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Nov. 17, 2007 - No Agenda
41:57
4: No Agenda 004
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Well, hi everybody.
Once again, it's time for the program that has no music, no commercials, no jingles, no talent, and, well, apparently, no agenda.
Coming to you from the Curry Manor in Guilford in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in Northern California.
And it's time for one day later than usual for our weekly event.
And, you know, I'm getting some good response on this show, John.
People like it.
People are bored stiff.
It must be.
It must be.
No, I mean, we've even been added in the...
You know the podcast-ready guys?
They actually have a pretty interesting idea.
They've put a podcatcher, an RSS podcast aggregator.
They're embedding it onto memory sticks.
I think they have a deal with SanDisk.
That's a good idea.
Yeah, it's a great idea.
There's 10 feeds that are pre-subscribed, and we're one of them with no agenda.
Wow.
Yeah, it's pretty cool, huh?
Yeah, it is really cool.
I think they put tech5.podshow.com on there, though.
No, no, no, no, man.
It's got to be...
Having a no-agenda show is good, because no one benefits except you and I. People listen.
We feel better.
So we were talking about tea before you started the recording, and I was wondering, the public might be interested in some of our thoughts, since you said that ever since you moved to England, you've become kind of addicted to the product.
Yeah, well, you know, there's the Dutch, and I grew up in Holland, they drink a lot of tea, but they drink it differently than the UK. Here, you know, it's really milk and sugar, whereas I never would have ever considered putting milk in my tea ever before living here.
But I found out that culturally, it really works for me.
Essentially, if someone walks in the house and they've got a bullet wound to the shoulder, the first thing everyone says is, let's put a kettle on, let's have some tea, and everything will be okay.
And I just kind of fell into that, and I love it.
Now I must drink at least during the day, if I can make it myself, easily six to ten cups a day.
And what's your preferred brand?
PG Tips, of course.
Yeah, we've been using PG Tips for over 20 years, I think.
It used to be hard to get in the United States, but now it's freely available.
But for people out there who haven't tried it, and they're used to some of these crappy teas that we have, which usually don't even have enough tea in the bag to amount to anything.
PG Tips is the, I think, the standard, the gold standard of British tea.
Yeah, I would have to agree.
Not that it's the absolute best.
It's just that it happens to be the one everybody uses.
And a lot of the thing that's interesting about PG Tips to me and a lot of these other teas, and we were talking about Sainsbury's has a nice thing called Red Label, which is a competitor, is that the British, when they were colonizing the world, they did these long-term deals all over they did these long-term deals all over the place for things like tea.
So they essentially have, I don't know how long the contract is for the various tea providers, but they get some of the best tea in the world because they kind of locked down these deals permanently back in the 1800s.
Isn't that in some way related to upcoming December 16th when we commemorate the Boston Tea Party?
Yeah, the Boston Tea Party, if you study enough American history, of course, this gets pretty peculiar as to why the Boston Tea Party took place, but they were trying to shove tea down everybody's throat, and they were also stealing it from China and making them take opium.
Really?
Cool.
That was later.
Here, boys, have some opium.
Give us the tea.
Well, you know that I've heard now that there's another Ron Paul money bomb scheduled.
The previous one was on November 5th, which coincided with Guy Fawkes Day, a revolutionary day in the UK. And from what I understand, December 16th, commemorating the Boston Tea Party, there's going to be another drive to raise another several million dollars for Republican candidate Ron Paul.
Well, you know, the thing is, I've noticed this.
In fact, I blogged it.
If you go on the blog, you'll find, at vork.org slash blog, you'll find a mention about how the Liberty Dollar guys were raided by the FBI. I've gotten a lot of emails from people.
I think you were the first one that you actually sent me a link to your blog post.
And it's interesting because I'm seeing two stories.
One is, you know, the guys who created and run the Liberty Dollar, let's just call it Operation for a second, They got raided.
And there's this other side that's talking about the Ron Paul dollars, and now I'm seeing that's kind of becoming the meme is now that Ron Paul is being associated with it.
Honestly, I think I understand what the Liberty dollar is about, but I clearly have no idea how successful it is, or it must be successful, otherwise it wouldn't have been raided.
Do you have background on this, John?
Do you know...
I don't know as much about it as...
I mean, the website, the Liberty Dollars website, which is easy enough to find, has most of the details.
