Crackpot & The Buzz-Kill

00:01 It's time once again for the weekly adventures of Crackpot and Buzzkill. Live from Gitmo Nation West in Southwest... Wait, I'm in East. From Southwest London, I'm Adam Curry. And I'm John C. Dvorak here in Silicon Valley North. Did I say I was John C. Dvorak? I believe so. Yes, yes you did. And that is Gitmo Nation West. I'm in Gitmo Nation East. Fresh back in 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 Geneva yesterday. You missed them. Well, you were on the plane in fact. I missed the Geneva, but yesterday the British also, not riots, but they're calling Gordon Brown on his bullshit, the workers at, what is it, Total and a few other outfits, and we had a wildcat strike. Total is a gas station. Well, yeah, the oil firm.

01:03 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 a contract that was awarded to 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. The Italian guys must be working cheaper, that's my guess. Let me guess. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, they're making minimum wage. Well that's cheap. Would Brits work for minimum wage in the same job? Would they do it? Yeah, I think they would. I think a lot of Brits are ready to work right now. Well maybe it's so they can... Maybe Gordon Brown's thinking that well if we use all these foreign laborers they won't give us any tax money and then that'll help bankrupt the company or the country. Well yeah, that's probably something in that. Maybe he's a communist.

02:10 You think? So I was watching last night as you were traveling on the big giant silver bird and I made a copy of this for you by the way because it turned out to be quite interesting. Jack Welch. 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. But he doesn't seem to be selling anything. Yeah, I find that peculiar. he's not selling anything, maybe selling himself. But whatever the case was, he did a whole hour with Donna Shalala, who 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. Which is kind of interesting in itself.

03:08 But he made this interesting point, 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 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 going to get worse before it gets better, which is a thing you don't do ever. and uh... welch says that roosevelt never did it nice iry united or wasn't there were done even alive during roosevelt's a your barrier heard all those early speeches in his cousin kept him around for a long time and he never did that he was all he said the only thing to fear is fear itself obama's you know to say he's saying fear head for the hills

03:59 Well, well, so on that side, 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 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 in the administration. So Timothy Geithner is approved or 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 but that's okay because he'll recuse himself when appropriate. Come on! Which should be all the time. Well of course.

04:50 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. You know go through this whole thing big song and dance and the first guy that Geithner brings in. You think they could have put this off of you? You know why would they have to do it right away just violate your own 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 it and said, look, I got these rules. I mean, can't you find anybody else that'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 is what I'm... No. Well, I'm getting the hate though. That is starting to happen. Oh, well, tell us about it. No, just on Twitter even. By the way, it would be cool if you followed me, Adam Curry, all written together on Twitter.

05:47 I'm not following you? You're kidding. Yeah, I don't have that many followers. Oh, well let me go follow you. Okay, thank you. I'll do that as soon as the show's over. Well, I do it now, but it'll screw up the stream. It's like, uh, Adam, don't you have anything, can't you be positive? You rarely, maybe never have said anything positive about Obama. No one is 100% wrong. You said lots of good things about Obama. I certainly have. I said he's very cute. He's a very good looking man. Here, this is good. I love listening to you on John C. On No Agenda, but will tune you out if you don't lighten up bashing my president. My president. The hell is that? He's my president too. I get a fair crack. Well, he's my president too, you know. Yeah. What's up with that? Well, you know, I'm much more positive about Obama than you are. I mean, I have to admit to that. Really?

06:46 Mm-hmm. And what are you positive? Well, 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 a Geithner 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 it. He wasn't that bad of an experience. He wasn't even fined any penalties like everybody, the rest of us. Exactly, like they came into the office with their hands on their weapons when they came looking for me. And now we have Tom Daschle who also hadn't paid his

07:28 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 a hundred grand, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Where's the penalties? No, it did say that he paid fifteen thousand dollars in penalties. That doesn't sound right, sounds low. Sounds low, I was gonna say, it sounds very low to me. And I wonder if he then also got all that freaking mail. You know, so, so, so, um, 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 let the, you know, we can help you with the IRS and it's unbelievable how that works. I guess you get there's some public record or something that must pop up. And here's something else I discovered if you'll indulge me for a moment.

08:23 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 sometimes depending on what it is. I'll wait for that warning note just because it gives me satisfaction of paying 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 she can have as many gym memberships as she wants but she put it on her debit card with a standing order. So basically you sign stuff and so you know and she gets an allowance from me but you know it's not enough to cut and but you know we pay we would support her we'd pay for the

09:06 For the gym membership, so of course she ran into trouble somewhere got ahead of her You know she wasn't paying attention forgot to ask me and so then it's like a 349 pound Bill that's outstanding and this was for in Guilford so we left and she went to cancel it 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 And it's one of these typical collection letters. It's been, you know, 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 gym company.

09:56 And they said, £349, and so I gave my debit card number and was paid for. But the lawyer letter, which came in two weeks earlier, what I thought was a lawyer letter as if the account had been handed over to a lawyer, it seems like it's... and they were asking for £500. 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 they're a lawyer and the lawsuit is ready and they're going to bring you before court, etc. And it really seems like a tremendous scam because the difference is of 150 pounds

10:40 Yeah, that's their... well actually it's even better than that because they... when you turn over to your debt to the collection agency, they get... it 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 more money. Yeah, well this is a crooked business and the fact of the matter is it's rampant in this country. I didn't even know what was going on over there. Well, so this is my point is I didn't know about this just because I've never been in that situation and let that be a warning that you know it's real 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 howl on the Attorney General or the

11:28 consumer protection department of the state government or whatever it is to get action. Because these guys will call you at midnight, there's just a million little tricks that they pull, most of which are illegal and then again not enforced. I mean, it seems as though in the United States ever since the I guess it began with the first Bush administration, 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, a lot of them have been taken off the books, they've been, you know, usually through some sort of a rider on some other bill, you know, to save the children. And let's stick some stuff in there.

