Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Hold the Phone - The Phone Message

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

"It began simply enough. It began with a phone call."Stuart loved talking on the phone: much of his work revolved around phone calls. Jess talks about some of the memorable phone calls you may have heard on the Vinyl Cafe radio show over the years, plus we’ve got an essay Stuart wrote about his journalistic practice and a Dave and Morley story.Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the apostrophe podcast network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We've got a few different things for you today on the pod. A script from the radio show, a letter we received recently from a podcast listener, and, of course, a Dave and Morley story. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you will have listened to the podcast for a while, you will have heard me talking about Stewart's process as a writer and how that was based in his background as a journalist. Basically, his process consisted of endless curiosity, research, research, and more

research, often in person with notebook and pen in hand, and then also often on the phone. Stewart was always on the phone. He loved talking to people on the phone. And not surprisingly, much of his work revolved around those phone calls. His fictional stories would often begin with a phone conversation, but between him and his editor, Meg Masters. They would talk for hours. And his nonfiction writing was grounded in that same journalistic technique. He would be researching, I don't know, something random like chewing gum or pencils, you name it. It would almost always start with a phone call and it would take persistence. For every 10 phone calls he made,

maybe only one of those would really bear fruit, would actually get him the answers he was looking for. But the other nine, that could get something too, maybe somewhere totally unexpected, and that could be kind of cool too. Putting together the Arthur Awards was a good example. It involved countless phone calls, wrong numbers, busy tones, people hanging up on us.

It was kind of part of the fun of putting those shows together. So many of you have written into us asking us to play some of those pieces on the podcast. Conversations like the one where Stewart was trying to get someone to pick up the phone but kept getting a busy signal. This was years ago, back before my time on the show, back in the late 1990s, before cell phones before, call waiting. Stewart and founding producer David Amor were in studio recording that weekend show, and they were calling someone to try to tell them that they'd won a contest. They had won in all expenses paid trip to Toronto to be in the theater the night they recorded the Vinyl Cafe Christmas show. Stuart and David Amor were trying to call the contest winner, but they kept getting a busy signal. An hour passed and then another hour.

The clock was ticking and they were running out of studio time. Someone, I don't remember who, someone had the right idea to order a pizza and have it delivered to the contest winner's house. And when the pizza was delivered, they'd also deliver this message. Get off the damn phone. It was a great piece of radio. So there was that one, and there was the one where Stewart called an Arthur Award winner and someone misdialed. All right. Not someone was me.

I misdialed. I called the wrong number. And instead of the Arthur Award winner, we got Kyle, a teenage boy. Stewart struck up a conversation with him. and Kyle told him about his life, about some of the stuff he was going through. Anyway, you've been asking about those pieces, and I promise you, I'm looking for them. I'm digging through bins of old computer hard drives. And as soon as I find them, I will play them for you.

I promise. You don't have to ask. You have asked. I've heard you. I'm on it. It's just taking a lot of it. Anyway, as I've been looking, I've found all sorts of other good stuff, including this, this interesting script that Stuart wrote about some phone research that

kind of shows how many of the not-so-successful calls went. I like hearing Stuart struggle with, well, with his struggle. I think it gives good insight into how Stuart liked to work and good insight into the challenge and balance of the art of journalism. So that's what we're going to start with today. This is Stuart McLean, recorded in studio back in 2012. A few days ago I made a phone call I've been thinking of making for five years. I called a woman called Daisy Simone. Daisy lives in Canada's northern Nunavut territory in the hamlet of Pond Inlet on the west coast of Baffin Island. Pond Inlet is a scattering of houses perched on the rocky Baffin Island coastline,

home to maybe 1,500 people. Like most of the people who live there, Daisy is in a nook, an Inuit person. I've never met Daisy, seen her, or spoken to her in my life. And while it's possible she's heard this radio show, I'm sure she would say the same of me, except more so. I know her name.

And I've been thinking about phoning her for five years. I think it's safe to assume that she's never given me a moment's thought, and certainly the thought of calling me has never entered her mind. Nevertheless, we have a connection, Daisy and I, a connection that was made in the summer of 2006. That was the summer, vinyl cafe producer Jess Milton and I traveled through the Western Arctic. We visited Anuvic and Took Toyuktuuk.