But, you know, they're trying to do private coinage.
I mean, generally speaking, you can do this legally, but you can't do it...
Like Disney Dollars or like Scores, strippers.
In strip bars, you can get dollars, right?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Oh, shit.
I blew my cover.
No, it's like in Disneyland.
You get Disney dollars.
Is that the same thing, or is this different?
Well, they're trying to put this into general circulation, so I think it's different.
Some years ago, there was a problem in the United States, especially from about 1862.
I don't know when it ended, but I have collected a lot of these bills.
But in the 1800s, every bank had their own currency, and every state had its own currency.
There was just currency all over the place.
No shit.
Worth anything.
It's actually, some of the stuff's gorgeous, by the way.
Anyway, so they decided to, you know, make everything either a U.S. note, Federal Reserve note, or there was silver certificates, gold certificates, which were backed by gold and silver.
That's when the gold standard was...
Introduced.
Right.
Okay.
Anyway, there was always a de facto gold standard always, which is basically the price of gold.
So these guys want to make these coins worth the amount of silver that's in them.
And then they want to try to get them in the general circulation.
I think there's something about the general circulation that's the issue.
Is that illegal, though?
Is it just illegal to have your own money and trade on it?
That's apparently true.
You can't start minting your own money.
So that's what they were doing.
Which is kind of silly because when I issue you a check from my bank, the bank made up this piece of paper.
They printed it.
I just filled in the value.
If they certify it, then isn't it the same thing as a pretty picture?
You know, you're going to have to talk to a lawyer.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I had you confused for one.
I'm not absolutely sure.
I mean, I know the logic that you're expressing.
I know there's a logic there.
And it seems to me that a check is a banknote in some funny way because it's worth whatever you write on it.
But there's something else about what these guys are doing that seem to...
And I have to, I guess, look up the FBI's documents to figure out why they busted these guys.
But they also took all the Ron Paul money.
Right, which I guess was another version of the Liberty Dollar, just another currency which these guys were running through their existing infrastructure.
Right.
But I think the Ron Paul thing had something to do with the bus because there seems to be an overt mechanism out there to get this guy to shut up.
Right.
That's where I wanted to get us because, you know, You immediately will be branded as conspiracy theorist, but I gotta think that, you know, perfect, perfect thing, you know, it's moving towards the whole story is more, you watch, because I haven't seen it in mainstream yet, but it's going to show up and it's going to be totally associated with Ron Paul and they're going to try and scandalize it.
I'm almost positive that's what we're going to see happen.
Yeah, and it's going to be fun to watch.
Now, I've already noticed that I'm a big fan of, I think you are too, but there's a lot of us out here who actually enjoy listening to right-wing talk shows.
Sure, oh yeah.
Right-wing talk radio in particular is very entertaining in a lot of different ways.
I'm always torn between right-wing talkers and Jim Rome.
Yeah, the sports guy.
The sports guy.
And the sports talk is the competitor with right-wing talk.
Interesting.
I mean, there's no left-wing talk.
There is none.
Well, they tried that with Air America, and no one fucking cared.
It was pointless, and it wasn't entertaining.
It wasn't entertaining, and they couldn't say a lot of things they would like to say because it wouldn't be politically correct.
I mean, they've tied themselves up, painted themselves in a corner with their philosophies.
So they can't do it.
You had a lot of whining and a lot of people petting each other.
It was weird listening to that stuff.
It was very creepy, actually.
Is Dennis Miller still doing some kind of talk show on the radio?
Yeah, Dennis Miller's got a show on in the mornings that's syndicated in the U.S. at the same time that Jim Rome is on and Rush Limbaugh is on.
So that's a tough slot.
It's impossible.
Now, I have listened to his show on and off, and he's kind of a lightweight when it comes to the politics, even though he's just a right-wing nut.
But when he starts going into his show business anecdotes, the show is really good.
I mean, he's got a lot of funny stories.
But anyway, yeah, that show is, it's like, if you listen to the other stuff, you hit him just to see, if you're driving around, you hit him.
You don't listen to this stuff unless you're in the car.
You hit him if you get commercials every which way, and you've got to listen to something else.
So, anyway, where were we?
We're talking about...