12:08 Yeah, let's take some stuff in here. What are you gonna do about it? But it's a predatory It's a it's a predatory practice though. This is this is really very very well Yeah, it's a total predatory practice and nobody does anything about it. There's no agency that cares, Obama, I doubt he's going to do crap. You know, talking about, when I see some consumer protection action from him, then I'll, I'm totally on board, but I'm not seeing, you know, I never even heard that during all his campaigning. You know, these like, these payday loans. Well, well, there was a whole bunch of stuff on 60 Minutes with, you know, a guy goes in, some poor guy who was a veteran, in fact the Army's very concerned about this.

12:50 You know, the guys will go in and they'll take one of these payday loans out where you give them your, you get a loan for what your next check's gonna be and you have to pay them some ridiculous amount of fee and if you don't pay it, all of a sudden you owe like thousands and thousands of dollars. Excuse me, there's a... Loan sharking. Legal loan sharking. There's a couple things about the administration which kind of runs along these lines because it comes down to legalese, you know, and 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 try to call me. Don't be idiots. I hate that. Idiots! Can't you hear? Oh, that's fun. It goes bloop bloop. I'm like turning off all the sounds here. Idiots.

13:36 Yeah, I figured I'd 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 it exactly the same, create or save three million jobs. Now, there's a big difference between saving and creating. I mean there's like a six million job difference between the two. That's funny. You say we have we saved three million jobs how do you know you didn't? Yeah I mean it's so that's actually that's legally. I should go back and say whatever the employment say we got 40 million people working. You can come back and say we saved more than three million jobs. Oh yeah. 40 million jobs every person working today we we save their job. And that is exactly what's going on. There was there's a C-SPAN clip which I'll send you the link

14:36 of um... I think he's a representative... I think he's a... 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, it must have been the Senate, Hank Paulson came to the House and said, you know, this was the one day where over a half a trillion dollars in money markets started to flow away and we need this money within six hours and people will be dying on the streets. And he goes through this whole rap, man, it's just like, I saw this. I think we blogged it. You might have, yeah. It's been circling around. And it's just like, wow, you know? And he's literally saying, we don't know. Which of course is true. He's being honest there. We don't know how this works. But then you just hand the keys over to that bald fuck.

15:27 Well, you get away with what you can get away with. So here's the big news though in my mind, which is kind of being glossed over is Joe Biden is, so he's got his marching orders, he's off, he's out, 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 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, no. We now have an executive by executive order. Joe Biden will be leading the middle class task force.

16:15 And he's going out on a listening tour. Joe Biden coming to a town near you soon to listen. What the hell were they doing on the campaign trail? Isn't 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. So, yeah, so I guess he's just out. That's it. Yeah, he'll be out on the road. But it's a life of Riley for him now. You know, traveling around with the 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 Ledbetter 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

17:17 You know, like sometimes 15 minutes before the president arrives. And it's just like a show. They've got the little music going, you know, like... Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. We will be starting in five minutes. Five more minutes. And 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. I can just see the West Wing in the morning. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy! Mommy! West Wing in the morning! Mommy, Mommy! What's the matter, Malia? Where's Daddy's scripts? He needed scripts for today. So we went out to a couple of restaurants we should tell anyone coming to San Francisco about.

18:15 Yeah, I have to say I had a great week. It was only the first night that I had room service and every other evening I had a good meal. And maybe the first thing we should say is if you're looking for oysters in San Francisco, be prepared to pay. Yeah, the oysters on the west coast have skyrocketed in price because of some shortage or God knows what. But you know the thing is we went to this Coco 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 was Zuni.

18:56 The Zuni Cafe, very famous old restaurant that's part of the foodie revolution. I don't know, I mean, this place is kind of on par with Chez Panisse except that, 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 a lot of oysters. We had $90 worth of oysters. That was pretty outlandish. But they were good. And January is, according to the French, January is the month you want to eat oysters. At least in the northern hemisphere, of course.

19:38 and I've never had oysters down in South America. That'd be kind of interesting. So what we did specifically for the show is we tried 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, actually we started with... Here's how sad it is, we lost count. We started off with a dozen, two dozen right off the bat and then we had another dozen and then we had the final nine. Something like that. Yeah, okay, I remember the names. Yeah, you do. I don't remember. So my favorite was the Pickering and yours was the Pearl Point. Yeah, right.

20:40 Right, they were both good. I think the Pro Point was better. And then the other one that was the runner-up was the Nuka. Which I never heard of. That was more like Nuka. What is that, Nuka? That was Netka. N-E-E-T-K-A, something like that? I don't know. It's just like, you know, these oysters are just a bed of oysters someplace and they give them a name. And so for those of you wondering, it's very possible to eat all those oysters. You don't feel sick. You can just keep eating them. It's just basically like 99% water. I whitewash the ceiling in the hotel room boy just kidding 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 they go so sure is typically you know in a place like that usually run a buck

21:35 25 to a buck 50 and then in a really expensive restaurant around the rent they run to two but 250 and then a couple of those ones from the East Coast which I wouldn't use 75 was 275 I saw 350 was one of the ones was 350 yeah outrageous I was pointed out to you and then we had grouper right we split the grouper it grouper yeah okay yeah I was alright And, oh, that was, 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 going to do that. She didn't know a lot about the wine, did she? She didn't know anything. No. She was looking for the screw top.

22:28 Well, whatever. But that was kind of good because we had a... Was that a champagne we started off with? No, we had a little champagne, but then we had a Chateau Neuf de Paupe. Yes. That you liked a lot. Yeah, I did like it. You're right. Okay, then... So what do we rate that place? Is that a place we would recommend? Yes, I would. 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. It was expensive. It was expensive considering it's kind of like a funky place. I mean it's not like a romantic great restaurant that you take somebody to propose to them.

23:23 uh... but 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 uh... but you know that we have you know that champagne in the red wine and we've never really been 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 and i just don't i'm really disappointed in the prices of those oysters it's It just keeps you from having oysters. I mean, you normally go in there in January and the whole bar, they have a big copper bar, it's beautiful. And there used to be people at the bar, about half of them would have that oyster thing up in the air, that levitated oyster bar.

