Muse

What I'm saying is you got to go for it. You got to take a risk. Yeah, no, you're right. You have to. It's like when I decided to go back to Cleveland, I wasn't totally sure they were going to welcome me back, man. But they did. They welcomed me back with open arms and an open heart. Yeah, they did. Again, I feel like that applies more to you. I don't even live in Cleveland. But again, I appreciate the thought. Cleveland, Ohio? You just want the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? Or maybe we go down the can to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You know Superman was created in Cleveland? Yeah, no, I know Superman was created in Cleveland. and you've told me that a number of times. You ever seen Cuyahoga Sunset? No. Do you know Cleveland's great for the whole family? Yes, yes, yes I do. You tell me that all the time. You randomly just text me that. What's wrong with that? Which is weird. It's weird. I got free texting.

TVTL!

Yes, money has been a little bit tight lately, but at the end of my life, when I'm sitting on my yacht, am I gonna be thinking about how much money I have? No, I'm going to be thinking about how many friends I have and my children and my comedy albums. I mean, I have a yacht, so I obviously did pretty well money-wise. Are you all right?

No. No, I'm confused. Nothing makes sense to me anymore. This face is not my face. This is ludicrous. Okay, I think you've said Targus.

Is this correct?

What? No.

Great. I've made the change. Your wife's new legal name is Targis, Targis. Is this okay?

Are you taking my duplication investigation seriously? Or are you disrespecting my duplication investigation?

My God, man! How much more can we take? I can only imagine what the audience is thinking!

Oh, well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's an audiophile's nightmare. My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host. We all like to flee to the cleave and club up down at the flats and have lunch with Little Richard, but we fight those urges because we have responsibilities. That's right, coming to you from the great Buckeye State of Ohio Valley City in the greater Liverpool Township area, to be specific, where we are dealing with some smoke, some clouds, some particulates, some dark skies.

Don't stay in my house if you're dork-sided.

The kind of whole, I don't know, sort of northeastern portion of the United States is dealing with some smoke coming down from up in Canada. And yeah, we are, we're indoors though, thankfully. We have a couple of AC machines that are blowing out. The, I would say air quality is great here inside the Liverpool Township Community Center, formerly the Liverpool Elementary School, which is where Andrew went to school, which is why, part of why we're here this week for TBTelethon 17. Jumping for joy. By the way, we've got eyes on the Daves, our frogs. They're great. Dave!

Dave!

Dave! They are in there. They've moved around, I think, just the right amount. They're changing places on the different rocks. They're chilling. They're looking into the camera. The Dave cam is live at tbtl.net. I think it went down a little bit last night, but it's back up and running. There is a certain amount of condensation, so it's actually easier to see us. So if you want to go over to tbtl.net, I don't know who I'm talking to right now because you're either hearing this as a podcast and we're not broadcasting on tbtl.net or you're already watching us there even as we speak. Hello. Welcome to the program. It's episode 4,772 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Because this is the TBTL-a-thon week, we are going to be taking your phone calls. Ahoy, ahoy. 206-414-TBTL. 206-414-TBTL. I meant to think of a theme this morning for the calls. Yesterday was run-ins with small animals. I haven't thought about what the theme is today, but I will think about it. And, yeah, if you've got a thought on the theme, give us a call. 206-414-8285. Also, it's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day, so we will still do the Blur's Days. We're still here doing the yeoman's work of TBTL, even during the THON. We'll celebrate the Blur's Days of the folks to whom that applies this week. And I really want to try to, if I can, get the guys here to agree that we will stop at some point in the next three and a half days at what I think is one of the most intriguing restaurants I've seen in a long, long time. It's three blocks from our Airbnb.

You have no idea how my body processes soup.

So we will talk about that. And we'll say hi to this guy, longest running co-bro of the show.

Oh, my God. He a man.

Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. Would it be returning to the well too much to go back to sort of the love line? Was it love lines vibe we had? Love line. Love line vibe we had. What about, like, what about the...

One who got away. Remember we had that wonderful caller a couple of days ago? Yeah, Dana in Kentucky was talking about Pizza Hut dates. Had the date with the Pizza Hut guy and kind of didn't work out. What about the one who got away? Is that too grim? What about the one who stayed?

It feels like one in the afternoon doesn't feel like one who got away timing to me. I don't know. That feels like when we do TBTL After Hours, but I don't have a better idea.

Okay, I got a better idea. Okay. I want everybody to call in and tell us about a Dave in your life. Yes. A Dave that you've met. Memorable Daves.

Dave! Dave! How about this? Restaurants you might not be allowed in. I'm thinking of this because we're going to Gandalf's later. Yeah, we are. And it's unclear if Andrew will be allowed in there after the public, I would say, the barrage of public criticism he's leveled at that place.

You shall not!

Whoa. That's the sound effect for Gandalf's. You see what's going on there?

You shall not!

Okay, so the second half is Gandalf. I don't recognize the first half. No, the first half is Gandalf. Okay, oh, I need to re-watch those movies. Hold on.

You shall not!

That was most of my morning was crafting that audio in secret. That's because on Monday we were talking about this local joint here in Valley City, which we've learned, by the way, your stepmom's grandson, Luke, works at on the occasion. It's called Gandalf's. It looks wonderful. Andrew did point out that he saw a little bit of... He thought that there was a lack of alignment maybe between the name Gandalf's and the fact that its mascot is a dog. That's why I came up with this bit of audio art, and I do think that's art.

And that is a reminder of why you should donate to TBTL. Yes, there are other podcasts out there, but do they have that level of sophisticated production?

Because it's called Gandalf's, but then it has a dog on the side, which I think is kind of... You shall not!

Every time Luke plays that, it costs us $5,000.

Peter Jackson is incredibly litigious. So we're going to go over. We're going to have lunch there later on today. What I thought was interesting, Andrew, was, of course, after day one, where you just mentioned, oh, it's called Gandalf, but the sign has a dog on it. That's a little curious to me. Our friend Brian here, who's been helping us out with all kinds of stuff, came in. He heard the show. He said, I liked it, but I felt like you went a little hard after Gandalf. Yeah, I felt bad. You apologized the following day. Yep. And then today, when, was it our friend Rod? Somebody else came in here. We're talking to Rod, local historian and a long time, I think, coordinator of the Valley City Frog. Rod Knight. Rod Knight. He, I believe, I was chatting with him about some stuff. He was on his way off to his next thing. And then he remembered, oh, I want to get the information on how people can listen to TBTL. So he came back in. I wrote down some info for him. And as he came back in, he said, what did he say exactly? He goes, I hear you're going to Gandalf's. It is really good. Oh, I didn't hear him say that. He brought up Gandalf's in a way that indicated to me that word has spread in the town that we are the show that is going a little too hard on Gandalf's. He did not. First of all, he knew we were going to Gandalf's, and he was standing up for their good reputation.

You are making me nervous about setting foot in Gandalf's.

I'm telling you, may not. Woof. Shall not.

You have a, I see you stole one of the football helmets from the Buckeye football program. Do you think if I wore that into Gandalf's, it would sort of obscure my identity a bit? If you wear it backwards. Yes, it really would.

I'll tell you what's not going to work, my friend. You're not going to be able to put up any of your campaign posters in Gandalf's until this has been cleared up. Even though we learned last night on the Zoom that in, I can tell you exactly when it was, November of 1987 in fifth grade. Because, oh, Andrew, I've actually got some intel.

Okay, so let's explain this poster. Yeah, please unpack this. So yesterday evening, as many listeners know, and many listeners joined us for this, we had a TBTL Zoom party. We gathered here, me, Luke, and John, and we gathered with the tens of listeners via Zoom. It was kind of like a show and tell, and we were all bringing things from our childhood or from our past that we wanted to show off. and John you brought a book and Luke you brought a mouse pad. Kids and fantasy. Something that kind of reminded you of your first first class experience on an airplane and then I was going to bring this object from my parents house and my dad said I have a better idea what about this campaign poster that you made in 1987 which I had no recollection of except I think he might have told me about it maybe earlier this year or two years ago and I was like oh I have no recollection of running for vice president in 1987 I'm guessing I was in about sixth grade then but apparently I made this campaign poster and people who are viewing us now live on YouTube can see it I've taped it to the front of the desk there in front of us

It's got a little photo of me. It's got my class picture. I'm wearing a little sweater vest thing. I look very respectable. I look like somebody who you'd want. I have no memory of this, but again, clearly I'm the kind of guy who runs for vice president, not president. Really kind of keeping myself in check there. It was fun, though. It was fun to show it off. The poster lists my credentials, including lifelong resident of Valley City.

Yeah, because of the orientation, I can't actually read sort of your list of credentials, but they were incredible in that they really represented somebody who's in fifth grade, who their main sort of bona fides has lived in Valley City their whole life.

Oh, yeah, you said fifth. It says fifth.

Attends school regularly. Sure, yeah. I believe, you know. Will work for you. Bathes on the regular. Yeah, too much. You had a bunch of, like, your credentials listed there. And what I asked you last night on the Zoom was, well, did you win? And you said, gosh, I don't even remember because I don't even remember running for this. Yeah, true. Well, Andrew, I'm now, because of my position, looking November 1987, fifth grade. Underneath it says, the best man didn't win.

