Muse

It was the bottom of the fifth quarter, and the baskets were loaded. It was me versus the Boston Celtics basketball team. Ready to lose again? I said to the James Braun. He was sweaty and out of breath. Please give me another chance, he said sexily. It's basketball time, I yelled in a booming voice. Then I did a layup, which is different than slam dunking. It's where you throw the basketball in the hoop when you're really close to it. I was too quick for them. I was dribbling all over the field, and the Boston Celtics said, wow she doesn't even double dribble something I know about. Just then Seth Curry did a humongous jump and tried to block me from the basketball hoop but I threw the basketball so hard it went straight through his chest and into the hoop but he was okay and didn't die. The basketball went in so good that I got a hundred points and won the game. Can we please be your boyfriends now said the Baltimore Celtics. Sorry that was a deal you can only be my boyfriends if you beat me in a game of hoop ball i said winkingly then they all cried the end tbtl i don't know what this is

but jay says it's a big sea turtle i was just fixing to get me some grub beans i love beans big fat hot juicy beans now don't get me going on beans or i'll be jabbering away till the sun

comes up why would either one of you uh you know why dear god why actually you know what i could

email you or you know you could email me at uh splat2 at splatnet.net splat1's my father i mean i'll be sad to see him go it'll be nice to get my hands on that handle you know and i also think it

wouldn't hurt you to talk to a therapist about your bathroom issues because there's really

something going on there. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. If God wanted us to listen to audiobooks, she wouldn't have given us eyes to watch TV. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Oh my God, he am in it. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill Broadcast Center, perched high above the mighty columbia where it is it's a very rainy uh kind of fun kind of yucky day up here but uh didn't know you like to get wet though we will make it through my friends and we will arrive as we have already at episode 4652 in a collector series let the fun begin physically i am here doing this podcast with all of you, but mentally, I am eight days, no, sorry, 10 days ahead, 11 days ahead. I'm thinking about the Super Bowl, my friends.

I'm in a glass case of emotion!

Because the Seattle Seahawks are going to be playing in it, and I am trying to figure out exactly what my plan should be for watching it, and both honoring and being close to the people i love but also and by that i mean the seahawks but also watching it with people i know still trying to figure it out i may work it out on the air in real time live with all of you also it's a thursday aka blurs day so we'll do some blurs day messages and we are going to say hello to this handsome young stranger he's a soulful rocker from new hampshire maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships their grace and their power and what i've read online

is his heroism yesterday might be a little fat he might be a little drunk but okay he can sometimes yell at us a little but he's the last superhero in the world he is andrew walsh and he is joining

me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i know we want to talk about heroics by the

way i don't even far and wide i don't even know what your heroism are being heralded far and wide

I am a hometown hero. When I say hometown, I mean very specifically the home that I live in. Yeah, and actually specifically the basement of the home. Yeah, I'm a basement town hero.

And mostly the darts area. So hometown meaning Seattle, meaning your neighborhood, meaning your house, meaning your basement, meaning the part where you play darts.

Which I'm a little bit worried. I don't know if I'm going to have to temporarily temper my dart playing as we have some construction starting in the basement today.

That's starting today, Andrew.

Well, the deconstruction is happening today.

We call that demo. It's demo day.

We have so much to talk about. We have so many things, but I do want to start with this, just a small anecdote that will not get us super off track, but when I'm done recording with you here, I'm rushing off to KUOW to record a podcast with them. A paper and a reno. That's right, and they do give a little stipend, as you know. I don't know if it's going to—

The Walsh Principle.

It's not going to happen.

Oh, no, that's right. They do give you a little stipend. Oh, that's right. I said this could not possibly get us off track, and here we are. They give you a little, what is it, $50 or $75? $75 U.S. Which is, I never expect that. Not at all. You get a check after you appear on one of these shows a couple of weeks later, and it's got a little sticker on it that says, please deposit immediately, right?

Yeah, let me, if I can, quickly for the listeners, explain how I came to this information. You and I were talking off air about this gig of doing the Seattle Now podcast with our friend, Trish Murphy. And you said, yeah, you know, they send you this check. It's 75 bucks. It's not nothing. But also, you know, you'll rush right out to cash it. But then sometimes you got, you know, four or five of them. And you go to the bank and you're like, hey, that's real money. And I was like, yeah, that does sound like a way to do this. And then I got a check from them from my appearance. And it has a sticker, this orange sticker that says, please deposit this as quickly as possible. Yeah. They want to settle their books. I texted you and I was like, they call this the Andrew Walsh principle. And you were like, oh, no, no, I've seen that on every check. I just choose not to cash them in a timely manner.

It's a very un-Andrew-like thing. Right. But I'm not great with mail, to be honest with you. That's what it is. Like physical mail that comes, I kind of put it in a pile, whether it's like incoming or outgoing, like a task I got to do or just a check I got to cash. Because you know me, I got a lot of checks, I got a cash. They just sort of sit there for a while. Then one day we dialed up, and yeah, I was kind of like, ooh, depositing all these and watching them kind of stack up there. Just, again, stacking cheddar over here, Luke. Cashing checks and breaking necks.

You're ready for the Catalina wine mixer.

Each one is a sticker that says, please, please be responsible.

By the way, the day that I got it, this tells you about our financial differences, the day I got it. you full-on photo photo deposit to the checking account have i thrown the check out andrew no i

have not because i still don't trust oh you got to go in and see when it's cleared i always go

in the next day when it's cleared even then away in case there's issue in case there are issues later there's an audit this is my most andrew thing is that like i i will never trust the uh

the photography around the check once i see it has passed into my account then i throw the check away which is usually the next day but i got a reasonable response i know we talk about this a lot but like i just don't think there's any of all of the internety things of all of the technological breakthroughs that i've witnessed in my life i don't know if i appreciate any of them more than i appreciate just easy check deposit can i tell you when i got that check

out of the mail and then i took a picture of it which by the way i don't think my phone would let me send you a photo that was weird it wasn't even the check it was the other part of the check the receipt what do you call that it just my phone my phone sensed that i was sending you some um sort of sensitive financial information and it kept blurring it and you were like hey i'm in a weird internet connection i can't see it i was as in i assumed too i always assume you're at fault and um and no it was i think it was my check trying to protect or my phone trying to protect

me from sending sensitive financial information it might have been but every now and then and i thought it was it's when i'm in a bad internet place i will get a photo like that where the photo is all blurred out and then there's a little button that says you have to download this to see it which is not usual practice and then when i downloaded it downloads like a blank file i think there was something corrupt in that photo because i googled it later i'm like does do apple phones or iphones i call them apple phones i gotta stop doing that it's not a bit i i google do iphone scramble check photos for security and i didn't see anything that backed me up unless you're seeing something different now i heard you typing away over there um i will be i was trying to find

the photo in my um text because what happened was it happened twice happened three times you tried

resending it but it was always the same photo you were in the same place but you were in the same bad internet place no i was it was uh i was i believe i came out of fred meyer looked at my phone saw a scrambled photo but just assumed that fred meyer might have had bad internet or something or bad uh cell coverage so i just texted you said oh i was in a bad i was in a bad place but i sent

it to you again and it was still scrambled you sent the same photo you didn't retake it right so you but see that seems to so you think the photo was corrupted so we've moved on from the idea that it was bad internet connectivity and now on to it was a corrupted photo maybe i do think

that something happened but i think i'm gonna find it yeah i'm not sure i i did i have no idea

what happened there but it is i'm arguing hard for you to be right by the way about this which is to say well yeah because i'm right i guess i'm arguing that this was i guess i'm arguing for me to be right i'm arguing that my phone knows when it's looking at a check stub i guess i'm ultimately arguing my point. Yeah, I guess

