Muse

i frequently am behind cars that have bumper stickers or something on them but i wanted to tell you guys about and i like take pictures of but then i don't send it because it's like weird to have a license plate on it but i just have to tell you the person in front of me the i don't know what it's called but the thing around the license plate so like the license plate holder says i'd rather be slamming the back of my dragon i just i just needed to share that i'm sorry what i've made a terrible mistake the license plate cover thing or whatever does not say i'd rather be slamming the back of my dragon it says i'd rather be slamming in the back of my dragula which somehow makes less sense to me um i don't understand but i just wanted to correct myself i'm sorry okay well i googled the phrase because it was killing me and apparently there's a rob dombey song that says i slam in the back of my dragula so clearly this person is a rob dombey fan. So that was it. I'm so sorry for all these

boyfriends.

TBTL! I was just fixing to get me some grub. Beans. I love beans. Big, fat, hot, juicy beans. Don't get me going on beans or I'll be jabbering away till the sun comes up.

Alright, you guys like impressions? Here's that guy Bob from Bob's Burgers. Hi, I'm Bob from Bob's Burgers. How about that show Archer? You watch that show Archer? Here's that guy Archer. Hi, I'm Archer from that show Archer. Now what if those guys met?

Could you crawl back out of my mind?

If you want to pick a fight with your body's sexual chi, it's just going to drive it inwards.

This party is going to be off of the hook.

Well alright, hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of TBTL The show that just might be too beautiful to live spock sabotage the system my name is luke burbank i'm your host hello our whoo coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where just in about the last five minutes we've been fully enveloped in fog we've got the fog it's supposed to be a nice day today at least down there in portland it's going to be nice and warm today. Up here, it's apparently pea soup foggy. But thankfully, that will have no impact, my friends, on the recording here inside the broadcast studio. We are ready to go with episode 4,657 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. You know, we put up a mysterious billboard in Friendship, Wisconsin last summer, and it got absolutely zero heat. But that is not the case for a different mysterious billboard in Northern California.

The past is history.

The future is a mystery. People are trying to figure out what is going on with this billboard that someone put up wishing a particular politician a happy 81st birthday. So we'll get into that. Oh, speaking of birthdays, a.k.a. Blur's Days.

My birthday today.

Do some Blur's Day messages here on this Thursday. Oh, and we're going to talk to this guy. He is the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. very exciting stuff today and tomorrow he is joining us from the new tbtl studios at the

university of washington i'll say what's up dog he is andrew walsh and he's joining me right now

good morning my friend good morning luke how you doing my friend oh i'm doing great i'm excited for you because you have uh you know figured some technology out that it seems like has you Footloose and Fancy Free.

I mean, sort of. I was thinking while you were doing the intro, as you mentioned, I am not in my usual studio now. I'm hoping that the podcast sounds okay. Sounds great where I am. Yeah, but you're in that special sound cave that we built for you where everything, it's a sound bath, actually. It's a sound bathtub, actually. So I don't know. At the end of the show, we will stop recording and I will listen and I will say, did this technology work or did it not? And I'm hoping it worked. But while you were doing your intro and my microphone was off and I was just fiddling around with the knobs on this new little device that I'm using, I thought, this is one of those rare cases where I wish I were just the engineer here and that you were introducing somebody else to talk. So I was like, I'm just dialing in how this little machine works. I'm hunched over it. I'm twisting little knobs. All this co-broing gets in the way of your technical times. And then it's like, could I just not talk? could i just engineer the show today but then how i mean how would that work you need somebody you

need somebody to bounce things off of you know every once in a while back in the olden days i would have to rip off an entire show just by myself and And, you know, honestly, like, I didn't look forward to it, but once I got into a zone with it, it's almost, it really is kind of a state of mind. I'm not saying these were good shows, by the way. In fact, I think they were pretty bad. But I can put myself into a weird kind of fugue state where I'm just pretending to be talking to the audience and assuming they're listening. And eventually it just really, it's sort of, I don't know how to explain it other than it's, I'm capable of doing it, but it's not great. It's much better when you're here talking.

Well, thank you. All of that was actually me setting you up to say the show is better when you talk, Andrew. So I have some pretty big news. I mean, I don't know how much we want to dwell on the fact that I am in an office, by the way. TVTL breaking news.

Well, I do want to ask you about that.

One of Genevieve's colleagues' offices here at the University of Washington. So I'm trying to not, I'm trying to do this thing where I'm not trying to talk into the microphone in a different way. I'm trying to be that loud, vivacious person that you've grown to love and need on the show, as we just discussed. But it's a little bit hard because I can hear my voice clanking around in here. And I know that even though the door is closed, this is not the same soundproof studio that I usually record in. And people could be walking by and listening and picking up. But I'm really trying hard to get out of my head about that.

Yeah, I know that feeling very well from doing the show in lots of odd places. And there is, I mean, Bingo knows it. there's a different tone to one's voice when one is hosting or co-hosting this show than just normal talking it's sort of like being the world's most annoying person on a phone call like if you're walking by someone's office and they were uh you know maybe on a speakerphone or just kind of like sitting at their desk but talking to somebody but being really kind of loud and weird about it that's essentially what doing a podcast is so i can understand why you don't want to let go full kind of broadcast voice and disturb the good people of the University of

Washington where you are. Yeah you mean like those guys who walked into Chipotle yesterday well I'm sitting in Chipotle yesterday by the way I have a new Chipotle I just realized yesterday I don't know if that's interesting to you or not I'm pretty loyal to the Chipotle in Northgate because I figured that's closest to me but honestly I think the Chipotle in Shoreline is closer to me or at least a straighter shot.

What's your go-to order?

It's always been the same. Since the first time I ever walked into a Chipotle, which was in the 90s, we had one of the first Chipotles in Kent, Ohio. No joke. I think it was sort of a testing ground or something. And the first time I walked in there, I got a chicken fajita burrito, no beans, white rice, corn salsa, plus the really red hot salsa, some lettuce, wrap it up, I'll take it, in the words of George Thorogood. in the words of the fabulous Thunderbirds. Are they the same thing?

Spiritually, yes. By the way, I saw a sign for George Thorogood in the Delaware Destroyers. I don't know if that's even who he plays with anymore, but he's coming to a local casino, and just a picture of him and his crew, and it was like, the baddest show on Earth. And I thought, really? Is it really the baddest? I mean, it might be the worst show on Earth. Is it the baddest, though?

Yeah, in fact, maybe that's what they mean.

Maybe they're like, we told you.

Truth in advertising.

It was right there in front of your eyes the whole time.

So you're just, but not to over, you know, I don't know, clarify with this, but like, so you're getting work done at your house, and they're going to need to cut the power to do some rewiring of things. And so to be on the safe side, we thought for today and tomorrow's episode, you would head to Genevieve's office or her place of work at the University of Washington, my alma mater i'll mention um and uh and and record the show uh from there has everyone been welcoming to you did you like did you go around and say hi to the folks what's the vibe there it's been chilly to be honest with you well i think the first salvo was when your longtime partner is displaying a text me back poster in her office but nary a mention of tbtl which puts chicken bones in the freezer at your house. Thank you very much.

Wait, what is your reference to chicken bones?

I was going to say food on the table, but then I try to think about a different thing. Oh, I see. I'm joking about the idea that TBTL is what pays the bills around your house. Ever since Genevieve makes more money than we do.

But my point is... Genevieve makes more money than we do, and she works at a public institution as a...

Somebody who supports the government. But anyway, yeah, so I have not gone around and made the rounds. I did run into one colleague of Genevieve's in the hallway who I know, and I actually kind of felt bad because I said a quick hello to her and she looked kind of surprised to see me. And I kind of later on was, of course, like any interaction, reliving it in my head over and over. It was literally a. second hello, but it occurred to me how weirder it would be for her at her place of work to identify me out of context, because I've only seen her in social situations, right? She would have seen me in those situations as being there with Genevieve, now it's somebody that I've met many times before, however, for me to be in her place of work, it occurred to me later, I should have been a little bit quicker with a, oh, I'm Andrew, I mean, she recognized me pretty quickly, but I was like, oh yeah, I'm in her place of work, of course i'm going to recognize her because i associate her with here you know what i mean right whereas for me just to be here it must have taken her a moment to be like wait why is this bald guy who wait who where do i oh oh oh genevieve's guy now are there people there that uh ever listened to

the show or have listened to the show were there any i don't even know if we'd go with tens but just casual consumers of the product that might hear this later and is that in your head and if

it's not can i put it there yeah well it's it's in my head a little bit now let me put it this way i doubt anybody listens on the reg if they do they certainly don't tell me or genevieve or

genevieve is hiding this from you in a continuing campaign to run down your self-esteem here's the

thing about genevieve is um i sneak around a lot she when she's asleep at night i dig through all of her stuff uh-huh i get into her digital files i mean i you would know if she was intercepting positive feedback directed at you that's right i've teamed up with the partiful people to get All of her information, in fact. You think the Epstein files was a big data dump? Yeah. The Vivstein files are, woof. The stuff you'll see in there. Anyway, so you're not too worried about people there hearing this. On the other hand, though, I have come here into this actual team of people I have given, not presentations, but they've asked me to come in before and talk to rooms of people about podcasting and stuff. Really? This is going back years. We must have talked about it on the show. So but like I definitely like joined them for a big kind of meeting with maybe, I don't know, 20 people one time. It was kind of a half a day little conference where they're talking about podcasting and they wanted me to talk about my experience with it. And so the fact that I do this as a professional means met, you know, that that is on their radar. And the fact that I am using a colleague's office. So I'm in an office where a fella is working from home today. Today is a day where a lot of folks work from home in this particular office. And that's why we thought this would work OK. If this were like a Monday, I don't think there would be room for me. And also, I think I'd be way more self-conscious about me blabbing. But I think it's not that nobody's here, but it's a little bit of a thinner crowd today. But my guess is, I mean, if you knew somebody was borrowing your personal space to do a podcast, you might listen to it.

