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April 5, 2008 - No Agenda

01:38:06

25: Grapes the Size of Little Oranges

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	Okay everybody, once again it's time for the program that emanates from two different continents every single week.
	We have no music, we have no commercials, we have no jingles, we have no seemingly value of talent or valuable talent.
	Coming to you from a soon-to-be snow-blanketed United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
	And in sunny Northern California, I'm John C. Dvorak.
	Hey John, how you doing today?
	I don't know.
	I was talking out of my ass.
	That's the only thing I try to mix up, but I never write it.
	I have no agenda, so I don't write it up.
	I try and make it up on the spot.
	I know it sucked.
	I should write it.
	What's the snow thing?
	What are you talking about?
	It's April.
	Yeah, the wind changed from the north, and you can even track it on Google Earth.
	I have a cloud layer, which is fantastic to look at.
	It's coming down directly from the north, from Scandinavia, and it's like a low-pressure system.
	I mean, it dropped about an hour ago.
	The temperature went from 15 degrees Celsius to about 8, and hail started forming, and so it should be snowing within the next five hours or so.
	Oh, nice.
	That's crazy.
	It's not nice.
	Well, you know, I understand it's largely due to the fact that Al Gore came out of his hole and saw his own shadow.
	I'm telling you, man, we've had weather, I mean, global warming.
	How can you buy it?
	When does it start?
	You know, it's supposed to be happening now.
	It's only gotten cold.
	April, indeed.
	Climate change, not really global warming, depending on who you talk to.
	There was a report in, I think, Nature Magazine.
	Some guy wrote an editorial saying that they keep redoing the calculations.
	They say there's no way, no matter what we do, we can't influence the climate so much as they say.
	It's just a cycle.
	Yeah, it goes up, it goes down.
	Well, let's not even get into this because I don't want to deal with the email.
	There's some things we say, man, on this show that just generates so much email.
	Oh yeah, religion also.
	I got one for you.
	Thursday night, Thursday evening, I was invited to a dinner at this place.
	It's a private club called Five Cavendish Square.
	Have you ever heard of this?
	No.
	Okay, so Cavendish Square, you know, it's a very nice address.
	And there's this Sicilian guy, young guy, like my age, maybe a little bit older than I am, just a few years.
	And he's turned this, you know, this beautiful, you know, London house...
	Into a private club.
	I think primary market is like, well, rich fuckers to start off with, but maybe football players or extremely wealthy businessmen.
	It's one of these places that's really blinged out.
	They've got like 15 hotel rooms and they have a restaurant, a private club, disco-like dance club.
	They've got function rooms.
	Really, really top-notch, really expensive art.
	Great food, Italian chef.
	Also from Sicily, by the way.
	And the wine menu, this of course is what it's leading up to.
	So the wine menu, you open the front page, John, it's like, cheapest wine on the front page, 2,000 pounds.
	I'm like, okay.
	Well, I don't feel like...
	Well, exactly.
	I wasn't in the right company for that.
	But the owner actually joined us after dinner, and his name is Jay.
	And he says, you know, what do you guys drink?
	We chose...
	One of my table mates had chosen the wine.
	I know it wasn't hugely expensive, but it was okay.
	And he said, let me bring you my favorite wine.
	This stuff is just awesome, he says.
	And indeed, it was fantastic.
	I wanted to see if you knew what it was, because it doesn't look terribly expensive, to be quite honest.
	He gave me a couple bottles to take home, which was another clue.
	It's Italian.
	It's a 2004 Amarone.
	Have you ever heard of this?
	Amarone, yeah.
	Amarone, yeah?
	Have you ever had this?
	Yeah, yeah, no, I've had that wine.
	I find that wine to be, for my taste, it's not a real, it's not as popular as, I think it used to be popular in like the 50s or something, but it's a slightly, it's a slightly sweet red wine.
	It has like a sweet slice that kind of goes through it, you know what I mean?
