Muse

Did you do anything in the bathroom?

Mm-mm.

Nothing?

Mm-mm. I was putting some lip-ic on, and then I was getting my phone.

So what'd you put on?

Lip-ic on.

Oh. Whose was that?

It was my lip-ic.

Oh, it was?

Yeah.

Did you ask anybody if you could put it on?

I asked myself.

So whose lipstick is that?

Mine.

You bought it?

Yeah.

Where'd you buy that?

My Yippick?

Yeah.

I buy that from Home Depot.

TVTL!

Doggy butt, doggy butt, doggy doggy doggy butt, doggy butt, doggy butt, doggy butt, doggy doggy doggy butt.

Is there, and I'm just guessing here, some kind of medication that you maybe need a lot

of and have taken none of, or maybe too much of today? I consider myself to be an absolutely dead-centered, normal, average American. It just so happens I am on a first-name basis with some of the most influential, some of the most powerful people in this business. So, get Chuck Woolery on the phone. Hey, you either get it or you don't. And I don't, but I am so excited to be a part of it. I could really use a win here.

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. A beautifully wrapped, glossy, sweet-smelling show. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

Oh, God! Oh, God, I'm running!

coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where we are

looking at an absolutely spectacular february day oh ma pa it's just beautiful blue skies

calm rivers out there in the mighty columbia i'm watching a logging project that's happening across the river from me over on the Oregon side of things. I've never actually, well, I guess I've just never lived across a river from where a large-scale logging project was happening. They do this crazy thing, I think, where they've got like a zip line that is spanning between these two enormous hills so that the guys who are in the logging, like, machines can get to the machines because you can't really, like, drive up there. It's totally rugged. I'm just watching these guys go back and forth in this little, like, gondola thing that's, like, that they've got strung up on this cable. And it makes me really feel like I missed my— I mean, I don't know if I would be good at logging. I don't know how I feel about the environmental impact of it. But I would love to be part of this gondola project. It looks really fun. Anyway, this is going to be really fun. I'm happy that I get to be a podcaster and bring you episode 4,656 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Which is what we're here to do today. Hey, Super Bowl is on Sunday, and the Seahawks fans and Patriots fans, they can't agree on much. But there is one thing that they apparently do agree on.

What the hell is even that?

We'll tell you what that is. Also, I think I've officially decided on my plan of what apparel I will be wearing during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

I feel cute today. Look at my outfit.

So we'll talk about all that, and we'll talk to this guy. He's the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, something else you may or may not know about him. In an age of uniformity, he's quite the opposite, an authentic subversive. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I went to the TVTL P.O. Box yesterday. Oh, what's in the box? What's in the box? Oh, we got some postcards here from our friend Cassie, who joined us on the show last week. It says, greetings from a Palouse Country Road. I almost said County Road. It's a very nice picture of a road cutting through some fields. but I also received the world's saddest three-panel cartoon comic strip from our pal Stephanie there in Portland. You know Stephanie, August's mom.

Did Stephanie draw this or just locate it?

Just clipped it for some reason. Here, I'll read you the note. So it came in this little note that's cute. It's like a little popsicle-shaped card. Yeah, I see that. And it says, Andrew, I must confess, I'm a bit of a hoarder. I decided to go through some old newspaper bits that had recipes in comics that had recipes in comics I made a

delicious pork stir fry, and a not-so-good cauliflower soup. I found these comics and felt the need to share. I will admit I'm only sending the Sally Forth cartoon to share my confusion. This seems very depressing and not funny at all. I'm not familiar with this comic strip, so I don't know if they're all unfunny. I guess not much here to say. August is in a very clingy stage and is obsessed with the movie Cars. I'm very sick of watching it. You know, I did not babysit a lot in my life, but I did babysit our friends' kids right around the time Cars had come out on DVD, Luke, and the kids were obsessed with it. And so that's the only kids' movie that I watch as an adult many, many times for those kids. So I understand that. But let me describe this. So tell me what you know about Sally Forth.

Well, Andrew, a couple of things. One, it did not occur to me until you just were reading that message from Stephanie that it had never occurred to me in my life that Sally Forth is not just the name of the person, Sally, and then her last name is Forth, but that it's the idea of going out into the world to Sally Forth.

I just got that, too. As you were saying, I just noticed.

That was so lost on me as, like, a 10-year-old reading the Seattle Times.

Because there's another one. Because here's the problem. Here's the problem. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately as a sort of new fan of the, oh, geez, Kathy comics, Kathy and Sluggo, you know. But what? No, no. See, this is my problem. Kathy and Sluggo. No, not Kathy. See, this is exactly what my problem is. What in the world is going on with my brain right now? I literally just bought a book Luke I'm having an absolute freak out here okay just hold on just Nancy Nancy not Kathy but this is my point I can there is this long standing comic called Nancy that had been around since the 1930s and then Kathy comes around probably in the 70s or 80s I'm guessing and confuses the marketplace and confuses soft headed podcasters like me did you see what just happened and I've been reading Nancy now for the past year or two really enjoying it, even bought Nancy and Sluggo's Guide to Life based on some recommendations by listeners and I've been really enjoying the Nancy lifestyle, but do you see what just happened to me? I couldn't recall her name because Kathy slipped in there first, and once Kathy is in there I can't think of the word Nancy and I, I should have just said act and that's what, you have Sally Forth and don't you also have a Mary Worth and aren't they both unfunny

You have Mary Worth, you have Sally Forth, you have Apartment 3G. That was the holy trinity of unfunny comics when I was a kid. You have Crankshaft.

That was supposed to be funny.

A little bit funnier.

That was supposed to be funny. It was supposed to be rye and kind of dry, I think.

Sardana. And by the way, adding to the confusion around Nancy and Sluggo to me is that I always, because Nancy, that was way before my time. But then you had Little Lulu Who was kind of Nancy-esque Kind of a little young girl of the same age But who was always getting up to hijinks And my mom was kind of into Little Lulu

Oh, it looks like also originated in the 30s So contemporaries, I would say

So I would always confuse this Nancy character with Little Lulu I think when this came up a couple months ago on the show I started singing the Little Lulu song And then I realized, oh, that doesn't hold up because they were trying to rhyme something with lulu and they said though you're wild as any zulu oh right i do just as hard to tame yeah little lulu i love you lu just the same and i was like oh man yeah that doesn't hold up no anyway uh but so with back to sally forth if we can i i know that i've uh i've talked about this extensively and repeatedly on the show but i did have a weird era of my, uh, of my elementary school, uh, years, which is, I, uh, I don't remember if it was my third grade or fourth grade, but it was one of those grades. And I was in a, I was in Mrs. Wharton's combined third, fourth, and fifth grade grade class. So the idea was if you were, you know, if you were like maybe pretty smart at math and you were in third grade, you could work ahead on your math. You could be in the fifth grade math, or if you maybe were struggling with something you could kind of be you could be working at whatever pace suited you between the grades of third fourth and fifth so all you save money on teachers that's the important thing critically i mean you want to know how old i am andrew mrs wharton told us kids she was very close to retirement in fact i might have kind of helped really sort of like tip her over to like i can't do this anymore because that's a very very bad menace vibes real uh real slingshot in the back kind of energy. She used to tell us stories of how she would ride a horse to school in Nebraska, where she was from, because when she was going to school, they hadn't invented cars. I had a teacher who her educational experience, her pedagogy, if you will, predated cars.

I find it hard to believe that they hadn't invented cars. They just weren't. Cars hadn't taken over every aspect of transportation right well because i'm reading a book now that takes place in the 1950s and it takes place in a culture where people are still riding horses around

because it's a very rural area of the country but do this math do this math with me bub okay it's 1984 she's 70 years old she was born in 1914 right so but so there's a 10 year old she's not taking a horse around probably you know like i i maybe there were cars but it was not the uh it didn't seem to be common where she was if you know what i mean so maybe she wasn't before the also the thing about the invention of cars is also kind of um it's actually a weird it's a weird kind of historical data point right because like there were cars before henry ford he just was the person who sort of seemed to figure out the um you know the the way to create the assembly line in mass produced them. And there were also electric cars. Have we talked about this? There was a car expo in New York City, again, I'm saying before even the Model T, where half the cars were electric. There was this fork in the road, as it were, where we could have had electric cars, but the combustion engine won out for whatever reason. We think of electric cars as evs as being very modern and sort of they are but also it it was not always a sort of a fate accompli that we were going to have to go with the combustion engine it just kind of it sort of won out at vhs'd over the betamax it probably was that was probably cheaper

or or more convenient or more you know a more expedited way of making cars at the time but then once once the oil companies became an oil industry then it kind of they did not want to

release their grip i'm assuming but i had this one year of school where all i did was read the newspaper in the back of the room because it was a kind of a somewhat loosey-goosey class again the idea was that you kind of could follow your own passions but also you need to get your assignments done and stuff but there was a it was a little bit uh it was it was there was a little bit of latitude for the students and the way that i decided to exercise that was to come into class each day to not sit at my desk but to sit at this like work table in the back of the room and to read the Seattle Times more or less cover to cover. Maybe I skipped over the business section or something. But that very much included the comics page. So I was reading all of these comics and also never knew what the hell the purpose of Sally Forth was because it was one of those unfunny comics to me. Okay, so back to the world's saddest.

But now that we're here for a second, I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about Sally Forth except for this comic that I'm holding here. but I also couldn't tell you anything about Mary Worth like do you have anything in your memory that would even distinguish these two sort of adult unfunny comics? Because I think Mary Worth was unfunny as well

If you woke me up out of a sleep I would say Mary Worth represented the crushing loneliness of an unmarried woman of a certain age

Oh really? Okay

Now I don't know if that's even really the plot but my memory of it as a kid is Mary Worth in my mind equaled And, again, I'm not saying this is how we should think about the world. I'm saying this is how I thought of Mary Worth being a woman, I guess you could say, of a certain age. By the way, I could be combining Mary Worth and Apartment 3G.

