Muse

Clarence Armstrong has a unique cat. Yeah, he's pretty unusual. Let's go. Hey, come on. His name's Tegri, and he's more like a dog than a cat. I think he's more intelligent than a dog. He likes this. Every day when the weather's nice, Clarence and Tegri go for a walk, and they usually end up at a fast food restaurant in Renton. Would you like that one cheese today? Clarence goes inside and gets a cup of coffee, and Tegri waits for him outside. He'll just sit right there. It's darling. In the summertime, sometimes when it's too hot, I don't bring him over. Tegri will wait for Clarence for hours. Customers are amazed. When I first walked up the ramp, I thought it was a statue.

He's the best. We've known him for about, what, three years? Oh, he's a little sweetheart.

Clarence says he takes Tegri everywhere. To the grocery store, bowling alley, and library. Clarence and Tegri are best friends. Tegri, you ready to go? Hey, you ready to go home? And this is his Christmas sweater. Elton John would be impressed with Tegri's sunglass collection. And when it comes to hats, Tegri has a different hat for every occasion. Here's his Christmas scarf that goes with it. When he wants to swing in it, he'll push it and get it started. And just when you think you've seen it all, Clarence pulls out Tegri's favorite snack food. Now, this is my cat's gray poop on. Now, you've seen everything. Scott Rensperger, Cairo News Channel 7.

TBTL!

Hi, podcast.

Oh, no. I consider myself to be an absolutely dead center, normal, average American.

You negligently ruined her iPhone. You have to pay for that. Simple as that. Isn't that rocket science? What is rocket science? Rocket science is when the scientists find out things about space.

As far as I'm concerned, they're the worst looking things I've ever seen. I mean, they are pathetic looking, they're homely.

I don't know what exactly the attachment is. I think they're cute, but kind of funny looking.

This is what happens when you hire two guys with a podcast. Let's get to the jokes.

All right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's a kind of magic. My name, my name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. I just want you to be normal, and clearly you're not. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia.

Well, well, well, look who's back.

I was getting a delivery last week, and the FedEx guy looked over at the, I have the name Madrona Hill studio. Not studio, but Madrona Hill on the outside of this little converted garage. For reasons that I don't fully understand, I think I wanted to feel like I was going somewhere designated to work. And it's actually odd to me how many people that pull up here to drop things off and deliver things are not curious about that. But this guy was. He said, what's Madrona Hill? And then I had to explain that I do a podcast in here five days a week. And then he asked me the dreaded question, which is, what's it called? So anyway, shout out FedExGuy if you're listening. That's what's going on inside that building that says. He also told me that he was really into Madrona trees and he read online that you can make tea out of their berries. So he and his kid picked a bunch of Madrona berries and made tea and it was awful. It was undrinkable. So that's a story about Madrona tree berry tea right here on episode 4,651 in a collector series. So let the fun begin. We're going to talk about house burping today. And why it is that I chose to play that drop. You're a gross person. It's actually something that my friend Andrew Walsh referenced, I don't know, a week or two ago, without even knowing that he was very on trend. Speaking of my friend Andrew Walsh, he's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He sometimes will, in a pinch, he'll hold the door around here, which we really appreciate. And he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I thought when you were telling that story about the madrone berries, I call it madrone. Oh, I see.

I did also. I mentioned that to the fetish. I go, another thing is it also can be called madrone.

I thought, maybe I didn't think this. I was half expecting or maybe kind of hoping, although that would be child endangerment. I was kind of wondering if you were going to say they started tripping from drinking this tea.

It does sound ayahuasca.

It sounds. I was like, oh, where is this going?

And to be honest with you, looking at this particular FedEx guy, I believe he had sort of long.

Munger hair may have been in a ponytail. He had some pretty powerful, my name is Otto, and I love to get Blato vibes.

It smells like Otto's jacket. Did you happen to see, I think I forwarded it to you. Did you see this piece? Maybe we can get deeper into it later if you feel like it's worth it. But something about there's some mushrooms somewhere in China, I think, that people have been taking, I think, for a long time in this small village or something. But the weird thing about them is they're not just causing hallucinations. They're causing the same hallucinations to everybody who takes them.

You sent me that story a while ago, and I saw the headline. I didn't actually delve into it. So that's the deal is that it's not just that they're hallucinating, but the hallucination is the same.

And the hallucination is you see dozens of tiny little human beings. And I almost didn't send it to you. I saw this in, like, my social media stream somewhere, and I was like, oh, this could be, like, total ZergNet. But it's from the BBC. Yeah. The big black comedy show that I went to in Las Vegas.

That's what I was assuming.

Yeah, no, this is from the British Broadcasting Corporation. The headline is, they saw them on their dishes when eating. That's a quote. The mushroom making people hallucinate dozens of tiny humans. And I think this is the first time anybody's found something. I don't know if you want to classify it as a drug or something edible. I consider it medicine. That creates the same hallucination for everybody.

Yeah, I don't want to be, I do not want to be no but here because that's your job. But I wonder, it sounds, the thing that would be hard to pin down is, you know when you hear about something where the same thing happens to a bunch of people, sometimes it can be described as a sort of mass hysteria or mass delusion, or like, you know, a bunch of teenagers in a particular town start fainting or something. It's kind of, what's that called, social contagion or something? Mm hmm. And so my mind immediately wonders if there's a social contagion aspect. And then it's also the fact that the people reporting this are on the drugs. Although I will tell you, I am not against a little psilocybin ingestion. I actually find mushrooms to be a quite pleasant experience. I've never had like I've never had a hallucination. I don't think I'm when I when I've had mushrooms, I'm not having enough of them. And I'm OK with that. I don't want to see little men like that. Actually, it doesn't sound relaxing to me. That sounds unsettling. Like, I like the amount of psilocybin that just kind of, like, makes everything a little more chill.

Well, I will say that—so this is a really long article, and it's pretty in-depth, and it mentions—I don't know. I guess you were joking when you said the reporters are on the drugs. I don't think that's necessarily true.

No, not the reporters. The people talking to the reporters. Oh, right. The people who are saying they're having the same delusion—or, excuse me, hallucination—were hallucinating, which to me lowers their believability, I guess is what I'm saying.

But the interesting thing about it is it was known in this one, it says, small village in China. But then they found it in other parts of the world where the same thing was happening to people who were not in conversation with those small things. And this has been being studied since the 90s. So I don't know. I do sort of trust this. It says in academic literature published in 1991. Oh, okay. So it seems like it's pretty in-depth. And I will say that I don't know that I made it through the whole thing, but I'm scrolling here and it goes on and on and on. That sounds more legit.

Yeah, I think this is a little bit more legit, yeah. Than maybe my initial instincts.

Whatever happened with the – where did we land on the Cuba thing with the hearing? Remember? Like some – this story goes back. Oh, yeah.

Well, they found the device, they think.

They did find the device?

Yeah, you mean the kind of like the sonic warfare that was being perpetrated against people in like the embassy?

I swear that story first broke when you and I were working together at Cairo. Could that story go back further than 10 years at this point?

Cuba Syndrome. I just saw, or whatever they call that, right? Yeah. I think Havana Syndrome.

Havana Syndrome, right, yeah.

Pentagon reportedly testing radio wave device linked to Havana system. This is from Scientific American, which is the only comedy show I go to. this reported machine may be linked to havana syndrome a debated condition characterized by a strange panoply of symptoms that were experienced by u.s officials stationed in cuba boy if there was ever a scientific american sub headline you just heard it yeah right so yeah i thought that was the last graph nope that's where they're starting um so it looks like they have uh they've located a device that they think might be what was making people have that experience of havana

central this is bananas that you and i or i guess we accidentally stumbled onto this today like this is newish news that we're talking about this was just like last week this was i could have reported

on it when i was in miami i was very close to uh cuba yeah uh this is a headline from cnn which is even more interesting pentagon bought device through undercover operation some investigators suspect is linked to Havana syndrome.