I would tune in, definitely.

Yeah. Does this guy also have a Text Me Back poster up in his office? He does not, but, you know, he does have something. And I'm trying to be very respectful here. I don't want to be rifling through people's stuff, but there is a, um, it definitely is an office that feels like, yeah, it's sometimes I work here. Sometimes I work from home. I feel like back in the day when we came into the office all the time, maybe our offices maybe had a, I don't know, a little bit more to them, more personal effects and what have you.

When you say office, I mean, did you ever have an office with a door that closed? Because, you know, I have never. And now, I mean, presumably that part of my possible career has also passed me by. Like, I will probably never, you know, Lord willing in the Creeks Don't Rise, and I continue to do this sort of stuff for my job, I will have gone through my entire adult life never once having tasted the sweet success of an office with a door that closes.

Feet up on the desk. Farting away. Oh, don't do that. No, don't do that in your own office.

because then you're going to do that in someone else's office i don't know i don't know where you

do that you do that outside because you don't want to call somebody and you'd be like i need

to see you in my office well that wouldn't be the time to do that but what i mean is i i've i've never reached the heights it also it didn't help that i well i was going to say it didn't help that i assiduously avoided any kind of management jobs but also no one ever offered me any to avoid a management job implies people trying to get you into management and Anyone who'd ever worked with me for over four seconds was like, this guy is not management material.

Yeah, and I think you would say that. I mean, honestly, do you want to be signing people's timesheets? Do you want to be doing Thrive reviews? No, I mean— Do you want to be entering it into the system? How are you and Concur doing these days?

Oh, we're in a detente. They triple-charged me for an airline ticket, and I cannot figure out how to fix that one right now.

So you triple-charged you or CBS? Well, not me.

My CBS card But it's going around and around

Barry's got you Don't worry, just run it up

But like, no, I mean It's just that I did at one time though I wondered if I would ever Manage to

achieve the kind of professional success where I could have. Because I'm guessing, does Genevieve have

an office there? Yeah, Genevieve has an office. That's that photo I sent you that has all these University of Washington posters and then one podcast poster, but it is not TBTL. Any pictures of the cats or you? Did you notice that that picture for the Text Me Back live event was signed by Megan and Lindy too? She has a signed poster of our

rivals. Yes, our bitter rivals.

Our bitter, bitter rivals. are heated rivals you might even say oh yeah but i was going to say so the so the office has you know it has some stuff in here it doesn't have tons of well there's some tchotchkes and stuff but on the shelves that are mostly empty there's like this set of bookshelves next to me and there's a chessboard on it and then a lot of space where books could be the top shelf is completely empty but then in the middle shelf there is a book that is a dictionary of american slang which i really want to pick up and flip through and um next to it though and i think i'm going to do this and david i'm in your office if you're listening because you wanted to know if i was rooting around in your stuff i guess we got to be honest but i'm excited about something here hold it okay i'm grabbing one of those um the little set of books like we would have had when we were kids uh-huh it is four books and they're they're kind of in a box that you can slide them out And it is a set of choose-your-own-adventure books. Oh, boy. And I think this is a more modern printing of it, but it is like they're classic choose-your-own-adventure books. We have Choose Your Own Adventure, The Lost Jewels of Nabuti.

Uh-huh. Sure. Didn't you make a movie called The Lost Jewels of Yabuti? That was an Alan Smithy production. I did not put my name on that.

Okay, gotcha. choose your own adventure space and beyond choose your own adventure journey under the sea. I swear I had that one or read it. I used to get these from the library a lot. And then the abominable snowman, which I also think I remember from my youth. And this is giving me feels my friend. I have not read an actual choose your own. I mean, why would I, but man, these just brought me so much joy as a child.

So much joy. I, I, I don't want to yuck any yums, but I could never, those were like, you know, So the Choose Your Own Adventure books were ubiquitous during our youth. Every book fair, I feel like every classroom, there'd be a bunch of them. Kids loved them. I could never get, I mean, I read plenty of them, but I could never get into them for some reason. I don't know why it didn't quite click for me.

Did you find it frustrating? Are you somebody who you were just like, I just want to know what really happens. I don't want to live in this world where there's like a bunch of different possible outcomes.

I was not ready for Sliding Doors 2, Jingle All the Doors. Sure, yeah. But also, I mean, I was a big reader, and I really liked reading books. I think there was something about the, yeah, like, I liked reading a book where the author was telling me a story, and I was going along for the ride versus, you know, it's sort of the self-checkout, really, if you think about it, of reading.

Okay, that's a poll quote. Remember how we used to sometimes make poll quotes and post them online? Choose your own adventures are the self-checkout of reading.

You choose the adventure for me, bub. Yeah, what do you do? You're the writer.

You know what they've done here? This is different. So these are definitely like slightly new packaging. The spines of the books look exactly like I remember them, and that's why it sort of stood out to me. But when you pull the book out of the box on the back cover now, they have a sort of like a infographic chart, sort of a flow chart that sort of maps out for you all the different paths you can take on this book. But it's not labeled. So it's not spoilers or anything. It looks like an electrical chart or some sort of a programming chart sort of. But I think what it indicates is on each book, it'll show you like kind of how many different outcomes you can possibly find yourself in, which I think that's a that's a cool little update.

But I don't know. I'm not trying to win you over if you don't. I wonder. No, no. I mean, and again, I know that I'm out of step with people of our generation because people, you know, who are about our age, I think, would all say that that those books were everywhere when we were kids. And again, everybody loved them except me. And sometimes I'd get stuck with them for whatever reason. And it would just be like the only book I could get my hands on or something. And I'd be like, all right, I'm going to do this. But it never thrilled me the way. I was also wondering, I wonder about kids these days. I wonder if kids these days are reading Choose Your Own Adventure books or if they're, you know, just on their iPad in Florida getting a tan.

Well, I do think there is something about Choose Your Own Adventure books that did sort of set the stage for kind of gaming, I think, a little bit. Like, you know, like when I'm playing a video game, it's kind of a choose your own adventure in a certain way, I guess, sort of depending on depending on the game. Another thing.

I wanted to say about these books. I don't know if we've talked about this before. I mean, I know we've talked about Choose Your Own Adventure, and I know that I've also mentioned that there was another series called The Time Machine Books. I think it's a different publisher, but they were also basically Choose Your Own Adventures, but they all had to do with going forward or backwards in time, of course. But anyway, the thing that when I look at these books right now, it's not just the books. It's remembering going into the library and how these particular books were displayed. I don't know if this was true of all libraries or just one of the libraries that I went to as a kid, but they were always in like kind of a magazine rack, one of those circular spinny. That would spin. Yes, only they weren't magazine racks. They were, you know, for books about this size, like kind of pocket-sized paperbacks. And there was just something about it. It was like going into the proverbial candy shop, sort of. I just feel like I have memories of just like, I can just take any of these and then like choosing five to take home, but we still had to spend time at the library so like just taking one of them and like I don't know sitting I just have a memory of like sitting on a floor a carpeted floor somewhere in a carpet in a corner of the library with this book and just like letting it take me away you know it just I do think that that there's something about when I think about the pure experience of reading

that kind of is it you know I've talked about this before on the show but what I was really obsessed with was first the encyclopedia brown books which by the way is also kind of some self-checkout happening there even i would say even more so hey don sobel why don't you solve the mystery for me you're making me guess what bugs meanie was up to with that with that broom and dustpan behind the counter during the egg spinning contest that's right it's always bugs but um but like so i loved encyclopedia brown and i mean just devoured those books and then that got me into the um the slightly more uh grown-up uh version of that which is to say maybe more tween era which was called like the two-minute mysteries written by this i believe the same guy but instead of encyclopedia brown it was a a guy named doctor like or inspector like halogen or something was not spelled like the light bulb but a slight different spelling but anyway i also just and it was the same exact idea it was basically like you know something mysterious would happen this inspector would show up and then you would try to guess what the thing had been like it was one where there was like a guy bet um there was a guy who was a famous violinist but i believe he was blind and he made a bet for his prized violin that he could sit in a room all night and that there would be no way that someone could come into the room and and and somehow it involved like ice cubes that were made of ginger ale and then the ice cubes melted and then there was a cup of ginger ale in there. It was pretty convoluted now that I'm saying it out loud. That reminds me a bit