That's only because I've seen this happen before with non-check photos, although it is rare, and I've always just chalked it up to bad internet. But anyway, so let's see here. So let's see. What were we talking about? We weren't going to get sidelined. Oh, we never even got to my point. So I'm going into KUW in a little bit here to record the weekly roundup, which is kind of what they call casual Friday on Seattle Now podcast. And I wait for the topics to get to me last night. And I kind of had a busy night, and as you apparently learned, it got busier in a surprising way. Yeah, I did. But they send out the list of topics, which is a very thorough breakdown of the topics and talking points and things to think about. It's actually really, really helpful. You kind of don't even have to read the articles. I do, but they do a really good job of prepping you, the producers. But that doesn't usually come out until, I think I got it maybe around 5, 5.30 last night or something. So you're kind of all day waiting. It's like, I don't know, are we going to get into a conversation about, like, what will we do if we see an ice abduction in our neighborhood? Or is it all going to be, like, these five pizza shops claim to have the best French bread pizza? I don't know. And so I'm always waiting, like, is it going to be a heavy one? Do I have to do a lot of reading? I get the list of topics, Luke. Listen to what we're talking about. Where's my bell? I'll bell it. I got you. You got the bell? Okay, I'm going to put my bell away then. Okay, you get ready with the bell. We've got talk about public transportation, TV commercials, grocery store shopping. Wait, let me guess the last one. The Seahawks. Seahawks. Yes. And not sports Seahawks, but Seahawks, like, where are you going to watch the game, what's going on with the commercials and everything. And weirdly, Geauga County. I actually don't know that much about Geauga County. Cuyahoga.

I didn't know. Cuyahoga.

Look at me. I'm a Cuyahoga boy. Anyway, yeah, I was just like, well, that's a treat. Take the night off, Walt. I'm really looking forward to that. Yeah, so I am interested in, I don't know, so apparently Genevieve posted something. I was going to tell you about a little adventure I had last night, but based on that intro you gave me, apparently you already have some intel, and I'm sort of curious. I don't know if this is the right way to start this.

You're getting huge props online.

What do you know? Is that a good place to start this, or should I just tell the listeners what happened?

maybe the story is more interesting if you kind of unfold it for all of us I saw, let me what does Principal Blackman say? I'm an obtuse man

so I'll try to be oblique, that's not the line you were looking for, but it's my favorite that's exactly the line I was looking for, let me be oblique

let me be oblique, by the way, RIP to that actor wait, no, we did this again I don't think, I think that actor is very much alive, he just hasn't been in a lot of things that we've been seeing, oh, oh, okay I think I pre-memorialized him A few months ago on the show

Unfortunately that's the part I remembered That's why corrections don't work When you said that I was like Oh that's right he's gone And I was just remembering you lying to me apparently

Yes exactly I'm glad though that I have that influence on you I have the power to Create and destroy life in your mind No what I saw online was Genevieve Saying that you guys Had had a whole kind of thing happen last night a fast-paced, speed-esque adventure last night that ended well. But why don't you pick up the story? Let's all go down.

Yeah, so I told you, I kind of set up what my night was. I was kind of prepping for this little thing at KUW today. And then also, remember when you and I were prepping for the show the other day? And we were actually having a pretty serious conversation, but then I started swearing because suddenly my inbox was filling up with New York Times emails telling me that I had just subscribed to like three different newsletters that I did not try to subscribe to. And it all started because I just saw a recipe online that I was like, oh, I'll save this for later. And I clicked one button, and all of a sudden I don't even know. I still don't know what I hit. And suddenly my inbox is like, you're now following the midweek lunch newsletter from the New York Times. Anyway, last night I'm like, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to read. I'm going to do my little homework and then I'm going to make this recipe that I saw in the New York Times involving shallots cooked with 12 shallots last night. Luke called called for 15. I can almost smell it. Oh, the house smells so good. Anyway, so I'm kind of doing my my prep of both dinner and and prepping for today's show. And then also what's kind of hanging over me is this fact that we have some folks coming in today to sort of start dismantling our little kitchenette in the basement. which is going to be a project that we're going to be just kind of renovating that area and putting in cabinets and stuff that work better and aren't atrocious and torn up and swollen with moisture and what have you. So I knew that I had a night or I assumed I had a night of like kind of cleaning out all these cupboards. filling i had gone to home depot to get those big plastic tubs you know to store a bunch of stuff in then haul it out to the garage great radiohead song uh big plastic tubs i uh anyway so i kind of already had a full night and i'm in the midst of cooking and or i haven't fired anything up yet but i've patted the chicken dry i'm peeling all these these scallions and then genevieve comes home and we're talking about how we're going to approach the basement when i'm done cooking and And then she's like, oh, shit, I don't have my phone. I think I lost my phone. But the thing is, I had just called her, like, I don't know, 15 minutes earlier, and she was on the train, and she had picked up.

The Germans must have a word for how we all think that we've lost our phone, but we haven't in modern life. You know what I mean? I think probably once every other day, we all go, oh, God, where's my phone? And you're padding the normal places, and then you have it usually. You just put it somewhere else. Mobilspektor. That's it. That's exactly what it is.

I think what it's called. I should even mess around with fake words in a language that I don't know, because God knows what I just came close to say.

It's the German word for that. What's he up to?

Anyway, so. Sleeping in a shoe somewhere. A size nine boot, I believe. David Roth joke. Credit where credit is due. But then anyway, Genevieve's like, I can't find my phone. And I immediately, I struck a very Burbankian positivity tone. I was just like, I was just talking to you on it, Veeves. I'm sure you didn't leave it on the bus. She takes a train, then grabs a bus for a few stops to get home. And she's like, well, you're talking to me on the train, but I don't know. But she says, I think I have a, you know, I lost my phone or find my phone app or something. And I think for years, I've been paying for some off-brand version of that, too. Because with iPhones, I just think it's all kind of bundled, and you guys have everything. And it's a little bit more of a Wild West, I think, when it comes to some of these apps, or at least it used to be. I think Google is doing a much better job now of bringing everything under the tent and kind of making it a little bit more seamless.

It's definitely very built into the iPhone. And the fact that Genevieve wouldn't even be sure or you wouldn't even be 100% sure if you had that service or whatever is funny to me because, like, this thing I know, that that is a thing on my phone because I have used it. I just said that we never lose our phones, but I have used that, you know, 100 times since I got an iPhone.