24:07 plate holder and they all be eating oysters. I mean you just go in there and just sit there and have some oysters. Have some oysters. Go to the bar and have a bunch of 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. Turn the speaker down just a bit John. Sure. Sorry about that. And I think we talked about this, actually we argued that we talked about this on an earlier NOAA agenda. This is 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

24:48 Whatever it is, it's like they're getting screwed, they can't 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 they'll even say sorry or thank the governor or something like that. They'll have a little cute message. Yeah, someone's posted a link now in the chat, so there you go. So the, that wasn't only on that, it wasn't on the other bills. Well, you never saw the other bills. I saw the one that took local 500. It was on all of them. It was on all of them. I didn't see it on there. I think it was. You have the copies in your wallet, you should check. No, I throw those out. I destroy the evidence. I'm so used to it. It's like never take anything from a hotel or a restaurant back, man. You might have to explain yourself later. To who? Who cares?

25:43 I didn't fill out my 105 by the way. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So you just walked it through? Yep. Of course. Go look that one. Go Google that one. 105. uh... yeah you know what i figure you're gonna do that and i figured the scenario of anybody said anything is a policy and i got the one oh five right exactly right ahead and i had a filled out to like this boat all crap man i can't believe i forgot to do that so hectic here and i think that's what that would be your scheme and i think that's why i'm sure buzzkill

26:26 Yeah, so it's somebody with some one of our listeners by the way came up with it 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 the applause sound effect right there. That's right, not once but now it's twice a week! That's right, bottom buzzkill! So, okay, so that was the Zuni Cafe. I give it a B. You want to go to the second review or you want to do it somewhere midstream so we don't kill people with food?

27:38 Yeah, we'll put it off later. That'll make it be more agonizing. All right. We got to come back to it though. I got stuff on the list. How about you? Okay, go. I'm ready to rock. I gave you my stuff. It was Jack Welch. Yeah. Well, Jack Welch, it is interesting though that I've seen him on every... He's co-hosting CNBC in the morning. It must be like a... You're right. It must be about Jack Welch and not about anything else or maybe I don't know what it is. Hey babe. 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 Twitter it to us. Jack Welch? He's got to be near 70. Yeah, 70. Sure. But he obviously, you know, he 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 them. Yeah, and then they took it away. Wasn't that under similar circumstances to like corporate greed or something?

28:36 Yeah, it was something like that. Some BS. He's the only one that uses a damn jet. So anyway, so he retires and they screw him, of course, which I'm sure has got to be something he discusses once in a while. But the problem is he sounds like he's drunk. He does a little bit. He does. Or like he's just kind of crazy. Yeah, and then he starts talking about stuff and you just, when you see this thing you'll see what I'm talking about. And there's guys that are like, this Kelly at, his name's Kelly, he's at Federal, anyway, he's a,

29:16 It's just like this... Jack, complete a sentence, will you, already? He can't complete a sentence and he can't remember anybody's name. But you know what it is? All these guys who are like my age and your age, they're all falling over themselves because Jack Welch was legendary as a business leader. He was like the kind of guy that you wanted to have as president. And yeah, and 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, he's just just a mess He's a mess but the funny thing any any slurs and he's got a mush mouth He's doesn't enunciate but he I've always thought he was overrated. I

29:59 Because I mean it was a pig in a hurricane, you know, when General Electric's money went way up. 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, he's great. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, 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 L. Sloan, let's put it that way. But that is, but you're right, that is rather interesting. Right, and his wife does all his writing. Well... Why is she by-lined with him on the calls 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 credit! I want my credit, dammit!

30:58 At a certain point, 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 a point where if the guy is just kind of out of a job, you know, well, she has money, but he doesn't have a jet. Women care more about jets than money. Yeah, and then she's kind of still young and she's still kind of milfy looking. That's gotta be hard, man. When you make that bed and then you gotta lie in it until the guy kicks it. Right, and you never know this guy could go for another 20. Jeez. She's like, hey, get up earlier. Wake up, wake up. Jack, Jack, Jack! It is time for CNBC! HR 645.

31:52 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 reason why this is so big in the circles that I travel 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, a legitimatization of FEMA camps. So basically the legalese to support these camps that have already been built. And yeah, sure it's for, in fact it's to provide temporary housing, medical, humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster.

32:45 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? Let me tell you Mr.. Hastings of Florida, okay, that's a good excuse Katrina. Yeah, which was referred to the Committee on transportation and infrastructure and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, because of course it will be run by the military. Okay? And we want the other three uses, to provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of federal, state, and local first responders.

33:38 So they're going to be training camps. And to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response and recovery efforts of government, private and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations 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. Take a shower. You laugh, but 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 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.

34:40 Because now there's rioting and violent protesting going on everywhere. Yeah, well even in Geneva of all places. Yeah, tell me about this because you mentioned that. Oh, it's because there's a whole bunch of people who somehow managed to go into Switzerland and then they're in Geneva to protest the Davos thing which has become laughable. You know, the World Economics Summit Forum or whatever they call it. Yeah, the World Economic Forum. You know, I'm okay... Discovered by Scoble. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I'm okay with... If you say, hey, we're going to go have a party and score some hookers and slurp some oysters in Switzerland, that's okay. But don't pretend like this is where you're going to go fix the world. They're celebrating. Gordon Brown was

35:32 on stage 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 so while he's saying that he's got thousands of people on a wildcat strike in the UK against the very thing he's preaching. Oh man, oh man. Well, while you were over here, there were rioting in France and they were striking all over the place. Yeah, which is not abnormal for France, but it is the first time it's happening under Sarkozy's watch. Yeah. So that does say something there. But people are getting pissed off. Well, you got a bunch of do-nothing governments.

36:23 Oh no, they're doing something, they're stealing it. They're stealing us blind and we're just sitting there laughing, watching Celebrity Big Brother. Well I guess they didn't put enough reality TV shows on to keep the public happy. It's fascinating to watch, that's for sure. Well now that you're back over there you can catch us up again with what's going on off the continent because while you were over here you were just stuck. Because we don't get any of that. It's all about the Super Bowl, which of course is taking place later today. Right. You know, you mentioned, well you told me and I think you mentioned on Twit that you were going to DVR the game and you were going to just speed 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... I don't care. I don't want to watch that one minute, or that five second commercials that they dreamed up, which... That's not, would you let me finish?

