Muse

we messed up and we want to apologize to our followers many of you probably know our account

as rick's shoe warehouse the go-to wholesale shoe seller for when you need many shoes at once for a lot of people but out of full transparency we want to announce that our ceo and fearless leader rick housel has in fact gone missing so here's what happened two weeks ago when we arrived to work our shifts as sneaker leader and open toe kit and heel associate at rick's shoe warehouse the go-to wholesale shoe seller for when you need many shoes at once for a lot of

of people. And we noticed Rick was gone. So instead of panicking, Aaliyah and I took initiative and we decided right there and then to helm the entire company. I knew a guy, my old neighbor, he had a

French accent and everything. So, you know, he was legit. And he did a digital company of some sort. So I pitched to him, Hey, what if we changed this company to something like that? Immediately,

I was on board. Overnight, we rebranded Rick's shoe warehouse as consider this media, a digital company that does media and digital stuff like that. We heard many comments from where's Rick to I thought this was a shoe warehouse company and we want to say we hear you. Unfortunately we

have no formal education as well as we don't have any informal education so our money for the company is going down every day in a large amount and that's not great because we have a big old office and a big old amount of employees. So follow along as we figure out how to try to run this company so that money goes up. We've already had so many good ideas like we are going to do partnerships and digital and just overall we're going to be striving to doing all kinds of stuff that companies do every day and actually please leave a comment about what kind of things a

company you know does tbtl are your honors at this time i'd like to present a compilation of general misjudgments half of them fear-based half of them just stupid i'm gonna let you in on a

a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it. Don't wait for it. Just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a cat nap in your

office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. They said it would happen, and it has. The day when you could go to the movies without leaving your living room. You wouldn't have to go to the movies the movies would come to you well they are coming to you if you're ready for them via videotape cassettes you can play on your home television set but if what you want is superman the only way you can get him is illegally from a modern day pirate the man or beast that i

run from ain't been born and his mama's already dead when you get there this is what you will see on the screen and there's a little arrow over there you press it and congratulations you're

listening to a podcast well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live intelligence for your life my name is luke burbank i am your host i'm so excited about this show coming to you today from the uh the shores of lake michigan very cold very snowy but very beautiful chicago illinois snow snow and more snow where we are here to uh participate in the wait wait don't tell me project but in the meantime my goodness is this ever a beautiful city when you look out you see the white caps on lake michigan and it's really something it's really a way to bring you episode 4641 in a collector series let the fun begin and um i watched the ricky gervais the most recent ricky gervais stand-up comedy special the other day and i was i had complicated feelings about it and then i saw an article that said did ricky gervais win a golden globe for the worst stand-up comedy

special of all time and jokes are really difficult i must say i felt seen my uh sort of experience

with watching it it checked out with what these people were saying on the internet and so we'll talk about that a bit and we'll also talk to this guy we will welcome back the longest running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ship he is andrew walsh he is joining

me right now good morning my friend good morning luke thanks for covering for me while i was gone I had a wonderful weekend, and I live in Vegas now.

Uh-huh. Is that how much fun you had that you now are deciding to? I mean, the taxes are low.

That's a big part of it for me because, you know, and I also have a lot of investments. You're notably a low-tax guy. I am. That's kind of when I look for a place to live. I'm looking at Florida. I'm looking at various places. Do you know that I had a memory when I was in Las Vegas? As you know, I had a memory.

never been to las vegas proper before you and i drove through las vegas we drove through the strip in an rv one time in a in a very and stopped at a place called like what was like five aces or something something i've looked it up before we've used it as a show pic we stayed in an rv park next to a jerk called five aces yeah it wasn't five aces though it's it's so close to that but but I'll look it up later. It was three aces and a jack. Maybe six aces. It was three aces and a jack. I had three jacks and a jill.

Oh, is that a group out of St. Louis?

If you're ever at the Hampton Inn, I suggest you check them out. But I had a memory in Vegas.

So you've never really, really, really been to Vegas?

Nope. You and I did our best national lampoon imitation as we drove a clunky RV through at one time then stayed in a trailer park and then um and this was my first real trip although it reminded me that there was a period of my life a time in college where i actually very seriously considered spending a summer living in las vegas and being how do i not know this about you i don't know man because i'm full of surprises and apparently repressed memories i didn't come that close to it it was just an idea floated by my mother who was living there at the time she was newly a flight attendant and i think the first place she moved after leaving ohio was i think las vegas is where she was based and she was trying to get me or floated the idea of me being a valet she's like there's so many valet jobs here and you know this is the late 90s i think and i was just like it sounded exciting and adventurous i remember being pre-nervous about it already being like boy driving other people's cars uh were you at kent state or post kent state This is Kent State. So this is like in college. It was like a proposed idea for something to do during a summer, I think. Make a lot of money, spend the time in Vegas. And I wonder how much of a different person I would be now if I had been able to pull that off. For some reason, I was not able to pull it off. So this trip, this weekend.

Based on your experience the last few days there, I mean, did you, did you, did Vegas sort of, how do I put it?

Did you feel connected to Las Vegas, Nevada? I, this is just so boring. I didn't get into any fights. I didn't have any bad, bad. There's many ways to be part of the Las Vegas environment. You choose your road. I choose mine. I mean, I mean, just from a TVTL content standpoint. standpoint like you know how sometimes this is such a weird and probably inappropriate place to take it but i am somebody who's never been on any kind of um kind of uh medications that affect mood or whatever or is it psychotropic ssris yeah is that the right term are you teasing me i don't know i believe no i think that's that that's the typically the term for those kinds of drugs yeah Anything that helps you, you know, and I know that some people who are maybe prescribed them and have hesitancy about taking it is because they're worried everything is just going to be too leveled out, you know, and I've never taken that. But I will say, my Vegas trip, you just hear about Vegas, I feel like in my head, it's always going to be, whatever's happening is going to be at some huge theatrical level in my head. The highs are going to be high, the lows are going to be lows. You're either just going to be, you're going to be Zach Galifianakis. Right. Somehow you now are in possession of a baby. Yeah, a wolf pack of one, as I believe you famously says in that movie. or you know i feel like i'm either going to be uh you know tim robinson coming in with my uh my tuxedo on luck be a lady tonight or i'm going to be the end of that sketch where he's absolutely destitute and crying you know like there's just no middle ground going in the bathroom to do some weird stuff and there's a there's a fee for admission i feel like i'm either going to be like the saddest simpsons character like crying with my head in my hands or you know but instead It's highs and lows, and you feel like you didn't have a high or a low. It was just really a wonderful weekend. It was just, like, very, very chill. How was Vidara? All credit goes to Genevieve for this. This was our 25th anniversary trip, and Genevieve just said, would you like to go to Vegas? I said yes, and that's when I stopped thinking about it. This was months ago. And Genevieve, I mean, I think she enjoys planning things. She probably would enjoy also having help planning things, to be honest. But that's not exactly my bailiwick.

Listen, as a person who is almost thrice divorced and a planner of home things and trips, we don't want any help because you being part of it means that we now have to kind of negotiate, and we don't like that.

Yeah, no, good point. But I do say I do.

do think this it was very clear that Genevieve kept like kind of checking in on me like you know or keep on saying like are you enjoying this or I got the impression that it was important to Genevieve that she planned this with my weird temperament in mind you know I'm not a big risk taker I'm not a big adventure guy I'm not a big traveler but also which makes you the perfect

Vegas so I don't like gambling I don't like gambling I don't like shows I don't like I don't like things that are shaped like uh either an eiffel tower or a pyramid i don't like giant

spheres that are lit up from the outside actually that was really cool dude that thing is sick though

it really is you asked about for all of the james dolan-ness of it when you stand outside of that or inside of that it is quite impressive now i didn't stand right at the base of it or anything but

whenever you would catch a glimpse of it from the city it was really cool i liked it and i'll say You asked about Vidara. That was the hotel that we stayed at. And we were like on the 16th floor, which isn't like as high, obviously, as you can go. But at least it wasn't too low to the ground. And it was a really beautiful view. Like we could see the fountains. We could see the sphere. We could see like.

Oh, nice. You had a view of the Bellagio Fountain.