Well, that's not to sound holier than thou, but I've never lost my phone. I don't even think I've had a – I don't even think I've had more of a five-minute scare. And, you know, that five minutes is I know it's in the house somewhere. I just don't know where I set it. But, like, I'm a very ritualized person, so it's always in my right-hand pocket, you know. And, you know, I'm totally – I'm going to knock on all the fake wood around me. But because I'm just constantly – keys are in the left pocket. Phone is in the right pocket. I just always know where my stuff is. one of these days i'm sure i'll lose it and i'll rue this conversation but um anyway so i i think at one point i was like yeah i should have a find my phone thing and like from some bowel of the internet about once a year at mid-year i get some email that just says don't worry we're renewing your subscription to whatever janky find my phone i signed up for when i had a when i had a g2 back in 2010 or something like that anyway like a g6 anyway so i i actually am unfamiliar with that stuff but genevieve just kind of runs to her computer and just types in like find my phone or something generic like that and it opens up google maps and that's why i think that the android system and she has a pixel phone by the way which is literally made by google so i think they really integrated it she just typed in find my phone and she got something that looked very much like google maps and she could see where her phone was and her phone was not at home so turns out she was right she had left her phone somewhere presumably on the bus like maybe it fell out of her she's thinking maybe it fell out of her pocket and she said she was reading her kindle i got her it's not actually a kindle because we don't do amazon as you know luke because amazon is a nickname nicknames are for friends anyway i she was reading her ebook thing and so when she has her ebook thing which is relatively new she got it for christmas um she's not constantly looking at her phone holding her phone listening to a podcast on her phone so she she apparently it slipped out on the bus or something and she's looking at this map and it's not showing it move in real time the way it would in a movie it's not going like boop boop boop you know like a radar dot moving further away like the door dash bringing me a very expensive order from taco time right Exactly. Or waiting on a Lyft or an Uber. Right. For some.

reason this technology doesn't quite have that which maybe makes sense because the device is hopefully you know it could potentially be turned off or it could certainly be locked or something so anyway so she keeps refreshing but she's like yeah this thing is definitely on the move but we also at this point don't know did she drop it on the bus and somebody picked it up and decided to you know just take it which i i don't think even though you see some really bananas behavior on some of the bus lines that we take and smashed phones and various weird things because somebody who has a chemical imbalance decided just to go to town on some little piece of property. I just don't think that the majority of bus riders find a phone and decide to do something, you know, malicious with it. I think the majority of people on any bus line, including my beloved E-line, are going to take that phone and give it to the bus driver i think absolutely and i this is actually a good

message in this of all weeks when there's so much coarseness between between u.s citizens um i think you're right i think most people are generally good and then every once in a while you get an outlier and then it's easy to sort of like uh sort of expand and stereotype from that experience but

yeah i most people are good yeah and also you're not to mention finding a phone you first it's a Pixel. iPhone, forget it. People love pixels. People love pixels. I also, you can't really unlock that. You know what I mean? You kind of have to be a master hacker for it to be of any use to you anyway.

Because all the face technology and fingerprint and the like.

So anyway, all that is to say, Genevieve starts watching this blip. Now keep in mind, we are at home. She's on her laptop computer. And she's been home at least 10 minutes now. But she's like, I think it's on the bus. And I'm just like, I'm putting on my shoes. I'm like, we should just get in the car. I'm like, here's what we're going to do. You already, her computer was already somehow immediately synced up to her phone. I think it's because she's logged in as herself on her phone into her Gmail account or her Google account. She's logged into her computer and her Google account. And so it just knew, oh, I know what phone I'm looking for. So she immediately gets this thing. I'm like, we got to get in the car and track that thing. But your computer doesn't take, you know, your computer will lose its Wi-Fi signal the second we leave the home. So I put on a, I turned my phone into a mobile hotspot, right? Nice. And so I'm like, so keep your computer, log your computer.

Welcome to the movie Sneakers.

That's right. Which I was mad wrong about. Did you hear that? Like loud wrong? Apparently the old person who plays the young Robert Redford, it's still a bad casting. They cast some other old guy, but it's not even Robert Redford. I don't even know if I ever corrected the record. A listener pointed it out to me, and he sent me links and proof and screenshots. So twice now.

They dressed a different person up to look like Robert Redford, but obviously too old. But still too old for the flashback scenes. Get a young. I need an old Robert Redford and a young Robert Redford. Right. Get a Galifianakis.

Right. Anyway, so I'm like, here's what we're going to do. you attach your computer to the wi-fi hotspot on my phone i'll drive you track so we get in the car she's got her laptop open obviously tensions are running high here we are now chasing the 40 line but the 40 line has a hell of a head start on us right because we yeah it does you know again

genevieve's been home for a while walked to your place opposite direction presumably or maybe not

but just walked you guys talked you said hi hello she smelled my shallots yes she said hello to bingo who had blood work yesterday it was a very adventurous day for the whole family yeah anyway um so bus is long gone the bus is gone but genevieve's tracking it and she's also using my phone not just as a hot spot but also to sort of track what the 40s um what the 40 lines route is on the phone to make sure while she's not just straight i was assuming it was straight up and

down aurora but that would be the e-line that's the e-line is a little bit more kind of windy

remember i told you that time this summer where we went to like one of the fanciest parties ever and one of the fanciest parts of seattle which i think was like seward park but we took it took us three hours to get there because genevieve wanted to take the 40 there so we had some uh understanding the 40 is a pretty winding route but it goes past our house on northgate way down holman road through the heart of ballard ballard into fremont across the fremont bridge into downtown and so luke you know none of this is the fastest way to get downtown it's just like it's serving all these which kind of actually other communities in this kind of if we had been smarter so when we get in the car instead of like immediately thinking we got to like cut left on aurora and like try to cut this bus off. I'm just like, let's follow the bus.

We will catch up. The bus has stops to make and we don't. And even though it's sort of, you know, the last of the rush hour traffic, we're stuck in it. The bus is stuck in it. The bus has to make stops. We don't. The bus also has its own lane, though, in some scenarios.

Right, right, right, right.

So it's going to move a little faster than you in certain parts. In certain parts, but it also does have to make stops. So we're like, I don't know. So we're trying to, and we're bickering a little bit about, like, should we take a left on Greenwood and try to cut it off or go straight? We end up going straight. That was my idea, and probably in the long run was probably wrong.

You're Sandy Bullock and Genevieve is Keanu Reeves. I can see it. I love this.

It's fried green tomatoes. Exactly. It's exactly like fried green tomatoes. Tawanda. So, I, um, God, I love film. Anyway, so, at first, I'm just kind of like, listen, I know what the 40 do. Like, Genevieve's looking, she's like, it's in Salmon Bay now. I'm like, Salmon Bay is Ballard. I know where it goes in Ballard. It's going to go past Sonic Boom. Like, let's go, let's go. And so I'm driving, and we're chasing this bus. And again, just for the record, I think Genevieve's right. We should have probably started thinking more strategically early, but we're just very scrambled. We'd never done this before. And so I'm driving the route. You've never been in a speed-type situation. Or a fried green tomatoes kind of situation, or whatever reference you want to use. Postcards from the edge. Postcards from the edge. And so anyway, we're following the route, but Genevieve is constantly, she's like, the only way to do this is she's also using my phone, which is plugged into our car, to start saying, listen, I know the bus is going to pass this location at some point. I think at one point we were using this English bar called the Georgian Dragon. You probably know. It's been there forever in Fremont. like the bus is maybe five minutes away from that so Genevieve's like let's use the and I know the bus is going to pass it so let's use that as a point on your map Andrew and just see the fastest route to get there so we're kind of doing that over and over again trying to like drive faster than the bus going off the route a little bit using my phone to try to like get me the fastest route to these locations trying to cut off the bus it's it's feeling bleak I'll be honest with you really the bus is getting closer and i don't know this is maybe just the psychology of this but like genevieve and i keep on well she's she's watching it and she's telling me but for some reason the bus going over the cut seemed like some sort of a psychological barrier to us when we say the cut it's this area montlake cut via the montlake cut where there's a you know in a couple of different places bridges that go over it but it basically kind of separates the city from north to south and we're just kind of like and i don't want to go over the fremont bridge i'm like that is gonna that's just gonna like the bridge could be up first of all like these bridges like the bus could go over the bridge and then the bridge could go up the bus could jump a gap in the bridge that's right i'm ready to jump a gap by the way and then you can't and then you get stopped and you go and i have i had put turbo power on our car a long time ago never used it though i get a bill every every year for 35 that says remember when you installed the turbo power app is that what they called it night rider by the way it was a turbo power oh um i was thinking