37:26 You may. And then you can go on the rant. No, see, what they discuss on Twit is not necessarily what's true. It's not really what's happening in advertising. No, what I thought would be nice for you to watch is that all of the big brands are all going to be attempting to bring a positive and subdued tone. And I think that makes it extremely interesting to watch. So that you know there and and and uh hope okay and change and these types of things yeah okay I'll watch a couple here's what the deal when you speed watch on the uh

38:10 with, I'm using a Dish Network DVR which has a 30 second button on it. That's nice, yeah, which TiVo doesn't have, right? TiVo you can program 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, they, they, they, the amount of time during the advertisement section is, you know, varies. Sometimes they'll have a, a, a a two-minute break, sometimes I'll have a three-minute break, sometimes I'll have a four-minute break. I mean, you never know. So you're popping through. There is a clock somewhere, but you don't have it. That'd be cool, actually. People out there should do this. In broadcasting, there's a thing called the clock. And the clock is a sheet of paper that's used heavily in radio.

38:58 Especially with syndicated shows. It's a sheet of paper. It's a format clock. It's a format clock showing you how much time they're going to be talking and then 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 them on the money except at the top of the hour. They do tell you how many commercials or how long the break's gonna be. So they'll tell you if it's gonna 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 when you're doing CSI, there's 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 little remote controls, you go, oh, this is the four minute one. This is the big one at the bottom of the hour. And you go bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You just hit the button eight times and you're boom, your four minutes passed.

39:57 so you don't have to go to the ad because you get kinda pensive you'll see check could it again okay and that's okay did again anyway it's just a thought every cell every time i'm back in the states after some period of time i'm always amazed at the amount of uh... signal-to-noise ratio on broadcast network television the amount of commercials it is this one it's it's yeah go ahead it's one minute for every two minutes of programming You just want to shoot yourself and then and I and I and then I really tried to extract myself and say 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

40:37 So first there was a Cialis commercial, you know the one that ends with, if you experience an erection for more than four hours, please consult your physician immediately. Actually there's a comedian that has this gag, he says, yeah and it says if you have an erection lasting for more than four hours, call your physician. I said, call my physician? I'm calling everyone I know. Yeah, I've heard it 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 it's a scandal. It's a scandal It's not fantastic because in you see these women and and they're and they're talking about it But without saying what it is, and then she's like oh, you know you can you can even and then she whispers to her

41:28 Like, you know, gosh, now my mind is racing. What can you even do with this wonderful finger vibrator? I can't wait! You can't hold this from 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. A law. That should be a law. No, it shouldn't be a law. Let those guys blow up. Every show would be like two minutes, one minute, two minutes, one minute. So you only see two minutes of the show and then a minute of commercial, then two minutes of the show, then 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.

42:29 This is a different one. This is British. It's a British one. Yes. Play it. Okay. No, that's not for the finger vibrator. That's for some of the... But she had such a cute voice. Yeah, but it was kind of weird. Okay, well, but I'll look for it. If anyone has it on the chat, send that to me. Because when you see this ad, John, it's just like, huh? How did they get that one through? And meanwhile, they're bouncing ads left and right. Oh yeah. What if that's going to be on the Super Bowl?

43:21 Well, again, it's all going to be spiritual and hopeful and subdued. Okay, so let me get back to my point then. Now that you brought me back to that. I'm going to speed watch the game, but when the commercials come out I can stop and watch a few of them. What I'll do is I'll do it selectively. I'll speed watch the game, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, because it turns out that as soon as the player hits the dirt, And you hit the button, they're hiking the ball again. That 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 they're doing no huddle or there's a penalty, then you get all screwed up and you get back on track eventually. So when I go to the commercials, I'll just hit them and hit them and hit them. Yeah, just take a look. Just take a look. See if there's anything good there. At the split second, it looks like a big high production value because a lot of these are...

44:13 All you have to do, 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 few. It was in the first half hour of the game. Exactly. Now, thank you. The thing is that I've noticed is that years back in the late 90s, the Super Bowl commercials were a big deal. It all began actually with the 1984 commercial. Apple 1984 for Apple and so the Super Bowl as from 1984 to about 19 99 we were building momentum in every year you watch the game you watch there be some really cool commercials and they win and by the end of the 90s were during the dot com boom everybody went ballistic with crazy commercials it's when you had your cat herding commercial you know all these weird and wild commercials

43:21 Well, again, it's all going to be spiritual and hopeful and subdued. Okay, so let me get back to my point then. Now that you brought me back to that. I'm going to speed watch the game, but when the commercials come out I can stop and watch a few of them. What I'll do is I'll do it selectively. I'll speed watch the game, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, because it turns out that as soon as the player hits the dirt, And you hit the button, they're hiking the ball again. That 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 they're doing no huddle or there's a penalty, then you get all screwed up and you get back on track eventually. So when I go to the commercials, I'll just hit them and hit them and hit them. Yeah, just take a look. Just take a look. See if there's anything good there. At the split second, it looks like a big high production value because a lot of these are...

44:13 All you have to do, 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 few. It was in the first half hour of the game. Exactly. Now, thank you. The thing is that I've noticed is that years back in the late 90s, the Super Bowl commercials were a big deal. It all began actually with the 1984 commercial. Apple 1984 for Apple and so the Super Bowl as from 1984 to about 19 99 we were building momentum in every year you watch the game you watch there be some really cool commercials and they win and by the end of the 90s were during the dot com boom everybody went ballistic with crazy commercials it's when you had your cat herding commercial you know all these weird and wild commercials

45:03 And then it started to go downhill after the collapse of the dot-com. So the 2001... Wait a minute, wait a minute, you missed the obvious. We had the what's up? Well that too. Which by the way didn't sell any, which didn't sell any beer. It's a famous example of a... No, no, it did not work for them. I'm talking about the talking frogs. I like that better. Oh yeah. Frogs always work. Right. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah, the WhatsApp thing was ridiculous. But anyway, 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 wanted to. Yeah, it's played out. It used to be loaded. It's played out. It's done. The whole Super Bowl ad thing is over. You know, when we had our previous company, when it was Think New Ideas,

45:54 We had Oracle as a client and we did their Super Bowl ad. So we did the ad and there was an online component. At the time it was for, what was that crazy thing Allison had? Maybe network computers, I can't remember. But here's what happened. But we were one of the first companies to have a URL in an ad on the Super Bowl. 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 beautifully made. And so people start hammering the website. And so as was kind of expected, we couldn't handle the traffic. That wasn't so bad, were it not that the error message that showed up showed about a broken ODBC connection to Microsoft SQL Server. No!