Oh, yeah, anyway, so the right-wing talk show guys are not the main guys, not the Limbaugh's of the world, but the lesser guys, the weekend guys and the late-night guys.
They're starting to slam Ron Paul.
Okay, right, right, right.
Big time.
Is O'Reilly slamming him yet?
Not yet.
Of course, I haven't been listening to much O'Reilly, because O'Reilly's on to some weird hour.
They keep bouncing him around.
He's never really hit the home run, I guess, on the radio, and I don't watch his show too much on TV. Have you been watching Countdown, Keith Olbermann?
I watch it on and off.
It's one of the funnier shows.
He's probably one of the only left-wing guys that is entertaining.
Exactly.
I'm presuming that he's writing it, but he writes really well.
There's some really poignant stuff in there.
Well, I'm sure he's got a staff.
There's no way he can be writing all that stuff daily.
Also, Jon Stewart and Colbert are left-wingers that are funny and entertaining, but their styles are totally different than the emotional styles of the right-wing talkers.
Exactly, because it's always working your funny bone and not your terror bone.
Right.
But anyway, so I'm starting to notice they're starting to sneak in the anti-Ron Paul stuff.
And one of the right-wing talk guys is named Michael Savage, who's out here in San Francisco, who's something of a bipolar character who's really entertaining and has a huge following.
And he does not follow the Republican drumbeat.
He tends to take an independent perspective, and so he'll slam Bush a lot.
And he's an interesting character.
And...
He won't probably go after Ron Paul, because Paul is essentially a strict constitutionalist, and I think the savage guy is too.
So he'll probably, if some of the big names go after Ron Paul, he'll jump them.
It'll be kind of interesting to watch.
Well, I personally think it would be great.
They really should be attacking Ron Paul, because his answers are really...
I mean, you can put any guy in Ron Paul's place.
You know what I mean?
You can put a robot, a robot, and the input is the constitution, and here's a logic.
It's one or zero, true or false.
And it's that simple.
There's no other way to interpret this document, you know?
So it doesn't really matter.
But it will raise, I think, awareness of the platform.
Yeah, well, the one thing that's starting to come out in the right-wing talk show radio that I've observed is I think Savage, again, is one of the guys who actually starts to point this out a lot.
He's been kind of marginalized because of it.
You don't hear a lot about him in the mainstream media, for other reasons perhaps.
But anyway, he points out that, and he believes that Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly I mean, Hannity is absolutely the worst for this.
I mean, if George Bush was a rapist, he would be saying why this was good.
You know, just before our previous board meeting, I sent Ray Lane, who's one of the lead partners at Kleiner Perkins, and also ran Oracle for a number of years.
I sent him a note and said, dude, did you have a chance to...
No, I think I actually said, hey, I know you're the only Republican in that entire bunch over there at Kleiner Perkins, but I wanted your opinion on this guy because I'm going to endorse him.
Have you heard of him?
Ray listens to the show a lot, but I know he's been busy and probably hasn't listened for a couple weeks.
And so I sent a link to the interview.
And he came back and said, no, I'd never heard of this guy, but I researched him.
It's pretty fucking interesting.
This is really good.
And you know who just joined KP? Yeah, Al Gore.
Exactly.
So there's, I don't know, I might be able to influence something, because I believe that the only way to change anything is to change where the money is or where the money flows.
Yeah, you're going to get Ray Lane fired.
I doubt.
I doubt Ray Lane can get fired.
I don't think it works that way.
It's a curious crowd over there, because they are a flock of Democrats for the most part.
I don't know that the founders...
Like Tom Perkins is.
I think he's pretty much of a right-wing Republican.
I don't think there's any question about it.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm right there.
And, you know, the main guys are all Republicans.
But the guys who actually run the place nowadays...
Well, John Doerr is a Democrat for sure.
Oh, he's a huge Democrat.
He's a big, you know, he's a Democrat, but he's kind of a party organizer.
Oh yeah, no, he did the whole Obama thing and Obama at Oprah Winfrey's house.
Oh yeah, no, he's big, big, big into that stuff.
Well, the rumor is, of course, that he wants to get...
He hasn't put his money on the right horse forever.
But the rumor is, amongst the cognoscente, is that he wants to either be a Secretary of State or something like that, or get a good ambassadorship.
That's how you become an ambassador to France.
