Smells Like Tee Truffle

00:01 Forget about Proposition 8. This is Preparation H, broadcasting from Gitmo Nation East in the United Kingdom. I'm Adam Curry. And I'm John C. DeVore, cup peer in Northern Silicon Valley. Hey John, how you doing? Okay. How was your Thanksgiving? It was good. Yeah, what'd you do? Well, we had to unfortunately we're gonna have Thanksgiving next weekend because I couldn't get up to Washington so we had separate Thanksgivings because of the price of the airline tickets and meanwhile all the air all the news coverage was all nobody went anywhere nobody went you know the airports were empty and they were and

00:38 There was like nobody traveling and they were moaning and blaming on the economy. I'll tell you what to blame it on. $500 airline fares that were normally $65. That's what to blame it on. These guys are idiots. I love it when you're like that. Hey, so wait a minute. So did you celebrate by yourself in the Bay Area and the family was up in Seattle? Yeah, basically. Aww, did you have no one to celebrate with? No, actually one of the guys that we were sponsoring in law school, who my wife calls our fourth son, he just moved down here, so I brought him over and fed him. Did you make turkey? No, no, I had pheasant.

01:18 Oh, that's sad John. That's a real bummer when you can't have it. The pheasant was great. I'm sure. Except from the pheasant's perspective. No, it actually forced my wife to have to do the whole meal. You know, I had to walk her through a couple of things, but for the most part she did it. She nailed it. She finally discovered that if you use a thermometer on a turkey, you can probably get the temperature right and cook perfectly. Oh, I like those pop-up warning buttons. Yeah, okay. So one of the things that was floating around here though, which I go to the store to get the pheasant. I figure it's an economic collapse, so I might as well have a pheasant. And what would make it even more decadent? Cake. Truffles. Ooh, nice. So there's a bunch of off-season truffles that came in and they were dirt cheap. I mean, and they were good solid black ones. And the woman that brought them in over at the store, local store,

02:15 They came from Honduras. Now they've had truffles, obviously the best truffles come from France and Italy, but then there's a lot of them coming in from Oregon, but the Oregon ones are kind of mushy and you have to deal with them in all kinds of weird ways. to make them acceptable. These are just like a French truffle. And they were like... So what is the truffle market or what was it before the economic malaise? Because these things were quite expensive and they're basically, what is it, it's like a root that's under the earth that has to be uncovered by either a pig or a dog? Is that the basic idea? It's like a fungus. Oh yeah, it's a fungus, that's right. It's a ball. It's a little ball. And it looked very distinctive looking. And they get to any number of sizes. I remember going to

02:59 Alan Ducasse's restaurant in New York once when it was truffle week and they brought out these truffles in a big box and they opened the big one to each table individually and they opened the box and showed you these three truffles that I swear each one of them, they were white truffles from Italy, each one of them was the size of a softball. And what did they cost? What did they cost? That probably cost about $5,000 a piece. My goodness. For a fungus? Yeah, it's a fungus. It's very aromatic. Yeah, but still 5 grand. And they're very dense. Well, no, those are the big softball ones. You don't see those. I've never seen truffles like that in my life. Why are they so expensive? Is that just because of the... Are they scarce? Is it rarity? Or what is it? Yeah, they're hard to find and they're, you know, they only grow under certain oak trees and once you dig one up, you can't, you know, they don't propagate. It's not like cork, you know, you can just harvest.

03:56 Boy we learned so much on this show from from cork to truffles So the no, I mean typically a little truffle decide if you got one the size of a golf ball Which would be a big truffle? You know these other ones that I was talking about this restaurant were ludicrous But if you got one the size of a golf ball, which would be a big truffle you you'd probably pay about I'm guessing around 150 bucks for it, something like that. Wow, yeah, that's a lot. Now these were small, they were the size of, they were small, but they were bigger than I would expect for the price. You got two of them for nine. They're more like testicle size is what I'm guessing. Exactly. Well it depends on if you got, but anyway. So they were like nine dollars.

04:44 Wow, that's nothing. So I bought a bunch of them and I said, geez, this is like ridiculous. I mean, I've never seen this price before. Even the ones from Oregon cost more than that. And so I guess somebody found some truffles in Honduras and some oak trees and here we go. And do you think there's a flavor difference between the $5,000 softball truffle and the $9 Honduras testicle sized truffle? Yeah, yeah, the $5,000 one is better. Much better, yeah. Can we grow these? I mean, that sounds like a fantastic business. Impossible to grow. So anyway, imagine one of the bigger restaurants that we've been to.

05:22 Like, let's take the Ritz Carlton in San Francisco and put yourself in one corner of the restaurant and then go to the complete opposite corner. When I was at Alan Dukas' and they had this box of truffles, I was that far away when the guy at some other table that far away opened the box and I could smell him from there. Wow. It was unbelievable. So I've been having truffled eggs in the morning and truffled, basically putting truffle in the salad, I mean you name it. Yeah, cool. I got some hemp seeds and I've been putting them in my salads. Have you ever tried that? Hemp seeds? Do you fry them?

06:02 You can, but you can also just... Aren't they kind of hard? No, no, no, actually you can eat them right out of the container in fact. And they're very nutty tasting and actually not that hard at all. It crunches away like you have a nice mouthful of nuts. And it's tasty and it's also filling. And the reason of course why I eat it is because I believe it's healthy. But that's it. Yeah, you believe a lot of stuff. Yeah Sure, I'm kooky John. Yeah, but I still look good for 44 Okay, and you can just sprinkle it on a salad or I put it in yogurt. Sometimes I eat it quite regularly Huh where you get them you buy it in the supermarket right at Sainsbury's? Hemp seeds. Yeah. Yeah. Well, can you plant them?

06:49 No, well they're de-shelled, so or whatever it is. I should go get the, it's three flights down, otherwise I go grab the container and read it off to you. But it does state specifically guaranteed not to contain any, what is it, TCH? Yeah, THC. I'm sorry, THC. What is that, tetra, hetra? Tetrahydrocannabinol or something like that. Yeah, tetrahydrocannabinol, whatever. The good stuff, as we call it here. So it doesn't contain any of that. Well, that must be some trendy thing. That would be fun to do. I'd play with it. You should try it because I think you will like the taste of it. And I don't think it's a trendy... Well, maybe it is a trendy thing. They don't sell those seeds here. If there's no THC or anything else, they're so against, you know, even suggesting. I mean, they don't even like hemp clothing. I mean, they're just like freaky. Or paper, which of course, it's great for making paper.

07:47 Yeah, there's a lot of uses. I mean, the hemp, you know what I mean, the stuff that's low, it really has low THC content, but just this stringy stuff. You know, it used to be ropes used to be made out of it. It's a very valuable crop, but you know, they won't grow it because it's like, you know, it's just propaganda. Talking about propaganda. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Gee, you think, wait a minute, let me just pick up the newspaper. Yes? So there was a thing on PBS. This is one of the things I actually made a note on this because I was watching the show and I'm just it just struck me as just odd There's a special on and this is part two was the history of late-night television was the show It's actually quite entertaining because it's all about Steve Allen And you know then how how Jack Park came into the scene and how Johnny Carson got the job and all this kind of thing and mer how Merv Griffin would discovered himself and that kind of thing oh excellent excellent so they're showing this Steve Allen show because Steve Allen's the progenitor of all these shows and

08:50 And I remember watching Steve Allen when I was a kid and I saw, I actually got to, I got to watch this show but having also experienced the entire history of late night television, because even when I was a little kid my... Dad, who was a fanatic about watching comedies, you know, I could stay up until midnight, it wasn't a big deal. And so I saw all these shows... There's proof, parents, that's what happens when you let your kids stay up until any time of the night. This is what they turn into. Right, chatterboxes on podcasts. Big winners in society.

