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March 29, 2008 - No Agenda
01:17:30
24: Bagging Your Own Reality
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Time Text
It is time once again for the program.
Many equate to a D-ticket ride at Disney World.
It contains no frills, none of the thrills, no commercials, no music, and two no talents.
From the manor in Guilford, England, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in what is now kind of a dreary Northern California.
Well, join the club, my friend.
We've got horrible weather here.
It's been bad all week, and I just got back from Antwerp flying through rain and gusting up to 40 knots of wind.
So, it's bad.
That sounds dreadful.
Yeah, but they have this thing, which is actually really good, where every aircraft has to have an annual inspection.
And there's a whole bunch of...
Each aircraft, you know, has to go through this whole checklist and things have to be opened and replaced.
And if you don't do it in time, mine expires on the 31st of March, then your insurance is no longer valid.
So I had to get it to the shop before the 1st of April.
And, well, I just got to go whether or no weather.
The shop was in Antwerp?
Yeah, that's, you know, I'll tell you, the big thing about it, here's the secret about aviation.
If you want to stay alive, maintenance is everything.
So you find a guy who you really trust, who a lot of people trust, and you stick with him.
You don't go from, you know, mechanic to mechanic.
You really want only one pair of hands working on your aircraft.
There's a bunch of jokes.
I'm not going to go into them.
No, you can do it.
I've heard them all.
Believe me, I've heard them all.
No, no.
There's too much flack.
There's too much political correctness out there.
You know, can I just say, John, you are absolutely right.
In general.
But about political correctness.
You know, did you follow the...
You can't say anything.
I mean, like, you say anything about anyone as you're either hurting somebody's feelings or you're a racist pig or whatever.
Well, racist pig is the big one.
Because, you know, Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician, he released his movie on Thursday evening.
Oh, was it?
And, you know what, as movies go really bad...
Because it's one of those typical, like all the 9-11 truth type movies.
So not the same topic, obviously, but footage taken from all over the place and edited together.
So it absolutely had no impact whatsoever.
But the message was exactly that about political correctness.
Basically saying, hey, look...
We now have a third generation of Muslims who have been born in the Netherlands, and half of them think the Netherlands should not be a democracy, it should live by Sharia law, and this shit has got to stop.
That's basically what he's saying, is stop the Islamization of Western Europe.
And I believe, John, that this is what a lot of people in Europe want to say, but it's politically incorrect to say it because we're all supposed to be living in the multicultural society, which I just don't think really works.
Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with understanding different cultures so you can deal with them for business purposes.
But there was something I read.
I'm going to have to find this book.
I have a book that was making an interesting comment.
The writer made this.
It's just about three sentences that are so well done I can't even...
Got to get close to it without quoting him exactly.
But he says, you know, there's a lot of cultures out there that you can respect to a point, but many of them really are bad.
Really suck.
They're just bad.
And we shouldn't, you know, maybe our respect for them should be reconsidered.
Because they're just bad.
I mean, there's no reason that there's...
There are bad cultures out there.
And, you know, some of these things are bad.
And I... I question some of the things that have been floating around in terms of whether they're good cultures or not.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
But since we're on the topic of cultures, I wanted to bring up something that came up in a couple of emails, and I sent you one, I believe.
Yeah, I got it.
But I'll pretend I didn't get it to stick with the no agenda, like we didn't prepare anything, okay?
Well, no, but we get mail.
That's true.
It's not like an agenda.
I didn't say what I want to talk about.
I just said, read this.
And what it is is from a guy who I've been corresponding with who was talking about this big British grocery chain.
Tesco's.
Yeah, Tesco's.
And this is related to cultural issues, although it's not extreme cultural issues where, you know, you're beating women or anything.
I mean, I don't think they want that.
But what's happened for people out there who want to follow this is an interesting story.
And it starts in Southern California.
And I did some follow-up by going to the websites of Tesco.
And it looks like they're going to open up a bunch of these stores.
They're called Fresh and Easy's.
And they're small grocery stores that have a lot of supposedly fresh products in them.
Although there's so many of them, they're going to open like 30 of them or something like that.
But the whole basic formula is fresh and easy.
So it's really fresh food and easy to get.
That's their formula, right?
Yeah, and you're right.
And they believe that the Americans have got it all wrong and...
They can show us the way, even though I've been to grocery stores all over the world.
The fact of the matter is we have some of the worst in the United States and some of the best, including a chain that's now evolving out of the Seattle area.
Is that Freshfields?
I'm sorry?
Well, we'll get to that in a second, I guess.
Yeah, let's talk about Fresh and Easy.
Here's what they did, and this is what makes the story interesting.
They came in with supposedly a lot of research, and they're going to come in and blow the American market away.
They're on the wrong trends in almost every way.
They're going to lose.
If anyone's an investor out there in Tesco, they're going to lose.
They're going to lose their ass.
And I normally don't cuss.
And here's one of the reasons.
For one thing, their research indicated that people wanted fresh food, and I think that's probably generally true.
But so what they've done is they've changed the way they do expiration dating.
And that was the biggest mistake they made, because in the United States, we expect the date to be pushed away out to the point where the date should reflect the date when the food, milk, or eggs, whatever they are, are literally rotten.
In fact, it is American culture to reach behind the products in the front of the shelf and get the even fresher stuff from the back.
I do that.
I do that all the time.
Are you kidding me?
Especially with buttermilk, by the way.
For anybody out there who doesn't like buttermilk, they should get into it.
And if you live in Florida and Georgia, this is where the best buttermilk in the country exists.
I mean, you can't get that buttermilk.
Oh, man.
I'm not a buttermilk.
I'm a soy milk guy.
I don't drink buttermilk.
Yeah, soy shrinks your brain, by the way.
No, it does not.
That's horseshit.
It's really good for you.
It shrinks your brain.
Yeah, if you like to have mock estrogen, soy is good.
So if you're into that, that's fine.
But anyway, which causes all kinds of issues.
We're not big soy eaters in this family.
Wait a minute, excuse me, John.
Am I killing myself by drinking soy milk now?
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah.
Seriously?
It's an unnatural product.
Stop drinking it.
Drink milk.
Well, no, stop.
No, no, no.
Stop the fucking show.
Excuse me.
I've been drinking soy milk exclusively for the past two years because it's supposed to be good for me.
And now you're saying...
Yeah, it says the Soy Council and the public relations operations out of the U.S. By the way, we did a lot of research on soy.
And, of course, I get a lot of flack for every time I bring this up.
You know, a lot of people think that, you know, male breasts are due to too much ingestion of soy.
But the thing that's interesting is that the soybean...
The lobby in the United States has got a public relations agency that is so strong that every time you read about soy, if you start looking at enough material, go on the web and start looking at, you know, when people say, well, soy's bad for you, and then you'll see these responses.
These responses are almost word-for-word identical because they're all pushed out by the soybean PR people who are just, you know, keeping the soybean industry alive, and it's mostly for the oil, which we don't use either.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
We'll get into the soy thing right after you finish the Fresh and Easy because we just got to stick on that.
But then I really want to hear about the soy stuff.
And canola is another one.
Anyway, I'm surprised you don't drink canola milk.
All right, let's go.
My breasts are a little tender.
I wonder what's wrong.
Well, that's probably from something else.
But anyway, so Fresh and Easy comes in with this idea.
So they put, to get people, they think that by changing the date, instead of like, for example, say it's April 1st and you go back and you want to get some product that says April 14th and there's some that says April 10th.