and I know I referenced this a lot. I want to say a Roald Dahl story but it might have been a Thurber story. I kind of get those two guys confused. I don't know if I should or not to be honest with you. I don't know if they're similar but I remember one of those stories and it was later turned into a twilight zone is a woman kills her husband with a frozen like oh knife blade no no lamb it's like a big hock of lamb or do lamb it could be a ham it was some sort of big frozen piece of meat and then she bludgeons them with it uh oh by the way uh trigger warning uh and then and then when the cops come to investigate she's already cooking the meat and feeding it to them so they're literally eating the evidence wouldn't i just like a frozen i don't know i guess what

the point of a frozen knife would be because the person would still have the stab wound they wouldn't be able to locate the weapon but it would still be pretty obvious what happened um i'm trying to find this because i feel like i've got to be messing part of this story up but my memory of it was again this guy i don't know why he agreed to this i don't know what was in this for him but he agrees to sit in this room all night listening very carefully to someone trying to break into the room to i think maybe even get into a safe where there has there's a cup with ice in it but then in the morning it's ginger ale and then he's going to lose his violin but dr halogen is like but the ice cubes were ginger ale again why this guy signed up for that that particular stunt i'll never know but anyway i loved those two minute mysteries there was another one that involved somebody saying a narrow flight of stairs but they were really saying an arrow flight there was some kind of slight you know it was somehow the mystery was revealed to be an arrow had been shot at someone, even though what they said was a narrow flight of stairs, but it was actually an arrow's flight of stairs or something.

Hey, can I just take a little quick victory lap here? And again, maybe it's not a victory lap if I've actually looked this up on a previous episode of TBTL, but the story that I'm talking about is called Lamb to the Slaughter. It was a 1953 short story by Roald Dahl, which was then adapted for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which makes me think that it was...

Some sort of piece of lamb, some sort of big frozen piece of lamb.

And a very subtle title as well. Yes, exactly.

But what's it about?

Exactly.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank some donors. These are the phenomenal folks who are supporting TBTL with a donation of dough, And it's the way this thing can happen. I did, in fact, Andrew, have that meeting yesterday that I've been being a little vague about where I was trying to explain the concept of TBTL to some folks who are uninitiated. And, yes, they were quite surprised at the business model and its efficacy. But this is how we do it. 100% listener-supported podcasting, supported by folks like Kathleen Jones in Seattle, Washington. Kat Jones! I wonder if anybody ever says that to Kathleen as Kathleen's walking down the street.

Do you know the number? I don't remember the number anymore. I used to have Mike Jones' number memorized, but I don't remember it anymore.

Oh yeah, doesn't he like, puts his phone number in the song or something?

Almost every song, Mike Jones would put his phone number in there. When you hear it, you'll know it too. Well, maybe not 281-330-8004, but I feel like you always did. Was it 1877 Cars for Kids? I don't think so. It's my money, and I want it now. J.G. Wentworth. That's what I said to Kathleen, by the way. Yeah. I said, Kathleen, it's my money and I want it now.

There used to be, did you ever, I don't know if when you were in L.A. this was still happening, but Indy 103, there used to be, Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols had a show called Jonesy's Jukebox.

I think I've heard of it. I don't think I listened to it, but was that K-Rock or did you just say that?

It was on, I think it was on Indy 103. Oh, you just said that, yes.

As I'm saying, oh yeah, that was on K-Rock. i'm i'm hearing your voice echoing in my headphones no it wasn't i think we may be dealing with a

slight delay in the line too so that might be adding to things but yeah in my brain but yeah but but yeah so i mean that man indy 103 was such a great station and it was proof that nothing gold can stay because like it really did have like all kinds of interesting djs that really just played the music they wanted to play like it felt very much like it was not one of those music stations that's you know programmed based on all of the data around you know people just want to hear the same you know i don't know even what's popular these days they want to hear the same far east mafia what's the name who does like a g far east movement everybody's want to hear far east movement four times an hour but i mean it was like it was sort of like a tbtl of radio stations like hey what if we just got a bunch of i guess this presumes that you and i are fun and interesting but it's like what if we just got a bunch of kind of fun interesting people that have their own kind of vibe and musical taste and let them do their thing and and one of the most amazing things was this midday show that steve jones hosted called jonesy's jukebox and he just has this like great sort of british cockney accent you kind of didn't know what he was saying a lot of the time sometimes he'd just have his guitar with him he'd just be playing acoustic guitar while he was talking there would be so much talking on the show it was almost like a talk show but then he'd play a song But he loved those J.G. Wentworth ads. He would just sometimes start yelling. He'd start laughing and yelling, it's my money and I want it now, just because those commercials made him laugh. It was a great station that could not survive in the marketplace because they weren't playing enough Far East heroes or whatever.

You know what I'm just realizing now? The reason Indie 103 rings a bell to me is because that's where Comedy Bang Bang started, too, as a radio show. It was called Comedy Death Ray back in the day.

Right, that's what I mean. I mean, it was like they were just like really, somebody should do like a little oral history. It looks like, are they still there? Do they still exist? No, I think this is a look here. I'm trying to do this. No, I think Indie 103 is now gone. But like it really was, it was really a magical time. I was kind of living in L.A. and, you know, very excited about my life and my work at NPR and driving around in a cabrio convertible and listening to Indy 103. It was all happening for me back in the day. It's all happening right now for Hane Caceres of Palo Alto, California, because we're thanking Hane. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Hane. Thanks to Scott Rosen of Seattle, Washington. Scott, I appreciate it. Yes. I don't know how close Scott is to where you are right now, Andrew, but I think spiritually he's very close. He could hear me. He might be listening to me like right now through the walls. It's possible. Yeah. That is a service we provide for some donors. You are allowed to sit in an office next to Andrew while he co-bros the show. That's going to be a premium level donation next year.

No, no, that's what we do. That's what we do to punish people who don't donate. They have to sit in this room with me.

I mean, speaking of sitting in rooms, I assume because, you know. I often am doing my half of the show from a hotel room somewhere. And most modern hotels, I think that they try to build them with a certain amount of soundproofing. But it's just, you know, you never know. And I just, like, I sort of assume no one can hear me in there. But it's like, dear God, if somebody is trying to catch some sleep during the day. Or maybe they had a late night. Or they had an overnight flight or whatever. And you just hear me just hollering through that, like, you know, that kind of connective door. What a nightmare for those people. I feel bad for them.

At least there's a bit of anonymity, I was going to say, though, with that. Like, you can just move on the next day and somebody's like, I don't know, I heard some guy through the wall here. Like, you know, I'm known. I'm, you know, I'm. Yeah, exactly. You know, I can't I can't shake the stink.

Hey, Christopher Gay is in Halifax, Massachusetts and is supporting the program. Thank you, Christopher. Thanks, Christopher. I don't know if I knew there was a Halifax, Massachusetts. I know about the Nova Scotia one.

I'm not sure either, but I did want you to know, and I'm taking a little photo here to send to you, while I'm not sitting right next to a window right now, I positioned myself so that I'm sitting, and when I look straight ahead, I do look out this old-school window, which I cracked a little bit, by the way. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that, if that's going to send the HAC system all haywire. I did hear a truck backing up a little earlier. Oh, you could hear that? Oh, my gosh. I have the microphone facing away from the window, too, but I thought you would appreciate that I do have a nice little view of the campus here.

Yeah, I was wondering what your vibe was there, and if that, because normally when you're at your home studio, you're just looking into this room, and you know me, I'm all about the staring. Do you feel like getting to look at a sort of a landscape and environment out there, is it doing anything for you? Is it popping off the creativity in your brain in a special way?

Well, I think you can tell that my performance is even better than usual today, so obviously the answer to that question is yes. Yeah, but I do wish I was a little bit closer to it, but I thought that rearranging the furniture in somebody else's office might be a little... That's my move. Maybe. Maybe that's a step too far.

Rifling through his Choose Your Own Adventure books is one thing, but fully reorganizing the office is a whole other thing. Although Brad Baxendell of Norfolk, Virginia, I think would allow it. Yeah, you think so? Yeah, Brad gives us a pretty long leash here at the show. Brad's been donating and supporting the show for many years. Thank you, Brad. We appreciate you. And then Annie Johnson is in Seattle, Washington as well. Annie might be sitting in the other office adjoining you and overhearing this conversation. We just never know.