Which I know nothing about. But I want to take a stab at Mary Worth myself. But I have no idea if I'm right. Okay. All right, everybody. Let's calm down. You know what?

I'm confusing Apartment 3G and Mary Worth, by the way.

Okay. Mary Worth, I'm picturing a woman – I thought it was about a woman who was like a journalist or some sort of an investigator, some sort of a kind of important person or like somebody who had – but like you said, I picture her in her probably 40s or 50s, not like – not a coming of age and not like new in the workforce. So have we looked it up yet? What actually is Mary Worth?

I've got a ton of info now.

What do we know?

Well, do you want to start with Mary Worth or Apartment 3G? I want to start with Meriworth. Meriworth is an American newspaper comic, is, by the way, Andrew, is an American newspaper comic strip that has had an eight-decade run. It was created by Alan Saunders. It's actually associated with an older comic strip, Apple Mary, sometimes subtitled Meriworth's Family. It was a—let's see here. I just want to get to the—

plot let's see uh it centers on an old woman who's who sold apples on the streets and offered humble common sense that's what i said a real go-getter yeah actually i might have been a little bit more accurate than i thought yeah uh though usually called apple mary the character's full name is given as mary worth apple mary ran until uh let's see here uh king features began syndicating maryworth in 1987 um there's significant evidence that the two comic strips share an unbroken air later just so yeah so i guess it was one of those kind of um you know it was not intended to be as much funny as it was maybe insightful or inspirational of this you know of this woman apple mary aka maryworth who was doling out you know life lessons or something but then you skip to apartment 3G.

Can I just, can I get a little bit closer to Mary Worth? Because that Wikipedia page, it gets into, this is the problem with Wikipedia sometimes, it gives you too much information and you're just like, yeah, but what's it about? What's it about? The backstory of each whatever. So here it is on TV Tropes that gets to it a little bit more. Mary Worth is a soap opera style comic strip. The title character is a recent widow who moves to a condominium complex in California where just about everybody seems to have some sort of problem in most of the strips yeah go ahead spot on was I when I said you wake me up of a dead

sleep and Mary Worth is the crushing loneliness of a person living in a life like that's almost

exactly what they're describing there in a way I'm trying to figure out if she's lonely or if she's just like sort of getting into other and helping other people with their problems it hasn't explicitly said that in most of the strips one of the I'm not saying you're wrong I just don't know in most of the strips one of the quote young people in the neighborhood is troubled by a problems such as drug abuse alcoholism infidelity or teen pregnancy which mary takes it upon herself to fix though she is the title character and the catalyst for most of the strips dramatic plots mary herself doesn't appear all that frequently rather she is setting up she is set up as a framing device to get each plot rolling usually through her counsel so anyway so that's in so that's interesting that's not what i thought but i guess it was taking on the the serious issues of

the day i would love to see the mary worth take on drug addiction circa 1959 like what kind of reefer madness were they buying into like what was happening okay so then apartment 3g is an american newspaper soap opera comic strip about a trio of career women who share an apartment in Manhattan, and they say that it was sort of inspired by Mary Worth. The strip situations and characters were influenced by the soap opera strip Mary Worth. Look at that. Okay. So there was a little kind of, I don't know, spiritual connective tissue there.

Yeah, see, I don't think it's funny because it almost sounds like what I was describing with Mary Worth. It sounds like I'm confusing with Apartment 3G, but the thing is, I don't think I knew about Apartment 3G. Before you read that sentence, I had no sense of what apartment 3G was at all, which now leaves us this question, Luke. Why can't we grow the audience? Why can't we grow the audience?

Is it possible that these modern forward-looking conversations about King United syndicate comics of the 1940s, is it exactly blowing up the youth demo?

So what can you tell me about the comic strip that I hold in my hand right now, a perfectly clipped little comic strip, by the way, called Sally Forth? What do we know about this?

Well, again, it was in the, what I think I know about Sally Forth was, I know, I feel like Sally, in my mind, Sally Forth had black hair and was kind of a go-getter. Sally Forth was Sallying Forth. Those were the kind of broad strokes memory of Sally Forth.

Okay, and we're going to look up the overall sort of vibe and plot of Sally Forth in a moment. But first, I'm going to read to you what's going on in this three-panel cartoon. And here's my question for listener Stephanie, who is totally responsible for this beginning of the show, by the way.

We've got Stephanie wishing she was watching Cars with August right now.

So Stephanie, or the rest of the audience is like, Stephanie, go back to Cars.

Certainly, they're like, get me Lightning McQueen, please, please.

So Stephanie says, you know, I was a bit of a hoarder, so I was going through some things and I found some recipes and some comic strips. I'm assuming that Stephanie clipped these herself. And by the way, I would like to say again, very well done, very neatly clipped out of a newspaper. And I'm seeing that one of them is copyright 2017. So I want to know why Stephanie in the first place was clipping Bizarro. take it from the Tinkersons and Sally Forth comics in the mid-2010s. I never liked Bizarro. Bizarro, let's see, which one is that here? Oh, yeah, okay, this is actually very relevant to our times. There's a man in his boxer shorts and T-shirt sitting on a doctor's table, and the doctor says, the good news is your cholesterol is down. And the patient says, what's the bad news? And the doctor says, pretty much everything else in the whole world. That's the Bizarro comic strip.

That's the Bizarro one. That's not the Sally Forth that you have yet to read us. No, the Sally Forth. That's baby shoes never used.

Do you understand the concept of sweeping the quarter hour, Luke? I am holding onto this Sally Forth. We swept it right under the rug. We really did. We swept it right off a cliff and out the door. Okay, good. We're 20 minutes in, which means we've already had our first commercial break. We've kept people around, and they're like, what is in?

It's all about that quarter hour maintenance.

What is in that three-panel comic that Andrew claims to be the saddest three-panel comic he's ever read? We see a woman who I'm guessing is, I don't know, maybe middle-aged with a woman who I'm guessing is her daughter. I'm guessing that this is Sally Forth and her daughter. The woman has dark hair. The younger girl, who I'm going to say is maybe about 13 years old or a teenager, somewhere in that range, with blonde hair. And they're clearly in a hospital. And the frame is the same for each shot. And they're outside a hospital door. And in the first frame, you see the mom and daughter, presumably, walking into the hospital door. When I say hospital door, I mean they're in a hospital. They're outside a room, right? They're going to visit somebody. Yes, gotcha. And the mom is saying as they walk into the room, are you sure you're ready to see grandpa, sweetie? And the daughter says, no, but I need to. I need to look back on this and know that I said my you know. the next panel is the same shot of the door you don't see the mom and daughter anymore because they're presumably inside talking to the grandfather and then the third panel is we just see the young woman the 13 year old or whatever leaving the room with her face in her hands sobbing and her mom who's still in the room with her dad I guess says he knows you were here sweetie and the woman is saying or and the girl is saying through her tears okay

wow were you able to follow that okay yeah can you picture it i can i mean i have a lot of questions a why did stephanie clip this yes why was it mailed to you and why did we just talk

about it for 22 minutes what is that what is the drop my question is why why would it why would

anybody do that just why like i mean i guess i guess what it is is this this we're gonna call it a i go back and forth if it's comic strip or cartoon because i guess a comic would be in a strip okay so comic strip i guess if this comic strip sees itself as a sort of a soap opera or at least a plot you know a sort of like um continuing plot line around characters and also something that's not there to be funny it's there to reflect the human experience I guess that's what they're looking to do it seems to me to be a tough place to try to deal with those major themes you mean next to Crankshaft I mean next to Crankshaft BC and just above Dagwood and Blondie right now here's the thing if you look at the work of Dan Clow's is that how you say his name who's the guy that does you know the guy that did Ghost World and stuff, Clowie

I know what you're talking about but I don't know

there are certainly graphic novelists there are graphic artists who write and create incredibly moving stuff where they're using you know, they're using that format to talk about all kinds of themes of loneliness and you know, just all the things that go on in the human experience and in fact I think a graphic novel can be an incredible way to experience that art spiegelman jumps to mind

that seems like sure from your from when you would have been maybe reading that kind of stuff

or yeah like uh what did our crumb or terry zweigoff or something um but like megan kelso precisely i mean i should have started with megan kelso but like so there is definitely a way for this to be a really interesting way to um to to get into these topics like grief and like you know but to me it's the like putting it in the funnies it's it's because like if i go and i get a book if i go get underworld i go to my local my local ghost my local underworld and i mean and i pick up a copy ghost world excuse me is there also one called underworld there's a novel by dom

Don DeLillo named Underworld. It would have been such a different book if Dom DeLuise wrote it, I feel.

Double D, by the way. I know, I remember that from yesterday.

I remember that from yesterday. But all that is to say, I don't want to, because I know we have a lot of listeners who are fans of graphic novels and even people like Megan who make them. I'm not, my point isn't to try to be insulting towards the form. I'm saying that's for Sally, for the people, the creators of Sally, forth, to pop that right into my Thursday morning experience of opening up the Seattle Times or whatever newspaper and reading through and seeing that. I mean, I don't know. Maybe that spoke to somebody. It seems like a pretty heavy message to try to slip into an otherwise normal day, as opposed to I went to buy an actual graphic novel from this person that I'm going to sit down with and read and be ready for a certain kind of experience with, if that makes any sense.