more spy hunter but yes i i'm sure they i'm sure they said turbo power there was some but because the car could race around and drop right isn't there a drop where it says it's where michael knight says it's time for turbo something maybe i'm thinking of i think you should leave when

they do turbo time has this ever happened to you i don't think i have any i do have some night rider drops that are really not about the turbo ness of it but i'm happy to just empty out the uh

the clip here if you want to hear what's he i'd tell you to get this through your head but you're a machine so run this through your data processor get lost so good how about this kind of holds up that aluminum box seriously and then this one are you okay are you all right no no i'm confused nothing makes sense to me anymore this face is not my face my whole world has disappeared

and and now i'm talking to a car this is not the time to have this conversation but i'm realizing now that that last drop and the first one were from the very first episode of night right of course that's when michael night realizes he's been given a new face okay so you're familiar with the actual story i had no we went back and watched the pilot and could not believe how unnecessarily batshit it is the rest of the series doesn't have to have anything to do with him having a new face the rest of the series is guy lives with gay car why why did he have to go to some mysterious, like, mansion.

somewhere it's never explained why this rich guy wants to transplant his face like it's i thought

he was in an accident using he is that not the i mean i haven't watched this in it starts with

sort of a sting at a casino i believe and he's a cop okay and his partner watches him get i want

to say shot he's wearing a mask but in congress votes they have to take the masks off so he gets

a face transplant right exactly they said oh wow they said the guy who shot you in the face just

needs more regulation is what they said but no i my memory of the of the show was that he's in some sort of an accident and again you watched it more recently than i did my memory was michael knight is somehow in an accident and he gets not only a new face but a new car it is that is true i'm

trying to look it up i i think you're right and maybe he is disfigured in some way and so that's why they have to put a new face on him, but it's also because he also has to, like, give up his identity and his identity cards and stuff. I remember that's a big part of it.

By the way, I would love nothing more than to wake up and have David Hasselhoff's face.

Yeah.

I would take that. What a good deal. Oh, especially then. For the average cis male-identified person. Like, what a win. What a W. What did Michael Knight look like

before he was David Hasselhoff? Self-made billionaire Wilton Knight rescues police detective Lieutenant Michael Arthur Long after a near-fatal gunshot to the face, so the face is disfigured there, giving him a new face through plastic surgery and a new identity and name, Michael Knight. And I remember, by the way, I remember this was a detail in the pilot, some person who works for the billionaire, and by the way, billionaire, even in 1982, that was a lot of money. I thought it would be a millionaire. um one of the his employees says to him boy he sure looks familiar so i think that this this rich wilton knight guy kind of gave michael knight his own face when he was like a younger more handsome man it's like a way of him extending his own legacy i think andrew can we just take a

quick i know that we said we weren't going to get off the track with the the story of heroism ranking news but i was trying to kind of backstop you on the sort of knight rider lore so i put into the internet knight rider plot and here's what ai said michael knight alone this isn't about you being wrong this is about the insidious nature of ai michael knight a lone undercover agent saved from death by a billionaire who fights crime alongside kit an indestructible wait for it andrew ai power ai powered supercar

AI-powered? You're worried that it's just AI is claiming that Kit is AI-powered, but wouldn't Kit almost have to be AI-powered?

Yes, but we didn't call it that back then. Not then, but it would have to be. Somehow I feel like they're, you're siding with the robots again.

Well, that would have to be the technology. If you have a talking car that can process information, I mean, it's literally like that's an AI model.

I'm just saying when I was playing Knight Rider on the playground, none of us were calling it AI, And I feel like AI is stolen valor. I feel like this is stolen AI valor from the robots now relating to the robots of yesteryear.

I do think it's fascinating that, like, Wikipedia doesn't say AI, but the AI overview is like, hey, hermano. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I recognize this. Anyway, where were we?

You are waiting to see if Knight Rider jumps the monthly cut.

So anyway, Genevieve and I are concerned about the bus going over the cut for some reason. We just sort of feel like if we lose the bus, maybe that's putting too fine a point on it. But there's a sort of psychology in the car as Genevieve and I are feeling a little bit glum about this and like racing around the streets of Seattle. But also, I'm trying not to race too much because this is how you know I'm an old man. Back in the day, I was a very aggressive driver, and now I'm driving a little bit over the limit, maybe by five miles or something, but I'm not driving like a crazy person because I keep thinking, if I get pulled over right now, that phone is gone. I honestly believe that not slow and steady, but, you know, hurried but steady is way better than doing some crazy moves as I'm driving through, you know, rush hour traffic through some pretty busy areas on a rainy, dark night, by the way.

You're doing the math of four miles additional per hour versus 15 minutes of being stopped by the police.

At the very least. Right. And then and then to explain the situation. So anyway, so we're in this sort of like low-speed chase sort of situation. Genevieve, by the way, like I said, she has to keep refreshing the computer on her lap. They call it a computer on your lap. Lap computer, powered by AI. Because it's not like automatically.

updating and so it's just she's like I think we're still on track I think it's still on the bus because there's always this question of could the phone leave the bus you know could somebody pick it up and put it in their bag

I didn't want to get ahead of the story but yeah I mean from the moment of realizing this you are assuming that it is on the bus but not in someone's bag because that's a whole other situation if you get on the bus if you locate the bus and the phone is still allegedly with it then the real mystery begins which is is it in the pocket or bag of somebody on this bus right

and then if that's the case or somebody who was on the bus and is now leaving the bus because that's what one of the things Genevieve is doing on my phone is actually looking at the route of the 40 and then using her laptop to see kind of where we are and actually her laptop isn't even showing where we are so she's trying to it's it feels like 1995 she's kind of like what are we on the corner of like 15th and Republican or whatever.

She's got the Thomas guide out.

She's got the Thomas guide out. She's got a triple A triptych for some reason. I don't know how they had the forethought to put that thing together. She's got highlighter marks. It's showing where the construction is. But anyway. Gas station.

11 miles.