We recorded a show in Yellowknife. It was during our Arctic rambles that I was introduced to Kiviot. Kivet is a soft, warm wool, spun. from the underlayer of a musk ox. I saw sweaters and gloves, hats and scarves knitted from Kiviot, and I thought they were beautiful. I wanted to buy something made from the wool. However, everything was really expensive, too expensive, I thought. A Kivet sweater can cost over $600. Not without reason, perhaps. Kivet is not only warmer than sheep's wool and softer than cashmere, it is, apparently, hard to come by.

According to Wikipedia, prices for kivet yarn can range from $40 to $80 an ounce. That Christmas, Jess gave me a pair of kivet mittens. They are one of the most beautiful things I own. Soft brown with a beige diamond pattern around the wrist. They look like something you might see on a five-year-old girl in a movie from the 1950s. Or maybe on Audrey Hedron. Hepburn in a film about a Russian princess, which is to say they are both modest and beautiful at once. I love the Mitz. In fact, I love them so much I hardly ever wear them, because I'd hate to lose

them. They give me enough pleasure just holding on to them and rubbing them on my face. Anyone who ever picks them up does that, rubbed them on their face. But that's not the point of this. The point of this is when I got them, that Christmas, the Christmas of 2006, there was a small tag attached to my mittens. The tag read, handmade by a Canadian Inuk artist. In a space below that, the artist had signed her name. It was Daisy Simone, Pond Inlet, Nunavut. I'm still not sure why I wanted to phone her. Maybe because at the very bottom of it all, life is about coming together with others, about connecting.

My life is also about stories. Maybe I thought if I could connect with Daisy Simone and learn the story of my gloves, I would love them even more. Or maybe I just like the idea of being able to say that these are my kiviet mittens. They were knitted and pawned inlet by Daisy Simone. I talked to her once. Whatever it was, I wondered about calling for five years. This week, after five years of wondering, I picked up the phone.

It's easy to find phone numbers these days. It was lunchtime when I dialed Daisies. A young man answered. Daisy is not here, he said, but I am Daisy's brother. Daisy's brother told me that he and Daisy live with their grandparents, their aunt, their aunt's daughter, and Daisy's daughter too. Though I'm not sure I got that right, I might have got some of that muddled. We were struggling along in English, which is not his first language.

We speak enuctatook at home, he said. Then he told me that they eat country food as well as store-bought food. He told me he goes hunting with his grandfather for tarmigan and rabbit, seal and caribou. We stay in a tent if we stay on the land overnight, he said. but mostly we come home. He told me his grandfather knows how to build a snowhouse and can build one in an hour. He has taught me, he said,

but I can't do it like him. Then he told me it was time for him to return to school. He told me if I wanted to talk to Daisy, I should phone back in an hour. I waited an hour, and then I phoned back. This time a woman answered. She sounded about 30. But she said,

Daisy is not here. Daisy is very busy. When will she be home, I asked. I don't know, said the woman. I phoned back an hour later. Daisy was still not home, though I was beginning to wonder if the lady I was talking to

was not Daisy herself. I don't know when she'll be back, said the woman. We are totally busy here. I phoned back a third time. This time, whomever it was who picked up the phone hung up on me. I worked as a journalist for some 30 years. As a journalist, I learned to be persistent when I wanted to talk to someone. Combining persistence with good manners, being polite and persistent, usually paid off.

But at some point, persistence becomes harassment. I decided that point had arrived. I didn't have to speak to Daisy, and she certainly didn't have to speak to me. I'm not even sure whomever I was speaking to understood why I was calling. There was that language barrier for sure. But language barrier aside, I'm not even sure I knew why I was phoning, and if I didn't know, why should she? We had met over a pair of mittens.

Her obligation in that transaction had ended long ago. ago. And here we are now, in the depths of January, in the depths of the winter of 2012. The average mean temperature and pond inlet this month is 36 degrees Celsius below zero. The sun has been below the horizon for almost three months. There is plenty of winter left, plenty of cold afternoons and evenings for me to reach for my mittens, plenty of time in this cold, dark season, to think about the distance between Daisy Simone and me. We may be citizens of the same country,

but we live in different worlds. And this winter is a little colder as I think about that, as I make my way through the snow, wondering if Daisy and I could have found something to talk about, had we managed to talk? That was Stuart McLean with a script we recorded in studio back in 2012. Stuart and I talked a lot about that script when he wrote it.

I didn't like it. Not very much at all. It felt voyeuristic to me. I felt for Daisy, and I felt she was entitled to her privacy. I felt protective of her. And I was bothered by Stuart's persistence. But when I listened to it recently, preparing for this pod, I heard a bit differently now.

