Andrew Walsh (3:09)

I thought your brother. David.

Luke Burbank (3:10)

David will. David may humor me depending on when he. I think. Oh, is he okay? Yeah, I think they're going to get there. They'll get there the night before, so we'll be good to go schedule wise. I'm sure David will get out there and shake a leg. Jack probably will. Although the thing is, Jack is a extremely elite cross country athlete now. Like, you know, just smoked me last year like a turkey. And so if he wants to run with his old Uncle Luke, he can. But otherwise he'll probably just, you know, lap me. And so I may just be by myself in the drizzle, huffing and puffing on the Burbank family Fun Run. Andrew, as. As you're three fingers of Wild Turkey in on your birthday, just having a wonderful time there in Seattle. You're going somewhere actually for you're eating out this time?

Andrew Walsh (3:55)

Yeah, I guess we're going to a Brazilian steakhouse with some friends and their family and it sounds like it's gonna be a big crowd. This is our friends and they do this every year. It's their tradition.

Luke Burbank (4:03)

Do I know these friends?

Andrew Walsh (4:04)

Yes, this is a Camaro.

Luke Burbank (4:05)

Kevin family. I was picturing them, but you weren't saying their name, so I didn't know.

Andrew Walsh (4:08)

Oh, did I? Wasn't sure if I had said that or not. You mean last time we talked about this, what I'm looking for?

Luke Burbank (4:13)

I figured it seemed like their move they like to go to like they kind of alternate or don't they go to Ruth's Corner?

Andrew Walsh (4:17)

Chris, sometimes, you know, I'm a little confused about how we ended up here. You might be asking yourself, how did we end up here? And I don't have an answer to that question. What I am remembering though is you mentioned the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Is it still Macy's? They still.

Luke Burbank (4:30)

It is.

Andrew Walsh (4:30)

Why would you sure. Is that it's not. It's not like Bitcoin Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's not.

Luke Burbank (4:38)

It's the Gronk.

Andrew Walsh (4:40)

The Grock. The Grock.

Luke Burbank (4:42)

Actually, no, unfortunately it's now Gronk.

Andrew Walsh (4:44)

I'd be down with that. That's fine.

Luke Burbank (4:45)

I'd be more down with that than.

Andrew Walsh (4:46)

Grok do you know that that was not a big tradition for me growing up to watch that or if it was on in the house, I just didn't pay. I don't, let me put it this way. I don't have specific memories of like hey, the parade is on. I mean I have vague recollection of there being some excitement around it, but I don't remember me personally being super into it. But then I became an adult and then I became a middle aged adult. And something that happens with middle age is something they like to call a midlife crisis where you start trying to recapture your youth. And that must have been what happened to me maybe, I don't know, six years something ago on Thanksgiving. I didn't start watching the Thanksgiving Day parade day of. I started looking up Thanksgiving Day parades from the late 80s and early 90s when I would have been a child. And I've got one here. I'm looking because it was my understanding that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle dancers appeared in the 1990 Thanksgiving Day parade. And so I've got the full. You can find these things online. The full two hour plus Thanksgiving Day parade here from 1990 is on YouTube. And this is something that I started doing. We would have friends over for Thanksgiving and I would just have this kind of stuff on in the background version.

Guest or Additional Contributor (5:56)

Of everything you ever saw in that American institution. The Ed Sullivan shoe. A really big shoe vote.

Andrew Walsh (6:08)

So we have some sort of a barbershop quartet or something holding up a picture of a car and singing. This is just how we're getting things rolling. It is great even if you keep the volume down. Again, if you're kind of of our generation, this is a fun thing just to have on. In the background you'll see commercials for toys that you coveted when you were a kid. I remember he man was a big one of these for one of them that I watched. So I also love.

Luke Burbank (6:30)

I think that's Willard Scott is voicing.

Andrew Walsh (6:33)

Oh probably that would. That would line up, wouldn't it? 1990, that was a big time for Willard Scott.

Luke Burbank (6:38)

The thing that we always like point out, Addie and I is just the, the crass. The crass commercialism combined with the insatiable. And these by the way, were the original. These were the original foundations of Thanksgiving crass commercialism and the insatiable need for more attention or more power. And what you have is like a float that's sponsored by Monsanto but that for some reason has a kind of mid level boy band on it. Sure but they're singing either. If they're lucky, they get to sing their song because the idea is that that will promote their new song. Sometimes they get stuck singing Hark the Herald Angels or something, but like they're on the float because their management says, well, putting these kids on this float will help move some units. The Monsanto is paid for the float because they're, you know, trying to greenwash their name or whatever. And none of it works because, first of all, the lip syncing is obvious. There's no way that you're actually singing the song. And it's. It's often very difficult because of the way that the. I think that the monitor is set up and the speakers like it's an unconvincing lip syncing of a song you will never listen to by four people who couldn't spell Monsanto if you spotted them. The M and the Santo.

Andrew Walsh (7:53)

Right, Right.

Luke Burbank (7:54)

And the whole thing just, it's just, it's. It's both what's great about this country, which is, I guess what maybe people enjoying things. That is me and Addie watching it and everything else. What's terrible about the country. And it's all happening as a lead into football, which also, by the way, satisfies both of those characteristics.