Again, just based on the headlines, it sounds like they bought this. The Defense Department has spent more than a year testing a device purchased in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of a series of mysterious ailments. Diplomats, troops, a division of the Department of Homeland Security purchased the device for millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration. I knew nothing useful could have been happening under the current administration. you know what i mean like they they're not smart enough to do an undercover buy of the thing that was doing havana syndrome uh the waning days of the biden administration using funding provided by the defense department um the device is still being studied and there's ongoing debate and in some quarters of a government skepticism over its link to the dozens of anomalous health incidents the device acquired produces pulse radio waves one of the sources said which some officials and academics have speculated for years could be the cause of the incident so there you go they They may or may not have figured out what was making that happen.

I don't know if I like how close we got to actually reporting news here, Luke. This is topical. I mean, usually I'm more comfortable reviewing Star Trek IV, The Way Home, or whatever it's called. That's more like what we like to do. Or Juggalos.

Or Juggalos, as we discussed last week on the program. That's your go-to. I think what you really demonstrated, Andrew, for all of us was your antipathy towards the topic of Juggalos. Well, I wish I hadn't said that. Oh, I'm not trying to call you out. I'm mostly just joking. But I think you're actually right. The Juggalos really served their purpose on this show, and they served with distinction and honor and Faygo all over their heads. But that was a period of time. And what's funny about that is, and I think, was that kind of, that was sort of before your time on the show?

Yes, that's what I was going to say. So it's not even like, by the time I was on the show, you were already a little fatigued by Juggalo content. You know, it was probably a small but hearty part of TBTL in the early days.

Well, yeah, but what it really was, was it became, like other things on this show have become, extremely strongly associated with the brand. So for years, and probably even to this day, we'll get Juggalo content from people. And again, there's absolutely no harm in that. But when the listeners of this show, the longtime listeners of this show, see Juggalos in the news, they think of TBTL.

Yes, and you specifically. I'm looking, I'm a little distracted. I do have some Juggalo related.

Yeah, most people think I'm on drugs because I'm always happy. Are you on drugs? No, I'm not. I'm high on life.

A listener sent me that a long time ago. That's a juggalo who's high on life. Yeah, I didn't know that was a juggalo. Yeah, what is this one? See, I'm worried about some of these because some of them are kind of like from juggalo promotions where they like yell at you in a deep voice.

Yeah, where it's like coming this weekend or whatever. Not this weekend, but Cave in Rock, Illinois. We used to play those a lot.

I love to think about this. It's a puzzle. And each of every one of us is an integral piece that puts a big picture. in which we're all together, puts a big picture. The show lets us to see the big picture.

That's actually me just trying to get through a Monday on TBTL is what that was.

This is something, do I dare play something called Juggalo Barbecue that's 12 seconds long? Sure, do it to it. I have a feeling this is going to be. I was listening to Chuck Klosterman on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. Me too. Oh, man. How great was that interview?

That was pretty good. But, I mean, it was a little bit backgroundy for me, but I thought it was interesting that, not to get into formatics, but it was like Pablo was just kind of like, all right, go. Like, I don't even remember a setup for it. It just sort of seemed like, just let him talk, and he was just sort of rat-tat-tatting for a really long time.

Well, I mean, I'm a Klosterman head, so I thought it was actually interesting that Pablo started off by saying, like, I'm a fan of yours, although at my college, that was considered in poor taste.

I don't actually know if I heard that or remember that.

Oh, yeah. It was how he literally started. It was like one minute into the interview. I was like, all right, we know you went to Harvard, Pablo, but simmer down. But the thing Chuck Klosterman was saying was that his old people will come up to him and they'll reference a book that he wrote when he was like in his late 20s. And he says, you know, I'm really not that person anymore. And I haven't reread that book ever. And they actually know more about that version of me than I do, because they just maybe finished that book that I wrote when I was much younger. and that's not who I am anymore. And that really hit me because it made me think about the eras of TBTL and the kind of things that we used to say and jokes we would make or even tape that we would play and how, you know, that's really kind of not who we are anymore. And, you know, and how do you make sense of that or how do you think about that? Like things that you said and did that you sort of don't currently stand by. So with that all being said, I'm going to play something called Juggalo Barbecue. That's 12 seconds.

long that i'm almost sure i don't stand by i don't know what it is but i'm pretty sure i'm

gonna regret it anyway here we go every year this party becomes more outrageous as the thousands of free cheeseburgers hot dogs and ice cold fago rain from the stage all right that wasn't that bad

that's the stuff i have a bunch of that too i think from the same promo what is this adventure

so awesome that the memory will live on with you forever um anyway what about do you think

juggalo michael jackson trial that seems oh interesting that seems fraught 16th i have something called juggalo michael jackson trial this year the lucky juggalos in attendance will

be jamming out to the awesome sounds of the greatest michael jackson tribute band in history

oh tribute bands i couldn't see the whole word oh you thought it was tri that tri was actually not enough i it was it was the opposite of tmi it was not enough information i was totally totally wrong

about that but anyway we just set the show back by about 15 years and now and we're just saying

how we were shedding this reputation in all your juggalo content folks send in the clowns as it were oh actually that's a yeah that's a that's pretty good hey um uh i've been i mentioned this like a lot kind of a long time ago on the show like i think before you went to vegas and it was funny because you had a sort of an odd an audible kind of response to it and then you brought it up in passing. I can't remember if it was on the show or off the air, but I had mentioned that I'm kind of becoming a shoes off situation here at the Madrone Hill studio and even in my house a little bit. And I didn't see it coming for me. Basically the deal is, as you know, to come out here to this converted garage, I leave my little house and come out here. So of course I'm going to have to have shoes on, but it also means that I'm then tracking a lot of dirt and debris into here and i'm um the area that i'm broadcasting from there's an there's an area rug that is like my chair is on and everything's on it's supposed to kind of absorb some of the sound but i wisely bought something that has a lot of kind of white in it i don't know why i keep doing that and so i find myself that needing to vacuum this rug a lot because i come you know come on in and i walk over and i sit down i start talking to you and i'm always tracking dirt onto this rug and then one day i realized you know i've got two different pairs of clog lake shoes i've got some birkenstocks and i've got some other ones that i bought from the internet it's called cvs i think basically look like birkenstocks and i realized that what i can do is as i'm leaving my house i slip into these slip-ons i come out here i walk in here and then right before i get to the corner of the carpet i step out of the slip-ons and i walk over here and i start doing the show with you so yes i don't have shoes on right now i do have socks but it has totally solved this vacuuming problem and then what i notice is when i go back into my house then i just take the slip-ons off again and then i'm in my house in my socks and i'm not tracking dirt in there and i'm absolutely loving it now the caveat is i'm not making anyone else do this at my house that's not the rule of my home but what i'm finding is for me personally andrew this shoes off lifestyle is really working yeah and i

No, you know, I just want to reiterate here. This comes up a lot because I say that I am not comfortable going. I don't like socializing in my socks. That's basically it. Like if I'm going to a party, as I did this last summer, and I was quite uncomfortable. And it was, you know, a decent-sized house party at my friend's very beautiful house in Shoreline. And it was a shoes-off party I knew it was going to be. And I get there, and it's just like you see this huge pile of shoes at the front door, and everybody's taking their shoes off. And then the whole time, I just feel like a child. I feel like I don't, it's just not how I, I wouldn't want to take off my shoes walking into a bar, and I don't want to take off my shoes walking into a party. That's how I feel.

Can you imagine the shoes off bar? Oh, I'm sure they have them.

Are you kidding me?

How long before Portland or the Lower East Side has a shoes off bar?

I'm sure, I almost guarantee they have them. But that's not me saying to other people, you can't have shoes off parties. I'm just saying, but I'm at an age where I also have enough autonomy and kind of enough give a shit-edness just to say, yeah, I kind of don't care if this makes me look bad or a lack of give a shit-edness about like, yeah, you know, take me as I am. But I'm telling you, I'm probably not interested in like coming to your party if it means I'm hanging out in my socks all night. But I would never tell people that they can't have that rule for their house. I'm just saying that it's not for me.