09:31 Anyway, so they're showing the Steve Allen thing and one of the things I remember distinctly about Steve Allen, he had this thing called Man on the Street and he's the one who developed it. Basically he'd have some questions, he'd ask these people, but they wasn't a real reality TV thing, he had these stooges, these regulars that were on his show. It was Tom Poston, uh... always played kind of a forgetful character and then he had uh... uh... the gal played barney five five don knots on the plane is nervous wreck and he would just be shaken like a leaf when he was on it when the camera was on a minute answering questions and that was funny back in the day that was it was she was if you look at no actually still funny hillary uh... shammy this or because he was so good at any which is trembled head to toe and uh... very unbelievable way

10:14 And then he had Louis Nye, who always played some slickster who was like a New Yorker or something. And then the last guy he had was Bill Dana. And Bill Dana would come on and he would play this Mexican character named Jose Jimenez. And Steve would always, always the gag always began with Steve Allen asking Jose Jimenez, you know, so what's your name? And the guy would say, my name? Jose Jimenez and you know it is my name like you can make those kind of jokes today in our PC world Well, you know even during this era which was some time ago the some Anti-defamation group found it very offensive to have bill danish saying my name Even though you know if you go see the movie Scarface, you know with my little friend motherfucker so

11:06 Anyway, so they somehow, even though this was after he became a stand-up comic doing this character, and they hounded him out of business and I think he basically lost his living. And that was the end of it. So I'm watching the special and they... to me, left him out of the story completely. Trying to, you know, it was just obviously suppressed. I mean, even though this is years and years ago and this is a historic document now, you know, this 15 years... Well, now hold on a second. Now, hold on a second. Obviously suppressed? Please. I mean, you know, people who make television shows and documentaries are often just, they have an opinion, they're just boneheads and the zeitgeist is, people don't remember this shit. The problem is that they showed the other characters.

11:52 in this in this in this uh... you know so they had that they had to make it within sixty minutes and i had to cut one out there to make a choice. They had plenty of crap in there that could have been cut out. They left him out. I'm debunking John C. Dvorak. What has the world become to? And I'm reminded, it reminds me of what you know Bill Cosby's been trying to do for the last five or six years which is scoop up every possible copy can find of Amos and Andy. That's right. Because he wants all the rights and he wants to reissue and do that again or what does he want to do? No, no, he wants to destroy it. He thinks it should not be even viewed by anyone. You'd think that it would be much funnier if he actually turned it around, you know, if he used that in a different way. But it's nuts that even in this day of digital media to even think you can do that. Let's face a point, let me go to YouTube. Can't be done. No, of course not.

12:45 But anyway, that's the thing. But I was actually, I noticed the missing Bill Dana, was the name of the character. I mean the name of the actor, Bill Dana, the comic. I just, it was just left out. I mean, because they showed, I swear to God, they had everybody else that was ever on that show mentioned or something. And Jose Jimenez's character was important to the man on the street sketch. Anyway, I just found it galling. Almost as galling as the airlines, huh? So the airlines and then one of the way they you know have trouble making money I have a sound effect for us today John. Oh ready you ready? You know what this is?

13:28 Sounds like the subway or a train or something like that. No, no, no, listen again. You gotta listen really carefully to it. That is the sound of the printing press at the Federal Reserve, John. Oh! It's going at full speed! You better believe it is! Oh man, it's been so fantastic to see all this stuff being created and printed and thrown away and there's so much happening that you can't even track it all anymore. We're now at 7.4 trillion dollars that has been pumped in in the past three or four months. Yeah, all the good has done me.

14:17 And I love it that the Fed still won't tell anyone what they've given this money to or what they've received in exchange for it. And, oh man, Obama's financial team. Summers, Geithner, Volker. Dude, a lot of change. Robert Gates, defense secretary, left in place. There's some change for you. I got the biggest kick in, you haven't been over here, but they've been debating this Robert Gates thing since the idea first came up.

14:54 And it's just the weirdest thing to listen to everybody and their sister from both sides of the aisle go on and on about how it would be really cool for Robert Gates to stay. There wasn't one person that says this idea sucks, get rid of it. No, everybody, both the Democrats and the Republicans and the conservatives and the most extreme liberals all thought Robert Gates is the guy, the go-to guy, would show the magnanimous, you know, bipartisanship, you know, nature of... I'm putting Republicans in my cabinet. I'm doing the right thing.

15:30 Oh man. So I don't know. Well, I think I got it figured out, John. You want one? I mean, you just went off on your little conspiracy theory there about... Bill Dana and Jose Jimenez. Yeah. So, of course, we've all been at least following to some degree the attacks in... I still have to call it Bombay, but okay, call it Mumbai if you want. And there's a lot of things that is really bugging me about the reporting on this. First of all, the immediacy. They haven't even captured any guys. I think they killed a... they say they killed a couple, but you know, we have one picture of a guy wearing a Versace sweatshirt and now we of course immediately know that they are Islamic radical Islamic terrorists.

16:16 And I started to put all these things together, you know, of course Obama is saying, hey I'm going to pull all the troops out of Iraq. Of course that means I'm going to send them to Afghanistan. So sending them to Afghanistan and then I'm thinking, alright, so obviously what they're doing now if you listen to the Prime Minister of India, he's saying, oh no, this is Pakistan. This is Pakistan who's doing it and now the move is towards Pakistan. And if you look at the map, which you might want to do, I mean you do John, but I'm just saying it to our listeners, from time to time just pull up Google Earth there and go look at Pakistan and you'll see that on one side it borders on Afghanistan and on the other side it borders on Iran. So if we got, or Afghanistan borders on both of those. So now I've got all these guys in Afghanistan right on the border in fact with Pakistan

17:11 I think that there's a poise here to take over Pakistan, which already politically of course is severely weakened. It's a nuclear country. We're building up troops right on the border. I'm thinking that this is... and by the way, there have been in the past, you know, like seven years, there's been an attack in India every six months with 60 or 80 people being killed. and this just stinks to me completely. I think it's a gear up for some kind of assault on Pakistan. Well, that's not bad. It's not like your usual material.

17:51 Well, of course, the part, the usual material part would be that these obviously are hired mercenaries who are trained, has nothing to do with terrorism because since when does Al-Qaeda all of a sudden take hostages and use AK-47s? It's completely different from any type of Al-Qaeda linked terrorist attack. These guys look pretty damn professional to me. And it looks like they were hired, they went in, they just were in there to kill. And it doesn't seem to me like... No, I mean, I think that's reasonable too. What I meant when I said it's not like a usual thing, I thought that you were going to summarize by saying that the Martians are somehow behind this thing. No, the CIA, you've got to believe that we are behind it, Israel's behind it. You know, there's a big thing, oh now they have, there's a...

18:41 Jewish house of worship or whatever that they're calling they're not calling it a synagogue. They're calling it something else This one here's something that really bugged the hell out of me because you know there's well first of all they're saying oh It seems like they were targeting Americans and Britons although you know like of the hundred and thirty people who've been killed only a few were actually American or British But this is one guy in multi-millionaire Andreas liveris and he was on the phone with the BBC and right after that he got killed. And so I'm like, wow, that's fascinating. So I'm looking around for the, you know, for an audio or something like that. I don't know if he actually was on air but I found a short transcript on the BBC website and here's what he said. This was interesting. So he was in the restaurant, about a thousand people in the restaurant and

19:43 Hold on a second, where is it? He said that they were locked in. He said there must be more than a thousand people here, there are residents and tourists and locals, we are not hiding, we are locked in here. The doors are locked and we are inside. Now, what kind of terrorist goes through all of this? Locking people in a room, containing them, they cut the television services so no one could have... They cut the telephone connection to the outside. This is a major ass attack, John. I mean, this is a coordinary military effort. This doesn't seem like a bunch of bozos. And boy, do you think they were armed. I mean, to me this is very, very troubling. Well, somebody else on Fox or someplace else pointed out that it was a very low-tech thing because it was just basically armed men, militia types,

20:34 that just took over all these places and burned the hotels and did all the rest of it. You might be on to something here because it doesn't... because all the things that the Al Qaeda has ever done is they... yeah, they'll do a coordinated thing... They'll bomb, yeah, bomb. Suicide. ...but they bomb the crap out of everything. Suicide bomb, yeah. And the most people who were killed, and we're just talking about it really easily, it's horrible of course, but the most people who were killed were in the train station which were mainly Indians. So there's a definite spin being put out there, and that's the shit you gotta watch for. There's a real spin on that A, it was links to Al-Qaeda, or now they had some Mujahideen group, which is, even the definition of Mujahideen is not really something you can pinpoint.

21:21 Right, well they also mentioned that this is the Drakkar or the Drakkar Mujahideen which is from a region. An area. And they say it's somehow related to this other one, because I listened to the analysis on Fox. and they you know they they they it was a stretch it was like well you know first of all they said we don't even know who these people are at the beginning remember when this thing first broke it was like everyone's baffled by who these people were and then they announced who they were and everyone said who are they we never heard of them yeah which of course then is a bad reflection on the Indian uh they a lot of people are reflecting negative well did you hear the audio did you hear the audio of the the the Decca Mujahideen they called in to uh Sky News or whatever like yeah and they were speaking in the Indian and

22:01 And so there was translation, but it was like yes, we are the Deccan Mujahideen, we are responsible and then the reporter says, um, what are your, um, what are your demands? And the guy goes like, what are my demands? Hey, what do I... It's like, like he didn't know what the demands were. He had to ask some guy. So it's, you know, it's clearly either fake or, you know, set up or it's just not right. It's crap. Yeah, you know, I'm not gonna, uh, until the reporting is finished, we're reporting. Might be some dream world. Let me take some more drugs. John, oh, excellent. So it's like, what reporting? I mean, there's going to be no reporting, so we're never going to find out is what I'm trying to get at here, obviously, because if it's what you think it might be, which is a phony baloney deal. And by the way, it's interesting that it coincides with the IMF.