Andrew Walsh (8:11)

Yeah. And here I'm going to play just a little. I want to respond to what you just said. And it actually gets close to something that I wanted to say when we're talking about like just commercialism earlier this week on the show. But honestly, maybe that's not the best exploration to take on this Thanksgiving. I don't want to get too much into it, but even lately I've been sort of just watching holiday commercials. And this might just be my state of mind and where things are in the world right now and in this country. And it's not like this is some new phenomenon. This commercialism that you talk about has been going on, you know, even in the, in these videos that warm my heart because they remember, they remind me of my youth. Even then. It was like the big he man float is coming out and what happens is you have a million he man toy commercials leading up to it, and afterwards it's all just like a giant, like release a commercial for some new product. Right. And I've been thinking about like all the holiday commercials we've already been seeing already. And again, nothing new here, but just maybe my take on is just like the holidays. I mean, the whole point of a TV commercial is to sell something. So it's not like what, do I expect them to take airtime just to say, hey, don't buy anything this year. Just love your family? That doesn't make any sense. But I've been more, like, kind of acutely aware of how the holidays really can. Man, these commercials really must make you feel like crap if you're. Sorry, Happy Thanksgiving if you're broke, you know, like, there's something that. It's not just like, hey, celebrate the season by, you know, spending a lot of money, but also if you don't have money to spend and you just see all, like in TV right now, the connection between happiness during the holidays and the ability to put a bow on a car or, you know, make sure that your kid has a million toys under the Christmas tree. And I was very lucky in that way when I was younger.

Luke Burbank (10:00)

Well, it's like Trump said, maybe we should ask, how many dolls does somebody need?

Andrew Walsh (10:04)

Right, Exactly. So I don't know. That's been pretty. I don't know, kind of on my mind just sort of thinking about, man, a lot of people with the furloughs and just, there's a lot of economic insecurity right now. And I keep on seeing these very glossy depictions of the holidays, which for a moment, make you feel good, but you're like, oh, well, this is only if you can buy into the experience, sort of.

Luke Burbank (10:26)

Yeah, no, you're very right about that. It's. It's like. And I think you used the perfect analogy. It's like, as long as you can throw a big red bow on a Lexus and park it in a snowy driveway outside of a beautiful modernist home, as long as you can do all of those things, then this is going to be another Christmas to remember. Now, Andrew, would you feel a little bit better about the state of the world if I told you about a recent W for TBTL when it comes to AI?

Andrew Walsh (10:52)

Oh, my God. I thought you were going to say we have balloons in this year's float or, I'm sorry, balloons in this year's parade.

Luke Burbank (10:59)

I thought about that. In the parade.

Andrew Walsh (11:02)

That would be amazing if you pulled that off behind my back.

Luke Burbank (11:06)

Would you authorize $300,000 of the TBTB budget to go towards an inflated Johnny and Bobo?

Andrew Walsh (11:16)

That would be the version, too, wouldn't it?

Luke Burbank (11:18)

It would be like making their ways.

Andrew Walsh (11:20)

We had. Yes.

Luke Burbank (11:21)

Our luck, though, actually, those would make. You know what those would actually make.

Andrew Walsh (11:24)

Those would be really great. Yeah.

Luke Burbank (11:25)

Our luck would be one of those where it's too windy, so they either can't fly Them or they have to hold them really low. That's happened in the last couple of years. No, this is in some. This is in fact free. We also don't have $300,000. No, unfortunately, in case you didn't know, Andrew, there'll be no bow on that Lexus for you this year. Yeah, I was trying to remember how the Thanksgiving Day shows tend to start. I knew that, you know, like to play little Charlie Brown, something a little Vince Guaraldi, a little whatnot. And so I went into my music kind of catalog on my computer and I just put in like TBTL Thanksgiving. And I wasn't finding anything right away. So then I decided to just literally go on the Internet and go TBTL Thanksgiving to try to find an old episode of our show so that I could like, just listen to how the show began or how the show historically has begun on Thanksgiving Day shows. And the AI overview said TBTL likely refers to the podcast too beautiful to live. This is the first result.

Andrew Walsh (12:27)

Okay, this is good.

Luke Burbank (12:28)

Which has released many Thanksgiving themed episodes over the years, including those titled the Bernie Madoff Thanksgiving, the Bernie Madoff of Thanksgiving 2020, and Happy Thanksgiving 2011.

Andrew Walsh (12:42)

Huh? I don't remember the Bernie Madoff. I remember you had a good one. There's something about the inside of a turkey that warms the outside of a man about every.

Luke Burbank (12:50)

About every six months. So I. Yeah, I don't know what the Bernie Madoff of Thanksgiving 2020 was about, but we apparently did one of those also. Again, Happy Thanksgiving 2011. Another possibility is the Food Network show Throwdown with Bobby Flay, which had a Thanksgiving themed episode in 2010 starring Reed Drummond. So we. It's not. We don't have total and complete stranglehold on the search term TBTL Thanksgiving, but we're at least the top result.

Andrew Walsh (13:20)

We're doing okay. We're doing okay. And that's pretty good.

Luke Burbank (13:23)

It's not the theater by the lake.

Andrew Walsh (13:25)

No, exactly.

Luke Burbank (13:26)

Or that photography behind the Lens podcast. It's like we are. We are the dominant player in the TBTL Thanksgiving space. And I, for one, am thankful for that.

