It's time once again for the weekly Adventures of crackpot
and buzz kill live from Gitmo nation, west and southwest.
Wait, I'm in East from southwest London. Adam curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak here in Silicon Valley north. So John C
Dvorak. Yes. So
yes you did. And that is Gitmo nation West. I'm in Gitmo nation
East fresh back and Gitmo nation east where things are falling
apart. And the Brits have finally started to grab for the
pitchforks and torches.
There were riots in in Geneva yesterday you missed him you but
you're in a planning Miss
Geneva but yesterday the British also not riots but the they're
calling Gordon Brown on his bullshit the workers at what is
it? Total, and a few other outfits and we had a wild
wildcat strike.
Total is the gas station. It will Yeah, the oil
firm. Gordon Brown apparently well not apparently I saw it
myself in 2006 and 2007. He kept talking about hey, British jobs
for British people. And so now there's there's a contract that
was awarded to a an Italian firm. And they just float these
barges, which are like floating hotels, and they bring in a
whole bunch of Italian guys to do the work.
And the Italian guys must be working cheaper. That's my
guess. Let
me guess. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, that no reason
why they're making minimum wage.
Well, that's cheap. Nice work for minimum wage in the same
job, but they do it.
Yeah, I think that would I think a lot of Brits are ready to work
right now.
Well, maybe so they maybe maybe Gordon Brown's thinking that
well for us all these foreign labourers. They won't give us
any tax money and then they'll that'll help bankrupt the
company or the country.
Well, yeah, that's probably probably something that
maybe he's a communist. You think so I was watching the last
night as you were travelling on the big giant Silverbird. And I
made a copy of this for you, by the way, because it turned out
to be quite interesting. Jack Welch, who is he's
everywhere. By the way, he's on every single talk show. He's on
CNBC. He's on Fox. He's doing the rounds. What are the ways
but he's not doesn't seem to be selling anything? Yeah, I
find that peculiar. He's not selling anything, maybe selling
himself, you know, but whatever the case was, he did a whole
hour with Donna Shalala, who's turns out to be the president of
the University of Miami where he went to school, I guess. And I
guess that he's teaching He's been teaching for the last four
years at MIT some business course. And he kind of called
out all the other business professors as Boneheads. So
which is kind of interesting in itself. But he made this
interesting point, which is, which I've heard made over and
over again, by people in business. Andrew Horowitz made
it the last time we did our little podcast, and then that
earlier this morning, CNBC was doing a world roundup of opinion
of business leaders, which is about how Obama is screwing up
by saying it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Which is
a thing you don't do ever. And well says that Roosevelt never
did it and I'm sorry, you know, I don't remember wasn't leaving
alive during Roosevelt's Europe Ira heard all those early
speeches and his because they kept him around for a long time.
And he never did that. He was He said, The only thing to fear is
fear itself Obama's you know,
saying fear ped for the hills. Well, well, so, on that side,
um, there's, there's a lot we can talk about, because of
course, you know, I've been watching all my little C span
stuff and paying close attention. But what really what
really got me is we just went through this whole song and
dance about transparency. And there's an executive actually,
it's not an executive order. It's a memorandum regarding
lobbyists and you can't be a lobbyist two years after you
leave the administration or you can't be the in the
administration. So Timothy Geithner is approved or what do
you what do we call that? Confirmed confirmed? Thank you
confirmed as the Treasury Secretary, the first thing he
does is he announces his assistant, who was a lobbyist
two months ago and he says, Well, that's okay, because he'll
recuse himself when appropriate. I
shouldn't be all the time. Well, of course.
You know, it was a different field. It wasn't finance. Of
course, the guy did work at Goldman Sachs, you know before
then, but that's just blows me away. go through this whole
thing, big song and dance and the first guy that Geitner
brings it
up, but you think they could have put this off? If a few. You
know, why do they have to do it right away, just violate your
own and we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that. And then
right away, you just, you know, I think Obama should have called
him on and said, Look, you get these rules. I mean, can you
find anybody else's the only guy in the world?
Yeah, really? There are some other employees at Goldman
Sachs. I'm sure he could pick another one. Because that's all
that it's about.
Well, I'm not seeing any change. Here's what I
know. Well, I'm getting the hate, though. That is starting
to happen. Oh, well, tell us about it. Now. Just on Twitter,
even. By the way, it would be cool if you followed me, Adam
curry all written together on Twitter.
Following You're kidding, yeah.
I don't have that many followers.
Oh, let me go follow you. Okay, let's do that soon as the show's
over. I do it now, but it'll screw up the stream.
It's like, Adam, don't you have any thinking to be positive? You
rarely maybe never have said anything positive about Obama.
No one is 100%. Wrong, which is?
You said lots of good things about Obama.
I certainly have I said he's very cute. And you're a good
looking man. And and he here. This is good. I love listening
to you on John Cena. No agenda, but we'll tune you out. If you
don't lighten up bashing my president. My president. The
hell is that? He's my president to
get a fair president. You Yeah. What's up, Brian? I'm much more
positive about Obama than you are. I mean, I have to admit to
that.
Really? And what are you positive? We actually you did
mention something in one of our many dinners, and we should talk
about a few of them, if not all briefly, you did say something
which kind of which stuck in the back of my head.
I'll tell you what it is. I was gonna deny it but I won't. My
wife thought the idea of hiring guy. Geitner was a good one
because he had had his run ins with the IRS and we need some
guy who's had a bad experience or two but you countered with he
wasn't that bad of an experience. He wasn't even find
any penalties like everybody the rest Exactly.
Like they came into the office with their hands on their
weapons when they came looking for me. And now that now we have
Tom Dashiell, who also had a hadn't paid his his income tax
until of course, you know, he goes through confirmation
hearings. Oh, yeah, no, I just took care of that last week,
like 100 grand $150,000 with no penalties. Now, he did say that
he paid $15,000 in penalties.
That doesn't sound right. Sounds low. Sounds like I was gonna say
it sounds very low to me. And I wonder if he then also got all
that frickin mail. So so. So there was, you know, they
couldn't find forms from something for me from 2001
through 2005, whatever. And so that triggered a whole bunch of
stuff. But what that also triggers is your mailbox gets
completely stuffed with lawyers. Hey, you know, don't don't let
the you know, we can help you with the IRS. And it's
unbelievable how that works. I guess you got this on public
record or something that must pop up that and here's something
else I discovered if if you'll indulge me for a moment, that I
have not had a lot of experience with creditors, just because I
pay my bills, and I usually pay them on time. You know, I wait
that sometimes, depending on what it is, I'll wait for that
warning. No, just because it gives me satisfaction of pain
later. But I've never really had a creditor situation now
Christina, signed up for a gym membership. And of course, you
know, typical lazy teenager didn't really comprehend what
she was doing. And yet she couldn't have as many gym
memberships as he wants, but she put it on her debit card with a
standing order to basically you sign stuff. And so you know, and
she gets an allowance from me. But again, it's not enough to
cut in but you know, we pay we would support her we pay for the
for the gym membership. So of course, she ran to trouble
somewhere got ahead of her, you know, she wasn't paying
attention, forgot to ask me. And so then there's like a 349 pound
bill that's outstanding. And this was for in Guilford. So we
left and she went to cancel and they said hey, man, you owe us
money. So I you know, in the move that had laid around for
another four weeks or whatever, and and then I got a letter from
an attorney. And it's one of these typical collection
letters. It's had been yelled this. I should actually read it
verbatim, but this has been handed over to us and whatever.
And so I figured I'll do that when I get back. And then
Christina sent me because they really started harassing her.
She sent me a text while I was in San Francisco. And so I
called the company up the the gym company. And they said 349
pounds and so I gave my debit Card Number one was paid for.
But the lawyer letter which came in two weeks earlier, what I
thought was a lawyer letter as as if the account had been
handed over to a lawyer, it seems like they were asking for
500 pounds. So I think what's happening here is a lot of these
companies turn over their debts to a collection agency, but the
collection agency acts like their lawyer, and they're, you
know, and the lawsuit is ready, and they're gonna, you know,
bring it before court, et cetera, et cetera. And it really
seems like a tremendous scam because the difference is, you
know, 150 pounds
is that's there? Well, actually, it's even better than that.
Because they when you turn over to your debt to the collection
agency, they get that depends on the deal. But generally
speaking, they get like half of that, and then whatever else
they can tack on, so they're like making money. Yeah, well,
they this is a crooked business. And the fact of the matter is
this rampid in this country, I didn't even know it was over
there. Well, so this is my point is I didn't know about this just
because I've never been in that in that situation. And let that
be a warning that you know, it's really easy to fall for this and
it can cost you hundreds more than necessary.
