Muse

We're on the beaches of Lake Erie, and we've got our radios tuned to Kid Leo on the home of the Buzzard, WMMS. Let's go with the hottest thing in town today by far, the Euclid Beach Band, and there's no surf in Cleveland. From the sound, you'd think the Beach Boys were doing this song, but it's really the Euclid Beach Band, a group of musicians who got together to cut this record for a special cause. The proceeds will go to the Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. Jim Gerrard of Scene Magazine and Richard Rising combine for the lyrics, which talk about how Cleveland has plenty to offer, even though there's no surf in Cleveland, USA.

Anytime as the Liberty Bell ranger chimes, we're all here in Cleveland, Ohio.

Ohio.

A single will be released for local airplay this Friday. It will go on sale next week. As I say on bandstand, it's got a good beat and you can dance to this one. I'll give it a 95. T-B-T-L

Who's that? Daddy. No, that's Andrew. Who's that? Daddy. No, that's Luke. Daddy's here and daddy is going to take care of you please don't refer to yourself as our daddy

my ideal man doesn't play the drums doesn't stay late at the bar does what he says and says what he does does not get a fancy lawyer that the other person can't afford if things get weird

sure it's done in the name of comedy but is debasing ourselves really that hilarious here

i've been talking with the most intelligent people in the world i never even noticed this will be blown way out of proportion you have my word on oh well all right hello good morning and welcome

everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live this is

special this is special my name is luke burbank i am your host first things first i love my job

coming to you once again from valley city ohio home of the valley city frog jump where we are bringing you tbtl-a-thon 17 jumping for joy we are going to be taking part in the valley city frog jump this coming weekend and we are here at andrew's actual elementary school location broadcasting to all of you uh through tbtl.net and youtube and across the internet and i'm just sitting there on my ipod whatever device you may be tuning in from we are going to be taking your calls today and all week, by the way. Ahoy, ahoy. 206-414-TBTL, 206-414-8285 here on episode 4770 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. We went out to grab some food last night and I ordered a very big, very healthy salad full of fresh, possibly unwashed lettuce. I wish I hadn't done that. And here we are in one of the states most affected by cyclosporiasis, which apparently is very hard to identify the source of because you don't get sick until a couple days after you eat the bad stuff. So let's cross our fingers that I make it through this week. I think I will. Speaking of literal major disasters, we do know where our missing box of audio equipment is. And we've sort of got more questions than answers. We'll update you on all of that. And we'll say hello to this young man, longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. They just want you to be normal, and clearly you're not. They know him as Andrew Walsh in these parts. Some call him Andy, and he's joining me right now.

Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. I now understand why you shared a little bit of your salad with me yesterday. I just want to make sure we're all in the same boat.

I want you to know that I did not realize about the chances of cyclosporiasis. I was trying to just be generous, but then afterwards I was like, well, mutual assured destruction.

Don't think I didn't wake up this morning and start thinking about the airplane ride home, because I read the same information you did. I'm like, oh, it takes a couple of days, huh?

Part of why they can't figure out what the source is is because by the time people are levitating above their toilet, It's been days, and they can't remember what they ate three to four days ago. So, yeah, fingers crossed that we make it through, and we make it home in one piece.

I always like splooch the turtle more as a concept than a lifestyle. I'll tell you that much. I consider him squat goals for us.

Squat goals. Squat goals. Show title?

Possibly. By the way, right over here to my right, left to right on your radio dial, is our friend TBTL employee numero uno, John the fire hydrant Sklarov. Fire at all. He's joining me now as well. Hey, buddy. Hey, my cheeseburger and fries not sharing a salad is looking better every moment. Yeah, it seemed like you might be making the less healthy choice, But in fact, you were looking out for your gutty works. You were also looking out for fire hydrants this morning on the drive from the Airbnb here to the community center to the point where I think you may have slightly gotten on Andrew's nerves. Andrew was trying to lay out the plan for the week and where we're going to be when. And, John, you were very obsessed with this one particular fire hydrant.

In my defense, as been noted by Andrew on the show, Valley City is a very rural place. There's not like, you know, it's spread out. Houses are far apart. and there was a few fire hydrants on this one road on the way to the school that had no structures around them. So I just, as you mentioned, yes, it's on the same line because there's several of them, but I don't understand the need for them in those specific places.

So let me explain what was happening in the car. I remember vaguely you being excited about a fire hydrant yesterday, which honestly, that sounds condescending, but I'm only surprised that it wasn't me because that sounds like my move to get excited about a fire hydrant, but I remember some talk of it. But then today, as we're rolling into Valley City proper, there was some question about what our schedule is going to look like tomorrow. And then I kept starting the conversation. You're like, OK, I just want you to know that the fire hydrant is coming up. I'm like, OK, the fire hydrant is coming up. So there's a lot of interruption about the fire hydrant coming up. But then what we learned is, well, there's one there. And I'm like, OK, so tomorrow when we leave, there's another one there. And then like every sentence I said, you pointed out another fire hydrant, which, yes, it was interrupting me, but also sort of belying the idea that the fire hydrants are exciting when there's one every 100 feet.

But why are they every 100 feet? Insurance purposes.

I'm guessing that when they went in and they added county water or whatever along the roadways, they put in these fire hydrants. So at some point, if there is a development or there is a home built, there will be access. But I'm with you, John. Thank you. A couple of them were notable because there was a fire hydrant and then just nothing for acres and acres around it. Well, thank you for seeing me. Andrew's punishment to you and I is that we now have to rank the fire hydrants of Liverpool Township.

That's how we ended that conversation. I'm like, no, you're right. There's tons of them, and on the way back, you guys have to rank them. I compared it to when you're trying to teach a kid not to smoke. Well, you shouldn't do this, but there was a trope of—

Now we have to smoke all the fire hydrants.

Instead of, oh, you want to smoke a cigarette? How about you smoke this whole carton? and then the kid gets sick and they never want to smoke again, supposedly. The 80s were a strange time.

I do think we should, on one of our trips out here, take a picture of a couple of the different fire hydrants, put them on the Sten's page or tbtl.net, and we can let the listeners rank them.

Yes. Am I hot or not for a fire hydrant? Yes.

I love it. Exactly. Now, Andrew, I know that you've got something that you'd like to share with us and the listeners from the heart. Oh, yes.

I have a bit of an apology to make.

I'm sorry. So sorry

You mentioned before the show to me, you said, Hey, can you maybe get the I'm sorry music because I'm going to need to apologize. I said, I've always got this right here. Always have it on standby assuming you'll need to apologize for something.

I should have this on a sound box in my pocket at all times. I apologize for things. The other day I was somewhere and something fell near me and I apologized for it. And the person said, you don't have to apologize. That was not you. So this time I do have an apology to make. You know, things were said on this show yesterday that it turns out hurt some feelings. And I think you know what I'm talking about, Luke. We were discussing some of the local fair here in Valley City. Oh, sure. And I was mentioning that there is an establishment, a fine dining establishment watering hole called Gandalf's in downtown Valley City. Now, the context for this is also important. Like when I grew up in Valley City, we didn't have any restaurants downtown. Now you've got a Samosky's down there. You've got yourself Gandalf. You have some other options. John and I even ate. It wasn't downtown, but we had some good barbecue the other night that I think was probably in Liverpool Township. All of that is to say, these are all great developments. And then what do I do within five minutes of opening up my microphone yesterday? But I start critiquing the logo of Gandalf, an establishment I haven't even set foot in yet and is a beloved community meeting place.

I went to the website yesterday after you trashed it. And I looked at the menu. It looks phenomenal. Yeah, and there's a big menu. There's all kinds of stuff. Even Luke's can eat there.

I don't know if you were able to hear this through fire hydrant talk, but I mentioned maybe tomorrow we can go to Gandalf's. That can be part of the plan as well. I don't know how many fire hydrants.

from here it is but um i'm sure we'll find out but all all of that is to say i was critiquing the logo not the restaurant itself and i just sort of thought like if you're going to name your i'm not trying to reopen wounds but my argument was luke backing away from my from my hot take

away from you're trying to back away from your hurtful words but then you're you're going forward back into your hurtful words.