22:58 I was looking for something. Tell me about the IMF. They've done a deal with Pakistan. Oh, this makes so much sense. So we hit him twice. We hit him in the financial nuts and we just take everything and everybody out and move in. Now listen to this. Dude, major massive Gitmo Nation news. You will love this. In the United Kingdom. So we have a shadow government here. So we have the people running the country and then right on the other side of the House of Commons you've got what they call the shadow government. So there's an immigration minister in Parliament and then there's the, that would be a Labour immigration minister and then on the other side you have the shadow immigration minister. In this case it's Minister Green.

23:55 And so over the past couple months, a number of stories, really whistleblower stories have broken in the newspapers in the UK. One was that We talked about this, that there were thousands of illegal immigrants who had been cleared to work in sensitive jobs in the government and that the Home Secretary, Jackie Smith, knew this months before it ever came out. There was another one about an illegal Brazilian immigrant who was working as a cleaner in Parliament. uh... let's see there was uh... what people would think about the uh... forty two day incarceration or a number of stories that were getting leaked to the press which i consider to be you know and look uh... is the government we need we we deserve to know about this stuff so what they did is they uh... they had suspicion that it was uh... the the conservatory minister green damien green of immigration who was leaking this to the press they took him out of his house last night arrested him

24:55 took him to... interrogated him for nine hours while they searched his homes both in London and in Kent. I mean, dude, does this remind you of anything? It's great! This is outrageous! It's absolutely outrageous! I wonder if they slapped him around a little bit just to, you know, with the organ. I hope so! That makes the story that much better. With the inner tube, you know, or something, where they do it. waterboarded him. I mean, that is just outrageous that this is taking place. Let me tell you another one because you'll get a kick out of this. The British man, and I've been talking, I love the Brits, and I've been talking to him about this. You know, they said, why are you on your back like, like bitches, letting the government piss on you all the time? And which by the way, they have a term here, which is called Bohica.

25:52 Oh yeah, bend over, here it comes. Here it comes again. So they had this big blow up about these two talk show hosts, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. We talked about that and these guys make a lot of money and they said like, they fucked someone's granddaughter and it was a big brouhaha and should they be fired and one resigned and the other was kicked off the air for three months. But they have Dancing with the Stars, which of course originated here in the United Kingdom, which is called Strictly Come Dancing in the official pronunciation. And there was a guy on, an actor, singer, comedian, one of those, older guy, older gentleman named John Sargent.

26:36 and the guy can't dance. But the audience loves the guy. When I went through Europe last week, I was reading all these papers and you know, because there's all the British papers and I was reading though there was like a big deal about John Sargent and they had pictures of him and there were editorials all over the place about how he can't dance and I'm reading what is wrong with these people? Well so this is what's amazing from a number of perspectives. So the judges were, you know, scale of one to ten, the judges kept giving him one, two, you know, three, I mean completely failing scores. But the audience, who ultimately decides who stays on, kept voting for him because they loved it! They were like, this guy's entertaining, it was funny to watch him, and it was, it really was funny. Because, you know, you dance with a real professional and she's basically doing all the moves and he's like dragging her across the floor. It was just, it was funny, it really worked.

27:26 And then, you know, it was like this big, oh well, you know, this is it, this can't be, this is a dancing competition and, and then, you know, so then John Sargent said, oh well, you know what, I'm just going to resign the show. And I'm thinking, is the British, you know, so the British public who's so outraged about paying for these, for these two comedians who just weren't funny for once, and they're so outraged where this is a blatant setup blatant where they kick the guy off the show, someone's lying somewhere and they're just letting it go. You know, it's like I don't get it. I'm like, oh, okay, well, I guess that makes sense.

28:03 And Patricia has this fight on pop stars in Holland all the time. You know, because it's like, well, this girl, you know, this is one contestant who's really rocking, right? She's above average singer, but she weighs about 230 pounds and she wears dumb dresses to go with it, which are not flattering. And the audience loves her because, of course, losers always win on these shows. And they're like, her other judges are like, we gotta get her off the show, this is ridiculous, you know, this is a serious competition, how could she ever become a pop star? And Patricia's like, F you! The people love her, what do you want? She literally said to the other judges, do you like that new house you bought? Then you better keep this bitch on the show. The audience wants it, that's what keeps the ratings going. And I'm just amazed by the British public

28:56 taking that lying down. Unbelievable. Well, there were sure a lot of articles about it. And I wasn't, I actually should have asked you about it the last time we spoke because I was unaware of the backstory. I just noticed it was like a whole bunch of attention. It was getting a lot of attention. Well, honestly, it didn't really hit me until I started thinking about it. And I'm like, this is crazy. This is just absolutely nuts. Well, I don't see things getting any better. And I'm surprised we don't have more of that kind of thing going on here. As much as there's a fascist state a-brewin' everywhere in the U.S.

29:38 The Brits have got us beat hands down if there was a competition on what state has just gone completely fascist. Let me give it to you, man. So Patricia called me. She was traveling to Holland today and she takes EasyJet. She loves EasyJet. She'll take EasyJet over British Airways, KLM, anything. She thinks the system's great and I agree with her. And so she calls me and says, I'm finally at the gate. So what happened? She said, well you won't believe it. Now John, you've never met my wife. Have you ever seen a picture of her? Oh yeah, you have a picture on your phone and I've seen pictures of her on... because I've seen her in action on that show because you sent a link to it. Yeah, okay. So she's beautiful. And do you think she looks like a potential terrorist, John? Just an offhand question. Do you think that she looks like a potential terrorist? No, obviously not.

30:32 So she rolls up to the x-ray machine and she's already, because the show is this evening, so she's already kind of pre-prepped and she's looking good and she already has stuff on that she's going to wear on the show. And she has a small tube of toothpaste and a miniature travel size bottle of Chanel. That's my wife, Miss Chanel. And so it goes to the x-ray machine and they say, you know, stop, okay? And they say, look, ma'am, this is not in a plastic bag. And Patricia, and by the way, Patricia always laughs at them, which is, you know, she just smiles and is always happy, which makes them crazy. I mean, I immediately, I would be calling you from jail today if this happened to me.

31:19 So she says, oh, oh really? Well do you have a plastic bag? And they're like, no. You gotta go all the way back. So it's like a 20 minute line, right? She said, okay. So she went all the way back outside. She had to get a plastic baggie, put her toothpaste and the Chanel in it, then wait in line 20 minutes to go all the way back through. And then this is the kicker. So they, of course, it's the same people, and they recognize her, and they say, okay, it's in the bag. And they say, we have to do a liquid test. They literally tested the Chanel and the toothpaste. They tested it, which consisted of spraying the Chanel No. 5 into the air and sniffing it. Unbelievable. Maybe one of the people there wanted a dose of Chanel No. 5.

32:07 you know, so they could go on a date later. This is the danger in a fascist state where you have people who have a uniform and they have a certain amount of authority for a microsecond of your lifetime and you know, if they're having a bad day or whatever it is, they take advantage of it. And I mean clearly this is ridiculous and a harassment. I mean there's no doubt this is just bullshit. Yeah, yeah, unquestionably, yep. Well, was this leaving, was this going into the airport in London? Yeah, of course, it was at Gatwick, so it was this afternoon. Liquid test. It's nuts! And it's just getting worse. Well, I mean, you know, there's gonna be a... something bad's gonna happen. Oh, okay, what do you think? I got a couple of ideas, what do you think? I think the British public's, you know, they're gonna... at some point, I mean, the British are, you know, there is a mean streak in that culture.

33:10 that is gonna come out and I think it's gonna be... Well this is what I'm waiting for! I want that thin, wiry, white English bloke on the street burning shit and waving sticks! That's what I always thought the Brits were like! Well you know that movie Vendetta? Did you see V for Vendetta? Oh yeah, I loved it! Of course! Remember, remember the 5th of November gunpowder treason and plot. Oh yeah, I love it. You bet I love it. Guy Fawkes, yeah sure. Well I'm not expecting something like that. Just blow up Parliament. I mean that's what Guy Fawkes tried to do. And it's funny that they still celebrate him and they do that by creating a bonfire and getting hammered.