Today, I hear him wrestling with this himself, not just with this one interaction, but with his way of being. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes our strengths can also be our weaknesses. One of Stewart's strengths was his persistence. He talked about it in the piece you just heard, but his... His persistence, one of his greatest strengths, could also be a weakness. He struggled to know when it was time to let go. When to hang up the phone. When to not ask the next follow-up question.

When to walk away. Today, when I hear that piece, that's what I hear. Someone struggling with the knowledge that one of their greatest strengths can also be a weakness. And that piece also reminds me of that wonderful trip that we took to the Western Arctic. Listening to that sent me deep, deep into my photo library, and I have some great photos from that trip. So I'll put them up on Facebook and Instagram. It is a beautiful place with beautiful people. I have so many beautiful memories of that time there.

And it was my very first trip up north. And I've been back many, many times since. It was that trip that sparked something. in me and my love of the North, and I'm grateful for it. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with the David Morley story, so stick around. Welcome back. Storytime now.

This is Stuart McLean with The Phone Message. It began simply enough. It began with a full. phone call. A phone message, actually. Dave came home and the message light was blinking, so he picked up the phone, the cordless phone, and that part's important. He picked up the portable phone thinking maybe it was morally. He was walking around the kitchen with a phone to his ear the way you do when you're a bit keyed up, flipping through the mail, opening the fridge, pacing, into the living room, over to the kitchen window, not really paying attention to the phone. And that part's important

too. That part is maybe the most important part if that is you're interested in the archaeology of the infamous events that unfolded at Dave's house several weeks ago. If you're interested in sorting out the spaces between cause and effect,

the fact that Dave wasn't totally paying attention is key. Because it wasn't morally who had left the message Dave was only half listening to. It was Dave's arch nemesis, his neighbor from two houses down, Mary Turlington.

Now Mary had called and left the message just before she and Bert left town, and it's important to know that, too, that it was a Friday night that Mary called and said, we're going away for the weekend, but we're having a dinner party next Saturday, and we'd love you to come. And Dave was thinking, as he paced, that he'd rather have his legs waxed than go to another dinner party at Mary Turlington's. And that's when things began to happen too fast. Things that caused Dave to lose his focus, such as it was. Dave was in the kitchen, sort of listening to Mary Turlington's message

when all hell broke loose. Morley blew through the back door with her arms full of groceries. Sam blew through the front door with two friends. The cat began... Well, you know what? You don't need to know all the details. You just need to know that things got pretty confused. for a moment, and Dave, who wasn't really paying attention, hung up the phone or meant to hang up the

phone. And this is the crucial moment. This is the moment where he thinks he hung up the phone. But what happened was he pressed the callback button, which means instead of hanging up, Dave called Mary Turlington. Or more to the point, Dave's phone called Mary's message machine. and Dave, who was holding the phone in his hand, waving it in front of him like a microphone, said to Morley, who was unloading the groceries at the counter, Mary Turlington's invited us to a dinner party, and he dragged the words out derisively as if Mary had invited him over to deworm the dog. But he didn't stop there.

He kept going. She said there'd be interesting people, which means there'll be name tags, which means she decides where we sit. and there won't be enough food, there's never enough food, and she never opens the wine anyone brings, which is true. She doesn't. The Turlington served Bert's homemade wine,

and Bert's homemade wine tastes like car wax, and he didn't stop there. Dave kept going. Dave said, I'd rather have my legs waxed than go to another party at the Turlington's. And that is when the phone beeped. Twice. Dave looked down at the phone in,

terror realizing what he had just done. He had just left Mary Turlington a message. He had just told Mary exactly what he thought of her invitation. And when the enormity of what he had done became clear to him, Dave began to rock back and forth. He stood there staring at the phone, rocking back and forth. Morley stopped what she was doing with the groceries and watched him. And then when he began to moan softly, she said, what now? Huh, said Dave? Right, said Dave. Oh, said Dave, trying to pull himself together. Oh, said Dave, reassembling himself. I, uh, uh, I really don't think I want to go to Turlington's for dinner. Get over it, said Morley. Right, said Dave, get over it. It's nothing. I'll get over it. It's okay.