46:54 That's a good one. That was not so good. That was like, I mean, you know that one line that you get? Or like three lines on a blank page, you know, Microsoft SQL Server, whereas Oracle, the company that's supposed to be able to handle everything, who by the way, they were restarting their own server every five minutes because of a memory leak in their own web server. Those are the crazy days, man. Nothing worked. so anyway the uh... so i can't get behind that this game is not that interesting i mean it's it's it's going to be a good maybe an interesting defensive game with the pittsburgh team uh... plays like they've been playing and uh... you know you get the the uh... kurt warner who's i think one of the finest quarterbacks ever to play ever i mean you who's has ups and down career cuz he could leave he hasn't slight injuries terrible and uh... but but he's

47:54 just fun to watch when he's playing well and you know he's over the hill, he shouldn't even be playing anymore, should have been retired but whether he wins or loses this game 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. The other thing is that Werner is also a Jesus freak like to an extreme. A Jesus freak? He's a Jesus freak, yeah. He's, uh, I mean it's ridiculous. I mean, I don't mind people being pious or having religious beliefs. None of this bothers me. But this one constantly harps on it to an extreme. I think there's actually some, and I always forget 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 I just want to go back to Davos.

48:45 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 acts on the world stage. You have to understand that this World Economic Forum in Davos, Davos, Davos, That it is just like 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, told me basically how it all works. It's a trade show scam. You pay $50,000 a night for a suite so you can entertain. It's a big trade show schmooze fest run by this one guy.

49:24 and that's just well done it's well done yeah but it's not but this is not like some government you know world leader we saw yes and Robert scobled covers it I mean with enough said And so they have a panel... Who are you? Who are you? I'm Robert Scoble! Who are you? You're referring to the puppets. Yeah, anyway. That's good shit. We love Robert. Yeah. I don't love him. I do. I think he's a great guy. I've only met him once. He's a very nice guy. I don't love him. You I love, John. I don't dish out the love that easily. Yeah.

50:10 Go on. So there's a panel with Ban Ki-moon. He just put MC in front of that name. Yo 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, it didn't matter. And then there was Shimon Peres, who is, is he now the president of Israel? He's the president now, right? I don't know what he's doing. The guy's in and out, he's in and out. Every time I see him, I see Andy Grove. He looks exactly like Andy Grove. He's got a little Warren Buffett in him too, though. A little bit. Well, he's gained weight. But Andy Grove, yeah, absolutely. And Shimon Peres just goes off for like 25 minutes and

51:07 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 can have one minute. The moderator was an idiot from 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 just

51:51 And then of course it why and if you haven't read it this is a bad moderator I mean if you have a 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 what everyone wants to see! Yeah, hell yeah! You're going over! I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna have lunch right now, but we'll let him speak because you know fireworks are gonna just... Everyone's like, what a great panel that was! But this idiot decides, no, no, I think we should stop here when this thing's gonna get heated up. I was stunned by that! Exactly, exactly what we wanted! Like, let fireworks commence! Come on, rock it!

52:30 But you know, yeah, I was stunned by that decision to kill the panel. It was unbelievable. What is he thinking? Oh, no, I know what it was. You go to do these things and events like this and they come up to you beforehand. Usually some woman, a Lindsay Nagle type. Hi, I'm moderating the panel. So now you're going to be monitoring the panel, here's the rules. You have to have a hard stop at the half hour point. Can we just put hard stop amongst the certainly Silicon Valley speak that we hate? Can we just put that so 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 jar you. Look.

53:19 I mean look, I mean look. So there's look and then, um, I'm sorry, I've got a hard stop at 1.30. I've got a hard stop right here, baby! I dislike that. It's 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 gotta go to this and we don't have time to run anything over. The thing is 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. You know, in other words, he 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 him talk and then you don't worry about getting chewed out afterwards. You let that go past the hard stop and you're not going to come back anymore. You probably don't want to go back anymore anyway. Absolutely not. In a situation like that, why would you want to? It's stupid.

54:20 So they... I don't get invited back to a lot of things by the way. No, no kidding. But you know there's so many things to do, who cares? There's plenty of things to go to. Yeah. So what, 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 too, MC Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It doesn't quite work. So he just keeps going on and on and on, then 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 this stinking rat hole. He gets up and walks out and says, I'm never coming back to Davos again. Right. And then the conference organizer, the CES head guy,

55:06 He gets on the podium, he's like, well, you know, we're working towards solving world peace and blah blah blah blah. And meanwhile 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. Because I saw it either live or at least unedited. Then Perez is walking around and shaking everyone's hand and you can almost hear them say, wow, that guy was a tool. They're sucking 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

55:42 told his story, true or not, doesn't matter. Well, true or not, doesn't matter, but he's, you know, you have to realize that the Turks have been under a lot of, I mean, they're essentially being run by... By Europe, by the European Union. No, no, no, you got to, well, yeah, there's that element, but the other thing is that this radical Muslims that have basically taken over, they're gonna really make that country ruin it. Well, this was a step. There's no reason for the Turks to even care about Israel or Gaza or anything else. So what is the point of that? Your analysis is spot on 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 heralded a hero's welcome upon his return to Turkey.

56:30 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. Well, you know, 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 they close it down. I mean, that's the flaw of democracy. I mean, this is what happened in, was it Algeria? You know, where you get, you vote in enough extremists because, you know, they do, they sell a 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 becoming a Sharia government.

57:14 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 stunt 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 all of a sudden you, 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 with the black vote for example.