Yeah. Yeah. And so. That's cool. Yeah. And so it was it was nice. Of course, what I also liked was if I looked straight down from my hotel room, I could see like Vegas reminded me a little bit of like maybe. what it would be like to walk around the back lots of like a Hollywood studio or something because it's all kind of a show but it's never that deep it's kind of a facade yeah you can only see past the facade a little bit if I look straight down I saw this big kind of staging area where they had clearly just pulled all these like huge holiday decorations down giant bells and like just some like you know kind of ornamental archways or whatever and they were just laying on the ground like the holidays are over but for me it was sort of like being able to look in the in the storeroom closet or whatever yeah and it was kind of interesting and so i i'm not like you said i'm not a big gambler but i spent some time sitting behind video poker

machines and having some cocktails honestly we don't have a lot of stuff on the show sheet today because i just need to hear about every single moment of your time gambling there well i didn't

all i care about well that's the thing though like i i feel like i'm gonna let you down in this aspect because i didn't sit at any tables i told you i before i had left i did not so you didn't do any table games no and i i was practicing my pie gow here at home on my ipad but then i go to vegas uh i mean just almost like i felt like i should i had this moment where i was like passing a pie gow table i was like well i guess i feel like i should do that but i'm not really in the mood to sit and engage i was like this is my damn vacation like don't do it because you feel like you owe it to somebody else. And so, I mean, what happened was this was funny. So our first night there, Genevieve had reservations for us at a nice restaurant that was good, a place that was in the Aria. I can't remember the name of it, but it was nice. Sort of a somewhat French, I guess somewhat. Well, maybe you know it. It was called Bardot. I probably do know it. Bardot. So maybe, I don't know. It seemed like mostly American fare, but it's called Bardot, which made me think that might be French-influenced or something. But anyway, it was just kind of a nice little dinner we had. Did you guys go to the – they have a Din Tai Fung in there as well. Did you go to that? No, I didn't realize that. I saw a sign for it later. I was like, oh, that would be nice. But we've also – we do have Din Tai Fungs here, so I think Genevieve wanted to try something maybe a little bit different. We only had – I came back. Yesterday was a free day for me here at home. Monday, we came back on Monday. So we only had kind of a couple of dinners and a nice brunch that Genevieve had made reservations for. But we were – let's see here. So Saturday night, we had dinner, and then we were late for the big black comedy show, unfortunately. Dinner took us a little bit longer than we thought, and we were getting ready to leave. You're on white people time. And I said, oh, at some point, I was like, oh, you know what I think – I was especially taking my time with dinner. I was kind of like I didn't want to order our entrees right away. That's one thing that I'm sort of realizing. Sometimes at restaurants, especially when you're in a nicer restaurant, sometimes it just all happens too fast. I don't know if you're at an age where this is starting to hit you, too. So I was kind of like, well, let's just have a glass of wine. Right. You're on vacation.

Let's stretch this out. We don't have anywhere to be after this. I feel like you did, actually, apparently.

In this case, we did. And I thought we had a little bit more wiggle room. So we just really took our time with dinner. It was very nice. but then at one point I realized oh we're running late for the show so I kind of waved our waiter over I'm like oh we got to run and um he was like oh you don't have time for dessert or and he's kind of got a dessert menu we're like no no sorry we mismanaged our time and he's like oh uh okay um we had a like an anniversary dessert coming out for you he's like I'm sorry they're making it now so Genevieve when making the reservation must have checked a box or something for an anniversary. So we had this kind of nice dessert.

I am so with her. This is why when you find me in various restaurants, they call me Dr. Burbank. Because if they ever ask, like, is it an anniversary? Do you have a particular title of note? I'm like, yeah, throw it on there. There's a chance that will get us some kind of better situation.

Yeah. By the way, you do need to call me Andrew Lewis Walsh Esquire. going forward that's a new thing that i got going on for me as well um so anyway you sign your emails

alw which is which is i mean not to me but like generally speaking if you're if you're being formal don't you don't you go with alw yes how i sign but i don't understand your point there does

that seem too informal to you no too formal alw alw well i don't do lcb lcb you could though it'd

be cooler if you did i'm just saying a guy who goes alw he might go with dr andrew dr esquire

andrew walsh it never occurred to me that you that one would think that would be like formal it's lowercase does that take some of the edge off of it it does it absolutely look at me

exactly what you're doing there dude alw lowercase is the most chill version of giving your three initials but giving your three initials is oh it's a flex you know uh but i don't understand

know why it's a flex because almost i mean almost everybody has a middle name right it's not like

they do but they don't point it out but if they don't point it out what does that mean what's my

middle name uh a christian okay but i don't point it out that's so weird it's like but pointing it out would be like i have something that other people don't if i were signing my name a l e w Do you know what my confirmation name is? Esquire? No, Edward. Edward is my confirmation name. Now, not everybody has a confirmation name. I forget about this.

So you also, as a Catholic kid, you got a confirmation name that's not one of your given names from your parents.

I chose it. Yeah. So basically the idea behind confirmation in the Catholic Church is you're baptized as a baby, and so you're baptized into the church, but you don't have any agency as a baby. And so when you're of age, sort of, and I think maybe for me it was maybe around 10, I'm going to guess, you do something called confirmation, which is you kind of confirm everything that— Basically you're agreeing to the system. Yeah, exactly. you're confirming the the i'm trying to think of the proper word for it but you get what i'm saying i'm saying yes i i agree with all of this no lie um and uh and so anyway and so in doing so you choose a confirmation name for yourself and do your parents weigh in on that a little bit well they told my sister that my sister i think this was unfair my sister chose a confirmation name that also was in a beatles song because she was a big beatles fan at the time i think she was it jude or something wasn't michelle it wasn't jude could jude be a girl she chose octopus's garden she chose octopus's garden for some reason i my parents vetoed that my parents did veto something or at least my mom did um for my sister which looking back i don't know if that was fair or not but edward was you know pretty inoffensive i think it has to be a name from the church you

know what i mean it has to be a biblical name like a saint or something that's in the canon essentially yeah i think so and so interesting okay i didn't know edward was part of the deal but now i will i will now factor that in okay so back to uh back to your vegas thing uh and the fact that you guys were a little bit late to go to your comedy show i'm dying to hear about this comedy show i have do you know that i have revisited the website like this is not for the air this is not for the listeners this is for me a personal journey of double checking how ai the the comedian is on the website for the comedy show you went to i keep thinking i misremembered

it i keep going back to it and being like just shocked anew well that's sort of my problem here lucas i just feel like especially the idea of this comedy show we built it up so much and i think it had to do with the fact that i just every i just assume that everything in vegas is going to be up to 11 right or as you like to say at its limit i know and i feel like this comedy show it was just a kind of a it was just kind of a comedy show but don't okay so let me start off with this we did get there a little bit late for you and other people who know vegas because keep in mind when I was talking about going to this show, which is advertised as the BBC with those initials very much highlighted. For those who understand the connotation, that it might be a show that invites some blue material. But also it's called The Big Black Comedy Show. And you and I were very much, Genevieve just kind of booked the show for us. She said it was affordable and it had really good reviews. And she said every other show she looked at just had terrible reviews. And everybody was like, this was fun. We laughed. But you and I watched the video and it was like this AI created video that didn't say any comedian's names.

and it just listed that's what that's what i was really struck by was how non-committal they were right right about who was gonna be there it felt like they were leaving the option open of just bringing in people off of the streets who had hopes and dreams about comedy right and i mean

to a degree i understand that if you have a revolving and sort of open-ended you know group

of people coming in maybe you don't you don't want to be committed you don't want to tell anybody

that it's going to be kevin hart right but i did think it was funny that they listed did they have kevin chart there they did on the on the website or maybe in this video we're talking about they would say kevin hart they would they listed like three or four black comedians and that said if you like them you'll love for real yeah i don't know if you call that you might you

might if you enjoy the comedy stylings of these very famous good comedians yes you may also enjoy

comedians who have one thing in common with them right and so and again i don't know i think what i was expecting was something that was going to be like super and i will get to it and the show was parts of the show were very very dirty but i was i think i was expecting something that was going to lean into the showmanship of that or like really leaning on audience involvement or pulling crowd work yeah maybe pulling the white people on stage like if eve and i were going to

be the only white couple there. I mean, this was everything that I was hoping for was that you

would be getting roasted as the one white attendee. Here's the line from the website, by the way. They might not be household names like Dave Chappelle, Cat Williams, or Kevin Hart, but this rotating cast of up-and-coming comedians are every bit as hilarious. Now, every bit as hilarious. Oh, and also it says here free drink included, which I didn't realize until later, and it wasn't really a free drink. It was $4 off of your drink. So Vives and I are running late. We leave this restaurant. Where was the comedy show? I'll get to that in a second. We have this Mishigas at the Aria Hotel trying to catch a ride share.

Absolute disaster. Those waiting areas of those casinos trying to get a car, forget it.

Yeah, it was this whole thing where Vives and I were already running late, and then we run downstairs to this taxi stand place, And there was a little sign with an arrow that said, you know, stand over here, or it indicated that, implied that for your rideshare services. And so Genevieve, like, calls the car a few minutes away. And this is at the ARIA, essentially? This is at the ARIA, yeah. And then while we're waiting for the car to show up, Genevieve gets a text message from the restaurant. She's left her credit card up at the restaurant, which is up on the second or third floor. So Genevieve tells me, like, wait for the car. This is what the license plate is. It'll have Dyson on the mirror. And then she runs upstairs as fast as she can because she's already anxious about being late for the show and missing this ride share. But it's also confusing as to where the car is going to show up. Genevieve comes all the way back downstairs. She's so out of breath. I don't know what kind of shoes she's wearing, but, you know, we were out. So probably not the most comfortable shoes. Presumably comfortable. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Super comfortable.