She might be. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks, Annie. Thank you to our donors. We couldn't do this without you. hello and welcome to top story um there is a mystery billboard andrew that has gone up in northern california that was written about in the uh i'm always going to say this wrong i'm just going to say sf gate that's what i'm calling it that's what it is i used to think it was associated with the chronicle it's not anymore apparently uh lester black writing in the SF gate. Uh, no one knows who's behind Sacramento Valley billboard message to 80 year old Democrat. It's just this giant billboard with a picture of the guy that says happy 81st birthday Congressman Garamendi. And then I heard, it says elected 52 years ago. And then there's the giant photo of the Congressman and they, uh, the paper reached out to the Congressman's office and they said uh we did not pay for this billboard uh they reached out to some of his political opponents i guess he's he's um he's been in the in the u.s congress he's been a representative in the u.s congress for many many years and i guess he's there's some people that are running against him in the latest election uh none of them took credit for this they cannot figure out who paid and you and i know this and john sklaroff knows this from our billboard and particularly in like sacramento these things ain't cheap oh yeah like this is i mean you know we went with the the the bargain basement version uh and it was still not cheap this thing has cost somebody a pretty penny and they no one has claimed credit for it and so the speculation is it's either someone trying to put a burn on him about the fact that he's 81 years old or it's just somebody who really likes him and wants to congratulate him and they cannot figure out what the person's angle is and it is

accurate is it actually his birthday or was it it was his birthday a couple of weeks ago i think it went up on his birthday okay um okay now now here's a little 52 years ago yeah i'm now finally looking at it i've got eyes on it now yeah the fact that it says happy 81st birthday elected 52 years ago that does seem like maybe a bit of a dig like not to be ageist about it but especially the elected 52 years ago maybe it's kind of like it's it's implying that maybe that is a

too long of a time to be in office there's apparently a small note on the sign that says paid for by americans celebrating octogenarians which kind of feels like okay that's also a slight maybe dig at this person's age but what i would say to these folks is you played it if let's just say this is someone that's trying to say garamendi is maybe too old for the job by the way he looks to be in great health there's another photo of him in the article he looks You know, he looks just fine And he, by the way, had a pretty good response He was like, listen, if you're going to fight Trump You need a lot of experience So that's my move But like, I feel like they went If this was someone trying to point out That he's maybe, quote unquote, too old for the job They went too subtle with it Like, they spent a lot of money and they went subtle Like, not that I'm, I'm not trying to support You know, the sort of uncouth culture of political hit ads Which are just insane these days But if you're going to spend all this money and if you're hoping to kind of, like, create some doubt around his fitness for office, I think you played this one a little too chill.

You need a little bit more of a lamb to the slaughter approach. Thank you. Just put it right in the title. You know, it really kind of hits you over the head, Luke. Yes. Hits you over the head. I got you.

I'm picking up what you're putting down. By the way, billboards in the news, Andrew. It's not just this billboard in Northern California, but I don't know how to feel about this exactly, but Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame, and now I guess he's the new host of, they brought back Fear Factor, and he's the host of Fear Factor, which by the way is a pretty solid casting if you ask me. like that's really his brand um but um he has a daughter who is uh who's grown and uh and is a real estate agent i think in austin and for reasons that i don't fully understand i don't know if maybe it's her married name or maybe um she has uh well also you know what i just realized there's no way johnny knoxville's last name is knoxville i was like because her last name is clap her name is meredith clap his daughter and i spent the whole morning going like i wonder why she doesn't have her dad's last name well because knoxville's not a real last name luke that's why she doesn't have it so he johnny knoxville paid for a giant billboard for his daughter's real estate business and he said meredith clap this is the clap you want to get and then it had a big picture of her and then her phone number for her real estate office it's definitely gonna get it's

definitely going to get your attention um for sure i um i'm also on something here and i'm sorry i do think that we're dealing with a little bit of a delay so my apologies for that i'm i uh i'm realizing that what happened is when i got to this office on campus at around uh nine o'clock this morning 8 30 no nine o'clock this morning i think i did an internet speed test and i was surprised at how fast it was i was telling you this before the show i just logged on to like the the only access I have I believe which is like the main access for any guest on campus but I was like oh this is gonna be dodgy and I do a test on it and it is really fast I'm like oh this is fantastic and and then you and I dialed up and everything was great and now the the connection is getting worse and worse as we talk and I'm pretty sure it's because everybody's waking up and they're all on their ticky-talkies and doing other in the dorms and and you have teachers who are streaming I'm assuming I haven't been in college in a long time I assume teachers and professors are saying we're just going to watch a movie today and they're just streaming it's a mad mad mad mad mad world or whatever and projecting it so my apologies if i seem a little bit out of it but also i was slightly distracted by something else i'm seeing on sf gate which it says and this caught my attention because you were talking about potentially leaving tiktok the other day says leaving tiktok these offline hobbies can stop it can help you stop doom scrolling okay and i thought oh this might be interesting i thought it might be cheesy i was going to ask you to like maybe guess what some of them might be but what i'm what i'm distracted by here is you can barely read it because and again i understand like the state of media media and journalism especially this week talking about well you know what's going on at the washington post which is just unbelievably heartbreaking and makes me feel so much better about not supporting bezos anymore um but like this whole thing it's not really an article it's sort of an article but it's just a way to sell you a bunch of stuff so in other words the first one on the list is exercise so hey luke you trying to stop hey luke you said that you're leaving tiktok but you don't know what to do with yourself how about exercise well first of all we don't need yeah that sounds free to tell us that uh but then it's like okay so it's just like one one little graph that says exercise not only strengthens your body but also improves your mental state like just absolutely like

unnecessary words and then a huge huge uh like kind of illustrated link to amazon basics neoprene dumbbell hand weight set or thera band latex yellow green beginner set uh some sort of resistant bands and then a yoga mat and then then the next one is you can knit or you can crochet and then there's like two sentences and then just three huge ads for various like crocheting needles and you know yarn and stuff like that and that's what the whole thing is it's almost unreadable and it's hurting me it's like it's just like oh and it's like oh you can read more in here you can buy an amazon kindle or whatever it's just like and i know this isn't everything sf gate does and i know that they do do some real journalism there but like there was something about clicking on this that i thought it was going to be just kind of funny clickbait but it's actually like really depressing me to be honest with you yeah it's just like here are

things that you can buy yes instead of doing tiktok and by the way we're going to get our

beaks wet exactly and it's also just and maybe this is again my my own little um i don't know hobby horse but it's also just so hard to read because it's just like the the the ads that are i guess part of the content here it's just like the way everything is formatted it's just so terrible you cannot tell what is an ad and what is you it's unreadable actually and it's just it's such a bummer it's kind of like oh i'm going to click on this thing and learn how i can maybe like separate myself from being too online and it's just a bunch of really really crappy ads

trying to sell you junk you don't need it never occurred to me to do exercise instead of tiktok because now i do tiktok while i'm exercising oh yeah that's actually what you're gonna do that's not true but i have found myself sometimes and for me even this is like a bridge too far like they're sitting and scrolling and then there's like i'm in the kitchen doing something but i'm also occasionally going over and and like you know flicking to the next screen of tiktok like while i'm doing other things but it's like i'm washing the dishes but then i have to like every eight seconds like dry my hand off and then go over and scroll down to the next tiktok feed and i'm like i i'm like that's when i know my brain has really officially broken i have stopped short of of course ever having tiktok like while i'm driving but i feel like that's unfortunately the next that's the next logical step of my slide towards god knows what do you ever get into a

ride share and they have you know a lot of ride shares now are teslas or some sort of a some sort of a fancy car that is out of my is it both out of my um price range but then also just out of my um awareness awareness because i don't know cars at all but like some of you get in one of those cars that's like a robot right but it's not but it's not one of the self-driving ones we don't have those in seattle but you get into a car and then the driver has like a really big screen and i think teslas all have really big screens uh but then they have on like some sort of a podcast but it's a video podcast yes you know even though again this is not the life i live as a podcaster like the idea the the line between podcasting and television and youtube is all very very blurry now So you just get in and they're basically just watching a sports show or something because it's three guys talking about the playoffs or something like that. And it's kind of like, at a certain point, are we just putting TVs in the driver's seat now?

Yeah. In fact, there's a product that I was tempted to buy and I did not buy it, Andrew, for that very reason, which is supposedly, and you know, I've been real hit and miss on the TikTok shop of late with them not sending me my illegal guns that I've tried to buy. but like there is this device that i kept seeing advertised that some sort of a dongle that plugs into your usb you know most cars now will have like a kind of a little usb port where you plug in your phone for carplay or whatever yeah and like you know i have a screen in my car that shows like the radio stations and it shows uh ways if i'm driving or whatever it's not a television though per se or like i can't watch the game on there i can't watch youtube on there this thing apparently turns that screen into a tv screen that you could play netflix or youtube or whatever it is you wanted to watch and for a second i was like oh man that'd be kind of dope like you know if i want to watch the game on there or something and i can just kind of stream it from my phone or whatever and i was like wait what no i do not need to turn that into a television screen that's

wildly dangerous and it feels like it should be illegal i mean i guess it would fall under distracted driving i guess if somebody saw you driving erratically then that could that could be a ding on distracted driving but um yeah and i but i do feel like things are moving that way i mean i wonder if i would have a different feeling about it if i still lived in la where driving in la is usually just being stopped in la right you know what i mean like you're driving and it's like okay it's just stop and go traffic you're barely moving you're creeping along the 10 or whatever and I could sort of see it there but like that's not i don't think that's really your experience it's certainly not my experience in the times i'm in the car around these parts you're you're moving you don't need to be having