We have a bunch of consumer protection laws in this country
that are not enforced that prevent all kinds of bad
practices that these guys execute constantly. And you have
to almost how and the attorney general or the Consumer
Protection Department or the state government or whatever,
whoever it is to get action because these guys will call you
in midnight there's just a million little tricks that they
pull and most of which are illegal and then again not
enforced. I mean that seems as though in the United States ever
since the I guess it began with the first Bush administration
just maybe even the Reagan or maybe even the Carter I don't
know it just keeps going further back but it's just the consumer
protection laws have been weakened lot of have been taken
off the books they've been you know usually through some sort
of writer on some other bill you know that Save the Children
Yeah. Let's stick some stuff in there.
Stick some stuff in here. What are you gonna do about it?
But it's a credit to predatory children it's a predatory
practice though this is this is really very
very it's a total predatory practice and nobody does
anything about it there's no agency that cares Obama I doubt
he's gonna do crap you know talking about indict when I see
some consumer protection action from him then I'll I'm totally
on board but I'm not seeing a you know, I never even heard
that during all his campaigning. You know these like these payday
loans well well there's a whole bunch of stuff on 60 minutes
with the guy goes in some poor guy was a who's a veteran fact
of the Army's very concerned about this you know, the guys
will go in and they'll take take one of these payday loans out
where you you give them your you get a loan for what your next
checks gonna be and had to pay him some ridiculous amount of
fee and if you don't pay it, all of a sudden you owe like
1000s $1,000 Excuse me, there's loan shark legal loan sharking.
There's a couple of things about the administration which kind of
runs along these lines because it comes down to legalese you
know, and, and the the small disclaimers, etc. And really the
fine print and so there's two things. I'm going to turn off
the Skype chat if you guys tried to call me I'll be idiots. hate
that. Idiots. Can't you hear? Oh, that's fun. He goes Bloop,
bloop. I'm like turning off all the sounds here. Idiots. Yeah,
figured I'd give him a toss him a bone. Give him a Skype chat.
What do they do? So the first thing that's really starting to
irk me, is the stimulus package. According to John, your
president and my president will and here's the quote everyone
says exactly the same create or save 3 million jobs. Now, that's
it there's a big difference between saving and creating. I
mean, there's like there's like a 6 million job difference
between the two.
That's funny Hey, um, you say we have what we say 3 million jobs
How do you know you didn't Yeah,
I mean, it's so that's that's literally
back and say, whatever the employment said, We got 40
million people working in Kobe. Say we save more than three. Oh,
yeah. Oh, well, 8 million jobs. Every person working today we
saved there. That is
exactly what's going on. There was there's a C span clip which
I'll send you the link of I think he's representative I
think he's uh, I don't know if he's a senator or if he's in the
House of Representatives, either way, and He literally says, you
know, Hank Paulson must have been the Senate. Hank, Hank
Paulson note came to the house and said, you know, this was the
one day where over half a trillion dollars in money market
start to flow away, and we need this money within six hours.
And, you know, people will be dying on the streets and he goes
through this whole rap man. It's just like, Oh, I
saw this. I think we blogged it. So
you might have Yeah, it's been it's been circling around. And
it's just like, wow, you know, and he's literally saying we
don't know well, and which, of course is true. You know that
you've been honest there. We don't know how this works. But
then you just hand the keys over to that bulb? Fuck. Ah,
no. What did you get away with what you can get away with?
So the so here's, here's the big news, though, in my mind, which
is kind of being glossed over is Joe Biden is so he's he's got
his marching orders. He's, he's off. He's out. He's, he's on the
road. They've successfully gotten him out on doing
something incredibly useless. What? Which is? Well, of course,
because who was promised? Yeah, who was promised the most we got
the poor people in the middle class. Right? So middle class,
of course, we're waiting for mortgages to be paid and health
care to be fixed and everything. No, no, we now have an executive
by executive order. Joe Biden will be leading the Middle Class
Task Force. And he's going out on a listening tour. Joe Biden
coming to a town near you soon to listen. Listen, what the hell
are they doing on the campaign trail? Is that what they always
say? Well, we heard you we listened to everything you had
to say.
I guess they didn't listen very well.
Ah. So yeah, so I guess he's just out. That's it.
Yeah, he'll be out on the road who better said life or Riley
for him now, you know, travelling around with a family
seeing America.
See, America. I love these. This whole past week, President Obama
was doing a show every morning around somewhere between 10 and
1030. The first one was the signing the lead better bill,
and you know, all these all these different appearances. But
but when you watch C span, you get the complete, unedited
experience, and they turn it on with room noise before, you
know, like, sometimes 15 minutes before the President arrives.
And it's just like a show. It's they've got the little Muzak
going to like do Lulu and him. And then, ladies and gentlemen,
please take your seats. We will be starting in five minutes,
five more minutes. And it's it's uncanny. It's just it's really,
really spooky.
It's a show. It's
a complete show. This is the biggest reality show ever. And
it's unfolding before our very eyes. fascinating to watch.
Absolutely fascinating. Fascinating. I can just see the
west wing in the morning. Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy west wing in
the morning. Mommy, mommy, what's matter. Malia Where's
daddy scripts? He need his scripts for today.
So we went out to a couple of restaurants you should tell you
know, anyone coming to San Francisco about?
Yeah, I have to say I had a great week. I don't there was
only the first night that I have room service. And every or every
other evening. I had a good meal. And maybe what the first
thing we should say is if you're looking for oysters in San
Francisco, be prepared to pay.
Yeah, the oysters, the West Coast have skyrocketed in price
because of some shortage or god knows what. But you know, the
thing is, you know, we went to this cocoa 500 or whatever it
was at the last day and they had oysters on there. I don't know
if you noticed, but they were the same price $2.50 for an
oyster,
per oyster. So the first dinner we had with Zuni
they had the Zuni Cafe very famous, old restaurant that's
part of the foodie revolution. I don't know what that means place
is kind of on par with shape and East acepted. You know, I don't
think it was a leader by any means in terms of new cuisine,
but they always have known for having a good oyster selection.
And we had
boy, did we have a selection or what? We had $90 worth of
oysters. Yeah, I was already outlandish.
But they were good. And January's. According to the
French, January is the month you want to eat oysters, at least in
the northern northern hemisphere, of course. And you
have never had oysters down in South America. That'd be kind of
interesting.
So we what we did specifically for the show, is we tried a
seven different varieties. A couple of them were not
available. The one from Rhode Island was not available, which
I really wanted to try. And we had So we started off with a
dozen then we had another dozen and then we narrowed it down to
the final three of which we had three each.
No. Yeah, actually we started with we.
Here's how sad it is. We lost count.
It started off with a dozen, two dozen right off the bat. And
then we had another dozen then we had the final nine.
And I'm like, Yeah, okay, I remember the names. Yeah, you
do. I don't remember. So my favourite was the Pickering. And
yours was the pearl point. Yeah,
right. Right. They were both good. I think the pro point was
better. And then the other one that was a runner up was the
Nika
Chen ever heard of that was like more like Nuka was a new craft.
That was net
guy, n e, t, k, something like that. She's like, you know,
these oysters are just a bit of voice or someplace and they give
them a name.
And so for those of you wondering, it's very possible to
eat all that all those oysters. You don't feel sick. It's you
can you can just keep eating
it just basically, like 99% water.
I whitewashed the ceiling in the hotel room boy.
So anyway, yeah, that was good. But, you know, I've been eating
some oysters now and again this season, but I was very
disappointed in the prices that goes OSHA is typically, you
know, in a place like that usually run a buck 25 to a buck
50. And then in a really expensive restaurant. They run
to two but 250 and then couple those ones from the East Coast,
which I went to 75 was 275. I saw a 350 was one that was 350.
Yeah.
Outrageous, as pointed out to you. And then we had grouper.
Right, we split the group or group or? Yes, okay. Yeah, it
was all right. And, oh, that was an of course, John's doing his
whole wine list thing. And he looks at our server. And he
says, Hey, is the wine guy here?
I warned you I was gonna do that.
She didn't know a lot about the wine. Did she?
She didn't know anything, though. As he was looking for
the screw top. Well, whatever. But that was kind of good.
Because we had a was that a champagne? We started off with
no. Fan. But yeah, then we had a chateau nifty pop. Yes. That you
liked a lot. I did like it. You're right. Okay, then. So
what do we rate that places at a place we would recommend?
Yes, I wouldn't. Well, the price the total bill, you know, for
now. Yeah, we had a lot of oysters, but it's not cheap. I
thought it was an expensive place, which of course included
the 4% health tax, which is now included on every bill was
expensive. It was expensive.