Right, and this isn't a criticism of you But what this is for me, I think Is the camel's nose under the tent Because it starts with I'm like a hard no on shoes off things Although I'm not quite as I don't have the same boundaries you have So if I went to someone's house and it was shoes off I would take my shoes off I would just feel insecure the whole time Well, I mean, that is what happens to me What has happened to you

I've just tried to now kind of avoid it a little bit

Because you know that's what's going to be happening.

I don't know if I want to go to that New Year's Eve thing, if it's going to be at the house where I know they don't wear shoes.

But, like, what for me I feel like is the evolution of this is it starts with I'm a no-shoes-off guy or I don't like it. And then in my own life, I start to realize, wow, there really is kind of something to this. Because what happens is my level of anxiety about how dirty the rugs are getting, it's sort of like that level of anxiety drops. So overall, it's a real net positive for me because as I'm sitting here talking to you, no part of my brain is being occupied with when was the last time I vacuumed this rug that I'm on. And the same thing is happening in my main home environment, which is I have started to on occasion, like probably maybe once a month or once every other month, I will hire someone to come over and do some sort of housekeeping stuff for me. And while my house is generally speaking, very tidy, what she and her cleaning partner do is they, they really clean the floors and the sink and the oven and they like steam the floor, which I didn't actually know was maybe that's something you talk about on spotless. but like when i come home the perfect for me the perfect version of this is if this can happen while i'm on like a work trip and then when i come home and the house is like so clean it's the floor is clean andrew to a level that you know there's nothing you could think your house is clean and then the afternoon sunlight comes in a window and you're just like especially as the seasons change that i'm living in an absolute pigsty right now this they get the floor so clean that like it can even stand up to the harsh scrutiny of of the sunlight the afternoon the low winter afternoon sunlight coming in and then my obsession becomes do not under any circumstances mess this floor up burbs the game is how long can i preserve this level of cleanliness in this house because it's so nice right now i don't want to use anything i don't i don't want to walk on the floors i don't want to besmirch anything that's been smirched you know what's the act of is it

smirch if i besmirch it then was it smirched so when i come in from the outside like i especially during these winter months like i also actually it's weird because i'm actually i do this more than genevieve does in fact like i actually if i'm coming in from outside and i've been out and about during the you know seattle winter i always kick off my shoes when i get home because i don't want to track shit all over my house either but i have a couple of pairs of sort of indoor shoes that are like you know we've had this conversation before sperry topsiders it was funny because you see you didn't know what sperry topsiders were you were picturing them incorrectly they're just like they're just like little sneakers that you slip on and they have rubber bottoms they were mentioned in this book that i was reading recently as something people were wearing way back in the 1960s so i didn't realize they're kind of a classic shoe but i had them in high school yeah they're Just like slip-on shoes, no laces, rubber bottoms, canvas top, very, very basic design. And I have a couple of those, and like one of them is like kind of quasi inside-outside. So in other words, I have one pair that is almost only inside, and then another pair that I'll wear inside. But then if I'm going to take the garbage out, I'll wear those outside, take the garbage out, then kick them off at the door and put the other ones on. I kind of rotate them. So I'm not totally blind to, you know, I'm not tracking shit all over the place all the time. Also, I had a question for you. I assume that you have a wireless vacuum out in your studio. You're not bringing a vacuum. You're a cordless.

I do, but it sucks. Remember how we descended in the vacuum talk? Good point. You know what? I'll allow it. No, that was good. That was some farsight humor.

It was.

And I'm here for it. Remember when the show descended in the vacuum talk for a long time? Oh, yeah. Because I was buying those Temco. So I basically, like, Becca had recommended this, like, cheap, like, very, like, maybe $100 version of a cordless vacuum as opposed to the really fancy Dyson one, which I had purchased in the past, but which seemed to always break on me. And they were very expensive, like $400 or $500. And I thought, well, I can buy two of these Temco ones. I can have one in the house and one out here. Well, I think you kind of get what you pay for. these Temco's what they do, the problem so I do have one out here but it's not very effective have you ever had a cordless vacuum or even a regular vacuum that it won't hold, what it has sucked up this is hard to explain but basically while I'm activating it while I'm pressing the button it is sort of vacuuming stuff up but it's got that long kind of tube and the second that I turn it off it releases a bunch of stuff that it had up in the tube

so I have a whole

i have developed this really ridiculous system where it's like diaper for it totally it's like i'm vacuuming i'm vacuuming and then i'm holding it and then i'm walking out

outside with it still activated because as soon as i tell it to stop sucking it's going to just release like most of what it so and the the so that's the that's what's going on with that vacuum cleaner i have one out here but it's not particularly effective now i did break down and buy another cordless vacuum from ryobi and andrew yeah cannot recommend this thing highly enough first of all it's not as expensive as that animal i think it was maybe 150 bucks or something but But it uses, I have all these different Ryobi products that are all on the same battery system. So, like, I have a Ryobi drill that uses the same kind of battery, the vacuum cleaner.

Yeah, they're using the same battery?

They all use the same Ryobi battery.

That's the dream. How many batteries do you have? Oh, you would be... Pleasantly appalled.

You'd be pleasantly appalled. I might have, like, eight of these batteries. I've got them charging at all times. i've got a whole like a whole charging station down in the basement of these ryobi batteries because my um i have a shop vac a ryobi shop vac that uses this battery system so it's very um it's very elegant that way very convenient but that thing i love this it's that thing is like it's got so much suction to it that it will like it's it's sort of like a dog that's overly aggressive and you try to take it to the dog park and it's just like going after every other dog if this ryobi thing hits on a piece of like area rug it's just like it's pulling up all of the area i'm like okay all right buddy i'm like he's nice he just he's he's nervous he that's his reaction to being

nervous i was so close to saying i'm gonna he's a rescue i was gonna bring my dyson over to have like kind of a vacuum party a play date my ryobi does not do particularly well around dysons yeah

yeah he was not his previous owners used to torture him with a dyson vacuum by running it near him and he's still a little shell-shocked from that does it have a headlight i'm looking

at some of these some of them have headlights i'm not trying to make you jealous if they don't if yours does i don't know if my ryobi cordless vac i'll tell you the kind that i have vacuums

let's see they offer power yeah i've got the yeah i've got the ryobi one uh yeah i think it's got a i think it's got a uh this thing by the way you can buy it at homedepot.com not an advertiser on the show but we would accept it um yeah i've got this ryobi stick vac and man andrew it is no joke it is like it is I would say it's better than any of the Dyson products of peace and love I know we have a listener who works for Dyson but like this thing is freaking phenomenal would recommend nice nice I love that all right hey let's uh thank a couple of donors here these folks are supporting tbtl financially and uh it's uh well it's how this thing can happen five days a week 52 weeks a year i had a moment andrew the other day i don't know why but i just i had i don't know you probably had this too where i just i had this moment of realizing that we're probably going to be doing this for the rest of our life or at least for a long time and that we have to do five of them a week i'm not complaining we're very lucky to have this job i'm very grateful but like every once in a while i'll just go like what if i don't have anything to talk about in eight months on a particular wednesday you know what i mean like we've just been doing it for so long it seems to work out but i just i all of a sudden it hit me like what if i just lose the ability to form words or i just nothing interesting happens to me or like i there's something about the fact that we're going to do this as long as there is financial support for it almost like

it struck me out of the blue and i had a moment do you worry that i am unemployable at this point and so you feel an obligation to me to keep this going because otherwise what in the world would i

do i well i mean i think they're no i i don't i think you're highly employable i think you're more employable than i am because i have absolutely no ability to take any sort of constructive or non-constructive feedback from bosses anymore i really think what would happen is um if uh if i couldn't do the show anymore for whatever reason if i was incapacitated uh in some way i think you i would hope you would keep doing the show and i would think you'd either pull maybe veves in or john in or even maybe friend of the program cassie chatelaine who happens to be standing by in, of all places, Pullman, Washington. Hi, Cassie.