Well, honestly, honestly, I've thought about that many times, and there was a point in my life where I seriously considered lobbying for an ambassadorship.
I thought, that would be a great fucking life.
That's exactly what I want.
You know what the best...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, no, go ahead.
Well, the best ambassadorship, I'm told, is the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
Oh, yeah, right on.
Well, my uncle was ambassador to Korea for many, many years.
Well, apparently in the Vatican, there's nothing else to do but drink and eat.
Because it's just one little town.
Yeah, that's it.
And all the politics are held in one place.
And it's all parties.
Yeah.
I don't know if I'd like living there, though.
You know what I mean?
Nah, I wouldn't like living there.
I'd hate that.
But yeah, you should be an ambassador.
Were you thinking of becoming an ambassador from the Netherlands?
No, no, no.
Well, yeah, that would have been okay.
I want to be an ambassador in England.
I mean, how cool would that be?
Well, that would be, yeah, that's the health risk there, not because someone's going to shoot you because you could overeat.
It's too much sausages.
Oh, damn straight.
Follow-up on a story we talked about, was it the last episode, about that Dutch couple that got thrown into jail?
Yeah, terrible.
So after the show, we were Skyping back and forth, and within like 30 minutes I discovered that this jail was operated by a commercial company that has received hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts to operate prisons, primarily in the Texas area.
And it's called the Management Training Company, I think?
Management and Training Corporation.
Corporation, yeah.
And MTC. And they're huge.
And the former chairman of MTC was the guy who...
Wow, what's his name?
The guy who was involved with the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Yeah, isn't that interesting?
Yeah.
And I'm like, how come that high-end program, Nova, who interviewed them about a year ago, how come they didn't Google?
Because the way I did it was, the girl was talking about, after they'd been in jail a month, they'd been thrown in jail for hitchhiking and they had an expired tourist visa, and they never saw an attorney, were never allowed to make any phone calls.
Oh yeah, a collect call within the U.S., but they were hitchhikers from Europe.
Right.
And they weren't Mexicans, you've got to make that clear.
No, nor did they look Mexican.
If they were Mexicans, they would have been let go.
Exactly.
So she said, after a month we were allowed to send a letter, so I sent a letter to my boyfriend, who was of course in the mail ward, and they showed the envelope, and I freeze-framed the video, and I just copied the address, and I googled it.
And the website for the jail is the server not found, right?
It's just gone.
The domain doesn't resolve anymore.
And then, you know, through a couple more searches, I found out that it was a part of MTC. And I'm just like, you know, it's clear that these companies are incentivized to keep people in jail and throw people in there, even if they don't belong in there.
Yeah, because they get paid.
The more you got in there, the more you get paid.
Just start rounding people up and throwing them in and charging the government.
I'm starting to understand how this works.
So our tax dollars go into the government.
The government then hires commercial companies to do what I've always thought was kind of like government work, you know, fair.
People who have no benefit to having more people in jail.
But it's not true.
It's the people who are in Iraq fighting our commercial companies.
It's nuts.
I know.
It's like Rollerball.
It is.
Yeah, it's very much like Rollerball.
You don't understand it, but still, it's kind of fun to watch fat chicks getting beat up.
I don't know.
The original movie, Rollerball, with James Caan, was basically the country had deteriorated into factions of corporations that just would fight with each other, and there was no government anymore.
And one of the ways they would resolve a lot of this is by having these Rollerball games.
Where the winner takes all, and if you died on the thing, that was cool.
Fuck, I've got to see this movie.
I've never seen this.
You've never seen Rollerball?
No!
There's a couple movies out there people should see.
Rollerball, the original Rollerball, but it came out again, but these remakes suck.
You have to get the original James Caan one.
And that's a good movie.
And it's kind of sick.
It's like Running Man and all these.
So there's a lot of these anti-corporation movies out there.
But the rollerball is quite good.
But another one, if you haven't seen it, which I'm just thinking of like cult favorites, is the original Max Headroom movie before it became a TV show.
And if you can get a copy of it, the Max Headroom movie, the original, has a nerd kid in it that is priceless.
This kid is unbelievable.
You just hate him the minute you see him.
He's an evil little kid who's part of a hacker.
And it's just one of the best characters I've ever seen on the screen.
But the movie itself is quite fascinating.
I'm Googling it right now to see if I can find a clip.