But it wasn't okay. And Dave wasn't about to get over it. And it certainly wasn't nothing. It was something. and Dave knew he was going to have to do something about it. The potential for gossip was just too horrible to consider. If Mary heard the message and if the story got out and who was he kidding? Of course the story would get out. Even Morley would be telling the story once she heard it. Propeled by the universal, indisputable, undeniable drive that all women share. The dreaded urge to tell other women embarrassing stories about,

their husbands. Mary and Bert were away for the weekend. Dave had 48 hours to get into the Turlington's answering machine. Forty-eight hours to erase his message. First thing that came to Dave's mind was that he had to get his hands on the Turlington's secret code. If he could intuit their pin number, he could get into their message service and erase the message. He wasted the first half a Saturday morning trying to ferret out the year that Mary and Bert were born. No one seemed to know. Though everyone wanted to know why it mattered today.

So he gave that up and he tried to dial directly into the system. Planning to plug in numbers at random, 1958, 1959, the Turlington's twins' names, whatever. But he couldn't find his way in. The Turlington's didn't seem to have a message service. And that's when Dave remembered. The Turlington's didn't have an answering service. They had an answering machine.

It was one of those merry things that made Dave crazy. It's way cheaper. She said dismissively the night Dave spotted the old tape machine in their upstairs family room. For the first time since Friday night, Dave felt a flicker a hope. He didn't need a secret code He just needed to get into the Turlington's house If he could get into their house He could erase his message with a push of a button

Dave waited until dark He circled the Turlington's house Starting in the backyard shaking doors pushing on windows The Turlington's house was locked up tighter than a bank Trust Mary muttered Dave his hand on the front door handle, shaking it desperately, which is about when he spotted Polly Anderson,

watching him from the sidewalk. No one's home, said Dave, trying to pull himself together. All the doors are locked, said Dave. And then he dropped his voice an octave and said, I was just checking the security. There's no way in. And then he said, shut up. Shut up.

He intended to say it silently to himself. It was supposed to be a personal order. But Dave was so wound up, he barked it out loud. Polly began to back away. It was half an hour later, wandering through the park, the dog by his side, the empty swings hanging glumly in front of him, that Dave had his brainstorm. He was whistling when he came home.

What are you whistling? asked Morley. Dixie, said Dave. taking off his jacket and throwing it across the room, watching it float above the easy chair like a big black bird, falling under the arm perfectly. Bingo, said Dave. Magnetic recording tape, the kind in the Turlington's answering machine, is essentially a ribbon of microscopic iron filings.

Now, when you record something, say, for instance, a phone message, the tape recorder organizes those filings on the tape into a recognizable pattern. If you want to erase what you've recorded, you just have to pass the tape over a magnet. The magnet returns the filings back into a random pattern. If Dave could get a magnet. And if you could get the magnet into the Turlington's house,

he could erase his message. Heck, if the magnet was powerful enough, he could, hypothetically, erase the message from outside the house. hypothetically. He tried a building supply store the next morning. They didn't have the kind of magnets that Dave was imagining. This will pick up 200 pounds, said the guy at the counter. Stronger, said Dave. Not here, said the guy. Try a scrapyard. They have magnets strong enough to lift a car. The scrapyard guy had to lift his head to look at Dave from under his greasy baseball cap. When Dave told him what he wanted, the scrapyard guy, Steve, or that was the name stitched on his blue jacket,

Steve lifted his head and squinted at Dave. Then he walked away without a word. Dave wondering what he was supposed to be doing until Steve motioned with his head. Follow me. Dave followed him into a dark and dirty back room, a room piled with old engines and car doors and stuff that used to be something but wasn't anything anymore. the guy pointed with his head at a device the size of a waste paper basket hanging from the ceiling. Like this, he said. Exactly, said Dave.

Could I bore it for a couple of hours? I'll pay you. $75, said the guy, and you have to have it back by closing. When do you close? asked Dave. The guy started to laugh, and the laugh became a cough, one of those disturbing, raspy fits that you think is never going to stop. You think the guy's going to die right there in front of you, his belly hanging over his belt. Dave thought maybe he should get the guy some water, but then the guy stopped coughing and spat on the floor and said, we never close. He was shaking his head again.

And then he reached up and pulled a rusty chain pulley and he lowered the magnet. You have to be careful with it, he said. I can handle it, said Dave. The guy gave Dave a close look from under his cap. I better show you, he said. He lugged the magnet into the shop and he set it up on the counter, waist high. And he unwound an extension cord and turned to plug it in. And as he did, Dave was thinking he should show this guy that he knew what was going on.