It was expensive considering it's kind of like a it's a funky
place. To me. It's not like a romantic great restaurant that
you'd take somebody you know, to propose to them. But at those
prices, you think it would be
you better get laid? If you're taking someone out for that
money, that's for sure.
So, but you know that we did have, you know, champagne and
the red wine and
we've never really done a rating system. But I'd go there again,
if you said, Hey, you want to go to that place with the oysters?
I'd definitely go again.
Yeah, well, I've been there before I go there. I just don't
I'm really disappointed in the prices of those oysters. It's
well just keeps you from having oysters. I mean, you normally go
in there in January. And the whole bar is that they have a
big copper bar. It's beautiful. And they used to be people at
the bar with which about half of them would have that oyster
thing up in the air. You know, that levitated oyster plate
holder? And they all beat noises. I mean, you just go in
there and just sit down at the bar and have lunch oysters.
Yeah, I didn't see anybody eating oysters? Well, no,
because it's
pretty expensive finger food. So people on the chat are asking
about this health tax turned speaker down just a bit, John.
Sure. And I think we talked about this actually, we argued
that we talked about this on an earlier no agenda. This is
in Kansas proving proving I was right. We never talked about it.
Yeah. Okay.
So in California now, I believe there's a certain amount of
health care tax that employers are obliged to pay and whatever
it is, it's like they're getting screwed. They can afford it and
their solution was to pass it on directly to their customers and
so they actually put a line item 4% health tax and sometimes even
safe Sorry or thank the governor or something like that over
little cute cute message. Yes, someone's posted a link now in
the chat. So there you go.
The the the that wasn't only on that it wasn't on the other
bills. Well,
you never saw the other bills. I saw one that was on all 500
there was it was it wasn't it? I think it was. But yeah,
the copies in your wallet. You should check out I throw those
out.
I destroy the evidence. I'm so used to it's I've never had
never take anything from a hotel or restaurant back man. You
might have to explain yourself later. To who? Who cares I
didn't.
I didn't ever yell at him.
I didn't I didn't fill out my 105 by the way. I just couldn't
I couldn't bring myself to do it. So you just walked through?
Yep. Of course. Go look that one go Google that 1105
Yeah, you know what? I figured you were gonna do that knew when
I figured this scenario if anybody said anything was Oh
shit, you know I got the 105 right
is exactly right. And I hadn't filled out to like this. Oh, oh,
crap, man. I can't believe I forgot to do that.
So hectic. Yeah, I figured this was that would be your skiing.
Yeah, sure, Buzzkill.
So if somebody was some or one of our listeners by way came up
with a We should retitle ourselves crackpot and buzzkill
and we thought it was very amusing,
then we're keeping that in there. Well, we should actually
give our second our second piece of news because you know, we can
do restaurant reviews all day. But we've decided that for a
number of reasons we need to do an additional show in the week.
So we're not quite sure how that's gonna play out yet but
might be Tuesday might be Thursday. And that's pretty damn
good news, isn't it?
You need to apply sound effect right
that's right, not once but now it's twice a week that's right.
crackpot and buzz kill well, so Okay, so that was the Zuni Cafe.
We I give it a B, do you want to go to the second review? You
want to do it somewhere midstream so we don't kill
people with food.
Yeah, we'll just put it off later. That'll make me more
agonising.
All right, we got to come back to it though. I got stuff on the
list. How about you
okay go I'm where I'm where I'm ready to rock I gave you my
stuff was Jack Welch.
Yeah. Well Jack Jack Welch. It is interesting though that I've
seen him on every he knows he's he's co hosting CNBC in the
morning. It must be like a you write it must be about Jack
Welch and not about anything else. Or maybe she I don't know
what it is. Hey, Ben.
Well, even with this thing at the University of Miami, the
problem with Welch I don't know how old he is. We could probably
somebody could record literate to us. But
Jack Welch, he's, he's got to be 7070 Sure, but
he obviously you know, he's still irked about the fact that
they took his jet away. I mean, I think they screwed him at
General Electric. Because he made a deal with him.
Yeah, and then they took it away. Wasn't that under similar
circumstances to like corporate greed or something? And yeah, it
was
something like that. Somebody Yes. You only wanted to use a
damn jet so anyway, so they retires and they screw him of
course, which I'm sure it's gotta be something he discusses
once whoever the promise he he sounds like he's drunk
a little bit kind of crazy.
He starts talking about stuff and he just you get you got when
you see this thing you see what I'm talking about goes up and
then there's guys that are like what he just said Kelly at KK
names Kelly's at federal aid. And a way anyway, it just
there's just like this.
Jack, this is a complete a sentence really already. He
can't
complete his sentence. And he's Nick can't remember anybody's
name. But you
know what it is, is all these guys who are like my age and
your age, they're all falling over themselves. Because you
know, Jack Welch was legendary as a business leader. You know,
he was like the kind of guy that you wanted to have as president.
And yeah, and there's just such a fawning over him that they're
they're overlooking the obvious, which is, yeah, the guy's no
longer TV appropriate. You know, it's just,
it's just a mess. Isn't a mess, but the funny thing and he's any
slurs and he's gay and he's got a mush mouth. He's doesn't
enunciate. But he I've always thought he was overrated.
Because I mean, it was a pig and it was a pig in a hurricane. You
know, when General Electric's money went way up the I mean,
that was during an era where everybody was just growing like
crazy, no matter how incompetent you were, that said, when you
listen to him give his basics on this and that is great. I mean,
me probably maybe I'm wrong and that he, you know, because I
always had this, you know, he spent most of his time writing
books about himself, instead of actually managing anything,
which may have been a good thing. Him and his wife. He's
not alone. Let's put it that way.
But that is, but you're right. That is that is rather
interesting.
Right? And his wife does all his writing. Well, why she bylined
with him on the call that they do,
because she's instrumental, She is the woman behind his success.
I don't think that's the reason. Jack, if you're gonna make me do
all this work, I
want I want credit, I want my credit, debit. At a certain
point, you know, you get you get these women, and I think she's,
I believe she is somewhat younger than he is. I would
hope. Yeah. But you get to you get to a point where, you know,
if the guy is just kind of out of a job, you know, wealth has
money, but you know, he doesn't have a jet. You know, women care
more about jets than than money. You know, and then she's she's
kind of still young, and she's still kind of MILFy looking.
It's gotta be hard, man, when you make that bed, and you gotta
lie in until the guy kicks it.
Right? You never know this guy could go for another 20 G's.
She's like, Hey, get up earlier.
Wake up. Jack. Jack Jack. Is that
for CNBC? HR 645. This is House Resolution bill proposed for the
introduction of FEMA camps in the United States.
Yeah, well, just in case there's a natural disaster, you need to
put some people someplace.
Yeah, but the the reason why this is so big in the circles
that I travelled in John, is that the so called FEMA camps
and the stacks of plastic coffins. And the barbed wire,
and so many different videos are on YouTube of these FEMA camps,
FEMA camps, FEMA camps. And now here it is legitimatize nation
legitimization of FEMA camps. So basically, the legal ease to
support these camps that have already been built. And yeah,
sure it's foreign. In fact, it's to provide temporary housing,
medical humanitarian assistance to individuals and families
dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster.
Well, what would they do? Are they showing that there's barbed
wire around these things?
Yeah, with the barbs pointing inwards.
Why would they do that
to keep people in?
But why? I mean, what would they want to keep them in there for
if they're if they're from some natural disaster doesn't make
any sense? Well, Bill,
let me tell you, Mr. Hastings of Florida.
Okay, that's a good excuse that Katrina,
yet which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and
Infrastructure, in addition to the committee on armed services,
because of course, there'll be run by the military. Okay. And
we want the other three uses to provide centralised locations
for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of
federal state and local first responders. So they're gonna be
training camps, and to provide centralised locations to improve
the coordination of preparedness response and recovery efforts of
government private and not for profit entities and faith based
organisations and to meet other appropriate needs as determined
by the Secretary of Homeland Security. Well, that's the only
one that counts. Yeah, no less than six FEMA camps to be built.
And what they'll do, John is they'll take the feeble and the
weak first the elderly, and like, Hey, come here. We'll take
care of you come on into the camp.
To take a shower. You laugh
but I hope it I hope it never comes true, man. But this is to
me, this is frightening shit.
Sounds like Nazi Germany. Yes. Correct.
But when you look at the train, so when you look at it, when you
look at the you know, seeing the headlines in the UK, upon return
was just amazing. Governments around the world shaking in
their boots about uprising, you know, because now it's, it's,
you know, there's rioting and violent protesting going
on everywhere. Yeah, well, even in Geneva of all places. Tell
me about this. Because you mentioned that,
oh, it's because there's a whole bunch of people round somehow
managed to go into Switzerland and then their engineer Give it
a protest that Davos thing which has become laughable, you know,
the economic world economics summit
forum or whatever they call it. Yeah, the World Economic Forum,
you know, you know, I'm okay. I'm
hurt by Scoble.