I think this is one of those things where this was pretty, in the parlance of my father, the technology the technology we were using yesterday was pretty slick having said that it's going to seem so antiquated in 10 years like it didn't show us on the map it only showed where her phone was on the map she had to keep refreshing the map we had to keep like comparing it to my phone on my map and everything whereas you know in the future hopefully it'll just show a blipping moving marker where the phone is and a blipping moving marker where you are and like how close are we together but Genevieve has to like do some triangulating and some mapping in the passenger seat and we're taking some you know we're taking some shortcuts now cutting across various neighborhoods saying okay we're going to get here and then we're going to try to cut it off before it gets to the bridge but it gets to the bridge now we're heading downtown and but I'm like we got to be making progress on this like even though we're not catching it as fast as we hoped like we have to be making progress on it I'm concerned the bus is going to get to the end of its line turn around and start heading back and i don't know where that happens i know it goes downtown i don't know if it goes through downtown um but we are i think somewhere between fremont oh no you know where we are luke we are down at like kind of the the bottom of denny hill what would that be is that south lake yeah we're in south lake union isn't there a big whole foods or something on um west probably yeah it's like west lake and denny or something like that we're kind of in that area and you know things are complicated in that area and traffic

uh is it can be intense down there yeah mercer and all that can get really kind of it it's a lot

of one-way streets and it gets really clogged and you also have like streets will totally just shut off and become bus only streets and so that's kind of a problem too if we want to be chasing this bus but somewhere around there genevieve is like we're just crossing i think maybe westlake Republican and she's like now it says that we passed it I'm like well we haven't seen any buses she's like oh no but it also says it hasn't updated and she's hitting refresh refresh it's like it hasn't updated in like two minutes but it must be in front of us but it says it's behind us now and we're like and then all of a sudden like a beacon in the night in front of us I saw a bus and it had two numerals on the back of it four and zero like Genevieve that's your bus now the music and you immediately just t-boned it i said well there's your bus rammed right into it i said get out the rest i found your bus you hired me to find the bus not fight the bus so i kicked her out of the car um no so then we start we start chasing the bus but we don't know genevieve's like you got to get in front of the bus and then get me and drop me off at the next bus stop in front of the bus but she's like it's like how do you pull over a bus how do you pull over a bus we don't have any flashing lights or anything like that but i'm like generally i can't get in front of the bus because the bus is in this area now in this very congested area and now going downtown going into bell town now luke if you can sort of picture that um and she's the bus is taking like you know it's not on a single road the way it was you know way up north here it's taking a lot of turns meaning i don't trust myself to get in front of this bus and pull over and drop you off at a bus stop because i don't know which way this bus is going and we're trying to triangulate that but for a second i'm like alongside the bus but then the bus takes a left and i'm like is there

any waving to the driver from genevieve because i mean what would the driver even make of that but did that even come into play uh not yet okay so we're the bus

So I'm like, Genevieve, I've got to get behind the bus. I'm just thinking, like, we've got to get behind the bus. We're going to be coming up to some pretty big stops in, like, the more urban, dense centers of the city here.

God, what I would have paid to just be in the backseat of this car, listening to this conversation. I love it. This is really like an action movie.

It really kind of was. I've got to say, when we saw the bus, it felt like, I'm trying to think whose music I would want here. Maybe a P.T. Anderson. Maybe the heat is on. Maybe Yorgos Lanthimos, like, you know, I don't know, some sort of like we see the bus and it's just kind of like the music, like the action scene begins in my head. So we're literally chasing this bus, talk about a slow, slow speed chase. And then finally, somewhere in Belltown at a very big bus stop, actually, this might just be downtown proper, actually, at this point, we just the bus pulls over and I'm waiting for it. I'm like, is it stopping here to actually let riders on and off? I'm waiting for the telltale sign of it to put on its flashing lights. So the bus stops at this big, and I pull up behind it, and I stop. But I'm not supposed to be there. I'm just in a bus lane in this kind of big bus area. And I'm like, turn on your flashers. Turn on your flashers. And then, boom, he turns on his flashers. And then I'm like, go! Genevieve gets out of the car. She still has her laptop, and she runs up to the bus, and apparently she runs into the back door. I've now lost sight of her. And, like, we were having a conversation before in the car while we're stressfully triangulating. I'm like, well, what is the plan if you get on the bus with your computer, and then you're looking for your phone on the bus, and the bus takes off, and you don't find your phone, I'm completely out of touch with you. you don't have a phone to call me in you're on a bus, I'm in a car I guess I just keep following the 40 around like I'm not sure how this is all going to go down if you get on that bus but can't find the phone but anyway, right now we're feeling I'm just feeling pretty excited the fact that we even found the bus, so Genevieve just runs out of the car

controlled roll out of the car

holding her laptop, somehow maintains the laptop holds the laptop runs out of sight for me and now i'm sitting behind the bus and there's some um transit workers or at least there's one transit worker in like a bright yellow vest sort of just kind of milling about and i put on my flashers and that the person isn't really looking at me with a lot of scrutiny but i do think for a second this guy looks at me like how long is this car gonna just sit behind this bus i'm not supposed to be there right but the bus in front of me still has its flashers on genevieve has been gone for i don't know 30 seconds now now maybe a minute and i'm like what's going on on that bus i don't know

i'm sorry to keep revisiting this and we already said we're not going to stereotype bus riders because some of my very best co-hosts are bus riders but i feel like there is also the very real possibility that somebody who is currently on the bus found the phone and maybe put it in their pocket or their bag again not to not to say people on on the bus would do that but that's the part that i would have been really stressed i mean along with the fact that you couldn't contact her is like what happens if she gets on there we know the phone's on the bus but we don't find we don't see the phone and now it's like what kind of an inquisition are we dealing with to get the phone

back yeah i could see genevieve even just saying to everybody on the bus hey has anybody found a phone you know right um that would be a way to handle it by the way it's like it's like it's

like god sorry everything goes back to minnesota but it's like the pivot that i saw a lot of people doing online, including Tim Walz, which I thought was very smart, which was, look, if you supported ICE, or just like if you voted for Trump, or if you even thought ICE needs to come in and get rid of these quote-unquote, you know, criminals or whatever, it's not too late to change, and it doesn't make you a bad person if you did think that, but now you can change and you don't lose your, you know, standing in our world. I think that's actually a very smart approach, because one of the issues with this kind of stuff is people get really locked in to a worldview and it almost feels like they can't if they if they think about their worldview critically they're they're questioning their own sort of existence anyway that's a long way to say i think the move would be to say did anybody did anybody find my phone not

not did anybody steal my phone yeah of course right right right just screaming in a bus which

one of you m ever stole my she's amanda plumber in the opening seat of pulp fiction everybody be Coo, this is a rubbery. That's actually Tim Roth who says that. That is, yeah. She's Honey Bunny. She's the Tim Roth, and you're the Amanda Plummer in this movie. That's right. God, I love fried green tomatoes.

Anyway, so Genevieve's out of sight. I'm behind this bus. Maybe it's been 90 seconds now, which you know, Luke, that's a long time. Long time.

People think when you're measuring things in seconds, it doesn't seem like that long. But like 90 seconds is like a full commercial break that is driving you crazy when you are in a total information black hole. That's right. Yeah. When you're sitting there, you're I'm behind the I'm behind the bus and I'm just like, I don't know what's going on in that bus. I mean, that bus, a couple of things could happen. I could see Genevieve jump off that bus and suddenly, you know, come into view for me, you know, joyful because she found her phone. I could see her getting off that bus looking dejected and sad. I could see the bus's flashers go off and the bus start to pull away from me while I still sit in the car without a Genevieve.

An old-fashioned Donnybrook. Three people, including Genevieve, tumble off the bus mid-fisticuffs.

Yes. It just looks like a cloud of dust.

Yes. It's not a Donnybrook unless there's a cloud of dust.