I need to let the people know what I'm apologizing for. I was critiquing not even the font, which I thought was wizardly, but I was just saying if you're going to name your restaurant after probably the second most famous wizard in the world, would you say? Who's the most famous wizard? Merlin? The fact that you said it with a question.

Yeah, I mean, I'm losing confidence

in this whole thing.

I think it's arguable that Gandalf is. I think, what do you think, John? Is Gandalf the most famous wizard in the world at this point?

I think, yeah, since the Pierre Jackson movies came out. Like, maybe 30 years ago or 25 years ago, Merlin.

I would say he's leapfrogged Merlin. Like, we haven't had a good Merlin-related movie or book in a while.

Yeah, which is actually, I mean, I think we stumbled on something kind of interesting here. It was never an actual demarcation. It was bound to happen. What episode are we on?

4,770 in the collector's series.

At some point, even since the books were written, the Tolkien books were written, I think Merlin would have been the world's most famous wizard. And then sometime in the past 30 years, that changed. But it changed kind of slowly as Gandalf seeped into the culture more and more, which is interesting. I think so. Well, I think. I use that word loosely. But anyway, I just thought that maybe a wizard could have been incorporated into the logo of this local restaurant since it's called Gandalf's. Instead, there's a puppy dog's face in the logo. I love puppy dogs, as you guys know. It's a very cute puppy dog face. I thought I was just trying to maybe be a little playful, but I will say that when we got done with the show immediately, our friend Brian came in here. Now, Brian has been managing our experience here. He put an Ethernet for us before we got here. He's been managing it wonderfully, by the way. He's installed air conditioners now.

Two air conditioning units now.

Including one that he brought from his own home. Like, I'm telling you, this guy.

We're double-cheeked up here with air conditioners.

This guy has done everything for our comfort and happiness here. And to bring you this broadcast, no joke. And he came in after our show, like immediately, and he said, how did it go? And we said it went really well. And I think maybe he volunteered or you asked, did you listen? He said, yeah, I caught part of it. And somebody said, what did you think? Which is always a really bad question when you're talking about TBTL. And he said, well, his first words were, well, you went after Gandalf. And I legitimately sat with that all day and night. I felt legitimately bad. So I apologize not only to Gandalf the Wizard, Gandalf's the restaurant. Gandalf the Gray. But also Brian and Gandalf the White and Brian for insulting Gandalf. Because, again, that was not I did not mean any offense towards the establishment itself.

And we were going to go there yesterday, but it was a Monday and they were closed.

And so they're usually open on Mondays, but their hearts were broken.

I think the plan is that we are going to try to go there tomorrow and, you know, make up for our hurtful comments with buying a lot of food and tipping really well, I think is the plan.

Andrew, you do mean all offense to Saruman, though, right?

Saruman can still absolutely take a long walk off a short pier.

Saruman's is in Brunswick, and it has a terrible menu.

Saruman's has a picture of a cat as their logo, which is equally confusing. Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way. Now on to the other pressing matter of the week, really. You never know in this business of show, guys, what stories and what developments and what plot lines are going to truly captivate the imagination of the country. But I think we've got one here, and it's called Where the Hell is Our Box of Equipment? Yes. And yesterday we were out. I was making questionable salad orders, and you got an update on your phone, Andrew. I did. Stopped you and the rest of us in our tracks. What's going on with the box?

This is incredible. So this is the box of equipment that I shipped myself. It was supposed to get here Wednesday so that we could use it to do the setup. Got lost in the mail, literally. Didn't know where it was. Had to buy extra equipment to set all this up and broadcast to you. But I still thought, well, at some point this box is going to arrive in Ohio. I don't need it here in Ohio anymore. In fact, it's just going to cost me more money now to ship it right back to seattle where i need this stuff so i've been kind of bummed about that i was almost hoping it wouldn't arrive and that it would stay in seattle and i could pick it up there but yesterday when we were at dinner um i think i was texting my dad and i said he said that we did a good job yesterday by the way i appreciate he said you guys do a great job which is nice and i said thanks i'll tell the boys i please don't be mean

To Cleveland. I guess I call you guys the boys. I didn't even realize that until I'm reading this now. I said, thanks. I'll tell the boys, now that day one is done, I'm feeling better. Because my dad got to see some of that patented Andrew Prethon anxiety the other day.

Well, there was a lot of moving parts.

The equipment wasn't arriving.

Some of the parts weren't moving fast enough. Unfortunately. So, no, I think you had every reason to have a bit of anxiety.

So, I tell him, I'm feeling better now. And he wrote, I'm glad. And then he wrote, I doubt if this will make you feel any better. And I'll let you inspect the contents when you get here. But he sent me three photos of the box. It has arrived at my parents' house. Again, it was supposed to arrive on Wednesday. It arrives on Monday afternoon instead. The top of the box doesn't look too bad. It looks like you can see I applied a lot of tape.

No, this is the first I've actually seen the top of it.

A lot of tape. I was really careful taping this box up because it was a heavy box. It cost me almost $150 to ship it here because, of course, you ship it priority. And then I flipped to picture number two, and it's not really a box. It's more like pulp. It's like whatever cardboard is when it's completely disintegrated. I'm going to show this to you again. You've got to be kidding me.

I know you've seen this, but just breathe it in. The end of the box, you know, the kind of, yeah, I guess you call it the end, is just absolutely torn apart like a feral animal. Yes. smelled some kind of a food source inside of our box of equipment and then just absolutely tore into it. There's a gaping hole. Gaping.

It is unclear if our equipment is still in there, if it fell out. And then the other picture is kind of similar. It shows you kind of the other side is also busted out. You mentioned it's like an animal crawled in. I would actually say it's more like an animal crawled out. It's more like a –

Did you pack a wild animal accidentally with the gear? Of course I did. And could that be part of the issue? Oh, I think that might be the source of the issue.

It was all the frogs. Yes. No, it looks like it's like a wildebeest. It's like I shipped a wildebeest, and it came busting out. It's not even a hole. It's just like a rip that goes from, like, the northwest corner of the box and then rips all the way down the seam and then across the bottom of the box. And somebody took priority mail tape, almost like an ironic insult or something. They took extra tape that says priority mail and then banded it back up together. So that wasn't on there when you shipped it? And look how terribly it's been applied. So somebody tried to tie this back together.

The world's least effective suturing job of trying to put the package back together.

It's an insult. It's an insult.

Do you know what it looks like, Andrew? Yeah. It looks like you had multiple different cardboard boxes that was fashioned together with tape. It doesn't even look like it was originally one box. Can you zoom in and see if our hacky sacks are still in there?

I was going to say, kudos to our- That'd be the first thing that would fall out. To my friend Pinter. We were having dinner with her last night. And that's when we got this text message. and she immediately said oh no the hacky sacks which like there's some pretty expensive equipment in here but we do have those homemade hacky sacks i believe listener matthew made for us so hopefully they are still in there i have a book in there for my dad oh yeah by the way i guess some of this some of the shipping cost was for a book i was sending to my dad well we can prorate that or john will work that out with dad we're gonna need some i'm gonna who are our accountants

what are they called hudson hayworth hayworth we'll work it out with the folks at hayworth bookkeepers price waterhouse cooper um this is what i was saying last night when we were looking at the pictures but i'll just say it again uh here for the broadcast i'm so confused about this because what i see is a package that was absolutely destroyed and that if i were the person who was the link in the chain where the package got this beat up if i backed the truck over it accidentally or if i i mean that couldn't even just come from dropping it that's like someone was angry at our box of equipment exactly so if i was the person in charge of the box when this happened to it i believe what i would do because i'm a honorable upstanding person is throw it in a field and pretend right it never existed like all those newspapers you never delivered like when i was north central outlook true like the time that i was valet parking cars at a golf tournament and I drove someone's Jaguar and I didn't know, I thought it was a pull up gear shifter and it was a push down and I pulled the entire gear shift off. Oh no. And it was just a weird little metal stick where the thing went looking like the people in The Little Mermaid when Ursula steals their voice for some imagery. I know exactly. You can picture that, right?