I think it's interesting also that two out of three of the comics that Stephanie clipped took place in hospitals or doctor's offices. I don't know what's going on there. The funny thing about that is I think Stephanie clipped that Sally forth because it was so unbelievably unfunny that she just wanted to keep it as evidence. And it is unfunny but in a certain way, as I was describing it I brought it up because it was like, wow this is, like you say, really heavy just to open up on a Wednesday and see it in the newspaper next to Blondie but honestly, as I was describing it it actually kind of was moving so i was like well i guess maybe i mean that's the thing and who am i i think the thing is you buy a graphic novel it's called a graphic novel i actually think i probably read a few more graphic novels than you in my time and obviously they

cover all you mean i'm only able to mention the most famous graphic novel of our generation and then i also called it underworld is that why you think you read more than i did and like terry zweigoff directed ghost world he is not himself a graphic novelist just to be clear and the reason

i brought up spiegelman because i he wrote mouse which i kind of figured you would have as an npr producer back in the day you know like that okay but you know what i'm talking about i do know what it is i never got it holocaust and but told through the told through mice i mean i guess but it's a very but it's a very serious you know it's a very very serious yeah the art form covers very very serious things and does it really well i actually think it's really set up to cover serious stuff well but the fact that we called the page in the newspaper or used to when there were new The funny pages. The funny pages. And then you have this, a teenager sobbing as she leaves a room because she feels like she wasn't able to properly say goodbye to her. Yeah. The apparently dying grandfather is just like, wow. Okay. Now, what do you got for me, family circus? Right. Oh, I see.

We now know what that kid's whole day looked like because there's a little broken line going all around the yard and over the swing and back around. Oh, Billy. Oh, Bill. What have you gotten up to today?

That's right.

All right, let's thank some donors. These incredible folks are sending in a donation to TVTL voluntarily. They don't have to do it. They've chosen to do it, and it's how this thing can happen. And this is 100% listener-supported podcasting. Andrew, as you and John know, we're set to have—I'm set to have a conversation with some folks. It's kind of TBTL-related, about some future projects that we're excited about. And every time I get ready to try to explain to somebody who has no prior knowledge of this show how it works, I'm reminded of how absolutely amazing it is that it has worked. It's a slightly ludicrous thing to try to explain to someone. Well, we've been doing it for almost 20 years, and here's how. Because people who like it, who don't have to donate money, are like, yeah, but I will. And then it's three people's job.

And then do they ask, yeah, but what do you talk about? And that's when you get into the Sally Forth conversation.

Actually, you know who I'm about to talk to. I think that might be right up their alley.

Yeah, that's a really good point.

I actually think this might be a real good proof of concept for the folks that I'm going to be interacting with.

Give me an example of what you talk about on your show. Well, we like to do about a 25-minute breakdown.

I've been a long time on Apartment 3G yesterday.

3G and how it relates to Apple Mary. What is Mary Worth up to? Yes.

Well, I'll tell you. We're here thanks to Kirsten and Daniel Carr, who are in Sagatuck, Michigan.

Really nice job there. If not getting it right, certainly saying it with confidence. Committing. Do you know if you're right? I'm just curious.

I mean, I couldn't imagine that it's Sagatuck.

Yeah.

Do you think it's got to be Sogatuck?

I was looking at that and I was sort of like trying to figure it out. I didn't even get as far as you did in my process on that. I was trying to figure, could it be a soft G? And I don't think there is any way it could be a soft G. like Saugatuck, but no, I think I just swore.

Should we call the Tim Hortons? Yes, in Michigan. In Saugatuck? I was trying to find if there's a pronunciation. Wow, this looks like an amazing place, the greater Saugatuck area. I'm picturing a lot of beautiful outdoors. Oh, my gosh. Welcome to the art coast of Michigan. Oh, wow. Welcome to Saugatuck, Douglas, and Fenville, three distinct towns that beat with one welcoming heart From award-winning beaches and scenic waterways to a thriving art scene and a world-renowned culinary landscape, this is a one-of-a-kind place where people long to stay. For a getaway rich in both recreation and relaxation, explore the Art Coast and discover your ultimate escape.

Look at this, and you could just get on a boat, cross right over Lake Michigan, and end up in Milwaukee.

Amazing. Incredible. You know, Beck and I were talking about maybe this summer doing a road trip and trying to end up at, like, maybe Mackinac Island. A place that I've always been fascinated by Ever since I learned how to pronounce it a year ago It's not Mackinac Island It's Mackinac I'll never remember Or is it Mackinac, not Mackinac It's whatever It's Mackinac It's Mackinac, not Mackinac Ever since five seconds ago When I re-remembered how to pronounce it We were talking about maybe doing a road trip Because Michigan, I'll say Michigan has some of the most Picturesque and lovely uh, towns and highways and byways and waterways of America. And, uh, I haven't spent enough time there. My, my main time there was two trips, one for the Superbowl when the Seahawks lost. Uh, and then the second, when I was flown into Midland, Michigan, home of the Dow chemical corporation to fill in for Peter Segal at the last minute on like a, um, not so much wait, wait, don't tell me, but like a, uh, sort of, um, an event where it was sort of like wait, wait, light, but minus the game. It was just Mo Rocca, PJ O'Rourke, and then me filling in for

Peter. As a, just sort of a donor event or something? You know, it was in the Midland

like arts center. So Midland is an interesting town too, because again, it's where the Dow Chemical Company is founded because there were some kind of the, whoever Dow was had figured out that he could make some kind of useful chemical. I forget what exactly he started with, but he needed a certain kind of like i don't know if it was a mineral or a um a particular kind of um there was something that there was a lot of it in in this area of midland michigan i feel like it had to do with like i don't know like um ponds there were like a lot of ponds or something that had this thing that he wanted so he goes out there to midland and he founds it and so what you have in midland michigan is a kind of a medium-sized american town that has a tremendous amount of resources in it because of this very successful company so they got like an amazing minor league baseball stadium they've got this great arts center and the arts center was kind of doing basically like hey if you like wait wait don't tell me come to this thing where you'll hear peter segal in conversation with mo rocca and pj o'rourke except peter couldn't make it so they

called me the day before and i remember flu i assume i remember always with that guy god

wild man don't take take a meeting with him after two because it is he's not going to remember it That's apparently what they say about Rudy Giuliani, right? You know that?

Oh, no, I didn't know that.

Yeah, the word from his various handlers was like, yeah, no meetings after two or he won't remember it. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah.

But I know I've literally played this as content on TBTL. They recorded it, and I used it because this was back in the bad old days when I think it was just me maybe doing the show. And I was like, well, I'll go to Michigan. I'll do this. But I'm going to also need to use it as part of the show. But what I said, I'm very proud of this joke. And I've repeated it here on the program many times. I came out to this, I don't know, 3,000-person auditorium that's, like, all excited to see Peter Sagal and Mo Rocca and P.G. O'Rourke. And instead they're like, and here for Peter Sagal, it's a guy you've never heard of. And I said, this is kind of, to the crowd, this is kind of a bucket list event for me because one of my items on my bucket list is to see 3,000 people disappointed at the same time.

Yeah, at me.

Which I thought was a pretty good spoof, honestly. Did you win them over with that? They tolerated me. That was pretty good. They tolerate him. Anyway, all that is to say, I haven't explored Michigan sufficiently. And when I look at this kind of arts coast of Saugatuck and Douglas and the other place, I'm like, man, that looks great.

Yeah. Michigan is like the heart of the arts of the middle part of the country, I guess. It really is. You think of so many communities there.

Grand Rapids has got that big, you know, what's the name of the big art? The yearly art event in Grand Rapids.

That's literally one of the greatest art fairs in America. Are you sure that's Grand Rapids? My brain, I'm still reeling from my Nancy and Sluggo brain fart earlier, but I think I know the fact.

Art prize is what it's called.

And that's Grand Rapids? Grand Rapids. Where? Oh, okay.

Where is the University of Michigan?

That's in Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor. And don't they have a very vibrant art scene as well? Oh, yeah, absolutely. They have a big arts festival, too. That's what I was thinking of.

I mean, you can't turn around without bumping into Interlochen, where I took a job. Where you were breaking hearts way back in the day.

They're still weeping for my departure in Interlochen. They've never recovered. Nope.

They've never recovered. Thanks also today to David Johnson, who's in Federal Way, Washington, another place that I haven't explored sufficiently.

True, me too. But plan to. Yes. Thank you, David.

Appreciate that. Thanks, David. Thanks to Colleen Burns, who's in Mystic, Connecticut. Ooh. Mystic, Connecticut. I've never heard of the place, but it sounds mystical. Is Colleen... Is that where they did the pizza?

I think that's where they did the pizza. I told you I went to the post office yesterday. I have some comics I want to share with you later on in the show. But one of the things that I learned was some of our LPs were returned. to our return, you know, when we ship out thank you gifts, sometimes people move or they're on vacation and they don't check their mailbox or something, and so things get shipped back to us, and so we had several records that bounced back to us, and one of them was from Connecticut, and I don't know, I don't think it was Colleen.

I hope it wasn't Colleen's, but Andrew, yeah, what do you know? I am on the website for Mystic Connecticut, and I say this, you know, with peace and love, move over, Saga Tuck! Mystic Connecticut is also unbelievably beautiful. Yeah, I'm not surprised to hear that. Unbelievably beautiful. It's a village and census-designated place in Groton and Stonington, Connecticut. It was a significant Connecticut seaport with more than 600 ships built over 135 years starting in the 1700s. And my God, does that ever look unbelievably beautiful and relaxing, a place to while away a summer afternoon eating some chowder. I don't know if that's how they say it in Connecticut That's more of a Massachusetts thing But still Thanks Colleen, thanks to Randy Grover Who's in Bellevue, Washington Hey, that's another beautiful place Another place to while away the hours At Dintai Fung, if you're lucky Sitting next to Steve Ballmer As I once was Was he loud? I think CBS has greenlit me doing a story About Dintai, Andrew

Oh, I thought you were going to say about Steve Ballmer About Steve Ballmer Look out Pablo Although Luke's on the case now. Yeah, I know, right? I'm a little late to the game.

Just me citing Pablo Torres reporting on Steve Ballmer.

It'd be amazing if Ballmer just sat down for an interview with you. With me. At this stage, yeah.