And she's coming downstairs, and she's like so out of breath and discombobulated. And now she's on the phone with the Uber driver, the Lyft driver, whoever it is. And she's like, well, I don't see you. Where are you? And then finally I just ask the taxi stand guy. He's like, I'm like, where are the rideshare pickup areas? And he's like, oh, downstairs one level. We're on the upper level. And so as we're getting on an escalator racing down, this Uber cancels on us. Oh, no, what? Yeah, because they're waiting for more than four minutes, and Genevieve is on the phone trying to find them, and whoever this is, she just ends up hanging up on Genevieve and canceling the ride, and then I don't know if we get charged for that or not. And then now we're downstairs, I call a car, the car's going to be another five or ten minutes now, and it's still not a very good pickup area, it's quite ridiculous. I'm hearing people bargain with their Lyft driver saying, well, she says she's not going to throw up talking about whatever situation they have going on in their party. And by the way, the show – I know that we're racing to get to a show that starts at 8.30 at night, and this is on a Saturday night. So some folks are partying pretty hardy pretty early, I would say. Yeah, I guess. So I guess all of that is only interesting to the degree that we now get – dropped off at and i'm blanking on which hotel i think it's um the one that is goes by ph planet hollywood i believe that this place is the venue that we're going to this little theater is somewhere in planet hollywood so the the car drops us off at planet hollywood but then once we're in there we don't know exactly where we're going it's more of a michigas neither one of us like being late so we're both like kind of looking around asking people it's actually in the miracle mile which i was unfamiliar with but the miracle mile seems to be just a huge huge mall right on the strip

that is attached it's funny you say that because i'm in chicago where the actual miracle mile is i think oh right of course maybe the origin story of miracle mile is here actually am i i'm sure

vegas has just uh sort of co-opted that but wait have you heard of the miracle mile am i am i am i uh misappropriating that in some way no no i i think like there's a miracle mile in la there's

a miracle mile here my guess is the vegas one is an appropriation of of the other uh previously

existing ones it's basically a giant mall but it's a mall that like this it looks like if you look up you actually get the impression of looking up at the sky one of those things you know it's got like the cloud cover or whatever and it's very strange but but this is this is not fremont

street this is they've done like a fremont street kind of deal i don't understand what fremont

street is i thought you would know what the miracle mile is to be honest with you i was ready for you to kind of jump i'm not familiar with that in vegas but where i know where planet hollywood is

my guess is that the area that is called miracle mile in vegas near the planet hollywood has a kind of a covering like a digital covering on the walkway which is uh made famous by this thing called fremont street in old vegas that has the same kind of deal going interesting yeah i wasn't

sure if this was digital or not in fact i don't know if that occurred to me i thought it i'm not exactly sure um and i kind of just thought you would know what the miracle mile is but it's basically this just huge mall-like area that is attached i think to planet hollywood and maybe it connects other um it looks i'm trying to look at some street names here but it's basically just along the vegas boulevard so um but but the club itself so veves and i get there we have our tickets and we're a little bit nervous about being late. We're probably at least 15, no, probably like 20 minutes late for the show. But you also got to assume that things like this are going to start late. And Genevieve had mentioned to me that it's not general admission. We have specific seats. So we get to the door and I still don't know what it's going to be like when they open that door. It's going to be some huge kind of venue. It's going to be a tiny little thing. And the guy looks at our tickets and we're like, oh, sorry, we're late. And he's like, oh, no worries. They're just getting started in there now. He's like, oh, you are close to the front. I'm like, are we going to disturb everything? He's like, no, no, it's fine. And he opens the door, and it's basically just a tiny little comedy club. Like, it's like, you know, I'm terrible at guessing, you know, kind of room size and basically any kind of measurement, whether it's distance or volume or whatever. But I'm going to guess maybe, maybe 100, maybe. Like, that would be tops, you know? It was just like a little.

Like, seated around tables, basically?

Yeah, like seated facing straight forward, so just chairs, but all arranged facing forward, not like a cool comedy club or a jazz club like you'd see in the movies where some people are facing the stage and others aren't. Everything is facing the stage, but there are little cocktail tables in between every two seats or something like that. And it's relatively full, and we get there, and the host is just sort of opening up. And I heard him say one joke. I don't remember what it was, but I remember legitimately laughing. It was funny enough. But then I'm like, everybody's got cocktails, but there's no service or anything. So I'm like, I'm going to go out to the bar. I'll find the bar where everybody's getting these drinks. And so I miss most of the opener because there's a bit of a line at this bar. And that's where I learned that everybody is using their tickets to get some sort of drink vouchers at this bar. And, of course, everybody's ordering a hurricane. And this bar serves a couple of different small venues in this area. It's called the V Theater. And, by the way, that was the one thing that was kind of funny is me trying to figure out how we get in the theater without saying big black comedy show to strangers. You know what I'm saying? Whereabouts is the B, comma, B, semicolon, C. Well, that is when I realized that everybody there is just like, oh, you're here for the BBC show. Yeah, yeah, the BBC show. And everybody, you know, they say it a million times a day. It's not it ain't nothing to the people. They're not scandalized. They're not scandalized by it. But because like everybody thought we were there for a different show because we were late and most people were getting there for some other show. But anyway, so I did see that people were get everybody. There's something about new. orleans and vegas everybody drinks hurricanes or maybe one person in line saw somebody else get a hurricane you know that's like i have some sort of frozen blue drink or whatever there's this long line i'm like are we all really getting it was a little bit it's a little bit like luke a little bit judgy like really we're all gonna get the frozen drink right now don't you know i'm late

for my bbc first of all a little bit luke how dare you what i would say is like this is the thing This is what my point with Miracle Mile Vegas approximates what everybody else is doing in the United States and the world. And like if a thing is like you're right, a hurricane is a very New Orleans coded thing. And then they're like, oh, but people like it in New Orleans. We should do it here. You know, like I don't think of it as being the Vegas drink is not a hurricane, but it is, in fact, a drink that is popular somewhere else. So now Vegas will now do it. And make people wait in line for it.

And I was confused, though, in this particular case as to whether—because I didn't see a big sign for it. I didn't see how, like, this hurricane drink was advertised. And it was literally, like, a line for this bar area. It wasn't, like, a bar that you would sit at. It was literally a bar that just serves these—I don't know, this small group of theaters. And so I was—I really was sort of thinking, like, did one person at the front of the line, like, maybe a half hour ago, order a hurricane? And that just put the—you know what I mean? And then everybody else was getting it. I couldn't understand. Especially with the defunding of FEMA. Think about the time it now takes. And then I also noticed that everybody's having some sort of conversation about their drink tickets or whatever. And so I'm out there. I have my ticket to the show. But Genevieve, I left her behind. I'm getting us a couple of drinks. And so I'm like, well, I guess I'll use my one. So a free drink was like part of the ticket for a lot of folks? And I'm just looking at this now on the Big Black Comedy Show website. It does say, and a free drink included. But what I think my ticket got me was $4 off of my total. So I don't know why they would call $4 off a drink.

Because you didn't order a Hurricane. Maybe that's it. It was probably a free Hurricane. Oh. Like seriously, maybe that's it. Or $4 off of a non-Hurricane.

Maybe you're right.

Maybe that's what it was. I'm sort of looking here. Because a Hurricane is probably a cheap drink for them to make also because it's like it's mostly, you know, it's mostly Slurpee. Yes.

And then an unknown amount of alcohol in it? Yes. And Veeves and I were just getting, like, I don't know, gin and tonic or something. So anyway, so I wait in this line. All of that is to say by the time I get back in, the host is already done. So I missed most of, like, the host. I don't think he spent a lot of time warming up the crowd. So Kevin Hart is done. So Kevin Hart was just the warm-up act. Exactly. And then Eddie Pepitone comes out, which I was shocked. Unlikely. Unlikely casting. But we love it.

I was just joking.

What am I doing here? That was my favorite. You were making sure I was listening. Limited Eddie Pepito. So anyway, so I go in, and now the second guy is on. It turns out there's only going to be three performers this night, and so I guess this is the feature artist. And he was fine. Like, when I came in, he's kind of a good-looking guy. And he's, you know, oh, I know how old he is. He's white. He mentioned, I think, a couple of times he was 44 years old. So, you know, he's been around for a little bit, but he's, you know, doing a bit. One thing that I didn't totally love was that he was one of those guys who always thinks that the crowd isn't laughing quite enough. So it kind of becomes this ongoing bit.

I see, so his go-to is kind of like, what's going on?