Exactly. Because I mean, I'm okay with the what if you say,
Hey, we're gonna go have a party and score some hookers and slip
some oysters in Switzerland? That's okay. But don't don't
pretend like this is where you're gonna go fix the world.
There's they're celebrating. Gordon Brown was onstage giving
a speech in the morning saying you know globalism is good.
Gordon Brown in the morning Gordon
Brown in the morning globalism is good FM. And and so while
he's saying that he's got 1000s of people on a wild wildcat
strike in the UK, again, the very thing man Oh, man,
well Oh, eat while you were over here. There are rioting in
France. And there were striking all over the place. Yeah.
Which, which is not abnormal for France. But it is the first time
that first time it's happening. Under Sarkozy's watch. Yeah, so
so that does say something there. But people are getting
pissed off.
You got a bunch of do nothing. Governments.
Well, no, they're doing something. They're stealing it.
They're stealing. They're stealing us blind. And we're
just sitting there laughing watching Celebrity Big Brother.
Now they just didn't put enough reality TV shows on to keep the
public happy.
It's fascinating to watch. That's for sure.
When as you're back over there, you can catch us up again with
what's going on in the off the continent because you kind of
worry while you're over here. You're just stuck with you
because we don't get any of that. And
it's all about the Super Bowl, which of course is is taking
place later today. Right. And you know, you mentioned Well,
you told me and I think he's mentioned on twit that you are
going to DVR the game and you're going to just say watch it
speed. Watch it. Yeah, but I was reading something that actually
I think you should watch the commercials, John, because from
what I
read here, I don't want to watch that one minute come over that
five second commercials that they had dreamed up, which
that's not Would you let me finish? You may and then you can
go on the rant. Now see, what they discuss on twit is not
necessarily what's true. It's not really what's happening in
advertising. Now what I what I thought would be nice for you to
watch is that all of the big brands are all going to be trot
attempting to bring a positive and subdued tone. And I think
that makes it extremely interesting to watch. To the end
and hope. Okay, and choice lunge and these types of things.
Yeah, okay, I'll watch a couple. Here's what to do. When you
speed watch on the width, I'm using the Dish Network DVR,
which has a 32nd button on ice. Yeah, which TiVo doesn't have to
TiVo, you can programme it to have it. But you know, you have
to know what you're doing. So you pop pop and pop, you're
always off about two or three seconds one way or the other.
Because you you know, you have to see if you're back to scratch
because they the amount of time was during the advertisement
section is very sometimes they'll have a two minute break,
sometimes have a three minute break. Sometimes we'll have a
four minute break. I mean, you never know. So you're popping
through, there is a there's a clock somewhere but you don't
have it. You have to be cool. Actually, that would be people
out there should do this. You know there's a there in
broadcasting, there's a thing called a clock. When the clock
is a sheet of paper that is used heavily in radio, especially
with syndicated shows, it's a short pay format clock, it's a
format clock showing you how much time they're going to be
talking and where a commercial break takes place and who owns
the commercial. And then the next commercial break, and it
shows you exactly when these breaks come and go. And what
they do, even though they never usually hit him on the money
except at the top of the hour. They do tell you how many
commercials or how long the breaks gonna be. So they'll tell
you if it's going to be two minutes of commercials or 30
seconds of commercials or whatever. So it'd be cool for
somebody to start a website with a clock showing that and right
when you're doing CSI does a break here and a break here and
a break here and how long the break is. So people like myself
and half the public I believe that have these guns, you know
these old remote controls. You go oh the camera this is the
four minute one this is a big one at the bottom of the half of
the hour and you go bang bang bang bang bang bang bang you
just hit the button eight times and you're boom you're four
minutes back past so you don't have to go to the you had the
because you get kind of pensive. EOSC check it again. That's
okay, hit again. Anyway, that's just a thought
every so every time I'm back in the States after some period of
time, I'm always amazed at the amount of signal to noise ratio
on broadcast network television. The amount of commercials it is.
It's, yeah, go ahead.
It's one minute for every two minutes of programming, ah,
just want to shoot yourself. And then and I, and then I really
tried to extract myself, it's okay, I'm really gonna pay
attention to the messaging that I normally just tune out. But of
course, you're not really tuning it out, because that's how it
works. So first, there was a Cialis commercial. You know, the
one that ended Alice Cialis. Yeah, that ends with if you
experienced an erection for more than four hours, please consult
your physician immediately.
It actually there's a there's a comedian has this gag, he says,
Yeah. And it says, if you have an erection lasted for more than
four hours, call your physician. I said, call my physician. I'm
calling everyone I know.
I've heard a differently. I've heard that's not a medical
problem. That's a scheduling problem. And then, but that was
followed by and if you've seen this, the Durex finger vibrator,
I have not seen that you have got this and this was on network
television. It's a scandal. It's a scandal. It's not It's
fantastic. Because in you see these women, and they're and
they're talking about it, but without saying what it is, and
then she's like, oh, you know, you you can even and then she
whispers to? Like, you know, gosh, and you're now my mind is
racing. What can you even do with this wonderful finger
vibrator? I can't wait. You can't hold this for me. I need
to go to durex.com to the website immediately. I wonder if
that's on YouTube.
I'm sure it is. Everything's on YouTube.
Durex vibrator?
Well, anyway, so there's one minute of commercials for every
two minutes of programming. So you know, I think that by law,
someone should pass a law. So you cannot have more than one
minute of commercial interruption at a time.
But that should be a law. No, it shouldn't be a law. Let those
guys
show it'd be like two minutes, one minute, two minutes. So you
only see two minutes of the show. And then a minute a
commercial then two minutes of this show than a minute of the
commercial that mainstream
shit is so over. I mean, they've really fucked it up. Here we go.
This is it. Let me just see if this works. They totally screwed
it
up because of this. This
is a different one. Visitors. This is British as a British
one. Yes. Play it. Okay. That okay, I made sandwiches at
effing school really? Well. No, that's, that's not for the
finger vibrator. That's for some of the that's this. The machi
had such a cute voice. Yeah, but it was kind of weird.
Okay, well, well, but
if anyone hasn't on the chat, send that to me. Because when
you when you see this ad, John, it's just like, ah.
How did they get that went through. And meanwhile, they're
bouncing ads left and right. Oh, yeah, that's gonna be in the
Super Bowl.
Well, again, it's all going to be you know, spiritual and
hopeful and, and subdued.
Let me get back to my point. And not you brought me back to that.
Yeah, I'm gonna speed watch the game. But when the commercials
come on, I can stop and watch a few of them. What I'll do is
I'll pop out what I'll do it selectively. I'll start with
speed watch the game bank, main main main bank. Because you
know, it turns out that when the soon as the player hits the
dirt, and you hit the button, they're hiking the ball again,
that's just happens to take about 30 seconds for them to get
up, go into the huddle, set and then hike the ball. It's about
30 seconds, every play. Unless you're doing no huddle or so
that was a penalty, then you get all screwed up. But you get it
back on track eventually. So when I go to the commercials,
I'll just hit him and him. Just take a look. See if there's
anything. Second, it looks like a big, you know, high production
value because a lot of these are
all you have to do. John, John, all you have to do is watch the
first and the second commercial pods after that. It doesn't
matter.
Yeah, you're right. I watched the first couple of First up, we
was in the first step already. Exactly. Now. Thank you. The
thing is that I've noticed is that years back in the late 90s,
the the Superbowl commercial were a big deal. And all began
actually with the 1984 commercial 1984 for Apple. And
so the Superbowl ads from 1984 to about 1999 Were building
momentum and every year you'd watch the game and you'd watch
there'd be some really cool commercials. And they were and
then by the end of the 90s or What during the.com Boom.
Everybody went ballistic with crazy commercials. You When you
had your cat herding commercial need all these weird and wild
commercials, and then it started to go downhill after the
collapse of the.com. So the
way you missed the obvious we had the was up. Well, that too,
which by the way, didn't sell any which didn't sell any beers
a famous example of a good No, no, it did not work for
them. I'm talking about the talking frogs. I like that
better. Oh, yeah. Fry frogs always right. Sure. Okay. Yeah.
Anyway, yeah, the What's up thing was ridiculous. But
anyway, this is the era it started to deteriorate. And over
the last, I'd say the last three or four years, these ads are
nothing special, there's maybe be one ad throughout the whole
game that is worth watching, you know, if you want to be loaded,
it's played out, it's done. The whole Superbowl ad thing is
over.