Andrew Walsh (13:37)

Who is the host? You just said his name and I just am now whiffing on Bobby Flay. No, the host of the old Macy's Thanksgiving Day, Willard Scott. Willard Scott. I think I have some. Some really good, pure Willard here. Can we take a listen to that? I hope I'm uncut Willard.

Guest or Additional Contributor (13:58)

Welcome back, 64th Matthews Parade. Thank you for the finest police department in the world for doing a brilliant job in New York City, that new rap sensation, Kid and Play. Now these guys really know how to celebrate the good times and they practice what they preach. So listen up and get a load of all that hair. Maybe they could help somebody that I know very well. Kid and Play, folks. They've got energy.

Luke Burbank (14:18)

Here we go.

Andrew Walsh (14:19)

There we go.

Luke Burbank (14:22)

Willard Scott introducing Kid in Play after lauding the police.

Andrew Walsh (14:27)

It's timeless. This could be from any era. So they're not, as you are probably aware, Luke, this is one of those performances that's on the ground, it's not on a float. You know what I mean?

Luke Burbank (14:41)

How they have people and that's the other one, by the way.

Andrew Walsh (14:43)

Yeah.

Luke Burbank (14:43)

They will have a Broadway production, will come in and do like the world's. This is again, I keep coming back to this. I'm thankful for negativity today, Andrew. And but like the thing that's funny about the. So like, like there will be the. Some of the performers that are not on floats. And a lot of those are Broadway. Like a Broadway show that's trying to get more attention and they're gonna do like a number from their. From their show. The problem is they can't do a full song. It's like way too long. So they're trying to figure out how to sort of like boil down like, what's a 22nd version of this song. Which again, it's sort of not possible to do anything that's compelling or meaningful in the time that is allotted. And again, often it's raining or there's like just. And again, these Broadway shows, what's cool about them generally is you're in the audience, you're not like up next to them. You're a little further away from them. Like, I remember seeing that Beetlejuice, I think a couple years ago, the Beetlejuice on Broadway was a big, you know, big hit. And so then of course, they have the Beetlejuice cast doing something and it's like it's way too close up on the makeup of the person who's playing Beetlejuice. You know what I mean? Like, the costume is not convincing because it's bright daylight and the cameras are 4K and you can just see that one backup dancer who's just not really keeping up with the rest of them. They get bad hoof or something and they're like. It's just like it's somehow all of it, this parade, which again, I actually love watching it, but I love watching it for how unsuccessful it is at most of the things it's attempt the small talk. I don't know who it is now these days it's probably like Savannah if you're watching it on NBC because each network covers it themselves. But even though I work for cbs, somehow we seem to be an NBC family when it comes to watching this. So it's like Savannah Guthrie. And you know what?

Andrew Walsh (16:34)

Wait, this is on? Oh, all the networks carry this?

Luke Burbank (16:36)

Yes.

Andrew Walsh (16:37)

I literally did not realize that. Luke. That tells you how much of, like, out of the loop I am on this particular tradition. I always thought that one entity, like, kind of has the main broadcast.

Luke Burbank (16:49)

No, there are like, if I remember right, I think you can you at least I know NBC and CBS do it. Or at least last year because we checked over on CBS and they were also covering it. So. Yeah, I don't think it's exclusive to one network.

Andrew Walsh (17:02)

Duh.

Luke Burbank (17:03)

I mean, watch me be wrong. I'm thankful for being okay with being wrong, Andrew. That's another thing I'm thankful for.

Andrew Walsh (17:10)

You know what my gift is to you? I'm not googling it. We don't have to Google this. Just let it be. You said something. I might be right, it might be wrong. It doesn't really matter. And I'm not going to fact check you live on the air. How about that?

Luke Burbank (17:20)

Thank you. That's your birthday present to me.

Andrew Walsh (17:23)

That's right.

Luke Burbank (17:33)

Thank you, baby. Andrew, I am very thankful for these donors. I love that our music today. Thank you, baby. Is very on brand for the day. But I could not resist. I had to google. Is CBS playing the Macy's Day parade? And what I'm learning is that apparently CBS does an unauthorized unofficial broadcast of the Macy's Day parade that they're not allowed to call the Macy's Day parade.

Andrew Walsh (18:04)

This is what CBS does.

Luke Burbank (18:06)

Yeah, NBC. So here's what AI says. You know AI, the thing that knows about tbtl. Yeah, it says cbs. Let's see here. The Thanksgiving Day parade on cbs. Thanksgiving Day parade on CBS is an unofficial broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that aired on CBS up until 2023. It was originally billed as the Thanksgiving Day Jubilee and later the CBS All American Thanksgiving Day Parade and featured segments from other holiday parades across North America.

Andrew Walsh (18:41)

Huh.

Luke Burbank (18:42)

So they've never had. So you're right. Your instinct was right. That it's an NBC exclusive.

Andrew Walsh (18:49)

Makes sense.

Luke Burbank (18:51)

Which. Yeah, it does make sense. There were there. So what must have happened in years past, although it couldn't have been last year, but in the year before that, I do have a very specific memory of Wondering that myself and bopping over to CBS and seeing them covering a parade. But what I think I was watching was the final year of their off brand ass.

Andrew Walsh (19:09)

Oh, wow.