Hmm.
I've never seen that one either.
Of course, I saw the TV show because I was hosting my own music TV show at the time, and we saw this as a huge...
I remember actually talking with producers.
They were like, oh, fuck, man.
Our days are numbered.
Look at what they're doing over there in England, man.
They've got this animated shit.
We won't need any more sets.
We won't need any more anything.
The end is near.
It was quite amazing.
Well, anyway, those are pretty good films for this kind of genre.
But anyway, so rollerball is what I'm reminded of with this situation.
I don't understand it myself why the government is...
You know, they've done that with the parking system in San Francisco.
They've turned it over to a private company, and so now you have no redress.
They can just give tickets away to anybody they want, and you're screwed.
They've jacked up the prices.
Out in front of the offices at the pod show headquarters, it's a quarter for five cents.
I'm sorry, five minutes for a quarter.
No.
Five minutes for a quarter?
Yeah, so you've got to pump in.
They have to keep dumping these meters out daily because to sit there for half an hour, you've got to throw in about how many quarters you've got to throw in.
They fill up and jam.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, the original idea for parking meters was you put a coin in there as a token just to set a timer that would make you have to get out of there before the timer was over.
It wasn't supposed to be a profit center.
Oh, man, it sure turned into one.
Yeah, because some jerk-off came along and said, hey, you know, we can make money off these parking meters.
Yeah.
Damn.
So they're not designed to move traffic long.
And the worst part about it is because they're so onerously expensive on 2nd Street around the office near Bryant.
Yeah.
And there's meters all over the place.
They're all 25 cents for five minutes.
The street, there's nobody parking in those spots because they'll drive down into the residential area around the corner and park in the residential spots where they don't have to worry about it so much because you get two hours.
Yeah.
And so meanwhile, the residents are screwed.
I mean, this is just...
I don't see how they...
I really don't like San Francisco, to be honest about it.
Well, check this out in London.
So they have this radical new scheme called the Congestion Charge, which...
Are you familiar with this?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, so there's a zone...
Which saps that accidentally drive into it.
Yeah, so there's a zone of London...
And the minute you drive in, your license plate is scanned, and if you, within a certain amount of time, don't pay up at newsstands, I guess you can pay your fee.
Or if you don't have a subscription, it's eight pounds per day, and of course there's a penalty if you don't pay for it.
Now, they just recently expanded this into Chelsea and one other neighborhood.
And so, what is actually supposed to help congestion, and honestly, they launched this the very day that school vacation started, a year ago, I think, or two years ago.
So, of course, everyone said, wow, look, it's working!
But it was school vacation.
So, you know, it did feel a little bit better for a while.
But now they've expanded it into Chelsea.
It's actually had the complete opposite effect because all these people who are residents in that area, they get a 90% discount On the congestion fee, so they're paying not even a pound a day, and they can go anywhere throughout London with their car.
Anywhere.
So now the traffic is completely fucked up.
It's been, you know, this just happened a few months ago.
And all the cab drivers are talking about it.
Everyone is just, you know...
Well, of course, the Brits don't really get outraged about it.
You know, they love to just complain.
But I'm outraged.
It's nuts.
And, you know, you can just see that they don't give a shit.
You know, the government taxes, you know, the license fee for the car.
And then, you know, the gas is taxed.
And now, you know, it's...
It's just going to keep on going.
I'm surprised they haven't had a revolution.
There's no more new lands.
I guess that's why we have to go to the moon again.
No, maybe.
If we ever went in the first place.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
I've tried that one on my show a couple years ago, and that was very bad to be on the they didn't go to the moon side of the story.
There's more people who believe we did.
It's stupid, but I do love the latest twist that we're going to go to the moon again.
And I love throwing this one, because I've thrown this one on the blog, because I just love this type of debate.
Which is my argument as well.
The only reason we're going to go back to the moon again is because the Chinese say they're going to the moon.
So that means we have to go to the moon before they get there so we can plant the stuff from 1969 that was never there in the first place.
I love it.
Oh, this is a story I wanted to talk to you about.
The last night I was in San Francisco, I was watching CNN. Maybe it was Friday night.
And Larry King Live was on.
And he had Shirley MacLaine.
Now, Shirley MacLaine, I always hear Patricia, who, of course, is older than I am.