You know, we, when we had our previous companies that when it
was thinking new ideas, we had an Oracle as a client, and we
did their Superbowl ads. So we did the ad. And there was an
online component at the time it was for was that crazy thing
Ellison had? Maybe network computers, I can't remember. But
here's what happened. So but we were one of the first companies
to have a URL in an ad on the Superbowl. And so we expected a
lot of people to show up and hit our servers when that ad hit. So
the ad rolls, you know, real dramatic. We are the world type
piece. It wasn't funny, but it was it was you know, beautifully
made. And so people start hammering the website. And you
know, so as was kind of expected we couldn't handle the traffic.
That wasn't so bad. Where it not that the error message that
showed up showed about a broken ODBC connection to Microsoft SQL
Server.
No that's a good one that
was that was not so good. That was like the I mean, you know
that you know, that one line that you get are like three
lines on a blank page, you know, Microsoft SQL Server whereas
Oracle the the company that's supposed to be able to handle
everything who by the way, you know, they were restarting their
own server every five minutes because of a memory leak in
their in their in their own web server. Those are the crazy days
man nothing worked
so anyway, the so I can't get behind that this game is not
that interesting. I mean, it's it's going to be a good may be
an interesting defensive game with the Pittsburgh team plays
like they've been playing. And you know, and you get to the
Kurt Warner who's I think one of the finest quarterbacks ever to
play ever I mean, he who's has ups and down career because he
has a slight injuries terrible. And but but he's just fun to
watch. When he's playing well, and you know, he's over the
hill, you know, shouldn't be playing anymore should have been
retired, but this, whether he wins or loses this game, and
he's got the Hall of Fame in front of him now, there's no
question about it. So that's kind of interesting, but that's
it. Yeah, I think it's Werner is also a Jesus freak. Like to an
extreme.
Jesus freak.
He's the Jesus. Yeah, he's, I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, I
don't mind people being pious or having religious beliefs. And I
this bothers me, but it's one of these constantly harps on it to
an extreme, I think there's actually some, and I always
forget what the what those passages are, but there's some
biblical passages that kind of forbids this. And I don't care
gotta show it off.
So just want to go back to Davao, Davos. I sent you a
YouTube video to take a look at just because I thought it was
such an outstanding performance as it comes to watch next on the
world stage. This was a you have to understand that the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Davos, Davos, that it is just like, you
know, Macworld or CES. It's a trade show, and it's run by this
guy, you know, pompous ass guy. And I know all this because Ray
Lane one of our investors, you know, told me, basically how it
all works. And it's a trade show scam, you know, you pay $50,000
a night for a suite. So you can entertain it's just it's a it's
a big trade show schmooze fest run by this one guy. And it's,
it's well done. It's well done. Yeah, but it's not this is not
like some government. You know, world leader, we saw CES and
Robert Scoble covers it. I mean, it enough said. And so they have
a panel. Do you are you I'm Robert Scoble. Are you? You're
talking you're referring to the puppets.
Yeah. Anyway, that's
good shit.
We love Robert.
Yeah, no, I love him.
I do I think He's a great guy. I
only met him once. He's in house. He's a very nice guy. I
love you. I love John. You know, I don't dish out the love that
easily.
Yeah, let's go on.
So there's a panel with bunkie moon. That's he just put MC in
front of that name. You'll MC Ban Ki Moon baby on the cheap
tip. Who, of course is the Secretary General of the UN?
Then there was the Turkish Prime Minister whose name I cannot
remember. And then there was some other dude who didn't
matter. And then there was Shimon Perez, who was is he now
the president of Israel. He's the president now, right?
I don't know what he's doing the guys in and out. He's in and
out. Every time I see him. I see. Andy Grove, he looks
like Andy Grove. He has got a little Warren Buffett and him to
the little bit was gateway, but Andy Grove. Yeah, absolutely.
And Shimon Peres just goes off for like, 25 minutes. And, you
know, from an Israeli standpoint, I mean, he just laid
it down so beautifully about this whole conflict in Gaza, and
how good Israel is and how incredibly peaceful they are.
And just I mean, it was a I was stunned. But then what happened
right after that is the Turkish Prime Minister wants to rebut
him, and the moderator says, Well, no, no, we really, we
really can't No, no, one minute, you're gonna have one
a minute, a writer was an idiot and the Washington Post,
oh, my God. And then this guy's like, Are you kidding me? And he
just starts talking and the moderator starts cutting him off
cutting him off and like, he's pushing his hand and pushing
shoulders. And it's, ah, and then of course, it won't if you
haven't read it.
This is a bad moderator. I mean, if you have if you're running a
panel, I've done these obviously, you're running a
panel and you since all of a sudden two guys get into it.
That's whatever. Yeah, hell you're going over so I'm sorry
ladies and gentlemen. We're gonna have lunch right now but
since but we'll let him speak because you know, fireworks are
gonna just everyone's on a great panel that wise, but this idiot
decides no, no, I think we should stop here when this
thing's gonna get heated up. I was which was
exactly what we wanted. Like, let the lead fireworks commands
come on rocket.
But you know, yeah, I was stunned by that. That decision
to kill the panel. It was unbelievable. What what is he
thinking? Oh, no, I'm actually I'm gonna I know what it was. As
you go to do these things and events like this, and they get
come up to you beforehand. These usually some woman, you know,
Lindsay Nagel Tyson's.
Hi, I'm moderating the panel.
So now you're going to be moderating the panel. Here's the
rules. You don't have to have a hard stop at the half hour
parts.
Can we just put hard stop amongst the certainly Silicon
Valley speak that we hate? Can we just that's right up there
with Look, look, look, by the way, man. Listen to how many
politicians are using this and what a trick it is. Because it
does what jar you look. I mean, look, I mean, look. So there's
look, and then I'm sorry, I've got a hard stop at 130. I've got
a hard cock right here, baby. I dislike that.
So okay, so hard. So they come up to you with this with these
rules, we have a hard stop. And you have to stop because we got
to go into this. And we don't have time to run anything over.
The thing, the way it would work. If you're a reasonably
good moderator, you would say you always say to yourself,
they're probably not going to invite me back anyway, if this
thing is any good. Right? You know, in other words, it gets
out of control and fists start flying, you're not getting
invited back. But you don't expect to ever get invited back
anyway. So you just go for it. So you screw the rules. And you
say you guys go you know, and you let them talk and then you
don't worry about getting chewed out afterwards. You let that go
past a hard stop and come back anymore. I don't want to go back
anymore. Anyway. Absolutely. Never a situation like that. Why
would you want to it's stupid. So they get invited back to a
lot of things.
No, no kidding. But
you know, there's so many things to do. Who cares? There's plenty
of things to go to.
So what gets so to make it even worse, by the way, the Turkish
Prime Minister name, his name is Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan.
guy needs a makeover to emcee Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It doesn't
quite work. So he just keeps going on and on. And the
moderator absolutely just kills the session while the guy is
still going. He's furious. He's like, I'm never coming back to
the stinking rat hole, right? Yeah.
He gets up and walks out. He says I never coming back to
Davos again,
right. And then In the conference organiser, the CES
head guy he gets on the podium was like, Well, you know, we're
working towards solving world peace and love above me. My
everyone's like, can you believe this shit? What's going on? No
one's listening to him. And then on stage, I don't know if this
was on the YouTube clip, cuz I saw it either live or at least,
you know, unedited, then, you know, Perez is walking around
and you know, shaking everyone's hand and you can, you can almost
hear them saying, Wow, that guy was a tool. You know, that's
like going up to him. It was just an incredible performance,
you owe it to your general development, to see this and to
listen to how eloquently this man told his story. True or not,
doesn't matter if it's
true or not, doesn't matter. But he's, you know, you have to
realise that the Turks have been under a lot of I mean, they're
essentially being run by by Europe, right, by the European
Union now know that you got to Well, yeah, there's that
element. But yeah, the thing is this radical Muslims that have
basically taken over, they're gonna really make that country
ruin it. Well, this was a reason for the Turks to be given care
about Israel, or the Gaza or anything else. So what is the
point of that?