Exclamation point. That's my dad's handwriting. So he sort of slugged that.

Which means you did win, but he was voting for the other kid. Just the saddest part of this whole story.

It would be weird because, I mean, clearly, I mean, this poster has my dad's work, you know. His fingerprints all over it. His fingerprints all over it, literally and figuratively. He clearly made this. He was the talented artist. I was more, I was focused on the issues. You were in fifth grade. Yeah, and I was focused on the issues, you know. And so, like, this is why you hire a campaign staff.

Like getting candidates out that aren't lifelong residents of Valley City. That was one of the things that you stood for.

as uh as vice president of the school or whatever it is um my job is not to be making posters my job is to be leading and legislating yeah and so that's why i thought it was okay that my dad as my campaign manager made this poster for me clearly i mean you could see the parts that i helped on because it's not quite as good but uh yeah it would be interesting if my dad actually did vote for the other kid i wonder who won i wonder who the president was i wonder what the responsibilities vice president and um well i wonder who the running mate or who like you know

won the top spot it's so it's interesting that you don't remember more of this although i was thinking to myself i also ran for vice president this is not a bit really this is not a bit i think it was can i have anything i think it was class vice president i do not think i won but i also don't remember and that might have been in like eighth or ninth grade i don't remember anything about the election so i guess that's not that crazy that you don't remember who you were running against or like you know who was up for the presidency or whatever but yes it does appear based on the back of this poster board if we believe that bob walsh wanted you to win that you did not in fact win because he wrote and it's an interesting detail and it really speaks to the battery daddy situation in your dad's basement yeah my dad my daddy has a battery daddy yes and his his battery daddy has a battery daddy uh you know andrew of course loves his battery organization device it's a little kind of um it's a case called the battery daddy and um it keeps all of your batteries of different sizes organized well when we were visiting your folks um the other day you showed me down in your dad's extremely organized kind of workspace in the basement

it's the nicest basement i've ever been in my life without a doubt incredibly it also goes and goes

there are so many rooms it's like and they're all well appointed so in his workshop there's the battery his battery daddy but what he has taken it to another level yeah is that he has noted when the warranty is up on certain batteries so i believe it was some nine volts that he got in 2021 and they're on a five-year warranty which means bob if you're watching those things are due so he's not only organizing i mean every battery is in exactly its place but he's noting when those batteries you know sort of when you put them in the battery daddy and when they're out of warranty, et cetera.

And he also has a green piece of tape on the front. So that's written on a blue piece of tape. Nine volts, five-year guarantee starting in 2021. That's a pretty good memory for old LB. Then there's a green piece of tape that says use first, and I asked him about that, and apparently he has taken this green tape and tagged some of these batteries that were slightly used and then placed back into the battery data. So those are the first ones you want to use. So he wants to find the ones with the green tags on them and use those first. I mean, this is taking battery dadism to a whole new level.

level but here's but here's my point this is a person who keeps meticulous notes of things and a meticulous note that he kept on the back of your campaign poster when it was taken down brought home and put somewhere was the best man did not the best man did not win honestly I blame my

platform of less recess more math yeah Never forgetting when there was a pop quiz again. That's my commitment to you. I will remind the teacher that we were supposed to have a quiz today, even if it seems they've completely forgotten. That's the Andrew Welsh promise.

That's the end. I will fight against you. I will fight for them. Yes. John? Yes.

Hello, John. Hello, guys. Good morning. Hey, guess who it is? It's John Sklaroff. The voice is like a combination of Fergie and Jesus. He's a TBTL employee numero uno, and he's been here the whole time.

Sorry. No, I've been enjoying the banter. But I just wanted to comment, too, on Bob Walsh's basement. So I was a little starstruck, obviously, by being Bob Walsh. But there's the thing, like, if you go, people are a fan of radio, if you, like, see the radio station where the broadcast happens from, it's, like, a cool thing to witness. I got to see the computer that Bob Walsh blasts emails away from. Oh, yeah, yeah.

He doesn't sound any blasts away emails.

So I'll be honest, I was actually sitting here doing some email blasting myself, and I just felt like I was touching a piece of history by being there, And I thought that I just want to share that living history, living history. Yeah.

It's a living document like the Constitution.

It's very relatable. Yeah. For people who don't know what we're blabbing about, like I will mention that sometimes I'll call my dad. And if it's a little bit late at night, you know, keep in mind, I'm on West Coast time. It's it's later here in Cleveland. And so sometimes I'll call him and I'll be like, oh, did I wake you? It might be 10 o'clock at night. And he'll say, no, no, I was just down here blasting away emails. And it's a very evocative, but I think relatable way that we go through or a way of describing the way we go through our email, right? Because how much of the email that we get in our inbox do we actually need? Very little. You start by blasting away the big stuff.

Yeah, like me. That's why there's 20,844 unopened, unblasted emails.

Just throw that into the frog pond. Just give that to the Daves right over there. Let the frogs deal with those emails. So, yeah, the blasting away. I think that's kind of you start with all the obvious stuff. You blast it away. Then you start chipping away at your email, start paying attention to the stuff that needs a little bit of your attention, etc.

This is not a particularly insightful thing for me to say, but why start now? So much about you, Andrew, makes sense having gotten to meet your dad. And I'd met your dad previously, but very briefly, getting to really spend some time with your dad and kind of see his life and how he lives his life. There's so much about you that makes a ton of sense. And the idea that I think you feel a great sense of relief in organizing things and getting your inbox, maybe not to zero, but pretty close in handling loose ends, having loose ends no longer loose. Those are that when when when it's the end of the day and your emails have been dealt with and things are tied up and everything. I think it probably creates a sense of accomplishment and calm and relief for you. And I would guess Bob as well.

Special shout out to Bob and Joyce because it's been – the thon is great. It's fun, but we're running from this thing. We're doing this. We're going to back and forth. And we had a few hours to have some pizza and hang out. And that was honestly a highlight of the week just to meet the man and enjoy it and hang out.

And thank goodness they sent us home with pizza. Yeah, that was great. Which was amazing because then we ate that last night. Yeah, that was really good. We need like three growing boys.

We have a good show title suggestion from a listener, and I can't see who it is. But what if we renamed the podcast Call Her Battery Daddy? Ah.

Not bad. Good spoof. And the SEO might actually, we might catch a little bit of the Call Her Daddy. How long into our show would somebody get before they realized it wasn't Call Her Daddy? I don't know. Probably not too far. How much do they talk about Wordle on Call Her Daddy? Because that's something I know you want to discuss, Andrew, today.

The words mean nothing.

You said something very, honestly, shocking to me this morning. You said you might be done with Wordle for a while.

I'm shocked myself. I might be, I'm not even joking, I might be at my limit with Wordle. It ticked me off yesterday.

He's about at his limit.

Now listen, when we're on a week-long project like this, this is the time when I might accidentally, you know, kind of blow my streak. Yeah. Because I'm busy. So if people don't play Wordle, you've got to play every single day, and every day that you win, you tag another day onto your streak, right? And I've had days or I've had streaks that have gone into the 80s, and I know some of our listeners have them that went well into the triple digits. And it's kind of a bummer when you just sort of forget to do Wordle as opposed to Wordle beating you. But it was kind of a combination of that yesterday. So I am back down to zero. I have not done Wordle today because I'm still mad at Wordle. So I started Wordle in the morning, as I usually do, but it seemed kind of complicated. If anybody's playing the archives and you're worried about spoilers or whatever, this is your spoiler alert on this because I'm just telling it all. And so yesterday, I think that I knew that there was an A in there and I think an S and an H. And so I was struggling with those. I never had them in the right places.

I remember my fourth guess you have six guesses to figure out what this word is going to be my fourth guess I started it with a P and I can't remember what my guess was but it was wrong but then now I've got a P in the right place I've got an A somewhere an S somewhere an H somewhere and I cannot figure out what it is and then at one point and again because we're in a different time zone all the people I play Wordle with it's still like nine o'clock at night they have a few hours to figure it out I open up my phone at like 12 15 or something like that I'm like ah I forgot to finish my wordle word I saw that some people in my group had completed it apparently with no problem I hadn't seen a bunch of people busting out but I'm like well what was the word anyway I totally forgot because it's at that point too late for you to finish it restarts at midnight it restarts at midnight so I've totally I've wasted the day I had gotten to my fourth guess and then I forgot about it I moved on to something else we had our event last night on zoom and then all of a sudden that you know after midnight i'm like ah god dang it my streak is back down to zero because i forgot to finish it what the heck fire was it anyway i look it up and i want to know what you feel about this word as a legitimate word and do you have any guesses based on what i told you where the starts with a p there's an s and h and an a in there somewhere Is it Peshaw? I hate you. That's not a word. Yes, it was Peshaw.

That's not a word. Peshaw, it is a word. And I think I just used it correctly. Peshaw. I would have never guessed that, though, if you didn't give me all of those letters. Because I, first of all, would have assumed that there's an apostrophe in there. I don't know why. I don't know who. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, I guess it is. I think of it as P apostrophe, like S-H-A-W, Peshaw.

But is it just a sound effect? Is it like if you were going, like, that's what it is. That's kind of what I think about it. But that's not a word.