Luke Burbank (19:10)

Their thing of trying to their jubilee. And by the way, it worked. It worked on one of their own employees. One of their own Skydance Paramount employees.

Andrew Walsh (19:18)

Sure. Yeah.

Luke Burbank (19:18)

Who didn't even put it together. That they're showing me other parade stuff and hoping that I'm not going to be looking carefully enough to realize it ain't Macy's.

Andrew Walsh (19:27)

So. No. No. Okay. Yes. Very briefly, did you hear that the President of the United States is. Because of all of this stuff with Paramount and CBS and all these trying.

Luke Burbank (19:41)

To bring back Rush Hour two. Rush Hour. It's like. I think it's Rush Hour.

Andrew Walsh (19:45)

Rush Hour four. Rather. Sorry. Rush Hour four. Yeah. That I. Of all of the bizarre headlines of the year. I did not have President of the United States pushes to bring back Rush.

Luke Burbank (19:55)

Hour four because he likes leaning on my boss.

Andrew Walsh (19:58)

Yeah, right.

Luke Burbank (19:58)

David Ellison to do it. And I wish them well. I wish them the very best with that. I'd love to see Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan.

Andrew Walsh (20:09)

Yeah.

Luke Burbank (20:10)

What's left of those two fellers driving around in a convertible or whatever happens in the other Rush Hour movies. But yes, that is. That is. Here's what I'll say about that one. At least it's relatively harmless.

Andrew Walsh (20:22)

No, it's just bizarre. I'm not rallying or railing against anything here. It's just. Yeah. Insane, I guess is like I never expected this to be the result of government run media.

Luke Burbank (20:38)

It is also, by the way, it also does involve suppressing free speech, in.

Andrew Walsh (20:43)

Case you were wondering. But yeah.

Luke Burbank (20:44)

You. You figured there'd be less Chris Tucker.

Andrew Walsh (20:47)

Yeah, I did certainly. And you make a good point about Jackie Chan.

Luke Burbank (20:50)

He really.

Andrew Walsh (20:51)

I mean obviously his physical prowess. Right. And his skills in that regard is what made him famous. And then he was able to. It's not like he was an actor first. Right. But I would have thought that he would have entrenched himself into our culture so strongly that once he became an older man, which I assume he is now and maybe can't still do all those stunts, that he would still be a mainstay of American cinema. But you're right, we have not seen. Right.

Luke Burbank (21:17)

He didn't Schwarzenegger, you know, like he didn't Schwarzenegger. Like Schwarzenegger went from Conan where the entire thing was the muscles to being kindergarten cop is not like he. He moved into many roles where it wasn't purely about his physicality anymore. Yeah. You know, where he could kind of be. He could be an everyman kindergarten cop.

Andrew Walsh (21:40)

Yeah, exactly. Genevieve loves, like, watching any movie where he plays just almost any kind of character and nobody ever asks or acknowledges his accent. Nobody ever acknowledges it. Not that we should live in a world where if you don't have a typical American accent, that people should be questioning you about it all the time. That would be highly annoying. But you would think that, like, oh, oh, that's interesting. Where are you from? Just at one point, somebody acknowledged the fact that you talk that way when nobody else in the movie does.

Luke Burbank (22:11)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was, to me, always the thing about Schwarzenegger that I found. So I was, you know, I was never. I wasn't the kid who was real super into Conan or the. Or Predator or Terminator. None of that stuff was really, for me very much anyway. So I was always. I felt like the person going, like, are we not talking about the accent? Yeah, like, we all.

Andrew Walsh (22:35)

We all.

Luke Burbank (22:35)

This isn't how this ended last week. Have you all gone insane? Like, it always just seemed to be like, it's a heavily accented version of English. That is. Again, it's being in. It's. It's. It's being placed in a lot of different cinematic contexts where it would bear comment in the movie.

Andrew Walsh (22:54)

Yeah. Or at least. Or. Or if not comment. Like, just explanation. Explanation in some way. Like, oh, well, when I got to the States as a young man.

Luke Burbank (23:03)

Right, exactly.

Andrew Walsh (23:03)

Like. And again, not to other. When I was growing up in Chicago.

Luke Burbank (23:06)

And all of that.

Andrew Walsh (23:07)

Yeah.

Luke Burbank (23:08)

What part of Chicago were you in?

Andrew Walsh (23:10)

That was not. That was not bad. Not great.

Luke Burbank (23:12)

I tried to go as fast.

Andrew Walsh (23:13)

That was pretty good. Jackie Chan has been working.

Luke Burbank (23:16)

Hold on, Let me do my Jackie Chan.

Andrew Walsh (23:19)

Wait, hold on. Let me lay out for this.

Luke Burbank (23:20)

Wait. I'm thankful for editing.

Andrew Walsh (23:22)

You have all of the space in the world. Go ahead. No, no, he's working consistently. He's got, like. He's got movies on his filmography for every year. It's just not stuff that you. It's like voices and, you know, that kind of stuff that you and I are not, like, really following that closely. But he's already listing Rush Hour 4, so I guess it's already in production. Huh.

Luke Burbank (23:41)

He's doing just fine for himself and is an international star. But you're right. He's just not. He's not playing the, like, sort of father in law in a movie where, again, there's no stunting involved.

Andrew Walsh (23:56)

Yeah.