Your analysis is spot on with, with what I'm reading, that this
really makes a whole bunch of shit happen in Turkey that just
isn't necessary. And if you see it, every single paper he was,
you know, he was heralded a hero's welcome upon his return
to Turkey. Yeah. And people are laying flowers outside his house
and outside the Prime Minister's residence, whatever it is, you
know, this is scary
shit. It will, you know, these these radical groups, they sneak
in all kinds of different ways. I mean, that's what's going to
happen in Iraq, eventually, they're going to just vote
themselves in and then vote out everybody else. And that'll be
the end and the close it down. I mean, that's the flaw of
democracy. And that's what happened in he was in Algeria
and you know, where you get your vote in in extremists because
you know, they do they sell good populist message. And then once
they get in, they get the majority, they say, Okay, we're
shutting down democracy by popular vote, and we're become a
Shariah government, you know, and then so they said, Well,
wait a minute, you know, you can't do that. No, we can. We
did. Yeah. Well, that could happen. Almost, according to all
the reports I've read Kuwait is like about two votes away from
pulling that stung any minute. Really? Yeah, nobody knows quite
what to do about it.
Well, do we need to do anything about it at all?
Well, I mean, if you have a democracy that can vote itself,
you know, it's like, imagine that you all of a sudden, you,
you, you it is, especially in parts of Europe, where you have
this huge Muslim population that will eventually just vote party
line, you know, like, you see here, you know, with the
Blackfoot, for example. They vote party line. I mean, it
just, there's no, I mean, just five black Republicans, even
though it was the Republicans who freed the slaves, nobody
wants to pay much attention to that. And then they use vote
party line. And then once you get everybody, once you get a
majority say, Well, okay, let's just change everything. That's
why this democracy thing is stupid. And it was because look
how easy it was for us to take it over. And let's just vote it
out. And vote in a, you know, a cleric run, you know, theocracy,
and boom, we're done. We got it made. Now. It's kind of doable.
I mean, every time they try to make an effort to do it, just
the opposite direction. In Iran, for example, they do have
elections, vote some guy in, you know, who's kind of a Democrat.
And they he's, you know, they just either throw him in jail or
whatever. I mean, it's just horrible. Well, this is
kind of what's taking place in the Netherlands with feared
builders, Member of Parliament who created that movie fitna. Do
you remember there was kind of a mini uproar about that? No, it
was about it. If you Google Fit in other movies, you'll probably
get bored by it, because it's just like a bad YouTube video
wasn't really spectacularly well produced. And essentially, what
it does is it takes quotes from the Koran, and then shows you
newspaper clippings that would relate to that quote, you know,
and of course, all the newspaper clippings are terrorism, death,
destruction, and it's all the Muslims fault. That's kind of
what it is. Well, not even that it's more like, here's what's
happening to our society to the Dutch society. And people
complain about this all the time. So it's an this is no
secret, although it's rarely ever properly written about an
aggregate. So he created this movie, and now he is the head
the I think the the High Court, I believe, has approved that he
can be prosecuted for insulting Islam. And so he's going to
they're going to take him to court for insulting Islam.
And, you know, and is a good trick
to the beginning of the end. Yes, it is. It is. And it has
nothing to do with Islam any group that can do that. can sue
someone for insulting them give man give me a break it Michael
Arrington would be rich. The spitting thing by the way that
he gets in the face a bit. Was that a Davos? Oh,
no, no, he was in Munich, us in Germany someplace just because
he's always at something. I mean, I'm just surprised he
hasn't gotten spit on before. Yeah.
I read. I read somewhere that in Davos, spitting was the big
thing. A lot of people were spitting at people who were
showing up.
Oh, really? Yeah. A spitting must be becoming the great
equaliser in Europe. I guess they feel so helpless. Yes, they
are in the United States. We'd be shooting at him. Come on.
That's it. That's it. I believe it's a final desperate act, you
know, whereas maybe in some cultures throwing a shoe.
Spitting is very, it's a very violent act. If you actually
spit on someone, that's that's a, does that constitute his
battery?
I don't know. Yeah. Did you probably local laws. I don't
think it would around here.
Yeah, but you guys aren't getting your tax refund checks
either. So you don't count anymore. California.
You know, spitting is against the law in South Africa. And
there's a lot of countries where it's against the law, because
there's one way that tuberculosis is spread.
It's also just nasty.
Yeah, well, especially when people are spitting all the
time. You know, when you go to Taiwan. Or at least you're not
so much anymore. But I back in the early 90s or the late 80s or
whenever before, before the Taiwan Island was populated by
millions of Mercedes Benz cars and stuff in the freeways are
now jammed with traffic. They used to be very few cars because
there was a very high tax on automobiles. So everybody drove
around a motor scooter. And so there was 1000s of these I mean,
there was 10s of 1000s of motor scooters everywhere you went and
there would be like people talking about the record for how
many people could be on a motor scooter and somebody Oh, yeah, I
remember these days Sure. told me about seven you know, and he
described it there was a to two little kids on the handlebars a
kid in front of the driver that's 1234 somebody behind him
that's five and then it was and always was the mom behind him
five and she was holding two babies. And that was the seventh
and he says he claims to have seen as a bit of a nice
photograph. But anyway, so one of the things that you'd run
into because it was so hectic you watch these motor scooters
in the main squares of Taipei for example. It was just it
would look he was frightened you just to watch it because of the
fact that it wasn't blood on the streets. But there never was one
of the things that the reason for this was because everybody
was wired on beetle nut juice.
Yeah, I know I know the effects of it I don't
but anyway but one of the things you'd see a rounded read these
miles of scooters parked everywhere because it's what
people drove around in a park them something and round the
scooters it'd be this guy this just pools of spit read spit
read read sit read bloody looking spin I said what is this
people like bleeding from the mouth and somebody said no
they've said beetle nut he says they have to do to survive on
these roads with all these scooters doing a full speed you
have to be juiced
up hammer well the beetle nut stuff which I tried was offered
to me and I accepted at a hill tribe where I stay overnight
during one of my many travels my documentaries it's like an
elevator high like you so they they wrap it in a cocoa leaf and
there's some I think there's some tobacco leaf in there and
then some white paste God knows what that is. And then the
beetle not and then you're supposed to kind of like chew it
like a cut and have that in the in the in your cheek there. And
within like 25 seconds is like oh my god, I'm fine. And it
lasts about 20 minutes and then it's gone. And then your then
your whole mouth is just Yeah, it's like numberless plaque
tablets used to get at the dentist. Right? It
turns your teeth red. Yeah, everywhere. There's
plaque, which I'm convinced was just it didn't actually detect
plaque. It just just made
everything red. Yeah. So does it heighten your awareness? I mean,
would you think you could write a motor scooter better?
That's a very interesting question. It was not a not like
marijuana where you were, you're actually the opposite of Hi. Um
And it might it might have I mean, I've never done Coke or
anything like that. So I can't compare it to that. So maybe the
coca leaf had something to do with those guys. They're
basically make an opium so maybe that paste was opium God knows,
right? Yeah, could be anything. But so the women chew it all day
long. So I guess they're using it as an opera to keep them
going. Well, there's
a lot of obscure uppers out there, like cat is one of what's
at cat quirks, k h, a T, one of the two and his cage he got cat
is a it's just some weed that grows in North in some parts of
Africa, I guess. And it's used by Africans to, you know, stay
up, stay awake all day. And I'm always surprised some and
there's all of these, you know, like, Badal. Net and cat. And
there's, you know, there's a laundry list of these things
that are used here and there. And they've never, you know,
they never, you know, they've never brought over here to
become popular. I'm always wondering what the mechanism is
for something to arrive. And the next thing you know, everybody's
all using it. I think
probably supply and demand. You know, that's how crystal meth
became popular. You know, it's there wasn't enough or whatever
people wanted to smoke or take and the cheap alternative was
buying NyQuil and creating crystal meth out of it.
Yeah, that stuff in the world, which crystal
is bad. I mean, you have no idea how many people are hooked on
this shit.
And you can usually tell by looking at him to think about, I
knew actually, when I first went to University of California when
people were like, hooked on. Students were hooked on various
forms of method Drean or dexedrine or Benzedrine. Or one
thing or another. They always had and I've talked about this
with anybody. They had no buts. selection, you know if you want
to have zero, I mean, no, but I mean, there was nothing they had
no, but it was just like, regular pants and it'd be no but
there. And Crystal Meth is you can spot these people a mile
away. They got absolutely no but there's no button exists.
You heard it here first. Around, okay, you're really highly
qualified for this job. But I'm sorry. You got no but so you
must be on crystal meth. I can't hire you. Here's a question for
you, John. Who controls or would you say is in charge of the sea?
The sea? Yes. Any United
Nations will say we'll say the United Nations just a guess. I
don't know. Yeah. Good guess. Oh, wait, wait, wait. I know who
it is. Neptune.
Yes. Now you're talking. Now there's this United Nations
Convention of the Law of the Sea, which is now being driven
very hard in by one person in particular, Hillary Clinton.