It's very specific, yeah.

And what did I do? I gently put the gear shift back on. I parked it in the furthest corner of the golf parking lot and I made a mental note, I am not bringing that car back.

I put it in neutral and set it next to a cliff.

That's right. That's what I would do if I had damaged this box so profoundly. At that point, I would just say, what box? Yeah. This person, somebody, both did that to the box, then tried to tape it up, then sent it on its way. And why was it delayed? And what happened? No notes, nothing. It just, oh, here's your box. I got two emails from the U.S.

Were they hoping we wouldn't notice? Like, as long as they don't look at the side of the box, which is absolutely ripped to hell, maybe we'll get away with this?

I received two emails today from the United States Postal Service. One of them says, your box has been delivered. It was left on the front porch. No note or anything. Just your box has been delivered. And then I received this not long after. We want your feedback regarding case number 897-380-49. Tell them they've got to download the show. Just send them a picture of that. To serve you better in the future, we'd love your feedback about the service you received. So this is not the tracking number. This is the case number that they gave me, as Snoop Dogg once said. Murder was the case. Murder was the case. They absolutely murdered our box. So anyway, I don't know. Do we have any feedback for the United States Postal Service?

I mean, first of all, we know it wasn't listener Eric in Seattle.

Because he texted back.

Because he texted you immediately. That wasn't me, which honestly is a little suspicious.

Well, I had to send him the photo because he, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Let's talk about this. I sent Eric the photo.

I thought you were going to end that with O'Reilly's.

He would have done a better job. Sorry, Eric. eric uh had nothing to do with this honestly eric has been nothing but a a helpful hand and a listening ear as i've been um dealing with this but he's a listener of ours who works out of the post office that i shipped this from he has a mail route and um i've been keeping him up to date and he even i think he texted me during the show yesterday right and said hey it looks like it's gonna arrive at your folks house tomorrow i'm like great and then when we got these photos from my dad I sent it to Eric and his first response was oh my god I didn't do it which was just like like you say very very suspicious but I do believe Eric but also he said he asked me a question that a lot of people have been asking me which is well did you insure it and let's talk about this idea of insurance from the company that you're hiring to do a job for you I know it's a very standard thing like yeah you want to insure what's inside I think the postal service defaults to like giving you automatically a hundred dollars worth of insurance on what's inside but we mentioned there's like a three hundred dollar microphone in there so it's already beat the hundred it's probably i'm putting the value at this probably around five hundred bucks of the contents inside and and now they're worth more because they've traveled around the country and seen some things but um i remember they asked me do you want to insure this and i said no i didn't get the insurance at the post office because and i i didn't i didn't ponder it too much in the moment I'm just shipping this thing off. But I remember having a flash of like, well, why would I why would I why would I pay you to insure it? I'm paying you to do the job. Just do the job. And now and Eric was like, hey, did you insure it? And I don't think I responded.

But I consider this your response to that question.

I was sitting there. This is not towards Eric. Again, I want to say Eric and Gandalf. They're both in the TVTL. Good. OK, absolutely. but that's a hell of a screw right like yeah to say to be a company and be like hey um i'm gonna give you 150 to do something and then the company says okay we'll take your money and we'll do that thing probably yeah but do you want to bet that we won't you want to bet that we won't give us more money and i'll bet you we won't do it right is that how is i mean that's kind of what insurance And it's just like, well, you can kind of hedge the bet. Like, we might just screw this up. We might just, like, lose your stuff. And this wasn't even a loss. This is, again, like, I don't know what happened. Like, somebody did something to this box and practically destroyed it. And it's kind of like, well, I should have paid them more money because there's a chance that the money I paid them wasn't enough for them to do their job.

It's like the restaurant bringing me my salad last night and then saying, would you like to ensure that it doesn't have cyclosporiasis in it? Exactly. And it's a $5 up charge, but we can guarantee we will not give you explosive diarrhea. And to your point, Andrew, what I would say is, well, that's the expectation of eating here.

Like if I have to buy insurance, maybe I just shouldn't be using you. It's a real mafia type tactic.

You're like, oh, it would be a real shame if anything happens to that box. You want to pay to make sure nothing happens to that box. This seems, Andrew, like an argument I would be making typically. Like I actually assumed you would have gotten the insurance. I think you tend to be a little more belt and suspenders than I am. But your logic is absolutely airtight. Thank you.

I'm getting roasted in the comments section on YouTube. Never read the comments. It says, ye gods, he didn't insure it. And then what's the emoji where it's like? It's the Edward Munch scream. Yeah, because it's blue on top and yellow on the bottom.

But I don't, I mean, to those in the comments section, to the people hearing this on.

their podcast device.

To Brian, to the people at Gandalf's.

Yeah, I mean, you know, from sea to shining sea. I defy someone to explain to me why it is that you would be required to pay extra to make sure that the company does the thing you're paying them for.

It almost makes more sense because, like, when we're insuring any of our objects, it's upon us to say, you know what, this is valuable to me, and I'm not exactly sure how this is going to turn out. whatever it is our home our car whatever our valuables so we go to a third party and so to almost make more sense if i were to use the postal service but then think to myself but you know something could go wrong i'm gonna go to a third party and buy some insurance about for this you know that that makes more sense to me but paying the company for insurance the same people that you're paying to do the job just there's something logically unsound about that to me we need to also

figure out who we talked to about not getting charged to mail this absolute abomination of a box because first of all we can't even can't even mail that box no i don't know and by the way i

paid for that box yeah um i here's what i think we should do is we should get our money back and then ship it using anything but the u.s postal service my apologies eric but like do you really want that to be shipped now now this is the thing though what are the chances

it happens twice this might be the safest it was like you know speaking of foodborne illness you know it's like eating at jack-in-the-box in the 80s after the e-coli thing ripped through it yeah they were probably being the most careful with their stuff like i don't honestly like you know unfortunate things happen in the world and i don't think that this means that the usps is doing this a lot or that we shouldn't use it again it's a i think a great organization um but so I guess I feel like I wouldn't even think it was crazy to mail it back with the USPS I don't know I think what I want to do is because here's the thing if we FedEx it back to your house yeah then FedEx is going to just charge us what they charge us our only chance for getting this back to your house at no additional charge is to use the very people who completely destroyed the box and delivered it days and days late well either way I don't think the postal

service is going to both return the money spent and ship it for free i'd be really shocked about that i feel confident i could get them to do both oh you think you can do both because i was thinking either way we're either going to eat the cost on the way out here and maybe get it free shipped back or they return that money and then we have to pay it back to them to ship it back you were saying last night we should call your guy in ohio i think we should go to the west because the postal service a postal worker in Westlake Ohio called me in Seattle on Friday morning and said I heard you're missing a box that's supposed to be here and I said yes and it needs to be there by this weekend because I'm going it's filled with a bunch of equipment and I need it for a gig and his response was uh-oh and I need to find uh-oh Kevin yes we got to get uh-oh Kevin on the line I think

he's going to be our key to getting this thing uh sent back and at no charge to us and honestly like hey if it's just auto insured for a hundred bucks send it our way usps because definitely that

seems pretty jacked up i was actually thinking that we should just go into the west lake post office because i've been meaning to visit it for years we can show photos we could even take the

damn box that's what i think i think the box is going to be you know habeas corpus produce the corpse produce the box habeas boxes that's a show title too we got too many show titles hey uh we We are taking your phone calls, being that this is our TBTL-a-thon week, 206-414-TBTL, 206-414-8285. Call us with your shipping disasters. What if I just start running this like an old-fashioned talk show? I love it. East of the Rockies. Yes, that's right. Wild card line. Call in 206-414-TBTL. Call in with whatever you want to talk about. It's one of the fun little elements this week is that we are streaming, of course, live on YouTube. And we are taking calls from all of you, talking about whatever it is that you feel like. Should we go ahead and grab a call?