She's seen more of Shirley MacLaine, seen more of her career, and just knows more about her.
And Patricia always says, oh, man, she's kooky.
She's really nuts.
And...
I recall that she had this thing about UFOs.
And the whole discussion was about UFOs and these pilots, these ex-military pilots who are now all stepping forward and saying, you know, we really feel the government, you know, there's no reason anymore to hide the fact that they exist.
They're here all the time.
You know, we understand that there was, you know, there would have been mass panic 40 years ago if people, you know, knew that there were UFOs.
But look, they exist.
I've seen them.
And even Dennis...
What's the candidate's name?
Kucinich.
He admitted on stage in one of the debates when he was asked directly, you know, have you ever seen a UFO? And he says, yeah, I've seen a UFO, which, of course, what a fucking loaded question that is, just to make the guy look foolish.
But this is, you know, there's something happening here.
I'm not quite sure where it's coming from, but it was, you know, Shirley MacLaine, these ex-military pilots, you know, on Larry King.
I'm like, there's something real here.
At least something real about someone who wants to.
They're probably leading up to some phony baloney special.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You don't think so.
Yeah, that would never happen on CNN or any of these TV stations.
Yeah.
No.
Set the public up for a special, pre-plugging it in advance, get everyone all jacked up.
That never happened.
So I was watching Larry King.
I wasn't watching Larry King, but now there's this kind of a quasi-scandal going on.
You get the biggest kick out of this one.
Larry King had Marie Osmond on.
Yeah.
And he asked her about her son, who apparently is in rehab for drugs or alcohol or drugs.
I don't know what.
But anyway, and she kind of freaked out because this is supposed to be a big secret and she got her demeanor changed.
So all these entertainment shows that try to find news where there is none are all over the story.
All over the story as though, and I'm looking at it as, wait a minute, Larry King actually, who's the softball master on CNN, who never says anything about anything, actually asks a question that has some research behind it, and everybody finds this to be a stunning shocker.
Well, no, but of course, Larry King actually didn't know.
He's just too stupid.
He didn't know it was a secret, and everyone else did.
I'm looking at it now.
He's not stupid, I can guarantee.
I'm sure he knew it was a secret.
I don't know why he did it.
He's not stupid by any means.
I mean, we should all be so dumb.
And I think there were some...
I don't know what, there was some ulterior motive.
I'm not sure what it was, because he never does that.
I mean, he probably could if he wanted to, but he essentially just, you know, kind of sleepwalks through that show.
Well, so there's a couple things I'll say here, you know, because I have been kind of following the Osmonds over the past couple weeks, mainly because, you know, Marie was in Dancing with the Stars, and I like that show.
I follow that.
She passed out, right?
So that kind of got her into the news.
I know Donnie.
In fact, I raced against him in a celebrity race in Denver.
It was an Indy event, IndyCar, when I was working for MTV. And the guy's fucking serious.
Yeah, he won the race, by the way.
I was impressed.
We were all out partying, and he was walking the track at five in the morning, finding the apex and all the fucking perfect curve.
He wanted to win.
He really wanted to win.
But I've been following this, and the only thing I can say is, they had a hundred Osmonds on Oprah the other day.
A hundred.
So even though Marie's dad had just passed away a few days earlier, they still decided to come to Oprah's show, which is fine.
But what was the point?
She was there plugging her dolls, which she sells on, I think, QVC or the Home Shopping Network, which is, I think, really her main source of income, and I'm sure it does huge business.
But when you step back into the limelight, it's like a fucking boomerang.
I've seen this happen.
It's happened to me many times.
It comes back at you, and positive energy comes back fucking black, and vice versa.
It's part of the beast.
It whips a lot faster than it used to.
The turnaround time is quicker, and the ups and downs are severe.
This is just what happens, I think.
I guess.
I mean, I don't get it why she's, you know, in and out of the scene that much anyway.
But maybe she's always trying to stay in a scene, whatever the case is.
Well, you have to because, you know, when your gig as a celebrity is selling, you know, I'm Marie Osmond, these are these dolls.
And I think she has a factory.
And this is really big, these collectibles.
And people get really into it.
You know, it's like sellertainment.
You know, I love that.
It's a great vocation.
But part of that is her celebrity.
So, you know, once in a while she...
She has to do something.
It's part of the business.