Let me ask you this. If you would have said to me, forget the word old conversation, if you said, is pshaw a real word or just kind of like a, I don't know, onomatopoeia thing, I would say it's not even a real word. It's a thing that characters say in a, you know, sort of a. Oh, pshaw. Yeah, like, but not a real word. only because you gave me P.S. I don't know if you gave me the H, but the A.W.

And also, as I was sort of saying it in that, it's sort of like I was sort of grouping them verbally in a way that you don't sort of see it. I mean, again, hey, listen, not everybody busted out yesterday. I'm the only person I know who didn't complete it and actually got a zero for the day. So, you know, it was solvable.

It is a weird-looking word, too. So I reached out to Becca, who is a pretty daily Wordle player, and she said, I asked her if she had any thoughts on yesterday's Wordle. She said, I don't have any interesting thoughts except it was so dumb. The only reason I even remotely know that word is because my sister uses it. Her sister is very smart. Pshaw. Pshaw. Pshaw. And then she said, I messed up a couple of times. And she started with Zebra. Went to Sandy.

She starts with Zebra. You're starting with a Z. You are crazy for that one, Becca. That's bad. You're crazy for this one, Bex. What? You are living on the edge.

I mean, talk about, yeah, it goes Zebra to Sandy to Shaq to Holtz to Peshaw.

See, now this, for people who don't play, starting with Zebra is interesting because, like, very few words are going to have a Z in there. Like, that is a wordle of a very confident woman right there. Because, like, how often is a word going to start with a Z?

I've texted, do you always start with Zebra?

That is amazing. Look at her.

Now I know why you love her so much. When I'm seeing the word Peshaw written out, it does not look like an English word. It's P-S-H-A-W. In a million years, I would never have gotten that through Wordle. I got it because you kind of walked me right up to it with your description.

Do you know what the word was the day before?

No, but I'm getting, by the way, an update from Becca. She says, no, I've literally never started with the same word. You want to talk about raw dogging life. Yeah, no kidding.

i just i'm still hung up on this i want somebody to use pasha in a sentence because to me it really

is oh pasha but that means it means don't worry about it it means ah it means oh that's not something to be concerned about so if i said to you if you were like um uh we left andrew left his bathroom window open by one inch is the raccoon going to climb in through that window and ravage the house i would say oh pshaw and and just for the record for people listening at home

uh the window was fully closed so we were safe from the raccoon but i hear what you're saying i

just i'd never heard that before yeah um then i got trolled in the chain so after i looked it up last night i wrote to the to the wordle gang i said uh i just looked it up it might be time for me to take a break from wordle and then somebody gave like the double exclamation point emotion or whatever. Then the conversation moved on to some sort of neighborhood news and whatever goings on.

that's too complicated to get into here because i didn't fully understand it but then somebody i'm you know what i'm gonna name her my my my friend anita oh who got it in four yesterday was responding to this other story on the text chain and somebody said something was weird and she wrote pshaw nothing weird about that to which i said in my head i think i might need to take a break from anita for a while because i don't need that kind of i don't need that kind of trolling

you know what i mean people usually this is the ai overview people typically use it when they want to downplay a suggestion express impatience or scoff at an absurd claim yeah for example a person might say pshaw that's absolute nonsense or oh pshaw don't worry about the small stuff it's like

something that like daisy would say in um the great gatsby right sure or i was and i don't

That might actually be more accurate in terms of history. I was thinking of it as the importance of being earnest, like sort of that era of writing. But I don't know when it came into fashion.

I just got a breaking news text message. My mom, who's watching along, shout out Karen. What up, Karen? She said, when somebody gives me an incredible compliment, I often say, oh, Pasha. Oh, you know what?

Karen, I got to say something. tvtl breaking news i think we've got to work on that karen uh and i'm with this is something you and i can commit to when someone pays us a compliment it i think the nice thing to do is to say oh thank you so much not to say and this is something i've historically always done why the compliment is undeserved why um they don't really mean that why if they really knew me they wouldn't because i mean i think becca actually she of the wordle mastery she of the jumping out of the wordle plane without a parachute lifestyle she says like look if i if somebody made me a really nice meal or somebody made something for me a gift somebody gave me a gift and i said oh this sucks i don't deserve this oh this is wrong for me you that would be rude you would never do that if somebody gave you something you'd say oh my gosh thank you so much if someone's giving you something in the form of a compliment if they're saying hey i really liked how you did that or that was cool to say oh no or that sucked or whatever is kind of depriving them of the experience of giving you that gift i'm really trying to remember that because i get complimented up to once a year and i don't want to the next time it happens uh you know kind of dismiss it i'm trying to be a little now here's the thing give yourself permission to be kinder to yourself That's right. Give yourself permission. And also, don't go. That's a phrase we were discussing. That's a callback to what was happening in the car during fire plug watch. But here's the thing, though. It is nice to accept the compliment. Let's not go too far with the accepting the compliment. That's the thing. It's a fine line. Don't say and. Or, yeah, I've always thought that. You know what I mean? It's a fine line between you are you are clinically insane for suggesting that nice thing about me. That's that's too much on one side, but also saying I've kind of thought that about myself too far on the other side. It is a it's a very narrow band of acceptable compliment acceptance, in my opinion.

So I want to say this is a much more interesting conversation, a richer conversation. I'm happy to come back to the conversation about how to accept. That was all I had on that. But, I mean, it is an important thing, and it's something that I am remarkably bad at. It's listed on my campaign poster. We'll get better at that. But just to come back to Peshaw, something just struck me as you guys were talking about it and as you mentioned how your mom uses it. Here's my argument against that being an actual word is we cannot think of any other context, any other sentence in which it's used other than followed by the word O. And that's why I think that it is more of a sound that has now been sort of— How do you mean followed by the word O? Or I'm sorry, preceded by the word O. Like O-pasha. Okay, that's one usage. Use it in a sentence, O-pasha. Use it in another sentence. I couldn't.

I agree. I don't think it's a word. And Google, I was on dictionary.com, and it referred to as an interjection. It's not a noun. It's not a verb. It's not an adjective.

Is it a word? No, I don't know. And I say that to you all the time. When you compliment me, I go.

The irony is what we're saying about the New York Times puzzle people. people you know selecting this for the world today we are essentially saying pshaw to that I am saying pshaw to that exclamation of irritation disbelief disgust or mild contempt and here's the

deal with me and Wordle going forward I don't know how long this will last I might have made threats like this before but I I have been playing both Wordle and I've been secretly playing connections for the past year but I had given up on connections a long time ago because I did not feel like and I do think it's a single person still who writes that it does not seem like she is working in good faith that she is engaging in good faith with this puzzle like i just feel like oh too many times this is very subjective and subjectively wrong how you've grouped these words together if you're familiar with that game and i gotta say since wordle in the past i'm gonna say six months or so since they announced that like hey we're kind of running out of five letter words we're gonna start introducing words that we've already used before we're gonna start repeating words i think wordle is in a place where they're really struggling to find words that are actual words and that are challenging and it doesn't feel like good yesterday's puzzle did not feel like it was in good faith to me and i'm not and maybe that's just sour grapes but it just doesn't feel like it it feels like they're trying to trick you but they're they're they're walking this line and if it's not bringing me joy and if it's making me angry then i need to step away and i need to do something else i'm going to start playing more retro bowl exactly

words mean nothing you know what it's going in the direction of and this just came up on the show recently um is it feels to me like and again i don't i don't want to yuck any yums or steal anyone's joy if you are an enjoyer of very very competitive scrabble or um you know very competitive speech and debate forensics but like in the way that the really highest levels of scrabble are not mostly words that you even recognize as words somebody in this comment section is literally

saying i don't under listening to andrew a big part of my uh education work andrew simply doesn't understand what words are that is that is a that is a comment from one of our listeners but she

followed up by saying she agrees that pasha is silly that is not that is my takeaway from that

sentence i i have about i have several thousand episodes of shows involving words thank you i

I feel like what's happening with Wordle, as you described, Andrew, is they've run out of the sort of they're not going to use what? How long is it? Six letters, five letters, five letters.

They're not going to use maybe six. I don't know the difference between five.

They're not going to use grapes. They're not going to use, you know, not going to use super obvious, easy words. And so they're always going to try to use something that's a little confusing, a little bit interesting. But now they're out of that bandwidth of words. and they did say we can start reusing them but they don't want to like start reusing them you know a lot early on so now they're down to pshaw and words like that which are i'm with you it's sort of like when you watch really high level scrabble and most of the words that are being played are words that are not particularly familiar their utility is that they're three letters or four letters they are technically a word but not a word that we use a lot and they do you know they get the triple word score or whatever where some of these games eventually they just evolve into this thing that's just kind of not really how the game feels like it was

intended in the first place. Let me ask you a question, and I'm doing this in good faith because I'm actually going to make an argument against myself for a second if I just want to truly explore this Pasha thing. Let me ask you this. Good news is I'm getting a call from one of the Daves. Oh, good. Clearly dialed into the broadcast schedule. This is one of our frog Daves because this involves frogs. Because this could, if you say what I'm about to say is a word, then that Belies everything I've said so far Do you think ribbit is a word I did have to

Google it last night Ribbit Because the frogs The daves had actually written the email That was going out to people but I wanted to spell check them And the very fact that I had to Spell check ribbit To see even how it was spelled tells me it's not a word Do you think a meow is a word No I mean yes I understand that they are words that have a define spelling and people write them down but i think of them as like whether it's onomatopoeia or an interjection or a salutation they don't feel like words to me they feel like sounds that

people and animals make because that's where i'm trying to figure out like because if i can i don't know how i answer that question but if i feel like ribbit is a word and i don't i'm not saying it is but it might be and if i believe that ribbit is a word then i don't then i have to

except pshaw as a word too no and i'll i'll say this so characteristically i don't know if that's the right way of framing this if somebody were to say what sound does a frog make you go ribbit what sound does a cat make you say meow like those are universally what does the fox say like these are universally accepted like sound you know wolf or dog or bark right like these are things that we all kind of agree like that is associated with that animal so therefore where there is some culturally defined meaning to that word. If you say, what sound does a human make? The literal last thing anyone would say would go, Peshaw. That's a good point. It's not so directly associated.