Yes, that's right. It looks like a Charles Schultz cartoon. Yeah. So anyway, I don't know what's happening, but I'm just waiting. I'm just waiting. And then all of a sudden I just see Genevieve come into sight off of the bus, literally jumping up and down and waving at me with her phone in one hand and her laptop in the other and running to the car. And so she gets in the car and she's like, oh, they had it. They had it. Jalapeno. Jalapeno. Jalapeno. And this is very relevant to, I think, what we've been talking about, the nature of human beings. She said she ran under the bus. I was picturing her going into the front door of the bus in very first order of business saying to the bus driver, did anybody turn in a phone? But because she was closer to the back of the bus, she actually ran out of the car, darted into the back door of the bus, and looked around where she had been sitting and didn't see anything. And I guess just luckily the bus is not pulling off at this point. So then she runs to the front of the bus and says, did anybody, did you find a phone or anything? And he said, somebody turned it in. And he handed it to her. I think without, boy, you know, I'd even ask her about this. But remember that time you lost or just like temporarily set down your earbuds in a hotel in Miami and they didn't trust you to give them back? You're like, you describe them as like the white case. By the way, the sarcastically named Good Time Hotel. Right. There is like we got to prove that these are yours. We have to we have to do forensics to see if the earwax that is left on these earbuds.

We have to start playing Pod Save America in one of these ears.

just prove it was you anyway uh apparently none of that happened the guy just gave genevieve her phone and she came skipping off the bus and then and now i'm still like kind of in a bus only area but for somehow i'm also just like discombobulated i kind of don't know where we are and we end up pulling up alongside the bus and the hero bus driver so keep in mind like i'm now the bus has pulled away from the stop and now it stopped at a red light as are we but i think we're both in bus only lanes were to the left of the bus, meaning that Genevieve and the passenger side can look up out her window at the bus driver, the hero bus driver who just gave her her phone back. And so I actually start leaning over and waving to him, and then he's waving at us. And I believe, I never saw any of this, but I believe Genevieve took a photo of this bus driver through their respective windows. And is that the photo that she posted to Instagram with some sort of version of the story?

Well, I can't find it because it was a story, so it went by, and I don't know how to get back to it. If I go to Genevieve's page, it's just posts. I don't think it was a picture of Kathy Bates from Fried Green Tomatoes as the bus driver. This is fascinating

because I didn't think that Genevieve knows how to do stories. That's the interesting thing about that.

Is it possible I saw it on a different social media platform other than Instagram?

Maybe. I haven't seen it.

That's the only one I'm on, unless you put it on TikTok.

I'll take a look here.

Here's what I was struck by. First of all, that's an amazing story. I can't believe you guys pulled that off. That is frickin' awesome. That's flippin' awesome in the words of Fernando Mendoza. But Genevieve was very, like, very how do I put it? Super sort of complimentary to you in her post. Like, you were named. I'm looking at it now. You're right. It was

a story, which first of all, I'm super proud of Genevieve for posting a story. You were the hero. I felt like you were a hero of this story. She used the word heroically. Literally and figuratively. Jumped in the car and we chased the moving phone all over the way to Pike Place Market. That's right. That's basically where we end up coming out. Through a fish.

They filmed it for an interstitial of an NFL game on Fox.

That's right. God, where do they come up with that?

I don't know. Pearl Jam? I mean, how do they think of these things? I got a little store for you. Anyway, that was the story. We got the damn phone back. Amazing.

It's kind of funny. I was later on thinking about where I was putting the probability of getting the phone back at various times during this adventure.

I want to see the poly markets on this.

Yeah, right?

I want to see the real-time, you know, sort of probability, like they'll be with the football games now or the Mariners games. I want to see what was going on in your mind.

Yeah, exactly. Because I remember asking Vise, what did you think that the possibilities were? She's like, I was pretty pessimistic most of the time. But then once we saw the bus, like once you saw the bus, you're just like, all my job right now is hell or high water. We attach ourselves to this bus. If that means driving through bus only lanes. If that means if this is one of those duck boats that goes on water, we'll find a way. Got it.

If we have to blow a kazoo and do some kind of dance to YMCA.

What is what is that? I believe they do that on the ducks. That's what they do on those duck boats. There was a really bad duck boat accident here in Seattle, and so they don't operate here anymore, do they? It just occurred to me, I haven't seen a duck boat in forever, but is that just because maybe I'm not driving the highways and duckways of duck boat?

The highways and quackways? No, it didn't work.

At least it was a better stab at it than what I offered.

Let's see. Ride the Ducks is an amphibious tour. permanently ceased operation in 2020 following the 2015 crash. So you were absolutely right about that. I believe they do definitely exist in other cities and I once took Addy on Ride the Ducks and I just remember again, I'm just like what an unfun dad in a way. A fun dad that I was like, let's do Ride the Ducks but then an unfun dad that I was like, I refused to do YMCA.

Oh god, I don't blame you though. On the bus.

Because you know it's a participatory kind of thing. Yeah, right.

I mean, that's an absolute nightmare for me. You remember the photo of me being a little kid, and people are just saying happy birthday to me, and I've got my hands pressed firmly over my ears because I just don't go in for that.

Well, that would have been one of the letters. I think it's Y, M. That could have been the M.

Yeah.

You were kind of doing it.

Sort of between the M and the surrender cobra. Yeah.

Well, congratulations to you and Thieves. That is really cool. I'm so glad that worked out. And that was a fun story for us all to get to hear about. All right, let's thank some donors. These are the incredible, generous people who, if they found a phone on the bus, they would immediately turn it in to the driver because they're good. They're morally upright. They're citizens of the world, Andrew, and they are supporters of TBTL. And the only way this thing can happen five days a week, 52 weeks a year, is because of the support of folks like Gray Chapman of San Jose, California.

Thank you, Gray. Appreciate that. Thank you, Gray. Gray Chapman sounds potentially like a singer-songwriter name. I don't know if Gray is considered becoming a singer-songwriter.

Well, there was a Christian singer named Stephen Curtis Chapman when I was a kid. So your instincts are right here, Andrew. Not that Gray Chapman is a singer-songwriter or even a contemporary Christian artist, but that the name sounds like it could be. Whatever Gray is doing in San Jose, we appreciate Gray redirecting some of that income towards TBTL. So this can be our job. Thank you, Gray. Thanks to Alyssa Adelson of Bellevue, Washington. Or Adelson.

Thank you, Alyssa. Appreciate that. Oh, I'll see you in March. There was a big announcement. You're going to Bellevue in March? I don't know if it's March or April, but that is when sometime this spring they've announced an opening day for the train line that will connect the two cities. Oh.

I just thought you had plans to go to, like, the Din Tai Fung in Bellevue, but you were two months out on it.

I need to make some plans in Bellevue and then take the train over there.

Yeah, absolutely. And then I was going to say leave your phone, but don't, actually. You guys, you've gotten away once with this. Let's not test fate. Thanks, Alyssa. Thanks also to Annette Streak of Brampton, Ontario. I am checking the schedule, and it does not look like. When does the train get to Brampton, Andrew? It's going to be a while. It's going to be a while, but it's not about the destination. You know there is a train, and you know the monkeys wrote a song about it. Take the train to Brampton. Take the last train to Brampton. I'll meet you at the station. Isn't there a story that like Did the monkey The monkeys didn't write their music initially And then they wrote the music on head Is that what that was

I don't know all the ins and outs I know that Neil Diamond wrote a bunch of their hits though Including that one I think

That's Last Train's the That's so interesting i'm not sure if he wrote that one let me double it sounds like a neil diamond song though like take the last train to clarkston and i'll meet you in the morning like you know although i guess if you sing any song like that yeah it sounds like a neil diamond song like red red wine for instance which i only found out about through ub40 but it's like you sing it

neil diamond style red red wine so not last train to clarksville that is not written by neil diamond but it was written by other songwriters. But let me just type in Monkees' Neil Diamond songs.