Like, you guys aren't feeling me right now kind of thing? Yeah, he had this whole thing where he kept saying, like, this half of the room isn't laughing. It wasn't our half of the room, and it kind of didn't matter. And so he's doing a lot of crowd work like that, which it wasn't like, you know, it's just a little bit of a crutch that I see comedians do a little bit too much. I'm kind of like, you can maybe lean off of this a little bit. And some of his stuff was funny. Some of his stuff wasn't, it wasn't the best comedy I'd ever seen in the world. It certainly wasn't the worst, but also it was just normal. And I can't explain it to you. It's just like, it was like being in a small comedy club and seeing some people. It was neither big nor black. but it was comedy and then so he finishes up his set he's I'm generally net positive on him and I just liked his vibe he just seemed he was a very likable guy and at the end he's like he starts working in the t-shirts that he's going to be selling into his act a little bit just kind of like hey just so you know I put this but it was all very relatable it wasn't like I can't explain it but it didn't have some sort of vagacy-ness to it that would seem over the top or I know why you're all here and we're going to do something that's really Vegas. It was just like standup, you know, but then the guy who came in after him and I did get all these guys names. I'm, I, I'll tell you how I got their names later because I needed to do some. follow-up research for this conversation but i'm not 100 sure i want to name them all because the last guy i really did not like too much and he was maybe a little bit more what you were expecting like he really did lean into like the blueness of the comedy but it was one of those things where he was nothing he said was blue comedy yeah nothing he said was essentially um funny you know it was just like dirty or offensive in some way that there's a clear i couldn't i didn't get eyes on this guy but there was somebody in the front row who must have been asian so then he starts asking this guy you're chinese and then he's like but it's always interspersed with no no i love everybody i love everybody kind of deal well that fixes it

yeah right if you love everybody you can be racist and it's just kind of like i didn't love

that that was i mean the racism wasn't a huge part of it but it was enough of it that i didn't like it at a certain point so i do feel and i don't know if you agree with this but i felt this way for the the middle comedian i guess you'd call him the feature or whatever he um i i don't like it when the comedian refers too many times to how much people are laughing in the audience and it feels a little bit like a crutch to me but generally speaking i got really good vibes off of him and i feel like if i'm in the audience i'm not gonna fake laugh at jokes but i'm definitely going to be ready to laugh you know what I mean like I don't think yeah you're there to help I'm there to help in a certain way I'm not going to laugh at everything and I'm not going to fake laugh or whatever but if something is funny I'm going to audibly laugh or whatever because I do think it helps the room and it helps the experience and it helps the comedian and they're working and they're two feet away from you you know what I mean it's a small comedy club yeah right like we're looking I mean he's right there and so but by a certain time with this last guy I'm like I don't have to laugh at this anymore but then something interesting happened that i actually think made the show a lot more interesting and better okay but i do feel like it's going to give you the wrong impression of the show but the guy who's the the headliner he's he's a guy he's about i think he mentioned his age i think he's in his he's 60 or maybe he's in his early 60s kind of a big guy kind of a big stature sort of he and he's just dirty you know what i mean he's just like of making dirty jokes or statements that aren't really funny but it's just like yeah whatever kind of like sexual yeah a lot of sexual stuff and then like i said sort of but but fine not toxic you know what i mean like and again i didn't like him kind of like talking yeah there there was some stuff that was definitely racially tinged about like asian characteristics i was like this isn't funny i don't feel any responsibility to help this guy anymore but generally speaking it was still a very human experience sort of and you're in the small room but then his microphone goes out and i think what he's using is just like a standard microphone but they're not using they're using things like an re-50 or like a sennheiser yeah something like that you know just a handheld standard stage mic but instead of being plugged directly in they're using those things you can plug into the bottom of it to make it like a wireless mic you know what i mean and you and

i know this so it's a little like a radio transmitter yes i'm pretty sure that's that's

what's going on from from my vantage point never let that happen if i was doing the thing by the Yeah, either get a wireless mic or get a wired mic. And so I think his little transmitter was coming. I don't know what it was. So his mic starts breaking. This guy who is the headliner, but I'm not the biggest fan of him. So he has to, like, he waits for a while. And then, like, it's really funny that whoever the sound guy is eventually comes to the front. Again, this is a very small room. Whoever the sound guy is comes from the back and then just takes the guy's microphone away and doesn't give him a new one. And now I'm really interested in this because I'm interested in microphones and technology and what would I do in this situation and how do you not have another microphone? Wait, so he's just on stage with no microphone? Yeah. Now the room is small enough that I think if he talks loud enough or even as he was talking into the microphone anyway, everybody can probably hear him, but he's clearly a little bit uncomfortable not having it. A vibe killer. It's kind of a vibe killer, but for me, it felt more like a moment in the room because I didn't like what he was doing. I don't need another vibrator joke because a woman was there by herself. You know what I mean? Which was one of the things. He was kind of teasing this woman who was in the front row. But who's by herself is definitely going to be using a vibrator. Right, yeah. But she's also very game and she's laughing along with it or whatever. But him losing his microphone is not the worst part of this show, certainly. And then it becomes really funny because now he's just left up there without a microphone for a little bit. And he's kind of like rolling his eyes about it in a humorous way. but then the tech comes back with his microphone and it's working for a second but then it stops working again and it kind of goes on for the rest of his set now there are two microphones in play but neither one of them are working for this guy and I have a theory I think this guy I mentioned that he's kind of bigger and I think he just has big hands and I think he's gripping the microphone in a way that he's kind of gripping the bottom of it and this is totally just a theory that I had You think he's shorting it out i think that there's something about the way he's grabbing it he's grabbing both the transmitter and the microphone kind of at the bottom it's both his style of holding it and his big hands and i say this as a big handed man i think he's just holding in a way that maybe these other guys aren't so they're bringing microphones up to the front and they're working at one point the feature guy comes back out and gives him a mic and it's clearly working and then they start busting his chops a little bit and it was really nice and then like kind of at the end And even the guy I didn't like much was just kind of like, hey, listen, you know, we had to call this the big black comedy show because we knew there's a way to get black people in here or whatever. And then everybody's kind of laughing about it.

Like, what was the kind of not that this, I guess, particularly matters, but what was the were you and Genevieve sort of like one of the few white folks there or was it mostly white folks?

I don't know. I would say and I didn't get a good look of the room because we were kind of in the second row. So there's definitely like a white couple in front of us. It seemed a mix, you know, it seemed like a mix of people, but I'm going to guess the room was probably mostly black, I'm guessing. Yeah, I would say so. I don't know. I don't have numbers on them. Maybe three-quarters. Nothing felt essentially, you know, kind of, I don't know, unbalanced in any particular way. You know what I mean? There was nothing, again, my whole trip is just kind of like, yeah, everything was just sort of nice. Was it noted at all that you guys were there as white folks? Not me and Veve. There was a little bit of like, you know, talking about race, but it wasn't. And I'm trying to think, did any of the comedians call out any white people in particular? They were calling people out, but about different things. And I can't remember any, but it was not like, it just, I think I was expecting, maybe again, because of the vagusness of it and this really cheesy promotion of it, that it was going to be like, almost like if The Simpsons were to do a parody of what this would be, like just so over the top, like, look at this white people here. You know, it just was not like that.

We are so lame.

I don't know if I remember that.

Because that's literally, it's like, white people drive like this, black people drive like that. And then Homer laughs and goes, we are lame.

Oh, yeah. That's probably why I do remember that. And that's why my brain maybe went there for this. But it just wasn't exactly like that. And then, just at the very end, because by the nature of the technology kind of failing them and everything, I think it kind of ended with both the feature guy and the headliner on stage. And they were just like, it just means a lot to come out if you could tell people to come. And it just it was a very human experience, in fact, right, not oversized in this Vegas way that I thought it was going to be. And while not all of the comedy was necessarily for me and I definitely did, you know, I would actually not want to see the last guy again. I didn't like him. I said hello to him after the show and that, you know, he seemed like I think he was a good guy. It wasn't my kind of humor. I feel like he is just maybe in a of a generation where it's kind of like the difference between being edgy and being funny isn't as clearly defined.

Dude, this happens so much in stand-up comedy in, like, not to, you know, speak poorly of what was going on at the BBC comedy show, but I would say in low-level comedy, stand-up comedy, there's stuff that's just, like, humor adjacent. Yeah, yeah. It's like somebody saying something that sounds like a joke, but it's not. It's not funny. It's not actually, like, it's not clever, but it's next door to a joke, and then people will laugh at it.

Yeah, exactly. and his stuff all came back to sex in some way that wasn't it wasn't really funny you know but like i said as they wrapped up the show it did feel like kind of a nice little moment and like honestly for me the fact that his microphone went out it made him the best part of the show of his set and it wasn't because like i feel like oh yeah this guy's better when his mic is off like like the two guys from the muppets because he like dropped we're not trying to do waldorf and saddler but we're just it was just like well we had to deal with this as an audience and as the people on stage and it just made everything a little bit more real and you know and so i i actually enjoyed it like i am i was thinking about this later since you and i talked about this and you were like you should go see like carrot top i think maybe you raised that maybe some listeners did because carrot top you know i did he's got his reputation but then a lot i just

was thinking if you wanted to do the most vegas thing you could do yeah carrot top and like a lot