So when the guy turned around, Dave was flicking the switch to turn the magnet on. And suddenly this guy, Steve, or whatever his name was, this guy who had barely said a word, this guy who had hardly moved when he moved, suddenly slow-moving, say-nothing scrapyard Steve exploded. No, he shouted, jumping

back, his arms flying down to protect his waist. Huh? Said Dave. Now there are many fundamental laws of physics. The magnet only knew one of them. The magnet only knew the law that was in its nature

to obey. The law about magnetic fields and the forces of attraction between opposite poles. Like, say, an electromagnet and a belt buckle. Dave's. Dave flicked the magnet on and slow-moving guy behind the counter threw his arms to his waist and said, no. And then it's hard to remember exactly what happened next, except the magnet flew off the counter.

Dave would later compare it to a wolverine because it flew towards him viciously. There was a whoishing sound as the magnet smacked into his belt buckle, and all the wind left Dave's body at once, and his knees buckled and he sank to the ground, pawing at this thing drilling into his groin. Dave dimly aware of slow-moving guy hovering over him, wheezing and coughing and spitting,

wrestling with a magnet trying to get at the off-switch, as Dave lay on his back like an upended turtle. Later, Dave would try and explain it away. It was a sucker punch, you'd say. In any case, when he got off the floor and regained his wind and brushed himself off, Dave had to convince the guy that he could handle this thing. It was a close thing, $75 rent and a $400 refundable deposit.

Just bring it back, said the guy, smirking. Once he got at home, Dave decided he had better try out the magnet before he hauled it up the ladder for real. He had jury-rigged a carrier that he was going to use to get the magnet up the ladder to the Turlington's den window. He had it on one of Sam's backpacks, which he was going to wear on his chest like a snuggling. He had removed his belt and his watch.

He had emptied his pockets of everything. There was zero, none, no metal on him, all, not anywhere. And there was no one home at his house. A good thing. He went into his kitchen and he switched the magnet on. There was a high-pitched electronic sort of hum, but nothing dramatic happened. And Dave smiled. I can handle this, he thought. And then he gasped in terror. Because out of the corner of his eye, he spotted flying across the kitchen towards his chest, a carving knife. Blade first. Dave twisted at the last moment and the knife flew by him and stuck in the kitchen wall. But now he was facing the stove and a cast iron fry pan was making menacing movements.

He spun around again and cans started sailing out of the recycling bin. Cans hitting him in the chest, attaching themselves onto the magnet and then on to each other. And Dave twisting around, twisting and twisting and things flying around the kitchen, Dave fumbling for the off switch, lunging around the kitchen trying to reach his arms around the growing layer of tin cans, slotted spoons, pots and pan lids that festooned his torso. He looked like a piece of modern art. It was 6 p.m. when he propped the ladder against the Turlington's house. He hitched his beltless pants up, and he gave the ladder a shake to make sure it was secure.

He was pretty sure he had taken care of every variable imaginable. He went over it in his mind one last time. There was absolutely no metal on his person. No belt, no pens, no watch, nothing. Unlike the kitchen, there was no metal in the vicinity either. Nothing loose anyway. He had borrowed an old wooden ladder from Carl Lobier. He started up.

the ladder, playing out the extension cord behind him. He looked like a ghostbuster. Now, when he got to the top, he braced himself in position in front of the Turlington's den window. He looked around one last time. He took a deep breath. He shut his eyes. Now, he'd already been up here twice without the equipment. He'd checked the window frame. It wasn't metal. It was some sort of polyvinyl plastic. There were no overhead wires. He had thought of everything. He flicked on the magnet. He had thought of almost everything. Mercifully, things happened so fast, Dave had no idea what happened until it was over. He only knew that when he flicked on the magnet, he flew off the ladder, flying through the air like he had a jetpack on his back, flying and flying until he smacked into the side of the Turlington's

house and stuck solid, attached to the Turlington's drain pipe. He was a good 15 feet above the ground, arched backwards like some sort of hideous marsupial, all arms and legs and drooling horror. His beltless pants dropped around his ankles. All the moments for Polly Anderson to come to feed the Turlington's cats. As Dave was hanging from the drain pipe wondering what horrible thing he could have possibly done in a previous life to have deserved this. Polly Anderson was coming down the driveway with raccoons on her mind. Polly is terrified of raccoons. And she had spotted one the night before when she had come to feed the Turlington's cats.