Ahoy, ahoy, guys.

Hi. So nice to see your shining face. Oh, good to see you guys always.

Yeah, good to see you. Thanks for joining us today.

We're going to be talking to Cassie in a moment here about the big move from the Bay Area to Eastern Washington. I've been following this on Instagram, and it had been too long since we had talked to Cassie. In the meantime, though, let's thank some of those donors, some of the people making it.

it so that we have to do this for the rest of our life that doesn't sound properly we don't have to we don't get to we get these are the people making it so we get to do this for the rest of our life andrew we're talking about charlie hanachek who's in des moines washington nice thank you charlie appreciate growing up did you grow up on the east you grew up in why do i think of garfield washington and you cassie is that that's where you hail from right that's where i hail from the

large metropolitan area of garfield 500 people population now did you grow up calling it des

moines or did the did the name of that city ever even make its way over to garfield washington

never made its name over it wasn't until i moved to seattle that people had to

kind of correct me on that pronunciation because you want to call it des moines like they do in iowa but uh but washington says no live free or die we're going to mispronounce it um and that's where charlie is thanks charlie thanks to laura peterson who's in seattle washington

had you heard of seattle washington that was like within a 15th of a second of me graduating high

school i was like bye going to seattle you walked you walked off the stage yeah into a taxi a waiting taxi cab which drove you directly to seattle yes which had said exactly what i want to talk to you

about uh later on in the show because you have you have it sounds like gone from country mouse to city mouse to country mouse again which is very interesting i love it yes uh you know who else

loves it andrew henderson who's in ottawa ontario canada nice our neighbors to the north i just came up with that but it sounds that's a good idea um formerly known as our friends to the north

yes my friend not the current state of things i really i had a thought the other day this sounds

like i'm making a joke but i kind of wasn't i was like could canada and europe get together and take over this country please like i was like i'd be okay with that i'll i'll you know what come on over yeah and uh i'll take i'll take canadian troops in the streets that's yeah you know what i mean like like i you know i wouldn't love that either but i would i would like it more than the current situation like have we have we ever had a moment in america where it'd be like there's a there's only about five countries that i would think would be worse if they took us over at this point that leaves a lot of countries that i'm open to the idea with and we're in a good

geographical position to allow them in you know what i mean exactly come right through take mexico

come on up uh canada come on down yeah you know um so andrew if you want to get on that i'm just telling you we are we're very very open to the idea uh scott decay is in clayton washington now that's a place I don't think I've heard of Clayton Washington is anywhere near Garfield Cassie

never heard of it but you know what he uh he's never heard of Garfield either most likely so

I was going to apologize but I don't know more of a Heathcliff Washington guy is Garfield named for the president it's named for the president but I love that joke Luke I've

never heard I've truly really I've never heard that really I'm proud of myself because I feel

like you would have heard every garfield related you know joke every particularly the cartoon

garfield growing up when i liked was a friend of mine this is like 20 years ago he goes i'm in

garfield like lasagna you know also you're growing up there cassie in the like um height of the gart jim henson garf not jim henson jim davis garfield like powers like i was obsessed with that comic so much in that era and you're living in a city with the name i know and of course now

i i'm a dork and i have like garfield t-shirts and stuff like that um oh i've totally leaned

into it love it love it all uh sean here is in saint james new york saint james new york another new place to me i don't know if i've heard of saint james it sounds like a place when i picture saint james new york i picture like uh explorers like french explorers in a painting and they're in a canoe and they're pointing towards something that's what i think of when i think they're pointing towards a place that they're going to go ruin is kind of what i

think of i know that tbtl is a show that only looks forward and never looks back and that's kind of what we said about 2026 that's going to be the new thing but i do want to go back very briefly to clayton do you guys know where loon lake is is that do i know where loon lake is

Andrew, Cassie, what is it? Good question. Loon Lake is where I learned how to make the loon call with my hand. Take a listen.

Oh, gosh.

He's still got it. He's still got it. Loon Lake, my friends. That is, sorry. So I was just going to say, Clayton is right below Loon Lake, way over in the eastern part of the state, right above Spokane. Spokane, yeah. That is...

I believe it's near Deer Park, I think. Yes, exactly. When we were kids, and I've told this story a million times, we had these friends from the church, this woman named Marianne Coyne and her kids, Gabe and Cassie, and her family had a cabin on Loon Lake, and it was like classic, nothing fancy. It was, you know, just like this teeny tiny little, you know, at that time, 100-year-old cabin that had, like, a screened-in porch where I would sleep. I can smell it. I can smell it. Just a million old, like, abridged books and Reader's Digest, large print, and just, like, just tons and tons of, like, fun books to read on a summer. And they had an old ski boat that was not powerful enough to get my dad out of the water and, like, a little dock and stuff. And what was so incredible was, like, they, you know, they had a big family. And Cassie, or excuse me, Marianne was like one member of I don't know how many siblings. So imagine this place is like a third hers or a fourth hers. And the whole, everyone, her brothers and everyone's coming out to the family cabin. And she's like, could I bring like nine Burbanks? And incredibly, the people said, yes, these were, these were the, I think we did it two or three times. These were the most fun summers of my entire life. And then I tried to recreate them by renting a cabin years later as an adult on Loon Lake and then a different lake in Idaho, all to try to recreate that childhood feeling of being on Loon Lake. And did it work? No, you can't go home again.

I know, it's so hard to redo. Can I quickly tell you about my, I had a friend who had a cabin in northern Idaho and loved it. Again, some of the best summers of my childhood, but also the worst sunburn of my life. the furniture in the cabin this may be the same i feel at every cabin they don't furnish it with brand new furniture oh no weird old furniture from the 70s that like nobody wants anymore so it had this scratchy like little pad couch from the 70s that i was sleeping on uh-huh with

the worst sunburn of my life oh that sounds horrible yeah we were not we do not come from the sunscreen generation no we do not come from the we did not know what sbf was referring to in our child at least we didn't did you in ohio andrew was anyone telling you to put when you went to florida in the minivan with the with the tv and it was someone telling you to put on

sunscreen i feel like we talked about it probably not with the same intentionality and purpose that we would in 2026 but i speaking of sunburn the thing that i think of first in my life now is that is nature reminding me that i'm a bald now because that was just never a thing and as a kid i had a big mop of hair and i always had really thick hair until i started losing it and of course i look at myself in the mirror and i can see this huge forehead i have and i know that i'm bald there but i forget that the top of my you know the back of my head the little male pattern baldness thing on the crown and i'll go out even just here in seattle you know notoriously sunny seattle on a summer day and work in the yard all day and then come in and take a shower and you get underneath that hot water and that hot water is hitting your dome right away and you're like

brother you gotta spf the head these days andrew you're not bald you are as i saw on a t-shirt in

the 80s a solar powered sex machine that's how you get your power is through your head wow that is amazing and i am going to get that t-shirt that's just the kind of comedy that lisa pedic

of rent in washington is paying good money for apologies lisa but thank you lisa thank you and thanks to all of our donors we really do appreciate you i am i am very grateful i mean this to have this as a job i hope it didn't sound like i don't want to be doing this really grateful to have hair it's like well you should oh no i don't i don't know how much the topic stops i don't know how much my hair i've actually you know what andrew i've wondered about that on a couple of levels One is, because what happens is you put a little of this powder in your hair and it kind of sticks to your hairs through static cling. It's like keratin fibers. And so it creates a little more density, but I don't know if that is an effective sunblock or not. Like, I don't know if I should be doing it. And then the other thing is, I wonder if I jump in a swimming pool and I've got it in my hair. Is there like a black? You're going to do it. Is there some little, like, dissipation of this stuff that, like, follows me around? One time I stayed over at Camaro Kev and Anita's, and Kevin, like, the next time I saw him, he goes, Anita was wondering what that, what was on the walls of the shower after you took a shower there? I was like, oh, right, because this was right when I had started putting it in, and what I didn't realize, now I'm very up to speed on this, is if you have it in your hair, it stays in your hair for days and days, and then when you shower and you do the shampoo, if some of the shampoo goes on the wall of the shower, it will have the little... pieces in it so now i'm very careful i hose down all the walls of the shower after after every

shower if i still have that stuff in two things first of all i think adding spf to this hair product would be a great idea i don't know if that's physically possible or scientifically here's my million dollar idea secondly i'm now picturing you just taking the saddest shower when you said that your hair product ended up on the on the shower walls i was picturing you like I don't know if you've ever seen, like, Igby Goes Down. It's a very sad scene where somebody's just, like, they're just, like, leaning up against the shower. Isn't that early Karen Culkin? Yes, exactly, yeah. And so I was just picturing you just taking the most depressed shower. For some reason, you're leaning your head against the wall and just weeping in there.