Yeah, that makes you feel good.
That makes you feel like it's fresh.
Yeah, you make sure.
So they've got, but they've got their numbers really tight, so if you go on on April 1st, probably the furthest out it'll say is April 4th.
Right.
And so people would go in there and they wouldn't find what they considered fresh by American standards because of the way we do our dating.
So these guys immediately come into the country, and the first thing they do is they assume that their style of dating...
It is somehow acceptable when it's not, which is a cultural thing again, which makes me wonder, because they supposedly did a bunch of research before they opened these fresh and easy stores.
The other thing that seems to be a problem with them is that if anybody's been to London, if you go to a Marks and Spencer's, They have a grocery store in many of these places.
They have a lot of nice stuff in there, but the fact of the matter is it's a very sterile environment.
But it's very upscale.
It's the most upscale supermarket food you can purchase here, apparently.
Chain supermarket.
Well, I'm not sure.
What's that other place?
Sheffield's?
Chef, that other one that's over there?
No, Marks& Spencer's.
Well, I mean, you have like Fortnum& Mason's, you know, but that's not a chain.
No, that's not a, right.
For a chain, okay, well, maybe.
Whatever the case is, it's not a comfortable, it's not a comforting, it's not an American new style store like a Whole Foods, for example.
Which would have a funkier quality and more wood.
You know what their ad campaign is for Marks and Spencer over here for their food?
What?
They've really beautifully styled.
It's very hard to shoot food for television to make it look good.
So it really looks good.
And the tag is always, this isn't ordinary food.
This is M&S food.
Yeah, right.
Well, nice try.
So, their bangers are quite good, by the way.
People like a British banger, a good one.
They're very hard to get in the United States because a lot of people don't realize it's against the law to put as much breadcrumbs, or what they call rusk, into the sausage as they do in England.
It's actually illegal.
Really?
Yeah, there's a law.
Because years and years ago, during the 20s, I guess, people were making crappy sausages and they were just loading them up with bread and meat.
And so the legal guys came and said, this is just ridiculous.
That's not a sausage, damn it!
Meanwhile, a sausage that's about half bread, which is a British banger, a good one is really mostly because you've got a lot of bread in it.
Because for the texture, you need that bread in there for it to be exactly right.
If you like that sausage, I really like it.
I love it.
I love it.
Bangers and mash, baby.
The only good bangers that I've had, there's some in Canada you can get, and in fact, I took a Canadian air flight once from Toronto to London, and they had, for breakfast, they had a really outstanding banger on the Canadian flight.
Anyway, so back to the, this was now becoming a shaggy dog story about fresh and easy.
Yeah.
So it immediately tells me that their researchers were idiots.
Full of shit.
So they come in.
But the other thing that's interesting that people complain about, which I wanted to discuss a little bit, is the fact that they also have this European style that is rather alien to Americans in general, except maybe in Berkeley.
Yeah.
Where people do it voluntarily, where you bag your own food.
In the United States, it's like, if you're in the union, maybe I'll bag my own food and get in union pay.
But for the most part, we don't bag our own food.
And I can already hear one of the listeners to this show moaning about the...
The kind of dilettante nature of American shoppers, but the fact of the matter is, it's a tradition here and it's our culture not to bag our own groceries.
In fact, most people can't bag them right anyway and they break bags and I think over time they discovered that it was a disaster to let people bag their own groceries.
Also, it's an efficiency thing, because if you're bagging your own groceries, it just takes longer, because you've got to bag them, you've got to go back, and you've got to move forward and pay it, and you've got to put them in the cart, and meanwhile people are waiting behind you.
And by the way, I think that there are many, many retirees and young kids who would really benefit from having that gig.
I mean, it's a great gig just to be doing something and making some money.
Yeah, no, it keeps employment up.
But anyway, the point is that we don't bag our own groceries.
Although if you go to Berkeley, you run into people that voluntarily go over and start bagging their own groceries because they think they're in Europe or they want to pretend they're in Europe or they feel like they should be in Europe or whatever.
We're saving the earth, John.
We have to save the earth.
Now, these are the same people that put bicycle lanes all over the place and there's no bicycles in them, but they all wish they...
Those bicycle lane buildings, soy milk, smoy milk drinking losers.
If you want to ride a bike, move to Amsterdam.
That's where you ride bikes all the time.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Hold on.
We shop at Sainsbury's, as you know.
That's where we do most of our shopping.
And they do ask you.
So they don't have baggers.
But the cashier will say, would you like me to help you bag?
Oh, that's new.
No, no, no, no.
I've never seen it.
Well, I live here, dude, and I've heard it for the past couple years.
I've shopped at Sainsbury's numerous times.
Well, maybe they looked at you and went like, fuck that yank, man.
Let's teach him a lesson.
It's possible.
Bag yourself.
But the point is that...
Generally speaking, in Europe, you bag your own groceries.
And in some places, and I think in Asia in some places, you actually have to buy the bags.
Oh, no, that's common.
In the Netherlands, you have to buy the bag.
You have to pay for it.
It's an extra, you know, like 50 cents now.
I remember it used to be a dime, but now it's 50 euro cents per bag.
I can advise most Americans that you can just take the bags and not pay for them, and they figure you're just an idiot.
Typical American attitude.
John, come over here, visit our fantastic supermarkets, yeah?
The ones you love to shop and you know so much about, and then act like an asshole.
Don't do that, man.
This is what gives us a bad rep.
You've got to stop that.
And, you know, it's like drinking soy milk.
Anyway, back to the cultural things.
Now, another thing you run into in Berkeley, besides people voluntarily bagging their own groceries because they wish they were in Europe, is that they bring in all these crappy bags that are made out of cloth that they either bought or whatever.
They actually give you a nickel or a dime or something back on your bill if you don't use their bags.
Which is fine because, you know, golly, the same people, though, that are walking around with these...
With these cloth bags that they stuff their groceries in, instead of using and wasting the one paper bag, are the same ones who subscribe to the New York Times and relish the Sunday edition, which probably accounts for about a thousand paper bags per issue, but that doesn't bother them.
You know, they have plastic bags here.
Only plastic.
They don't have paper bags.
We have plastic.
We have either plastic or paper.
Generally, they ask you in most stores.
In some parts of the state, and in San Francisco in particular, they have gone out of their way to ban the plastic bag.
And I think the plastic bag, which is used throughout Europe and the Middle East, I might add, is a disaster.
I remember the first time I was visiting Israel, I thought, you know, you drive around into the outer reaches of the country, and there's all these trees with plastic bags.
Hanging in them, yeah.
It's a wonky country.
Plastic bags hanging from the trees as though it was fruit, and you can't get these things down.
It's a disaster.
Oh, by the way, when you drive over them, and they stick to your exhaust, how much does that suck?
Your car smells, the garage smells, Remember we were talking about those swirling centers in the ocean where all the plastic...
It was one of the first shows we did.
So that's now happening near Midway.
I saw a documentary the other night.
All this plastic is all winding up.
Midway is right in the middle of the...
The word started with a G. What was it called, John?
What?
One of those...
Guadalcanal?
No, no, no, no.
In the middle of the ocean where all the plastic is swirling around.
Yeah, the word for this phenomenon?
Yeah, what was that?
It was with a G. Remember?
I vaguely remember.
Somebody will bring it.
Maybe we'll get it shortly.
Anyway, so Midway is...
Midway Island you're talking about?
Yes, Midway Island.