a tv there too and i actually for once demonstrated some sort of foresight and self-control to not to not go with that what i don't ever understand is how when there is an accident and you read about it or you know the the report is well they were on their phone it's like how do they know how do they figure that out that somebody was because you know not to be a complete sketchball but you know i probably would that wouldn't be the first thing i would cop to and then i feel like they'd go well were you on your phone i would go no and they go well look it's playing tiktok and i go well that's i just let it sit on the chair playing tiktok all day like how do they catch people for being on their phone and it causes a crash well i will tell you that i think

about this a lot because i am very rarely using my phone like i'm pretty you're probably not surprised to hear this but i'm pretty strict with myself about like not like sitting at a light and then just like saying, hey, is there a, did that email come through or something like that? I'm pretty good at just like kind of putting it aside. I usually have it plugged in to my, that's the other thing too, I also have it plugged into my car and then text messages, the computer just reads them aloud. It'll say, hey, you have a new message from Luke Burbank and you can hit play on it. It really wreaks havoc with the Wordle scores though. It's like Genevieve Haas says green square, green square, yellow square, black square, black square, green square, green square, black square. It really does do that whole thing. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it just drives you up a tree. All of that is the same. On the rare occasion that I feel my phone buzz or something, I pull it out. I'm at a traffic light, right? And I look and I check a text message or something. I think about, I know part of my brain is thinking about stories that I've read. And not to be dark, but maybe these are usually involving maybe a fatality or something like that. But I have read them look into phone records and they've said like, well, they sent this text like right before right before the accident or certainly if you're on the phone, they can tell. And so I have sort of and there's always a part of my brain that's kind of like if something happens right now, I'll be dead in the water. They'll know right away that I was checking my phone. And there's always like some part of me that always feels a little watched.

Because I feel like, I mean, I guess most modern cars also have all kinds of, like, you know, data that's in the whatever the black box of the car is. So I guess you could see, like, oh, a text message went out at this exact second of time, and then the crash was registered with the car's brain at that exact second. It just seems to me like it's a little loosey-goosey. Like, I mean, yeah, you could, there's so much going on on my stupid phone at all times, even when I'm in the car, whether I'm looking at it or not. I feel like, you know, if I were to get in a crash, immediately the suspicion would be that I was on the phone, and I probably wasn't, although I don't know, like, I also, I mean, is it technically illegal, like, for instance, I listen to the Howard Stern show pretty frequently, but I will say the SiriusXM interface is tremendously not user-friendly, my UX with it is not very great, so I'm always...

in what context again is this i'm trying to get to the howard yes i'm listening it's i'm on my

phone i'm trying to get to the howard stern show like what'll happen is i'm listening to opb they'll be on their third story where they're just basically playing long stretches of tape from trump and kind of talking about how the world is ending but offering no solutions and i'll go i gotta listen to something else i gotta listen to ronnie the limo driver get mad at john blitt so now i'm going to go on my phone to try to dial up the howard stern show and it's like i got to go through like six screens to get to what i want first i gotta i gotta go to the sirius xm app then i've got to go to library which is a very small icon then i've got to go down to the howard stern show but not the clips because one of the things they try to do is like give you 80 million different like channels and versions and clips and best ofs and all i want are full episodes and then i go into the full episodes and then i've got to scroll down because i'm always like 10 episodes behind and find whatever episode i haven't listened to yet or the one i was listening to which is indicated by this very small blue circle that the amount of the circle that's filled in indicates how much of the show i've listened to and i'm doing all this while i'm bombing down i5 i mean i this is actually my the listeners are going crazy mark is leaving the room um but uh like what i here's one thing that i do really and truly as a safety measure i always put on my anti-crash cruise control before i do anything that involves even glancing at my phone like to try to just get either the mapping system going or the whatever the howard stern because at the very least it will not allow me to rear end anyone um you know i mean my car has that kind of cruise control that will stop me from hitting anyone and i've got it set on like four car lengths so it doesn't let me get near anybody and then if my car goes ever goes out of the lane it starts vibrating either the left side of the wheel if it's the left side or the the right side of the wheel. So it's kind of a lot helping protect me in that moment. But even so, I mean, I can't, I cannot credibly make the statement that it's not distracting for me to try to dial up the Howard Stern show. And I guess my question is, should I be pulling over? Like, should I wait until, because the problem is I live like 40 minutes from Portland. So unless I do this in my driveway before I leave, the next chance I'm going to have probably is when I get to like Becca's house or something. Is it irresponsible of me to dial up the Howard Stern Show on i5 is my question to you.

Maybe. Probably. I'm also, I'm looking at my SiriusXM app here too, and I'm a little surprised that it's so buried. I guess it's because you're trying to pick up where you left off on something. Because for me, I'm almost like, I open up the app and it's always like telling me, well, this is what you usually listen to now. Or this is like, it's always, and let me just see, when I open up SiriusXM.

I'm also sure that Phyllis Fletcher has a hack for this, that as soon as you hear this.

Yeah, actually, that's a really good point.

I'm going to get, like, nine screen caps of, like, the way that she has, like, completely hacked this so that she doesn't have to do what I'm doing. I'm sure that I'm – this is unnecessarily hard on me because I've never taken the five minutes to just kind of, like, set up my profile in some way. So this is probably on me a little bit.

And I'm not – I don't have any information about that. I'm not trying to put you on the spot on that. But also I'm looking here. Yes, it's suggesting, like, all I have to do is swipe over, like, four little channels, and I'm already seeing Howard 100 and Howard 101. one, but that's live. And it sounds like what you're trying to do is pick up where you left off, which is probably different. But anyway, I'm getting bogged down in the details of that. But this is something I think about a lot, both in the context of cars, but also the context of grocery stores. Because, Luke, I don't know if you know this, but I really like to spend time in grocery stores. Yeah, I do know that. And I have a lot of thoughts, right? And this also goes back to something I said to you a long time ago about how we view people, maybe especially our generation, you and me, when we see somebody on their phone, it signifies something that is different than when you see somebody reading something else. So for example, the other day, I was walking. I think I was leaving a building and some guy was walking into a building. It was Sprouts, a different grocery store. And he irritated me because I'm getting more and more judgmental, which is something that I'm really trying to work on. But he almost walked right into me because he was just like walking at a pretty brisk space at pace but looking directly in his phone just like head down I think ear pods in just like head down like fully engaged in his phone just walking really quickly across the parking lot into into the grocery store and then kind of looks up at me like I'm in his way and I'm like buddy like I'm you know what I said Luke what you said I said I'm walking here oh that's a good one yeah he didn't hear me I had headphones No, we didn't get into anything, but I just was like kind of this this ping of sort of irritation. But contrarily, when I'm in the grocery store and like I told you, like I am pretty conscientious, I try to pull my card over to the side if I'm going to look down at my phone. But my grocery list is in my phone. Right. And I have a list app, as I'm sure most people do these days. And so if you see somebody and they're looking down at their phone in the grocery store, you could immediately judge them and be like, put down the tick tock and buy your peaches. you know but um you don't they're probably looking at a grocery list and if you were to see somebody walk by with a paper grocery list looking down on it that'd be quaint as hell that'd be sweet right and i remember saying this to you a long long time ago um the same deal like if you're in a and i don't know if this holds up now like it would have maybe when we were talking about it in 2015 or something but you might be in a in a restaurant you see a couple right and they're sitting across from each other at brunch and both of them are ignoring each other and their noses are in their phones that gives you one kind of a feeling if you're judgmental yes but if they're both reading a different section of the sunday new york times charming as hell charming as hell i remember being in boston i loved what i would see people reading a paperback as they walk down the street leaving the leaving the train station i remember being like oh i love the city you got these nerds reading their paperbacks but if i were to see somebody reading their kindle app on their

phone i'd just be like get off the tiktok because i know old and cranky and it's just kind of like we need to so that doesn't get to the safety issues that you're talking about but i was sort of thinking like back in the day you might be going through a triple a trip tick or that or that thomas guide the thomas guide or the map that you keep in your glove box because you or the instructions that you wrote down because back in the day to get to somebody's house for the first time you had to say okay then i'm taking it so the instructions i wrote down on the telephone is you take a right by the oak tree you know and so it was that was back in the day of and if you hit such and such you've gone too far exactly now the difference here is the because the phone does do everything the idea of looking down at a map in your car is a little bit different because you can look down at your map and then you see oh I just got a notification and then you check that notification and that leads you to this and that leads you to that like the fact that it

is everything in one does lead to it how many times have you opened up your phone to check something then you check a notification instead and then all of a sudden you're just standing there in the middle of the room watching tiktoks you put your phone back in your pocket and then you're like god damn it i pulled my phone out to change the temperature of the house