It's called the Law of the Sea Treaty, which I love because the
acronym is lost. And it covers all ocean space all its uses,
including navigation and overflight overflight, all its
uses of all its resources, living and nonliving on the high
seas on the ocean floor and beneath the continental shelf
and in the territorial seas. Including the overflight and
space and that isn't it that now belongs to the United Nations
does not just belong to no one. So they're in total control of
it or they will be when this when this is ratified.
Hmm, I wonder what the purpose of of doing that is, is to
collect commissions on people who mined for magnesium in the
middle of nowhere or are they charged a nickel on each piece
of tuna that's caught 12 miles offshore
or anything? How about how about ambling or gay Han gambling
ocean? Under under oceanic cables, piracy, but even
transatlantic flight? They own it space. How about space?
That's pretty vast.
Every time a satellite goes over yeomen? Yep.
I don't know if it's going to be four. If it's going to be that
blatant, but I just found that very interesting and that
Hillary Clinton is, is really making a big push for this thing
to get ratified.
Well, did she ever this is you can you find a rationale? Not
yet.
Why not yet. That's why I'm just bringing it up. I don't know
why. But I can understand the power of being the boss of of
seven tenths of the globe, I can see there might be some
rationale.
I'm the boss of the fish,
advisor of everything, everything, but she's
wanted to be the boss for a while so maybe she gets a job
here. She'll quit her State Department job and become head
of the ocean.
So I have testimony from her on this. Hold on.
See if there's one works Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman, and welcome to you Senator Clinton, thank you for
your leadership for your willingness to step forward and
assume this very, very important for the nation I truly
appreciate you are doing what you have done in the past. We
had in my office last week to discuss
there's so much pontificating going on in our government
sounds like
Lindsay Nagel.
She's not she's Ms. Country. I mean, she's got MS as Murawski.
And I know oftentimes she's got
bad times, often oftentimes
of Alaska. And she's from Alaska tuna tease.
Come on, get to Clinton to
ah, yeah, so I'm watching this thing with Jack Welch. I don't
know what Jack was. What was the thing I was watching? It was?
Oh, yeah, the Larry McMurtry is or, you know, the novelist to
get the speech at Rice? I didn't record this war maybe? No, I
don't think so. Anyway, it's actually interested about the
depth of reading and the fact that he owns a bookstore 350,000
Rare Books in it, which I think is but this guy, they the
president of the University of rice in Texas, he gave an
introduction that was a good 20 minutes long because he liked to
hear himself talking sounded talk like this. And then she
make AmeriTrade gaping eyes on that. And this is one of those
seaspan things by the way. And I just found it annoying. Why
can't people just get we know who Hillary Clinton is we know
who McMurtry is. Why don't you just get that we want to hear
them, not you. Yeah, but this is who wants to hear this bonehead.
If they wanted to hear McMurtry that's their moment to shine
their moment to make themselves look like idiots. Anyway, back
to you. Right.
So on the rare book front you sent me a YouTube video to watch
about a book that is apparently being sent around the world.
Yeah, yeah. What's the name of it? Was it say the ages
something about? It's the title,
not the I've opened up the YouTube video. It wasn't the
Almanack it was kind of like a
big thick book about to creationism but from the Muslim
perspective. It's just this guy who happens to be another Turk
by the way. Yeah, here
we go Holland.
He go to the parent.org/minister of
education does not believe in evolution in the Netherlands. It
says here, copies of the Atlas Atlas of creation out to a
number of schools and universities, Atlas of creation,
which apparently is a beautiful book that is being sent to being
sent anonymously. John was being sent from some
I don't know who's sending it. I mean, it's obviously the
somebody's behind all the money because this thing's not a cheap
book.
No, it's with beautiful pictures. Anyway, it's a it's a
book that debunks evolution. Yeah, supposedly, and does it
through fantastic beautiful imagery and holograms and
beautiful pictures that explain that the world was created.
So yeah, we have to get copies of it. Sounds like
the paddlers Atlas of creation. Hell, yeah. Someone's probably
running across it somewhere.
So you get this link, which I have on the blog now, which is
the tour, the tornado steam train to carry first passengers
from New York. In New Castle and maiden voyage, they built a
steam locomotive in England. Brand new to 10 they're going to
put in service.
Yep. And you sent me a note and said, Let's go on and just run.
And I'm like, Do you know where to draw? Do you even know where
Newcastle is
in the middle of nowhere because it's such a small you know,
England is smaller than California. So it's never that
far away.
Dr. Lee, but if you if you had to drive up as a pretty long
drive, man,
take a train up and then get on this train. And you know, chug,
chug, chug, and then come back. I think this is historic. We're
all going back in time steam engines.
Let me just see where's it actually running from?
From York In New Castle to where?
What isn't what is York in Newcastle means I don't
know is what it says. From New York to Newcastle.
Thank you. So your headline is you can't even copy properly.
I know that was done automatically. I don't know how
to wow, it got messed up.
York to Newcastle. Cool. I'll buy you a ticket and a Slurpee.
So how far is York to New Castle out? Is that a long way?
I don't know. I could look it up. But I can't be bothered.
You should you should know you live there. I know that that is.
I know it's 400 miles to Los Angeles. I know it's like 90
miles of Sacramento. I know all these decisions,
because you've actually been there. I've been told quite
specifically never to go that far north I'm reliably informed.
It's not a good idea. What did someone say to me? A flight
instructor Captain Dan said to me one time he said, even even
if you're even if your aircraft is on fire, and flames are
coming through this through the through the through the cockpit,
you never ever want to land in Wales. I like okay. I'll take
your word for it, dude. Ah, okay. Oh, so our second meal.
Right that we had was the winner by far and that we can just do a
quick wrap up of Coco. Cuz that that was a real dog. We went to
Limon that name of the restaurant. Yeah. Li Mo N Yeah,
Limon, which is a Peruvian restaurant.
Right. So yeah, this is the second time I've been to
Peruvian restaurant I took Kelly Lewis to the other one that's in
San Francisco. There's actually three or four. But anyway, this
place was astonishing because of the fact that we got out so
cheap. It's on Jimmy was almost I mean, we just had a lot of
wine. We had, you know, desserts, and there's always
lots of food. And it was delicious. And she was under 100
bucks when was said and done is amazing.
And we had the hooch wine,
we had some venio ver de which is a cheap white Portuguese wine
that when I was writing, right, we had that when I was in Lisbon
recently, I went to a little hole in the wall bar for some
something that you with these guys I was taking pictures with.
And they had the classic venio very day, which is it's you
know, like, you know, it's like a Coca Cola spigot. And it goes
into your glass, and it's all foamy, it's like really
carbonated. And it's got very little alcohol, it's probably
around 7%, maybe typically, maybe less. And it's absolutely
delicious, especially on a hot day, you know, because just a
very refreshing wine. And it was,
it was very refreshing. It was really, I mean, it went on Well,
cold ice cold. That was really nice.
Yeah. And so that, but you don't see that, you know, you don't
see it much in this country, because it's just, you know,
not, I mean, we could California wine. Wineries couldn't make
this wine by the tonne, especially in the Central
Valley, where you get a huge, you know, a huge production. And
if it ever caught on, it would be very popular. I think it's.
So the problem is it's like, you know, usually make one false
move and become becomes Boone's Farm. You know, it's like, you
have to be careful. And I think there were spritzy wines that
have been brought into the market now and again, ripple and
some things like that, which unfortunately ruin the market
for some that that would be more healthy. So So we had that and
then we also had some red wine and then it was just, it was
very, very good. Two things of note the corn with enormous
kernels, which Yeah, they're huge. Yep, Peruvian corn.
Apparently, you know, this guy was thinking about that corn
because you were wondering work. What about but this has got to
be the same kind of corn that's used to make corn nuts, which is
a bar snack and snack food, which has got huge
currency. Yeah, very tasty. And if you do eat at Lehman, Lehman
or any other Peruvian restaurant have the tuka tuka as an
appetiser. Now the way that wasn't like saying is to go to
Korea, which was kind of a rice ball with some peas and stuff in
there with a with a crust. Kind of like a dirty cricket ball.
Yeah, it was good. That was very definitely
good. But everything there was good. I was very impressed. The
place was packed. The reviews that I saw on yelps it called it
near the people that didn't like it too much. They thought it was
a yuppie place. I didn't notice any yuppies and oh, there's a
lot of family a lot of kids
blooms. What blooms been there?
Bloom has been there Yeah, he told me Well there's definitely
not a yuppie place you go. And
it was just it was good. It was you know, it was loud but not
not so you couldn't have a conversation. acoustics are
pretty good. Even though we had a two person table kind of in
the middle of everything. It just yeah, it felt so good. Oh,
and love the waiter who kept saying Right away, sir. Right
away.