It's right in the middle of one of these, and they show that it's unbelievable, the shit that shows up there.
And remember when I was growing up, which was...
You were already grown up.
You say, you know, plastic lasts for a million years and it's not biodegradable.
Well, guess what?
It's degrading in the ocean and it's being consumed by the smallest microbes.
And all these fish are getting sick.
They're all going to die.
We're going to die.
Most of the current plastic that's being manufactured is designed to biodegrade.
I mean, they've reformulated it so it really falls apart.
Yeah, but it falls apart in the ocean, and then those particles are eaten up by microbes, or whatever they're called.
So that's not good, is it?
I don't know.
It's probably better than drinking soy milk.
I got a cultural one for you.
Let's finish the story about Fresh and Easy.
Alright, but then we got to do some more cultural stuff.
Fresh and easy.
Okay, so let me just, let me summarize.
So, these arrogant Brits come in thinking that they're going to take over the supermarket world.
They say, you know what, we've done all the research, apparently, and they're going to change the way that they date the food, but in such a way that it is exactly opposite to what Americans like, because we like to see a date that is at least 14 days in the future, but will settle for a week.
That's it, right?
Okay.
That's part of their problem.
It just shows that they're incompetent.
Also, their store layouts are not Americanized and their stores are too small.
They think they're going to do – this has already been proven not to work.
The mom and pop family neighborhood store doesn't work anymore in the United States.
People get in their car and they go to a bigger place.
Now, the best example of this is that – because Fresh and Easy wants to sell like prepackaged meals and all this kind of stuff, that Boston market – See, we always associate that kind of thing with a fast food chain, and Boston Market's already got that.
They already figured out how to do that.
But anyway, in the late 90s...
And I think when I was still working at Tech TV, my route coming back from San Francisco would take me past one of the yuppie market chains in the Bay Area.
It's called Andronico's.
And they were test marketing a thing called the Andronico's Marketplace, which, as I read about Fresh and Easy, is exactly the same concept.
And it was sitting right in the middle of a million condos.
And if anything could have survived with that mentality, it would have been this place, which went out of business within two years.
It was a test.
It didn't work.
Obviously, Tesco had never heard of Andronico's.
They don't know anything about this test that was done in the Bay Area, which failed miserably.
And the store was fantastic, I might add.
It was a really good little place to stop.
They had everything.
It was amazing in some ways.
But everything, people just don't walk to a little store anymore.
That went out of business with the milk trucks in the United States.
And what people want now are these big stores.
And the best example of what is really a hot store is up in the Seattle area.
I'm going to end the story after this.
Which is a...
And this isn't related to the Texas chain of the same name, by the way.
But there's a market up there called Central Market.
There's one in Seattle.
There's one in Paulsbo.
And it was started by a couple Japanese guys.
It's huge.
It has everything.
It has everything Whole Foods has, but it also gives in to the regular commercial products.
And it also even has like a hot dog stand that sells a perfected Chicago-style hot dog with Vienna sausage, as a matter of fact, with the sport peppers and everything else.
It's an unbelievable facility that these guys should go check out and then rethink their strategy because this fresh and easy thing is a loser.
Well, I'll tell you, a very dear friend of mine worked for McKinsey, the consultancy.
And she was in the food department and they call it format.
So the format of the store, which is the layout, what you see first, every aisle.
This is really well thought out.
They even would go on espionage missions.
Try taking a camera into your local supermarket and start taking some pictures and see how quick your ass is kicked out because there is so much espionage.
I have done that, but I do it knowing that I could get kicked out, so I do it really quick.
Yeah, I mean, they are so protective of this.
So it really boggles my mind that they think they've done the research.
This sounds literally like a first-year McKinsey...
No, it sounds like they botched the job of research.
Right now, Americans are going for the...
I mean, if you go to Whole Foods, those aren't small little mom and pop.
No, those are huge.
Those are huge.
They're huge.
But the Central Market, if anyone's up in the Seattle area, they should check out Central Market or Polsbo.
There's actually three of them up there, and I think there's going to be a few more.
Although I've heard that the Central Market done out of Austin, which is done by the H.E. Butt Company, a huge retailer, the H.E.B. stores all over Texas, and they do a thing called Central Market, which competes with Whole Foods down there.
And it's supposed to be spectacularly nice, too.
But I haven't been to one.
So speaking of cultural differences, last night on the BBC here, the show I always watch Friday night, Jonathan Ross, Donald Sutherland was on.
And you know, he's from Canada.
Oh yeah, everybody knows.
He reminds everybody.
Right, but he still says that Americans usually think he's British, British think he's American, but everyone kind of neglects the fact that he's Canadian.
So he said there's a joke that he said he would tell.
He said the Canadians love the joke, the Americans hate the joke, and he wanted to try it out on the British.
Right.
Okay.
Thank you.
I was waiting for that.
So you want to hear the joke?
Of course.
All right.
Let's see if you like it.
He did some little visual thing here, but I don't think it's important for the joke.
Before you do the joke, not to interrupt.
The fact that the Canadians love the joke means that somehow it's one of those Canadian jokes.
Well, that's what I was waiting for, but it isn't.
At least I didn't think it was.
But then again, I'm certainly not Canadian.
I'm only half American, half European.
I'm a lover, not a fighter.
So here's the joke.
Two sperm are swimming along.
Swimming along, swimming along.
And the one sperm says to the other sperm, dude, how long until we get to the womb?
And the other sperm says, I don't know, man, we haven't even left the esophagus yet.
Huh.
Now, I thought it was pretty funny.
Bye.
Well, it is funny.
I mean, technically.
Did I not tell it well?
Did you not like it that much?
No, no.
I mean, I think you can't tell it much better than that because, I mean, it's, you know, it's shallow.
Very typical Canadian.
I think what it is, the Canadians do...
Very deflatio in Canada?
No, maybe.
They have more hookers up there.
Oh, please.
Here comes the email.
Whew!
I think the joke is juvenile.
I thought it was kind of funny.
You know what, if anything, I thought that...
It's like the punchline to the joke, oh, that's not a rash, that's lipstick.
To be honest, John, I thought that maybe a lot of Americans, if he would tell that on television or in some public forum, that maybe a lot of Americans, it takes him too long to figure out what an esophagus is.
Oh, that's a nice insult.
Seriously?
Well, I mean it, unfortunately.
Yeah, you know what?
I hate to admit it, but you might be right.
Yeah.
Not that...
We don't want to generalize or anything.
By the way, esophagus...
I don't know.
This is no agenda where we're just obviously going to just roam all over the place.
I can't wait.
Esophagus is one of the definitive dishes in Taiwan.
Of the beef variety?
I believe so.
I've had it.
I went to a Taiwanese restaurant to give me all the traditional national dishes, as it were, from Formosa.
And esophagus is apparently right at the top of the list.
And it's actually quite good.
Can you imagine esophagus stuffed with banger, dripped in M&S soy milk?
Oh, man.
How wonderful would that be?
So, another thing about self-service, which we, you know, is that in the United States, we used to, people used to pump our gas.
Oh, yeah, sure, absolutely.
My wife still won't pump her own gas because she wants that here.
And we used to get free maps.
Oh, that's right.
Oh, that's right.
It was the biggest thing on a road trip.
He's like, Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, can I run in and can I get a free map?
Can I get a map?
And the guy would check your oil, he would wash your windshield, pump your gas, and look at your wife's tits.
And give you a free map.