You do a special, or you get invited to some Christmas thing that you do.
Pass out on stage.
For example, I don't think that was contrived.
After listening to you, I'm thinking the passing out on stage was contrived, and so was this Larry King thing.
Maybe Larry King was told to do this and then she could act flabbergasted.
No, John.
I've been in this game.
That's not how it works.
Is it a possibility?
No, it's not how it works.
It is just not how it works.
The game is attention.
That's the game.
What could get you more attention than passing out?
Yeah, but you can't set it up.
Very rarely can you set it up.
That's why it's such an addictive game.
It's like media hacking.
If you do this, this is going to happen.
I understand.
I agree with you 100%, but I'm just wondering.
Is it possible that she's that good?
Okay, I see your point.
That, you know, I'd have to defer to the Lady Patricia, and I will report back on the next episode.
She will know if she's that good.
I think the passing out was real.
The Larry King thing, I don't know.
The guy never throws a question out like this to anybody.
Now, all of a sudden, to the nice little Marie?
Come on.
Well, you know, it could be that someone is just sitting there going, hey, let's fuck with her.
Let's go get some ratings.
Yeah, maybe.
Well, that's manipulation, too.
Yeah, oh, yeah.
But I see that happening a lot quicker than, you know, that it's a real setup and she wanted it.
I think she would much rather...
I mean, doesn't every celebrity want to be in the news in a positive light?
Well, not if you measure by the pound, like they say.
Enter the entire reason for hip-hop.
So, anyway, we'll never know.
That's the point.
I don't know.
We'll keep it on the list.
I mean, it reminds me of, you know, of course, this was never done for publicity purposes, but, you know, Little Richard used to, when he did his rock act, Would always do something to injure himself and have to be carried out in a stretcher.
Oh, speaking of celebrities, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here is on again here in the UK. What is that?
Oh, okay.
So I guess they may have tried this in the States and the format didn't take off.
It's a group of C slash D-lebrities, so former soap stars.
This year, the biggest celebrity is this woman named Janice Dickinson, who has hosted...
America's Next Top Model, I think.
No, not America's Next Top Model.
America's Next Model, or whatever.
One of these shows.
And she was one of the original supermodels, and now she's in the 50s, and she admittedly has all kinds of...
Plastic surgery done.
And she looks pretty good.
You know, she's very milfy.
Can't quite hide the old hands.
But anyway, they take this group of celebrities and they put them in the jungle.
And it's like a reality show where you have to do trials and you get voted off by the public.
But it is enthralling.
It is the most fantastic television you can imagine.
Really?
Oh, it is.
And yeah, because these people, you know, it's not like the Big Brother house where you still have kind of luxuries.
The entire program is built around food.
So you have your camp, and you get food that you have to cook yourself every night, but you have to complete a trial each day.
One of the members, chosen by the public, has to complete a trial, and if you don't complete the trial, then you get less meals, and then you wind up eating close to nothing, or like rice and beans or something like that.
And these people are constipated.
And they're sleeping outdoors and they have to do stuff like eat live creatures and sit in tubs with alligators and creepy crawly shit, eels.
Usually shit that inherently is creepy crawly freaky.
Well I think it's good that this is what we do to our celebrities that fall off the A and B list.
It is totally a way back.
It is fantastic for them.
So, well, make a copy of one of those for me on a stick or something, and let me take a look at one.
Okay, well, there's Janice Dickinson, who is completely ruling the camp, and, you know, half the women hate her.
You know, she fell down the other day when she had to do a trial, and she's so afraid, and she can't do anything.
You really see human nature come out, and you can kind of peg what the people are going to be like.
Of course, you know, most people...
Most people out there probably aren't not aware of the fact that typically, I mean, and Mark Burnett used to always harp on this, that he hated the term reality TV, and he's the guy who invented Survivor in most of the really good shows.
And he liked to call them unscripted dramas.
And they make you sign a lot of nondisclosures when you do one of these shows, like a million of them, so you can't say anything about how the show's actually constructed.
Because it is constructed.
Yeah.
It's totally constructed, and they also coach everybody, and they say, okay, you're going to sit down with this person, and you find something to argue about, and when you get a chance, throw a glass of wine in his face, we'll get it.
And then they tell you exactly what to do and how to do it, and they have certain people that do certain things, and they always have the camera ready for that.