No, it's less. I mean, as long as I don't look down, I generally, most of my showers have been tears-free for many years. But, no, it's just something I have to be mindful of. The where I really try to be careful is at a hotel because I don't want the poor housekeeping person to have to extra scrub out the shower and also to be like, what happened? Yeah, right. Right. Definitely. It's definitely on my radar. Hey, Cassie, congratulations on on making your big move, which I didn't really know. I consider us friends, but more I consider myself an online observer of your life through Instagram. and like i would always see you uh kind of having adventures in the bay area and then one day i saw that you were in eastern washington with your family but then you were there for a long time i was like huh this longer longer than a vacation and i was like wait did cassie actually move over

there and you did what's the story i did it's it's funny because first of all we are real friends but then it's fun to follow each other on instagram too and get like the the cliff's notes of people's lives so i totally get that oh it's it's funny okay so this is a lesson in hubris and arrogance um that is one of my specialties really um years decades i was like i would rather you know jump off the bay bridge than ever move back to which you can't anymore

right because they've got those nets actually that's the that's the golden gate exactly which good good safety zero people in the last half of last year took their lives on the golden gate

bridge because of those nets that truly is good although it doesn't stop me from using that and saying my friend and i joke and we're like it was a big bridge bridge jump day today you know that's shorthand for today didn't go great exactly exactly but i was so arrogant i was like i'm never gonna i'm just so done with that isn't that and then i got really burned out by the hustle and bustle of it all in the city, in the city. And, um, I, I'm somebody who maybe it's ADHD. I don't know what it is, but I can make an enormous life decision in like a 10 minute span. You know? Um,

I try and weigh out the, the scenarios, but I had just kind of, once your brain starts to, I'm the same way Cassie, like once your brain starts to consider it as a possibility, it could

be 10 minutes before now you're locked in. Absolutely. I had a really bummer week or I had like a super bummer day at work in the Bay area. And I was like, you know what, what am I doing here? What am I doing here? I'm done. Within an hour of like that day ending and me being at home, I had gone on Amazon and got like a bunch of moving boxes and bags and like things to wrap my belongings and stuff. I was like, yeah, I'm out of here. You know, I was like calling my, you know like the the like 401k office and I was like how does that work if I leave like how do I

port this over to my other job or whatever right how do I liquefy this how do I yeah really that's

a call I've made actually a couple times oh yeah but I was just like yeah I'm gonna kind of blow

this up you know how does that work now now why did you decide to go back to the part of Washington State roughly speaking that you grew up in as opposed to somewhere where you didn't know anyone but where like say the cost of living was lower and the pace of life was a little slower why'd

you decide to go back to where you're from a few reasons one i i came to visit this last summer and i had such a good wholesome time hanging out with my little nephews who are like 10 years old 12 i'm

heavily invested in the one that's a basketball player now so cute i'm actually going i'd like you to facetime from those games please i can watch them there's nothing i want more than to be invested in a nine-year-old or whatever 11 year old's basketball life talk about reliving

your youth hello you were a baller i know this and um this weekend we're actually going to his get this basketball jamboree i love it oh my god so there was that and then but i had a reluctance originally because i was like people there can be such like jerks you know i grew up with people like oh small town everybody's probably so warm and i'm like actually they can be like hyper judgmental you know and they can be really close you know, but then you guys are okay. You guys are hopefully going to like this. I had a moment where I was like, guess what, man, Cassie, you're the adult now. Like you can set the tone of the community. You can direct some of that. You can get in and like you have full autonomy to bring it back to another grim subject. Some of those people who were like that are probably long dead

since i was a kid and this doesn't have to be the town or the area that was the town or the area that you grew up in it could it could it could change and evolve and you could be part

of that maybe absolutely absolutely i'm like let's yeah let's let's try that how psyched was

your mom oh god because your mom is really the breakout star of your of your instagram account she is yeah she is one of the weirder people on earth she and suzy i feel would really vibe like she has my mom and your mom they like they kind of look similar their energy seems really similar

very similar luke like when you show me some of the like snacks that like your mom will bring over and stuff or oh my god the one where this was on your instagram your mom in one of her like

antique nightgowns yes no that's not a nightgown that was a dress she was wearing love that blue thing i yes yes that was an outside dress that she picked up somewhere okay love it love it i feel

Like, that is, like, my mom 100% as well. Like, our moms could be sisters, and it is wonderful. I love a good, like, heart of gold, but weirdo like the dickens. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cassie, I have one question for you before we get deeper into the story. Are you moving back to literally the same community you grew up in, nearby, or what are we talking here?

So I was living at my parents' house for, like, a month, and I was like, I'm really going to dig into living at Garfield. you know um then i was hashtag losing it um so you dug down too deep and then water started

filling the hole and then you said i gotta get out of here i was like i gotta get out of here

so now i'm at an airbnb like close by until i close on my house in colfax which is like 20

minutes away nice congrats that is so awesome i've now fully stocked on i've fully stocked house i google i walked around the neighborhood i checked out the little that little courthouse is so stinking cute i mean i hope you never end up in there like in trouble but like i was like i was like yeah no congratulations cass on your new house that looks so i mean new old house it's a cool like total classic when was it built 1917 nice wow that's amazing

you guys i'm like dreaming in colors of paint and tile and like you know i want to be honor the history but you know how it is you guys know how it is when you get into a project it it is all consuming i'll wake up in the middle of the night and i'm like oh wait let me remember to look at these linen curtains that you know that just i'm obsessed it's like you're that place looks so

unbelievably cool and what a fun project too like there's like just seems like the kind i can imagine you putting your putting your touch on it and and you were saying to us in text message that like that's one of the things also that you're able to do in moving to where you moved versus living in the bay area i was like i was like looking it's not the bay but i was looking at like this new i always read that new york times column that's like they had nine hundred thousand dollars and we're looking for a place in fill in the blank yeah the other day it was like this was like more southern cal but it was like they had nine hundred thousand dollars to spend in rancho cucamonga and and again peace and love to our friends in in rancho cucamonga but like i went through the whole thing of these three different homes they looked at and i was just and they weren't all in Rancho they were in these different areas near there and it was absolutely brutal what $900,000 would get you it's like it was you know so I mean that's an issue in California obviously but like it sounds like this is something also that you're able to do from from relocating and I never in my

wildest dreams thought that I love home stuff I love this kind of yeah because your apartment in

like Oakland was I would just see pictures of in the background you had those amazing windows and stuff like I sense that you're a person for whom your home environment's like a really big deal to

kind of like i am exactly luke i've related so hard to you when you're talking about how you know when you have guests over and you get kind of obsessive over like the just the exact optics of how it's going to look yeah people i'm just like that like i was like screaming at tbtl when you guys were talking about what kind of cup you should have in your bathroom for your like toothbrush what do you go with see i was feeling like a cool ceramic like a thick ceramic that's It's not totally breakable.

Yes, that's what I have now, by the way, in the upstairs bathroom. Oh, that is what you have. I could go get it. I think you would like it. It's kind of earth tones. It's a little bit of like, it's almost like it's somewhere between Fiesta wear and an earth tone kind of gray, kind of beige-ish, but it's thick, but it's ceramic.