	Yeah, I know.
	It's a sweet wine from my palate, and the alcohol is quite high, usually.
	That's the other point I wanted to mention.
	I was severely over-served that evening.
	So it should say the alcohol content on the label somewhere, but they run 15% sometimes.
	Let me see.
	Maybe higher.
	You're kidding me, really.
	Let me see.
	Shit, man, it's in Italian.
	Oh, here we go.
	16%.
	Yeah, you're right.
	Yeah, it doesn't surprise me.
	So it's not a favorite of mine.
	Let's put it that way.
	I liked it.
	But it can't be expensive, right?
	That looks like a $15.
	No, it can be expensive.
	It might be inexpensive.
	I mean, the range just goes from...
	It's never a cheap wine.
	And it can get pretty expensive.
	I mean, it doesn't get really expensive.
	There are great Italian wines that are extremely expensive.
	But...
	It could cost, you know, I've seen them for, I think a typical one you'd probably pay about, in the U.S., you'd pay $35 for it.
	Okay.
	Which to me, it's kind of expensive for what you get.
	I liked it, though.
	I thought it was pretty good.
	Yeah, no.
	Well, you know, sometimes, you know, a lot of times the, I found with wine an interesting aspect to it is that often the, The situation, the company, and the environment, and a lot of other variables contribute to your overall impression of a wine.
	If you're sitting there with a Sicilian drinking it and he's paying for it, it makes it taste that much better.
	It tastes a lot better.
	I've tested this over the years.
	There are actually people...
	And I'm not going to go into too much details, but there are people who are, I don't care what rabbit I can pull out of a hat, the wine never tastes good with them.
	It does happen, doesn't it?
	It's weird.
	Hey, how about, I'm coming out to San Fran, how about dinner Tuesday night?
	Are you free?
	It sounds okay.
	Yeah, because I think I come out Tuesday afternoon, and then either Wednesday we're taking the red eye to New York, or Ron might go Wednesday, I might go Thursday.
	We have a couple meetings, like we have some stuff on Friday together in New York, and then I'm coming back to the UK. But Tuesday night would be good, because then I don't have to think about what I'm going to do for dinner.
	Yeah, and actually the restaurants are all open on Tuesday.
	A lot of people don't realize in San Francisco, on Sunday and Monday, 99% of the restaurants are closed, the good ones.
	Really?
	On Sunday?
	Sunday evening?
	Sunday evening?
	Yeah, you'll find a lot of places closed on Sunday.
	And the thing that's interesting is that the restaurant that tends to stay open on these, especially on Monday, which is really problematic, is La Folie.
	So people out there who need to get a great meal.
	And they've reintroduced Frog's Legs to the menu.
	Oh, we should have some.
	We should have some.
	Frog's legs are great.
	Yeah, I like it too.
	But all the chefs tend to go to this place on Monday.
	The chefs that are in the restaurants that are closed is quite interesting.
	You always run into one or two of them.
	So, any idea where we should go?
	No, let me look around and see what's going on.
	Maybe there's something new and trendy.
	I'll check it out.
	Alright, our first comment, John, is 23 seconds long and very important to play at the top of the show.
	Hey Adam, R.E., the latest no agenda.
	I gotta agree with Dvorak on the latest television offerings, especially here in the U.S. It's all crap, regardless of how successful some people might be making the crap.
	It's still crap.
	Give me something cultural.
	Give me something current events.
	Give me something dramatic and interesting.
	Dvorak wins.
	Sorry.
	That's right.
	You were supposed to come on this week and defend yourself.
	Yeah.
	My rebuttal, my rebuttal.
	Well, first of all, there's a couple important things that people have to realize about this program because I went back and listened to it and kind of listened how I ground myself into the ground, you know, like in third gear.
	You have to understand that this show is typically we recorded on Saturday.
	And so for me right now, it's 5.30.
	It's the end of the day.
	I've been dinking around.