But no, I'm actually pretty excited about it. Because do you know that Din Tai Fung, which we talked about a lot on the show, it is per location the most profitable restaurant chain in America?

That makes sense.

An average location of Din Tai Fung is more profitable than any other type of restaurant chain in America, again, based on location numbers. And, yeah, mostly I just wanted to have an excuse to eat dumplings and not feel bad about it because it's for work.

Did you include or see or hear reference to the fact that there's some popular TV show now, popular with the young people, that Genevieve was watching? I'm never going to be able to know what the show is. But I believe it's a show. You know what? I might know what the show is. Does it have should be Sweden-y in it? I don't think so. I don't know. I haven't seen it. It's not Euphoria? No. I think it is a show called I Love L.A. I could be wrong about that. Have you watched this?

No, because I knew it was going to be highlighting the worst elements of L.A. culture and young life. And you know who that's been confirmed by? My daughter.

Oh, really?

Who is so young that she's going to start getting AARP mailings in eight years.

Well, Genevieve says there's a scene where somebody from L.A. is visiting, I believe, either an old friend or maybe a romantic interest, I'm not exactly sure, back in New York. And it might be a transplant from L.A. to New York or something, and so they bring him Din Tai Fung. And Genevieve said it was very sweet, but she said the one mistake they made, she felt, was that they kind of hit the hammer on the head a little bit too hard by kind of saying Din Tai. She said they have that such classic packaging with that very recognizable dintai bag. She felt like the character should have not said it, just shown it, and it could have been more impactful. So were you familiar with that, and is that making its way into your piece? It might now.

I did not know that. So that gives me, what, an associate producer credit? I can write today's show off as research. Nice. Absolutely. Yes, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I'm with you on that. You probably don't have to say the name of the place. If you're bringing that over and the person knows, they know. I will say that when—I have been to the Dintai in Times Square, and I do feel like—

Oh, there is one in New York now.

Oh, yeah, there's one in Times Square now. I mean, not— Oh, there's one in Times Square. directly in it's across from the winter garden but oh so that oh so they brought it from los

angeles i thought they just went to the times square one i thought i thought my keep in mind

this is like a show that genevieve watched then told me about while we were like driving to the

three career women are living in an apartment yeah right a friend visits but it was my understanding

that it was like somebody was missing la culture on the east coast maybe it wasn't new york but i

must have written it before they knew if it's in fact new york they must have written it before dintai because it's it's really brand new this location oh is it okay maybe that's the funny then okay yeah but i do i i you know first of all you know how you know how uppity i get when i'm at dintai about like when they ask you have you dined with us before it's like i'm like you don't understand my whole personality is liking this restaurant okay um and so i get that way imagine i'm in new york and they're asking me andrew can you um can you imagine because like to me it feels It's a Taiwan-based restaurant, but then its first expansion into the U.S. was into the sort of Altadena area, actually, where I was taken by an ex of mine and converted to the gospel of Dintai. So I, in a very not annoying kind of way of being in the world, feel tremendously possessive of the whole Dintai experience. And then to be at this brand new sparkling one in Times Square where they're like, have you dined here before? It's like, I was eating here when your mom and dad weren't even thinking about creating you. Please.

Is this you imagining yourself in that Dintai, or have you been to that one in New York? I've been to that Dintai. You've gone to the New York one.

Yes, I have a whole non-meat order that I can do, which is admittedly not as fun. But I get the string beans that I love. I get a fried rice. They do have a veggie dumpling, which it's too much mushroom. But what I do is, to me, it's really all about this sauce kind of concoction that I like to make, which is the rice vinegar, it's the soy sauce, and then it's just massive amounts of that chili oil. And if I get enough of that going and I dip the veggie dumpling in it, it kind of does. It sort of scratches the itch for me.

But I understand. I'm somebody who likes mushrooms. I'm not some huge mushroom person. I'm not huge on portobello or whatever. But, you know, like, I generally like mushrooms in various stages of cooking, or I'll even eat them raw in a, not charcuterie. Jeez Louise, I can't do the rest of the show. Can you just do the show? No problem. What do you call, crudité. I couldn't think of the word crudité.

Oh, sure, crudité, or as I thought it was called, crudite.

Crudite, exactly.

I thought it was crudite until five, maybe less than five years ago. I had seen the word, it was one of those things where I've heard the word crudité. I've seen a word I thought was crudite. I've never put it together that what I was hearing people say was a reference to that.

Anyway, I didn't even need to go there. My point is I like mushrooms raw. I'll eat them cooked. But I fully understand somebody who says they just don't work for me. And I feel like that sort of ties in maybe with my feeling towards bananas or something. It's just like it's definitely a textural thing with mushrooms, right? Like there's nothing like that.

Yeah, and flavor in the particular what the Dintai, like, you know, I don't know if it's growing anymore, but with a healthy number of people that don't eat meat or don't eat pork necessarily, which is what's in, you know, what I would say are the best of the Dintai feng dumplings, you would think it would, I don't know, it would kind of make sense for them to make something. Like here's my point I think you could actually do a very convincing Dupe of the pork Xiaolongbao from Dintai and the reason is because It's kind of in the realm of mystery meat You know what I mean it's a little sort of like Ball it's like a little Meatball of this pork stuff That then has got this soup which uses I think Aspic maybe to kind of like Solidify it until it steams and then it Liquifies but like I think Because in fact you know what I tried to make these once And I did an incredibly crude like I tried to make a vegetarian version I think when I lived in Bellingham and it was they were like terrible and yet they kind of worked like when I made the whole concoction my little dipping sauce I was like okay this is 30% of what I'm going for now imagine like the greatest dumpling minds of our time I've seen the greatest dumpling minds of our time and destroyed driven mad driven mad yes like I what my point is like what you need is you need like something that has a ton of umami yummy like you know better than bouillon you need something that's kind of like almost like a bite of meat but again it could be like the further like a steak is the most impossible is the most difficult thing to reproduce as a vegetarian option because we know what a steak what the texture is what it tastes like it's all the meat thing a fake pepperoni is pretty easy to fake or

like a fake chicken nugget is pretty easy to fake even that's very processed or ground more processed

Thank you.

totally the more processed the easier it is to fake it so like i feel like the dintai people could make something that doesn't actually have real meat in it but just like it's almost indistinguishable from the real meat option but instead they've decided to go to this like bean curd bok choy shiitake mushroom wood ear mushroom situation and they also make them green and they don't they're they don't look exactly like the soup dumpling and that to me is is a Maybe I'll talk to the honers when I do my story.

Oh, yeah, that's right. If you're doing a story, you can be the change you want to see in the dumpling.

That's all I'm saying. That's all Jonathan Levine of Hillsborough, Oregon is saying. What up, Jonathan, home of the Hillsborough Hops?

I have been to Hillsborough before, and it's another beautiful community.

Would it be a violation of your HIPAA rights if I asked why? What were you doing in Hillsborough, Oregon? Just visiting?

I was having new teeth. And they look great, by the way. You look exactly like Jelly Roll. I got those.

These are my Hillsborough teeth. How do we feel about JSN's?

Oh, I don't think I know where you're going with this.

Well, you know JSN has veneers.

No, I didn't. I don't follow. I don't think I follow this stuff that closely.

Well, I didn't really notice either, but then I saw a dentist, like a teeth expert on tiktok and she was talking about him and she was what she was pointing out was that jsn's teeth looked phenomenal before he got the caps before he got veneers like his his because there's you know there's before and afters and side by sides and things like that and she was going gosh his teeth were really nice before i wonder what was going through his mind when he decided to veneer them but um i mean to each their own i think jelly roll is currently the maybe the most glaring example of somebody who went too far with the veneers.

He's been restrained in his other choices of style. Well, traditionally, I told you that when I was at,

I was in Nashville and I was doing some sort of event there, like a corporate event I got hired to do. Speaking of law enforcement conferences, Andrew, there was literally a law enforcement. I was like jail guards. it was like the it was like basically the like carceral the like carceral industrial complexes like jamboree was at the was at the the exposition center in nashville at the same time that i was at this other thing in a different ballroom oh my god they have they have prisoners dressed up in

like white and black classic striped prison i mean a dunk tank just short of that my friend

because i had to walk through a lot of this bullshit to get to the one i was kind of going to which was like a software thing and uh and it's yeah it's everybody it was like all of the people that are involved in the sort of uh u.s prison system and all the people that are profiteering off of it andrew it's a good bunch of people and um and jelly roll there was a sign because jelly roll famously did some time like jelly roll was um before his music career took off he was a sort i guess a petty criminal and he did did a little bit of time so but now he's you know he's been redeemed and uh was there to talk he was there to make sure he was you'd get cashing some checks

from the prison people yes so yeah i was wondering well like his role there is to what on the face of it talk about the experience of somebody who has been imprisoned is it is i mean i didn't attend veneers but is the veneer here the idea the idea that he's supposed to be like giving a perspective that these folks wouldn't otherwise have i wasn't invited to the

speech because i did not have a lanyard for that conference i had a lanyard for the conference i was working at but my guess is yeah something like that i don't it wasn't a concert as far as i understood i don't think jelly roll was performing i think he was there to just and i you know look i i had seen some clips right when he was sort of emerging as a i guess music star where he would apparently go to, you know, jails and prisons and talk to people who were incarcerated. And I think they were probably honestly pretty hyped about that. And to the degree that he was going around telling people, like, this doesn't have to define your life, the fact that you're in prison right now or incarcerated at the county level. I think that's a great message, and I'm not trying to, like, neg him on that. I'm feeling a little less than enthused because of the fact that after he won a Grammy, they asked him how he felt about what was going on with ICE, and he said, I just got a cell phone four months ago. I don't watch the news, which I felt like was kind of a cop-out. That's why I'm a little bit – that's why I'm currently a little whatever about old Jelly Roll. I will tell you this.