But then you guys had a really good idea. I think Andrew had a good idea. good suggestion about like kind of a nice thicker uh plastic so it's not breakable i don't know what

let me ask you this both of you guys about and i how do you feel or do you have a little cloth coaster or anything or how do you feel about setting the ceramic down on the sink does that give you an okay feeling that you take the you take your pill or your sip of water then you're setting ceramic down on a sink how does that feel i know i know exactly what you're saying and there

is kind of a yucky grindy feel on that or a clink i'm just asking in my little upstairs bathroom

you put it actually on um a little shelf that me and my dad built that goes next because it's such a small bathroom it's a wooden shelf it's such a small bathroom that the sink doesn't even have

enough surface area really okay that's good yeah that was our fix contrasting textures i love like wood with ceramic that kind of thing oh you guys but here's the thing cast you when you were talking

about your Idaho cabin experience it was reminding me of what I'm calling for my own purposes the Loon Lake principle and this goes to like the idea of when you're having people over because yeah I fall into this real trap of like thinking it's only going to be fun for people if I can create some sort of like total five-star experience where like the like for instance that bathroom I'm talking about it's now that next to that little tumbler or whatever you call it is another cup thing that has like a bunch of single use toothbrushes that are individually wrapped because i feel like when people come over and if they're staying over they and they forget their toothbrush they'll feel good if there's a replacement toothbrush for them blah blah blah and and like when i have my family over i'm like everything has to be so perfect and then i remember what was the most fun i ever had in my life loon lake what was despite your sunburn probably the most fun you ever had was sleeping on that shitty couch i mean that's what is like makes these kind of moments with friends and family and stuff like important is the friends and family and and like you know what i mean like i have this weird obsession with wanting it to be so impressive to people that that is building the experience but that's not what anyone that loon lake cabin was so unimpressive so like if i've got people crashed out on the couch in my house or if there's not enough if there's a line for the bathroom or whatever yeah that's okay like the like for instance i had my whole family over to for a christmas thing and then we were watching the football game and I realized I do not have like enough seating for like 13 people in really my house anywhere and so we're like getting folding chairs out and people are finding like it's like it was a totally improvised event but it was so fun and that was okay like so I'm trying to lean into that and remember that to kind of lower my anxiety because I'm imagining you're gonna start having some get-togethers once your place is all dialed in yes absolutely and I've done that at

other homes where I'm like oh I'm gonna have people over this and that and I'm running around literally sweating not enjoying i'm trying to enjoy the moment but i'm really not entirely because i'm trying exactly to do that five-star experience and luke it reminds me of some of the best times similar to your loon lake principle best times on earth have been around one of those like plastic lawn um tables with the kind of you know those plasticky chairs that like the leg

always one of the legs break in fact there was a trend for a while of like if your friends were sitting in one of those you would just walk up and kick out the leg and it would just shatter

right yeah yeah because the sun had made the plastic so brittle yeah and somebody was always going to hit the skids at some point probably loaded but yeah those are yes have been the best

times ever absolutely like yeah the fun i just watched this errol morris documentary called vernon florida which is totally insane it's from 1981 errol morris was like his plan was to go to this town because vernon florida had an unusually high number of insurance claims from people who had lost a limb so he wanted to figure out what was going on but when he got down there no one wanted to talk to him about losing limbs so they just he just started interviewing everyone in this town and it is a real backwater and the people there are real real let's just say rural yeah yeah and like and it'll just be like a guy who it just has one i mean not even a chair like that cassie but like something equivalent and it's just in his yard and he just goes and he just sits in his yard and he's got a possum in a cage and he just goes and he stares at the possum and that could be a whole afternoon and this guy seemed to be much happier than i am yes this guy is staring

at his possum he's got the loon lake loon lake principle dialed in dude he is living la vida

loon lake now what about house burping though are you going to do your proper house burping

cassie and do you even know what i'm talking about i have zero idea but tell me tell me

This is great. This is on the subject of the home environment. This is something, Andrew, that you referred to, I don't know, a couple weeks ago about how when it's really cold and you've got everything all kind of like super, you know, windows closed and doors closed at the home because it's too cold outside. But then, like. There's not enough ventilation, there's not enough natural air moving through, and I said something about, yeah, like, the Germans really like to do that, like, at night, like, open a window and the room is cold but they're under a feather thing. Well, I didn't realize the Washington Post was putting out an entire article about this from a guy named Aaron Weiner, who's actually their Berlin correspondent. House burping is a cold reality in Germany. Americans are warming to it. And I didn't realize this. it's not just like at night when the Germans like to open the window and let a little fresh air in. They have this whole practice of throughout the day, this is this guy Aaron writing, after moving to Berlin from Honolulu, Wyatt Gordon was surprised when his new German roommate marched into his bedroom at 8am and threw open the windows. It turns out that his cohabitant, Laura, maintained a strict ventilation regime. Three times a day at precise times, all the windows in the apartment needed to be opened it didn't matter whether it was the dead of winter or a weekend morning or if gordon had company rules were the rules quote i had men and women in my bed that i'd brought home from the club or wherever said gordon now 35 a city planner originally from richmond as is common on berlin weekends they would crawl into bed around dawn only to be woken up an hour later by a blast of ice cold air um how do you explain to the person lying in bed next to you that this is what the german culture demands of us it's called luften and it means airing out or ventilation and it is apparently like according to this article it is written in stone for these german families they don't even have to teach their kids because

the kids have been raised with it so i i don't do this with such intentionality as they do and i've never heard that term before but i do sort of do this like winters don't get as cold here obviously in seattle as they do in other places and so i want to be you know i i want to recognize that i was talking to my stepmom the other day who is like by the way wonderful woman but you wouldn't describe her as a hardy soul at all she's not a hardy person but she lives in the cleveland area and she's like well i don't know i've just been cold lately i mean it's 19 i know 19 degrees is not something to be complaining about and i'm just kind of like it's like 36 here right now and i'm shivering and i'm wondering will i survive getting into the door of my house and people in ohio are like well i know 19 isn't really cold but all of that is to say here where i do think that it gets very cold especially at night and in the mornings almost every morning i come into my little basement studio and i do open up my window a little bit and i let bingo sniff the air i think it's important for bingo the cat to be able to sniff the cold air and if The other day, I was taking a little nap, a late afternoon nap, and I woke up and Genevieve was going out to some sort of dinner party thing and she was bringing fried tofu. And I don't know if you're familiar with other people's food smells, but there's something very different about you're making a meal and you've made the house smell like the food to waking up to the smell of somebody else's fried tofu. As soon as Genevieve left the house, I house burped. I opened up every window. You luftened. I luftened. Actually, you know what you did, Andrew?

You actually, let me see. Let me get the exact terminology. There's a few different ways to do this. There's a specific word for when you open a different, oh, it's called quer luften, which is cross-ventilating. You open windows on opposite ends of a home so as to move the air.

I did that. I turned down the ceiling fan, and I opened up, like, our front door, and I dropped the storm window down, and then I went to our bedroom, which is, like, on the opposite, And I opened up that and I tried to create as much ventilation as possible. It's cold for a little bit, but then you close it back up, you heat the house back up. And I think it's worth it.

Cassie, it's very cold there in the eastern part of Washington State where you are. Would you consider any amount of Lufthin, any amount of house burping in your new place?

I'm loving, loving that. I'm loving this. And so I do a multi times a day unintentional Lufthin as well, because you guys know I have two dogs.

Yes.