Luke Burbank (23:56)

And. And it's like, and we're not even. We're just like. There's no backstory about, you know, about any of the sort of, like, you know, maybe cultural differences, et cetera. But I'll tell you who cannot wait to hear me do my Jackie Chan impression. It's Don Tyler of Seattle, Washington.

Andrew Walsh (24:13)

Oh, I'm getting an email here from Don who says, please don't. Okay. Oh, okay. I had that backwards. Okay. Yeah.

Luke Burbank (24:18)

I can't tell you anyone who is less excited to hear my Jackie Chan impression than Don Tyler of Seattle, Washington.

Andrew Walsh (24:23)

Thank you, Don.

Luke Burbank (24:23)

Thank you, Don. Don is one of our donors, by the way, making this show possible today. Also, Becky Collier is in McMinnville, Tennessee. Hey, with the time difference, I feel like Becky may already be taking an afternoon nap now.

Andrew Walsh (24:38)

Yes. I'll try to try to get this up online as early as possible for everybody who's doing their Thanksgiving plans and cooking and prep today.

Luke Burbank (24:47)

Absolutely. And the nappers. We exist, folks. Like maybe Michael Guerrero, who's out there in Jersey City, New Jersey. I'm skipping to the east coast contingent today because of the time difference. See what I did there? Now, last time I tried to do this, I ran into some real problems.

Andrew Walsh (25:01)

So now, is this Michael, the Michael that came to the picnic from New Jersey, or do we have two Michaels in New Jersey? I don't remember. I don't remember Michael's last name.

Luke Burbank (25:10)

I don't either. I'm gonna start asking that of every person. Yes. At a TV channel event. But I am. I think the Michael that we talk to in Wisconsin is in Brooklyn.

Andrew Walsh (25:21)

Oh, is that Brooklyn? And I'm confusing New York. I don't know Jersey. Do people ever do that? Confusing New York and New Jersey? Are people not Brooklyn about that? Are people pretty chill about that?

Luke Burbank (25:32)

No. Unchill. Very unchill. Although I think Michael, if anybody's going to take it in stride, it's probably Michael. And also, by the way, this could be the same Michael. How about Chase Wiseman? Chase is in Los Angeles, California, and is just waking up as we. As this show hits the airwaves because of that West Coast, east coast thing. Also, Chase is just not a stressed person. Chase is not somebody who's up like Joan Didion, who we had meant to talk about today on the show and may or may not get to. He does not have 75. He does not have pages and pages and pages of his rules about Thanksgiving food that keep him getting up super early in the morning. Chase is getting up. He's listening to tbtl and really enjoying things, as is Danny Sandoval in South El Monte, California. Do Chase and Danny know each other? Possible.

Andrew Walsh (26:22)

They're both very chill, though, very well.

Luke Burbank (26:24)

Coast attitude, West Coast, California.

Andrew Walsh (26:26)

They may be a lot. Or wait, is this Hawaiian? They do the, like, kind of surf on thing with their thumb and their pinky.

Luke Burbank (26:33)

I feel like that's anywhere near the ocean you can. Okay, yeah, maybe not. Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. It feels un Delaware to me. Maybe in Delaware City.

Andrew Walsh (26:42)

That's a really good point. They don't do that in Maine. They don't do that on the coast of Maine.

Luke Burbank (26:46)

No, I don't see that being.

Andrew Walsh (26:47)

Is it hang loose? Is that the word? Is it hang loose, that thing? Okay, yeah, gotcha.

Luke Burbank (26:52)

And then Colby Blanton is in Seattle, Washington, where they hang the loosest.

Andrew Walsh (26:56)

Yes, they do.

Luke Burbank (26:57)

You know that you're in Seattle. You're hanging loose in Seattle right now.

Andrew Walsh (27:00)

So loose right now. It's okay. It's almost a medical field. Yes.

Luke Burbank (27:05)

Thank you to all of our donors. We absolutely could not do this without you.

Andrew Walsh (27:13)

Hello and welcome to Top Story in.

Luke Burbank (27:16)

A very Thanksgiving appropriate Top Story today, Andrew, which you sent to me like a week ago or something because you knew when you saw the headline and I think the accompanying photo that it kind of brought together all the stuff in the world that I tend to obsess over or at least think about a lot. It was from the New York Times, Patrick Farrell writing the headline, joan Didion's Thanksgiving dinner for 75 reams of notes. And it's kind of what basically happened was a new trove of Joan Didion's papers has been released by the New York City Public Library. And in that trove of papers just happens to be all of her Thanksgiving Day notes, the notes about the food that she was serving, the people that would come to her Thanksgiving get togethers, the people who wouldn't come to them, the people who what got eaten, what was not eaten. Like, copious notes around the topic of these Thanksgivings that Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunn, would throw at their place in Manhattan. Basically, the New York Times saying, before there was something called friendsgiving, Joan Didion was inviting together, you know, a huge collection of the kind of literary and artistic and creative class in New York City for Thanksgiving, including Jimmy Breslin, Jan Wenner, Philip Roth, Nora Ephron would come to them. There was one at one point, they were talking about some of the people who showed up and I thought of you because, oh, it was in 1993, the invitation list for her largest Thanksgiving buffet in 1993 was a mixed salad with writers Susan Sontag, Brett Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt, plus Detective Thomas Hyland from the New York Police Department. I thought, did they meet him at a law enforcement conference?

