wait no i was gonna i was gonna play this oh the badlands okay then i'll hold off i discovered something today regarding the new year that is very exciting um my dad sent me a new far side off the wall page a day calendar for christmas which is very very sweet because i had um taken a photo of one of the recent comics near the end of 2025 and i sent it to him and i think i gave him the idea oh i should get him another calendar for christmas so anyway uh he had one sent to me and yesterday or i guess on saturday or whatever i tore off fridays and and there was the saturday weekend cartoon i don't remember what it was and it doesn't really matter and then i just left it there for a couple of days and then today i went to tear it off because today is monday and i realized oh 2026 off the wall calendar we're We're getting 52 extra comics this year because they have a separate page for both Saturdays and Sundays. It used to be one comic would get you through a Saturday slash Sunday, just one comic a weekend. No more, my friends. No more. You want to talk about shrinkflation? This is the opposite. This is unshrinkflation. This is what Gary Larson— I think it's just flation. It's flation. It's swellflation is what it is. I mean, while the world is selling us less for more and more. Gary Larson is out there giving us more for less.

But is he, is Gary Larson making, where do we land on this? Is he making new Farsides as well?

Not that are ending up in the calendar. When Jane Goodall died, he had a famous cartoon that involved Jane Goodall from way back in the 80s. And so when she died, I know he released a new one that was sort of a tribute to her. So I think, you know, he's getting up there in age. Do you remember the story? he kind of revamped his website and said my my grandson got me like a digital sketch i don't know if it's just an ipad but some sort of digital sketch thing and now like he had just lost the urge to draw and cartoon but with the new digital world he just was really enjoying it and so he was making an occasional very occasional random cartoon and posting it to his website but when we talk

about the calendars and stuff it's all just retro okay because i was going to say the the adding of like an extra day or you know including a new one for sunday or not a new one but another one i mean they are going to go through they're going to burn through the backs like the you know their their inventory yeah 52 times well not 50 times faster but there's gonna be 52 more that are presented in the 2026 calendar that then presumably they wouldn't use for 2027 so he must feel

confident about his inventory 50 yeah 52 more right is that what you said yeah yeah i think I think that's right yeah anyway yeah but I don't know I just think he has such a big back catalog and they're all repeats anyway so okay you know whatever

can we close things out speaking of humor with something that I just just came through my Instagram from the onion yes it's a it's this now pretty famous picture already of the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro being walked in handcuffs along you know after the the helicopter lands in like Brooklyn or wherever he is, you know, he's being escorted by the DEA. Nicholas Maduro charged with felony oil possession.

Right? Once again, the Onion

nailing it. The last voice that we can believe in this fractured media landscape is the Onion. Nicholas Maduro charged with felony oil possession. What a world, huh?

Hey, Luke, you know what? I just realized that well, I realized about an hour ago, but I held my tongue. Something went wrong with my computer. We've been on Wi-Fi this whole time. Oh, I heard you kind of glitching. You glitched once or twice. That's on me, my friend. But we got through it, though. It was okay, and tomorrow's going to be even better. It gives us something to build on. Absolutely.

We don't want to come out with perfection here on January the 5th, because it doesn't leave us anywhere to go tomorrow on January 6th. Are we doing this again tomorrow? Yeah. I mean, I'll be here. All right. Definitely. I just wasn't sure. Well, thank you, everybody, for listening. Yes, we will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. so please if you can stop by for that in the meantime everybody have a great Monday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

power out