And you do have to write down the words. I mean, you don't have to, but there are times when you might write down ribbit or meow. Like if you're writing a story and the cat says meow, maybe a kid's story. But I'm with you, John, that Peshaw... I

I guess if you were like I could see somebody in like the Great Gatsby like I said there's some short story or something be like oh you know I Hey, thank you so much for this tea. It must have made took you forever to make this tea. Oh, Shaw

I could see that written I just but I actually think that your your larger point Andrew is it stands for me Which is regardless of a shot is technically a word which it is it's that they're getting into I mean look at I asked Becca what do you think she goes oh the word was so dumb if the general consensus of players is and I guess maybe not everybody on your text chain had this thought but if if most of the people playing go ah it's kind of a dumb word that just means you missed the mark

that day as the puzzle master that that's my thing it's it's not just about what is a word and what isn't a word but what is a word in the context of this particular game and that just doesn't feel like that doesn't feel like like I said in good faith to me now I worry about the

social implications for you of of stopping playing wordle because then i guess you will then also remove yourself you will self-deport from the wordle friend group because you won't have a lot to offer there and is that a social connection i worry about you losing social connections because it will be lucy and you and the dart bot and occasionally bingo i mean the wordle chat

group has really evolved into just being a neighborhood oh it's like it's like hawk squad I mean, honestly, the percentage of Wordle talk on this chain has diminished incredibly.

Well, that answers my question. I wondered if that was something that was fun for you, but that only revolved around Wordle talk. But it did not. So that's good. Hey, you know what? Let's take a quick moment to thank you for being a 10. Thank folks for being the 10s. We had such a fun time last night Zooming with folks. Thanks to everybody who participated in that. and I think I can I say this now Andrew that your dad and stepmom were actually here they were

observing yeah I don't know if we said that explicitly they're a little shy they're yeah like me they're a little bit shy so my parents were here during the zoom event last night in

the room with us and they it was so fun to kind of watch them watch everything and see their reactions and things and then we were all done they just said what a nice group of people yeah they were really uh they're really impressed I felt it's like weird I felt proud that Andrew's parents liked our listeners yeah it was a strange thing to say it was kind of nice because you know

we're here in this room and we've been keeping it mostly just the three of us in here because of just various things and you know I've had some people in my family and friends ask if they can kind of come by and watch us do this show and that felt like it might make me a little distracted or a little bit like because I am shy and awkward and like doing this with you guys it feels like

sort of a safe space he's never recovered from losing the election in 1987 supposedly yeah

allegedly so anyway but i realized as we were hanging out with my parents yesterday i'm like oh this would be a good opportunity for them to come be in this room with us not for like a tbtl show but it's just to hang out anyway and they were like well we don't want to be on mic or camera but yeah let's just see and i realized it was actually perfect because it it really showed my parents the tbtl community not us just like talking out you know one-way communication here but that they could see and hear the people that make this community special. Because what's special about this is not the podcast at this point. No, never has been, never will be.

Yeah, exactly. Like it was just great to see everybody and great to have Andrew's parents see that these are the wonderful people who participate in the world of TBTL. And it's also been really super heartwarming this week to see folks who have been continuing their donations or maybe donating for the first time. We've had some folks upping donations. We've also had some folks who've checked in to say, this is just not maybe a year where I can donate the way that I have in the past or maybe even at all, which we absolutely, completely understand. And you want you to know that everybody is welcome to be part of this show, whatever their financial relationship is with TBTL. But, you know, John and I were kind of talking and going through the numbers and we were sort of going, where are we? Are we at the goal? Are we behind? Are we ahead? And things were maybe moving a little more slowly in the early part of the week than the particular goals we'd set out. But it feels like we're starting to actually really make up some ground and kind of catch up. And it's just like every year, I mean, every year when we go into this, I kind of think, is this going to work again? Are people still interested in this and what we're doing? And I find it so heartening that the answer appears to be yes. So thank you, everybody who's been donating so far.

Somebody said, I want the Delica sticker. Delica is not a word, which is I will co-sign that. But actually, it's not a sticker either. It's an actual magnet, isn't it? We're giving it a magnet, so you can use it as a sticker as long as what you want to stick it on is metal. People are very excited about the magnet.

It's pretty cool. I know. I'm pleasantly surprised. I mean, that's something we want to make sure everybody who donated any level can grab this TBTL magnet. But I think it's actually got people pretty. I think the magnets got everybody kind of worked up. Christmas came early. Absolutely. All the gifts are really fun this year.

No, I was going to say the magnets are really cool. I was going to say talking about what we were talking about this week of kind of the trending and tracking of the donations coming in. We've talked about it a couple times on air. We know the economy is not the strongest right now. We know gas is expensive. We know groceries are expensive. It's for us too. And so we know we've mentioned on air how there have been some folks who explicitly said like i can't give for this reason or that you know i got laid off or whatever it is and and we've had several people email and be like hey i want to donate a little more and that's something we've said is if you can give you're you're you're you're stepping in place of somebody who can't but but just i don't know i guess just kind of even talk about what your your parents are talking about andrew it's like it's it's the fact that multiple people like yeah let me like explicitly i want to step up it's just such an awesome i don't know it's such a hard in a very difficult time in in the world yes i love it people really really want to make sure

that if somebody else isn't in a position and we've had people like naming specific other people they're friends with who they know may be going through something and they're like hey i so and so who i know is you know like you know maybe not working as much or etc i would like to i'm donating for myself but i like to donate on their behalf and stuff i mean it just like is an incredibly loving and caring and supportive community um the other thing too that i hadn't thought of uh john until you and i were talking the other day is you know we we have people that have been doing recurring donations and that's incredible and that's really the that's a big part of kind of our monthlies the the money that comes in the money that's used to pay for various things related to the show that's used to pay our salaries and things and then there's the the money that that sort of comes in people will donate maybe on a once a year basis during the thon they'll say well here's the money for the whole year and it did not even occur to me until you and i were chatting yesterday that the thank you gifts actually cost us money and that the mailing of them actually cost us money and when you cited what the general cost of that is i was like oh yeah well we would probably hope to raise more or at least as much money as that yeah so that that's all covered by the way i do believe we are going to get there this year but i hadn't thought about the fact that you know these thank you gifts to generate them does cost us money to mail them out to all of you does cost us money and we're so happy to do it and we're so glad to do it but um the fact that you know we were able to do this and send things out and hopefully not have that actually end up where the sending out of the things and the making of the things exceeds the amount of the money that comes in during the thon that's a i would say that's a low bar and we've traditionally cleared it i think we're going to clear it again this year but thank you everyone

for helping us clear that yeah and speaking of the the sending of things out and i again i know that the vast majority of people who donate to tbtl are doing it because they want to keep this podcast strong and uh or at least make it strong at some point but keep us going into the future and we really do appreciate that i don't think you're doing it for the thank you gifts i could be wrong about that but i do want to say because i don't want to kind of bury the lead here we don't talk about it during other times of the year and i don't want people to miss out the t-shirt is really badass yes i really like i wish if you missed it i should have one on now after

bad if he dropped out he didn't say it's really bad he said it's really badass yeah oh yes did i

yeah i might have swapped no you got it you got it uh but anyway yeah it's a really really cool shirt and of course these baseball cards that we had specially made and designed that are featuring featuring me uh luke and john and friends of tbtl that you can collect you can you can get a pack of these cards and open it up and not exactly know which 10 are inside we made 30 of these cards it's a very very exciting year for what we're giving away if that is what tickles your fancy

yeah absolutely we've worked very hard and by we i mean andrew and john have worked very hard on all of these thank you gifts and i think people are going to be really stoked to get them so anyway tbtl.net uh if you are watching this you've already been there um but if you've been watching this and you've been sort of considering you've been wondering if this is the year for you to to jump in and donate some dough this would be a great time to do that and if you're hearing this on the podcast that's a question too if somebody's hearing this john in like it's two weeks from now yeah uh i assume that the link is no longer active but i mean they can get in touch with you but i work something out john's never going to turn down a little tbtl support if you get in

touch with him technically let's get a real real exciting talk here the way it works is so obviously we're doing the thon this week the we keep the like donation page as is during the thon with all thank you gifts up for about another week or so but like this tomorrow's the last day of the But if you were to donate, say, next Tuesday, we'll still send you the thank you guest. We'll keep the lights on for you. Yeah. Yes. Famously. It's one of our catchphrases.