Yeah, he's very funny. He asked him for some Can we get some
water right away? Right away right away?
And he would bring it right away. Yeah. And it was like that
right away thing. Yeah. I did have dinner with Ron. On
Thursday. Yeah for a board meeting at flytrap you ever been
there? It's right near the hotel.
I've been casted I've never eaten there. No. Don't well with
a name like fly trap. Why would you?
It is a yucky place that but it is a place if you want to take a
date to just talk intimately. It's a good place for it. Kind
of off to the side. But the food isn't anything spectacular. And
then we had
so anyway limo we were given a to that
the Oh yeah. Oh, fantastic. And
but again, not another romance. Not romantic there either. So
take some ask him Don't marry you
not no. Not romantic. Well, you can always put the ring in the
tuka tuka
you swallow it. It was so good. I didn't feel like chewing.
And then we had dinner last night at Coco. And I did want to
mention that you booked that through open table they filed
for an IPO OpenTable did yeah. How about them apples? Yeah,
they filed for an IPO and they get apparently think that they
get $1 per diner? Who books through their system?
$1 per diner. Yeah. So
they got they got two bucks off of us. From the restaurant, the
restaurant pays that fee.
Well, you know, you get a little rebate from OpenTable after you
book
you get points. Yeah, we know all about the points. Points.
Maybe we'll get some stock with the points. That'd be a thought.
So we walk into cocoa, which I don't know. I don't think I've
eaten there before.
It used to be called beef zoo and it was much more of a French
bistro style. Now it's kind of New York bistro style but it
doesn't work no
and we walked in and it's stank. Yeah, exactly. It was like
cheese
some sort of bad smelling cheese was a you identified I just
thought it was as horrible aroma of some sort.
That's why you handed me a tic tac now I get it
so but anyway so it stunk and then the floor was loose and we
had to change tables cuz every time someone walked by be
bounced out of my chair. It felt like I was on a cheap aeroplane
you
even said like come on. Let's go to Frank guy let's go to Frank
House and no man Come on. We're committed. We're here. We're
eating here. We're staying here.
We should have downs going over to Florida Lee and just at the
bar
now that's true. But anyway what did we have the salads were
good.
I remember that actually. All the food was fine. I don't think
there was dinky thing was not not so nice. And also that will
you know you fell in love with the maitre d and she gave you
the finger and
no she did not know she did not give me this thing.
And it's standard.
I love the maitre d she was so beautiful. Maria Maria until I
saw her feet was all over it was
down she's wearing she's walking around barefoot or something but
when
she had sandal things on it's just there's just didn't have
very attractive feet. And that combined with that cheese smell
it just I don't know. Work. It was not working.
But we did have the one good bottle of wine.
Whoa. Oh, man. That was That was spectacular one what was that?
It was pavilion Rouge new Chateau Margaux. 2003.
Man, it was good.
And your line was really funny. This wine tastes like one of
those expensive wines. We usually have. usually have. You
know, and I realise Yeah, you know, expensive wine generally
tastes like expensive wine. It does. Taste This is expensive.
Speaking of which, I got a bottle of that. golden star tea.
Oh, yeah, you know, don't you mentioned that forgot mainstone
The trial you
did? I asked you to try it. I want you to I wanted to compare
explorer. I
have tried it. I had it with the Food Fair. They had it there. I
had a bunch of it. Because the guy said, Wow, this is great.
You know, and it gave me so we'll have some more. So I had a
lot of it. And, you know, my objection to those stuff from
the beginning was it was expensive and it's kind of
pricey, but it is delicious.
So it's actually you know, I know a little bit more about the
process, naturally fermented so it's a sparkling tea, and I
believe I had the Jasmine. Yeah, naturally fermented small batch
craft brewed. takes about six weeks. From water filter to
Whatsapp. FOB
free onboard how to no FOB.
The brewing happens in the Bay Area in Belmont. And they've
only had one run so far. And I gotta tell you that I shared it
with Andrew Gromit. And is it curry? Who sits behind you? Like
Capurro the tall girl
yeah Regina Regina Regina.
I'm sorry I got carried in Regina car is on the other side
behind Andrew got it. Right. And so Regina was there as it moved.
Would you mind trying this and tell me what you think? And we
all agreed that it was an as an alternative to drinking wine. It
would be fantastic. If you really were not into wine and
you just wanted something has, you know that feels a little
special has a little special taste to it. And then Regina
comes out and says yeah, picnic. Like, okay, Regina. When I come
back, baby, we're going on a picnic. I'm taking my golden
star with me. A picnic picnic. Hey, you should try it, man.
They want to sponsor the show. I'll
try it I'll put it in the refrigerator. I'll drink it up
but
talking about sponsoring the show, but you and I have kind of
gotten over that I think
well, you know they could sponsor something. I mean, it's
obviously we liked the product.
Well, I liked the product. You can't really remember.
I do remember it has I remember one distinct thing it had a
really delicious aftertaste that was very memorable. It probably
would have been as just as good as the venio bear day that we
had at the Limone
Jeffrey says, Adam, you're most welcome. DeVore AK was such a
buzzkill. I offered to give him some and he declined
ever did
for AG is such a buzzkill. Way to go on the sponsorship work
there, John. Good one. Good one. Dude. Crazy
is that the guy from white star?
golden star? Not White Star. Star was white star. It's golden
star. Which sounds more like an adult film label to me. Now one
golden star.
It's funny, you should say that. Oh, yeah, I have some toes.
Oh, John. Here's and now here it comes. Folks. You thought when
is the show gonna end? This is it.
So I had some some years and years and years ago, I found in
my portfolio. I think somebody bought it for me or whatever.
Some stock and I think the name is golden star or Gold Star
Entertainment. That's what I'm talking about. golden star and
golden stars. Really your own shares in it? Oh, that's great.
That's chairs in it. So I don't know, I figure with some I don't
know what it is, but have the stock
if you ever and this is for the audience out there because it
was available in the United States. I have a copy on VHS.
It's called Hot Pursuit. And it is a it's a porn movie. X rated
at least. And the voice of the lead guy character who's a
detective is me. And it received the fully erect penis award from
Hustler magazine.
Was it a dubbed thing you were doing? Yep.
They had hired this guy. This. I was like I was 17 at the time.
So you
were dubbing porn when you were 17 It's actually how I met. It's
how I met my wife qualify as kiddie porn.
In England it does. That's how I met
Patricia. You are a kiddie porn star before you get your Hey,
John. Let's not say that. Okay. It's like not a very good idea.
All right, I won't say it. But
get your hands on that. Bada Boom. All right. So when do you
want to do the show?
Well, I don't know. We can do a Tuesday. We can do it Thursday.
Well, let's just see what happens what's going on and
we'll we'll check in with each other. Wednesday is not good for
you though. Right? Wednesday is definitely not going to be the
day because you got cranky. You got
all the way out to go to the city and they have the you know,
all hands on deck.
I think that's changing. I think I think we've I think that we've
probably pissed on that enough that it's no longer gonna be
called all hands. They'll go back to foo bar or blue bar.
Well, I don't care what it's called. It's going to be on
Wednesday morning. And so that ruins the chances of doing this
show unless you know I just bag
down I can't bag it. I
gotta I gotta be a party you have to be on the conference
call, so that's not gonna work. Right? Well, we could just do
this show. And meeting. Yeah.
Here's the meeting. Okay, now we've always really wanted to
talk openly and honestly with y'all. Here we go. First of all,
at least three of you in this office are smoking meth. We know
it and it's a fact that I have
no buts like as you have no but alright. Alright, so I guess
that's that yeah, I'm gonna go get geared up for the Superbowl
and those fantastic ads.
Are you doing twit? Is it twit scheduled before the
now he's doing it right during the game? He doesn't like
football during the game. Pretty much yes. So regular time
then. Yeah. That's pregame
well, they actually they're gonna start batting a one
o'clock they started doing but doesn't tweet start around
three. I like listen, I love listening to that thing and
watching the chat. It's so funny.
Yeah, it is funny. The chats the chat people on that are
hilarious. They're just kibitzers pay until
Leo it wouldn't kill him to give our show a plug. I'm going to
talk about twit all the time.
He actually plugged you last time. Oh really didn't mention.
Yeah, he did.
I couldn't listen all the way to the end last time was too late.
He does it at the end. Okay.
I did. Yeah, until Tuesday or Thursday, coming to you from the
curry terrace and Gitmo nation east. I'm Adam curry.
And from Gitmo nation West actually northern Silicon Valley
and perhaps even the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, and
somewhere in the Berkeley region. I'm John C. Dvorak.
We'll talk to you again next week in our roles as crackpot
and buzzkill on no agenda.