i never even did that my move and this is kind of aggressive is and and by the way i i you're absolutely right for some reason for me it's like if i saw somebody walking and they were reading a copy of Moby Dick and they were like engrossed in it I that would be so charming to me even if they were about to walk into me I'd just be like this person loves books so much that they that that that they're a danger to society but it wouldn't bother me but when people are on their phone and they're walking like towards me mindlessly I will not deviate my path I will let them almost bump into me which is kind of a kind of a jerk move because i am you know i could just take one step to the left and it would just be a non-event but i like kind of want them to have that moment of like oh oh i'm sorry you know presuming that they are assuming that they are gonna you know be apologetic about it or be a little shook from it um i kind of want them to have that moment i don't want to i don't want to just step to the side and allow them to continue kind of blithely on their way i kind of want them to i want to bring a little gravity to the situation for them but i don't know i don't think i'm making the world a better place with that move

either yeah and i'm just kidding i you know i don't think i've ever said this on the show before but you know that my reputation especially when the the conversations turn to this kind of thing or you know back when i was living in roosevelt and i was getting so mad at cars that would just park in bike lanes or just park across three parking spots or something because people just don't they literally don't care they're like well i got my spot i don't care if somebody can fit next to me and it just it irritates me in some fundamental level about humanity i think but obviously i'm insane too like you know what i mean like there's a level of i mean to a certain degree you can have these conversations and you can talk about the fact that we live in a society and you should be looking out around you and not making other people's lives harder just because it's easier for you to roll your SUV up onto the curb directly in front of the door or what have you, right? Those are the things that bother me. But as I truly, I've always been a bit of an old man about these things. But as I truly become an older man, like it's not so, it's not so funny. It's not so, I don't know, acceptable. And I always think of something that our friend Tiara told me. Now, this is Tiara who lives in Baltimore and listens to the show regularly. And she's also a friend of mine and I I'm always feeling a little chagrined when I get into my really judgmental mode and her voice sort of echoes in my head not unlike Marge Simpson's voice sometimes echoes in Homer's head I don't know if that's something that you can sort of picture but I remember when you know we always use the phrase polite car on the show because one time I was taking a photo of some car that was parked like really sloppily and it would look rudely to me and I was taking a photo of it and then some guy was like why are you taking a picture of my car and like truly I was obviously doing that hoping somebody would see me doing it I was obviously trying to be provocative I wasn't going to do anything with that photo and I just said I'm oh I just yelled at him nice polite car and then I put my headphones on and walked away and thought to myself what the hell did I just say and do and what am I what am I just like the saddest vigilante Batman of the Roosevelt neighborhood just like passive aggressively hoping people see me notice that like what the hell like that that was kind of an embarrassing story anyway and i remember tiara just writing or texting me just being like but for real why do you care like that car wasn't in my way i was walking i was on foot she's like and she just wrote something that wasn't it wasn't super judgmental but it was also just like i just can't get in that headspace just like you live in the city everybody's doing their own thing like she didn't say all of this but i always think about that i'm like yeah why why do i get like this and i don't think when i get cranky about these things that it's really about i think it's probably more about me and my mood and where i am because i i started to say earlier that i was sitting in chipotle yesterday my new chipotle up in shoreline it's a nicer chipotle luke and there's um they have this area where they have

several stools and like a little a little i don't know how to describe a counter area but it faces out into the parking lot so you can sort of like eat your burrito and and watch cars park you know it's just a parking lot it's not a nice view and I noticed when I came in that somebody was just parked literally across two spots not for any reason other than it sort of seemed like they just didn't care and then and then there was some young woman in the Chipotle who was like running around like she was in some huge hurry and then she ran out and I was like oh that was her car and it sort of irritated me and then I'm sitting there eating my burrito and then some van pulls in and these two guys get out of the van and it's clearly it's clearly a work van it's a big white van it's also smashed to hell on one side i don't know what they were doing it's just like two guys and they're they're clearly i don't know doing some sort of labor right like they have dusty boots and stuff and they park kind of similarly not quite as bad but basically there's park on the white line like their tires are on the white line i'm eating my burrito and i'm even thinking i'm thinking about all of this i'm thinking like why are you sitting here in this window enjoying this burrito playing wordle which i think i got in four yesterday if you want to congratulate me i mean that's yeah big deal no i have no idea what the word was but anyway i'm sitting there playing wordle or whatever but i'm being distracted by people who are not following my rules of society and i'm also thinking about these guys i'm also like these guys are just like they are i don't know anything about them but by all appearances they work a lot harder than i do like harder than this right exactly i'm just like like who cares that they parked a little bit rudely and then they came in and then that's what i was like and then they're like getting their drinks behind me and the two of them are having some sort of a conversation with somebody on speakerphone that is just on blast and okay well this is now this is really this is really irritating me but i really had to i kind of was always thinking about like kind of tear i'm like well like just don't care so much like don't try to be the neighborhood's policeman of slightly rude behavior it's only putting myself in this little hell you know what i mean yeah it's not a it's not doing any good me just being steamed

but you know i also would say and i think this is almost exactly what i said the last time this topic came up which is my guess is that tiara sort of like me is maybe less of a rule follower again I don't I don't want to speak for tiara but like what I would say is that the people who are also not following the rules as much like myself I think can let this stuff go a little easier because it's kind of like yeah well that's maybe what I would be doing too but then you spend a lot of time thinking about other people's experience doing things the right way being polite and so I can understand why it's particularly galling to you it's like you're playing a game and you're obeying the rules of the game and everybody else is just like doing whatever they want, that would be more frustrating than if you were just one of the people who's just doing whatever they want.

Yeah, but still though, that's me though. That's not, I mean, again, I do, I'm not taking back everything I've said about people behaving boorishly in society. By the way, I use the word boorish. It's like an inside joke to me because I think I've only heard one person use the word boorish before in my life and he used it a lot and he was really annoying. And he would, ironically, he was a guy that I was interviewing. Boorish. I spent a day with him. Genevieve and I, I think Genevieve went with me. I spent a day with him with a recording kit for New Hampshire Public Radio because he was like the, he was like an ultimate garage sale hunter kind of guy. And so I did this like audio piece that was, I think, a nary, what would you say? No narration audio piece that I put together of just him taking us to different garage sales and showing us his fines or whatever. I remember he was talking about people who like get real boorish that you see boorish behavior at the garage early and not following the understood rules of whatever it is amongst this class of people. But every time he said boorish, I thought he was telling on himself a little bit because it was just like such a interesting word to use. But it also meant that he had this sort of sense of being better than everybody else in a certain way. And so when I use that word, which now has entered my own lexicon, I'm using it like half secretly sardonically or sarcastically because to say that word, I feel like I am telling on myself. But it just like you can go through the world and have opinions about whether or not people are, you know, putting themselves first in a way that can inconvenience others. I do think that's shitty. That's a word that I will use. But pretty boring. But you can't be obsessed with it. You know what I mean? And if I find myself getting obsessed with it, I think I need to take a step back and realize, I think I'm upset about the state of the world. Well, Luke, I mean, literally, I didn't want to bring this up. But let me just say how crazy I was yesterday. So I'm sitting there. I'm watching these guys park just like quasi-rudely. And then I would say pretty rudely come in with their speakerphone, but then leave. and but I'm reading an article that is related to the Epstein files right and it's about the the allegations against Bill Gates yeah and I'm thinking and that's really shocking and you think about what you know of Bill Gates I mean there are some people who were just like seem like sleazeballs anyway and then of course you put them in the billionaire class and then it's just going to amplify that but then you think about like kind of somebody who comes off as like kind of kind of dorky and also buying mosquito nets a lot of money towards for exactly

in the things that turn pee into drinking water. That's not quite right. Oh, it's absolutely right. I remember that. You took a sip. Didn't you use one of those straws one time? But actually, here on Red Square in the University of Washington. Do I have that wrong?

No. A good memory, though, was at a college. It was at Berkeley. Oh, it was at Berkeley. And that's LifeStraw, which is different than this thing that he was part of, the Gates Foundation was part of, which was this big device, this big thing that that took yeah like basically waste water and turned it into drinkable water then he went and had a cup of it famously I think Carrie was working on the filming of this project

or something is why I knew about it back in the day well I so so I'm sitting and this is this is absolutely bananas but like I'm sitting there and I'm sort of thinking about rude behavior and I'm thinking about myself being petty about it and I'm also reading like Melinda Gates responding to these allegations against her ex-husband and and so i'm thinking about that i'm thinking like how does how does somebody like bill gates end up in in this super super gross awful scenario yeah and you think well because with money you get to a certain point where you just sort of because i i'd be surprised if he would end up in like these kind of really awful icky situations if he didn't end up super super super super rich right like if he were you don't think his good looks would

have bought him access to this world or his charisma or his chair jumping abilities or even

that his brain would seek out these sort of right pleasures or whatever and then and then what he would do to cover it up or whatever again the allegations of people know it is just really gross and awful but i'm thinking about that i'm like well because then you get you get money and it can even take somebody who might not be like this anyway but they just start to realize the rules of the world don't apply to them and then you have tons of people who like already like kind of have that mentality and then the money kind of you know triples it or exponentially rises it and and so I was sort of thinking about that and I sort of thinking about like yeah there just are people in the world and they tend to be more successful who feel like even before they're successful they feel like the small rules don't apply to them and then they get more and more money and more and more power and then the big rules don't apply to them and it's sort of and this is just my obsession it kind of goes to the almost like the Ayn Rand like kind of Superman theory thing you know I don't think it's her theory but that she bought into and just kind of like and that's just always bothered me and then I really get into my you can hear like you're literally listening to me rat-a-tat-tat my psychosis out at you right now because I'm just kind of like why can't everybody just follow the rules and then we wouldn't have the Lolita Express, which is obviously not a direct line of logic.