of listeners backed you up and said oh i saw that that was good and i was hanging out with a friend who had happened to see carrot top and is not a listener didn't know we talked about that but happened to have seen carrot top in the past few months and was telling us about it and what an amazing show it was and so it sounds like carrot top was a good show there is not one part it probably by all measures maybe even a better show but i have no regrets i'm so glad we did this like it was just a fun little thing to do and so again like i've enjoyed it also yeah i think so i think she I think she basically shares my feelings about this I think that I think that maybe if you were to ask Genevieve and maybe we will someday if I can get her back on the show I maybe Saturday night at the Eagles oh that's right you're gonna maybe we're gonna see you on Saturday in a social in a social context I I think that maybe she thought the mic going out was not a good thing i considered it a good thing because i felt like first of all i'm a tech head so i was really interested in seeing how they i've i think i've probably said this to you before but i think i realized um at a somewhat young age that i was a radio person because my favorite part of listening to the radio when i was a kid was when something would go wrong and i remember like nothing i remember having a theory that nobody listens as closely to the radio as when there's dead air because you're dying to see how they're going to get out of it and i think in today's day and age this may be less true because it's just going to be everything's so automated when they get out of a dead air situation they're just going to go right into a mattress for you commercial or what have you but back in the day when there were live djs you're like what's going to happen this record is skipping the record's skipping like the dj's going to come back out you know like i like little mess ups like that because it kind of reveals the human side underneath and so for me that was i i thought that was sort of a show savor for me i think that i left feeling better because of the technological issues than maybe

as a person who's been i've been trying to get on the bbc tour uh-huh yeah and as a person who's been attempting to be part of that whole comedy thing it's good for me to remember but seriously actually it is good for me to remember when i'm even just doing live wire or we're doing you know tbtl live stuff like when something goes wrong like that like where the microphone's not working or whatever something inside me just like speeds up you know in this insane way of like this is going so badly but the fact of the matter is it's probably a it's probably fine for the people who are there and it might actually be a moment of humanity like you're describing yeah I mean it

really depends on the situation and I feel you as well like I'm not obviously on stage like you are every now and then we'll do a tbtl thing and you know you want to avoid that and the feeling of time passing when you're the one on stage and you feel like things are falling apart it's just it's a minute feels like an hour right and so and you're kind of panicking and you're trying to figure out what's going on did i lose you here on the uh on the on the riverside connection luke it looks like no i'm here oh can you hear me yeah i can hear you just we're having some technical issues on our side today too you probably think i just threw that in there the listeners are like oh now andrew's trying to make it seem like they're having technical issues just so that Well, like this is Andrew's mic just disconnected.

It's the best part of today's show.

Yeah, I think you're going to get a lot of that today. I feel like I'm talking a mile a minute. But here's what I want to close out with the BBC part of this, Luke, since I never thought I would say. But I did want to know who the comedians were. So I knew that you and I were going to be talking about this. And again, I didn't I don't want to maybe throw the name of the person I didn't like out there because that's not what I'm trying to do here. But I knew that the host's name was Ryan. and i didn't have a huge impression of him i heard like maybe one joke before i went out to get our drinks and i thought he made me laugh like within moments of sitting down um and then the middle guy the feature guy again lead a little leaned a little bit too much on the kind of like oh this side of the room isn't laughing and like trying to and i'm just kind of like okay move on with that but still had some good jokes and was generally a good time and then the last guy didn't like as much but i knew the middle guy's name was penny prince i got that if somebody googles him and and and you know here's his comedy i don't know what is online but what i heard in the room was pretty good i liked him um but i didn't know the host's name i only knew it was ryan and i only knew one part of the headliner's name so on a whim when we got back i called the v theater in las vegas in the miracle mile and i'm like call nobody's gonna pick up but i'll just i'll just call i called the v theater they picked up on the first ring and i said exactly what my conundrum was i was like hey we're at the show on saturday night i got the feature guy's name but i i didn't get the rest of the guy's names i was wondering if you could tell me who they were so i can check out more of their stuff and the woman on the phone was like very nice she's like you know i don't have their names but uh if you could shoot me an email i'll uh i'll look into it for you and so i did and i'm still thinking like this email is going to get lost so i send an email to like box office at v theater or whatever it was and i explained my situation and within like an hour and a half somebody else had gotten back to me with a list of the performers so by the way the lineup was ryan cole was the host and this guy uh penny prince was the feature person i'll leave the headliner off it because i don't want to bash him but not that i'm gonna do much damage but there's no point in looking him up you wouldn't like his humor um but all of that is to say like i just really love the fact that i just thought this was going to be the most sort of like sort of non-personalized experience one could have my first Vegas show but it was actually very intimate and very human and I really liked it and I have no regrets there's not another show

that I wish I had gone to that night right like between the actual scale of the room yeah and the way that the folks got back to you it was the opposite of like you know Siegfried and Roy

Thank you.

yeah yeah exactly essentially and so anyway and then i you know i've been blabbing forever i mean but later that night did you win anything on video poker no i i at one point i was literally fifteen dollars up and i think that's the most i was up the whole time what were you playing this was the this was the funny part so that night saturday night you know me all i wanted was to find a bar where i could sit at the bar i love sitting at bars right like better than sitting I was picturing by the way

this is what I was talking about Old Town I was trying to picture the perfect bar for you to be sitting at whilst playing video poker and having a free drink

well the problem was I gotta say I didn't have a lot of negative emotions while I was there but the one thing I did we got there Saturday afternoon did all this stuff Saturday night and kind of took a stroll around Saturday afternoon before dinner and we're looking for a place to watch whatever game was on on Saturday whatever football game was on and it was really really hard to find a bar that had any open stools let alone two like I my initial reaction was Vegas needs more bars for people to sit at because every now it might have been because the NFL playoffs were on and so more people were interested in sitting at a bar and watching the game and when possible playing the video poker that's built into the bars but I thought oh that's what I'm going to do this whole time Even well into the evening on Saturday night, even after the crowds were starting to thin out, the most prized real estate at any place we were was bar seating. So on Saturday, I didn't even get to do that at all. I sat with Genevieve, and this was an interesting moment in our relationship. And again, I don't know how much we want to go. And I'm looking at the time here. We've been recording for almost an hour.

We have all the time.

Yes. I don't know how much time we have here, but this was a critical moment in our relationship. Do we want to hear more? so in your 25 year relationship exactly so Genevieve wanted to have sex on the blackjack machine right and I'm like no sorry that's that doesn't have people playing blackjack on so sorry I think I stepped on your joke there's a little bit garbled up for some reason you know what I'm dealing with on this end Luke there is some technical stuff so every now and then you disappear on me as I turn off this uh echo cancellation so sorry for the weird sound quality and when you and I are missing each other but um uh what happened was so they have Genevieve loves playing blackjack she I don't think she's ever played at a table with live people before but apparently when she goes to Vegas she's been here a few times and I haven't she likes to find a video blackjack machine and and so and she was practicing on her phone or whatever leading up to this trip for the last few days or whatever so we we find the machines there there weren't enough of them and so we waited some folks out and then we finally got a spot and these these blackjack machines it's like a um they're arranged kind of in a circle there's like three machines all arranged kind of in a circle pointing at each other with sort of a spinning sign in the middle of them right but these particular machines were like kind of two for one as far as people sitting down in other words vives and i could sit down next to each other on this little bench at this blackjack machine this video blackjack machine and we could put in money and then both play with that same pot of money but we were playing individual games on the screens in front of us does that make sense yes okay so the you don't by the way are you are you holding back because of the technical issues you don't have to i didn't mean to get in your head about i'm just

letting you I'm letting you unfurl this story I have I already have over 36 questions okay sorry I'll hurry up here was there a human first of all the question number one was there a human dealing at a central location that was reflected upon the digital blackjack outcome no this this

particular one is purely a is purely a video game behind us you have the um roulette wheels that are

A person who's kind of like a human, but it's being filmed, and then you can bet on it at various positions, right?

I saw that, and I saw the physical roulette wheel. I never saw a physical human being who was dealing. I did see the sort of communal betting you can do on a blackjack game that you would assume would have a physical person dealing, and then it's represented in the video screen. I never saw the physical person. i did see the physical roulette wheel that has like the cameras pointing down on it and you can kind of get a bench seat and make your your digital bets on that but this is one that is purely like playing on your ipad only it's three or five dollars a hand or whatever the minimum bet that is right but the thing that i kind of want to point out here is and i do think this is key and it kind of took me a while to sort of maybe understand genevieve's point of view on this but But so Genevieve and I sit down and we put, I don't know. Let's just say we put $60 in or something into this machine. And then it's like, okay, good. And then we're both playing, but we're playing our individual games. The screen is split in two. I'm playing on the left. Genevieve's playing on the right. Our two blackjack games have nothing to do with each other. And Genevieve, and also one thing that I'm learning is that there's a whole bunch of side bets I can make on this blackjack. And I haven't practiced blackjack in a while, but I'm playing blackjack, and it's fine. It's kind of coming back to me. I'm like, oh, that's right. Don't hit too often. And all these little things are coming back to me. And I think it's like $3 a hand or something. So it's not exorbitant. I don't mind like sort of learning on the fly again. But then maybe I'm having a little bit too many drinks. I just start making all these side bets, but I don't really understand what they are. And so I'm sort of Googling them on my phone while I'm doing it. Are you dragging chips, like digitally dragging a chip over onto the side bet? Yes. So along the bottom of the screen, you have denominations ranging from a $1 chip, $3, $5, $10, $25, up to probably $100 or $500 or something. And then I'm dragging. I'm usually playing a $3 hand, so I'm dragging a $3 or $5 chip to the middle to make my blackjack bet. But now I'm kind of like, well, what if I put $1 or $3 on the side bet that says two kings? And I'm like, well, I guess I know what that means. If both me and the dealer get a king or if I get dealt two kings right away, I'm going to win a certain amount of odds. And I just kind of like – I like the fact that these side bets can play some, like, really incredible odds. But I clearly – but I'm also missing some of the nuances of it, you know. And Genevieve just kind of keeps saying, like, you know – and Genevieve and I can both be a little bit – and I think I get this a little bit from her – a little bit, you know, a little bit maybe overly cautious with money at times. But like Jennifer kept saying, this is the weekend of yes. Like, don't worry about it. Just have fun. Just have fun. And so I'm just playing like.