Yeah, it looks like we just got a call coming in right now.

Okay, hold on. Let me play the appropriate sound effect. Hi, you are on TBTO.

Is it me?

It's you. We hear you. Who's this?

This is Dana in Lexington, Kentucky.

Hi, Dana in Lexington. How you doing? I'm good. How are you all? You know, I've just violated the number one rule of talk radio, which is you're never like sometimes have you ever called a real talk radio show dana uh no well if you ever do there aren't if there are any left the producers will often say all right um you're gonna hear a little noise before like the line is live and you're on the air and just don't ask the host how they're doing because supposedly the idea is that a radio host get tired of every caller reflexively saying you know hey there how you doing

and I guess they're out of ways to describe how they're doing. It's like one of the main rules of talk radio. And then I just immediately asked you, Dana, how you're doing. So I apologize. But how are you doing?

I am doing quite well. Thank you very much.

How about this? What are you doing right now? What are you up to? It's a Tuesday. It's a Tuesday afternoon where you are.

Yes. And I'm in your time zone, so this is awesome. This is my lunchtime. This is perfect timing.

Nice, nice, nice. What did you have for lunch?

uh i went to jimmy john's don't at me what do you oh why would anyone at you for that

sandwich is so fast you'll freak what did you get what's your jimmy john's order dana

uh number four turkey tom okay solid do you order at mike's way don't do that there they get mad

no honestly if i went to jersey mike's i don't think i would order at mike's way I keep hearing about this.

What does Mike's Way actually mean, Andrew? Well, I can tell you, but Dana, do you want to field it? Do you know what Mike's Way is?

There's oil and vinegar involved. Yeah, I love that. Maybe some oregano.

I think you nailed it. I think it's oil, vinegar, oregano, and it might involve – does it involve a pickle or something? I can look this up. I know.

That sounds pretty good to me, Dana. You don't like that? Too much going on for you?

Okay, here it is. onions shredded lettuce tomatoes red wine vinegar olive oil oregano and salt that's mike's way where

is the closest uh either jimmy john's or uh what's it called again what's the mike's jersey mike's near us here in ohio i'm on it thank you john's on the case danny you've got us hungry for

lunch what did you want to talk about today well i have a pizza hut story for you i'm all ears story great okay um this um this is back back when i was maybe 13 or 14 years old my family and i used to go to this one dine-in pizza hut and and this was in kentucky got most yes okay um we used to see the same waiter and now all the time i mean we didn't go that frequently but we went in there often enough that we recognized him he recognized us and he was probably this maybe i don't know 18 or 19 year old kid named ryan kelly okay i don't know why we knew his whole thing we knew right he may have had the whole name on his name tag i don't know but anyway fast forward to 20 years later i'm on the dating apps i'm on match.com and i matched with this guy named ryan kelly and i saw his picture and i immediately recognized him

and i thought how freaking weird is this now can i ask dana uh were you around ryan's age when your

family was going to the pizza hut i was maybe five years younger than he was did you sort of

think he was cute did you have any thought about ryan back in the pizza hut days

i mean i was on the cusp of hormonal explosion so maybe just like a wild wing dove will provide

the show title edge of seven real edge of 17 energy from dana a young dana well

this this was around the time that i was kind of in a redhead phase he's a redhead

oh okay do y'all know that it is the name ryan kelly just well that's my mom's maiden name and Did you know, by the way, did you hear that y'all come out? Just by virtue of talking to Dana in Lexington, that southern bell is coming out in me. It's an actual kind of medical, you might say miracle or just odd quirk that I am not a redhead. Because my biological half-brother looks like Andy Dalton. Fiery red hair. As I understand it, my biological father, red hair. His father was called red. Wow. That's how red his hair was. It somehow skipped a generation with me, but by all rights, I should also be a redhead. But that's neither here nor there. So you match with, or at least you see Ryan Kelly on the apps 20 years later. What did you do, Dana?

Yes. I wrote to him, and I told him. I said, hey, I think you used to work at Pizza Hut, and I recognize you. And, you know, some other sundry things in the email. Now, when he wrote back, he said, oh, my gosh, I'm so flattered that anybody would remember me after that about this time. And we exchanged some emails, and we decided we were going to meet up for breakfast one morning. So we met up for breakfast.

Now, can I ask something, Dana? Breakfast just seems like an interesting first date meal to have. Was this because that was what the schedule permitted? Were you not maybe romantically that interested?

and you thought this will keep the fires of lust at bay because we're having moons over my hammy? Like, what is with breakfast as the first date?

That's one of the horniest meals you could have just said, though. Moons over my hammy? That was.

Right behind Rudy Tootie Fresh and Fruity. How did you guys pick breakfast for the date?

That was all him. We were originally going to go to the... There's this restaurant that we had in town that was run by a guy from, like, Uganda or something. I don't know. It was some African country, and it was a really good restaurant, but it wasn't open that day. He had suggested Sunday.

I see.

We were going to do dinner, but it wasn't open on Sunday. So he suggested breakfast. And normally, I mean, I'm at home, you know. I'm at home, parked in front of the TV, watching my CBS Sunday morning.

There you go. That's the move.

I don't want to leave. Yes.

So he deprived you of your CBS Sunday morning viewing to go to this breakfast date?

I think he did. Yeah, he did.

Well, how'd it go?

Well, we were there for a few hours chatting about stuff. It was a pretty pleasant experience. And we had our little date, and we parted ways. And then a couple days later, I got the nicest rejections email service.

Oh, Dana. I thought you were going to say you got a Pizza Hut gift certificate in the mail from Ryan that he'd had kicking around for all those years.

Let's go share a personal pan pizza.

I'm sorry to hear that. Did he say, and this would be really cruel, did he say book it? That was a book it. No, he didn't. No, he didn't, but I'm very familiar with that. Would you have, and this is obviously kind of personal, Dana, You don't have to answer this, but would you have been interested in an additional date? And was there, thought for you anyway, a possibility of a romantic spark?

There could have been. I try not to be just a, you know, one and make your decision kind of thing. He seemed okay. He said, you know, compatibility is important, but I'm a big believer in attraction. you can't force it i mean it was kind of a little bit cruel i guess i'm gonna say like there's lots

of ways to there's lots of ways to maybe let someone know that this isn't maybe the connection but i don't think i don't think we need to get into too many specifics how about like hey so fun meeting you didn't feel like maybe we clicked in that way but i'd love to keep in touch and uh you know whatever but like yeah we don't have to get it's not a uh you know it's not a a survey how did we do checking through the various different you know things we would love your feedback yeah if i understand right dana you hadn't sent that email to ryan kelly right and

honestly this is a real question about dating because i have very little experience in this realm i'm not saying that uh as a joke i'm serious i've never like kind of like done any kind of like formal dating in that way like after you go on one date with someone is there an expectation that the one person has to like say we're either moving on or we're not like couldn't this have just casually just like oh we never connected again after that like did he have to reject you

that's ghosting is that ghosting after one date dana what is the amount of dates is there an amount of dates in which it's not considered ghosting in your mind in other words after one date can both people just not re-engage and is that is that rude behavior or is is that okay

um from my experience it's well this is all from back in the days before coaching was even a thing um but i would say if you don't hear anything it's it's fine that counts as a rejection i don't

have to be formally told well but how about you how about if you were on a date with someone one date and it wasn't really it didn't really click for you that way would you feel like you needed to let them know or would you consider just not following up well you always you kind of want to

give it a couple of days to see if you you know who's what it's like yeah it's like buying a gun okay corral or something yeah do like need a waiting period you want to yes so you don't look too anxious the whole a little bit of game playing sure but at you know if somebody's feeling in it then reach out if they're not then just let it go yeah like a spore in the wind now um was

ryan uh i'm sure you had a three-hour breakfast you got into this was he still at the pizza hut had he was he still working there was he the manager by then or something

no he actually is he's a uh like an assistant professor at a community college around here

I don't think the Pizza Hut was even at that point I think the Pizza Hut had been bulldozed and they made it into a parking lot for a friction

they did they paved Pizza Hut put up a parking lot

you guys we have too many

I think I might have just unfortunately I might have shifted into the Counting Crows version of that song versus the Joni Mitchell version and I want to apologize to everyone well Dana I'm sorry to hear that that's how that went down but that is fascinating I also – is this true, Andrew, that there is a rumor – I don't want to make anything official that isn't official, but there's some – or maybe, John, you'd know the answer to this. There's some discussion amongst some of the listeners who are coming out on Sunday that they might try to meet up at a pizza hut somewhere.