I am, I mean, I'm just struck by how many people, like I'm a very non-conspiratorial person by nature, and in fact have, you know, been kind of like, when you hear about like QAnon, and I heard the guys on Pod Save America say, their minds were kind of blown because they were like, you know, QAnon was kind of right. They were going in the wrong direction on it. But like this idea of a shadowy cabal of the ultra rich doing awful things and kind of colluding on it and sending each other messages about it, et cetera. Like I just I've always said that's not a real thing. Like most of this most bad and I actually it's I still think this is true. Most awful stuff that happens in this kind of area is happens within home environments between, you know, existing family members and people that are known to each other, et cetera. i i i you know i'm just somebody who um didn't really think about the world as partially because what i grew up with with the kind of christianity i grew up with there was a lot of conspiracy theories and a lot of like there's satanists everywhere and so once i got out of that movement i was like i don't think any of that's real and i'm like well damn there really was a thing going on here where these people with a lot of power and money really i mean the owner of the new york giants like bill gates yeah i always thought that bill gates was just kind of a generally good-hearted nerd you know like that was the that was the category that i filed him under and as you see people like bezos and and musk and stuff uh who are sort of awful billionaires i always kind of fell back on well at least bill gates has given out the mosquito nets and now it's just like just crazy to read these back and forths and then also just to go like what was like what was the appeal of this guy to all of these people like if you already have all the money you could ever you could have your own island and i guess do whatever you want there like just the idea that they were jazzed about this that they were like oh there's gonna be a party at his island like isn't your life fun enough just from being super wealthy and having anything you want like i i literally just don't understand why so many of these people were so intrigued by this dude jeff epstein the financier i think i think i would know look i and i but and so this is what

Yeah, we should probably just end it there. But we all sort of do it to a certain degree, right? It's like, have you ever, like, I don't know, I'm trying to think of something, like, sold something online, but, you know, like, you're not reporting it. Or, like, when the tax season comes. This is a better idea. When tax season comes, like, people are, even people like me who truly believe in, you know, taxes. You're a tax and spend liberal. That's right. I'm a tax and don't spend liberal. I just I just like taxing. But you know what I mean? Like, I truly believe in that we should have that system and that we shouldn't just let people hang on to the money and then hope that they're going to put it back into systems that we all agree help society because they're not going to. They're going to be pet projects or whatever. So I don't have to explain why. But when tax season comes and somebody says, well, if you write it this way, I mean, technically you can save yourself a thousand dollars or five hundred dollars or whatever. Who's not going to do that? And so then you think to yourself, well, okay, well, then you put that on, just raise that to the highest levels of power, and that's how you see, and then you're reading Russell Wilson trying to buy a jet but not wanting to buy it before his contract has been settled with the Seahawks. this is all stuff that kind of came out of the epstein files because there's plenty of stuff in there that isn't that isn't like icky in a sexual nature but you're just seeing how yes the inner working people in the world interact and it's kind of like oh russell wilson is like doing this thing where he's trying to buy a plane but not trying to buy it right away because it'll look bad and it'll impact his negotiations with the seahawks or whatever and um it's spicy and you're just like like, okay, that's fine, like, you're in the Epstein files, but saying that implies something

different. I mean, Punxsutawney Phil is in the Epstein files four times. It was pointed out on

the Colbert show. I think Clippy was in the file as well. I was posting that online the other day, but anyway, the point is, but you're just sort of, you read this email about, you know, that is supposed, it's not from Russell Wilson, but it's supposedly people sort of representing his interests, sort of saying, well, you're going to bend over backwards and try to get this jet, like how gross these rich people are but is that a lot different than saying well if i sort of like kind of check this other column on my tax return and it saves me 500 i'm going to do that too but i'm just in a different tax bracket than these people like who who amongst us aren't sort of trying to get the best deals you know and like where are those lines yeah i would hope that i

mean you want to know how crazy my brain is like i was like i was i was like yesterday thinking you what's one nice thing for me i'm not in the epstein files like that i like as if i would be but you know what i mean i thought like god that bar has gotten low for you buddy that's what i'm saying that's what's so sad i was like you know there's plenty in my life i'm not proud of but like i can say i can say definitively like i can go to bed and when my head hits the pillow i there's no danger of me being in the epstein files but i guess i would hope that if my life had gone differently and i had been some crazy rich wealthy person that regardless of if i was trying to like you know you know invest you know put my money offshore or whatever you know i would hope that at some point my moral compass would kick in and that there would be i would there would be some some lines that i wouldn't cross you know what i mean and like no matter how rich and famous i was that there would still be something that i would say well that no but that's just messed up i would never do that or i've never interact with that kind of a person i mean what's also nuts is this latest tranche it's like so much stuff that happened after he was convicted the first time yeah and got his sweetheart deal it wasn't even like it wasn't even like oh jeff epstein the financier we don't know anything about him it's like no this guy is a convicted bad guy and you're like again what's so this is i'm this is like the weirdest thing for me to say and also that i don't know if you called an argument or not but the strangest and weirdest observation for me is like these people could have done whatever they're alleged to have done they probably could have done it by themselves or under like they're rich they can throw money at any problem they can probably hire somebody of unfortunately of whatever age to do whatever thing you know what i mean like i don't understand why these crazy rich people that already can kind of do probably whatever they want were so obsessed with going and and hanging out with this guy like it was exciting for them to go hang out with this dude when it seems to me like they could have all and I'm glad they didn't but they could have all had their own islands like they could you know what I mean it's like I don't it was just weird to me to see the glee from these people about like being friends with this gross dude when I didn't understand anything he was really quote-unquote providing to them that was not accessible to them just as part of the point zero zero zero one percent

and i will just say what you said about like well i would hope that as i got richer and more powerful

And we'll see how the next on goes. You never know. Yeah, I mean, we'll see that there would be a line. And I think that's the problem. And I think it's human nature. But I also think that the systems that we've set up to have this billionaire class is a huge problem and contributes to it. But I think the problem there is you think, oh, but I wouldn't cross that line. Something would go off. But no, the more you're corrupted, the less those lines appear. That's kind of what I was trying to say before is like we're all looking to put ourselves in the best position to win, whatever that means, you know, in any particular situation. If it means winning a faster burrito because I haven't taken the care to park in my spot.

And I would put what they did at the same level as Epstein, personally.

Have you seen, they call them the Chipotle files, and I got a bunch of them. But anyway, I think that those lines become even, the goalposts move. I think that the lines in the sand get washed away by the sea. I just don't think that it's like, oh, well, the old me will kick in at some point. No, that's literally what corruption does to a person, I think.

Well, I would say the amazing news for us is we're in no danger of having to test that theory. Yeah, that's true. You know what I mean? I'm going nowhere fast.

You can be nothing but one

Hey, Luke, do you remember way at the beginning of the show, I said I have some breaking news for you? Yes, I played the sounder. You don't have to play it again. You've already played it once, but this is not really breaking news. I was being somewhat sarcastic because literally nobody cares about this but me, But, you know, I'm obsessed lately with coming up with actors whose names, their first name and last name begin with the same letter. Like A, you have Alan Alda, et cetera, et cetera. And I said that there's nobody that fits that bill for the letter I. Well, somebody did send in. Well, a couple of people. I mentioned that my F is usually Frances Farmer, but sometimes it's Farrah Fawcett as well. Oh, that's more updated. Farrah Fawcett is a double F. Do you know the truth is? The reason I use Farrah's Fawcett, but then I think, I don't know, wasn't she more of a model than an actor? And then I looked it up the other day. No, she was an actor. I think it's just because that really famous poster of her that was sort of iconic before our time. I always assumed she was more of a model. But no, she's an actor. Charlie's Angel. So Farrah Fawcett is a great F. Oh, right. She was a Charlie's Angel. Be careful when you say Farrah Fawcett is a great F. Did I say that? I did say those words, didn't I? let's just let that one go no but somebody sent in it was a listener Denise I think sent this and I was very excited because I told you I can't find any double I's double O's or W's not double W's but Una O'Neill do you know who Una O'Neill

is that is two O's right there was that Eugene O'Neill's was that person related to

Eugene O'Neill yes I believe daughter or granddaughter and married to Charlie Chaplin and also an actor in her own right. And so not only do you have an Una O'Neill who is a double O, but married to a double C.

Una with an O. Una O'Neill. Okay, I was the first. Una O'Neill. Love it. What a great name, too, by the way. That's pretty great.