And Polly was on high alert. So when she walked directly under Dave, and Dave's pants finally slipped loose and landed on her back, Polly thought she had been jumped by a raccoon. She lifted off the ground and she screamed, she screamed so loud that lights began to flick on all over the neighborhood. And there was Polly heading down the drive, Dave's pants flapping around her head,

Polly batting at the pants with her hands, until she stopped abruptly and untangled herself and looked up and all Dave could think was of all the days to have put on the white boxers with the red Santa and the prancing reindeer and all he could think of saying hanging there upside down in his boxers was high

and then then without thinking he switched off the magnet Jim Schofield arrived just as Dave hit the ground Jim took the key from a shaking Polly Anderson and said, you go home, I'll deal with this. He didn't say anything as he helped Dave up

and waited for him to regain his wind. Ever since witnessing Dave in the plaza hotel lobby with a raw turkey under his arm, Jim doesn't ask about Dave's private life. And he didn't comment when Dave followed him into the Turlington's house. I need a drink, said Dave. And Jim didn't notice him slip upstairs into the den.

Dave didn't have time to work out how to erase the messages. Instead, he opened the answering machine thinking he'd take the tape home and erase it at home and return it later. There were, however, two tapes in the machine. One was for the Turlington's greeting. The other was to record the incoming messages. There was no way to tell them apart. So Dave grabbed both tapes. Before he laughed, he unlocked a window at the back.

of the house so he could get back in. It was after ten when he squirmed through the window with both tapes in his pocket. He was in and out as fast as he could, locking the window he came in through and leaving by the back door locking it to. He only had one last thing to do. He hadn't erased his message. There were other messages on the tape and he decided he shouldn't ruin them. so instead he had queued up the message tape at the beginning of his message. All he had to do now was go home and phone the Turlington's and record over it. And he ran home. And he gathered himself up and he dialed the Turlington's number.

And the phone rang once, twice, three times. And he heard the thump and whir of the message machine picking up just in time too. Because out the window he could see the Turlington's car. pulling into their driveway. And as he watched, Mary Turlington walked up her front steps with her keys in her hand. And then the Turlington's recorded greeting began. And this time Dave was paying attention,

thinking that if he had only paid attention the first time, none of this would have happened. Except it wasn't Mary Turlington's voice he was listening to. It was his voice. And he was saying, Mary Turlington has invited us to a dinner party. And he dragged the words out derisively as if Mary had invited him over to deworm the dog.

David reversed the tapes. He had put the tape with his offending message in the greeting slot. And until someone changed it, everyone who phoned the Turlington's would be greeted by Dave. And he would be saying, there will be name tags. She will decide where we sit. There won't be enough food. there's never enough food, she never opens the wines anyone brings.

And he doesn't stop there. He keeps going. He says, I would rather have my legs wax than go to another party at the Turlington's. Dave began to rock back and forth. Oh, my God, he moaned. Oh, my God. Thank you very much. That was the story we call the phone message.

We recorded that story in Brandon Manitoba in 2003. All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with more from David and Morley. At first, Arthur seemed excited as they got there. But as the afternoon wore on, he became increasingly anxious. His tail stopped wagging each time the doorbell rang. By suppertime, Arthur'd hold himself up at the downstairs bathroom and wouldn't come out. It's understandable you put six dogs who don't know each other in a house together,

six dogs, any house, and there are going to be moments. And there were no doubt about it. The first walk, just getting out the door was fearsome. Dave picked up a leash, one of the six leashes in the basket by the door, and Preston, who was sound asleep on the living room, couch lifted his head, and both his ears flicked up, but he didn't budge. He was waiting for one more jingle, and there it was. And with a second confirming jingle, Preston went from sound asleep to full speed running and barking. It happened in the blink of an eye. Preston was asleep, and then he wasn't.

He was running to the doors if he'd been running for hours. Preston had one thing on his mind, birds. And he wanted to tell everybody, birds, barked Preston, birds, birds, and he passed summer on his way to the door, and summer jumped up to garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, birds, garbage. The two of them barking right past Noonu, who's asleep in the corner. Nunu joins in, although she has no idea why she's running, She has no idea what's going on.

She's just running, and by the time she's made it to the hall, she's so excited she stopped twice to pee. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the apostrophe podcast network. The recording engineer is someone I have spent hundreds of hours on the phone with, maybe thousands of hours on the phone, Greg DeCleut. The music is by my pal,

Danny Michelle, who I also love talking on the phone too. We also have very long phone conversations. You're sensing a theme here. And the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.