Transcript
Luke Burbank (0:00)
Through our ceremonies and our rituals, we have witnessed firsthand the awesome and vibratory power of color. We experience it as alive, and we believe that this saturated energy is the basis of all creation. This is not an occult. This is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology. That stuff's hooey and you gotta have a screw loose to go in for that sort of thing. Our beliefs are fairly commonplace and simple to understand. Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store. Love it or hate it, it appears to be another irreversible step along mankind's.
Jeff Hiller (1:00)
Journey toward God only knows what. Hey, I've learned a lesson here, but.
Luke Burbank (1:04)
I hope you all have too, about the vitality of shared experience. We will all remember this moment for.
Jeff Hiller (1:11)
The rest of our lives.
Luke Burbank (1:13)
It was dramatic. It was visual.
Jeff Hiller (1:15)
It was stupid.
Luke Burbank (1:15)
It was stupid, but it was also theater.
Jeff Hiller (1:18)
This is the real thing. This is the necessary art of our time. This needs respect.
Luke Burbank (1:23)
Okay, are we done with business part? I wanted to start the clown portion of the meeting. Well, all right. Hello, good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of tbtl, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. There ain't nothing like soup. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You paint your bald spot. One bald spot. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. We've got the fog. Sort of a mixed bag of fog and clouds, but no rain yet. So that's a positive here as we've arrived at episode 4595 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. And we've got something real special for you on this Tuesday.
Jeff Hiller (2:07)
But we gotta freaking out.
Luke Burbank (2:09)
Well, first of all, we don't have an Andrew Walsh. He is still out of town. He'll be back tomorrow. Looking forward to that. But in his stead is would say a pretty good fill in. And that would be Jeff Hiller, the star, one of the stars of somebody somewhere and also the author of the book Actress of a certain Age, the memoir actress of a certain Age. And really I think one of the sort of breakout comedic performers of the last few years. He will be our special guest on the show today. So that is kind of a cool thing. What happened was Jeff was in town to be on Livewire and. But that was at night and it was daytime. And I thought, we have a Jeff Hiller loose in Portland and we cannot not take advantage of that. So I slid into his DMs. I'd actually been in his DMs, so I guess I just stayed. Slid in the DMs and asked if he would consider being on TBTL. And he was nice enough to say yes. And so we were able to have a chat. And it was really fun. It was very, very casual. It was in the restaurant there at the Heathman Hotel, by the way, shout out to the folks at the Heathman Hotel. Okay. In Portland, Oregon. Not just. Not just the place where the 50 shades of grey people have all kinds of wild times together. I believe that. I don't know if it's the book or the movie or both of them. I think that. I think it's set there at the Heathman. I haven't actually. I'm not allowed to watch or read any of that yet until I'm 50, then I'm allowed. I just realized maybe that's what they mean. You have to be 50 before you can read that book or watch the movie. But anyway, that's all at the Heathman Hotel. But I don't. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about how nice they were to me at the Heathman Hotel. For this recording. I am showed up there with my. With like, a SG Goodman tote bag. SG Goodman, by the way, is a fine, fine musician out of, I believe, Kentucky. But I had an SG Goodman tote bag with, like, a couple of microphones and all my little gear in it. And let's just be honest, I didn't look like the height of professionality. Professionalism, I don't think professionality is a word. And I went up to the front desk at the Heathman and I said, hi, I'm a radio host and I'm doing an interview with someone here at your hotel. And could I use a conference room? Because I thought it might be a little forward to ask Jeff Hiller, who I'd never met in real life before, if we could have a casual recorded conversation, but if it could be in his hotel room. That seemed like a lot. So I was trying to find some. A safe space where we could have this convo. And they were very nice at the front desk, but they, after checking around, they basically said, all of the conference rooms are booked right now. There's people everywhere, but maybe the restaurant can help you. I was thinking that doesn't sound like a very hospitable place to have a podcast recording. But I went over there to the restaurant of the Heathman Hotel and I asked. I'll also mention this. The guy was a server who I first approached, and he's running around, hustling, he's got tables, he's got customers to take care of, and he's sprinting around, running around. And I said, hey, I need to do a radio interview here. And that was all I had said, I need to do a radio interview here. And he said, oh, yeah, you know, actually a perfect place for that would be way in the back. We've got this little kind of back area that we're not seating anyone. It's kind of cozy. I said, oh, that'd be incredible. He said, yeah, just go ahead and take that over. This