He's right in that kind of narrow area of fame where he could easily ostracize either side. He could easily, with one wrong comment, probably chop his income in half, right? Or at least that's what's going through his head in that moment.

That's exactly what the line – he's trying to walk, and of course my hope would be that he would just learn how to live with half of the income that he's making, and to just say, particularly as somebody, and I know these aren't exactly related topics, but like if he's somebody who has been in the prison or jail system of this country, he has to understand the inherent unfairness of it all, and I know that's not the exact same thing as what ICE is doing, but they're all kind of wrapped up in the same ball of bullshit, and you would really hope that somebody who'd been in there would then spend the rest of their life particularly if they end up with a charmed life like he did pushing back against this system that is so obviously rigged and so obviously unfair to so many people and so obviously not about rehabilitation it's totally punitive obviously so my hope would be that he'd be like I got out of there and now I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams so now this is my chance to blow the whistle on this terrible thing as opposed to thinking like how do I not alienate i'm going to use this on air what somebody called my uh somebody called ice the gravy seals he doesn't want to alienate the gravy seals who might listen to his records and so he's going to

go i just got a phone four months ago yeah i don't know what's going on in the country sure you don't

meanwhile let's talk about zaron mamdani um appointing somebody and who's in charge of i guess is it the is it the it would have to be new york city because he's not you know he's the mayor of new york he's not the governor but i guess the new commissioner the person in charge of the prisons or the the jails in new york city is a person who's previously incarcerated and i think that's one of the coolest freaking things i've ever heard like what what a smart way in my mind to run something like that is to have somebody who's been through it from the other side who who probably knows the good and the bad of of what sort of works and doesn't work from an interesting perspective is obviously not currently someone who's performing criminal behavior we leave that for the president by the way um but like what a cool thing i think that's you should i almost i would say in order to be in charge of any major prison system you should have had to do

some time there i was thinking that mom donnie was going to be our final donor of the day i got

so excited there for a second but well we gotta reach out here's our connection you know uh friend of the show and friend of live wire hurry kundabalu is like has been friends with mom donnie for years because they both went to bowden college and when mom donnie's mom reached out to hurry and said my son who's younger than hurry is gonna is considering going to bowden would you kind of give him the like the download on it so they became friends like many years ago and have been friends throughout so if i can get hurry to reach out to zoran who is right now doing god's work which is trying to get bidets installed in Gracie Mansion and appointing formerly incarcerated people to run the incarcerations up. If we can get him to take a break from that to donate to TBTL, I think it could happen.

Do I need to clip the Sally Forth part and send it? Or do you think he'll listen to the whole thing?

I'd clip it out of the show, honestly. Because Serana is like a young, cool guy. You know what I mean? I don't know if that's going to... We need to actually re-record one where we're talking about... I don't know. where we're talking about Jimmy Neutron. I think that's more skateboarding and Jimmy Neutron. That's what he's all about.

That's young. That's young, cool culture.

That's what Carissa Carpenter of Denver, Colorado, turns to the show for. Thank you, Carissa. We appreciate you. Thank you to all of our donors. We could not do TBTL, this young, hip show, without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Andrew, you wanted to take a guess at what I was alluding to during the top of the show about our first top story here, which is related to the upcoming Super Bowl. And the Seahawks fans and the Patriots fans apparently agreeing on at least one thing about this game. And you wanted to guess what that thing is. What do you think that thing might be?

I don't want to put you on the spot here production-wise, but I don't think the story was in the show sheet, so you said it during the intro and during the soundcheck, and you played a little drop. I thought it was funny. I don't know if you still have it there. You said there's one thing they can both agree on. Yeah, and then I said, what the hell is even that?

Or were you thinking this one was the thing?

I feel cute today. Look at my outfit. I was thinking of that, what the hell is even that, which I don't know the origin of it. And I was like, what could that story be? And then I remembered I did see a headline today or yesterday that had to do with certain bill, but it's a serious topic, about certain billboards that are going up in San Francisco around digital billboards. Does this involve digital billboards in any way? Well, then I'm not even going to bring up my story because screw it. What is the actual story?

It is, this is a, this is a Seattle Times piece from Sophia Vasselli. Fanatics apparel company under fire for, quote, ruining Super Bowl 60 fan jerseys. Fanatics, one of the country's largest sports merchandise distribution and the NFL's exclusive supplier of Nike fan products, is under fire for its Super Bowl 60 apparel ahead of Sunday's title game between the Seahawks and Patriots. so basically these are the official super bowl jersey you know what i mean it's not this is not like the regular jersey this is not the color rush or whatever it's like fan graphics has the exclusive contract to create the super bowl jersey for the seahawks and for the patriots now i don't think this is even what the teams are going to wear it's so like the ways that this the way that that that the the sort of idea of even what a jersey is has been so it's been sliced so thinly and and and distributed in so many directions so as to maximize the profitability of all of it i don't even know exactly what this means when they call this the official uh super bowl 60 jersey other than this is the official one that this company is allowed to sell that is created by nike and people this is somebody oh dove kleinman uh who's like nfl reporter says this is on like whatever x or something trending seahawks and patriots fans are pissed at fanatics and michael rubin for ruining super bowl nfl jerseys making them extremely cheap and low quality imagine paying 160 for this garbage and you look at the jerseys and they are totally just like like first of all they're they're super cheapo looking they are not if you were paying 160 for a jersey andrew you would probably expect that like the stitching on the numbers and the all that like it'd be two pieces of fabric you'd have the jersey itself and then you'd have the the numbers and the name or whatever all kind of stitched on by machine this would be there'd be some what's the word i'm looking for i don't know the word you're looking texture between the the the writing the thing This is just a straight-up, like, cheap-ass-looking jersey with the letters and things just screen-printed onto there.

It just looks like an oversight. I'm looking at this now. Can I just rewind for one second? I don't know if you know this, but I do have a sports jersey, which is interesting because I'm not, like, a sports jersey. Is it your Bernie Kosar? But, yeah, Genevieve got me, like, a Bernie Kosar jersey, but, like, an official Browns Bernie Kosar jersey. Maybe she got it for me 15 years ago. but like it's really good quality right it's stiff like the letters that are sewn on are like obviously a separate material that is sewn on there the name each letter is sewn on like it's

it's a very imagine the person the crafts person who although it's probably a machine but still

probably a machine but still it's like it's all stitched on there yeah but the the thing i wanted to say though was i'm guessing that that cost did you say 60 i'm guessing 160 oh 160 yes that's more the market for these things i was like 60s does seem really cheap you know anything that just even has a nfl logo on it would be starred at 60 right so yeah 160 that's what you're buying they're just selling these look like floppy night shirts they like floppy night shirts and some of the patches that are like i guess ironed on are in different places just sloppily thrown on there yeah they're

It's so underwhelming. Again, at $160. So fan graphics responded. I'm sorry, fanatics responded. They said, NFL fans, we've seen your jersey feedback, and we take it very seriously. They wrote, we've let Patriots and Seahawks fans down with product availability. We own that. Is there anything more annoying in the parlance of our time than we own that? We're going to own that, guys. We're just going to own.

But what is it? it's especially annoying if it doesn't mean anything other than words.

Exactly. It means nothing except, hey, guys, we're going to own that, and we're sorry, is what they're saying. So Fanatics attributed the unmet demand to the Seahawks and Patriots matchup specifically, quote, both teams went from missing the playoffs last season to being in the Super Bowl, an incredibly rare occurrence that led to these two fan bases is buying nearly 400% more jerseys since Thanksgiving versus last year. So I think what Fanatics is trying to say is we ran out of good jerseys or something, or we weren't, like, I don't know what this means because, like, are they saying we didn't expect these teams to be in the Super Bowl, so we, like, what did they have? Like, did they have 100,000 Kansas City Chiefs jerseys already stitched up, ready to go? But again Presumably they don't make any of the jerseys Until they know the two teams that

are in the super bowl so i don't understand what their argument here is other than it seems like they're saying we didn't see this coming and because of that we had to make the jerseys really

shitty somewhere in another part in an impoverished part of the world yeah it's gonna be a bunch of people wearing amazingly made rams jerseys and you know what those folks deserve it honestly i'm just

hoping that like you know there's some guy somewhere he's wearing a matthew stafford jersey And it's lovingly hand-stitched with all the right stuff on there. But yeah, you know me, I'm not a big Jersey guy, generally speaking. But I do think I know. I don't know exactly because it's on the way here, Andrew. It has not arrived, but it is on the way. And I will know when it shows up, and I will show you. I do think I know what I'm wearing on Sunday, if it turns out okay. And that is a sweatshirt from Etsy that I bought. I bought myself one and I bought Becca one. And it is of, it's like Seahawks colors. And it is an Etsy sweatshirt of a bear, like a little teddy bear, wearing like a Seahawks letterman jacket. And he's holding a pennant that is Seahawks colors. And it says Seattle. Sounds cute. It's, I think it's going to be adorbs. I'm going to send you a picture of it here. And this I think is, now here's the reason that I'm saying I might wear it is because the sizes that I was looking for are like, like, you know, it was impossible for me to really know if I was buying the right size for either myself or Becca. So I like, I, I bought myself like a, an XL or something, but there's like, one is like girlfriend cut, which means I think made for woman's style of wearing a sweatshirt. and then one's like oversized and one's like boyfriend like it's a whole bunch of different categories and i don't really know what i'm ordering so it could show up i have an on the market cut sweatshirt uh shirt i'm sending you an email of this by the way tell me if you don't think uh this is uh uh not the most adorable little thing you've ever seen but like this i think is maybe for me the sweet spot again i don't know how if it's going to be way too big or way too small or not fit correctly or be the wasn't very expensive by the way i think it was like 25 bucks for the sweatshirt which is also kind of that's as much as i paid for a fake gun by the way that never showed up oh i was wondering that thing you know that thing never you know the whole thing of

chekhov's gun is you see it in the first act and it goes off in the last act and i've been waiting for this freaking burbank's gun to come back maybe that's burbank's gun you mentioned it in the first act and it never comes back into play at all but isn't that more but isn't that more

fitting with tbtl our version of the gun is that you never hear about it in the third act you hear about it four years later when a different play is being staged at the theater right so it just

never showed up huh it never showed up i've never heard from them tell me again how much you paid for it or did you 25 okay yeah so it wasn't um it wasn't that i mean that should have been my first

what i've learned is if i'm going to ever buy anything from tiktok it needs to be through what is called the tiktok shop um because that thing is i've bought a few doodads and gigas through there and that's all been fine they've shown up they've been as advertised um but anything that you try to buy through tiktok that's not going through the actual tiktok shop don't even bother because that thing is that's never showing up at your house that is as walt would say some chinese

bullshit um um oh this is very cute the little sweatshirt that you got isn't that kind of cute I think that the show picks everybody can see it, but I need to talk to you about something here, Luke, that I don't think you care about as much as, certainly as much as I do, and some friends of ours like Durs and our buddy Nick Jarin. I almost wish I could, like right now, just get one of them on the show to talk about this with me, because they are, you know, pretty obsessed with sports uniforms. In fact, before there was that blog.