Andrew Walsh (29:09)

Yeah, probably. Yeah. And he has an Austrian accent for some reason.

Luke Burbank (29:13)

That's right.

Andrew Walsh (29:14)

Nobody acknowledges it.

Luke Burbank (29:15)

Give me some of the cranberry relish and all of that. As long as you end up with all of that.

Andrew Walsh (29:20)

Did you ever read the Goldfinch by Donna Tartt?

Luke Burbank (29:23)

I didn't. And in fact, reading this mention of Donna Tartt in 1993, being invited to this reframed my sense of the Goldfinch, which I've never read. Let me explain. I. When I saw the Goldfinch in the name Donna Tartt, I assumed that Donna Tartt was like a young up and coming writer, maybe in her 20s, who had written some kind of breakout hit called the Goldfinch that everybody was talking about. But now I see that Donna Tartt was there with Brett Easton Ellis and Detective Thomas hyland of the NYPD and many other at Susan Sontag in 1993. And now I'm like, oh, Donna Tartt was an established writer who. Cause the Goldfinch came out well after 1993. Right.

Andrew Walsh (30:07)

I just looked it up, but it's not in front of me right now. But I think it said 2013. And you' know, if I had any knowledge or at least I don't think Donna Tartt was a name that was at the forefront of my brain before the Goldfinch. But somehow I did get swept into Goldfinch Fury and read that book. Enjoyed it.

Luke Burbank (30:27)

Pretty good.

Andrew Walsh (30:28)

Yeah, I remember liking it. It's one of those book. It's. It's a pretty sprawling story. It covers a lot of ground. And so because of that, I almost remember it as like, almost different sections, you know, like, as, as. I think one of the main characters has very different sort of phases. And I will say it takes some pretty big swings plot wise, but I remember being gripping.

Luke Burbank (30:51)

Now, the thing that this article also makes clear is that Joan Didion was dissimilar to a lot of the people of her generation, particularly a lot of the women of her generation who were sort of rejecting a lot of the assumptions around like, domesticity and, you know, sort of quote unquote, keeping a home. Like there was a bohemian movement that. That hit a lot of the particularly women of Joan Didion's time, and she was not one of them, even though she was in the Cool Club, she was, you know, writing about interesting topics. She was living a life of the mind. But she also really loved cooking and being in the kitchen. And it was kind of her like a sort of, as they say, happy place for her. She called it a room of her own. She just was really, really into it. And she became in this group of people that she knew, many of whom were much less kind of tied into these traditional ideas around the kitchen and cooking. She became kind of the food knower of their social group. And. And therefore, whenever you're dealing with someone who's the knower of something in your group and then you do a thing that's in that category, you become very, like, self conscious about their read on it. So in other words, it sounds like her friends, when she would come to dinner at their house, would feel self conscious about their cooking because she was the person who knew how to cook in the friend group. And I love this note. First of all, I'm never gonna do this myself, because it takes work. But I love the idea of people writing each other handwritten thank you notes for, like, how the dinner went the other night. One, because then it can be in your letters, your papers that the New York library can release. Here's from this New York Times piece Friends hung on her culinary judgment. Here's the quote. When you looked into the parched and smoking parody of scalloped potatoes I produced on Friday night and said, well, it's potatoes. Anna, I was struck by a fresh avalanche of love for you. The journalist Barry Farrell wrote in a 1973 letter, you are the kindest person I know. So Barry Farrell makes scalloped potatoes that he does not think have turned out well. Joan Didion plays along and says, hey, they're potatoes. Like, Joan Didion is nice about it. And then Barry Farrell writes a thank you note that ends up in her personal effects. The line, when you looked into the parched and smoking parody of scalloped potatoes I produced on Friday night, we just don't talk to each other that way anymore.

Andrew Walsh (33:26)

Yeah, that's pretty great. I mean, did you go through that phase? I mean, that was a big part of my life as a young person, was. Even when it became electronic mail, but some people call it email, but you know what I mean?

Luke Burbank (33:37)

But like, I write the e. Smaller.

Andrew Walsh (33:39)

Rest of the word electronic communications that still didn't take it away, like a huge part of Genevieve. And I sort of. I don't know if you would call it courting, but, like, after we had met and already hit a spark, but then moved back to our corners of the country. We weren't at the time, it did not look like I'd be moving to the east coast where she lived. So we did not realize that we had much of a future. But we were still writing these very elaborate long emails and we were both consider ourselves kind of like writers. So, like, we were. And again, I'm not trying to put us like Joan Didion, obviously, but the story also gives me sort of the warm feeling of those days.

Luke Burbank (34:17)

You were more doing A Year of Magical Stinking.

Andrew Walsh (34:19)

There's your. Can that be a show title for the AI? Next year will be like, yes, TBTL has done many things.

Luke Burbank (34:25)

Who brought you the Barry Madoff of Thanksgiving and A Year of Magical Stinking.

Andrew Walsh (34:30)

But anyway, like, yeah, that just reminds me also of like when we were like young and writing letters to each other and in some way, like trying to impress or at least trying to entertain each other. Me and my friends did that all the time, writing these long letters. And I do sort of miss that.