First of all, that's a good instinct to be overly cautious with money, particularly in these casinos. But also it's a fun instinct to be like, you know what? Let's throw some chips at these silly double king bets.

Yeah. And it's also like this is something that I think at age 49, I know myself well enough. If I was a, well, first of all, I'd have been way broker if I was there in my 20s. But like there are certain things that I've been very scared of in my life because I grew up hearing the worst case scenario. And so I remember long before I ever placed any kind of a bet in any way, just watching movies about gambling and gambling addicts or having that be part of a movie.

And people losing their kind of everything over this impulse.

Yes. And so I've always been very leery of it. And now at age 49, I'm aware of the things I'm addicted to. And I'm aware of the things that don't hold it. Pull tabs. Yeah, and I'm always happy to pull some tabs if I have the money in my pocket, and I'm always happy to say I don't have to make that money up when I inevitably lose it because I always just assume I'm doing this for fun, and I'm spending this money because I want to have fun here at this table for a little bit. I just never have to worry about, like, I got to come back here tomorrow because I went overboard, and now I need to win it back or anything.

At our age, I think we tend to know what it is that's really kind of got us by the collar and what doesn't. yeah for you it's not gambling like for me it's not weed right and so i'm just like so i'm not

worried about so we're just having fun and then i'm and i'm kind of joking with genevieve i'm like i don't know i'm placing this i'm here's a little here's a little side bet that has a a with an arrow that points to a two i don't know what that does let's just see what happens you know i could be i could get 25 off of one dollar and i didn't um some of them paid off a little bit you know here and there but no big deal but i guess what i'm getting at here is these are both having a nice time you know where we are i don't know we're in the new york new york by the way when we're doing this so i don't know if you have feelings about that for me i was just sort of like i don't know whatever is fine with me do you have thoughts about the new york new york um you know i like

it it is um if i remember what i like is near the park mgm which is the only non-smoking casino in vegas like 100 non-smoking so i like that for the uh park mgm i do is uh new york do they have a

a roller coaster that comes into the facility if so i didn't see it i did see that i passed underneath roller coaster tracks outside at one point okay i didn't see it there isn't anything especially special about what i saw in the new york new york other than a bunch of really cheesy nods to new york culture there was a hot dog stand in one place unfortunately i'd already eaten my anniversary dinner um you know there was like some big bar that was every stool was taken up called like um midtown or something there was oh you would have loved this the the black bar called like what are you looking at stop remembering that let's steal what ironically i did see that in las vegas nevada oh that's right yeah that's right um

Um, they, but what I thought was funny and I can't help thinking of you in these situations is Vives and I are playing this, you know, video game, this blackjack video game, and we are right outside of a fake Irish bar, which is just so funny to have that in the New York, New York, because Vegas, because it's not that different than any fake Irish bar. I know that you have a special sort of chip on your shoulder about it's not Irish pubs and that kind of thing is not your culture and you don't really like it. and it was just so funny that like do you need this representation in the new york new york like it's just like it didn't seem any different than o'malley toots and wallingford you know what

i mean right exactly like we're bringing like imagine being from like the midwest and going to las vegas for that authentic new york experience right where you also have a like a How do we say that? Simulcrum? Basically a pretend Irish bar in the pretend New York in Las Vegas. Like, what the heck?

But it was helpful for me because our machine was right outside of this bar. You know, like the bars in the casino. And so in the middle of the casino was a very, very packed. Again, this is Saturday night. And I kind of didn't realize the difference between a Saturday night and a Sunday night in Vegas. I just it was busy there. And I'm like, well, yeah, I thought Vegas, baby. Right. That's how it is. And so it's just we played that sound effect for you a lot when you were here. I'm glad. It's one of your favorite. I love it. Vince Vaughn head. Yes, exactly. You know me. I was just there looking for my Elizabeth Shue moment. um but uh so i tried to get a drink in the middle of this casino at this like loud raucous bar and it's like there's a what's that luke new york new york in new york new york in the middle of the casino with this loud bar and i uh i was just like i'm just like this line is not moving at all i'm like what if i just go in and start a tab at the irish bar that's like that opens up right where we're playing so it's actually kind of a cheat code for me because that bar was not that crowded and so I could just go in there and buy a bunch of drinks so that was a long that was a long way of saying maybe I'd had a couple more drinks and maybe I'm getting silly at the machine but all I know is Genevieve at some point has gone from like we're just here to have fun like have fun don't worry about anything too she's kind of like well I really it's just it's a little bit hard for me to see how well I'm doing when we're playing off the same tab, basically. Which is why I went to so much detail before telling you about how Veeves and I are putting the same amount of money into a pool and now we're both playing it. But she's taking it a little bit more seriously because she's like, and so I'm like, oh yeah, I guess it is a little bit harder to tell. But then I continued just my Tom Fulry and at one point Genevieve's kind of like, it would just be sort of nice to be like, And she's doing that thing that went from kind of like, it's the weekend of this, do whatever you want.

This is my girl. I am so in her world on this. This would drive me insane what you're talking about.

And it totally makes sense because then, you know, like when I was playing video poker later, it's like, yeah, you want to know when you're up and when you're down. And you kind of can't tell when you're both playing off of the same thing. And the guy next to you is just kind of like. And with different strategies. What does this dragon do? What does this dragon do? while she's over there deciding what to do on a soft 17 or whatever. And so at a certain point-

Well, hit, obviously, against a face card. I mean, this is, I don't need to bore you with the details, my friend, but you've got to hit a soft 17 against a face card. It's a no-brainer.

But anyway, so I just thought it was so funny, because I know there are people in Genevieve's life who she makes fun of for doing that, too, who will just so clearly want something but just won't come out and say what they want. but then eventually it's just kind of like oh oh oh you want me to leave so i think at some point i might have stopped playing that evening but it was fine too because for me it was kind of like okay and i think i wandered around and then i um oh that's right it doesn't really matter i just sort of wandered around a little bit i was looking for a place to sit you went to the pretend bronx that's right i said hey i'm walking here it was a it was a whole thing and we ended up not staying too much longer after that and then the next night which was sunday night vibes were very different the whole town like got significantly quieter and so we went back to i think the aria on on sunday night and that's where i posted up for a while just like at a bar drinking drinks and they did comp them um and uh and i just sat there and played uh video like jacks are better or something for probably a couple of hours but then i yeah maybe maybe an hour hour and a half But then after that, you know what happened was I'm playing the game. I'm just scrolling, and it was like playing my iPad. And then I was like, my – brain was wandering my mind was wandering i wasn't thinking about what i was playing anymore you got sort of bored with the experience yeah kind of and not in a bad way like i'm bored i want to go home this sucks just kind of like i just had this moment of realization where i was like i um i i've been playing this i really enjoyed it i got the experience that i wanted i wanted to sit down i wanted to just keep on spinning this thing for a while i wanted to drink some gin and tonics that's what i was like planning on doing and picturing myself doing in vegas but then after maybe an hour and a half i realized i'm not even paying attention what i'm doing and i started losing money really fast because i wasn't really thinking about it anymore i was just literally thinking about other things in my life and i realized wait a second this is arrow two was that i was saying a arrow two yeah right i don't side bets no and so anyway and so then i was like oh you should stop doing this now like you should just go do something else but then i would check in on genevieve who's you know she's been playing this is again sunday night And she's been playing blackjack this whole time by herself, not having to deal with me at all. And I come and I sit next to her and I'm just like, oh, hey, how are you doing? She's like, I'm good. I'm good. And she's just kind of like, I'm like, oh, you don't mind if I sit here? She's like, yeah, don't play if you don't mind. I'm like, I don't mind. She's like, just don't get in my head. And I was like, okay, you don't want me here. So I wandered around and then I just found a nice comfortable chair and I read my book for a while and I had some beers and I watched life go by. And I know that probably sounds pretty lame, but like I loved it. I love sitting and reading my book and people watch people watching. I don't know if you know this. Honestly, I don't know if I talk about this a lot, but it's free. It's is that an expression? I love it. No, people watching is one of my it wasn't about. Oh, no, no. I hope I don't come off as sounding cheap. I probably spent like eighty dollars or something on video poker.