Oh, I don't want to – I'll tell you what I think I heard, but I don't want to put this out there as if this is an official meetup. But I thought I saw some chatter between tens who are in this area. We're in Valley City. Worcester, Ohio is not too far from here. I don't know what that drive would be, but one of our listeners who's in Worcester said that there's one of those original style pizza huts in Worcester, Ohio. And so I thought I saw some people saying, well, maybe we could meet up at the pizza hut, then move on to the frog jump on Sunday. But I don't know if that's an actual plan. That might be what we call an AW hallucination. It's like an AI hallucination. It comes from Andrew Walsh. So I'm not exactly sure about that. But if there's any conversation about that, you know, you guys can work it out yourselves because I don't know what I'm talking about.

Quickly, though, is there anything that we wanted to say about Sunday? Because I know that people have been trying to figure out what the plan is exactly. Like, I'll say my understanding of it, and then you guys can maybe tell me where I'm, if I've got this right or not. So this is the, you know, the 65th annual Valley City Frog Jump Day here in Valley City where everybody's going to get together. there's going to be this frog jump competition we are sponsoring a frog we are going to go catch a frog tonight apparently um and then i i should we should check with the daves i don't know if they've actually reserved a gazebo for us or not but my understanding is they were going to set aside a little area like a pavilion or something where you know the tens that are able to make it can just kind of hang out um and then i think the plan is we're just going to be around we're going to be jumping our frog we're going to be chatting with folks uh who are there We're going to be accepting the trophy for champion. We better, or those T-shirts. All those T-shirts are going to end up in some other country, and little kids are going to be wearing them like Denver Broncos Super Bowl champion from the 90s or whatever. You know what I mean? That was weird I picked them instead of Buffalo, because Buffalo famously lost a bunch.

Yeah, but Elway, before they won in the late 90s, they lost a few or something. You are in Cleveland. I'd be very careful about Broncos winning championships talk around here.

But all that is to say, I don't think we're planning a barbecue like we did in Friendship where we're cooking food and stuff. I think it's just going to be kind of a pretty cash hangout, right? There will be food and stuff, I'm sure, that is for sale because this is a community get-together. I think a bunch of people come out for this. And, yeah, when we know what the scoop is as far as if we have a special little area set aside, we will let everybody know.

Yeah. And I don't know really the timing yet, but I would assume, you know, I know, again, the event starts at 1030. I don't think we'll probably be here at the crack of 1030, but we'll probably get here, you know, sometime in the late morning or early afternoon and get going. But we'll have more details as the week goes on. But we did want to let people know that, yes, this is a public event. We're not performing or doing a live show or anything. And Luke and I are going to have to, like, find I keep on picturing us hiding behind a bush somewhere, recording some TBTL segments. I can't see that going wrong.

Yes, officer, there's some men behind a bush where my children are trying to recreate.

Don't worry, they're just podcasting. That is worse. So anyway, you and I are going to be trying to do some recording as well with John.

And I'll be filming something for CBS Sunday morning.

Yeah, so we're going to be a little bit busy, but we'll be saying hello. I think I got some family coming out to that and stuff. Excellent. So it's just a fun family event. And I'm excited because I've actually, despite my Valley City bona fides, I've never actually been to the Frog Jump before. So we're going to solve that this Sunday. Dana, are you going to make it up from Kentucky?

uh i should yes i hadn't thought about it but it's kind of a it's a hike only i have a request though yes you're you're gonna be all gathered and i guess you're a karaoke dude so why don't you do work up work up a nice rousing version of i ain't got no home by clarence frogman henry oh sure i ain't got no home doesn't he go high on that song he does yeah that's a great song

And then he does Low, too, right? Mm-hmm. I don't know. That's on the A Date with John Waters CD, which I cannot recommend highly enough. It is just this, I mean, it's a CD that John Waters put together. of some of his favorite tracks and they are uh it's got johnny are you queer on it i don't know it's got uh ain't got no home it's got sometimes i sometimes i wish i had a gun he's just got a bunch of weird john waters uh you know sort of uh endorsed songs and um i highly highly recommend it but okay i'll be working on that um and uh if our frog wins the frog jump maybe i'll break into an impromptu Clarence Gate Mouth Brown performance. For you, Dana.

Thank you.

And Dana, I assume if you're coming up, you're bringing your own frog, but if not, we can point you in the direction of

some frog puns out here. We're going to know how to catch them, because we'll have already gotten some tonight. I'm going out on Friday night with the CBS crew. I'm going to be the world's most expert frog capturer by the end of this week. Well, Dana, thank you so much for calling in, and good luck with everything, okay?

Well, thank you. Thank you for saving me from having to record that as a voice memo.

Well, do send those in, though, any time. We love hearing from you, okay?

All right. Thank you.

All right. Bye-bye, Dana.

You're welcome this week.

Thanks. Okay, speaking of, well, you know what? Let's do this first. Thank you for being a 10. We'll just remind folks that this is, of course, TBTL-a-thon 17, Jumping for Joy, and we're out here. We're broadcasting live from this community center. uh previously andrews elementary school uh because this is the week the one week out of the year where we remind everybody that this is all listener sponsored this can only happen due to the generous support of you the tens of listeners if you go to tbtl.net right now you can click on the donate button and we've got all of the different thank you gifts listed and the different levels and if you're having any trouble at all john is here uh like ready to answer any of your questions ready to make happen whatever you need to have us do to get you in the in sort of in the donation mode this is we're going on what is well I mean this is our 17th thon so let's just call it like 17 years that we have not had any sort of real I mean we worked for APM but let's be honest American Public Media hired us because we already had the donations from the tens and then they paid us with the money that you all were donating so for almost the entire history of this show it is only existed because of the donations from the listeners and it's been an incredible thing to get to be a part of and we'd like to keep doing it for a little while so uh anything you want to add to this john related to the thon fundraising yeah i think you

covered pretty much uh the the gist of it and we talked a lot about yesterday so i don't want to bore folks too much but it is the time of year where the tens make sure we can keep doing this which we're incredibly grateful for so thank you to everyone um my dogs need to be fed so thank you Yeah, they're grown like a dang weed. She's a grown girl.

I had to buy dog food for the poodles when I was watching them. Yeah, it's expensive. Dude, it was like $70 for a bag of dog food.

Both our pups have sensitive stomachs, so it's even more expensive. But anyway, but yeah, no, so. Do you want John's dogs to go hungry?

Oh, my God. You can save a dog too. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Hold on. Let me get Sally Struthers.

No. But so, yeah, as far as donation, if you want to make a gift, if you give once a year and this is the time you do it, go to tbtl.net slash donate and you can fill out the form, plug in your amount and thank you very much. All the thank you gifts that we covered and we discussed yesterday, the baseball cards, the trading cards. Yeah, the TBTL trading cards. You can see what that all looks like on that page. So if if if if seeing a particular thank you gift helps make maybe motivate you to give a little bit, you can see what they look like there.

And one thing, if I can, you know, obviously, if you're if you've been donating and you want to just keep that rolling, that's awesome. And we'll be sending you whatever thank you gifts align with that level of donation. But if you've been thinking, I could probably do maybe five more bucks a month or 10 more bucks a month. That also would be amazing, because one of the things we've noticed already this thought is people have been super generous. Some people have been increasing their donations, which is incredible. And then some people have been emailing saying, hey, this is really not the year for me. You know, job changes, things like that.