57:53 They vote party line. There's five black Republicans, even though it was the Republicans who freed the slaves. Nobody wants to pay much attention to that. And then they just vote party line. And then once you get a majority, you say, well, OK, let's just change everything. This democracy thing is stupid. and uh... because look how easy it was for us to take it over and let's just voted out and vote in a uh... you know a uh... cleric run you know if theocracy and boom we're done we got it made now that's kind of doable and every time they try to make an effort to do do it just the opposite direction in uh... iran for example they do have elections have put some guy in you know who's a bit kind of a democrat and they'd be he's marriages

58:41 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 Geert Wilders, a member of parliament who created that movie Fitna. Do you remember there was kind of a mini uproar about that? No. It was... No, tell me about it. If you Google Fitna the movie, you'll probably get bored by it because it's just like a bad YouTube video. It wasn't really spectacularly well produced. and essentially what it does is it takes quotes from the Quran and then shows you newspaper clippings that would relate to that quote. 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. This is no secret, although it's rarely ever properly written about in aggregate.

59:37 So he created this movie and now he is, or they had the, I think 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. That's a good trick. It's 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. Man, give me a break. Michael Arrington would be rich. The spitting thing, by the way, did he get spit in the face at Davos? Was that at Davos? No, no, no, he was in Munich. He was in Germany someplace or someplace like Munich. Because he's always at something. I mean, I'm surprised he hasn't gotten spit on before. Yeah. I read somewhere that in Davos, spitting was the big thing. A lot of people were spitting at people who were showing up.

1:00:40 Oh really? Yeah. Spitting must be becoming the great equalizer in Europe. I guess they feel so helpless that they're... In the United States we'd be shooting at them, come on! But that's... I believe it's a final desperate act, you know, whereas maybe in some cultures throwing a shoe, spitting is... it's a very violent act if you actually spit on someone. That's... Does that constitute as battery? I don't know. Yeah, 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 it'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,

1:01:47 Or at least not so much anymore. But back in the early 90s or the late 80s or whenever, before the Taiwan island was populated by millions of Mercedes Benz cars and the freeways are now jammed with traffic, there used to be very few cars because there was a very high tax on automobiles, so everybody drove around a motor scooter. And so then there was thousands of these. I mean, there was tens of thousands of motor scooters everywhere you went and there would be like people talk 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.

1:02:24 You know, and he described it. There was two little kids on the handlebars, a kid in front of the driver, that's one, two, three, four, somebody behind him that's five, and then it was the mom behind him, five, and she was holding two babies. And that was the seven. He says he claims to have seen this. It would have been a nice photograph. But anyway, so one of the things that you run into because it was so hectic, you watch these motor scooters in the main squares of Taipei, for example. It would frighten you just to watch it because of the fact that there wasn't blood on the streets.

1:03:02 but there never was. And one of the things that... the reason for this is because everybody was wired on betel nut juice. Yeah, I know the effects of it. I don't, but anyway, but one of the things you'd see around, there'd be these miles of scooters parked everywhere, because that's what people drove around and they'd park them somewhere. And around the scooters, there'd be this, just pools of spit. Red spit. Red, red spit. Red, bloody looking spit. And I said, what is this? Are people like bleeding from the mouth? And somebody said, no, they're just a beetle nut. He says, you have to survive on these roads with all these scooters doing it at full speed, you have to be

1:03:40 Well, the beetle nut stuff which I tried was offered to me and I accepted at a hill tribe where I stayed overnight during one of my many travels, my documentaries. It's like an elevator high. So 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 betel nut and then you're supposed to kind of like chew it like a cud and have that in your cheek there and within like 25 seconds it's like, whoop, oh my God, I'm high!

1:04:20 And it lasts about 20 minutes and then it's gone. And then your whole mouth is just... yeah, it's like... remember those plaque tablets you used to get at the dentist? Right, it turned your teeth red. Yeah, everywhere there's plaque, which I'm convinced was just... it didn't actually detect plaque, it just made your teeth red. It just turned everything red. Yeah. So does it heighten your awareness? I mean, would you think you could ride a motor scooter better? That's a very interesting question. It was not a not like marijuana where you Where you're actually the opposite of high 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 cocoa leaf had something to do with admitting of those guys They're basically making 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 upper to keep them going and

1:05:21 Well there's a lot of obscure uppers out there like cat is one of them. What's that? K-H-A-T. Cat. Or K-H-A-T, one of the two. I think it's K-H-A-T. Scott. 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 awake all day. And I'm always surprised some and there's all of these you know like bale nut and cat and there's a bag 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 you know using it I think probably supply and demand you know that that's how crystal meth became popular you know it's a

1:06:11 There wasn't enough of whatever people wanted to smoke or take and the cheap alternative was buying NyQuil and creating crystal meth out of it. Yeah. Worst stuff in the world. Which crystal meth by the way is bad. I mean you have no idea how many people are hooked on this shit. You can usually tell by looking at them. The thing about, actually when I first went to the University of California, when people were like hooked on, students were hooked on various forms of methadrine or dexadrine or benzadrine or one thing or another, they always had, and you talk about this with anybody, they had no butts.

1:06:52 It's like, you know, if you wanted me to have a zero, I mean, no, but I mean, there was nothing. They had no, but it was just like, we wear the regular pants and there'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, but in existence, you heard it here first. Okay. Hey, 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 wait wait wait I know who it is Neptune Yes, now you're talking Now there's this

1:07:45 United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, which is now being driven very hard 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. All its uses of all its resources living and non-living 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 now belongs to the United Nations? Doesn't that just belong to no one? So they're in total control of it, or they will be when this is ratified.

1:08:36 Huh, I wonder what the purpose of doing that is, is to collect commissions on people who mine for magnesium in the middle of nowhere or charge a nickel on each piece of tuna that's caught 12 miles offshore? Or anything! How about gambling? Ocean... 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 the Oman, yeah. I don't know if it's gonna be for, if it's gonna be that blatant, but I just found that very interesting and that Hillary Clinton is really making a big push for this thing to get ratified. Well, does she have, can you find a rationale? Not yet. Why? Not yet, that's why I'm just bringing it up. I don't know why.

1:09:32 But I can understand the power of being the boss of 7 tenths of the globe. I can see there might be some rationale. I'm the boss of the fish. I'm the boss of everything. Everything. Well, 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 oceans. Oh, I have testimony from her on this. Hold on. Let's see if this works. Senator Mikulski. 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 position for our country, for the nation. I truly appreciate it.