You coined that, didn't you? But if you're listening- My almost dad did.

If you're six months behind, you can always donate. Just you won't be getting the thank you.

gifts because at that point we have to place the order for the inventory so it just becomes something we can't do year round obviously but we'll always take your donation if you don't care about the thank you gift

yeah absolutely point being if you're thinking about doing it this is a great week to do it so you can get the thank you stuff so you can keep supporting award winning radio art like this

I didn't know that I already won an award yes in my own mind oh that's amazing that's absolutely right I don't even remember filling out the application Hello, and welcome to Top Story.

Before we get into Top Story, should we take a phone call, Andrew? Yeah, we have somebody who's been on hold here for a while. I don't think we've settled on a theme yet. What are we asking of this person?

Oh, yeah, you had an idea at the beginning of the show. Are they quitting Wordle? Are you quitting Wordle is the theme of today's...

Oh, who are the Daves you know you know? Daves you know you know, and are you quitting Wordle? And is Ribbit a word? Yes. Hi, you're on TBTL.

hello there it's me it's you oh am i on we hear you who is this this is hey this is corinne and i was going to call about a date i know but now i'm calling to apologize to andrew uh-oh because

i just insulted him on the life oh are you the person who said i don't know the one who said he doesn't know how words work corinne i'm sorry to be i'm sorry to be bossy here but would you mind switching over to put that phone right up to your ear? Are you on a speaker or a Bluetooth device or something?

She's in a hot air balloon.

Okay, Corinne. Oh, I didn't know

that was Corinne. Take your time.

The frog jump isn't until Sunday. We've got all the time in the world. Corinne, can we hear you now?

Night and day. Sorry to do that. I don't want to do that, but that sounds very good. How are you doing? I didn't realize that was you, Corinne. I went hard after you. I apologize.

Corinne, you just heard the rare, it's like Haley's Comet, the rare, angry Andrew.

Oh, listen, if you knew, you talk about somebody living rent-free in your head. If you knew, Andrew, how often I think, I'm not kidding, Andrew hates me, or I just made Andrew so mad. Oh, no.

Wait, that's already something that you thought? I feel like I annoy you.

In the words of Ralph Wiggum, that's impossible.

That's impossible. Karina, I'm sorry. I didn't see who wrote that. I didn't know it was you. I thought it was some jerk like Max in Seattle.

Just kidding. Don't do that to Max.

I was kind of being a jerk. I was being blunt. And listen, I just tend to see the whole issue from a linguistic perspective. But I said it in a really unkind way.

Do you play Wordle? And if so, what is your streak? It must be, like, in the thousands.

Well, listen, I'm not a subscriber, so my streak is only as old as my phone.

Do you want to borrow my login? I'm paying through the nose for this thing, Corinne.

I mean, it's like 250 days, something like that. Whoa, whoa. 250 days?

Somebody does understand how words work.

I mean, it's probably more than that. I haven't, yeah. I mean, this is. Did you get Peshaw? I have, like, two or three skills in life.

No, no, you've got, Corinne, you've got a ton of skills.

I'm on my phone now. I think I got it in three or maybe four.

Oh, look at that. You're like a real Anita.

I lucked out, though. And believe me, sometimes it's just the luck of the draw. I got today in two, and it was just total shock.

Can I, Corinne, can I ask, do you have a starting word that you always start with, or do you, like Becca, just absolutely swing for the fences with a new word each day?

i absolutely start with the same word every day because i could never forgive myself can you if i yeah right because if it happened to be that word yesterday you know what you're

exactly like me and my roulette numbers 7 14 23 35 because if i were to not play those numbers and they hit i would be devastated um so i must always play those numbers so corinne whatever

works what can you tell us what your word is are there people listening who like play with you and

that would give up too much info oh there are people there are tens there are probably people on the live chat now that know what my opening word is and it's actually a word that's already been used oh um it's pasha isn't it but but and by the way i should say a caveat to my streak is that i do quite regularly consult the list of boards that have been used already some people

consider that a cheat well at this point does it even matter what now i said at this point does it even matter now that they said they're reusing words

but i still if there is a word that i've thought of that's not on the list I'm more likely to guess at, or if it's a word that was used a long time ago.

Yeah.

And so what do you use? So anyway, fully I admit that.

I think we talked over you before. There's a little delay on the line. What word are you using now?

Oh, stare.

Oh, okay. Stare. You've got your A in your. Yeah.

It's the common letters. Okay. E at the end.

Oh, S-T-A-R-E, not S-T-A-I-R.

Yeah, S-T-A-R-E. S-T-A-R-E, sorry. Okay, that makes sense. Hitting those common letters, and yeah. And I used a different one, but I think E at the end of the word is probably the safest bet.

Yeah, yeah, E's are more common than I's. Do you want to know what word I was using before I gave up on Wordle this morning? No one believes a word out of your mouth. Why do you keep talking? I used to use the word arise. I like that because I had an A and I and an E in there, and the R and the S seemed pretty useful. But then Arise hit, like, what, eight months ago or something like that? So I got my, what you were talking about, my once-in-a-lifetime get-it-in-one. But I didn't want to use that word anymore, and I didn't want to use anything that had been used. So I was, I almost used the present tense, but I got to remember that I've broken up with Wordle. But I was using a very strange word, but it has a lot of good letters, aired. As in, we aired our radio show last year A-I-R-E-D I don't think they'll ever use that, though Well, they used Peshaw

Yeah, they probably

Okay, Corinne

And they do sometimes use Pesh Uh-huh, go ahead

I was going to say, what else did you I know that, by the way Way to go, way to squash the beef with Andrew I feel like the beef is very squashed You guys are solid again

I feel terrible that I was You said that you already thought that When would you have, well, let's not revisit it. I can't remember ever a time that you've ever been anything but absolutely sweet. So please do not ever let me live in your head.

Oh, it's, I know it's irrational, but I do, you know, I, I called that voicemail. And you, you also know, I call, you know, all the other voicemails a lot too. Yeah, yeah. But I don't remember you ever. And I just feel like he's rolling his eyes because there's another long message from

No, not at all. So that's what I mean. Like, if you ever, yeah, did anything that you lived in your head, like, oh, I wonder how that came off. I promise you it didn't come off wrong. Or I certainly don't remember. Remember, I have a goldfish brain. I don't remember these things. So don't you.

Well, that's good to know.

Yeah.

Corinne, what else were you, other than apologizing, what were you going to call in for?

Oh, I do have a Dave I know I know. Yes.

Perfect.

Thought I might share about.

Love that.

This is actually from close to 40 years ago.

Oh, okay.

Was it a romantic Dave? It just gave away my age. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay, that sounds like it definitely was not.

Sorry, I keep stepping on you. I went to grad school with a Dave who was so Dave that my best friend and I named a verb after him. A verb? So a verb, yeah. Like a V-E-R-B?

To Dave. Verb. To Dave.

So to Dave became an intransitive verb. This was just between my friend Kathy and me, but it meant to toot your own horn in front of the professors and other grad students. And most specifically, to take every possible opportunity to mention one's semester abroad in England. If you could possibly shoot for it. So like if my friend Kathy and I were alone and one of us would brag a little on ourselves, the other one would say, oh my gosh, stop dating. And also our favorite thing to do to make each other laugh would be to just randomly say something like, you know, in England, they're known as lorries. They're lorries, not drugs.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. So, anyway. Did Dave ever get wind of any of this?

No. And, I mean, he wouldn't have had this self-awareness to, you know, suspect it. He thought everybody else was as impressed with him as he was. Did you ever? He didn't have a clue.

It sounds like going back, this was a bit, this is sort of pre-Facebook, but did you ever keep tabs on him? Did you ever hear what happened to old Dave?

No. And I don't keep tabs on hardly anybody, but I don't remember much at all about grad school. Seriously, this was like almost 40 years ago, but I could draw you a picture.

his face i remember the tone of his voice he was he was quite a dave now you don't think that he

moved to valley city ohio at some point do you because i don't think that's just littered with daves that's probably not one of ours i'd like to think that he's living in england now

and that you know maybe they're you know i could see him moving over there so that he is a novelty You know what I mean? Kind of like, although I don't know if the American, the novelty of being an American really works the way that the novelty of being somebody from somewhere else works in America. There's a lot of folks here who have an accent or have a different lived experience, and it's kind of cool. It's kind of exciting. I don't, certainly not currently. I don't know if everyone's jumping for joy when we show up somewhere else and try to, I don't know, tell them how it is back where we're from. Now, I'm also hearing that you guys made a verb out of Dave's name. it caused me to feel a little insecurity because you know burbanking is definitely also a verb and it's never that went so well you really burbanked it it's more like you tried to make this joke into something even though nobody liked it you know like this is like that would be burbanking right there and that yeah so i i feel like i'm unfortunately i'm more dave than corinne i'm a person who's who's done so much annoying stuff that people have made it a verb

But listen, Luke, you know, pulling a Corrine is sticking your foot in your mouth and saying something that was inadvertently rude.