I got an email and I'm not going to say this person's name. This is somebody who has been giving to us, certainly since we've been an independent entity. And I think probably when they at 8 p.m. too. And there was this very, like, very lovely note of like, hey, I suddenly lost my job. I'm interviewing for jobs next week. I'm sorry. I can't give right now kind of thing. But they did mention TPTL has been a bright spot since they've lost their job. that's awesome and that's awesome that that tbtl has been there as a comfort and so you say this i think frequently luke like some years you can't give some years maybe you have to give a little less and that's totally cool because yeah the the beauty of the tense community is the is it is a community and and it kind of it's not that the tens are out there doing the accounting per se but it always kind of works out of like yeah if you can give you give if you can't

you can't and will the show's going to happen kind of yeah so if you're somebody who for whom

it's it's going okay right now and you know again five more bucks a month ten more bucks a month isn't going to be a huge difference for you that would be great because again that will probably offset somebody who's not having that kind of year so just something to think about yeah and

uh we're sorry andrew real quick i'll just say like again like if you're giving monthly and

you're talking about fire hydrants again if you're giving you like to sponsor a fire hydrant

um now that's interesting that's your sponsor fire hydrant in medina county if you are happy with like if you're giving your you know 15 bucks a month or whatever 10 bucks a month and that and that fits your budget and you're happy to get the trading cards thank you you don't have to do a thing uh that's awesome thank you so much uh but if you do like you said luke if you have questions or concerns or don't hopefully not concerns but if you have any questions about what you're giving or how to change your gift or whatever it may be, please email me, john, at tbtl.net, and we'll make sure to make it work for you because, you know, the show will be here. But we're, you know.

Yeah, we appreciate wherever you're at in the process. And again, nobody, if you're somebody who's, this isn't the year for you, please, please, please don't feel bad for one minute. It's slightly heartbreaking when someone feels like they need to really, like, apologize to us about not being able to support the show because we totally understand that's just life. So, again, thank you to everyone who has supported us and everybody who is going to be supporting us.

Yeah, and it is about that community. And I want to say something here, Luke, that is a little bit sincere and hopefully not too back patty on our own behalf. I think that you and I are both very averse to saying nice things about ourselves or about the show. It makes us feel deeply uncomfortable. But you mentioned how before we went independent three years ago and almost exactly three years ago now as we enter our fourth year as a company, that before that, of course, we worked for American Public Media. And we did that for seven years. And that was a good experience in a lot of ways. And I wouldn't trade some of those years for – maybe not for anything. I mean, everybody's got a price. Everybody's got a price. But, no, I mean, we had some really great experiences there and did work for some really great people. We met a certain John Sklaroff. Exactly, and I wouldn't trade that guy for anything, and I don't think you guys would either, but in all seriousness, when we left APM, this is going to sound so whatever, when we left APM, we did it mostly for the listeners. like there were a lot of reasons why we left but the main one was we weren't able to do the show that we wanted to do anymore and a big part of that was the commercials that we were playing and and i know that might sound like a small thing we're used to commercials and podcasts now i mean i don't know about you guys i have one podcast i listen to daily that i just know i hit play and then i hit forward four times dink dink dink dink what is that that's two minutes of commercials right and we don't have that and that was something that like was we're sort of losing the... But Andrew, how will you learn about SimpliSafe? How will you learn about Carvana? Well, maybe if you play the same ad twice in a row, which was something that was happening to our podcast. And we were just like, this isn't good. And there was also some kind of talk at the network level of kind of like, well, you got all these... You have these listeners. We're not promoting your show at all, but we think we can reach out to them directly and get more money from them. And we're like, wait, wait, no, no. These are our listeners. We care about these people, and we're not trying to take advantage of anybody. And they didn't use that language, and I'm not trying to make APM sound like the evil empire. But we saw things kind of shifting a little bit. And we said, we need to protect the show and we need to protect the listeners. And that is why we did that. And that is why we're doing this now.

Yeah. We were talking in the drive out here when when John was between fire hydrant sightings about a particular conversation that we had when we were at that other company where the idea was, yeah, to try to identify the tens who might consider, you know, putting TVTL in their estate plans. and that felt to us like a bridge kind of too far um you know because it's like we again we're so grateful for all the support but it's like we just want to be able to do this for our job and and you know feel like we're going to be able to fund the operation we do not need we don't need to identify the listeners who who might have more resources to be extracted from like we're very protective like you said andrew of the tens because you know they're the whole reason this show exists and so we really did not want um we did not want anyone coming to them and asking for stuff that we didn't really think was you know kind of made sense for them and so anyway here we are in a andrews elementary school talking to a webcam so it's clearly worked out well we're not in your parents basement anymore that's a big upgrade and we got rid of those lunch boxes so a

couple of w's for the team i don't want to pile on here and keep this going too much but because you guys are not good self you know patting yourselves on the back as the guys that like you know i know i'm part of the operation but you guys do the show every day and then i've been for so long one of the reasons i want to when when andrew called me up one day and said were you serious about maybe coming with

pptl if we ever left the network one of the reasons i was serious is how much care and consideration you you two i mean i i hope i have the same absolutely you guys how much you really do and how protective you feel of the community and so to know that you guys like you said it's like not about extracting every dollar from every donor was such a priority for you guys i that was a big part of me you wanted the challenge i was the fundraising person you wanted to work with

two guys who consistently make decisions yeah that hurt the business hey guys maybe we should

don't you know no but like it really is i think it really speaks to the two and and don't get big egos i want to hear you talk about the rest of this week like yeah to see you two have really that much care for the supporters of the show and the listeners in general just i that really made the decision easy for me as a fundraiser to be like yeah like this is ethical fundraising this is the way it should be it shouldn't be about maximizing revenue profit and again not right you said andrew not to crap all over apm but like really make it about the priority about the show and the audience and what's best for them i that was really big for me and wanted to come with you guys to do this you did the appreciate that you you did the fundraising equivalent of putting

yourself in a barrel and throwing yourself over niagara falls when you hitched yourself to our

wagon yes appreciate it but here we are again it's working amazingly thanks to all of you folks that are watching this right now on on youtube and also folks who are just hearing this uh you know days or weeks later thank you really for um thanks for being a 10 and thanks for letting this be our our job well a big part of our job this week andrew uh and john is to um enter the valley city frog jump competition which means tonight uh we are going to be going out with the daves or one of

the days one or both of the days at least one of the day what do we call what is a collection of

daves murder of daves i think crows have that one already taken i feel like it's a flock of dave i I feel like it's maybe a flip-flop of Dave's. What do we think an accumulation of Dave's is going to be? But anyway, we're going to go out, and we are going to get our frog that we're going to be entering in the competition on Sunday. And the plan is I think we're going to a local golf course. That's where they apparently hang out. And then we're going to be bringing the frog back. We're going to be putting the frog in a very safe and comfortable large container where it's going to have plenty of water and food and fresh air and it's not going to be messed with. But first, we've got to get the frog. And, Andrew, my sense, as we've been talking about this, is that you're pretty, you would rather not be the person doing any kind of frog handling.

Yeah, that is true. And I've been really trying to put myself forward as the sort of tech guy on this, kind of the producer.

You were like, do not let me forget to bring the recording equipment when we leave the school. And I thought, oh, he's being a conscientious producer. No, you would like to have a dedicated job that is not frog related.

Well, I'm going to have a recorder in one hand, a microphone in the other. like I can't go handling a frog and I will say I'm being serious about that like I don't like creepy crawly things which is did I just call frogs creepy I'm in Valley City Ohio I can't do that but uh I I'm not I'm not a big fan of touching anything that might squirm or ribbit or anything like that which is weird because I know yeah growing up in the country I know I did touch that stuff more I think I was talking to my parents over dinner the other night and said like I know that I used to like fish for bluegill you know and I would touch them but I I just have this memory of thinking like well this is just what life is like you have to touch fish but it doesn't

mean i liked it you know i've never touched anything in their lives let them touch those

things for once and then i decided i'm going to move to the city where i'll never have to touch a fish or a frog again and uh and i did and now i'm back in the country and we're here to and now i'm going online and i'm looking at the frog jump website which is a really nice website by the way if you want to check it out just google it um but you see all kinds of people all walks of life all ages holding frogs and ain't no thing in fact did you find that newsreel luke when we were looking for um uh tape the other day did you find i found a newsreel didn't have any audio on it because it was from 1929 it was a frog it was a newsreel of a frog jump not here in valley city somewhere else in 1929 i just saw all these people handling frogs i'm like they could do it like i should be able to do that too but the truth is in the in the immortal words of bartleby the scribner i I would prefer not to.