33:52 Well, that's all they do, they celebrate everything by getting hammered. Oh, excellent news for you, by the way. A good buddy of mine, in fact a very good friend of mine, he stayed at his house in the south of France this summer. He owns one of the largest nightclubs, complexes I should say, in Surrey. And he has a strip joint called the Lion's Den, which I've never been to. I've been to his clubs several times and we had Christina's birthday party at one of his clubs. And he said, look man, I'm up for the license for all the Playboy clubs in the United Kingdom, which don't exist yet. And so, you know, I'm like, well, that's cool. He said, I'm trying to get a cool crowd together because these guys are coming by and they're going to come check the place out. So I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll come in, I'll look jet settery and I'll talk up a storm and no problem. So I go over there last night at 10 o'clock after I'm a celebrity get me out of here, which I also should mention a couple of things about in a moment.

34:50 and uh... to the places there you know i was like i was hanging out and it's a it's not really crazy busy but it's perfect for for the setting to to impress these uh... these guys were coming in and michelle says here many have a lap dance on me with uh... whatever one of one of his uh... his top performers and i'm like okay you know cuz i'll i'll talk to the vip area something i did not know john in the united kingdom at lap dancing clubs they take their panties off as well And you get a full-on, full-blown show. That's interesting. You know, I actually went, oh my, oh my.

35:31 I was like, oh my. Now, are you sure this wasn't just for you? No, no, no, because there were other guys in the VIP area and the same thing was going on. Because actually when I walked in, there was a girl and I could see just from behind, I could see that either that's an invisible G-string or she doesn't have one on, but I didn't think much of it. And the show was very, like it was a coordinated show because I saw these girls do the exact same show. So it wasn't like a personalized anything. And it's not like, you know, you're up close but you ain't that close. But still, oh my. Huh. Yeah. So, when you coming back? I don't know, but we gotta visit that place. Oh, you'll love Michel. Oh, you'll love him. He's, uh, we're flying tomorrow to, I'm taking him to see Patricia perform. She's doing a big benefit concert for starving children.

36:27 And she's going to perform three songs with a 65 piece orchestra. Her dad is accompanying her on violin, her 84 year old dad. She's doing a smile I think with him on the violin. So that should be cool. But yeah, you'll like Michelle when you're over here next. So that's why we... People should know we're doing the show on Friday. Well, I was not planning on telling anybody, honestly. Well, I think they should know because, you know, I think it's full disclosure. Oh yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. So in case there's something happens, why do these guys, they miss that whole story? Should we upload it today then or on Saturday? I don't think we have a problem uploading it today. I'm not a big, you know, I mean, this is the great thing about... About not being in the fake corporate media. Yeah. Yeah, we can do what we want.

37:17 And so we can be off a day or skip a week. I mean, the fact of the matter is, especially if people are doing this right, the people that listen to this thing religiously, and by the way, anyone out there who listens to us, please get a friend so we can get our numbers up to some point that we can theoretically pay for this thing. But anyway, so... Get a couple lap dances out of it. Better than poking an eye with a sharp stick. It was pretty similar actually, Dr. So people who do it right would obviously have an RSS feed that they would get this thing downloaded to their iPod automatically and be surprised. And then look... Oh, whoa! Gee, that was a concept. But speaking of that, I was just watching CNBC, Money Honey Aaron was on. I thought she might be off for the long Thanksgiving weekend. And they had a report on radio stocks.

38:15 And except for CBS radio, which currently sits around $6, all these other companies, MS, the 15% of Clear Channel that is actually still public, Sirius, every single one of them is under a buck a share. Some of them 18 or 19 cents a share. Radio is effectively dead. Sirius is really amazing. Well, it's not. They're losing $750 million dollars. Yeah, I know, and there's no way they're going to turn this around. I had predicted this, by the way, when they first formed years and years and years ago. How hard is that? Well, it wasn't, but I sure got a bunch of flack. Oh, that can't be true. But meanwhile, I had more people say to me, I think that was with somebody the other day, he says, you know, and the guy could afford it. He drives around a Bentley and he says,

39:06 You know I just gave up on my Sirius and XM radio subscriptions to the Bentley. I just listen to podcasts. Exactly. Because these guys, apparently the Bentley Continental has a clip in it that has a connector. Yeah, it has a connector that you can hook your iPod right to it. And... Well the whole problem, well first of all, you know, these companies were built with dot-com money. That's when they got their first infusion of cash and they have some beautiful facilities. Just un-fucking-believable. I've seen pictures of the XM or Sirius. They're fantastic. In New York, Sirius has 55 studios and that's excluding the palace Howard Stern has right in the middle of reception there.

39:57 But of course, they wanted to merge these two companies and the FCC and whoever else and the SEC, they really let it linger and linger and linger and they wouldn't give a decision so the stocks just kind of steadily declined. And now of course, their main source of distribution is not actually satellite, their main source of distribution is vehicles. And so what these guys do, what Norm, no it's not Norm Patterson, who's running it? I don't know. Oh, whatever. Guy from CBS I think anyway what you know their their main gig is to get the big automakers to pre-install Sirius and XM satellite receivers in their vehicles and yeah That's not happening light. Well like they did in the 90s there was everyone who was talked into installing a

40:48 AM stereo. Yeah, I remember that. Stereo AM. So I have one of those radios where it says, and when you hit it, AM stereo. By the way, there's no, nobody broadcasts in AM stereo anymore, but we used to be turned the dial and you would find the one station on the entire spectrum that had a AM, it would light up, a little thing would light up on the radio, say AM stereo. So you'd listen to it and it was, it was the crappiest, you know, I don't know even what the point of it was. It didn't sound any better. You know, it was like, it didn't even hold a candle to come close to what FM sounds like. So what was the point? I'm trying to think. There was a reason. There were a couple of different reasons they were trying to get people like that. Yeah, I remember at some CES somebody gave me some rationale about AM stereo and how it's going to actually take over because you get bigger distances, it's better than FM and all the rest of it, and it didn't go anywhere. It's like this thing going on, this high definition radio that's going on right now.

41:44 You know, they're trying to push HD radio. And that's not going anywhere. I mean, it's just like, you know, this stuff is fixed already. It's done. It's over. You got your AMs, you got, what do you got? You got talk radio. That's what it's turned into. And then you have your FM, which has got your music and you got whatever else you want to put over there and the public radio stuff. And then you've got the real media, the real true new media, podcasts. Yeah. And then you have the new media, which are, you know, much more versatile. You can listen anytime you want. You're not stuck. I'm still irked about it. I listen to it, because I listen to, like a lot of us, listen to right-wing talk radio, because it's very entertaining. And every once in a while, the gal says something, or somebody will say something, and you want to back it up, or you wanted to save it, or, you can't do any of that. And you can't listen to it when you want to listen to it. You have to listen to it when they're broadcasting. And, I mean, the whole thing is, I mean, that whole model of time-based broadcasting is,

42:35 old-fashioned choice nobody would prefer you to prefer the more versatile style which is what we're doing hell yeah one of these advertisers will get a clue and they'll start realizing that's not that no let me just say that's not entirely true because our audio programming is doing millions of dollars a month of which a significant portion goes to the producers of those audio programs with our transactional campaigns. You know this, you've been in these meetings, this shit works. You use my code for GoDaddy, you use my code for eHarmony, you use my code for Budget, you use my code for Footlocker, and I think that as we move into the depression, that as long as the grid stays up and people can still connect,

43:23 I think that we'll see increasing use of these types of offerings and for us it's 40% of our revenue, John. It's a serious business. No, I'm not saying it's not, but it's not... if you put it side by side with big media, it's like a spin-up. Yeah, but think about it. The reason why, for the same reasons that radio in broadcast towers is no longer valid because you have to listen at that moment, the interruptive nature of advertising also doesn't work anymore. You can skip past it, you can ignore it, you can... it so completely breaks the model

44:01 And which is why, you know, the counting of downloads never worked. No one could ever agree on it. You know, we had all kinds of guilds and organizations and societies and whatever. And it'll just never work that way. And by the way, listen to radio. They're doing the exact same thing. They're saying, hey, use my code. All of them are. Well, I have a code, budget.com slash tech. Yeah, I've got my code is... Go ahead. Go ahead. 10% off of any budget. And by the way, I say this on the Tech 5 thing, which is that I use budget because they really do have the coolest cars. And you get a 10% discount on your weekly rental. They've had Jaguars, they've got all kinds of cool stuff. Anyway. They won't have Jaguars anytime in the future. They're about to go belly up. Well, that's a shame.