	I've been doing stuff.
	And for you, you just got up.
	So I think that's a big part of what makes this show work is that I'm in a different frame of mind than you are.
	For some reason, I think that makes a difference.
	Could be.
	I think that's part of why I just collapsed.
	I just didn't have...
	Oh, crap.
	I don't know what to do now.
	Well, actually, I thought about it afterwards and came to the following conclusion.
	You had warmed up to the entire idea of a junk television program because your wife is working on a junk TV show in the Netherlands, which is one of those reality shows where she's a judge, which has got to be a great job.
	Because it's like money in your pocket, being a company man, as it were, you just basically sold out and were proud of it without thinking.
	In other words, if I was working for Standard Oil and I just got a huge raise and something about oil companies come up and it turns out that they're under indictment or something, I would probably be defending them to no end.
	And I think it's just the nature of things.
	That's my theory.
	Okay, I don't think you're correct.
	If anything, my wife working on that show reinforced my thinking.
	Now, I went back and understand that I didn't say I liked reality television.
	What I said was, I really liked television where there's an element of human truthfulness to it that is, I didn't say it in exactly these words, but we were talking about a certain type of reality programming.
	So let me expand on that.
	By the way, Deal or No Deal is the one that came to the top of the foam there.
	You brought up Deal or No Deal, and that is not one of the shows that I like.
	You said you did.
	Yeah, I was wrong.
	Because I had time to think about it.
	Seriously, listen to me for a second.
	First of all, television.
	John, you've made a lot of TV. I think I probably, in hours end-to-end, have made more than you have.
	Particularly the MTV days.
	It is, in its basis, television is an untruthful media.
	Okay?
	Everything, particularly when we started to get editing and digital video editing, there's almost no truth to anything.
	It's all pre-programmed.
	It's all thought about.
	I mean, MTV, for Christ's sakes, invented the jump cut, which was, you know, foreboding, literally, until that started happening in the early 80s.
	Because, you know, every technical move, every zoom, every cut from an interior to an exterior, just like a movie, right?
	It's untruthful.
	Even the news, you know, and it's put together.
	So the only types of television programming that actually delivers some truth are usually live programming, which you don't have a lot of, but like a sports.
	Sports is a great example.
	There's not much you can do with the switching of the cameras, and they have tons of cameras on these types of games.
	There's not a lot you can do that will change what's really happening.
	You kind of see it.
	You may not see it from the best possible angle, but you can see if the ball went in the goal or if there was a strike or whatever it is.
	It's an end-to-end sequence that all runs in parallel, and that's a pretty truthful sequence.
	Portrayal of what's happening, what you're watching, it's truthful.
	It's more truthful than anything else, let's put it that way.
	So the only thing that's...
	And I've made so much television, all of it's been full of shit.
	All of it.
	It's all meant to trick you into liking an entertainment-based product.
	Now...
	Enter reality television, which turned this up 50-fold, maybe 5,000 times.
	And if you look at programs like Holland's Got Talent, and I was there at some of the tapings, And when I look at the playback of the show, when I see how it's been put together, it is completely, every single bit of it has been moved around,
	pieces pulled in, slow motion, dramatic music, even some of the answers, although the outcome didn't change of what the judges said about an act, they cut a different answer into one act that was used for a different act.
	All of this is complete bullshit.
	In fact, I'm convinced, and I've done this, I can take a tape, one of your home movies, you just send a random home movie to me.
	I'm getting there.
	I'm getting there.
	Let me just go all the way to the end.
	So I could take your home movies and with editing, sound effects, music, and voiceover, I can create a fantastic show.
	It could be dramatic, it could be funny, whatever.
	But here's what I like about particularly these contests.
	So I'm talking about X Factor, Idol, Got Talent, and there's a couple other examples.
	Is the one thing that television cannot fake, can provoke, but cannot fake...
	It's extreme human emotion of joy or sorrow.
	And that's what these shows are built around.