And the gasoline was like 50 cents.
Ah, the good old days.
So what happened with the $4 gasoline?
They don't do anything.
You have to do it all yourself and they won't check your oil and nobody cares.
I just don't get the economics of this.
By the way, in Oregon, it's illegal to pump your own gas.
By law, it's required that somebody else pump it.
Someone who's qualified.
Yeah, qualified gas pumper.
It ain't easy, you know.
Well, the economics, I think, are, you know, that came with the self-serve.
I think it makes sense.
It's just less bodies there, and people don't care anymore.
You know, we're conditioned to it.
I think that went away such a long time ago.
Self-service seems to be really everywhere now.
Is there still anywhere you can get your gas pumped?
The internet makes it even worse.
Now you have to, you know, you can't even go to the...
Everything's self-service.
I didn't notice it began when...
When you used to go to Macy's, in the olden days, you used to go to a store and they would have people that could help you and actually had taste and they could lead you to buying a certain thing or whatever.
Nowadays, they just have these clerks that get whatever the minimum wage is.
And then they require them, either through the barcoding system or through punching it in by hand, to essentially do all the...
People don't realize why it takes so long to get away from a counter in a big retailer.
It's because they're punching in all the accounting information.
Instead of a bean counter doing it, they're doing it at the register.
They're doing the work, yeah.
They're doing the work for it.
Absolutely.
They're doing all the work, bang, bang, bang, so you sit there, all this data's going in, and then, of course, it ticks off something in some computer database so they can reorder more white shirts because nobody can notice that there aren't any left.
Oh, dude.
I worked in retail when I was 16 selling electronic parts, so literally diodes, transistors, capacitors, transformers, solder wire, you name it.
And it was, you know, we had a cash register where you would, you know, you'd write down every item by hand on the, you know, basically, you know, like a receipt.
And then you'd slide that receipt into this cash register.
It had a handle that you would spin, but it actually modernized it.
And you hit the, you know, you put the, you type the amount in, you hit the big black button, and it printed the total.
And it had an internal total, right?
And then at the end of every single day, you'd have to compare all three pieces.
So how much money you have left in the till, excluding the 30 guilders at the time that went in just for change at the beginning of the day.
And you had to match all of these different pieces of paper, and that matched back to stock.
It's the way it worked.
Well, and it worked well.
But, you know, by the way, I wonder where the word till comes from.
Hmm.
The money and the till.
I've heard that all my life.
I never thought much about it.
But it's not a till.
It's a cash register.
The money and the cash register.
But it's always said the money and the till.
Maybe one of our listeners knows the etymology of that particular screwball term.
I'm, of course, looking it up as we speak.
But it's kind of a hard word for Google.
Yeah, TIL would be impossible.
I think it's TIL. Maybe it's T-I-L-L. I think it's double L, yeah.
T-I-L-L. Let me see.
I'll do entomology TIL. That'll always help.
Maybe you should put cash register and TIL. I come up with something.
Associative, which is the way I do a lot of searches.
That's something that I only learned maybe 10 years ago, that NCR stands for National Cash Register Company.
Right, and the reason that Watson named his company, he used to work at NCR, of course, and got all his ideas from NCR when he started at IBM, and he decided that he was going to name it like National Cash Register, but he was going to up the ante on each and every word.
So instead of National, he made it International, and instead of Cash Register, he made it Business Machines.
Yeah, exactly.
A little known.
Well, actually it's not that little known.
And Tom Watson still lives on in Dr.
Watson, doesn't he?
Does he?
Yeah, isn't that Dr.
Watson on NT? I thought it still did it on Windows 2000.
Dr.
Watson would pop up and he would monitor shit that crashed.
Wasn't that him?
I don't think so.
That's too weird if true.
That's what I always thought.
That's him.
Well, if he had a baseball bat, maybe.
What does that have to do with it?
Yeah, there's stories of him coming to collect by breaking somebody's kneecaps if they're owed.
There's all these stories about the early days of IBM being the kind of brutish, B-R-U-T-I-S-H type of company.
Well, they were one of our clients when we had Think New Ideas.
And they were like a...
I think they spent $15 to $20 million a year with us.
And it was for the AS400 division.
Boy, oh boy, oh boy.
And those things are...
Oh, man.
They're still huge.
Really, really big.
Yeah.
A lot of people are really fans of those machines.
By the way, back to the...
One more thing that just came to mind because I was looking at my list of complaints, which goes on for days.
But the fresh and easy people had this excuse about the dating, saying that, well, people, you know, they're going to come in and shop daily, which is another assumption they made about the shopper.
Oh, right.
Yeah, yeah.
Which is not the way Americans do.
We shop weekly.
Yeah.
Yeah, I go, I don't, I mean, I love to, like I said, I like to shop, but I don't like to go to the grocery store each and every day just to buy today's food.
I mean, I have a freezer.
So here it is, here it is.
Okay, so it's a combination of, there's also a cultural shift happening in Europe, which has, I think, gone very, very rapidly, having grown up in Europe.
Absolutely.
Now, you have your long-term items, like your potatoes, okay, and stuff that you can just keep laying around, and you get that in some big bulk.
In fact, the potato guy would bring that to you, and he'd also take away the potato peelings.
There was another guy for that back in the day.
Every single day, mom goes out and she goes by the butcher around the corner and she gets her meat and she'll go to the vegetable guy and that could even be a stand on a little market.
What has happened is they've tried to keep that cultural process going, but now all those smaller stores are gone and it's become big box supermarkets.
They've kept that idea of Yeah, well, the Americans have never, except maybe in large cities like New York, generally speaking, don't shop every day, especially in the suburbs, which is where most people live in total numbers.
And it's also impractical.
I mean, there's a...
I mean, I wouldn't mind living in Paris, you know, a block away from a meat market and a cheese shop and a bread store and a whatever.
And yeah, and go every day, say hello to the butcher and, you know, get a cut of horse or whatever I wanted to eat.
That's because we live in a country where you gotta work your ass off.
We work 12, 14 hours a day in the United States.
We don't have any time for that shit.
That's what's driven us.
That's why we're such a tremendously huge nation and not like all those socialists in Europe who work 8 hour days and take 8 weeks of vacation a year.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
It's a shame.
Dude, dude, speaking of the French.
Sarkozy had a huge state's visit to the UK to visit the Queen.
This is really big.
Of course, we know nothing about this, so you might as well look for us.
Oh, no, this is a big public display.
They rolled out the Golden Coach.
It was really beautiful.
It was a real throwback to the 18th, 19th century.
Just fantastic grandeur, if you will.
And, you know, so Sarkozy addressed the entire parliament, and he says it's time for, you know, for our two countries to bond together, talking, you know, about deploying more forces together around the world, but really saying, yeah, we know, in fact, he literally said, Sarkozy said, you know, you have your special relationship with America, that's great, but we want a real brotherhood between our two countries.
But, of course, the real news was this was the first time that his wife, Carla Bruni, former model and singer, came along with him.
And, dude, oh, man, she's awesome, John.
She is, I mean, she's like Lady Di of France, I'm telling you.
I mean, just from the appearances, right?
I don't know if she's done all the type of work that Diana did.
But it makes so much sense.
I mean, it's like, finally, someone good-looking in the royal family.
Really.
I mean, we got Camilla, for Christ's sakes.
Yeah.
A cab driver told me a joke about Camilla.
He said Charles was driving around Windsor Castle and he accidentally drove over one of the Queen's corgis, one of those dogs that she has.