44:54 Well, it's a massive shame because I got to get rid of my Jag and no one will buy it. Well, the problem is, of course, you know, Jaguars have the reputation of once they get past warranty, they just start falling apart. So I don't see too many old ones on the road. Well, this one is not that old, but the dealer will not buy it back. They don't have the money. They do and they can't have a car that has actual money of theirs in it sitting on the lot. And they said, there's no one. Look around. There's no one here. We're not selling any cars, no one's coming in. The people who do come in, half of them can't get the financing.

45:32 So the only people coming in are people who really have the money, cashed down to buy a good deal on something new. But Jaguar, now that Tata, who owns them, has said, hey we need a billion pounds to stay in business, because they're looking for their own bailouts, don't think it's just the big three. Over here, Nissan, Toyota, Bentley, Austin Martin, Jaguar, they've all asked the government for help. They're all in the same position. There's no difference between here and the United States. Unless you listen to Gordon Brown who says it's all America's fault. You say Jaguar the way Stewie would on Family Guy. Jaguar. Yeah. Yeah, well I am Stewie. Jaguar, that's the... Come on, I slip in a couple of my correct pronunciations from time to time. I'm slowly going through my transformation. Yeah, you're gonna become British.

46:34 No, I don't think there's any danger of that. I will however have to register for my ID card with biometric data Yeah? What biometric data are they going to steal from you? Well of course they don't actually... They're going to take a sample of your blood, that's what they should do. Yeah, they don't actually tell you, but this is the same Jackie Smith of the Home Office, the one who said that everyone's clamoring and so excited about the National ID cards. She literally said that. Oh, I get calls! The people are so excited, they can't wait to have one. So the first group of people who are singled out, who of course will be the first ones to get on the train to the camp, are people like me. If you're married to an EU national, which gives you the right to live and work in the United Kingdom, then you're the first group to get a card. It will contain your visa status, name, address, picture, fingerprint, and quote, other biometric data, which I can only assume probably will be DNA. Could be, should they take a swab. In the Netherlands,

47:38 There's a big debate going on about something called the Electronic Child Dossier. And they want to start this in 2009. When a child is born, basically they create a new record in the database and call that the electronic child dossier, which obviously is meant for easy access to information about the child so that physicians and medical institutions can swiftly access the information and it'll probably stop terrorism as well. But what the big debate has been, so they have all these fields, you know, name, skin color, eye color, hair color, and then they have a field in the record which is the subject of the debate, which is pubic hair. And literally there are like three choices of pubic hair that have to be entered into the record. What? Yes sir, pubic hair. How fucked up is that? Unbelievable. Yeah.

48:42 Yeah, unbelievable. In fact, it's so unbelievable I don't believe it. You have to send me a link, I gotta blog it. I'll see if there's an English article about it yet, but it's all in Dutch so far. And I'm sure Google Translate won't really do it justice. But yeah, the three options were I think, curly, Hairy and curly or just adult hairy or something. That's a direct translation. So it sounds weird And I was talking to Patricia about this I said, yes, we clearly you have this electronic child dossier well into puberty I said so everyone will have one. So what are you gonna put on yours, honey? Do we have to change yours from time to time? It was like Brazilian landing strip. Ooh, nothing hubby likes it, you know heart

49:28 By the way, the girls at the club last night? No entry. Just leave that one blank, baby. That's funny. But how, I mean, this is what's going on all over Europe, John. It's like in record tempo, this stuff is just click, click, click, it's happening. Yeah, well, you know, it's just the thousand year Reich. The thousand year Reich? Is this another cyclical thing? No, no, I mean, that's what Hitler said when he began his, like, program to make everything fascist. he said it'd be a thousand-year right to be a thousand years of this you know in any course you know they beat him in the world war two and everyone figured it was the end of it but I guess not it's a is pretty scary so on other news yes what else going on a hold on a second I did a little bit of homework as he ruffles the financial times open so when I was floating around Portugal doing my show guy brought with me some gear I brought the

50:34 What did I bring? All I brought was the M-Audio interface. It sounded good. It worked. And a PR, I used it, that's because it was a Heil PR 42. A 42? It's a 40 not a 40. It was a 40. Okay. Yes, it's 40. Okay. It's that really good Heil mic Yeah, but when I the one that Lee Leo Laporte uses because you know and Leo has been in radio forever And he used to use that there's a 1ev model that everybody in radio used to use. Yeah the electro voice Yeah, yeah an electro voice specific dynamic electro voice not these aren't condenser mics that which is interesting because this Heil sounds Exactly like a condenser mic as far as I can go without the without the phantom power without

51:15 Without yeah without needing this extra power to drive it. It's just a regular dynamic microphone, but it sounds so good So I got a bunch of notes from people although. I need to have a Some sort of a dog. I'll protect it. They said it sounds better than normal. That's what they said right yeah I have this happen all the time. I was using, I told you I use my lav in New York and people are like, wow this sounds awesome, you should always sound like this. So now I'm actually talking on the same wireless lav mic. I don't know if it's just because it sounds different and then people think it sounds better. Or if we over obsess the sound and so that actually sounds shittier than normal But I've noticed this exact same thing whenever I change my setup on the road people like it I had a guy send me a note saying tell Adam to stay with that because you were wearing a headset on one of the shows Or something you know no, it's it's this mic. It's the mic talking through right now. They said well. Tell him to just use that mic He sounds a million times better. Yeah, and I am I

52:11 I mean that's why I'm gonna get a country, I'm gonna get a countryman. I gotta get a countryman too, I really wanna try that. Cause you know, cause that, cause this PR40, which is a beautiful sounding mic, in fact I'll probably switch to it, I'm right now I'm using an AKG, but a condenser with a tube. Sounds nice. Yeah, but apparently the other one will sound better But what the kind but that we travel with that PR 40 the thing is a big clunker It's huge and then they get every time I got stopped at did one of the gates from on the airplane They want to know what that is fine, and then they'd hold it up, and they'd look around I said, what's this you know they don't know what a microphone is do a liquid test on that fucker. You know I'm surprised they didn't crack it open, but anyway, so So I come back from Europe with two salamis and

52:57 and a microphone. Two salamis and a microphone. His name is John C.D. O.G. So they're all obsessing, they don't give a shit about the salamis, they're obsessing over this microphone. But anyway, it's too big. Now the Countryman is just a wire, it's just a wisp of a thing. I mean it doesn't weigh anything, it weighs nothing. I mean, if that mic sounds as good as the PR, and in my experience it does, it sounds as good as the PR-40. Yeah, then why take the PR-40? I totally agree. Take that thing on the road, the country man, and just, you know, you don't, because when you travel, you know, people don't travel a lot, they don't understand the CBOs. They have no idea.

53:36 You know, when you travel, I travel light. I know how to pack a suit into a regular suitcase that can go under a seat. And how to roll a salami in it. Well, I got the salami in the computer case. A new game. It's Hide the Salami with John C. Dvorak. So I've got a light, so I travel very light. And I see these poor schmucks, and especially some of these women, who don't know how to travel, and their husbands put up with this crap. They have a suitcase the size of a refrigerator and they can't move it or put it up overhead. They can't do anything with it. The thing is way too big. Hubby is stuck. I went to the Oakland airport to go up north about two

54:23 Two or three months ago, the funniest thing, there was one of these women, she was doing her nails in the front of the bus from the parking lot thing. And when I got on, this whole luggage area was stacked to the gills with luggage. And so they get off and this woman, you know, she refuses to carry anything but her handbag and this poor schlub husband of hers, he's got like two huge rollers and a thing, another thing, and the kids have got a couple of bags and he's got some stuff over his head. I mean, around his neck, he's holding the poor guy's loaded down like a mule. And did he have a baby hanging from him as well? I don't know, it was just short of that. And the little girl that's with him goes up to him and she goes up to her mother and says, Mommy, Mommy, why does Daddy have to take all the luggage all the time? You know, she's giving her crap about it. Smart, smart, yeah.