Luke Burbank (34:44)

I think you were more inclined that way toward. More inclined towards that than I was. But I can remember, I will tell you this, that like the text message, if I were to go back in relationships into like the sort of sedimentary record of my relationships, I would say that definitely one comes to mind that was at about that time when we still weren't texting each other everything. But I was long distance from this person for significant portions. And there was a healthy number of like emails, just kind of like long emails and, you know, discussing my feelings and things. Whereas now, like, if you looked at Becca and I's like sort of, you know, history of communication outside of face to face conversations or whatever, it's all text, you know. Yeah. As opposed to like an email that was really, you know, thoughtfully considered and stuff. But. But even just the like, man, a handwritten note goes so far and yet. And it's so not that hard to do. And yet. I just struggle to. In fact, even in this. One of the coolest things about this New York Times article is all the photographs. And these are again, I think they're photographs and then just papers that are from Joan Didion's papers. And one of them is she has written some recipe to herself in her sort of scrawl. But it's. And I don't have it in front of me because I printed out the article. So I kind of changed the. I took out the photos basically. But it was. The letterhead was from Time Life and it must have been. And it was like Time Life. But it was clearly like a, you know, a piece of letterhead that I'm guessing either Joan Didion or John Gregory Dunn, I believe they were both writers, had like, probably at some point done some project for Time Life. Somehow they had. And it was. But it was from their Beverly Hills office. But then it had the phone number for it. But the phone number was one of those, like, only five numbers kind of a thing, you know, it was like three dash, something, something, something.

Andrew Walsh (36:36)

Yeah.

Luke Burbank (36:36)

And it's just so frozen in the amber of that moment of life. And I love that she hand wrote this recipe. And I love that she just grabbed the piece of paper that was nearby, and it was this letterhead that was from the Time Life Corporation, which was still a going concern at the time. And that the phone number is not even a kind of phone number we would use now. Like, the archival ness of it all is really another kind of really. You know, in the. You and I already discussed that. The. The main. The top photo with this article is a Joan Didion, a younger Joan Didion in Malibu, and she's standing in front of a stove. And. And I was commenting on the Le Creuset. There's a Le Creuset pot, I think, there. I guess her used Le Creuset pots were sold for $8,000 at auction, I think, to raise money maybe for the documentary film that her. I think it might have been her son made called the Center Will Not Hold. And I think he also auctioned off some of her recipes to raise money for the documentary project.

Andrew Walsh (37:37)

I mean, that'd be a pretty amazing thing to have one of her.

Luke Burbank (37:40)

Yeah, that'd be a conversation piece.

Andrew Walsh (37:42)

Can I. Going back to this idea of things being handwritten or even typewritten. And I'm wedging this anecdote in because I want to share this with you, but I'm mad at myself for not knowing more details. But when we were kids, my mom had these two little wire puzzles, if that makes any sense. Small, like you could hold it in your hand. And one of them was like kind of a wire that was shaped like a bicycle. And the handlebars could kind of come off, but you'd have to. It was like literally a puzzle where you'd have to wind it around. You had to figure out, how can I take the handlebars off of this thing?

Luke Burbank (38:18)

Okay.

Andrew Walsh (38:19)

And then how can you get it back on? But it was small, right? It was like a few inches big or something. And that's one of those. And then there was another. There's a companion piece, too, that I don't think represented any real object. It was just another wire puzzle where you had to take one piece off. But how do you wind this thing off and on? And I remember as a kid now, first of all, this is one of those objects from my youth that was around all the time in, like, our family room. But I totally forgot about it until I visited my mom, I don't know, like, 10 years ago or something, when she had moved into a new care facility. And it was sitting on her shelf. And I had a lot of these things kind of pipe pop up over the course of the last several years as she sort of downsized. And then when she passed away, we were going through her stuff and just like, finding, like, kind of in some cases, very mundane things, but being like, oh, my God, I literally have not thought about this stool in 35 years or whatever. But I used to play with my Matchbox cars on it or whatever. You know, it's just like. It's just kind of sometimes, especially with objects and me, nostalgia, it just bowls me over. So I'm visiting my mom a while back, and I noticed that little. That little bicycle puzzle. I'm like, man, I forgot about this. Now, the irony is, when we kids, we weren't allowed to touch it because we would if we got the handlebars off or we couldn't get it back on. Nobody knew how to fix the damn thing, right? It was very. It was so tough to do. So I saw this on my mom's shelf, I don't know, five, ten years ago, I visited her. I literally was like, oh, my God, I forgot about this thing. I took the handlebars kind of partially off, could not get them back on. Literally. I'm 42 years old and I'm sweating, sweating it in my mom. But then I just put it back on the shelf still, like, kind of deconstructed. But my mom didn't get around very well by this point, so I don't think she ever even knew. So I did not get hollered at for that. But it was just so ironic that it's like, oh, we were never allowed to touch these things. And then I took it. I broke it.

Luke Burbank (40:06)

This is why.