While I'm thanking donors, Andrew. See, we're multitasking here because you've got places to be. While I'm thanking Sarah Wilcox of Tacoma, Washington.

Nice. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you. I'm a believer. I couldn't leave her if I tried. That's Neil Diamond. I saw it when I saw her face. That's from the movie Shrek. When I saw her face. He wrote that for the movie Shrek. I didn't see that.

He wrote that for Smash Mouth for the movie Shrek.

i'm a believer what a great song that is a neil diamond written song i believe i was like walking

by some people in miami and i walked by a person who just learned in real time that the lead singer of smash mouth is no longer alive because of that song that song was playing coming out of one of the like you know on ocean avenue there in miami beach it was coming out of somewhere uh the the the smash mouth version of then i saw her face and somebody said yeah that guy's dead and somebody said neil diamond and they went no the smash mouth guy and then just that's what i just it

just doppelgangered right past me and i first of all i love picking up little snippets of other

people's conversations we were doing that the whole trip we kept finishing bex and i our thing was we would hear like two seconds of a conversation and then we would do an entire build out uh-huh like ai can do with a photograph now right we would just build out the edges of the

conversation right right right um but that that happened somewhat recently right because he was kind of had a troubled life or am i thinking yes he had a troubled yeah i mean recently as in in

the last five years which to you and i feels recent i don't know what it feels like to andrew kugelman in seattle washington but i know that andrew has recently been donating to tbtl because his name is on this list that's right and we really appreciate it thank you andrew and then of course where would we be without christine mellow of wiley texas christine is all the way over there in Wiley, Texas, sending in some money to TBTL so this can happen. Thanks, Christine. Appreciate it. I really appreciate you. Could not do this without you, donors. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

You know who wrote that song, Luke?

The old diamond. Mike Nesmith's mother. That's true. When she wasn't inventing Whiteout. You know that story, of course.

When you raise it, it rings a bell always, but it's never top of mind for me.

Mike Nesmith from The Monkees, mother was a secretary and was, you know, would have some issues. You know, occasionally there'd be like a mistyping in her thing she was typing up. And instead of redoing the entire page, she thought, well, what if I put a little bit of white cover on this? And she is credited with inventing whiteout. I love that. And by the way, when I said Mike Nesmith, I didn't mean Peter Tork. I think Peter Tork was European, right? So I mean Mike Nesmith.

Oh, really? They're not all American? I didn't know that.

I don't know. I'll look this up while you blurs your little heart out.

Start blursing all over the place over here. Hey, all right. Calm down. Starting with Carolyn. I'm sorry, Carolyn. That was awful.

Here, let's just apologize.

It's time for some Blurs Days. You can email me, andrew, at tbtl.net and put Blurs Day in the subject line, and that's how I will know a Blurs Day waits within. Carolyn wrote to me to say happy Blur's Day to my cousin Debra in New Zealand. We grew up in the Northwest sharing our birthdays, and I love the festivity of having multiple family birthday celebrations all around the same time. I still miss those weird but delicious rice flour birthday cakes Aunt Marian always used to make to accommodate your gluten intolerance. Love you, cousin. I hope your day is a special one. So it sounds like we have a couple of Blur's Days here, Both to Debra and Carolyn Whose birthdays are around the same time

Betty Nesmith Graham Mother of monkeys Michael Nesmith Invented the typewriter correction fluid Liquid paper in 1956 Working as a Texas bank secretary She built it into a multi-million dollar company Before selling it to Gillette for $47.5 million in 1979.

Wow! In 1979. Died in 1980, by the way. This is such a boring thing to say, but I was surprised. When you said selling it to Gillette, I thought that sale would have been 90s or post-90s because I think of Gillette as being like shaving, skin care kind of stuff. And I'm like, oh, Gillette must have bought one of the big office supply companies sometime more recently. But no, Gillette was cranking out Whiteout back in the 70s.

Founded in 1901, Gillette, an American brand of safety razors. It's so funny because, Andrew, you and I have grown up in the era where there's nothing, really, there's almost nothing that isn't a safety razor.

Yeah.

Like, we're not from, like, my dad had, you know, the actual razor blade that you click into the thing, and your dad probably did as well, Maybe I don't know I would always see safety razor And I was like safety for what Because that's just what it is now But back in the day that was called a safety razor And the Gillette company Now owned by Procter and Gamble

Okay so that all makes sense Except why was Gillette If it is known as a Maybe they were like Selling it as stuff you could put on your face If you nicked yourself a little bit You know instead of toilet paper I could use that I show up to a CBS shoot, I just have whiteout over various parts of my face. Is this noticeable? Happy blurs, I Caroline and Debra. Erica says, this blurs is the blurs of 50, and I can kick, stretch, kick slowly and with effort. Sally O'Malley. Every year during the Pacific Northwest dark time, I wish I could go somewhere warm, and this year I have splurged. My dear boyfriend and I are departing for Hawaii for five glorious days. I will beach, I will swim, I will nap, I will revel in the goodness of the freshest fruit, but probably not bananas. Happy Blursday to all other Aquarians, the rarest of the Zodiac. California got sunshine. By the way, R.I.P. This time I mean it.

That's the guy from Smash Mouth.

Hey, Genevieve, let's have Genevieve on the show maybe next week. I'm just thinking about this now. Genevieve is suddenly at age 48, I want to say, maybe 47. She is ripshit. about her zodiac sign i don't know why it came up that is she really a plot twist she is a pisces and she is now going around telling people well she doesn't really talk about this much but she's just telling herself she has self-appointed a different sign to herself that she thinks she's like i am not a water sign she's like i'm the opposite of a water to change your sign so we need it you know i actually think that would be a good conversation to come up and then she's Monday or something. And I'm a Sagittarius, which is a pretty badass sign. I'm a secretariat. And she's like, you're not a Sagittarius. I'm like, well, I don't know.

I'm the sign that, you know, did I tell you that, no, I didn't because I was telling Becca this. I was backstage at LiveWire. I know you've got to go, Andrew, so I'll be brief, but I'll be obtuse. I was backstage at LiveWire, and it was Becca's birthday last week, which was part of why we went down to Florida for a little celebration. And I was telling the LiveWire folks about that, and then it was her birthday. and one of our producers, Melanie Sevchenko, who I absolutely love, she said, oh wow okay, so she is a, I don't even know what her sign is, whatever last week would have been let's go with Pisces, I'm gonna guess. She's like, oh she's a Pisces

and I, okay

wow, you know more about this than I thought. I only know because that's Genevieve's

real sign is Pisces and she does she's rejected it. Let's go with

whatever last week was, let's call it. Is Aquarius a thing? Aquarius okay, that sounds right. So she's oh, she's an Aquarius. And I go, yeah, I'm a Taurus. Is, like, Aquarius and Taurus good? She goes, no, it's the worst.