	They're built around with pure honesty.
	So you have a judge who will say something completely honestly.
	The judge is not making up what they feel at that moment.
	And it will either make you extremely happy or destroy you.
	And that one little...
	That one piece of human emotion, the best of course is in the finals when you have a winner and a loser.
	But just like sports, when a guy scores a goal, that human emotion is something that you cannot make up with television.
	And that's the part that I love.
	I will sit down and watch an entire show just to get the kick of seeing that.
	And I have to say, unfortunately, usually when someone's extremely sad or getting cut down is when I like it the most.
	And that's what I like about this.
	Well, you know, I mean, you might as well just go to the grocery store and step on someone's foot and see what happens.
	Oh, man.
	I thought a whole week, and that's what I get from you.
	Thanks.
	So, you know, the thing that I wanted to interrupt you for, which wouldn't have really changed your train of thought, which, you know, okay, fine.
	I'm not going to argue about it.
	I think that one of the things is they choose people because they've been doing it on game shows for years.
	They test people to make sure they are emotional.
	They jump up and down, you know, these contestants.
	And they won't take somebody who's nonplussed or who's, you know, just not going to go, woo!
	Or anything like that.
	Correct.
	And so there's a certain rigging involved there, too, which I think is deplorable.
	But not in the talent contest genre.
	Not entirely.
	They don't know that the way they do on game shows.
	That's different.
	Okay.
	Fine.
	I'll accept that.
	But anyway, the one thing I wanted to mention, which when you were talking about how a lot of this, you know, they change these certain...
	They'll edit stuff around so it's not what really happened.
	It's my favorite, absolute favorite thing, which is always...
	To be honest about it, when I see it, I just get seriously annoyed.
	You have a live performance of some sort, or even one of these idol shows, or a comic, and they show somebody doing something, and then the guy says something funny, and they cut immediately to an audience member who is dying of laughter.
	Oh, that's all fake.
	That's all fake.
	It's all from different audience shots.
	Yeah, they take a bunch of random audience shots and then they cut them in later because there's no way you could have...
	What kind of coincidence are we talking about here?
	John, that's just the visual version of the laugh track which is still used every single day.
	It's just a visual version of it.
	Nothing new.
	That's digital video editing gave us that.
	And the other thing I wanted to say is that all these kind of talent shows, really, I never heard any of them ever give a nod to the original.
	Actually, it goes back to radio with Ted Mack's Amateur Hour.
	And then there was the Amateur Hour show on television.
	My parents used to talk about that.
	They would say, that's really Amateur Hour, is what they would say.
	Right, which is what all these shows are.
	And I mean, they're all dependent on that model from some years ago.
	And then, you know, of course, the one that mocked it the best, and I still think one of the greatest shows of this genre was The Gong Show, which actually had the same crackpot talent.
	But they had this gong element where you could gong the person.
	By the way, that's the same in Holland's Got Talent.
	Each judge has a big red button in front of them, and when they hit it, then it doesn't do a gong, but it gives them an explosion-type shot sound.
	And then when all three hit it, then the act has to stop.
	So it's essentially the same concept.
	So anyway, I find these shows to be rather...
	I'm having more trouble watching television now than ever.
	Oh, but John, I don't watch television either.
	I mean, I'm not a big television watcher, but when I do watch, I have to tell you, I really, really love it.
	And other stuff, I can get online.
	You know, the documentary stuff, I'll get the good ones from you.
	I don't have to sit through all the other crap.
	Oh, it reminds me.
	I've got a couple more for you.
	I love it.
	I love it.
	Hey, let me ask you a question.
	With all the smart computing power we have and all the smart brains that are making software these days, why is it that my calendar, my schedules are still fucked up from America changing to daylight savings time two weeks earlier than the rest of the world?
	It really messed up a lot of things.
	Yeah, I know.
	In fact, I still have one computer that will not, no matter how updated it is, will not give me the correct time.