Andrew Walsh (40:07)

This is why. This is all coming back to a hand type thing. I promise. When my mom passed away recently, it was one of the very few things that I took was this little. This little toy wire bicycle, and still with the handlebars kind of Janky on it because I still hadn't put it back from a few years back. And I brought it back home and I showed views. But one thing that I did not realize and I don't know where this came from but when I told my sister I'm going to take this little bicycle home, she said well, here are the instructions. And she handed me a piece of paper that's like a full 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper but folded several times over so it's like the size of almost a business card or maybe a little bit bigger. And it was hand typed background and instructions of what this thing was with then on the backside hand drawn instructions and somebody's hand that was a little bit like shaky. You could tell that this was made and maybe photocopied but certainly hand typed by the person who made this in somewhere in Southern California. Maybe my parents got it on a trip or something like that. And I'm unfolding this piece of paper. It is like it feels like a treasure map from the Goonies and to see. And then Genevieve ended up fixing it. Like she's not. She always says I'm not a good spatial reasoner when it comes to with these puzzles but she's also somebody who can't stand to not have something fixed sort of. So I knew if I just left it with Genevieve or in her orbit long enough she would eventually get the handlebars back on. And she did by like reverse engineering these hand drawn instructions. But this is from I want to say 1968 or something like that. And there's this guy who was just making. And then I. Because he signed the type written thing and I'm sorry, I don't have it in front of me right now. I can't give you his name. I googled it. I'm like maybe this guy was big in this realm of these types of puzzles. And I did find some like I don't know if they were Reddit threads or what they were but he was mentioned. His puzzles were mentioned in some people's like sort of collections and stuff. It was. It really blew me away. I really of something so absolutely insignificant. It really felt like I was holding a piece of history that is completely. That you can't recreate.

Luke Burbank (42:27)

You know, if you want to know. As if we need more evidence of the just fundamental difference in your family's tendencies, behaviors, etc. The fact that those instructions.

Andrew Walsh (42:41)

Yeah.

Luke Burbank (42:42)

Survived and rode along as it were with that puzzle. That bicycle puzzle.

Andrew Walsh (42:48)

Yes.

Luke Burbank (42:48)

And then were able to be Produced at the critical moment. Yes. Is a miracle. I mean a miracle of organization, archiving, et cetera.

Andrew Walsh (43:01)

Yeah. And think about all the different life changes. You know, that means that my, you know, my mom probably got this when, you know, before I was born, but you know, living in Ohio, but probably on vacation somewhere and then. And then through all of the family tumult of a divorce and then her moving across the country to Arizona at some point and then like living in several different places and then downsizing several times and then eventually, you know, staying in this particular care facility after being in a couple. But somehow not only did this thing arrive with her, but with the instructions right in tow. And I think maybe now that you point that out, you see where I get some of my tendencies.

Luke Burbank (43:39)

Yeah. I mean, in my fam. Like, I mean, forget the instructions. There may be the handlebars.

Andrew Walsh (43:45)

Yeah, right. If you're lucky because it's stuck in somebody's nose for 30 years. Yes.

Luke Burbank (43:54)

And they wouldn't take me to the doctor because we didn't have insurance. So it's just. The handlebars are just in my knuckles for the rest of my life. But there you go.

Andrew Walsh (44:02)

Anyway, sorry to steal the Joan Didian ness of it all. No, that was physical. That, that something about those physical letters that were handwritten.

Luke Burbank (44:10)

No, that's cool. Yeah. It's amazing how physical objects really are so sort of nostalgic and can really like. I mean that's the whole thing. Even being at my parents house where I am again today as this is playing like my parents moved there. I was already in college. But now it's been so long since then, you know, it's been 30 more years of my life that now all of the weird crap in that house in that my parents, I think of it as their new house. They've been in it 30 years. That's all now like infused with. With history for me and do it like doilies and this, you know, we're weird, you know, book, what have you. It's like that's just been sitting on this man, you know, on this particular shelf for however long. It's like. Yeah, it, it's very, very, very memory sort of what it really jogs your memory and really takes you to a certain place. So. Well, well, I think that we should probably go ahead and wrap it on up today since it is a holiday and so you've probably got.

Andrew Walsh (45:11)

Do you want to play the Vince Guaraldi from your end instead of the usual words by doves or let me See if I have a copy of it here. We hadn't talked through.

Luke Burbank (45:17)

Yeah, I got that Guaraldi. Why don't we do that?

Andrew Walsh (45:19)

Oh, you got that Guaraldi in you?

Luke Burbank (45:21)

Oh, boy, he's got that girl. But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to play the long version, which I like because it starts with Vince Guaraldi counting it off, I think.

Andrew Walsh (45:32)

Okay.

Luke Burbank (45:32)

It's one of those little studio things that, like, where he kind of goes. I think he says, like, all right, I don't know if he says take 13 or something like that, but he does a little studio move here. So we're gonna. We'll play that and we'll let the music go for a little bit. We'll get banned in Romania, and then we'll. We'll duck it out. But anyway, so that's gonna do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening, everybody. Hope you're having a great Thanksgiving. Wherever you are, that you are surrounded by the folks you love. If that's something that can be happening for you, we're gonna be back here tomorrow. Because you know what? TBTL never takes a weekday off. We'll be back here tomorrow with more original imaginary radio for you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Thanksgiving and please remember, no mountain too tall.

Andrew Walsh (46:13)

And good luck to all.

Luke Burbank (46:15)

Q13.

Andrew Walsh (46:16)

Here we go.

Luke Burbank (46:17)

1, 2, 3.

Guest or Additional Contributor (46:18)

2, 2, 3.

Andrew Walsh (46:42)

Power out.