No, no, no. I mean, the weird thing about this, Corrine, is I famously have very thick skin. This was just like a once-in-a-lifetime where I had a little bit of a thin-skinned moment. You happened to catch me in the act. That's all.

yeah andrew listen but i i can't believe i'm doing this because i'm gonna have to play it for my husband but i live with an andrew okay and in fact he is i've told him this he's more andrew than you are he he's yeah yeah and so i i get that and uh yeah no you're you're wonderful Okay, well, thank you.

We think you're wonderful, Corinne. You're better. You're the best. We really appreciate you.

All right. Well, John and Luke, you're okay, too. Yeah, they're all right. That's okay. Yeah, I'll take that.

We're just a couple of snacks over here. It's fine. We're just here to look pretty. Corinne, thank you so much for, again, being such a great friend of the show and for all you've done for us over the years, and we appreciate you. And, yeah, I promise you, beef squashed with Andrew.

Yeah, absolutely. And I know I can count on your vote in 87.

That's right. That's right. Andrew for vice president. Love you guys. Love you too, Corinne. Bye, Corinne. Bye-bye. I just want to quickly work this in. Are you guys, because I did have the, we had the perfect drop to set this up, which is-

You have no idea how my body processes soup.

I know we're going to Gandalf's today, but sometime in the next couple of days, I would love it if you all would accompany me to a restaurant in our neighborhood called Supermarket. Absolutely. Which is something that I've been calling for for years in various cities in America, and it's harder to find than you would think. Forget the Seinfeld bit about the soup Nazi or whatever. New York's a big city. I'm sure there are soup-only restaurants, but I've never lived in a town that had a place that just said, we're just going to make soup. And there is a place called Supermarket, that's S-O-U-P-E-R, Supermarket around the corner from us that just does soups. And I am absolutely fascinated with this place. This is like my dream restaurant.

You know I love soup. This sounds fantastic to me. Now, I will say we're kind of here at the wrong time of year. Now, I am one of those people, though, who loves to have a big bowl of pho even on a hot day. And I know that that's a thing. I think it can actually have a cooling effect on you, too. I haven't been sort of wandering around these smoky streets of Ohio City thinking like, oh, I would really love some clam chowder right now. But, I mean, I definitely got to check this place out. But my only concern, and I'm guessing you've done some recon and you can set me at ease here, but my only concern would be if it's one of those places where it's like, do you remember one of our bosses at American Public Media took us someplace where it's like you stood in a line, you had to choose all the different elements of your soup bowl, and it was like a whole thing. Like, I just want to order a soup off of a menu. I'll have the – What she's having. I'll have what she's having. I'll have the pea soup or the whatever. Like, I don't want to have to, like, build my own bowl. It doesn't seem like a Chipotle-style fast casual.

It looks like they make the soup in advance. It's got the ingredients. You eat the soup. I didn't realize, Andrew, that that was, and again, I don't want to assume too much, but that whole kind of going up and having to specify this but not that but this is something.

that is kind of like not your favorite experience, would you say? Because we were getting sandwiches the other day and we were at a counter like that. And part of it was we were kind of late, so they were closing down. But I think you ended up kind of foregoing that because – was that just because we were late or because that way of interacting, of having to tell them a bunch of things, is kind of like not your favorite?

It kind of depends on the situation. Like I love Chipotle, you know, like I go there all the time, but I also always order the same thing. I'm not necessarily against that, but in this particular case, when you tell me there's a soup restaurant, I'm like, oh, that sounds good. I'll look at a menu and order some soup. It would just be a different thing if it's kind of like that other one just had the one I'm talking about that I think our boss and maybe Nate or somebody took us to. It just seemed like it was too involved. It was like more of an experience. And sometimes you just want to eat. Like that's the experience.

They let you go down a water slide into the soup, which can be fun on a cold day.

Speaking of the menu, I was looking at the menu. I see you got pulled up Luke I do have a question Because there's several soups There's a gazpacho Hopefully it doesn't burn your mouth

Well it depends on if you're expecting it To be cold in it's room temperature Let me explain something I do have a serious question

And this is like

Yes

I do have a serious question And it's like this gets back to What are words debate Chili's on there I don't think of chili as soup It's like more of a stew

But they also have salads on there too The reason that I think it's okay To put this in

The reason it's okay I think to put it It's because it is mostly liquid, and it goes in a bowl. So I'm not saying it's a soup, but I'm saying it's like, if I see this place, and imagine a cold, I know we're here the wrong time of year, a frigid January day in Ohio City in that neighborhood of Cleveland, and you go in there, and it's just all these different soups, and they're simmering. And there's a chili in there. I'm not mad at that.

What if it was a stew?

Fine. Yeah, that's fine.

Liquid in a bowl. Liquid in a bowl. I'm not mad about being there. I guess I'm just concerned about, like, why are we defining a soup?

Well, I have a question for you. Maybe this is a good call-in question for the listeners as well. Is hot dog a soup? Yeah.

Is bowling a hot dog?

A bowl of hot dogs.

We've got the vegan gumbo soup. We've got the jambalaya soup. We've got the chicken paprikash.

Ooh, the jambalaya sounds very good. Oh, I'm so hungry.

You want to know something strange about my slightly lapsed vegetarianism, which is to say I definitely in the last couple of years, I went from having meat maybe at Thanksgiving, maybe a steak here, like maybe twice a year to like probably maybe four times a year now, which is a roughly doubling of that. I am for some reason, if it's a soup, if it's like a chicken noodle soup, like I'll get the, you know, the Lipton packets. That's technically there's chicken in there. It's like freeze dried and weird and you almost kind of don't want to eat it. But I will use those, which is not vegetarian. that's just a and if if there was a soup that was a somehow had a little bit of i probably wouldn't go for like ham split pea and ham but if there was a chicken noodle soup and again i'm the guy saying like a chicken stared into my soul on the freeway i probably wouldn't order you know chicken tenders or something typically yeah somehow if it's in a soup kind of i know this is illogical but it kind of feels a little like for me a less of a violation of my rules i don't think this is

what you're getting at here but there is something about making like chicken stock or turkey stock which is something that is obviously close to my heart i like doing that i pardon me i will save chicken bones and carcasses and what have you and i'm probably gonna have to stop and cough here in a moment but um there is something nice knowing that boy you are really doing your best to use every part of the chicken not to be cliche about it but like you're literally because we know that Like, you know, the organs can be used for certain things. You're eating the meat. But then when you actually are taking the bones or even just the carcass or whatever, and you're like, we are going to boil this or simmer this for so long that we're taking the essence out of it. Like, you can truly make an argument for, like, a soup, a chicken soup being like, well, at least it's, like, it's, you know, relatively responsible.

And I'd also say, like, I can only speak for myself as a carnivore or, like, an omnivore. like i luke the way you you approach your food consumption there is a you have a stronger morality i don't know if that's right but the fact that you like will seriously sit sit there and consider and think about these things whereas i'll just and now you know don't tell don't tell west or ever and i don't think it's like i'm not judging myself for this but like i'll i'll just grab a burger and not think about it you know and i and i i do think you just the fact that you're having these thoughts and considering it that is like that is a a thoughtful thing that most people myself included just don't have that thought so i think that if you're trying to feel better about

it you know thanks john i've always thought that about myself yeah mom that's how you do it and i what i can tell you is i have i can't think of a time in the last three to four years that i have eaten more poorly than this week. Did you see my

my candy stash our main we have this big grocery store around the corner actually andrew went to this morning and got some real food but like and we were out of coffee we've mostly been i feel like i've mostly been existing on food from this one gas station yes it's a marathon it's a marathon we started going to and like last night on the way home from the zoom i said can we please stop at our gas station i bought like two king size reese's peanut butter cup packets uh two packets of donuts donuts like little you know um i a couple of other things just like you didn't eat any of it though have you i ate most of it really i ate a pack of donuts this morning i ate three of the reese's peanut butter cups uh last night i mean just and but that leaves me still an entire unopened king size and one more cup like i have been eating these lifesavers gummy things every morning like i have been eating like absolute garbage food this whole week and i am loving it i had about half a bag of that big bag of swedish fish that i bought last oh i ate some of your

swedish fish this morning too sorry no no no please do i had like half that bag and it's like the big bag so i mean well we had a lot of we had a lot of salad at my parents house that was

delicious and they promised us that they washed the lettuce three times right i told you guys this this morning at the Airbnb, I had, and I'll spare the details, I had a brief moment this morning where I really thought that the, what's it called? Cyclo. The cyclosporialysis. Yeah, close, yeah. Was coming for me. It was post-jog. It was, Andrew, you and I were talking, and all of a sudden I had a sensation that told me I needed to head on up.

Oh, I didn't realize I was there for the beginning of that.

Well, I'm subtle about these things. I didn't let on. uh you know always keep them guessing i i went upstairs to the bathroom that i'm mostly using and while i was kind of working through that process i started to feel like i was going to throw up and i was really having one of those moments of kind of like which end is this coming out of i did not throw up a question thankfully but in that moment which lasted for about four minutes where it was kind of like i had the strong sensation of like i might vomit here which passed i didn't vomit everything's fine i've been feeling great since then i was like I can't believe that I got this thing on the worst week ever for me to get this thing. And I was mad at myself for eating unwashed veggies, but it passed and everything was fine. Do you guys think you could spell vinaigrette?