Oh, compatibility?

It's the absolute worst compatibility. She goes, I dated an Aquarius, and it was awful. Later I learned he was bipolar. And I was like, that might have been also part of it. Maybe that's. I wonder if that was as big of a factor as him being an Aquarius.

Well, you know me. I'm an Adrian Monk with a Bob Belcher rising. That's what I always say.

I saw a guy on the plane yesterday who was a Bob's Burgers character, like a drawing. Becca and I, we were in the front row of coach, and we were watching a guy in the front row or the back row of first class. We couldn't place him for the whole flight, and I was like, and then when he got up to stretch and grabbed his luggage, I was like, that's a Bob's Burgers.

Was he talking to a turkey at any point? Yes, he was. God, I love Bob. All right, let's do some more. We got Erica. We just wished Erica a happy Blurist Day, and I hope you have a great trip. I think you're actually having that trip right now. Got this note from Chad that says, I'd like to wish my middle five gram a wonderful and happy 20th birthday. And I know you're bummed to be, quote,

turning old oh god chad i get it and and what's the gram what's the what's the fives name gram gram i get it i had my first midlife crisis at 20. i really did yeah like i guess they would call that a quarter life crisis if you're lucky i guess but yeah at 20 was hard for me 20 felt like yeah for real like i was like somehow it felt like i was i don't know it felt to me like my life was sort of half over at 20, which turned out to not be true.

No, thankfully, thankfully. Anyway, Graham feels like he's turning old, but hey, for the rest of your life, you get to say you became a commercial pilot at 19? What? What a year. We're so proud of you, G, and your mom, bro-sis, and I love you so much. 19 years old.

Dang, dude. Flying the giant, giant metal birds. I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking about flying them giant metal birds because there are two different airstrips near me. It's one of the nice things about living in rural America is there are a lot of airstrips. And they have signs that say flight lessons. And I'm thinking that in my 50th year on this planet, I might treat myself to some flying lessons. That'd be a plot for the show.

It would be. And that's what they say, too. You should kind of start taking flying lessons when you're at an age where you're, like, hearing and eyesight start declining and stuff. That's, like, the perfect time.

I'm thinking about writing a book about it called No Fear of Flying.

Oh, is that actually a book?

I think Fear of Flying is an Erica Jong book.

Oh, okay. I'm unfamiliar. But anyway, I am legit impressed here with Graham. Yeah, that's amazing. Graham, you're not old. So that was from Chad. I don't know if this is to the same Chad or a different Chad, but this is our pal Amy in Minnesota saying, Happy Blursey to my husband, Reverend Chad. I'm so proud. Oh, yeah. We love this guy. Oh, yeah. We love them both. We love them all. I'm so proud that you are. That sounded like such a dismissive thing for me, and I was being sincere. We love them, whoever they are, wherever they may be.

We love them all. Yeah, they're great.

Oh, love Amy and Chad. I'm so proud that you are a newly ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and can now officially use the title Reverend. It's pretty cool, actually. Amy is sending in Blur's Day messages and various emails and communiques over the years. I feel like I've been a little bit on this journey with Reverend Chad because we heard about seminary school. And now Chad is living the life.

Fully doing it. can do marriages, can do the counseling, can help people find the best version of their life. Highly support this, by the way. The Universalist Church, I think, is a great thing.

And can stand up to ice in the streets, which that's not part of Amy's official message, but I think I was going through these very quickly a moment ago, but I think Amy said that Chad's been out there on the streets as well. That's incredible. So Amy says, it's an understatement to say things are difficult in our home of Minneapolis this right now, but I'm inspired by how you're doing what you can to stand up for love and justice, and I'll make sure to make time for, oh no, I'll make sure you make time for a birthday drink. Absolutely. Happy Blursday, Chad. Absolutely. Yeah, man. Thanks. Good trouble, man. Good trouble. And finally, do you remember the other day, Luke, this is going to start with a question, the other day when I was playing that videotape for you that looked like it was home movies or a VHS that was recorded in what seems to be in a Bitter Lake community center.

We need to update that story at some point.

Yes, we do. I got a fascinating follow-up email from a listener I can't wait to share with you tomorrow. But we also thanked some donors that day, and Meredith in Britain was one of them. And we were wondering, did Meredith grow up in Britain, or could Meredith possibly have grown up here in Seattle even been in that video in the Bitter Lake Community Center and then moved to Britain. Well, some of these things are going to be addressed here in this Blur's Day message because Meredith says, please could I wish a happy Blur's Day to myself? It would be a, that's very, that is already a British way. Please could I wish a happy Blur's Day to myself? Please, sir, could I have more Blur's Days? It's a little Blur's Day. That was all over the map, that accent. I loved it. I love a good Greek accent. It would be great to celebrate this weekend with a message from my two very favorite imaginary radio friendos. Happy Blur's Day, Meredith. Absolutely. Meredith says, I do work in London, because I think I was making some jokes about, or I made some references to working in London. I did grow up in America, and I was a child in 1994, but unfortunately I did not attend the Easter egg hunt at the Bitter Lake Community Center in northeast Seattle, and I can't think of anyone who might have been. Well, more on that soon. Watch this space. But I will also say, Meredith, you've really taken to the culture because you spelled Bitterlake Community Center C-E-N-T-R-E.

What's more British than that? What's more British than that? What color is the building? You're going to hate this. But for a while there, and I finally have stopped doing this, but for a big chunk of my adulthood, I spelled color with a U and I spelled gray with an E. And I know that that is very British, and I've never even been to Britain. I wasn't trying to put on airs. I just truly believed that those words are better spelled that way. Because gray is not a colorful, bright word. It's a bleh word. It's gray. And having an A. A is like a sunrise, and an E is like a gray, foggy day. So I was spelling gray with an E. And color with a U, it adds color to the word. I felt very strongly about this, but I also understand how absolutely annoying that sounds.

No, that's not annoying. You've got a good reason for it. that's um that's some synesthesia coming out right i think you're right actually that's a

really good point because i sort of claim to be touched with a little bit of that and yeah no

that would be that would that would seem to be an example of that so well happy blurs day everybody yeah happy blurs day to you luke thank you thank you it's an honor and a privilege just to be nominated um all right that's we didn't even get in tomorrow andrew please i know let's let's let's circle it. I want to tell you about my somewhat kind of nutty plan for watching the Super Bowl because I'm trying to hold a couple of things simultaneously, which is the love of family and the love of Seahawks. So we'll get into that tomorrow. In the meantime,

thank you everybody for listening. I'm sorry. I know you're winding up. I want to give the listeners a warning, though. We're dialing up a little bit late tomorrow and we have a lot to talk about. I'm just realizing, I feel like tomorrow could end up being a very long show that gets started pretty late. So we might be posting the show late tomorrow.

And I will have just done a local television appearance.

We have so much to talk about.

Hello, Rose City.

You still don't even know what we're doing in our basement.

Oh, my God, dude. The basement could be, for me, that could be easily 10 hours of show. And I would only be beginning to scratch the surface. So, yeah, buckle up for a big show tomorrow. The good news is the Seahawks are on a bye, so we have nothing to do this weekend. That's right. We can spend it in quiet reflection and listening to TVTL. In the meantime, thanks for listening. Everybody have a great rest of your Thursday. We will see you tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I'm an uptuce man, so I'll try to be oblique. Power out.