55:17 And this poor daddy, he was carrying all this thing, I mean, ugh. You can travel with one bag, but I always tell people to travel with nothing and then buy stuff over there and ship it back. but you can travel very light if you try. I know people that travel, for example, this is a rant, I know people that travel, for example, and they'll bring, before the liquid thing, which I think was a benefit to all travelers, before the three ounce rule, which is 100 milliliters actually, they would bring an entire giant bottle, a year's supply of shampoo, and pack it. Why would you, why do you bring in this giant bottle of shampoo

55:55 on a two week trip or one week trip or whatever, it's just ridiculous. You should be at Heathrow, very often the Virgin Atlantic flight from San Francisco lands simultaneously with a flight from Mumbai. My goodness. Man, the Indians, when they travel, it's enormous the amount of luggage they have. Absolutely enormous. Big crates. Huge and you see of course they're always stopped at immigrations and some schmuck there is unpacking all this care I mean, then they pack it tight and then I don't know if they're coming over here forever or what but it's unreal Unreal yeah when I see this big like that. I'm always thinking are you moving there? Is that why you're bringing so much stuff? You know I don't know

56:42 I tell people, I guess there's some women, in fact I went to, when I went to Korea, Gina Smith, she brought like 10 pairs of, or 15 pairs of shoes. And I said, what do you bring all these shoes for? She said, well somebody told me, she hadn't been there before, she says, that they really are picky about shoes, you can't wear the same pair of shoes twice. And I'm thinking, and you believe this? Even I wouldn't believe that one. So anyway. Hey, Woolworths is bankrupt over here. I didn't even know they were still in business. Oh, they've been in... Oh yeah. Oh, Woolworths has been in business here for decades. We haven't... I don't think I've seen a Wool... We used to have Woolworths all over the place. Well, it was bought up. It was purchased by... So Woolworths in like 1908 or something like that, I think they did... They opened up a store in the United Kingdom. And who's the name of the guy? I'm sure it's...

57:36 John H. Woolworth, he discovered that it was the original five and dime concept. Right, right. And it really worked over in the United Kingdom, particularly with an American in the store. And so he really expanded in the 1970s. I think they had like 700, 800 stores. And they were bought up by another big conglomerate that owns multiple chains. But Woolworths for the UK ever since the 70s has really been the place where you buy your music, very much like a Walmart I guess. So they're bankrupt.

58:18 Which is culturally a big deal here. Well, we used to have a Woolworth's nearby in the El Cerrito Plaza and I would go there. You'd always could go there. You know that that style of store There's also used to be a Kresge in Berkeley or a Kress or whatever it was I think it's Kresge which was a deep competitor and which had the cooler storage, because they had the big round glass windows and all this other stuff. Anyway, you could go there, you could always, there was just about everything you wanted. You know, if you needed glue or scotch tape or, you know, something you, actually, it's all like, it was like a miniaturized what Target sells. Like, do you remember Zares?

58:55 I vaguely remember Zaire's. I think it was like a chain on the East Coast. Yeah, it was East Coast. I remember when we'd go on vacation in the 70s back from Europe to the States, we'd always be excited because we'd stay in Armonk at my grandparents' place and in White Plains they had a huge Zaire's. We'd go to Zaire's and we'd just shop, you know. It was one of the first... everything there for everybody. Lose your kids for five hours. Yeah, well now the big box stores have taken over that business. I mean, the Target is the one that fascinates me the most because I'm still reminded.

59:31 of the white front stores that used to be here which were actually a mob, a guy who was on witness protection. And there's always these, they always have these names, I think Conway, Con is in, Conway Trucking was one of these things. There's always some joke. Yeah, the name game, sure. In the name, and Target has always been to me one of those joke names, Target of Target, Target of what? You know, it's like a target. And so I'm thinking, you know, and I keep going to these and they got so many targets. If you drive up highway 80, there's a target store about once every two miles off the freeway. And it very high, these are high expensive real estate areas. And so there's a target that I can see one from my house. And then you go up, there's another one up in Richmond, there's another one further up. And then there's another and another and another. There's all these target stores. There's a whole slew of them. And you go into these stores and they're great stores by the way.

1:00:26 even though everything's from China, but they have everything. And you can get anything there. They even have food now. And you can get soap and you can get dog food and you can get tissue and you can get scotch tape. It's just like a Woolworths, only they're huge. And you can get out of a Target store almost instantly. They have way too many checkers. I mean, you never wait. You go in, no matter when it is, and you rarely wait behind one person. There's always an open thing, just you're out of there. It's amazing, it's a great store, but I don't see how they can afford to stay in business because I don't see that the traffic is that outrageous going in and out of there. Well, I don't know. But because of places like Target, there's no more five and dime stores. Well, I do know that we're trying to do business with them, I know that.

1:01:15 They're interested in working with us. Well, they do a lot of advertising. Oh, hell yeah. And their advertisements are creative. It's a really interesting company. The other thing that they've done which is unique is that they've found all these high-end designers that do this expensive stuff and they've had them do a cheap line. That's what H&M started that though, didn't they? I don't know. I don't know the H&M story. I do know H&M is everywhere. Yeah, H&M, I think, they started with Karl Lagerfeld, who of course is a massive designer, and he did a whole line at like 200 bucks for whatever, a shirt or whatever, which is incredibly cheap for a Karl Lagerfeld. And there were people queued up in the morning just to get in. Madonna did it, it wasn't successful, but they have a lot of big names doing

1:02:04 Well, they do like, you know, a guy who's a designer of, you know, one thing or another, they have him do a toaster. And they got like designer, design toasters and clocks and stuff like that. But I was, by the way, surprised I was in Lisbon. There was an H&M there. I didn't know the place was, I didn't know it was an international chain. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, they're everywhere. But it started in the UK. It's, I think it's, no, wait a minute. Yeah, Hammers and Mores. Is that what it is? Yeah, it's not American. That's what it stands for? Hammers and Mores, I think so, yeah. Why? Well, the reason is because it's one of those things that kind of snuck up on me. I was unaware of H&M until a couple years ago. And it was already...

1:02:48 is already taking over the kids' market. I mean, the kids, when I say kids, I mean college kids and high school kids and anyone under 25, that's where they shop. And you go in there and you can see that they're oriented toward that age group, it's like 18 to 26, whatever the demo is. And they have a lot of nice stylish stuff that's cheap. It's really cheap. The big thing here is prime art. And Primart is, I'm sure it's made in Asian sweatshops because the prices are just, it's so incredibly cheap. It's the price of Kmart.

1:03:29 but it's it's it's actually you know that's it's quick knockoffs yes i look at whatever's in vogue magazine or whatever is in glamour or mary claire or whatever and then they they with them up which of course i'm sure comes directly from the back door of the the the the factories that are making uh... you know the h&m stuff yeah and say boom boom boom a hammer out the same colors is the same patterns is you know there's no lawsuits in fashion no i can't have a reason to get you can't so i'm copyrighted font So, uh... Is that true? You can't copyright a font? I didn't know that. No, you can know that's why fonts are stolen. But what you can copyright is the name of the font. Ah, okay. So if you have like a, you design a font like Hattenschreiler or one of these crazy things or Universe, which is a, you and I, or Helvetica is a classic example. Helvetica, yeah.

1:04:17 most, you know, the most used font in the world. And if you run into the knockoffs of it, because it's owned by one of the foundries, all the knockoffs have different names. There's like Helv, my favorite one was Helvs, H-E-L-V-S. which HP used on one of their cartridges early on. But there's a, you know, otherwise they have all these other names. But that's not a copyright of the name, it's a trademark of the name. Trademark, right. It's a trademark. And so you can't, you can't steal the, you can steal the font, the design of Helvetica, but you can't call it Helvetica. And that's what everybody does. Funny.

1:04:54 But anyway, fashion is... By the way, this is like an argument that the anti-patent people have and the anti-copyright people have, is that they say, look, the fashion industry, if you design some fancy dress and you roll it out for $25,000, a couture, and then somebody else knocks it off and sells it for 150 bucks, exact same look and feel, you can't do anything about it. This is an argument against patents and copyrights because if you look at the picture overall, it's a highly competitive business and people in the fashion industry, many of them, make millions of dollars. It's a very successful industry with this model of everything being stolen constantly. But it's not just stolen, it is a part of the entire infrastructure. Because if there were only designers making $25,000 outfits for a very small select clientele, we'd all be wearing potato sacks.