Yeah, isn't Jarn's whole thing, right?

Yeah, well, and I remember, I mean, what, 15 years ago, but probably when we were all watching games together and you were still in Seattle, I remember those two would be in the room watching the game and just going off on all this, like, jersey ephemera, and it's just like, and they have such strong opinions, and for a long time, Vives and I were really trying to get them to do a podcast together, and then UniWatch came along and sort of, and now everybody's got a podcast about everything, and everybody talks about uniforms, but all of that is to say i have i'm a little distressed about some uniform news it starts off sounding like good news but let me back up here for a second and tell you something about my beloved seattle mariners you know i like the mariners right like there's no doubt about that you know that i like them as a baseball verified mariner liker thank you i don't love their uniform

in most cases um they have you know i don't like that pacific i call it like a teal color but i think they call it pacific action blue or some bullshit like that or you know whatever it's not action blue but you know whatever that kind of like teal colors that the uniform that the mariners wear i really dislike that i think they've sort of put that in the back burner a bit their white uniforms are fine i don't really love the s with the compass like i just don't love a lot of the imagery around yeah around it and you know that's fine um but they have one that i sort of like which is kind of controversial a lot of people are not with me on it but um the the new city connect uniforms that they rolled out about three seasons ago and they only wear them on friday nights during home games and those are the ones a lot of people don't like that it mixes black pants with like dark blue shirts that puts people off i kind of like it that was the first time i noticed the stitching thing that you're talking about because i'm pretty sure i remember when we were discussing those new uniforms on this very podcast you were like it doesn't look like they're sewn on it looks like they're kind of like you know like pressed on numbers and i i think

you're right about that you think that is sewn on no i think pressed on yeah that's what that was a tim robinson joke uh you think this is push you think this is slick oh i didn't know what you're

doing there but anyway i think you were right about that and that was something i hadn't noticed but generally speaking i kind of like those uniforms they don't offend me everybody can have their own opinions but the one thing that was universally agreed upon and i'm serious i had this conversation with so many strangers at bars and just random fans whatever everybody loves the sunday cream colored uniforms they're very very simple i don't know if they yeah they usually they have the names on the back i believe but they're this they the the mariners only wore them sunday afternoon home games this cream colored jersey it's what most fans are wearing with i don't think it's a throwback I mean I think it's just their their cream colored one right I think you're maybe seeing some new news that I'm getting to here because I could be wrong about that but all I know is the Mariners Sunday afternoon uniforms at home were universally beloved and a favorite of the fans recently there has been news that the Mariners are adding a new uniform to the rotation and these are throwback Negro League uniforms from Seattle's team that was called the steelheads and it has this real blocky sort of letters and very very simple design and they're going to be using those uniforms too now this year and i would like to say those uniforms look awesome i love the throwback steelhead look it's really cool and it's a great way to kind of acknowledge that part of baseball history but they're replacing the sunday uniforms with this new uniform they could have replaced any other uniform with their steelhead uniforms they're getting rid of what is just like it's been the one thing mariners fans agree on the one thing mariners fans agree on are that the sunday unis were always the best and now they're replacing them with these new also cool uniforms but they're getting rid of the the other good ones like why don't you make those the saturday uniforms or something else i don't know where do whatever you want with them but don't get rid of my cream colored unis yeah i'm seeing this on instagram r.i.p to the sunday creams are people bemoaning people are not happy see i haven't seen any reaction i only read the article and so i've been sort of you know how like sometimes you're like upset about something and you need your people you need to hear other people complaining about it and i hadn't done that dive yet and i hadn't talked to my buds about it but i just can't believe that they're replacing the best uniforms they have and again this is nothing against the steelhead uniforms i actually think they're really cool i would get one of those if i were a jersey wear i really love that font and you know i'm a font guy but i just can't believe they're getting

rid of the the fan favorite yeah yeah i do like these i mean this is it's so funny because you know i am so only because on our text chain on the criminals by the way on the subject of the criminals i have figured out a solution but it's not a solution but i figured out i was doing something extreme that was unnecessary which is like i was keeping dur's blocked like two four seven seven days a week like during football season when all i really need to do is just block him when the game starts and then just like unblock him when the game's over that's all

maybe give it an hour for people who don't know because you you're trying to protect yourself from a lot of the negative sort of shit posting that yeah it makes me more mad and then i get

into with him and i don't think it makes anyone's experience on the text chain better but the problem is first of all andy is he's got a lot of good information on the mariners and the seahawks he's almost always when i have him unblocked he's the first one into the chat with like oh we just picked this guy up or this just happened but because i just like i'm acting like i've been acting like i sort of had the brendan donovan scoop the other day well like

I can't know that because I had him blocked, so all I saw was yours, but I don't know for a fact if he wasn't, no. But my point is, I've been acting as if blocking and unblocking Andy is something where I need to, like, get a Sherpa and climb to the top of a mountain and seek a wise man's counsel and then, like, do some incredible, like, process to block him and unblock him. it takes five seconds all i do is go to the contact and unblock him and then part of my getting hyped up for the game day part of my like putting on my eye black pulling on my teddy bear sweatshirt i could make getting ready for the game part of the ritual is and now we block der's again and then we just unblock him you know a while after the game or even just wait until he does one thing in there that makes me mad then block him fine but like and then send us screen caps

of you blocking him, which is another thing you like to do.

It's been so silly that I've been leaving him blocked on like a Tuesday when he's not, you know, he's not a problem for me in the text chain on those days.

In fact, he's a great source of information.

He is. I mean, that's the thing. If he can, when he's not in a triggered state, he is a very, very smart sports knower and has a lot of interesting takes and is very, very read in on things, much more so than I am. Like, that's why I was asking you the other day if this Donovan thing was good or just because you already had Donovan memes. that shows you my level of awareness

no, Brendan Donovan watch has been a thing

so I'm so this is, I mean, I guess the point is that I was like when that Donovan conversation was going on in the text chain and I was like not sure, because I'm also only seeing like your response to something Durs did or David's or whomever's, John Goodwin's and I'm like well, wait a minute, why don't I just unblock him and just, I'll just block him on game day and then I'll just unblock him on non-game

let me ask you a question about blocking because I've never blocked anybody before If you unblock, do you see the stuff that you missed when that person was blocked? Does it repopulate? No. It's just missing time.

But the other problem is it's just missing time. And then the other problem is under the new iOS, what it's doing all the time is asking me if I want to leave the conversation of the fun-loving criminals. And the reason is it says you have, in this case, Andy, you have DERS blocked. He can still see your messages. do you want to leave this conversation? Oh, I see. Like, it thinks it's being helpful to me, but what it means is, at all times, along with, like, a weird-ass picture of John Ryan that I can't see the texts with...

Is that gone now, though? That's gone.

That's gone now. That's gone. It's also constantly giving me what's effectively, like, an error message. It's constantly asking me if I want to leave the chat because I have Durs blocked, but Durs can see me.

Uh-huh, so it's like, oh, I just want to let you know. It's another annoyance.

It's just a bunch of visual noise when I'm trying to just get in there and talk about George Halani hero game.

So I wanted to ask you, while we're talking about baseball and pop culture, and you mentioned bidets before, you're talking about Mamdani wanting to add bidets to the mansion there, the governor, I'm sorry, the mayor's mansion. Did you see also, and I thought it, oh, okay, so it's the White Sox. Now they are going to add a bidet to the clubhouse because of Murakami.

Isn't there a Japanese pitcher? I saw a headline. Somebody sent me an email in my TBTL account. I only saw the subject line, but it seemed to be that there was a pitcher who was requesting bidets or something.

Yeah, they signed a Japanese pitcher who was confused why there were no bidets. So it looks like they will be installing bidets. Yes, into the – and I'm sort of – I had seen this bouncing around, and so I'm sort of scanning the story now. Like I said, I was mistaken. I thought it was the Dodgers because I thought they're the only team that's allowed to sign people. But no, apparently it's the White Sox

Yeah I mean, you know me We don't have to re-litigate this But definitely I think the more bidets The more better In the Major League ballparks I mean, man, Andrew The story that built TBTL when I had my bathroom accident In the Kingdom Can you imagine if there would have been a bidet in that stall For me? I mean, there was a lot that the bidet couldn't help We were in a situation But it would have been better than nothing.

It's not a detachable hose. Unless you pull hard enough.

Yes. Here I go once again with the email. Every week I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

All right. Emails. V-mails. Voice memos.