I just sure stop caring. And I was like, oh, I I'm just kind of done here. And then I was like, I guess I don't know what to do. And then I went outside around. I don't know like I would keep on walking by Genevieve like she didn't know I was doing this but every day I would just like walk by and she just looks so intense playing her blackjack I'm like well she's doing what she had pictured herself doing you know leading up to she's having her moments and I just kind of enjoyed wandering around looking at things I went outside I took a bunch of like kind of pictures and videos because Sunday night was just really weird I kind of didn't realize how quiet it would relatively get and then yeah so it was just like Genevieve just planned it really perfectly never once was i stressed out about anything i wasn't stressed about the flights i wasn't that's why i said like i feel like i was on whatever drug that just evens everything out and it was just like really nice like i'm really glad i got to see vegas our hotel room was nice apparently it was an owner like somebody owned the suite have you ever been in this situation before oh so this is like kind of like an airbnb or a verbo kind of a deal i mean i guess it was actually in the Vidara so it's like kind of like you still have to go through all of that stuff but Genevieve had booked it on Travelocity or something and she didn't realize until we got there that it's some kind of situation it's not quite Airbnb I don't think they would maybe partner with Airbnb but they do have something where apparently in these places

you can own your own suite. This is somebody's condo essentially. Yeah I guess so but when you

go up there there's nothing that indicates that like oh this is somebody's personal taste in anything you know what i mean all the yeah art on the wall is just as you know they still have

that like giant like canoe art yes sure they do no it's a strange i don't quite get what the tie-in

is the the sort of canoe and kayak sculpture i don't understand like how that plays and but i liked the building i like everything was just like really really nice and it was the perfect amount of time we ended up leaving on monday and like you know after my sunday of like blowing a bunch of money you know sitting at the bar doing exactly what i wanted to do but getting my hour and a half or two hours out of that genevieve getting to play her blackjack getting to see our comedy show by sunday night i was like yeah that was great let's go back it was a perfect

amount of time like it was just like so it was just nice critically and this is really what i'm wondering i think the listeners are wondering on saturday night when camaro kev and i have had a few small beers, are you willing to go back to Vegas Saturday night in the aftermath of the Seahawks game?

Oh, this coming Saturday. I thought you were saying...

I thought you were giving... I mean, in like four days. So you're... Because we're probably... There's going to be a moment, if the Seahawks win, there's going to be a moment where Kevin and I decide it's a good idea to go to Vegas.

Interesting. And I need to know if you're in. On the spot. I can tell you this. Genevieve's in. Yeah, no, clearly. She has more blackjack to play, certainly. Just don't try to play with her, Luke. You know, it's funny. So let's set this up a little bit. So the Seahawks are playing a very big playoff football game this Saturday. I was so psyched to hear that it was a Saturday game that I can attend, or at least not attend, but view it somewhere. And I was already sort of thinking, hey, maybe this will be one where we can watch it at the Eagles. or I can watch it here at home. I was already thinking that. And then last night you texted me and a few other friends up here in Seattle and said, hey, I'm going to be in town. Do you guys want to get together at the Eagles and watch the game? Which I'm all in for. You sort of made up my mind for me since I was on the fence. That sounds like fun. So Saturday, first of all, you and I, I feel like, have not hung in a social situation that was not related to work in a very long time, I feel like. Yeah. Can you even remember the last time that you and I have not seen each other that was not tied to either our work together or some gig that you had, like a live wire or something.

I've done everything I could to avoid it.

I understand.

Thanks for coming. Saturday, we have no choice but to hang out.

That's right. And so we're going to do that. And you're thinking that the funny thing about your joke, and not to tear it down, but I've been kind of studying humor over the weekend, is that... Well, you were recently at a big black comedy show. That's what I'm saying. I kind of see it. First of all, we'll always need to back up, Mike. Do you think that that's Kevin's thing, though? Like, I almost feel like you and Veeves more than you and Kevin, but maybe I don't know that side of Kevin.

Well, you're right. It's probably more in me and Veeves' tendency, but I think there's a point at which Camaro Kev is sort of down to clown. So I don't think it's his go-to, is like, we should go to Vegas. But I do think that there is a point at which he is agreeable to the idea. I see. But you're right. The premise of my joke was slightly flawed, because it's not his tendency.

But I would definitely go back. I have a commitment on Sunday that I can't miss, so unfortunately I can't plan to make the spur-of-the-moment decision with you on Saturday.

You once again choose the unhoused folks in Seattle over me and Veeves, and possibly Kamero Kev.

Seeing how quickly you can become unhoused by spending all of your money on side bets that you don't really have a solid grasp on. But I absolutely would. Did you hit any of the side bets? Yeah. From time to time, one would pay off, but nothing huge. I wanted one of those. What I wanted was to put $1 or $3 on a side bet and then have it pay off 25 to 1 or something like that. Every now and then, I would certainly get my money back. i'd get a push on a side bet every now and then or a maybe a three to one tops but i was only

betting a dollar or or so on those so this is again this is the universe protecting you because if you were to have hit one of those uh-huh like like 25x uh-huh you'd be locked in yeah you would be totally like stuck thinking like like obsessing over this stuff that was like the first time that ever went to las vegas uh it was i was it was probably in like 19 maybe 99 or something and i remember going to o'shea's casino which you could play like two dollar blackjack and i brought 40 for my whole trip including las vegas and i think i must have hit one of those weird side bets that probably paid me you know 25 to 1 and something in my brain chemistry shifted Like permanently And I'm just glad for you my friend That that didn't happen for you

Yeah well I mean I kind of Was I getting that on Maybe when I was playing my Pi Gow You know just fake Pi Gow Like not with real money on my iPad or whatever When those things pay off You're just like oh And so I was waiting for something to happen with my real money And so I was kind of like oh man I really want that And I didn't get that And like you said maybe that's for the best Good very much for the best

all right let's thank some of our donors andrew the last couple of days the uh the listeners and donors have been treated to some uh what we call non-traditional donor music because i don't have this song so what are you using are you using something off well monday it was monday it was the home depot theme doers getting more done okay that's appropriate the listeners are getting more done exactly with their donations and then uh yesterday it was oh fully what was it it was something that i'm sure is getting pulled down in romania but it was uh it was not this song so So we're glad to be back to our normal stuff and glad to be back to thanking the folks who are making TBTL possible with their donations, including Laura Grace Linsky of Raleigh, North Carolina. Have you heard, Andrew, that there is a controversy about the pronunciation of Raleigh of late? No, but I feel like it might be one of those names that I'm always a little bit insecure saying.

I've committed to Raleigh.

but apparently people are saying rally or saying other things and now the internet is yeah like rally north carolina i don't know about that sir walter rally i don't know raleigh was he was sir walter raleigh was he the one who threw his cloak down

i don't know i'm sorry to be no but but i really don't know i believe the story of sir walter

raleigh or a story that i heard as a kid was there was something where somebody probably a woman was walking in an area where there was some amount of water and sir walter raleigh or rally put his cloak down over the water so that she would not step in water which by the way doesn't even make sense like you're still gonna like that's not gonna help i know that trope so well from like

I remember in cartoons, a cartoon character would put the cloak down. Throwing it down, right? But then the person would step on it, and it would end up getting – then they would fall into a deep hole or puddle or something like that. But I didn't know that it was – but it does – let's see here. I'm on something called HistoriaMagazine.com, and it says, Walter Raleigh stripping away the cloak of myth. So you have the right guy. And did you mention on the show – this is really important to me. every now and then we get a flood of responses on something that is and we never know what that thing is going to be but so many people luke and i don't know if you address this on the show or not have your back when it comes to lintels you were talking about you you were confusing lintel or lentil but yeah you were like i don't understand why this is part of what myth were we talking about or what song passover passover right not yeah and um and so it's a myth i just realized i

would say that no problem no judgment i think it's i think it's scientifically unlikely that the angel of death moved through egypt and killed everyone who didn't have blood on their lentil

you're just saying that that is not the angel of death's vibe like that just i would just say low low key it's not giving it's not giving angel of death low key it's not giving angel of death is that the show title or is that a little bit too dark you're in charge of that low key it's not giving the angel of death um but anyway uh you were saying lentil and and you didn't understand

why that was like kind of well it was so weird because while we were talking about it i was googling it and i was saying it slightly wrong i was saying i think i was saying lentil like the bean and it's lintel i think yeah it's lentil but but it was so strange because it's very rare that when you put something into the internet even like if you're close to it it usually gives you a result that kind of confirms whatever it was you were thinking or not thinking and it was a strange experience where i was like putting this into the internet as we were talking and it

was the internet was giving me nothing one letter off we have all the ai in the world but one letter

letter was that letter made such a big difference yeah but you would just think that maybe in the

context the computer that's supposed to be so smart these days and you can say oh maybe you're thinking of lintel but boy the listeners knew exactly what you're talking about did you address this on the show because i sent you one i didn't i just i just read each one and i just it it my heart swelled four sizes oh good you did see more than just the one i sent you because i've been getting inundated on the text chain which you don't see with everybody just wanting keeping that well i've been gate kept before and i didn't like it one bit anyway congratulations to you

thank you it feels it's a rare experience for me but it feels good to actually not have been totally crazy on something so uh thank you to all the listeners who weighed in on that thank you all sit to kelsey bannon who's in woodenville washington hey that's for my niece's first birthday on saturday and this is a thing you missed by the way which is so david's uh daughter jemma is she turned one actually yesterday but they're having a birthday party the birthday party starts i believe at three on saturday whoa which is very close to the start time of the