And the corgi's dead.
And all of a sudden the fairy godmother appears.
And I said, oh, why are you so glum?
And Charles says, well, you know, I've killed one of Mom's corgis.
Well, you know what?
I'll give you one wish, and maybe that'll make you feel better for today.
He says, oh, could you please bring the corgi back to life?
And Fairy Godmother looks and says, nah, no, that's a goner.
I can't do anything that, you know, no, can't do that.
And then Charles says, well, maybe...
You could do something about Camilla's appearance.
And the fairy godmother says, let's have another look at that corgi for a second.
That's a good joke.
You have to hear it in kind of that London cabbie accent.
It's funny with or without that.
It would be even probably funnier with a guy that could do the voice.
I can do the voice, but it sounds pretentious.
Unfortunately.
Not quite there yet.
So I had grits today.
I'm not a big fan of the grits.
Why?
I don't know.
I'm very particular about breakfast.
I never had grits, actually, until I started traveling into the south, the deep south in particular.
That's where you get your grips.
Well, it's common at breakfast and even all the hotels.
And...
It's an interesting dish because for people who don't know what grits are, they're actually a cornmeal mush that is made from a specific type of corn hominy that seems to soak up so much water and expand to such an extreme that you can see why poor people eat it.
It makes you feel full.
In like oatmeal, where you might need like a half a cup of oats to a cup of, or maybe three quarters of a cup of oats to like a cup or a cup and a quarter of water and milk, it's like a couple tablespoons of grits in like a cup makes a huge pile.
But they're bland.
So I've been thinking about...
I like them because they're interesting as a side thing.
But what do you eat them with?
I mean, did you...
Oh, yeah, with bacon and eggs or whatever.
I mean, just on a plate with the...
Right, but would you consider...
Instead of hash brown potatoes, you'd have those.
Right, but you don't consider any, like, some people will put syrup on it, some people do other things.
Right.
Yeah, some people put syrup on them, and some people put butter on them, and you can cook them, if you cook them in broth, they taste a lot better.
But I was experimenting with, we have at the deli, we have a bunch, salt's a big thing right now, it's a big trendy item, everyone's buying all kinds of salts, all kinds of weird salts, and they're very expensive.
Really?
Salt's a huge...
I was at the Fancy Food Show for the last two or three years.
Some of the biggest vendors making the most money are selling salt.
And what kind of salts are there?
I mean, that's interesting.
Well, there's like Hawaiian salt, which is red because it's in these brick kilns.
And essentially, it's pieces of brick that are in the salt, as far as I'm concerned.
There's mined salt.
There's Florida Cell from France.
What are the main differences between the salts?
I mean, is it...
I mean, it's like...
What are the differences?
I mean, Spices can be sharper or less sharp.
Yeah, there's flavors that are slightly different.
They have a lot of different mineral contents.
Not all salts are just sodium chloride.
They have a lot of magnesium.
I have some salt from Switzerland that's half potassium chloride, naturally, supposedly.
Anyway, but the one thing that, you know, there's a number of salts that are expanding, and there's salts from the Himalayas, there's Tibetan salt, and a lot of these restaurants are starting to use these salts.
It amazes me, John.
You don't know shit about Tibet, but you do know about Tibetan salt.
That's just a travesty.
It's a travesty of justice.
Anyway, there's also a black salt.
But the thing is, because they can't seem to make enough weird salts, there's all these smoked salts.
And now you can get from the United States, you can get hickory smoked salt, mesquite smoked salt, and these are, you know, just basically taste like smoke.
But now that's the lead up to what I have to say, which is the French have made a smoked salt called fumée cell for a long time.
It's a tradition.
And unlike the American smoked salts, this stuff is actually fantastic as a product.
And when you use it on grits, when you make the grits and you use this fumé cell, it makes the grits taste really outstanding.
It improves things a lot.
But it's a French smoked salt.
It's extremely expensive, but it's an astonishing product.
I didn't know there was such a...
Such a variety of salts.
I mean, anything like sea salt and table salt.
Yeah, no, the salt thing is huge.
And the other thing that we've noticed, and we can't figure this one out because we sell out of it constantly.
We sell a lot of spices mostly.
And I ran into the Andronicos that I mentioned earlier.
I was in the store, and they had it there too.
And it keeps selling out, and my wife can't figure it out.
I can't figure it out.
We haven't found any research to indicate where this...
Demand is coming from, I figure it's the Food Channel or somebody.
Smoked paprika is the hottest thing right now in the spice department.
Really?
Red or green or both?
Red.
It's red paprika.
It looks just like regular paprika.
There's no such thing as regular.
Now there's varietals and all the rest of it.
But...
The smoked paprika is going out the door, and if anybody out there knows why, I'd like to know myself, because we can't figure it out.
I don't even have a recipe for it.
It must be a new secret ingredient in crystal meth or something like that.
Yeah, well that's possible.
So front page of the Financial Times weekend edition over here in the UK. Of course the controversial tax law, new tax code goes into effect April 6th here in the United Kingdom.
And there's been a lot of talk about that even on this show about non-domicile taxes, etc.
So the first big loss for Britain, because I also predict that a lot of companies will leave and a lot of cool shit is just not going to take place here because of this.
So you'll love this.
Britain's bid for the 2010 Champions League Finals, which is the huge football competition at Wembley Arena.
They're out of the race because UEFA, which is the governing body of the Football Association, said, you know what, since you guys aren't going to waive our players being taxed when they play in the UK, you're off.
So, like, this is the country that is supposed to be the new sports-minded country.
We have the Olympics coming up.
They're now losing UEFA championship football because of the tax code.
Which has got to be worth millions and millions of dollars to the local businesses.
Pounds, even.
Sorry?
We don't talk about dollars anymore, John.
It's just not worth it.
Oh, by the way, have you seen this documentary, The Money Masters?
No.
Okay, I'm only one hour into it.
It was brought to my attention by one of my listeners, The Daily Source Code, at dailysourcecode.com.
And it's a three and a half hour documentary.
I think it's from, it looks like it's from the early 80s.
And it does look like it was a real television documentary in its professionalism, but just from the Just looking at the footage, it pretty much looks like it was 80s.
Or maybe even a little, or maybe late 70s.
But it's about how banks came to rule the world.
So they focus specifically on the Bank of England, which, surprise, surprise, is owned by private individuals and families and has nothing to do with the government or the Queen of England.
And the Federal Reserve, which of course also has nothing to do with the government.
Of the United States and how the system works.
And of course, you and I, I think we understand kind of what's going on, but they're able to simplify the process of how it works and how basically it doesn't matter who's running what country where, these guys are running the whole show.
It's a fantastic piece of work.
You can Google it.
Video.google.com is like the top hit.
The Money Masters.
Three and a half hours.
And it's just completely engaging.
Even if you know the story, they did it so well.
And I hope that lots of people watch it because it just shows you how everything is running.
Even the elections are a joke.
These two entities, the Federal Reserve and Bank of England, and of course other central banks, they control us because they literally control how much your house payment will be, how much your car payment will be, what your salary is going to be.
They determine that, random, and not, well, random to us, but for their own benefit whenever they need to do it.
So, that's pretty much, I think, when...
The lending hand is always above the borrowing hand, right?
Well, all I know is that it's fishy.
When you see this, your jaw will drop.
Your jaw will drop.
You'll be like, of course.
Now I get it.
Does it fit in with the confessions of an economic hitman?