Yeah, I know. So anyway, thank you, Denise, for that. I really appreciate it. That's not what we're supposed to be doing here, though. We're supposed to be wishing people a happy birthday. This is the Blur's Day segment. If you have somebody in your life you'd like to wish a happy birthday to, and maybe that person is yourself, you can email me andrew at tbtl.net and put Blur's Day in the subject line. Laurel did that, and Laurel says, I'd like to wish a very happy Blur's Day to Monica in Burbank from Laurel in Burien. Insert Luke's Burbank comment here. I'll wait. Do you have a comment?

Well, whenever we read, I believe that is our friend, And is that Monica Regimbal in Burbank, Washington?

I don't have last names here, but it's Monica in Burbank.

And that's when I always say, I didn't know there was a Burbank, Washington, although I kind of do at this point. Not Burbank, California, Burbank, Washington.

Yeah, see, I didn't get that. I just assumed it was the Burbank with the airport. Anyway, happy Blur's Day, Monica, from Laurel and me and Luke Burbank. Laura says, happy birthday to my partner Chris in Ballard.

Chris called into the Tradio show and successfully got rid of the very expensive robot cat litter box that my stupid cats wouldn't use. Oh, I remember that. Me too. I'm glad that he ended up getting rid of that using Tradio. That excites me. Laura says he does not like to celebrate his birthday, but I know he would be over the moon to get a shout-out from you guys. Aw, thanks. Happy Blur's Day, Chris. One of the people who wrote in to remind me that Farrah Fawcett has a letter, I have to be very careful here, has a letter F that starts both of her names, is our friend Larry from the School of Visual Design. Our buddy Larry. Larry says, I'd like to send wishes for a big blowout Blur's Day to, oh, to Burbank, California, home of my offspring. Oh. and 66 Karmann Ghia co-restorer. Oh, nice. Lauren, what is a Karmann Ghia? That must be a car, huh?

Yeah, it's a wonderful, I think it's a Volkswagen. Wait, did I say that right? Yeah, you did. You said it with a K.

Did I say Karmann Ghia correctly?

You did. Oh, nice. Okay, it's spelled. Those are really cool old cars, the V-Dub Karmann Ghia. That used to be one. Me and my buddies had a game when we were kids called we called dibs on things I know I've told you about this before this is the dumbest game of all time because we didn't get anything out of it But if you saw like a limo you go I call dibs on that which meant it's mine Like Tim Robinson spider game, yeah, but precisely except we didn't have phones to take pictures of these things So you'd also sometimes you'd find like there was this over on like Stoneway and Ashworth Not very far from where you are actually. Yeah, there was a like an auto garage that specialized in Oh, yeah, it's still there. I think yeah, like like a big kind of storage It was like a brick kind of storage garage and it was full of like really cool cars and I remember Happening upon it like during my paper route and just being like I'm dibs in all these cars, but nobody's here to like Nobody's here to know that I'm dibs in all of these i also thought that it was um i remember thinking i would call dibs on by the way i would call dibs on a lot of carmen gears is my point in this story because they're a beautiful car but also um i remember there was a i think it was a mercedes that was a diesel at the time it was a mercedes something or other and i remember i thought it was desire so i'd be like oh i dibs that mercedes desire that mercedes desire i dibs that like only years later that's how diesel is spelled

If I have the same garage in mind, I believe it's still there, and I believe that is the garage that above it was the pizza billboard that inspired, through a very strange, twisting logic, inspired our own billboard, I believe.

Oh, you mean the Spiros always in a relationship with?

Yes, exactly, in a relationship always. All of that is to say, happy Blurze to Lauren, who apparently helped restore this Carmen Ghia from Larry. Larry says, she was born on Valentine's Day 39 years ago and has been a love fest ever since. Adorable. Alex says, I want to wish a very happy Blur's Day to my favorite 10, Christina, your first birthday with a 5 and first Blur's Day in Portland. This is one to celebrate the whole year round. Alex and Ernest love you. Alyssa says, this is a Blur's Day message from my little brother, Justin Inferndale, who's turning the big 4-0. I'm prouder every day of the man he's become and the delight he brings to everything. From fang exchanges to caftans, no one does it better than J-bones. Well, I've been saying that my whole life, Alyssa. So explain that. I know times are hard under a fascist regime, but knowing my family is made of such great stuff like my brother Justin keeps hope alive. Fang exchanges. Fang exchanges. Wow. And finally, we hear from Penny, who says, Happy birthday to my wife, Kristen. I'm sorry. Oops. Happy birthday to my wife, Kirsten, in San Francisco. I'm pretty sure this is a thing, right? I Googled TBTL Blur's Day how-to and, of course, was met with garbage, so I'm sending this email. If you're doing birthday shout-outs, then please set one aside for Kirsten, who has heard every episode and I know will audibly shout with glee from the other room if this happens. Good looking out, Penny. Indeed. That reminds me of something, Luke, something that bothers me. Happy Blur's Day, everybody. But this whole, like, looking TBTL lore up online and then having the robots be sort of useless.

Yeah, I mean, I would be shocked if AI Overview knew how to get a message to us for the blurs.

doesn't that seem a little niche for them listen to this i got an email from isaac the other day he says my wife is a huge fan of your show and a while back she introduced me to the glorious website known as marsupial gurgle oh you and i know that that is the website that our friend lynn set up that had a whole it was like a storehouse of clips it is a storehouse of clips of you and i saying weird things on the show anyway uh according to isaac here whose email just disappeared on me uh recently i was searching for that beast mode seahawks rap song that you guys play and i couldn't find it or remember the title but i knew it had been on tbtl so i typed into google marsupial gurgle seahawks i thought you might be amused by the ai overview that i received okay you ready and it says here by uh trisha says hi by the way go hawks okay here's what if you type in marsupial gurgle seahawks into ai overview this is what you're going to get marsupial gurgle is a fan created phrase slash term likely from online communications referencing the seattle seahawks with marsupial referring to the team's mascot a seahawk though technically a bird is linked to the northwest wildlife and its themes and gurgle possibly a funny sound or play on words for seahawks often appearing in fan chants or memes not official team lingo but embraced by some fans for its quirkiness here are some key points luke origin it's a nickname or inside joke among some seahawks fans not an official term like legion of boom meaning it playfully combines a northwest animal reference marsupial with a sound gurgle for the bird seahawk creating a unique fan expression usage you'll find it in older fan discussions videos and social media especially around content related to the team's iconic defenses now what you me and every

seattle seahawks fan knows is this is all total bullshit in the words why tracy jordan honky

grandma's be tripping why can't ai overview just say i don't know like it is it bothers me so much to know that it just spits out this information that is just patentedly false, but with all of the confidence of you or Genevieve telling me something.

You've already got two people in your life that do this. You don't need the robots. How about this, Andrew? I was googling how to send a TBTL birthday message to see if AI Overview could figure out by going to tbtl.net and clicking on the button. This is what AI Overview says. Sending a too-bad-they're-late TBTL or belated birthday message is best done by immediately acknowledging the delay with humor or sincerity followed by warm wishes to show you still care. Use lighthearted phrases like fashionably late or extending the celebration and keep it personal to ensure they feel special despite the missed date. So the robot decided that there's something called a TBTL birthday message which stands for too bad they're late. It is. You monster.

It's so infuriating to me that it just can't – like back in the day when you were Googling something and there was no results, it would say, no results. This doesn't seem right.

Which is also kind of scary. When you do a Google and it just gives you that little like broken screen and you're like, oh, am I peering off the edge of the internet right now?

Right, exactly. It's very Shel Silverstein-y. Yes, thank you. Where the sidewalk ends. Where the internet ends, right? You're always like, oh, good. yeah um but uh i uh it just drives me crazy that it's just like it doesn't say oh this isn't a phrase that i'm unfamiliar with it just makes a bunch of shit up and there's no reason why we're just going to be creating the bullshit is going to seep into reality yes you know what i mean like it would be pretty amazing if like the seattle seahawks fan base did pick up something called the marsupial gurgle that they did at games to cheer on the team that would be really amazing Actually, you know what? I've turned around on this. And I do also.

I owe you a too-bad-they're-late birthday card, Andrew.

Yes, you do, all the way from November. Anyway, it's irritating. The world, as we discussed today, today got much heavier than I thought it would, given my temporary studio setup here. But I think we can all agree that it's tough out there. It's a tough time.

But we've got each other, and that's a lot for love. So give it a shot.

That's right. All right. all right we're halfway there whoa living on a prayer whoa oh that song i'm just gonna tell you

it's a beautiful song i love your song it's a beautiful song really everybody let's think long and hard before we sign up for living on a prayer for the karaoke there are roughly 11 key changes oh no it just keeps going whoa living

And you're like, okay, well, this is as high as this is going to go. And then just another just keeps going.

Oh, no. So your warning is to the people who choose that song. You're looking out for the singers, not the audience. Just saying know what you're getting into.

Know what you're getting into and just be aware that you think that it's gotten as high as it's going to get. And then somehow it gets higher. All right. That's going to do it for today's episode. But we're going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So please, if you can, tune in for that. I'm not going to lie to you. There's going to probably be some football talk tomorrow on the Friday before the Super Bowl. I don't know any way around it. So please, again, if you can come hang out with us for that, that would be awesome. In the meantime, everybody have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves. Stay safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.