Got this. Voice memos. Voice memos. If you want to call us, by the way, and leave a voicemail in our voicemail line, the phone number is area code 206-414-8285 that spells 206-414-TBTL but you can also email us you can email me andrew at tbtl.net and include a little voice memo and that is what our friend Cheryl in Corvallis I actually I'm pretty sure this is Cheryl in Corvallis I grabbed this a while ago and I didn't label it but I believe it is in reference to people. Remember the other day when I was talking about the pop song that everybody is talking about by Far East Movement called Like a G6? Everybody's talking about it. They're talking about that. They're talking about Sally Forth. They're talking about Apartment 3G. Well, I believe that that is what inspired this voice memo, which I have not heard yet.

Hey, Luke and Andrew. It's Sherilyn Corvallis. Nice. I was listening to an episode from a few days ago. I'm a little bit of a time bandit right now. and I heard Andrew's joke referencing the Far East Movement song Fly Like a G6 and it took me back to hearing that song somehow pop into our algorithm while on a road trip in Seattle and the kids a few years ago not being able to understand what a G6 was.

What is a G6? Is that a car?

You know, I always assumed, I think I was wrong about this, I think I always assumed a G6 was a kind of a private jet, like a Gulfstream or something.

Oh, that would make sense.

But also, I don't know, you know, again, I'm terrible with all that. Yeah, no, you're right, you're right.

A G6 most commonly refers to the luxurious Gulfstream, G650. Yes, so you're absolutely right. So, okay, Cheryl, count me amongst your children.

They started singing along, and they said, fly like a cheese stick. So every time I hear that song now, I no longer sing G6. It is absolutely and always will be fly like a cheese stick. Anyway, hope you have a great day. Power out.

I'm worried that that's going to stick in my head. I like that so much better. Really? I like it so. Yeah, because that's a more fun, weird song than just a, hey, guess what? I got a private plane, and I'm flying, like, a G6. Like, first of all, I am hungry. I would like a cheese stick right now, in all seriousness. And I think that's, I don't know.

When you say that, when you say you would like a cheese stick right now, can you tell me more about cheese stick? What do you mean? Are you talking about, like, a deep-fried situation at a apple? I'm talking about a red robin.

I'm talking about a very specific cheese stick, a red robin cheese stick, which is where I learned, and I know this is not your thing, right? Melting cheese.

No, I do like that. That's why I asked. You do that one. Because I wanted to make sure you didn't mean one of those gross little cold cheese sticks that is like people pull the wrapping off of it. And I always gag when I see that.

I like that one too, by the way. When I was a kid, we called that string cheese because you could like pull it apart and it would be stringy. I feel like I don't think that the youth of America are stringing their cheese as much anymore, which I don't know. Maybe that's a good thing. We thought it was like the coolest thing ever. I mean, we had three channels, Andrew. we had nothing else to do except string our cheese when i was a kid we're very excited about that but no when i say cheese stick i mean a really specific one too i mean the the first time i ever had a cheese stick in my life like that is you know a deep fried mozzarella cheese stick thing was at red robin probably the red robin on east lake rest in power and uh and that's always been my very favorite kind and now there's all kinds of different cheese sticks you can order them everywhere every pizza place has them but they generally don't they're all a little different than to me the first one that i ever had the first kind that i ever had is still the best kind and just happens to be whatever cisco ass food supply company red robin buys from you know what i mean it's not like they're it's not like it's superior it's just the one that started my love affair with the cheese stick and so that to me is the highest that's that's the most elite cheese stick

is the one that you get from a red robin you know as somebody as you said you're like oh this doesn't sound like something you would eat but you know my my rules my seven rules for dating my cheese stick is gets very very complicated like what do i eat what do i not but basically if you remember that i eat pizza because basically you're talking about a melted mozzarella situation with marinara sauce or pizza sauce on it or something like that is what a cheese stick is and so by that same i don't know transitive property yes cheesative property i also like mozzarella sticks and i even will keep them in the freezer sometimes you know and then like on a friday night maybe i think this last friday i heated up a uh uh what do you call a stouffer's uh french bread pizza alongside some of those cheese sticks so i do i do like those a lot and i don't know if i'd be able to pass a blind taste test between a red robin one and a tgi fridays one although bad example because i think tgi fridays i think theirs are flat right theirs are like flat and rectangular

I've got, I'm on the Red Robin website right now.

Are we going to go to, let's meet, what is between you and me? Let's meet at the Red Robin.

Oh, I'll meet you at a Red Robin like Olympia.

I could do that because I think they might be cutting power here this afternoon. So I need to get out of Dodge anyway.

Well, listen, hold on. I got to put on my soothing sound. I need a minute here.

Because I'm on the Red Robin website, and it looks like they have turned their back on the very fundamentals of their business model, which is to say the kind of cheese sticks that I like. Because they appear to now have switched to something they're calling cheesy mozzarella twists.

I swear that's what they—wait, you've already had this freakout. You can't have this freakout again. You had this freakout at Red Robin.

When we went there with John.

My first time at Red Robin.

First of all, you're not in charge of how many freakouts I'm allowed to have.

You don't know how my body processes soup. No, it's all coming back to me because I remember liking them, but you being disappointed because it was my first time ever in a Red Robin, and you really wanted to recreate all of your favorite Red Robin experiences for me and John. It might have been John's first time, too. I can't recall. And I'm pretty sure that you had a little bit of a mini breakdown.

I'm sure I had this. Listen, I forgot about Freak Out No. 1, So this is all new to me, freak out number two. But like, I can't believe that they did that. I'll say it again. I can't believe that they, because that's like the, the kinds of cheese sticks that they made. Addie and I used to go there when she was little. We would get, for some reason I was in a big, like I was in like a, well, I'd either get a blue cheeseburger or maybe something called the super salad combo. Not to be confused with, what's the place in Party Down? Super crackers? Not to be confused with super crackers.

Is that it? Super crackers? Yeah, super crackers.

And we would split a half order of cheese sticks Because I was Oftentimes writing a check Literally That I didn't have the money in my bank account to cash Like I'd write a check and then I would hope That something was going to work out for me Before the Red Robin Company Submitted the check to their bank And those were the cheese sticks that I loved And now I'm looking at cheesy mozzarella twists Which I'm sure they did Some kind of market research And decided that that was actually more appealing to people Who knows Maybe it is, but it hurts me.

Can you tell me about the kind that you had before they became the twists?

Yeah, they weren't twisted. They were like, what I remember about them is that they were kind of a little bit fatter than some of the other cheese stick products out there. You've got a certain kind of cheese stick that's maybe, let's say, roughly the size of a large French fry, right? Like a French fry that's maybe a little bit wider than a typical French fry. but then you've also got them these ones were like weirdly large like they were kind of abnormally large and then the breading they were in was not flaky it was a kind of a uniformed imagine like a helmet of hair that someone had hair sprayed down a lot that was what it felt like it wasn't like these ones I'm looking at these cheesy mozzarella twists panko breaded fried mozzarella

there is a lighter breading now I know the kind you're talking about and that's kind of the kind that I buy in the freezer section of my local grocer, kind of. I think describing them as kind of a thicker french fry or pencil-shaped or something. Oh, I found a picture of the old mozzarella sticks. I think I just did, too, and I'm looking at it. Very classic.

Does it got two things of marinara in the picture? Is that what you're saying?

Let me see what I'm looking at here. I'm looking at... Oh, no, I'm sorry. I was looking at a jalapeno cheese stick from Red Robin.

No, look up Red Robin mozzarella sticks recipe, and they've included a photo of the old school mozzarella sticks,

which, yeah, okay, yeah, that's your classic. Now, here's where, you remember when I was telling you merely moments ago, although it feels like a lifetime.

I've already forgotten it, Andrew.

Have you met me? I know Goldfish, Goldfish, darling. I have too, and rightfully so. I'm pretty, I'm not feeling great about today's show, I'll be honest with you. I really got to do that thing. You forgot. I got to do that thing. I mean, ever since my Nancy and Sluggo brain fart at the beginning of the show, I have just been struggling to keep up. I couldn't remember crudite, as you like to say. Anyway, my rant about the uniforms and the Mariners' uniforms. I told you that I was having trouble with this because I was angry, but I hadn't found my people yet. I hadn't found the other people who were bleeding online along with me. Yeah, so I want to provide that service to you right now. I am on a Reddit post that was posted on the official Red Robin subreddit two years ago.

Okay.

The headline and only commentary from the original poster was, Red Robin totally blew it by replacing the cheese sticks with completely hollow cheese twists. Now I want to read to you the first two comments that posted immediately.

Can I ask you one quick point of clarification? Yes, it is.

What book Lurbank who posted this?

I was wondering, what's the name of the person who, what's the name of the user who posted the initial complaint? Mr. Balzac. That's so much better.

better than I even could have dreamed.

Probably saved the show. All right. Okay, sorry, continue. So then this is Dill911 writes, 100% agree.

Marinara sauce can't melt this steel.

All right, 100% agree. It might be Dill911. Dill911 is a joke. 100% agree. So effing disappointing. And I'm editing this, by the way, for radio. I've been going there for years, and it's been my favorite item, and they've replaced it with something that tastes like low-quality cheese sticks you get at some fast food place. I can't believe they got rid of them. They've gone downhill considerably lately. I'm going to skip ahead to this next person whose username, I can't even tell what it spells, but they wrote, I am disgusted. We took our family out for dinner, we ordered the mozzarella sticks, and we get this twisty POS. What in the world? And then burgers tastes like really low-quality meat, no sauce. The fries were all undercooked. Chicken tenders were more like chicken tendons. It was just bad, bad. I'll never go back. After like 30 years, you effed up, Red Robin. Letting them know on all platforms, too. They are not going back.

By the way, I believe that person's name is Amam in Wa.

Oh, that's Amam in Washington. interesting boy you are you are you're following along with me i just got here i'm looking to see like what else something must have changed with reddit one of my favorite things is when somebody posts a comment like that click on their profile and see what else they've posted on but they've been a lot more and more people are choosing to make everything private now which i guess means

if you're after we roasted that woman who who went off about the hudson news in like whatever airport that was, and then everything else that she was posting was so negative

too. Yeah, can we talk about this for a split second? Let's move away from I think we're just Badlands in it now, right? I think I've been Badlands in it from the get-go today. And I'll pause if you need. Thank you. I do need to do this.