1:10:24 uh... you are are quite a bit what you have done in the past but we have a great deal in my office last week to to discuss there's so much pontificating going on in our government sounds like lindsey nagle she's not she's uh... ms country i mean she's not a ism is as morose key and i know oftentimes she's got a still that's oftentimes often oftentimes uh... alaska on and from alaska opportunities come on get to clinton's to uh... yeah so i'm watching this thing with uh... jack welch and on that would jack which was the thing i was watching it was uh... so yeah uh... the larry mcmurtry zero you know novelist who did this speech at at rice

1:11:10 I didn't record this one, or maybe, no I don't think so. Anyway, it's actually interesting about the death of reading and the fact that he owns a bookstore with 350,000 rare books in it, which I think is... But this guy, 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 talk and he sounded and talked like this and then Mr. McMurtry got the ass in the hat and this is one of those C-Span shit things by the way and I just found it annoying why can't people just get you 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 their moment. Nobody wants to hear this bonehead. They wanted to hear McMurtry. That's their moment to shine.

1:11:56 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? What does it say? The Age of something about the title? Not the... I have to open up the YouTube video. It wasn't the Almanac. It was kind of like an... It's a big thick book about the creationism but from the Muslim perspective it says this this guy who happens to be another Turk by the way. Yeah here we go Holland. Yeah you should go to the party.org slash plugin. The minister of education does not believe in evolution in the Netherlands it says here. Copies of the Atlas of Creation sent out to a number of schools and universities. Yeah the Atlas of Creation.

1:12:50 Which apparently is a beautiful book that is being sent... Is it being sent anonymously, John? Or is it being sent from some... I don't know who's sending it. I mean, it's obviously somebody's behind all the money, because this thing's not a cheap book. No, it's with beautiful pictures. Anyway, 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. It sounds like a... The Atlas of Creation. Hell yeah. Someone's probably run across it somewhere. So did you get this link which I have on the blog now, which is the tornado steam train to carry first passengers from New York in Newcastle in Maiden Voyage? They built a steam locomotive in England, brand new, and they're going to put it in service. Yep.

1:13:52 And you sent me a note and said, let's go on this ride. And I'm like, do you know where even know where Newcastle is? It's up in the middle of nowhere, but it's such a small country. You know, England is smaller than California, so it's never that far away. Driveway. But if you if you had to drive up, that's a pretty long drive, man. Take a train up and then get on this train and then, you know, chug, chug, chug and then come back. I think it's this is historic. We're going back in time, steam engines. Let me just see, where's it actually running from? From York in Newcastle to where? What does York in Newcastle mean? I don't know, that's what it says. From 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 it got messed up. York to Newcastle. Cool, I'll buy you a ticket.

1:14:51 And a slurpee. So how far is York to Newcastle? Is that a long way? I don't know, I could look it up, but I can't be bothered. You should know you live there. I know it's 400 miles to Los Angeles, I know it's like 90 miles to Sacramento, I know all these distances in California. 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 if your aircraft is on fire and flames are coming through the cockpit, you never ever want to land in Wales. I'm like, okay. I'll take your word for it, dude. Okay. Oh, so our second meal.

1:15:59 right that we had was the winner by far and then we just had a quick wrap-up of cocoa because that that was a real dog we went to Limon is that the name of the restaurant? yeah L I M O N yeah Limon which is a Peruvian restaurant right so yeah this is the second time I've been to a Peruvian restaurant I took Cali 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 almost I mean we just We had a lot of wine, we had desserts and lots of food and it was delicious. She was under $100 when we were said and done. It was amazing. And we had the hooch wine? We had some Vinho Verde, which is a cheap white Portuguese wine. When I was in Lisbon recently, I went to a little hole-in-the-wall bar.

1:16:58 for something to eat with these guys I was taking pictures with. And they had the classic Vino Verde, which is 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, because just a very refreshing wine. and it was very refreshing. It was really, yeah, I mean, it went down well. Cold, icy cold, that was really nice. Yeah, and so that, but you don't see it, you know, you don't see it much in this country because it's just, you know, not, I mean, we could, California wine,

1:17:44 wineries could make this wine by the ton, especially in the Central Valley where you get a huge production. And if it ever caught on, it would be very popular. I think it's a, the problem is it's like, you know, if you make one false move, it 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. and some things like that which unfortunately ruin the market for something that would be more healthy. So anyway, 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. Yeah, they're huge. Peruvian corn. You know, this I was thinking about that corn because you were wondering what about but this has got to be the same kind of corn that's used to make corn nuts.

1:18:44 which is a bar snack and a snack food which has got huge and giant kernels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very tasty. And if you do eat a limon, or any other Peruvian restaurant, have the tucatuca as an appetizer. No, wait, that wasn't an appetizer. You just like saying it. I do. Tucatuca, which was kind of a rice ball with some peas and stuff in there with a crust. Kind of like a dirty cricket ball. Yeah, it was good. It was very definitely good, but everything there was good I was very impressed the place was packed the reviews that I saw on Yelps to call it You know the people that didn't like it too much. They thought it was a yuppie place I didn't notice any yuppies in there. There's a lot of family a lot of kids blooms a lot of What blooms been there blooms been there? Yeah? He told me well. There's definitely not a yuppie place you go and

1:19:42 It was good. It was loud, but not so you couldn't have a conversation. Acoustics were pretty good. Even though we had a two-person table kind of in the middle of everything. It just felt good. Oh, and love the waiter who kept saying, right away, sir. Right away, sir. Yeah, it was very funny. You ask him for some, can we get some water? Right away, sir. Right away. And he would bring it right away. Yeah, I like that right away thing. I did have dinner with Ron on Thursday after our board meeting at Flytrap. You ever been there? It's right near the hotel. I've been past it. I've never eaten there. No, don't.

1:20:25 Well, with a name like Flytrap, why would you? It is a yuppie place. 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, Limon, we give an A to that. Oh yeah. Oh, fantastic. But again, not another romance. It's not romantic there either. So don't take somebody to ask them to marry you. No, not romantic. You can always put the ring in the tuka-tuka. You swallowed it! It was so good I didn't feel like chewing. And then we had dinner last night at Coco. I did want to mention that you booked that through Open Table. They filed for an IPO. Open Table did? Yeah. How about them apples, huh? Yeah, they filed for an IPO and apparently they get a dollar per diner who books through their system.