also tells you, I guess, how common this kind of stuff is, whether it's radio. He probably knew I meant podcasts. Let's be honest. We are men of honor. Lies do not become us. This shows you how typical podcast recordings are in the world. You could walk up to a harried server at a restaurant and say, I need to do a podcast. They go, go back to the podcasting room for that. So I go back there, I'm nervously setting up my stuff because Emmy winner Jeff Hiller is on his way down to meet me. And I already realized this is not gonna look super professional. It's like my laptop, it's a couple of microphones, dumb microphones, don't even match. Like, I have one kind of microphone, he's got another kind of microphone. And then I realized the muzak was playing kind of loudly. And so I went back to this kind hearted, incredible server at the Heathman Hotel who was already letting me set up shop in the restaurant. And I said, is there any chance you could turn the muzak down? Just in the room that we're in, just in the area that I'm going to be in. He said, I think I could do that. Let me see. And then I'm back there and I'm setting up my little stuff still, and I'm hearing the music and I'm thinking, I don't know what I'm going to do because I can't ask Jeff Hiller if we can go in his room. I mean, I could, but it would be inappropriate. All the conference rooms are full. This music is going to make this possibly unusable. And then all of a sudden, just like magic, the muzak went away and we were able to do this interview at the Heathman Hotel. So shout out to the fine folks there for being very accommodating and nice. Shout out also to Jeff Hiller. If you don't know who Jeff Hiller is, where you been? Maybe you haven't been listening to much TBTL because we have been, at least I have been obsessed with, with the TV show Somebody Somewhere. It's an HBO show. It's not TV folks, it's hbo. Although as I think about it, they always told us it's not tv, it's hbo. But then they stopped being HBO for a while and tried to be Max. Does that mean we can start calling it TV if none of us are sticking with whatever our names were supposed to be or not be anyway? The show Somebody Somewhere stars Bridget Everett, the fabulous cabaret performer from New York and other places as this character named Sam, who is back in Manhattan, Kansas, where she grew up, because her sister has died quite unexpectedly. And she's there to kind of, I don't know, try to deal with this grief and I guess help her family out a little bit. Her parents are both getting older and are going through problems and she's got a sister that is alive that she's not very close to. And she's just in that moment that people find themselves in in adulthood where your grown up life does not look exactly the way you thought your grown up life was going to look. And I think this happens for all of us to one degree or another. You know, when you're a kid you think about, I don't know, you just have your hopes and dreams and you think everybody thinks they're going to be a professional athlete or a famous rock and roll singer or famous writer or something. Maybe it doesn't all revolve around fame. Maybe that was just my particular hang up. But like people find themselves in that moment where their grown up life does not look like the way they thought their grown up life was going to look. And Sam's character is in that moment back in Manhattan, Kansas, just trying to kind of figure it out. And she bumps into this guy named Joel who's never left the town and who was in show choir with her back when they were in high school, back when she was kind of the star of the show choir because she's like a phenomenal singer. But she made a really big impression on him. He did not make as big of an impression on her. She's kind of at first kind of doesn't even know who he is, doesn't remember him. But they become friends and then they become really good friends and then they become kind of each other's people. And this is something that I think is so Amazing about this show, somebody somewhere. And I. Not to name drop, but I know that this isn't just speculation for me because I've actually talk to Bridget Everett about this at length. But she wanted to make a show that demonstrated a kind of important primary relationship in life with someone that is not necessarily romantic. Basically, she wanted to put forward the idea that sometimes your person can be someone you're friends with. I mean, your person, it can look like a lot of different things. If this was a different kind of show that was in less capable hands, the takeaway would have been Sam's just gotta find love and that'll fix all her problems. This is not that show. This is a show about how you can find a person that you really need in all kinds of different ways and in all kinds of different forms. And that's one of the things that is just like so beautiful about it. So Joel and Sam become friends. I thought I would just play this little clip. Now listen, if you know the show, somebody somewhere, you've probably seen this, watched it, listen to it, whatever. If you haven't though, this is maybe new to you. And I figure if you have, if you are familiar with this, you won't mind hearing it again. This is just Joel. This is a sampling of their relationship. This is Joel and Sam just having a chat on somebody somewhere. Shit. This is getting real, huh?