1:05:46 And of course, we'll always be wearing very stupid, ugly clothing. So it trickles down and it's meant to do that. And it's a whole power structure and Elsa Klensch from CNN and these women, and they are predominantly women, at least who are on the media side of fashion, they really control what we will look like. uh... in three months from now what will be wearing and and they love that it's it's a part of how it all works it's uh... was what's funny even goes deeper than that people don't realize is like you know when they have you know there are it's so far does done so far that's a reminds me a lot of the semiconductor business where you have a a really long ramp because everybody knows we're gonna go to thirty two nanometers are going to do this is always done in advance because you have this this pacing that set by moore's law and with fashion

1:06:36 that you know all these like oh this is the fall cut this is fall colors this is the new colors we're gonna have this orange and this blue that's got a disc tint in that those colors are done by these you know these guys who do design inks and dyes six months earlier it's their specialty yeah that's what they're doing they come up with these colors way in advance of the of the of the fashion season because those dyes have to go into the you cloth and they have to do all, so there's like a real long ramp and then all of a sudden these new colors come out and everyone's all jacked up about them. Oh, that's the new green, you're wearing the old green. You know, well you could have probably figured out what the new green's gonna be if you were in the business because the thing was decided like nine months earlier or a year. I think it's like six, it's like six months.

1:07:25 Okay, so long six months. Well, they guys see the product you first you got it first you got it Calls the color and then and then the design design. Yeah, well you have to come with the colors and then you have to then you have to come up with the fabric that uses the colors and so there's a pro you know, There's a gap there because you got a manufacturer's fabric Usually the designers they get they step in at that part of the process. So Karl Lagerfeld He'll he'll get fabric which already has you know, there's a selection of colors that go with it So they're even a step behind that Yeah, probably. I would think so. You'd have to be. I happen to know so. I have a wife who was involved in all this. Well, you have to... Anyway, so there's a... The ramp is large, it's long. It's not like it's a big shock that all of a sudden... I always get the biggest kick out of...

1:08:12 You go to Europe where they're more fashion-oriented, especially with these colors, than they are in the United States. And so you'll go past the department store and they'll have all these colors, these new colors for this season, this spring, you know, of 09. And so you see all these colors and then... And it was just they really emphasize these colors in Europe and you come to the US and every so often there was a I remember this one there's this crazy rust color from some years ago that was just kind of almost Gaudy it was they were pushing the heck out of in Europe and you could not even find this color in the United States So we did apparently our all our people said screw it. We don't like this color I don't care what anybody buddy thinks and we never got the color was just the funniest thing to see missing

1:08:59 I don't know. I got two more things, unless you got something. No, I got nothing. You can tell. No, I like it, because you've been on a couple of good rants today. Yeah, well, you know, it's early. Do you know who Buckminster Fuller is? Oh, absolutely. Everybody knows who Bucky is. Well, I'm just learning about Bucky. Can you give me some background on this guy? He seems highly interesting. He's very interesting. I think I've always thought he was very popular amongst the new age nutballs. Yeah, that's why I like him. Exactly. Well, if you were actually a new age nutball, which you're not, I can assure the audience, you would have known about him by now. I mean, actually, the fact that you're so far behind on Buckminster Fuller proves, and you know, with authority, that you're not a new age nutball.

1:09:52 But anyway, but I digress. So Buckminster Fuller had all these crazy ideas. He invented the geodesic dome. He did experiments on himself. He did this crazy experiment about sleeping. He put himself in some isolation and decided to sleep when he felt like and found that you only needed, if you didn't have any beds or anywhere to sleep in, you just conked out when you felt like it and wake up and conk out and wake up. Kind of pass out theory of... Hey, that's kind of how I live my life. He said you only, it turns out you only need four hours a day. and after experiment. I need a little more than that. Uh, you know, yeah, he did came up with a couple of interesting ideas, but when you start look when you start seeing how these things in terms of aesthetics, the Dymaxion car was the ugliest, stupidest thing ever put on the road.

1:10:50 What was so special about it? What was the... It had to steer from the one wheel in the back or something. It was made out of the kind of material that airplanes are made out of. Carbon fiber? No, no, we're talking about back in the 30s. Stretched aluminum. Aluminium, yes. Yeah, aluminium. And it was just the dumbest thing and apparently killed somebody in New York in a freak accident and then they stopped making them. It's weird. Let me give you the context of how I've come in contact with the work of Buckminster Fuller and I'm really interested in how he makes money, what his deal is.

1:11:28 Well, there you go. He's been dead for years as far as I know. Maybe I should retract that email with the interview request. That's a good idea. Look him up on Wikipedia. There's this piece of video where he's talking about 2012, which of course you know I'm interested in. Oh God, yeah. And he says this is humanity's final exam. And what was interesting, the concepts we have to understand... You are not actually of this era if you cannot grasp the following two concepts. He died in 83 by the way.

1:12:04 Okay, so he was an early kook so one the concept that the Sun does not set unless you can actually envision yourself spinning on the globe at 24,000 miles an hour and spinning past the Sun Then you're still living fight in 500 years in the past And he says the second one and this is this is funny, and I'm gonna start using this just to piss people off There is no up or down there is out in and around or through, but there's no up and down because you actually when you go what when you go up in an airplane you're actually going out of the earth and if you're going towards the moon you're going into the moon. And I was it was just it was a concept I was like wow that's pretty interesting and then when you start thinking about it and when you start feeling yourself being on the globe which is spinning around I don't know yeah it's a

1:12:54 It had an elevating effect on me, I guess. Yeah, well, apparently it did. I find the whole thing to be specious, tedious, and bullshit. Spaceship Earth was one of the things that he named, and everybody got jacked up about that. Spaceship Earth? I've got to write this down. Is that a book? He popularized the term. This is Wikipedia. I remember Spaceship Earth. Oh, yeah, OK, whatever. Anyway, the geodesic domes is main thing and people would build these domes because they were they're actually very good It's a good very strong structure, but they're the gosh awful looking this thing. They're horrible You know aesthetically you see these domes that people like you're living in a you like you're living in Epcot worse This is structure of it the thing was just ugly it looked like some it's just creepy looking and so but people would build them because oh, it's a geodesic dome Buckminster Fuller anyway, so I you can tell you about a

1:13:53 particular fan you know I'm never no not really I don't see what his contribution really was I don't know well that's why I asked well now you know you'll be you but go to the diamond if the Dimaxion is this stuff you want to look into because that's the funniest stuff I'm axiom car okay is there an x-ray Maxian yes d y m a x i o n ok d y m a x i o n oh definitely look into that And then before we leave, I'll just crank up the printing press one more time. Interesting story in the Financial Times that for the first time, and this is always kind of important when you look at economics in the United States. I have a great picture of Rahm Emanuel here by the way, looking really scary. Scary guy. For the first time, the London School of Economics is almost in the majority in Obama's cabinet slash buddies.

1:14:51 Because normally, this is a big deal, right? It's like, what school, of course Bill Clinton was Oxford. So what was the, should we read that again? Okay, I'll read you the headline actually. London School of Economics is well represented amongst Obama's buddies. And the point of it is, is that, I'm looking for the names here. Peter Orszag as budget director, Pete Rouse and Mona Sutphin as senior White House staff means the London School of Economics only has two fewer graduates than Harvard in Team Obama. And it goes on the list, you know, only one from MIT and it seems like a real... Like in the UK, of course, all the politicians come from, what's that horrible boy school named? Exeter.

1:15:41 No, no, it's in Exeter probably. No, it's not. Is it Exeter? I think so. No, it's something else. But anyway, I just thought it was interesting. We'll find out. I thought it was Exeter. But anyway, the, yeah, no, I was looking at this and everybody's got a PhD. It's like they all went to like Yale and then they've got their, or Harvard, but mostly Harvard is different. I mean, what we have. You know, we had during the Bush administration, everybody's a Yalie. And then, you know, everyone's from Yale. You have to be from Yale. And then this is switching over to Harvard, which I actually think is an improvement. But I could be wrong. And because who knows? I mean, I don't understand why we don't have more West Coast representation. There's nobody from, you know, Berkeley, you know, or any of these schools out here. You don't have too much Caltech.

1:16:29 you know, represented in the government. So all these East Coast Ivy League's clubby schools that, you know, have the same fraternities and it makes you wonder. Yeah, like skull and bone shit. Yeah. Eaton is the one in the UK. Oh, Eaton. That's it. I'm sorry. Eaton. I knew that. Yeah, I knew it too. So, uh, oops. Well, anyway, for those of you who are, oh, and that is the final thing I wanted to say. Those of you who are enjoying the change, which is already taking place, we can see it perfectly. The guy in the front has changed. Everyone else in the back remains the same in the administration. Twice now, I've noticed. on both the Jon Stewart show, the Daily Show, and on, I saw it happen on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He had, I forget her name, she has a talk show on E!, she's like a comedian, kind of funny, tall, milfy looking chick. You don't know. No, I don't know.