Yeah, I think it's vinegar, then E-T-T-E on the end of it.

That's what I've been thinking, but that ain't it.

Oh, is this like one of those restaurateur things?

It's very close to it because when I was looking at, by the way, today, welcome to Word Day on TBTL. this is where we spend the whole it's we have a way with words i think on this program that i don't good name i'm at the supermarket the supermarket's website this super restaurant which i'll mention i believe they have five locations so if you're looking for a concept for your new restaurant consider all soup although they do have sandwiches which they list under not liquid

which is kind of which is actually kind of a funny name but the sandwich is only like grilled cheese to go with, like, a tomato soup. Yeah, they're all adjacent. Yeah, I really respect that.

But they make their own vinaigrette dressing, and they've got a whole tab for it. And I was like, someone's got to let them know they are misspelling vinaigrette. We're wrong. And then I looked it up, and that's how you spell it. It is not, it seems like it should be vinegar, but vinegar is spelled V-I-N-E-G-A-R, and vinaigrette is V-I-N-A-I? Why? Why? Ask Napoleon. Ask Corinne. Ask Napoleon. That's a weird. I did not understand. I did not see that coming. And why it's French, as people probably already. Vinegarite. Oh, well, come on. Don't ask that guy any questions. That guy's going to be absolutely no help. By the way, how he pronounces vinegar.

That guy's from Ohio. He just went to France once.

Exactly. He's daving so hard.

Stop daving.

Okay. I wanted to just. So we're all on board with trying to get to the supermarket at some point.

Yeah, maybe that could be a tomorrow thing.

Excellent. And then, let's see. Do we want to do another call before the Blur's Days, or do we want to slide right into the Blur's Days?

Well, let's see here. We don't have any calls right now, so let's go ahead and do the Blur's Days. And if anybody does want to call during the Blur's Days, you can do that at 206-414-8285. That's 206-414-TBTL. But before we do that, let's do this.

You can just listen to your soul Just remember that life is number one You can be having so much fun Just remember that life is much fun You can be number one It's the best part. Okay, listen. I have two people I want to start with, and I don't know who to start with, but I'm going to start with this person, somebody who's very near and dear to our hearts, somebody who we are celebrating our one-year relationship with this week. Happy goldenest, blursiest, blursday to our friend Harriet in Friendship, Wisconsin. We met her last year when we were doing the Thon in Friendship, Wisconsin. She became a listener of TBTL. I don't think she has missed an episode in a year, which is really incredible. She's turning 79 today. Happy Blurs Day to Harriet. Happy Blurs Day. You are the absolute best. Thanks for being our friend.

Harriet needs to write a book about staying active at all ages of life because remember when we were making our way back from, what was it called?

It's 5 o'clock somewhere.

5 o'clock somewhere, that bar that we came to adopt as our local watering hole in Friendship, and it was the end of the night. This was after our little get-together at the picnic shelter, and Harriet said, yeah, well, let's all walk back to my place. You guys can kind of walk me. It's a couple of blocks. I believe it was roughly 12 miles.

I think it was 12 and a half.

And Harriet was leading the pack, showed no signs of slowing down, And it's just one of the most vibrant, you know, engaged with life people that we know. And what a cool thing that we got to emerge from our time in friendship as friends with Harriet. So happy birthday, buddy.

Yeah, go bend the elbow at five o'clock somewhere.

I had the feeling Harriet was just humoring us. I think Harriet was nursing a glass of Chardonnay maybe throughout the course of the night.

I think she can put it back.

I think Harriet's got healthier habits than we do. Happy Blur's Day. Yeah, happy Blur's Day, buddy.

The second person I want to wish a happy Blur's Day to is our friend Max in Seattle. You caught a stray earlier. I was just teasing. But I knew you'd be coming up later in the show, Max. And Max and I have been sidebarring. That's kind of an industry term for when we're having a conversation that doesn't include you guys. Max may be making a special appearance in this week's TBTL newsletter. You can sign up for that. I thought he changed his flight because I was talking to Max at the baggage claim at Hopkins on Sunday. Yeah, it would have been nice to see you here, but Max is a good friend. And Max in Seattle says, if you could shout out my dad Ernie on his 76th birthday, that'd be pretty double cool. Heck yeah. He thought the idea of you returning here and doing a week of shows from your grade school was pretty hilarious. Happy birthday to Ernie from our friend Max in Seattle. And thanks again, Max, for everything you do for TBTL. Look at this. Happy birthday to Julie in Lake Stevens from Howard in Albuquerque.

I think we saw Howard in Albuquerque on the Zoom last night, unless we've got two Howards in Albuquerque. Okay. Because that's a unique name, and that's a unique place.

Well, Howard is wishing Julie in Lake Stevens a happy birthday. Focus up, Luke. Yes, another trip around the sun, says Howard. Another year of fierce competition over the New York Times puzzle pages. Oh, my gosh. You guys, have you not gotten the memo?

The words mean nothing.

Fortunately, there's no record of our plans to engineer the downfall of the Connections Puzzle Editor, who obviously has a sadistic streak a mile wide.

This has been the perfect episode for Julie and Howard, I think.

Are we sure that Howard just doesn't know what words mean? I'm just kidding. I'm kidding to everybody.

It's not too late to up your donation, Corinne.

We had an Everton's meetup and have remained friends despite or perhaps thanks to my relocation to the desert southwest. Thanks for the bright spots on so many days. Well, thanks to both of you and happy Blur's Day to Julie and great to hear from you, Howard. How about this? Another happy Blur's Day to Ken. Cheers to another year of loving the Pacific Northwest. May your year be filled with Oregon Coast videos and other tales that pique your interest. Ooh. How many letters is it? P-I-Q-U-E. That would be a great Wordle word. P-I-Q-U-E. That would be a great Wordle word.

Maybe I'll start playing Wordle and I'll jump on the Wordle chain.

Use that every single time you can. You're invited. And thank you to TBTL for being a window into the Pacific Northwest. Love, Chris and Kathy. And that's to Ken. Aw. Sweet.

Aw.

Not a long list today. A couple more to go, including this one from our friend Nikki in Worcester, who we met last night. That's Worcester, Ohio. And I believe we'll be seeing Nikki at the Valley City Frog Jump Festival this Sunday. We haven't given out the timing on that. I think the festival starts at 1030 in the morning.

We don't know exactly when we'll be jumping our frogs.

I've got a little clarity on this now. Yeah, okay.

You want to give it out?

Yes. I think this is what it's looking like. So the Frog Jump Festival, as Andrew mentioned, I think there's some sort of a celebration. They've got a new giant frog they just put in this year that is enormous and is now in place. It used a big crane. It's now going to be in its permanent home, this giant fiberglass or whatever. It's made out of frog. There's going to be like a dedication ceremony for that or something. And the kickoff of the whole thing at, I think it may be 10 in the morning. That's 10.30 maybe. Then they start the flights, which is just the different rounds of frog jumps. So it'll be different people. Some people bring their own frogs. Some people can borrow a frog or rent a frog. And then you put the frog in the middle of this kind of big parachute kind of a thing. And then it hops. And then you pick it up. And then they take it back to the lake or you take it back to wherever it's from. and they figure out who has the longest hop of any frog in that round and then that person gets a little trophy and then I don't know if everybody, if there's a hop-off at the end or if it's just you won your flight. But here's the thing. It's going to be going for a good portion of the day. I am thinking our frog thing is going to be around 1 p.m. That's what I'm trying to negotiate with. And I don't even know if you're technically allowed to do this, but, you know, we're a pretty big wheel down at the Cracker Factory. So we're trying to get placed in around 1 p.m. So if you are in the area and you're coming out, that's just when Dave is going to hop, whichever Dave seems most up to the task. And then after that, you know, we're just going to be kind of hanging out. There's food, you know, for sale. There's all kinds of, like, little food trucks and things and fun stuff to do, face painting, the like. I think there's a little area, which we haven't actually got eyes on yet, but there might be a little area that's kind of set aside for the tens to hang out. and we'll just be hanging out and chilling until I think about 5 when the thing is over. I love that. So it's loose, I know, but that's the plan for Sunday.

Just come and go, come and go. We'll be here. I've got some family and friends who we're going to be visiting as well. And like you said, Luke, you'll be shooting some CBS stuff, which will be fun to watch. So, yeah, come on out to the Valley. And you can just Google very easily the Valley City Frog Jump Festival for more details on where to be. Is that me? Oh, look what's happening. We're getting calls on the TBTL voicemail line. I'll go ahead and answer this, and then we're going to go ahead and put them on hold for a second here. We're doing this. This is how the blurs days work when we're live.

I wish you all could see this. Andrew is working. Oh, I'm working it. He's working like multiple tabs on his computer. Oh, look at this. Look at this. I'm like an octopus. It's in a flow state. The game is slowing down for him right now. He's got the blurs days on one page.

He's got calls coming in. Hey, do you remember Nicky? in Worcester, by the way. Who can forget? Now, is this... Okay, what is happening? How am I hearing my...

One of the tabs has an open speaker on it.