It's always humorous.
Nobody notices this little, what, do you got a million cameramen?
I don't think so.
And the whole thing's a phony, baloney thing.
Not that people aren't eating the bugs, but Hey, you know what?
I did a reality show.
Of our family called Adam's Family in 2002, I think.
2002, 2003.
And we produced it all ourselves.
So we had like one camera guy living with us.
I did a camera.
And I had one editor.
Everything done on Final Cut Pro.
And it was broadcast every Saturday night primetime on SBS Broadcasting in the Netherlands.
You know, I have the rights to that.
You know what we could do?
First of all, I want you to see it.
Because I think you get a kick out of it.
Because...
Even though it was completely unscripted and everything you saw was chronological order, you'll see that just by editing, we really made it into something entertaining, and particularly editing to hit records, like soundtrack-to-your-life type hit records.
I should put that up online, because I have the rights to that.
Yeah, you should.
But I want to make money off of it.
Good luck.
Can't we get Chris Jacob to find a sponsor?
Colgate or something?
Oh, no.
You know what?
No, I know.
I can get to the Mars Corporation.
They wanted to sponsor their show, and they said, you know, we'll give you, I know, it was like 10,000 euros per episode if you feed your cats...
What is it?
Mars candy bars?
No, no, no.
They make, not the Purina, like Fancy Feast or, yeah, they do the...
Friskies or something?
Yeah, so they do candy bars because they also said, could you just have a couple of Mars bars laying around?
Product placement.
Yeah, and I'm like, no, I really don't want to do that because then I'm really kind of breaking the barrier.
But I could probably get them to sponsor it.
They might still be interested.
You know what?
Talking about that product placement, in the last episode, there's this show, I think it's called 30 Rock.
For some reason, I can not quite remember the name of the show, but it's 30 Rock with Tina Fey.
Yeah, Tina Fey, sure.
I love her.
So right in the middle of the show, she's...
She's getting into an argument with Jack, the boss, and he says, I've got to go.
He was with somebody, and they ended up swapping phones.
So he says, I accidentally thought my phone was her phone, and she must have thought her phone was mine.
And Tina Fey goes, well, that's interesting, because that's such a beautiful phone you got there from Verizon.
I think it makes me want to run to the Verizon store right now to get a Verizon phone.
And then she looks right into the camera and says...
Is that Alec Baldwin, her boss?
Yeah.
Yeah.
She's funny, man.
I like her.
Well, Baldwin is definitely doing his best work as a comic.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, that is very cool.
So wrap it up maybe with the writer's strike, which is still ongoing.
I hear the 26, they're going to go back to the negotiating table.
Yeah, go to the Dvorak.org slash blog site and look at the last Writer's Strike video, which was done by some staffers at The Daily Show.
And if nothing else, we're going to get some good videos out of these guys because they seem to be getting itchy.
But the Writer's Strike, you know, if you start watching what they have to say on their videos that they're putting on YouTube, you know, you have to take their side on this whole thing, even though I still think it could have been maybe a little premature what they did.
But they really did get screwed on a lot of these deals.
I agree they got screwed, and I think they do need to be made whole, and they do have to have some kind of model set up in the future.
The only thing that I just got a little itchy about is this could happen with any cog in the wheel.
Sure, if there's no writing, then there's no show, but there's a lot of unions that if they drop out, then it's going to be just as bad, and there really won't be any shows either.
You know what I mean?
Well, we'll always have the No Agenda show.
I'm looking...
Getting Paid is the name of the game?
Is that the video?
Yeah.
Hold on a second.
Let me just see.
I wonder if you can hear this.
Probably not.
Hello, and welcome to what is obviously not the Daily Show.
Oh, okay.
Bummer.
You're going to have to rig it differently next time.
Yeah, you're coming through the same interface.
Oh, well.
All right.
Damn, John, 41 minutes.
Not bad for a Saturday afternoon here in London.
Morning for you.
Saturday morning here, I've got to go to the store.
Farmer's Market.
Ah, I've already been shopping with my wife.
So that's it for this week.
I'm John C. Dvorak here in Northern California.
I'm Adam Curry, right underneath London in the United Kingdom.
We have no agenda, but we'll be doing it again soon.
Bye.
So long.
The best and the brightest.
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