1:21:30 A dollar per diner. Yeah, so 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. Maybe we get some stock with the points. That'd be a thought. So we walk into Coco, which I don't know. I don't think I've eaten there before. It used to be called Bisou and it was much more of a French bistro style. Now it's kind of a New York bistro style, but it doesn't work. No. And we walked in and it's dank. Yeah, exactly. It was like cheese.

1:22:11 Yeah, some sort of bad smelling cheese. You identified it, I just thought it was this 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 because every time someone walked by I bounced out of my chair. It felt like I was on a cheap airplane. Yeah, you even said, come on, let's go to Frangola, let's go to Frangola. I said, no man, come on, we're committed, we're here, we're eating here, we're staying here. We should have done is gone over to Florida Lee and just ate at the bar. Yeah, that's true. But anyway,

1:22:50 What did we have? The salads were good. I remember that. Actually, all the food was fine. I don't think the food was... Just the stinky thing was not so nice. And also, you know, you fell in love with the Maider D and she gave you the finger and... No, she did not. No, she did not give me the finger. The place was shaking and rocking and it's... I don't know. I don't know. I don't have all the experience with that. I loved the Maider D. She was so beautiful. Maria. Maria. Until I saw her feet. And it was all over. It was downhill from there. She's walking around barefoot or something. What was it? No, she had sandal things on. It just didn't have very attractive feet. And that combined with that cheese smell, it just, I don't know. It didn't work. It was not working. But we did have the one good bottle of wine for the whole trip. Whoa! Oh man, that was spectacular wine. What was that? It was Pavilion Rouge du Chateau Margaux 2003. Oh man, it was good.

1:23:47 And your line was really funny, you said this wine tastes like one of those expensive wines. We usually have. Usually have. You know, and I realized, yeah, you know, expensive wine generally tastes like expensive wine. It does. It does. This is expensive. Speaking of which, I got a bottle of that Golden Star tea. Oh yeah, you know, don't you mention I forgot mine's still in the trunk. Oh, you dick. I asked you to try it. I wanted to compare experiences. Well, I have tried it. I had it at the food fair. They had it there. I had a bunch of it because the guy said, wow, this is great. And he gave me some more. So I had a lot of it. And my objection to the stuff from the beginning was it was expensive and it's kind of pricey, but it is delicious.

1:24:39 So it's, um, I actually 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, what's FOB? Free on board, I don't know. Fob. The brewing happens in the Bay Area in Belmont and they've only had one run so far. And I got to tell you that I shared it with Andrew Gromit and is it Kari who sits behind you? What, Kapuro? The tall girl?

1:25:24 Yeah, Regina. Regina. I'm sorry. I always get...Cari and Regina. Cari's on the other side behind Andrew. Got it. Right. And so Regina was there. I said, would you mind trying this and tell me what you think? And we all agreed that it was, as an alternative to drinking wine, it would be fantastic if you really were not into wine and you just wanted something that has, you know, that feels a little special, has a little special Taste to it and then Regina comes out. She says yeah a picnic I'm like, okay Regina When I come back baby, we're going on a picnic. I'm taking my Golden Star with me a picnic a picnic You should try it man. They want to sponsor this. I'll try it. I'll put it in the refrigerator. I'll drink it up They're talking about sponsoring the show but you and I have kind of gotten over that I think

1:26:17 Well, you know they could sponsor something. I mean it's obviously we like the product Well, I like 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 is just as good as the Vino Verde that we had at the Limon Jeffrey says Adam your most welcome Dvorak was such a buzzkill. I offered to give him some and he declined I He never did! He says he did. No. No. Dvorak is such a buzzkill. Hey, way to go on the sponsorship work there, John. Good one. Good one. Dude. Crazy. Is that the guy from White Star? Golden Star. It's not White Star. I thought it was White Star. It's Golden Star. Which sounds more like an adult film label to me.

1:27:24 Now, on Golden Star. It's funny you should say that. Oh? Yeah, I have some... I'll tell you. Oh, John! And now, here it comes, folks. You thought, when is this 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 I still have like 200 shares. Really? You own shares in it? Oh, that's great. I have shares in it. So I don't know. I figure it was some... I don't know what it is. But I 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.

1:28:22 X-rated at least. And the voice of the lead guy character, who's a detective, is me. And it received a fully erect penis award from Hustler Magazine. Was it a dubbed thing you were doing? Yep. They'd 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. Does that qualify as kiddie porn then? In England it does That's how I met Patricia. I can't say that you were a kiddie porn star before you got your start in show business. 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

1:29:15 Yeah, you mean the movie. All right. So when do you want to do the show? I don't know. We can do it Tuesday, we can do it Thursday. Well, let's just see what happens, what's going on, and 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 geeks, you got all that stuff. No, you had to go to the city and they have the, you know, all hands on deck meeting. I think that's changing. I think we've... I think that we've probably pissed on that enough that it's no longer going to be called All Hands. It'll go back to Foo Bar or Woo 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 that. No, no, no. I can't bag it. I gotta be a part of All Hands. You have to be on the conference call, so that's not going to work.

1:30:05 Although we could just do the show and meeting. Yeah, here's the meeting. Okay. Now we've always really wanted to talk open 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 because you have no buts. All right. Alright, so I guess that's that. I'm gonna go get geared up for the Super Bowl and those fantastic ads. Are you doing Twit? Is a Twit scheduled before the Bowl? No, 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 pre-game. Well, they actually, they're gonna start, I don't know when they're gonna kick off. 3 o'clock, don't they start, but doesn't Twit start around 3? I like listening, I love listening to that thing and watching the chat. It's so funny.

1:31:00 Yeah, it is funny. The chats, the chat people on that are hilarious. They're just kibitzers. Hey, and tell Leo it wouldn't kill him to give our show a plug. I mean, I talk about Twit all the time. He actually plugged it last time. Oh really? Yeah, he did. I couldn't listen all the way to the end last time. It was too late. He does it at the end. Okay. All right, dude. Yeah. Until Tuesday or Thursday, coming to you from the Curry Terrace in 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.