Yeah. I am happy to take the lead on this. If, John, I mean, I don't know how you feel about handling a frog. I'm also hoping that we handle the frog minimally, right? Because I don't want to stress the thing out. I feel like, isn't there a net? I think this is a good job for a net, right? Like, I don't actually.

I know a net. I don't think she's going to be there tonight.

She's coming in. She's coming in from Kentucky. Okay, okay. I don't like my chances of, like, seeing a frog on the golf course and diving towards it and catching it before it hops away.

Well, you know about the flashlight thing? No, I don't know. Okay, this I do know because we, you know, growing up around here, we had a pond in our backyard, and my dad and my uncle actually would hunt frogs for dinner. Like, we would sometimes have frogs for dinner. Whoa. Frog legs. Really? Yes. I didn't know that. No, I wasn't.

My mom would clean them and stuff and then batter them, I believe, with breadcrumbs or something. I remember enjoying them as a kid with a lot of lemon or whatever. But we're not going to be doing that, to be very clear. We are not hunting frogs. We're going to go find our friend.

They're one of the major vectors of cyclosporiasis.

We're going to go find our friend or our buddy that we're going to spend the week with. But the way that you get them to not run away from you. Exactly. Do a leaper. is you have a flashlight, and you shine the flashlight in their eyes, and then they don't move. Whoa. Yeah, I thought we had talked about that. You didn't know that, huh? No, I didn't know that was the technique. Yeah, so that's the thing. So they shouldn't be, like, kind of hopping all over the place. You find one, put a light on them, and then that should freeze them and calm – I don't know if it calms them, but it freezes them. It's sort of a protective instinct, and then you can scoop them up with your hands.

Okay, so that's going to be the plan tonight. John, what do you think about this? Are you as anti-getting fraud slime on you as Andrew is?

I packed my lawn mowing shoes because I intend to get in the muck. Love it. So if I need, I'm happy to be a team player.

And your plan is to leave those shoes. Like, you're going to use them one last time. Leave the shoes here after they're mucked up.

You know, I wasn't, but there are literally holes in it. So I got, like, an extra. So for the fraud catching, I have those shoes, an extra pair of socks, and a towel to wipe my feet off before putting on my dry socks and shoes again. I wasn't playing up. I do have another pair of shoes that I can cycle into. That's the evolution. Yeah, the long. So it is possible that if they get mucky that they say farewell to that pair of new balance. Then you don't have to drag them all the way back home. Yeah, it's not a bad idea.

I'm going straight up, you know, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn style. I'm rolling up my pants, and I'm going barefoot. Are you going to have a little fishing line on the end of a stick? I've got a fence that I'm not going to let you whitewash. But I really want to. Andrew, that's the thing. I really want to. You're not allowed to. That's my fence to whitewash, sir. I think I'm going to go bare feet. Really? I just think I owe it to the frogs. If I'm going to get one of them and we're going to enter in the contest and win millions of dollars because I do have some CalSheBets on it, I owe it to the frogs to meet them at their level and to go out there with no shoes on.

And you're going to be dressed as a frog to sort of like integrate yourself into the community?

I was looking up online frog outfits that I could possibly wear, like maybe tomorrow on the show when the frog is here,

so that the frog feels comfortable.

It's like, oh, hey, there's my new dad.

Frog like me.

But most of the frog outfits, now they're the inflatable kind, and they have a fan in them, which A, would be maybe a noise issue, but also you can't talk through them because what looks like the mouth of the frog is still like vinyl. It's clear vinyl because the whole thing has to be airtight so that it stays inflated. So there would be no way for me to co-host the show in one of those outfits.

I mean, I think Brian could rig something up for you.

I mean, we've got two ACs going in here now.

And those had to be sealed up too. I could see him creating a hole in the inflatable frog costume, snaking the mic wire through there and then resealing it back up. Not unlike what you did with your makeshift swimming pool the other day.

Yes. Put the filter on there. I'm very proud of that. I'm actually interested to see what the whole thing looks like when I get back home. So that's the plan. We're going to go try to get a frog tonight. I guess we're going to get the frog's kind of terrarium set up in here maybe before we get the frog, and then we'll put them into—

I think the terrarium is coming with us. So Dave has the terrarium. We saw it the other day. It's a big kind of plastic thing that has been used for this purpose before. There's a hole cut in the top of it, and I think it's for observation for, like, students and stuff like that. So Dave brought it in here so that we could approve it. We approved it, and then he said, great, I'm taking it with me. So then he took it back, and then we're meeting Dave at the pond today. I don't know where this pond is. John, you've been – the pond is nearby? Yes. Okay, we'll figure this out. We're going to figure out where the pond is. We're meeting at the pond, I guess, at 930. And then we're meeting at the crossroads at midnight. I don't know what that's all about. Yeah, that's what Dave said. Bring your soul. Golly, will you be good at guitar afterwards. And anyway, and so my guess is he's bringing that and so that we can immediately, when we find our friend, put him in the terrarium.

That's right. And then tomorrow we should be coming to you here with our frog, who I don't know if we'll have named the frog yet, if we're still going to be deciding we'll figure that out.

Maybe we can switch on the frog cam during the show tomorrow. I don't know if that would be too much to ask, technologically speaking. Do we have a frog cam, or do we need to go buy one? Well, I understand that there is a box at my parents' house that looks like it really went through the wringer. There is a camera in there we could use, plus when that box was on the lam. I did buy another cam as well that is over there that might even be better.

We've got options. Okay. So that's the big plan for tonight. We'll give you a full report tomorrow, of course, on how it went. Andrew, should we take another call before we ski-daddle?

That sounds good to me. It looks like we have somebody lined up here who would like to speak to us.

Ahoy, ahoy. Hi there. You're on TBTL.

Hey, dummies. This is Nick from Connecticut.

Nick, the perfect 10.

Hi, Nick.

What's going on, guys? Nick, I know you're very into gardening these days, right? Are you seeing frogs out there in Connecticut when you're out in the growing crops and such?

Not frogs, but we get a lot of just mice and voles and everything. And we have an indoor-outdoor cat, and he likes to bring us those gifts sometimes. Oh, boy. It's bittersweet because we want everyone to live and be in harmony, but cats do what cats do.

You could put a bell on the cat, but I don't know. We tried that with Olive, and it didn't seem to work.

It's funny you say that because we tried that because you mentioned that on the show, and same thing, it just didn't work.

The only thing that seems to work is this ridiculous bib that impedes their emotions so much and doesn't allow them to do their normal stuff with their front paws that they are rendered ineffective hunters. But it's a pretty big downgrade in their standard of life, too.

Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds like, yeah, motion. This guy, he likes to hunt and just mosey around the yard, hang out in the sun, all that kind of stuff. Just cats do what cats things do, whatever.

Now, I've seen on Instagram that you've started doing a lot of this gardening stuff. What's going on with that? What's the story?

Yeah, so I'm a part of this class or certification called the Master Gardener Program, and it's through the University of Connecticut. Nice. And I started in January, and it was about 13 weeks of lessons. So once a week, we had a lecture on anything from pathology, from biology, a lot of ologies.

um and vitology underrated pearl jam record anything to do with uh botany in general and

everything um it has been beyond incredible i have learned so much currently um i have to do about 60 hours of volunteering work um working in like the office like like answering questions that come in from like from the public and then the other other hours actually in um in the garden and learning and taking care of the plants and all that kind of stuff.