Oh, completely.
Well, in that system, okay, so this is going back to, in fact, the American Revolution was because of central banking.
They wanted to get away from that.
It's fascinating.
We're taught in school it was about taxes.
Yeah, it was partially about taxes, but it was about America having the colonial script, which was their own form of money.
And they just issued enough for trade to take place and everything worked.
And there was no inflation.
There was no national debt.
It was just there was money in circulation and everyone used it.
And you could get more of it by selling more or spending less.
But there was just so much in circulation.
It wasn't brought in through printing it through a third party who would then basically lend it to the government.
Fascinating.
It's really an eye-opener.
Mm-hmm.
Well, definitely watch it.
Yes.
In fact, I don't think you should go anywhere today.
I think you should stay home in your slippers.
Have a nice cup of tea there.
And just sit there and watch this and then just get mad.
You know what?
You won't get...
I'm not mad.
I'm looking at it and I'm going like, oh my gosh, of course.
I mean, it's really Rothschild.
Rothschilds run the world, dude.
Well, you know, they make good wine, too.
Not just wine.
They got all kinds of stuff.
So we like them.
I got nothing against the Rothschilds.
But you'll also understand how bank runs really work when everyone has a run on the bank and everyone wants to get their money out.
And of course then you immediately understand why there's attractive interest rates for locking up your money, which means you can't take it out for a certain period of time.
Why?
Because they're using that tenfold.
They basically lend it ten times over.
It's just phenomenal.
Well, on the subject of colorless bankers, I met a number of the Rothschilds over time.
They reminded me of the character, a lot of them, the British part of the family.
Did you ever see the movie The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon playing a CIA guy?
Yes, I did.
You know how he was basically in no personality?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's kind of the way a lot of these people are.
That's the way they are.
The personality of a dishrag, essentially.
I actually enjoyed that movie.
It wasn't highly rated for spy movies, but it brings up a lot of interesting points, including the skull and bones thing.
Now that I think about it, we have no candidate running for president currently that's a member of that organization.
Which is new in history.
I mean, half the time, there's always one of these guys running the country.
There's always someone running, right?
But this last guy, Bush, has done such a crappy job that they should kick him out of the skull and bones.
Well, I think McCain, although technically not a member, I think he does janitorial services for skull and bones.
Yeah.
At least he's not a...
You know, it's these Yalies.
I mean, you know, William Buckley and the rest of them, they're all characters.
He passed away, didn't he?
Yeah.
You know, my cousin is married to Christopher, Buckley's son.
Is that right?
Christopher's also a writer, obviously.
Yeah, I think he's the editor now of the New Republic or the National Review.
He's a nice guy.
I've hung out with him a couple of times at big family gatherings.
He's alright.
Arrogant fuck, but he's okay.
Hmm.
No, that was kind of Brad.
I think he's a Yalie, too.
I'd be surprised if he wasn't.
So they all have that personality.
Well, my cousin divorced him.
Oh, so you won't see him anymore?
No.
Can't get him to do a podcast?
You know, I remember...
When, you know, everyone had AOL, and that was your email, and that was kind of your information source, and, you know, it was before, you know, the history of AOL, at a certain point, they actually opened up, like, pieces of the internet, and that could come in through little gateways, and it still would be within the AOL user interface, and within its universe, and it was, you know, protected, sanitized for your protection.
So I remember having a conversation with him and he was like, you know, the internet, who cares?
The internet is stupid.
That's nothing.
It's like CB radio.
It's dumb.
You know, AOL. I remember having quite a conversation with him.
And I think it was at least six years, seven years later and several million dollars in my pocket and he had to concede.
Well, it's about time.
Yeah.
But...
No, I'm reminded of, you know, there's a bunch of these guys that are at a certain level of society that they don't have either the wherewithal, the time, or the desire to really learn anything at all about computing, computers, the internet.
I mean, they can get by.
Yeah, because the secretary does their email.
The secretary does all the work, and the thing is, is they make these...
These ridiculous comments, everyone.
I remember when I was writing for Forbes, I read an editorial by Steve Forbes, who went on and on.
And this was like, you know, in the late 90s or whenever.
And it was about how things are going to change in the next couple of years because computers are finally going to become appliances.
And you can just see it was just a wishful thinking.
Computers have never and never will become appliances because they're not appliances.
You know, they're not appliances.
It's like a car becoming an appliance.
You have to learn how to drive one.
Yeah.
That may be nice if you could just jump in a vehicle, punch in where you want to go, and boom, you're there.
But that's not the case.
What bugs me is...
There's never any real encouragement, and they never really got to the right tools to enable people to actually program their computers.
And there's been a lot of efforts, and if you have half a brain, you can learn to program something, like AppleScript or some other, I think scripting languages mainly, but for your computer to do more, to automate stuff that is redundant for you on the computer.
I've never felt enough has been done that way.
It's always...
I agree with that a thousand percent.
And in the early days of the computers, the desktop computers from 1976 to about 1986, that was encouraged a lot more.
There was basic and there was all these languages that were easy to use.
And then the professionals came in, you know, and they kind of swept it away when C, which is nothing you can casually learn, and some of these other languages became dominating.
And then the next thing you know, they just kind of gave up on it.
And even with the macro languages and some of these other things, they're...
They're either too complicated or stupid.
And after the modem era was over, when you had to learn some macro languages to make those things work properly, that was it.
It just died off.
And now you don't do anything.
Now it's just punch up, click on something, run a program, click on something else, get your email, do a search.
Have you ever tried Automator on the Mac?
I think it's called Automator, isn't it?
Is that what it's called?
It comes standard.
I've seen it.
I saw it sitting there.
It's got a robot icon, and it's on the Mac I have at the office.
And I've been meaning to click on it.
Well, I actually got into AppleScript a while back, and I've always kind of kept up with it.
So you have scriptable applications and passing data from one process to the other.
Well, you saw some of the stuff that I'd done with...
With my setup, with, you know, understanding MIDI commands.
And it's really powerful, you know.
If you have some type of control over what your computer is doing, you know, which can involve multiple applications or processes that, you know, you're probably doing by hand, you know.
Yeah, no, what you did is phenomenal, but you took four years to do it.
Well, yeah, because not that I didn't understand what I wanted to do or that I could put the effort into learning how to do it, but literally the tools were not available.
So the buses and the audio interfaces and APIs, I guess you would call them, or system hooks or whatever, and there was just no tools to get to it.
I mean, yeah, if you're a programmer, you can delve in and do something at a lower level type language like C.
But for just a guy who could understand the concept of scripting and just want some stuff to happen or connect thing A to widget B, there was just no way to do it.
And so now there was a way to do it.
And the particular application I wanted to make, which involves a lot of heavy audio processing, the machine actually is strong enough to do it now.
Thank you.
So my stepson says he'll help you get the patent if you tell him what you did.
Sure.
Well, I thought it should be a full-on family effort, man.
You've got to be a part of this.
Yeah, no, I mean, I've done it.
I've done patents.
Yeah, what patent do you own?
I don't own any patents, but I've helped people do patents.
And went through a real process with the patent office.
Years ago, a guy came up with a...
A weird recycling separator.
This guy used to work at a scrapyard and invented this crazy device which sucks paper out of it.
You throw all this stuff on this big spinning thing with a vacuum behind it and it sucks all different...
Different things with different densities onto it and then shoots it off someplace on a conveyor belt.
You have to look at some of these places, these huge scrap yards and how they operate to see what...