I thought I had this person muted. What's going on here? I'm not seeing any tabs that should be making any noise, but I'll close that. There you go. I think we're okay. Nice. Alright, everybody. Problem solving. We'd love to see it. Hey, Nikki. Hey, Nikki. In Worcester? Mm-hmm. She wanted to say something. Happy birthday to my dear friend and fellow 10, Caitlin in Eagle. Idaho. Oh, nice. It's time for our yearly tradition where I get to blurs you back. Hope you had a fun-filled birthday. Maybe next year will be a good time to get the Duke game, the Duke gang back together. Miss you. Are these Duke people? Yeah. Ooh la la. Are these

Dukies? Blue Devils?

Blue Devils, indeed. Boy, that's a heck of a school. It really is. Well, happy Blurs Day, Caitlin. Smart people. is duke still the like kind of top of the pops when it comes to basketball i think in college

basketball it's still regularly up there although you know it's interesting with all the nil stuff and everything else college sports in general have have changed you know in a pretty drastic way but i think duke is still putting together very very good basketball teams both the men's

and women's teams typically i don't think they've uh won the championship a few years but you know They had a player go third overall in the draft this last year Cooper Flagg, the kid that went first last year So they're definitely getting and attracting A lot of the top talent, at least on the men's side For sure I thought Cooper Flagg was a football player

Cooper Flagg is playing a lot Better than I thought he was going to play I just thought he was going to be I don't know, kind of a power Sort of, you know, serviceable Power forward, but boy, he's sort of as advertised

Yeah, he really is playing more Point forward, really has the ball Not the segment for it, sorry

It's okay We're padding it out here This is what the Blurzays are all about And I'm just having a thought too

I can tell you this, if Nikki and her friends are Duke Blue Devils

They love basketball talk

That's a good point

That's a really good point And if Nikki and Kate and both went to Duke, then they're double Dukes. Dukes! Double Dukes! All right, one more here, and this is from Kelly in Belltown, who says, happy birthday to my dad, Russ. I know, Russ. Russ is a buddy. Russ, who truly does appreciate clouds and sunsets more than the rest. Here's to many more with friends and family. That's from our friend Kelly to our pal Russ, who showed up, by the way, for the book event on the east side back in Bellevue. Oh, did I have your Sorry, I had your volume down, Luke Double dupes But don't ever touch my board again Happy Blur's Day, everybody Sorry about that

I don't know how you got down there You've got a lot going on, my friend And you did it admirably Happy Blur's Day, everybody

Absolutely

Thanks for sending in the messages And thanks for being born Thanks for existing Exactly Should we take this caller?

Let's do it

Let's go ahead and Ahoy, ahoy Take one call as we're heading out the door on this This is the penultimate day of the thaw I cannot believe it Hello, welcome to TVTL.

Hello, this is Ken from Michigan.

Ken! Hey, Ken! We had another Ken getting a birthday shout-out, and I'm going to be honest, Ken, I thought it was going to be you, maybe. We've got multiple Kens listening. Did you know this?

I did not, but my birthday was in June, so that was not me.

Okay. Are you okay with us having more than one listener named Ken?

Yes. Okay. You can have up to ten.

Up to ten Kens? Tens of Kens. What do you think, Ken? I know you're a college basketball guy. How's Duke been doing lately?

Well, they did beat Michigan last year, but Michigan won the championship. They sure did. We have the better year.

Yeah, that's the main way they measure it. This is true. How you been, man?

Pretty good. um so uh i did just uh quit my job oh like last monday oh boy but i still plan on donating maybe

a less amount please do what if at all my friend if at all like don't don't you worry about don't you worry about your old tbtl buddies can i ask without getting too much into the i don't know details of the work thing when you say quit on a friday was it one of those things where you on that friday said i just can't takes it anymore or did you put in a notice uh i did it was actually

on a monday but uh i uh no it was a disagreement and i had been like sick of like there have been issues with work for a while oh i'm sorry was that super stressful or was it kind of like

were you were you feeling stressed or were you feeling kind of relieved when you like walked out of the building oh a little bit of both yeah i've like i've said on the show before that there are jobs that i've taken just so i can quit them because if it's you know it depends on of course where you are in your life and your career and all that but like you're talking about like when i was 20 and i quit storables extra space that was that was a feeling of liberation i've never had before it might be different if i was a little older if you gave your boss a quarter i do i do think i did that on the way out did you consider giving your boss a quarter ken as you quit this

job i i did not uh i have been working there for 21 years oh my only job oh well that's a big life thing ken i hope you're doing okay man yeah it's yeah uh i have some money saved so i should be good for a while but uh okay well you like obviously i need a job eventually do you know

how to run an audio board during a blurs day segment oh i do not okay sounds good because

we might have an open i like that you're honest about your skills you're not lying in this interview about what you can't do um is there a kind of ken is there is there an industry or anything that's interesting to you like this might be a chance after 21 years and kind of the main job you've had to pivot to go try something else is there anything that you find

intriguing yeah well i was working in a warehouse and like i'm six five and like being on cement floors like like my legs were starting to feel it so that was another reason i was looking to

get out of the warehouse eventually anyways maybe like work at a ball pit or something that's just kind of more cushioned something that's less i mean something that involves a chair some of the I would, as, as Mr. Burns said, chairs, the great leveler, I am so into sitting. And I know that like supposedly sitting is bad for us and maybe it actually is, et cetera. But it's even when I'm hanging out with Andrew and John on this trip, Ken, anytime we're talking to somebody, we're like maybe in some part of this building or whatever, we're having a chat with someone. I'm not sure how long it's going to go. I am eyeing what is the surface that I can be sitting on while this conversation is happening. So I really, really look forward to you having a job where there's more sitting. involved me too yeah anything else you wanted to talk about here on this thursday ken you know

any daves yeah actually uh dave blutzel from new york forever uh yeah he's just very entertaining on facebook and uh i like just he's like post something like every few days and it's always He's entertaining me. Absolutely.

He's got a podcast that he does as well, right? Yeah. That he's been doing for a long time.

It's called The Hell Podcast, I think. What the Hell? Oh, What the Hell Podcast? Yeah, I believe so. Oh, okay.

Ken, do you know what the name of Dave's podcast is?

I actually have not listened to that one yet.

Okay, well, Dave, we're going to have to get on that SEO, my friend. But, yeah, we love Dave Bledsoe. He's a longtime friend of the program.

Oh, yeah, I think it's called What the Hell Were You Thinking? You were right, John. Yeah, so that's what you want. I want to check that out. Shout out to Dave Bledsoe. One of the best Daves. And there are a lot of good Daves.

And they're growing. I mean, we've added three Daves to the family just this week. Dave! But they're in a terrarium right now. That's right. Speaking of which, one of the Daves, he's on, if you could see this, if you go to tbtl.net, he is on the big rock, and he is just absolutely laser focused on the camera. Oh, yeah. He's posing? He's posing. He is staring. If you go to the Dave cam, he's going to stare right into your soul because he is really, really paying attention to the camera right now.

Oh, nice.

Well, Ken, I really wish you the absolute best with your future. And, you know, I know that you're going to you're going to I was going to say land on your feet, but we're kind of going for the opposite of that right now. I know you're going to land on your rump sitting in a chair somewhere comfortably when the time is right for you. But I know in the interim, you will have Michigan sports to keep you occupied to rejoin the workforce.

And Ken, please shoot me in. I'll probably see you guys on Sunday. Oh, you're coming down? Really?

How far are we from you, give or take?

It's like two hours. I'd have to double check. Okay, okay, okay. All right. I'm going to a birthday party on Saturday, so I still have to see for sure, but I think I'll be able to make it.

That's awesome. I'm going to reserve a chair for you.

Yeah, we hope to see you, but if it doesn't work out, Ken, no pressure, okay, buddy? But maybe we'll see you on Sunday, okay?

Awesome.

All right, man. Good to talk to you.

Yeah, great to talk to you. And good luck with everything, man. We'll talk to you soon.

All right. Well, I think that's going to wrap things up on this Thursday. Again, I cannot believe that tomorrow will be the final show from Valley City. Well, that's actually not true. It's the final THON show, but we are going to be recording on Sunday a special episode of the program. This is actually very exciting. It's going to be taking you all through our day of participating in the Valley City Frog Jump. And that is going to actually be the Monday episode of TBTL because we are going to be on airplanes flying back to our various residences. And so that's how we're going to give you some entertainment on Monday. So there is going to be one more show after tomorrow from Valley City, Ohio, but it's going to be kind of a special a special program. So anyway. Hey, thank you, everyone, for listening today. Thanks for being part of TBTL. Thank you again to everybody who's been donating and commenting and jumping on the Facebook and the Stens page and all these different places and just making us feel loved. We really do appreciate it. You know why I think we've all been starting to get a little catch in our throat? I think the smoke.

Yes, absolutely.

I think the smoke is making its way into the Liverpool Township Community Center. I'm so in anticipation of Gandalf's.

Oh, I am so hungry. I'm going to order everything on the Gandalf's menu.

Oh, Gandalf's? You shall not I thought you were going to turn my computer

Another $5,000 right there Every time you play it

Alright, thanks everybody, we'll see you tomorrow In the meantime, have a great Thursday Stay out of the smoke And please remember, no mountain too tall And good luck to all

Oh, these sure are comfortable chairs Oh, yes, sitting The great leveler From the mightiest pharaoh to the lowliest peasant, who doesn't enjoy a good sit? Power out.