I feel like you're really the perfect person for doing that question-answering thing because you have such a great personality. Are you going to be dressed as a hot dog while doing any of this, or was that just more of a TBTL thing?

So it's funny. I did put it on, but the birds started flocking to me for some reason. It was a strange person.

They're like, we found the mother load.

And for what it's worth, I'm actually talking to you guys on my meta glasses currently. Interesting.

My goodness gracious.

But there's a caveat to this.

Yes.

I did not purchase them. I actually got them from a lost and found.

Score, dude. Wait, wait, wait. A lost and found doesn't mean somebody lost something, therefore you found it.

it so um i worked in stay with me on this i worked at a bowling alley and these ray-bans were just there for weeks on end and nobody had claimed them so i just said well i know what these are

and i wanted them so i took them i think that that's absolutely fair game if they were there for for weeks and weeks i'm surprised that somebody wouldn't come back for them a there's probably some kind of like find my glasses function and uh and b yeah those things aren't cheap. So I'm glad that you, uh, you got a pair. Do you find yourself using them, uh, sort of on a daily basis? Cause I, I got some, I was very intrigued by them initially. And then I just kind

of sort of forgot to use them. Um, I use them when I'm at work. And so I, I work at a coffee shop now. Um, and in like in the mornings when I'm getting everything ready for the day, I'll throw these on i'll listen to the show or listen to music um as i'm getting as i'm literally brewing

the coffee getting everything ready to go and they're not sunglasses but are they prescriptive

no no no just regular regular just black i mean glass frames and everything so i can just see

you know totally normal okay because you don't you don't need any kind of corrective lens

is yourself i do not okay and so nick i've actually put mine on right now you guys can

record each other yeah i'm looking into your soul yeah i know when when you said you're wearing those glasses i had this instant reaction of oh and then i was like wait you can't even record me right now um but uh we're talking on the telephone but um speaking of that reaction that i had do you leave them on when you're serving customers if you're serving customers and if so

do you get that reaction? Oh, absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no, no, no chance. Just one, because, um, a lot of folks know me now to not have glasses. So there, if, even if I did, they'd be like, why are you wearing glasses? And two, it's, they can, I mean, like, if you know what to look for it and you see the cameras, the camera lenses, it's like, why are you having those

kind of things? That being said, I don't want to, I don't want to sound like I'm, uh, you know, trying to defend a big creep or whatever, but I will say that they are designed so that a light is flashing if you are if you're filming or taking a picture and I think if you try to cover it even somebody told me it somehow turns like again I don't want to I'm not trying to give Mark Zuckerberg any credit at all but I would say that there are there are some safeguards that are that are built in you know for what it's worth I don't know still a little weird but yeah I like them except they're a little bit heavy if I wear them if I were to wear them for a couple of hours I think the bridge of my nose would start to kind of get a little bit of fatigue which is why i think it's so funny that those snapchat glasses which i think way this i'm not exaggerating i think they're like four or five times as much as these little ray bands that i'm wearing out years later and they look so silly and like it's it's like when homer simpson is doing a sting operation at the quickie mart because uh apu has sold him some expired meat and they send him and they go we've made a security camera so small it can fit inside is this, it fit inside this novelty hat. And it's a foam cowboy hat that's enormous and it's totally like causing, but you can't have it on for more than five minutes or it'll break your neck or whatever. I just feel like that's what those Snapchat glasses are like. I don't think there's a big market for them, but.

Well, how come every time you look at me when you're wearing those glasses, Luke, you say, wah, wah, wee, wah, and wiggle your eyebrows up and down?

That's actually an app that I downloaded after market. You know, another thing, Nick, I didn't realize, so could I theoretically be making phone calls from my glasses too?

that's a thing 100 yeah and then if you set it up you can i'm if you say hey the name of the company kind of like with just like how you do with alexa um it will trigger and it's basically like its own version of siri or alexa or however you want to whoa that's really that's really

interesting yeah i have not fully explored the functionality of these mostly it's for making like tbtl cooking videos or something but um uh well nick anything else that you wanted to

chat about here on this tuesday um i it's just as always just thank you all three of you for what you do for the show um last year i called in um and i remember a line i said the banality is the best part and i still believe that that's a great line this show is so special that it's I mean, it gets very serious and very real at some times, which is great in these very tumultuous, sad times, but it's also very funny, and it gives everyone a space to laugh and to create a community, to build these fun relationships around this show that you all have created. So I implore anyone to continue donating, and then obviously, if you're new, just a couple bucks can certainly go a long way. So that's my little pitch right there.

Nick, thank you for that. You are, as everybody knows, the perfect 10. Speaking of those playing cards, aren't you on those playing cards?

I am. Yes. So it's funny you say that because when I'm meeting people for the first time, not only do they ask, why do you have no mound too tall, good luck to all on your arm, but then I say, I'm also on a playing card related to a podcast, and they give me a very quizzical look and just kind of slowly walk away.

Oh, I know that look. I know that look.

Well, Nick, you're the best man, and we really appreciate you, you know, riding along with us all these years and being such a friend to the program. We really appreciate you.

I look forward to seeing you all at the 5,000th episode whenever and wherever that may be.

Absolutely. As soon as we know, we will announce it, and everybody can make their plans. So thanks again, Nick. Good luck with the gardening.

All right. Thanks, guys. Take it easy.

um that was that was you hanging up that wasn't my glasses right that that was me the thing about these glasses you know is that they they they send the music and the sound effects yeah right through the you know the the arm of the glasses and kind of into your brain but not through your ear yeah so this thing has been bone conducting it's been talked see that is i'm not exactly sure

that what I can tell you is it's been saying things to me. Oh, since you've been wearing it? It's been telling me about the battery life.

Has it been telling you to hurt us? Yes, exactly.

Okay, everybody, sorry, this is going to be annoying, but I'm going to ask the glasses something. Hey, Meta, do you know how I get to Gandalf's restaurant?

Okay. Oh, I could hear it a little bit.

Okay.

Is it talking to you? It's thinking. It's thinking. Somebody should.

Wait, can you finish that thought? Hey, Meta, how do I get to Gandalf's restaurant?

Do we have to be quiet?

To continue, connect your phone and restart. Oh, my God. It said, in a robot voice, it said, to continue, restart your phone and connect it to the Meta AI app. But wait a second. That's not ominous at all.

You said that we have to be, like, we're not. No, I was joking. I was like if those things if you can't do that With somebody this far away I'm totally kidding you don't have to be quiet at all

That's like when you're on the phone with someone And they're whispering and then you whisper back Because that's like an involuntary response

I was being quiet because I was trying to hear him It was just saying

That you know it's not hooked up

I'm so scared of silence Frogs Silence Zuckerberg In that order What do you think

I think it probably is time to say goodbye for today because, again, we've got we've got frogs to catch and and things to do around here, including a last little reminder, as if you don't know already, that that we're here drumming up support for the show this week. You heard what Nick said. So sweet. So appreciated. And yeah, if you go to TVTail.net and you click on the donate button and help us out, that would mean the world to us. So thanks again.

Can I mention here that tomorrow, not today, but tomorrow afternoon, we will, again, John, if you have any updates on fire hydrants, this would be the time to mention that. But we are, tomorrow afternoon after the show, the plan is to travel to Westlake, Ohio, to put eyes and hands on this box. So soon we will have answers as to whether or not the hacky sacks made it, which equipment is still in there, which equipment is not in there, and whether or not we are made whole.

And also tomorrow night At least out here in the east Is the TBTL Zoom hangout Kids and fantasy Kids and fantasy We're going to be getting together with all of you Those of you who feel like logging on And we're going to pull out some weird odds and ends Things that we've been hanging on to for a long time For God knows why And talk about them a little show and tell The link for that is at tbtl.net as well It's free but we just need you to sign up So that you can get the invite and all of that So we will see What time is that tomorrow night John?

8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. West Coast.

There you go. That's the Zoom for tomorrow night. So thanks again, everybody. Have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.