And so sometimes they'll, Tuffy, the smallest one, who's like maybe three pounds, will be a complete diva about going out. She'll like tease and want out, but then she'll not quite go out. So like I'll keep the door open for like a minute and a half straight and be like, leave. But it's funny because I love having dogs because you can just make up. This is my recent thing that I do when I let the dogs out. You can make up nonsense. You're the one that did it? Wait, what?

we've been wondering for years who let the dogs out and it's finally getting some clarity

speaking of that song um here's my mom likes to sing that song but she does it so poorly she

does it like this who let the dogs out oh my god she is when we need to run at like a 23 and me on your mom and my mom they might have been they might be related they might have been separated I know. I'm like, mom, you're doing such a poor job, but it's horrible. So I'm into it. But so whenever I let the dogs out now, I just, um, sorry. Now I've ruined it. I'm sorry. Oh my God. I, um, I'm, I'm like, don't forget your hamburger money. I like, I pretend that they're going on a little mission to buy themselves hamburgers. And so I'll let the, I'll, I'll do the Lufth, Lufthin. Yes. I'll let them out. It takes them a little while to decide if they want in or out this and that but the house is getting nice and aired out and then i'm like don't forget your hamburger money bye my problem is that my house i still

haven't figured out how to actually heat and cool it properly because what i should have done probably when i when i did all this crazy renovations i should have just sucked it up and put in like a straight up normal heating system like we all kind of maybe grew up with where you turn the thermostat and air comes through the floor or something i was sold this bill of goods about these mini split technologies and so so sometimes i'm like if i can't luft i can't luft right now because if i do it'll take me three hours to get the house back to like a comfortable temperature like it could be an all-day project um cassie in your new place do you have like are you gonna have a fenced area or whatever like you can just let them go out in the yard and

not have to be stressed about their whereabouts god that's another thing that i hate i love oakland but I don't miss about Oakland is I'd have my head on a swivel whenever I took the dogs out. And now whenever I took the dogs out, but now I can just like, yeah, there's a little fence. I'm going to put in another like larger fenced area and just open the door and enjoy your hamburgers, guys.

So I have a bunch of questions for you because you and I both grew up in very different parts of the country, but very small towns, right? Mine Valley City, Ohio, which comes up on the show from time to time. And as you were alluding to earlier, by the time you had some autonomy, you were like your bag was packed, you had a trunk, and you waited for a taxi to pick you up, and you threw it in the back, and you raced to the city as fast as you could.

And you Mary Tyler moored your hat off the second you got to Capitol Hill, Seattle.

That's right.

I had one of those little sticks with a handkerchief on the back.

Right, right. Right. And so anyway, I was similar. It took me longer to get to a city because I lived in New Hampshire for a long time. I'm glad I did. And it was near Boston, but I was living in New Hampshire and all I wanted to do was live in Boston. Finally, in my 30s, moved out to Seattle and have not lived in a rural place since and simply cannot imagine going back. I mean, I fantasize about it sometimes when Genevieve and I are driving through some country area with long winding roads. but i fantasize that i'm rich and i could buy a second house or something out there it would be really hard like i want to ask this question gently not to get in your head but do you have anxieties about not being able to go to the a.m. p.m. to grab a soda in the middle of the night or

any of these weird scenarios i come up with you have not google street stocked cassie's place

because she's right there in the heart of colfax are you is there a place you can go get your soda

in the middle of the night as if you'd want to there is a grocery store and i i have to look up the the the hours but i will say my hometown garfield you guys know here's what we have we have a tavern because the tavern don't quit and we have a butcher so those are the two businesses in my hometown so you can't even get you know a whatever a coke in the middle of the night or whatever but colfax my new place yeah i think i think it's going to be a little more a little

more jumping off nice hopping on i know i know i actually am probably i may be more i may be more sort of like remote from those services maybe than cassie is here at the madrona hill studio i've got this like i mean it's walking distance in the sense that like anything is walking distance i mean you know los angeles is walking distance if you walk long enough from my house but there's this that weird weird market that like just has like random dale earnhart oh yeah lampshades and then like velveta cheese and then like no half and half like they have none of the one skateboard

for sale am i remembering skateboard yes yes they have a skateboard so well they're the strangest

little places and i feel like man i i want to just like come in and like i want to like go bar rescue on it i want to be like here here's why people come to you we we ran out of milk we ran out of butter like you are here because we don't want to go into town so you need to have the thing that we ran out of and it's we didn't run out of dale earnhardt lampshades we have plenty at home

yeah exactly look like they won't have eggs for those triangular party hats like

Yes, they're trying to, literally the one near me is still trying to sell a like, how do I put this? It's like a Not a vending machine, but it's a heated cupboard that you would have hot dogs in. Like, at one time, they were trying to sell hot dogs, and no one was buying hot dogs. So now they're trying to sell the thing that the hot dogs, they've cleaned it, and it's sitting there. So you could buy the thing that they were trying to sell hot dogs from for, what, your market? Maybe you have more hot dog traffic than they did. But, like, it's that kind of place. The whole time I've lived here, they've been trying to sell a hot dog case that was clearly purchased when they were trying to sell hot dogs.

And it doesn't cook hot dogs. It just keeps them warm.

for your customers yes i i think it's a i haven't i'll be honest with you i've been eyeing the dale earnhardt lampshades more than the hot dog machine so i don't know if it also cooks them but it's it's just like it's that kind of a place although i will say this there's a gal who works there who is 94 years old and she is an absolute firecracker i love her so much she is the like grandmother of the owner of the store and um and the owner of the store has a night job stalking the shelves at the safeway in town um because wages are too high in this country um so he's got this little corner store but then he also has a real job and so she covers for him when he's like i guess sleeping after his shift and she and i had the longest conversation about little house on the prairie recently because it's also one of those places that has a tv that just has an over the air antenna and it's just always playing you know whatever's on me tv is it a tube tv is it a tube my friend a freaking tube tv and she and i and then i said something about a particular episode of little house and she corrected me and she was right and then she told me she was like i live down in town i just moved to these apartments and i love it so much and she was showing me the view from her balcony is the field of the local community college and she said i just sat on my balcony the other day and I watched the guy paint the lines on the soccer field and she goes you know how they do that and I go I don't know she goes they got a robot they have there's some kind of Roomba that paints the lines on the sports fields now so that it can be exact and she you want to talk about the Loon Lake principle this lady had whiled away an entire afternoon watching the robot paint the lines on the lower Columbia College field

mega dialed in

I know I was like I got I'll have what she's

having i could totally at peace it seems it seems wonderful to me but it also seems very much like there's nothing you like to fantasize about but just like looking just looking out your window

at things well i will say and i'm very fortunate here that the whole premise of this little place that i got is that it's that's got some good looking territory um some some good territory for looking and like i thought andrew that i was going to miss uh urban america more uh than i have if my girlfriend didn't live in urban america i could go longer stretches than i expected out here now granted i'm very fortunate that i've made this home environment very comfortable we can get amazon deliveries like it's i'm not totally cut off but it's like i this this agrees

with me more than i expected i think i uh i think i'm just different you know and i'm built different i'm just built i'm just built about you i don't like to say this but i'm saying it to you guys because i trust you but i'm built ford tough um no i'm not built ford tough i'm built like just so weak and soft and so i feel like i need the i i just i remember feeling like living in wallingford was too rural for me like i'm not even joking i told me it's like wallingford was a much nicer kind of neighborhood than what we live in now but it was so residential that i had to walk you know i think about a mile to get to the grocery store and i did it plenty but i alfie's was that your spot no no just the qfc that used to be a big wallingford qfc yeah 45th i used to live in wallingford too yeah that did you live there and that would you remember that was the

piggly wiggly cassie or not the piggly wiggly it was it had a different crazy name that that

grocery store that became the qfc but i did in wallingford are you guys familiar with the Dern Good Grocery. Oh, I have a hat.

I said Alphie's. I was wrong. I was referring to that one that Andrew's

got a hat from. You have a hat from the Dern? Yes. So they claim or some folks claim, and I don't even think the people who own it now claim this, but I have read that that Dern Good Grocery, which is on the corner of, I believe, Stone and 40th, I want to say, or maybe, yeah, close to there. It's like a small, like, what I would grow up, I would call it a quickie mart or something like that, but it's always been family run by various families over the years and some say some say that it's literally the oldest grocery store if you call it that in seattle i don't know how that could possibly be true but people have said that and what i like about it is they don't make a big deal about themselves like there's some sort of a landmark or anything but they would sell the family that owns it now they sell like little things that say dirt

Dern Good Grocery, and it is Dern with a U, and I bought myself a cute little green trucker hat with, like, white mesh on the back and green in front. I love that hat.