You'll see this kind of device.
Anyway, help me get patent.
It's funny.
It's never really interested me to go to a scrap yard.
Oh, I was an air pollution inspector and I had to go to scrap yards to see because there'd be smoke coming.
I was an air pollution inspector.
I was an air pollution inspector.
Gonna clean up all your air.
Gonna clean up all...
Like that?
Sounds like a song.
Oh, Terminal 5.
Sounds like a song ready to happen.
John, I got some more cool shit for you, man.
You'll love this.
Heathrow's Terminal 5 took 19 years of planning and building, cost $8 billion to build, opened up.
A fucking disaster.
They've canceled hundreds of flights.
Something went wrong with the baggage system.
And it always is with the baggage system, right?
It's always the baggage system.
Don't they ever test these things?
But they're not telling us exactly what went wrong.
But it's not the airport.
Because BA, British Airways, who has exclusive use of this terminal...
It's our mistake.
It's our fuck-up.
It's not BAA. And saying at the same time, they're very critical of BAA, who own all the airports.
So that's British Airport Authority.
It's not their fault.
It has something to do with their baggage handlers.
I mean, it's a staffing issue, clearly, because everything else is apparently working.
But they've had people sleeping overnight, people waiting four hours for their bags to get off of the plane, not being able to check in with any baggage at all except for hand luggage.
It's just been absolutely disastrous.
This is more reason never to check bags.
Yeah, I know.
But then you've got all that liquid restriction shit.
And I got product, baby.
I got product for my hair.
I got product for my face.
I got product for all kinds of stuff.
And it's not all in 100 milliliter bottles.
Put it in 100ml bottles.
How much of this stuff do you need?
Ever travel with someone who takes big giant bottles of shampoo?
No, but I have a lot of...
I have a lot of small bottles.
I got product.
I'm like a woman.
No comment.
So...
Thanks.
Change your ways.
You are right, though.
You are absolutely right.
But sometimes you got to.
Clothing.
Oh, the dog is pissed off.
He's saying it's time to wrap it up.
We actually got about eight minutes left before we get to the 70-minute mark.
This show's been going on a long time.
But it's...
I'm not getting a lot...
Well, the only people who complain about it are those two jabronis, but I don't hear anyone else complaining about the length.
Well, it just seems to me that it should fit on a one CD. But yeah.
No, I mean, I don't care.
Seems like an okay idea.
I got a couple more complaints, if anybody wants to hear them.
Let me see.
Yeah.
We'll take another complaint.
So...
Jose Canseco is the guy, as a baseball player, is the guy who was responsible for the steroid thing in baseball being blown wide open with this book that he did, I think it was a couple years ago, called Juiced.
And he named all the people that he had helped get.
He's a big steroid promoter.
Juiced, which of course is the exact same name as the video...
Video program.
Juiced.
You spell it differently, but Juiced, J-O-O-S-T? Yeah, it is the same pronunciation, Juiced.
But anyway, he named all these names.
And he actually, when he comes in, he's like a big steroid user.
He probably has a prescription, I don't know what, but he stays pumped up on this.
He's huge.
And he thinks it's the greatest thing ever.
And I guess a lot of baseball players have found it was very useful because it was a myth that, well, you know, people always...
I remember during the era when it was really being discussed a lot, it was, well, you know, you can take all the steroids you want, but that doesn't mean you're going to hit a 90-mile-an-hour fastball.
You know, that takes other skills.
It turned out that a lot of steroid use doesn't...
It actually increases all kinds of things other than just pure strength.
It also...
Makes you more likely to hit a 90 mile an hour fastball if you were whiffing at it.
But anyway, so it became a scandal.
And so now he's got another book coming out.
Well, he's naming more names, which will keep this controversy going for a while.
So I'm watching the TV version of the Jim Rome, Rome is Burning show, and Jamel Hill was on, and she brings up this topic.
And she said something interesting to me that kind of triggered a thought or two, which was that...
She says that the problem with all these accusations that Canseco makes in the book, he says he gave somebody the needle in the butt and then he hooked up some other guy with a drug dealer and all the rest of it.
She says the problem is there's no second source.
There's no second source for this information.
No second source.
This became a big thing in journalism.
No second source.
No second source.
You have to triangulate.
So I had to start thinking about the second source concept.
And I realized that Hemingway, when he's reporting about World War II, was just reporting what he saw.
George Sells, the famous correspondent, he would write about what they're doing.
They would go into the newspaper.
There was no second source for correspondence.
They would go someplace, take a look at something, and report on it.
They didn't have to say, well, I see that big oak tree over there is dying.
Let me get a second source in here to confirm what I'm seeing.
I mean, that doesn't exist.
So your beef is that all of a sudden there seems to be some unwritten new journalistic rule which is not official.
Well, yeah.
That's one of my beefs, but what it boils down to, in fact, in straight reporting, where you're essentially staying in the office and phoning people, you're supposed to get not only a quote from one person, but a counter quote from somebody else and a neutral quote.
You're supposed to get the three quotes, and you're supposed to have a second source for anything.
But if you actually are witnessing the situation, or you're a participant...
Why would you need a second source?
You're just saying what you saw.
So I don't need a second source to say that the word is crap.
No, no, no.
I got it.
Let me tack something on for you.
This is more of the don't edit your own Wikipedia page bullshit.
Which is another...
That's where I fucked up.
I didn't know that you...
Certainly not three years ago.
I didn't know that you weren't supposed to edit your own Wikipedia page.
Wasn't I fucking there?
Am I not some kind of authority?
That's what this is.
It's a cultural shift.
There's a lot of mistakes in the Wikipedia that could be easily corrected by the person that the post is about.
So it's actually idiotic not to edit your own Wikipedia page so you can maintain accuracy.
The reason, of course, they don't want you doing it is because you're going to take out all the negative stuff.
What's negative stuff about people, unless they're criminals, even in their form?
I mean, the Wikipedia thing is sketchy in a lot of ways.
But the second source thing, you know, because I've got a new correspondent I'm going to be working with who's a Chinese guy who goes to China a lot, and I think he's calling himself Hong Mao Teng, I think, something like that.
Like it's an alias?
Like he doesn't have a real name?
He was just in Tibet.
And he essentially just goes and he's going to be reporting.
And I'm not going to get any second source.
I'm like, why do I need a second source?
You don't need a second source when somebody's there reporting.
And so I found it weird that she would say, this woman on the show, would say that Ken Sego needed a second source.
And I realized that that's a bunch of malarkey.
You don't need a second source when you're just reporting.
90% of the time, if you're there, you don't need a second source.
You're looking, you're reporting, what do you need a second source for and why does this come up in the conversation?
Okay, well, I've given you my input.
I can't help you anymore with that one.
No, no, I appreciate that too, but I just think it's an interesting phenomenon where, oh, you know, you can say that all you want, but I'd like to see a second source, a second opinion.
It's like going to another doctor.
A second source.
Oh, well.
I guess no one trusts anyone anymore.
And even if you have second, third, and fourth source, the truth is whatever your perception was at that time.
I think there's always three or four sides to the truth.
It's just the way it is.
Yeah, maybe.
Do you even have any complaints this week?
I'm just sitting here griping all the time.
No, no.
I'm like a big griper.
You know what?
I'm actually pretty happy because Patricia has been in Holland all week doing the Holland Got Talent.
No, no, no.
This is great.
I love the name.
It comes from America Got Talent and Britain Got Talent.