football game on saturday is this because david is not a big football fan and he doesn't exactly

and this is the point this is what happens when you're not a football fan and you plan your first of all you impregnate your wife one year and nine months ago what were you thinking on the wrong day yes but so the whole thing is that like he is um how do i put this he is and i actually agree with alicia on this his wife she does not want the entire birthday party of her daughter to turn into a like seahawks freak out which makes sense also that was a thing that happened at my house for what was allegedly a christmas party and it turned into a seahawks freak out and that was only because philip rivers was playing in the football game so what we're trying to do is what i'm trying to do is figure out how much how much does this one-year-old really need me there as her uncle right how

much will she remember even i'd say almost none of it so did you and you i'm sorry that i did not listen but you you talked to david about this on the show yes i guess i guess i don't i want to hear about this but i don't want to bore the listeners with you just telling me what they've

already heard but what we what we decided was he well first of all he also has some access you david and my dad have access to some kind of like dark arts on the phone and the computer where you guys can watch anything at any time he's apparently got an app that he can watch the phone on even though he's not paying for them and i'm going to report it by the way to the ghost of paul allen that he's stealing seahawks content but what we agreed was he is going to when the party has calmed down and he's doing the dishes that's when he can low-key put his phone out and watch

the Seahawks game as long as but the party starts at three like an average party is gonna last like

what like I mean more than two hours certainly it might for them I don't care I'll be at the Eagles

at about 5 30 I mean again we've established this kid will not remember it well can I tell you a very quick story as we think the donors hear about something that I've been dealing with in my life my dear, dear friend Paul, who was mentioned on the show quite a bit. He's one of my closest friends from high school, introduced me

and Genevieve. He's the reason that you and Genevieve

are together. Exactly, exactly. And he is turning 50. He's just a little bit older than me. He's one grade older than me. And I got a text from, or I got one of those, like some sort of a, you know, we don't do partyful us olds. I got like an Evite of some sort or something from them. Also because it's a scam. And because I avoid Partyful anyway. And he's like, come celebrate. He really loves roller skating. I think this is something that maybe came later in life. I don't know. But Paulie these days loves roller skating for the past several years. And he lives near a really cool roller rink on the south side of Seattle. And he goes there a lot. And he likes to have his birthday parties there. And I got an invite from him when I was in Vegas. First Saturday? No, not this Saturday. It's for February 8th. His come join us for a roller skating adventure on February 8th and celebrate Paul's turning 50. 50 is a big one, right? You want to be there for your dearest friend in the world. Do you know what February 8th is? It's the Super Bowl. And so I wrote back. I'm like, hey, I know this is super lame, but I mean, I literally can't. I already took time off of my volunteer gig. And, you know, Vives and I have to watch the Super Bowl. Like, we'll be well deep into Super Bowl coverage for our, you know, after these messages podcasts. And also, I just like the Super Bowl. You know what I mean? But I had to say, like, I know this is lame. And like, I know you're not into sports. I mean, you can't be that into sports to not even look to see when the Super Bowl is before booking your 50th birthday party. But I felt terrible.

I found out that the Super Bowl was on February 8th from Elena Passarello, my co-host on LiveWire, because they were trying to do an event, some kind of a fundraiser thing. And they were like, February 8th. And I was about to hit cool on it. And then Elena, of all people, who's not even a football person, was like, well, you guys know that's the Super Bowl. And I was like, unsend.

Yes, right? And so I feel really bad. And Pauly wrote back. He's like, oh, don't worry about it. We'll get together. And I didn't realize it was the Super Bowl. But I was sort of, and Paul could listen to this, he listens to the show sometimes, I was sort of looking at, because I haven't talked to him any more deeply about this yet, but I was looking at the Evite or whatever it's called and seeing how many yeses, how many noes, and how many non-responses so far. Because I was wondering, like, if the Seahawks, I mean, this is in Seattle, and if the Seahawks are playing, you don't even have to be that big of a football fan to want to be engaged with Super Bowl Sunday. And again, I'm not trying to look past the next couple of weeks of playoffs, and we're still just hopeful now. But, like, I feel bad if the Seahawks are playing in the Super Bowl and Pauly is just, like, rolling around an empty roller rink by himself, sadly, to the sound of the Peanuts music.

well there are enough nerds that uh will still want to roller skate but this is a real issue for me because like becca's sister uh in-law and uh brother do a super bowl party every year and it's a big thing and they look forward to it and everybody looks forward to it and i've been going to it for years and i'm already saying if the seahawks are in the super bowl i will not watch this yeah in that

That environment. Yeah. Like that's a that's a nonstarter for me. Yeah. And nobody understands why they're like, well, what do you mean? It's a Super Bowl party that they're in the Super Bowl. Isn't that just more party? I'm like, no, you do not get it. You don't understand this mental illness. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, I obviously I completely. You do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm saying that to other people on the Evite. Exactly. Right. They do not understand this. Right. Yeah. If it's if it's Bill's Niners or something like that, you can be like, yeah, OK.

whatever i have some i have some feelings about i'll bet on the doink i'll bet always bet on doink um and uh and you can have fun with it but yeah but my question for you while we're here in the middle of thing of the donors is what is your ideal what is your ideal if if you know that a huge group of your social circle being becca's family and everything they're all doing this other thing and now you're free though you've said like i i'm too intense on this are you just staying home are you coming up to seattle to watch it with us like what are you doing probably watching

it with you because like i don't want to be by myself at my house if they win the super bowl that's not i need to i need to hug and jump yeah like so it it needs to be but i mean this is the whole thing this is the the the the tale of two super bowls which is super bowl number one that the seahawks won i mean they went against the uh steelers and they lost but like then the first one they won against the Denver Broncos I was at this place this loft and it was amazing because there was a lot of people to hug and jump with and then the next year I was watching the Super Bowl in that same place when the Patriots picked us off at the one yard line and I would still say I think I would I want to be if they make it to the Super Bowl I want to be with with the people I love uh who get it if that makes any sense I can't be with the people I love who don't care about it as much as I do because they're going to say something that is going to make me furious and then

relationships will end right when one person says why is everybody so sad and you know who

gets this is Aaron Lowenson of Santa Monica California donors today thanks Aaron thanks also to ashley renner who's in everett washington we know that ashley is a 12 or if not a 12 at least a person who gets the vibe you understand ashley you read the room you would never say why is everybody so sad after we throw an interception on the one yard line and we appreciate that about you also thanks to sam viner of north vancouver british columbia nice a lot of not south vancouver No. Not mid-Vancouver, North Vancouver.

And by the way, first of all, I wanted to mention a lot of very familiar friendly names on the—friendly names. A lot of just friendly—a lot of friends and longtime listeners and donors on the list today. Thank you, as always. I love seeing people's names year after year. Quick correction on Ashley. Ashley is not a 12. Ashley is a 22 because she's a 10 because she's donating to BETL. Plus she's a 12.

so she's actually a 22 yes that could maybe be that could be our new thing like but the people are getting 22 jerseys and yes like so if you are you're a seahawks fan but also a tbtl fan you are a 22 i think you got it like that yeah i wonder where um aaron moiso of nampa idaho comes in you know i'm gonna guess aaron is also a seahawks fan this is like we are the major uh football team I would say west of the Rockies although is Colorado, is Denver west of the Rockies?

Well let me tell you this I want to say yes I also wanted to hit some of those side bets though

Well I would just say that the Seahawks I believe are probably Aaron's team because of Aaron being in Nampa, Idaho I'm going to assume that all of these donors wherever they're distributed they're 22's because they're they're good people and they care about things that matter that's right and those things that matter andrew are the seattle seahawks supporting tbtl and you and me and genevieve and maybe camaro kev going to las vegas on saturday night what if i just did pop up from vegas what if we just took the show on the road i would love that so much for you like it would really buck my conception of you but i would love that for us that would be such a fun

plot twist well when you first said like well what if we get a wild hair and decide to go to vegas after the game on saturday like if i didn't already have that commitment which i really can't get out of at this point i was like i would be

Because my only responsibility on Monday is to do, I think the only responsibility I have on Monday is to do TBTL with you. And so if we just take a little microphone.

We'd already have Genevieve and Camaro Cat.

Right, exactly.

We could do it from the hotel room. It would actually be a lot easier than this. You've been listening to me garbled down the line from Chicago. Let's not rule it out. Can Anna Analfi cover for you?

Anna Analfi is always there, so she can't cover for me because she covered for me last weekend, in fact. So I don't want to put that on her, but I am looking at my calendar. We'll just see what happens. Can Anna come to Vegas with us while you handle your biz? Yes, actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you'd have more fun with Anna than me. But I want to come. Anyway, we'll figure it all out.

I'm looking forward to it. It's all sort of predicated on the Seahawks winning on Saturday night. But anyway, we'll see what happens. In the meantime, thank you for listening, everybody. We are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So please, if you can, join us for that. In the meantime, everybody have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Power out.