1:17:24 But, you know, when people pull out an obvious crowd pleaser, you know, like the old, hey, but we got change, Obama's in, and the audience goes dead silent. There's no more cheering, there's no more laughter, there's no more, yeah, we got him, look at you, we're rocking and rolling, the country is back. It's not even a chuckle, John. Really? Completely, it's dying. You cannot use Obama as a crowd pleaser anymore on these talk shows. That's interesting. Now I thought that was highly interesting because that shows a real change of mentality almost overnight. It doesn't take much. The American public in particular is extremely fickle and they can turn on a dime. I mean that's what in fact I've seen the economy do these crazy turn on a dime things. I mean we had, I'm still stunned by this. You know I was, like I said I was just in Portugal and prices were reasonable compared to you know not we haven't gotten

1:18:22 Well, with your American dollar now, which is being artificially inflated. But that's what I'm going to say. The pound got to two bucks and the weird thing was that the Canadian dollar got to a dollar, became one to one. And when this thing turned around just like a month or two ago, which I expected, it took years to get where it got, and it turns around and goes right back to 76 cents or 75 cents for the Canadian dollar. And the pound is back, was a buck 46. When I went there, which was low, it was usually a buck fifty-five, you know, traditionally. So it was a buck forty-six, which was low. Once it goes below a buck fifty to me, that's like bargain time in England. I'm thinking, this just happened overnight. I've never seen anything collapse like this. I mean, the gas prices, I bought gasoline for a buck ninety-nine premium. And the same thing, the euro, same thing, crushed. The pound, super crushed. It was two bucks. Now it's one fifty-three.

1:19:18 That's an unbelievable drop. Yeah, in such a short time. But I figured it out, it's the other way around. It's an unbelievable rise in the dollar because the Federal Reserve is selling gold. They're selling it like no one else's business. You know who's buying it? You know who's buying the gold? You are. Some of it. No, Iran actually just purchased 75 billion dollars worth of gold. You know, these are not just a bunch of camel jockeys out there. They know what they're doing. I think they're incredibly smart. Oh, that means that gold is going to collapse. We only do stuff like this to screw people. Hey, John, welcome to the dark side. I'm telling you, I got nothing against it. You want to sell the gold to a bunch of dumb Iranians and then pull the rug out from under them, I don't have a problem with it. It doesn't, you know, well, Lindsay Williams, the chaplain who I completely base all of my predictions on just by parroting him.

1:20:20 who worked for the oil companies in Alaska. This is the guy who said it's going to go to 200 and that it's going to happen now and he was right. What's going to go to 200? Oil. It never went to 200? No, it went close. But then he came out and said... Close? It got to 147. Close enough. It was 60 when he said it, you know, not even. It was 50 when he said it. He came out a couple months ago, six or eight weeks ago, and he said it's going down to 50. And of course it's gone down to 50 and he says it's staying there a long time and the reason why he claims that he actually speaks to one of these guys who determines this. He says because they want to bankrupt the Middle East. They want to completely bankrupt them. They're going to keep the oil at 50 bucks. They want them out of the way. They should drop it to 40. I mean, it's traditionally 25.

1:19:18 That's an unbelievable drop. Yeah, in such a short time. But I figured it out, it's the other way around. It's an unbelievable rise in the dollar because the Federal Reserve is selling gold. They're selling it like no one else's business. You know who's buying it? You know who's buying the gold? You are. Some of it. No, Iran actually just purchased 75 billion dollars worth of gold. You know, these are not just a bunch of camel jockeys out there. They know what they're doing. I think they're incredibly smart. Oh, that means that gold is going to collapse. We only do stuff like this to screw people. Hey, John, welcome to the dark side. I'm telling you, I got nothing against it. You want to sell the gold to a bunch of dumb Iranians and then pull the rug out from under them, I don't have a problem with it. It doesn't, you know, well, Lindsay Williams, the chaplain who I completely base all of my predictions on just by parroting him.

1:20:20 who worked for the oil companies in Alaska. This is the guy who said it's going to go to 200 and that it's going to happen now and he was right. What's going to go to 200? Oil. It never went to 200? No, it went close. But then he came out and said... Close? It got to 147. Close enough. It was 60 when he said it, you know, not even. It was 50 when he said it. He came out a couple months ago, six or eight weeks ago, and he said it's going down to 50. And of course it's gone down to 50 and he says it's staying there a long time and the reason why he claims that he actually speaks to one of these guys who determines this. He says because they want to bankrupt the Middle East. They want to completely bankrupt them. They're going to keep the oil at 50 bucks. They want them out of the way. They should drop it to 40. I mean, it's traditionally 25.

1:21:11 I think it's become too expensive right now, even just to get it out of the ground costs 30 or 40 bucks. Well, you know, you can bankrupt these guys if you get everybody on the same page that is going to go to 200 and everybody starts banking on it and they start all these green projects and we're going to do solar and we're going to do all those other things because, you know, the cost of oil makes it profitable to do all these other alternative energy tricks. Usually, over, you know, any time it goes over 40 actually. And then you get everybody all geared up for this stuff and you have Goldman Sachs come out and say, it's gonna go to 200. They're amongst the group that was cheerleading. And then the thing, you know, everybody's all geared up for this $200 deal.

1:21:51 You know, and it's already at 140. It was a setup. It's a setup, and you're all, you're in. You push all your chips to the middle of the table, and then, vroom, you pull the rug out from under, and this thing falls like a rock. If you take a look at the charts, by the way, I mean, this oil price thing went straight down. It wasn't like, well, let me hesitate here and just loop down. It wasn't like it was going over a cliff in a nice, smooth curve. It went straight down with one blip. But it's basically straight down. And I love it how politicians still talk about the incredible price of oil. I know, they don't even notice. They keep saying that. Oil is so expensive, energy costs are very expensive. I know, haven't they? Don't they go outside? Although it is true that Shell, I just read this today, Shell had to shut down their Nigerian liquid natural gas production.

1:22:46 Which is what... Europe gets almost all of their energy from the Nigerian liquid natural gas. So I predict that when it comes to heating, you know like gas heating etc. I think it's gonna skyrocket. At least in Europe, it's gonna go out of control. And then of course we have to go buy it from the Russians, which is gonna be interesting. Well I know Shell had that advertisement, they actually had a channel on the Dish Network promoting this liquid natural gas bullshit. It's so evil. That's the Dutch... Royal family the house of orange founders of the Bilderberg group Well, yeah, yeah, let's end it on a high John The high is you can buy premium gas now for around two bucks I'll take it. That's good. Yeah, I've now I can fly much cheaper, too I would say I don't know how you add the weather is completely crap Absolutely, no flying. Hmm

1:23:47 Alright, ummm... What's coming up this week? Anything special? Besides Cyber Monday? What's going on at Cyber Monday? Cyber Monday. It's the Internet's version of Black Friday. Oh. Yeah, I'm gonna be plugging all of our deals. All of our get-em-cheap deals. See if we can hop on the bandwagon. Hmm. Get a cheap deal on Budget. I got a bunch of Budget.com slash tech. The, um... I have to there's a something I had to do yeah, I got a little easy H right budget comm slash TCH Yeah, TCH. Yeah, it's a me vo offers calm as we can find out. Yeah, you can't hook John up hook John up I need some you know some action so

1:24:33 Yeah, I gotta go do my online ordering because I think, you know, next week is probably the best year after that, you know, Monday. That's what that's what Cyber Monday is all about. That's the day when you get all the best deals. Now, it'll really be dependent upon what happens today on Black Friday. I mean, what do you think is going to happen? Just predict it. Okay, well I have to say I've already watched some of the news and it seemed like this is what they were reporting on CNBC. On the West Coast, because they had reporters in the malls, right? This is how crazy we are. On the West Coast, everywhere it seemed like the same amount of people were showing up, but now they have to find out how the sales figures are. But on the West Coast, people were using predominantly cash. On the East Coast, people are using 85% using credit cards.

1:25:15 We're always ahead of the game out here. So I'm going to predict we will see a not a significant drop I'm gonna say 20 to 25 percent less than last year which of course will be amazing because it'll be the first time in a hundred years that we've actually gone down in Black Friday sales, but I think it's I think it's gonna be 20 to 25 percent down. I'm saying 5% down. Okay, 5. Interesting. And we'll find out tomorrow. But we won't talk about it until next week. Alright everybody, coming to you from Gitmo East in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry. And Gitmo West, I'm in Northern Silicon Valley, I'm John C. Dvorak. We'll talk again next week, right here on NO Agenda.