The Badlands The Badlands

so going back to that conversation we have to reset it a little bit because it was like a year ago it was in the arizona airport and i saw what would usually be described as a hudson news but it was sort of i don't know it was a little bit different it was a little bit crossroads or something and i can't remember what it was called but let's just say it was like crossroads by hudson and it was just sort of like i guess it was like an elevated hudson news right and so we thought oh this must be the direction they're going in or something along those lines that there were going to be a bunch of crossroads by hudson one thing that i noticed in one of my recent travels probably i'm guessing to la but i'm not exactly sure it seems like what hudson news is doing is they're making a whole bunch of different little offshoot brands because Because I think it might have been the Vegas airport they had. It wasn't Crossroads, but it was something else that sort of just vaguely nodded to local culture and then said by Hudson. So I'm wondering if all the Hudson news is or a majority of them are going to be like kind of these elevated Hudson news is. But they're all going to have different names based on where they are. Have you noticed this as somebody who flies way more than me?

No, I'm usually just walking around with my headphones and listening to, you know, this sound. and kind of keeping my eyes down but i could see that i that now the the what we ended up doing though i think i was just googling around trying to get eyes on this place you were describing and in the course of that i think i went to their website and then the first review of it was so irrationally angry about the person at the whatever they call this hudson crossroads or crossroads by hudson not like smiling or something when they like yeah you know checked this person out and then i think from there we went to see because it was on yelp i believe this is the yelp review of a lifetime as we say and then i think we went to this person's other like yelp reviews and they were all just kind of they honestly were a little a mom and wah to me and by that i mean like to go back to this reddit review of of red robin i am also as we've now learned uh multiple times i'm very bummed about them switching the cheese sticks i find it hard to believe that literally every item of food that was brought out to this person and her family was awful like i i i have a feeling that like this is a person who is uh if we could see their other reviews i bet you that they would be a person who goes more towards anger than yeah happiness for whatever reason whatever they're dealing with and it's like you know it would be nice to know because then i would know whether to believe them or not if someone's entire profile is leaving pretty angry reviews.

then I'm not going to take their angry review as seriously. And again, the idea that like the burgers were horrible. There was no sauce. The fries were undercooked. The tendon, the tendies were tendons. All of it was awful. And that she's letting them know on all platforms. Right.

Now here's give them both barrels.

We've got what we've got is a person in a mom and what who's cursing the darkness. Then we've got a torch lighter in user LARNAR23. three this is much more where i would go with this and in fact where my mind went already andrew i keep reaching out to them in hopes that they'll bring them back does anyone know their food distributor i'm sure there's a way to buy the previous ones in bulk that is that's problem solving yeah you figure out for answers yeah you figure okay who was the because like they weren't you know the the red robin mascot wasn't hand breading the cheese sticks in the back of the restaurant they're just buying this from some restaurant you know food supply company these just happen to be the style of the cheese sticks that that food supply company was making or you know sourcing figure out where those cheese sticks are get yourself a deep freeze buy yourself a few boxes of them and uh you could be you you could be home home cooking your mozzarella sticks uh just like just like mom used to make them at the red robin even though i said i because i wasn't

expecting anything different because I had never been to a Red Robin before. I remember generally liking the cheese twists. I remember very much liking the whole sauce situation. What do you call the thing that a painter uses? Is that a palette? Yeah, it was like that. Only a bunch of different sauces were on, and I loved that. But I understand, you know, change is hard, but the thing that speaks to me a little bit with one of these complainers these yelp complainers is this idea that it's it just feels cheaper to them and and that is one thing that goes back to what we were saying about the uniforms with you know these so-called super bowl uh jerseys or whatever like everything just feels like inflation the inshittification of everything it's inshittification and it's like and it's not because everybody's tightening their belts they're getting richer they capital they in quotes yes they're getting richer, but everything else is getting in shitified. Yes. A hundred percent. It's not as

simple as, well, what are these companies supposed to do? Because there are still at the, whether it's the, the airlines, whether it's the, the shareholders of whatever company there is very often some small group of people at the top of this, whatever, you know, sort of venture capital project, or what's the other one? I can never remember the exact name for it, but basically those kind of companies that will buy up you know a company and then just like strip out all the assets like they did basically a private equity yeah like a private equity company yeah the the things are getting worse for us the normal people because somebody somewhere is getting richer they're getting richer to a degree that they can't even spend the money that they're getting off of making things slightly worse for us there are occasionally market forces where a company can't stay in business but it's most of the time it's not because the big company is going to go out of business It's because the big company has to continually produce more profits year over year. And something's got to give. Now, listen, I have amazing news out of this Reddit feed. Somebody called Char Your Zard says, My brother said U.S. food carries the identical cheese sticks that Red Robin used to serve. I'm going to try them today. They're called Golden Crisp Battered Mozzarella Cheese Sticks Item Number 737-0166. Then somebody called Rumog checks in. Sir, you are a king, a gentleman, and a scholar After multiple failed attempts Trying to find a replacement for these I searched based on your post And your brother is 100% right They're McCain Golden Crisp battered mozzarella sticks And they taste exactly like the Red Robin ones And other places that used to have these Especially if you deep fry And reuse the same oil The taste really dials in

What a pro tip Yeah, that's getting Very, very deep

It's like if you hire if you hire a kind of checked out 15 year old with acne to reuse the we have to create the exact exact exact same environment of that red robin kitchen andrew we need a kid who doesn't want to be there right we need we need to reuse the same oil i'm gonna wear a hairnet yeah or not

or not you're supposed to i am sending you via text message the ugliest looking link i've ever done scene i don't know why it's so long and weird looking but it links to the frozen i'm just kind of curious what your takeaway is going to be based on the packaging of this i'm sending you a link to the type of frozen food section cheese sticks that i get at the grocery store now keep in mind when i get these i'm not trying to recreate anything i'm

Certainly not trying to recreate a restaurant experience. Yes. But generally speaking, these are the same shape and kind of size as the kind that I think used to miss. I'm wondering if this even gets close to scratching that itch for you. They're called Farm Rich, I believe, is the brand. I'm looking at them. With a terrible font. Just an awful font.

I know these style of mozzarella sticks. And, you know, honestly, any port in the storm. I would eat these. If I was at your house and it was freezer feast, I would absolutely eat these, and I would enjoy them. But what are you seeing? Yeah, what are you seeing that's different? Well, here's what it comes down to. The consistency of the cheese, for some reason, these ones, because now I'm on the foodservicedirect.com website. I've got eyes on this McCain. I can buy a case of these for $115.

How many are in a case? Three?

Let's see.

Three sticks.

Three sticks, that's right. um it uh the the it's hard to explain the difference but as a person who orders cheese sticks a lot when i'm out like the ones that you're showing me the farm rich ones are very similar to ones that i'll get at a bar sometimes or a place like that yeah and they're again they're always yummy there's nothing wrong with these cheese sticks except they're not the ones i'm going for and it has to do with the way that the cheese inside of the breading is responding i think because the outer breading is slightly different it's it's like the um it's almost like it's really hard to describe but the red robin cheese sticks when they would come out piping hot you didn't get a huge cheese pull off of them you know what i mean the cheese wasn't like ooey gooey molten it was almost like this sounds kind of gross but it was it was still fairly solid in there it was warmed up but it wasn't like this thing where you take a bite of it and then the cheese is just spilling out it's melting everywhere you're trying to corral it there was something about the consistency of the cheese in the red robin one that because that's the first one I had, that's what I prefer, if that

makes any sense. Yeah, and going back to the inshittification of everything, one thing that I've noticed, and keep in mind, this is coming from a guy who's already got a very fraught, weird relationship with cheese anyway, and doesn't eat a whole bunch of different kinds of cheeses, etc. But I like melted mozzarella, especially with breading and marinara sauce, so, you know, what could go wrong there? Except I've noticed, oh, and also, every now and then at a restaurant, if it comes like a burger, I don't get burgers all that often, but if it comes with Swiss, like let's say it's like a mushroom Swiss burger, like, yeah, okay, I'll just get the Swiss. It'll keep the mushrooms on there, and as long as it's fully melted. My thing is I don't want to see the corners. In other words, it needs to be so melted that it's just like a melted cheese. It's not like I can see that it was a slice of cheese that's only partially melted. So those are my rules. But one thing I've noticed is more and more of the cheese in these situations, cheese sticks and appetizers and then maybe as a topping on a sandwich, it's being more and more replaced with almost a cheese goo that is almost like what was the stuff that was sold in cans when we were a kid, a cheese whiz. It all feels like it's almost like a white cheese whizzy thing. And as somebody who already does not really feel comfortable messing around with cheese and you're sitting in a bar and you're like, you bite into a cheese stick and it's more like filled with white cheese whiz.

Yes, exactly.

That is awful.

Yes, exactly. Well, Andrew, we're going to need to wrap things up here because I am receiving a message from—remember the people that I alluded to earlier?

Yes, yes, the Sally Forth people.

I was the—they were sallying forth and going, hey, can you join the meeting that I did not realize was supposed to be happening 11 minutes ago?

Oh, geez, Louise, let's get out of here. That's an important meeting.

But, yeah, I'll give you and John a full response maybe later today or at some point in the near future. But I'm going to go ahead and— Yep, go ahead. I'm going to bow out here gracefully or not so gracefully. And thank you, everyone, for listening. That's going to bring us to the end of today's show, but we will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio. So join us for that. In the meantime, everybody have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I will be ordering a bowl of soup as an appetizer, not a cup. Chuck, I know people say I'll fill up. But you have no idea how my body processes soup Power out