That was my place for, like, oh, gosh, three years, I'd say.

I was there practically every day.

They've got beautiful T-shirts as well, Andrew. They've got merch. Oh, and they have it online now? I'm on their website. I don't know if you can buy it online, but I'm on their website looking at, or I'm on their Yelp page, I guess. And, yeah, it's got somebody wearing, like, a Dern Good T-shirt that's got the same logo that's on your hat.

Nice. I'm looking to see if I'm just totally talking out my keister about this being the longest-running grocery store in Seattle.

Cassie, did you land a new job, by the way, in the eastern part of Washington State, too?

I landed a new job, too. Look at you.

Highly employable.

I wasn't sure how long I was going to have my little mini-sabbatical. you know because yeah like rarely do I have get to get like a breather I was like I should really take advantage of this but then I was you know I was like at my folks house and I didn't have a job and I was kind of starting to freak out I was like yeah like there's only so much like romping around in my bathrobe that I can do before I start I was starting to feel kind of bummed like yeah so I got a new job I got a new job and I I like the people a lot and I'm actually i'm just like so pumped that i that i like it's actually working out here i can't and how long has it been how long has it been like two and a half months but it feels like 77 years like i feel

like so much has happened that's great though i mean you're saying that because a lot has changed or because the pace of life actually feels like the day goes a little longer than it did when you

were in the bay i i think actually good question i think both honestly so much has happened but also like things do there's definitely a slower pace here and my adhd is like sometimes like cranked up and i'm like things are so slow everything's a little more relaxed and i'm just like let's go i'm losing it but um like i i've noticed recently this is my thing where i'll take like long drives on the back roads and stuff like that and i've started listening to like relaxing classical music and i was i was telling like laughing to myself i was like this is the kind of thing where this music sounds like if you were to walk into a high-end custom framing shop ran by an elderly lady that's the kind of music i'm into these days yes sedate calm mellows

quartet radio is what i would recommend it's literally m-e-l-o-s mellows quartet radio it is exactly that it would be it's just like classical music but nothing too edgy yeah that's it that's it look nothing too edgy like nothing from bartok nothing that's sort of you know kind of jarring it's like it's it's very chill classical music i i just wrote this down and i need that

because just yesterday the piano was the pianist was it was getting a little wild and i actually this is the state of life i'm in i turned it down i was like this is getting out of control meanwhile you know it's like i used to run the streets of san francisco like

what is going on so um i'm not trying to rush us out the door but i want to make sure i get your guys's input on something here i've been playing around i've been playing around with show titles so originally i'd written down the loon lake principle i think that's kind of just a nice name for the show and where it was some but then luke brought up the word lufton and then i started playing around i got heavy lufton i have luft with your legs or i have live luft love which one do what do we what do we want to go with today live laugh love joke yeah i like maybe that one i think we'll go with live luft love all right yeah i think it also that if i might

click on that if i was scroll if i was running around the internet and i saw that i might click on that all right we'll go with that whereas luft with your legs might sound like it's a workout

podcast it is it's a german workout podcast but you know what it doesn't smell sweaty in there

it always smells nice and fresh that's right that's right three times a day opening those windows that's right um well cassie i'm like i'm i'm so excited for you i'm so intrigued uh it's fun to get to follow your adventures i'm really really stoked for you about this house project um maybe we can get some updates because andrew is a little coy about his uh he's gonna embark on a project at his house which i tried to engage him on that recently and he just kind of

said i don't even know no we'll talk about it i'm just very different from you guys like projects like this when you talk about like waking up in the middle of the night and being like oh i need to check out those those curtains or whatever like i'm somebody who really i appreciate and enjoy a nice space I think but I don't have the drive to create it myself

I'm just like deeply lazy and I don't have whatever that energy is. I want somebody else to create that for me. So I'm kind of entering my very first big home reno project, which is relatively minor by some people's standards. But like we've hired somebody and who's helping us design this area of our basement. And there are decisions to be made about like, what are we going to be putting in? We're going to be putting in like a plot, what he's calling an appliance garage. And there's all these decisions that I got to make that you guys would be loving making these things right now and i just keep on staring at this contract being like yeah i guess i gotta open up and read that at some point and sign it like i get more overwhelmed by it i just want it to be done i don't like the i don't like the project side of things

i got it we should all collaborate truly let's keep keep talking at some point because i could talk about like the most minor stuff like this we'll push you in the right direction andrew i could talk like tile for an hour and a half straight i've got thoughts i've got a lot of

And I got a Genevieve, too, so that helps, too. I'll put you guys all in touch.

Cassie, is there some pretty decent thrifting over there because it's not picked over like in a major American city?

It is cuckoo. Okay, a few things. First of all, yes, there is, and it's my antiquing and thrifting is my favorite thing in the world. But my new hometown, Colfax, has the best thrift store on earth, which is called Thrifty Grandmothers. we just call it the granny shop for decades i'm gonna go to the granny shop every okay so first of all everything there is like 25 cents 10 cents 50 cents a dollar um and it's ran by grandmothers who work there volunteer their time to work there and then all the proceeds go towards the community and like little scholarships and things like that it's the sweetest thing thrifty grannies Oh, I'm looking at it.

Yeah, me too. This is great. I do. I say I don't like shopping, and I really don't. I don't like purposeful shopping. Like, we need this thing. Let's go out and find this thing. But I love just mindlessly wandering through stores like this. What do they sell at?

Fonks.

Oh, God. Yeah, Fonks, one of my favorite places in the world. Huh?

I'm just walking down the streets of Colfax, Washington. When I was growing up, we had Vern Fonk Insurance in the Seattle area. Oh, my God, Vern Fonk.

Yes, I know.

But this place is just a place that just says Fonks, F-O-N-K-S.

Fonks used to be this absurd store. Okay, Luke, you know how you were talking about the corner store, right? They just sell the Dale Earnhardt stamp tape. This is that type of place. It used to sell weird, strange dollar store plastic toys for kids that were like bleach from the sun. um also like just like you know dried up ink pens and it was just the strangest place but we loved fonks um but now they turned it into like a really cool coffee shop yeah named fonks and i have a fonks hat i should send you guys a fonks hat oh we'll go on the we'll go on the website we'll

support fonks we'll buy some merch from them this is giving me as i as i wander around colfax it actually seems like a much more robust version of friendship wisconsin yeah maybe that's maybe that's every main street usa of a relatively small place you know i mean they're always going to have your you're going to have the place that used to be the jc pennies you know and like the kind of like there's a certain main street feel i mean i'm literally on main street but uh no this is

that you're walking around in there it's like so cool to think of yeah it makes me so happy did

you ever spend any time in chawela is the real it's the important question oh there's a casino right that's what i used to go to when i so i had my whole i'm gonna go stay in eastern washington at this lake for a month and get back in touch with my child and what i ended up doing was driving to the casino in chawila most days so uh you know good luke i can see that good decisions

all around for i'm laughing because actually my dad used to he for some reason he pronounced casino casino uh-huh sure you know people like that oh yeah absolutely he would anytime the commercial will come on and be like, Chawila Casina. It's just weirdos.

Oh my gosh. Well, I'm so excited to follow all your adventures, Cassie, and thanks for spending your lunch break at your new job jumping on TBTL.

Oh my gosh, this was absolutely so fun. You guys are the best. You're the best. And the nice

thing is you have so much more time to listen to TBTL as you drive around the highways

and byways of Eastern Washington.

Yeah, let them know. Let them know. Let Colfax know about TBTL.

Please. We see that as a growing edge for us. If we could get more people in Colfax. Right now we have one listener in Colfax. And Tuffy by accident. What's the other dog's name? Dagmar. Dagmar and Tuffy. Two solid dog names. All right. Thanks, Cass. We appreciate you. Thanks to everybody for listening. We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So if you can, please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Everybody take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

You

Power out.