This is a huge formula.
This is like Dancing with the Stars type of audience, like Pop Idol, American Idol.
This is a worldwide successful format, so...
It's almost no risk when someone says, do you want to do this show?
Because these shows don't fail anywhere.
The formula is tweaked.
It's perfect.
But of course, if you are a good judge, that's really important for the show.
So really the casting, and it is casting...
Of the judges in these reality shows makes all the difference.
And it's not just how knowledgeable you are about either singing, or in this case it's a wide variety of performance art, I'd say.
But it's also your reactions, and it's really about how you approach it.
They always want to have the Simon Cowell type person, maybe the softer person.
And really what works and what is always the core of the success of this formula is one person who is just honest.
Not a dick.
It may come across that way, but the person is just honest.
And that is my wife to the T. But she can actually say things so honestly that it's just cut your legs off at the knee, but you still feel good about it.
So the first episode aired last night.
Huge ratings, like a 20 share, just off the charts.
And so that's been exciting.
She's worked really, really hard on it.
And you literally, you work for a couple of weeks and then...
You know, they broadcast it the next morning.
That's your number, right?
That's your report card.
That's what it's all about in that arena.
After the show airs, I mean, do they put them all in the can quickly?
I mean, do they just have to go back every week?
No.
Well, yeah.
So here's the way it works.
So they've completed now two weeks of taping in the theater with an audience, but it's kind of like the audition round, if you will.
So 90% is going to go away.
And then they have the next round, which will be four live shows in May.
And that's really counting down to the final person.
So those will be done live.
But I think they've probably done...
Shit, I don't know.
They must have done eight, maybe eight episodes that will be the audition rounds, which of course are a lot of what the fun is about, and then by the time you've finally become endeared to...
Yeah, no, the audition rounds, as far as I'm concerned, is the only entertainment in these shows.
But then you get hooked.
You get hooked on...
that pulls you into watching the live shows and voting and all that excitement.
It's fabulous.
It's good.
If you're unlucky, you get hooked.
But anyway, so you're telling me, so the way they do this, they shoot like what, eight to ten shows and they get those in the can, so they just work real hard to get those done, and then they have to go back, then they have to actually go live because I guess they want phone-ins and the rest of it.
Week after week after week, and that must be the grind.
Well, no, that Those four live shows are great because the show is only going to last an hour and a half or whatever it is.
Live television is great because you start and the shit's just going to end at some point, whatever you do, and it's over.
There's no going back and fixing it.
So these shows, every day from 1 in the afternoon until 10 at night...
One after another.
And it's not front-to-back shows.
They do openings and closes, etc.
But it's really just all performances.
They're sitting there watching one after another.
And it's like grandmas on rollerblades.
It's all kinds of crazy shit.
And a lot of it is just...
I was there the last time when Patricia was doing the first week of shows.
And the judges are just so...
So tired after one of these days of taping and just emotionally drained from looking at some really bad performances.
So do they have...
And they do a wardrobe change, I would assume, between each...
So you shoot for an hour and then you change and you go back and...
Yeah.
I mean, this is all post-production.
And it's, believe me...
Yeah, I think the person who deserves to win always wins, but man, this thing is, it's all post-production.
They really put this together well.
It's art.
I mean, what an art form.
And it just makes for a fun, entertaining show and laugh about some people and get emotionally involved with others and has no other redeeming quality or value.
Yep.
No value whatsoever.
In fact, I can't even watch much television.
The networks are always wondering what's going on.
You watch shows like, what's that one with Howie Mandel?
Oh, yeah.
I like that.
It's Amnesia.
Deal or No Deal.
Well, you have Deal or No Deal.
And then Dennis Miller's doing a show now.
I think Amnesia.
It's worse.
But I like Deal or No Deal.
That's a great show.
It's an idiotic show.
There's no questions.
There's no skills.
It's just like you guess.
And then you watch people go off the deep end because they think they're going to make more money because they can't do simple math.
And look up on the screen and say, yeah, no, I think $250,000 is enough.
I doubt that I picked the million dollars and is in this suitcase I'm sitting next to.
Besides, even if it is, why should I go through all the anguish?
And it's probably not.
It's probably five bucks.
But no, I'm not going to take the $250,000, quarter of a million, even though I'm not making any money and I'm poor.
They go off and they walk off with five bucks.
It's unbelievable.
You need to see a different show.
You need to watch the show that Jerry Springer hosts.
And it's called Nothing But The Truth.
Okay?
I've watched that show once.
It's unwatchable.
I love that show.
I love that show.
This is my favorite question.
Okay?
So it's always around the $5,000 mark.
And, of course, it's all based on lie detector stuff, which is all totally sketchy.
But let's just say that, you know, this is...
I mean, it really comes down to people saying things in front of their friends and family who are sitting there.
So the question I love the most is, have you ever fantasized about gay sex?
I love that question.
It's so funny.
And you see these guys just going like, oh, fuck, man.
If I lie, then I'm going to lose the $5,000.
But if I say yes, it's like I'm never going to live this down.
My homies are going to be laughing at me.
That show is rigged weird anyway because the questions and answers are all pre-prepared.
I don't like that either.
But it doesn't matter.
But that part is so entertaining.
It makes you itch.
It makes you scratch.
It makes you cringe to watch that show.
That show is an example of what's wrong with television.
It shouldn't be encouraged.
People shouldn't watch it.
They should shoot the people who produce it.
That would be a good idea.
I love that show, John.
You have the worst taste in television.
Oh, please.
Oh, look, just because I'm on the cutting edge on the working tip of what's going on in media today doesn't mean I have horrible taste.
The media goes off the cliff.
Look, these shows are not going off the cliff.
These are the only shows that will be left because they're inexpensive to produce, highly entertaining, not offensive or useful in any other way whatsoever.
It is chewing gum for the brain.
It is fantastic.
I love it.
It's good for us.
Everything else should be done online.
It is not good for us.
It's probably the most detrimental programming in the world.
It's turning the public into a bunch of jackasses that don't know anything about anything.
A good show on current events is what we need.
People are so stupid.
It's because of these shows.
They're just stupefied by it.
It is worse than the worst kind of drug.
Well, I don't know what to say now.
You've hurt my feelings.
Well, let me just think.
I don't know.
You know what?
75 minutes.
Forget about it.
Let me think about this and I'll get back to you next week.
That's my new signal.
The time is up, John.
So you're going to let it end with my rant about your taste in television?
Yep.
I'm just going to have to end it there.
Well, okay.
You got me.
You got me.
What can I say?
You'll have to come back with something next week then.
Yes.
Not that we have an agenda or anything.
You really got me going there for a moment.
But I'm afraid if we get into it, the show will be two hours.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
We should save that topic for later.
Let's end on a high.
We're ending on a high so that people can...
They're already yelling.
In fact, a lot of people are going to help me formulate my rebuttal next week.
Good luck with that.
All right.
So you're doing Twit today?
No, tomorrow.
No, I think that Leo took off.
He's traveling somewhere.
Oh.
In Mongolia or something.
Oh, good.
Because then we get a lot more listeners, I think.
That could be.
Yeah.
And also a lot of people who are like Dvorak.
Dvorak groupies are showing up.
Oh, it's about time.
Yeah.
All right, my friend.
That was entertaining.
I think.
Yeah, and we'll be back again next week with more good stuff.
For sure.
From the Curry Manor in a wet Britain, my name is Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak in a slightly wet Northern California.
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