	I mean, we have really smart professional women working for us who do a lot of our scheduling.
	You know Maggie, you know Rosie.
	I don't know if you know Carrie or not, but they all work together.
	And they use Google Calendar mainly, but there's some offshoots.
	But it's all kind of linked together.
	You know, Ron, I think, uses Outlook, and Maggie has control over that.
	But invites are generally sent out as an invite, and those all work, those calendar invites.
	So I can get one from Microsoft Outlook, and I can just accept it, and it'll pop right into my calendar.
	But usually Carrie does that for me, so I only want one person, if possible, to do my calendar.
	But there's all these meetings that got set up, and everyone was off.
	Everyone was off by an hour, one way or the other.
	Either mine was messed up, or someone else's.
	I think in this day and age, it's inexcusable.
	You know, I don't know what to tell you.
	I mean, it's just amazing to me that some of this stuff goes on the way it does.
	I mean, just to take it to more of a micro level, how come these clocks don't keep accurate time?
	We have a computer, for God's sake, and there's a clock chip with a crystal in it.
	Things have creep.
	If you run your little clock within Windows, the time will change by a couple of minutes over the month.
	Really?
	Which makes no sense to me.
	Yeah.
	And so you have to keep resetting it.
	I use the time server.
	I use the time server too.
	I use the atomic clock.
	But every time you boot, it resets the clock.
	But if you just take that thing offline and give it a month, the clock will be off by two, three, four minutes.
	It's unbelievable.
	I mean, what is the problem with this?
	You know where I've seen this being a problem?
	It has to do literally with the accuracy.
	This is what I've been told.
	The accuracy of the clock with the computer's own clock.
	That's very simplistic, I know.
	But as an example...
	Something a lot of podcasters do is they'll do what we call a double ender.
	So they'll talk on Skype, but then they'll each record their individual file.
	We've actually discussed doing it this way.
	So then the other party or one of the parties sends his file to the other person and then the thinking is you just line them up in a program like Audacity or GarageBand or something else that is multi-track and then you just set the levels and then you mix it out and you're good to go.
	But it turns out that over time in about 70-80% of the cases that you do this they will be out of sync And one file will literally be longer or shorter than the other one because of the computer's internal clock mechanism.
	This is what I've been told.
	I've seen the out-of-sync happen.
	I've been told that's what the problem is, and it just has to do with inaccuracy of the internal clock.
	Well, it's possible.
	But all I know is that if that's the case, then it's even more ridiculous.
	I mean, what does it take to make the clock accurate?
	It's just a crystal.
	I don't know.
	Maybe one of our listeners will send a note.
	We're getting a lot of listeners from all over the world that are sending in all kinds of interesting notes about what we've said about something, especially when we make a request.
	And our numbers are...
	I haven't seen the last three days' worth because Limelight's logs messed up, but our numbers have yet again increased.
	I think we're hockey-sticking.
	Well, sometimes you get these weird effects.
	So, talking about one of our standards, we haven't talked about this for a while.
	So, as I mentioned before, I've been drinking the PG Tips Gold exclusively.
	Mm-hmm.
	And so they recently, locally, for some reason, one of the big distributors had way too much of PG tips in the big 160 boxes, 160 bags, and that was getting near expiration, like in the next few months.
	So they dumped it on the market at $5.95 for a big box of this stuff.
	Wow, that's a good price.
	Yeah, it's a good price.
	And so how can I resist?
	So I bought a big box, and so I started to...
	I figured I'd better plow through this stuff because it's going to expire.
	And I can now say for certain that the taste profile of the regular versus the gold is extremely different.
	Yeah, I would agree.
	I would agree it's different.
	You like it better, I presume.
	You know what?
	I can't say I like one over the other that much.
	It took me actually a few bags of the old-fashioned stuff to get used to it again because it has a green taste, a literal vegetal green flavor that tastes a little stronger.
	The other stuff's a smoother, milder drink.
	You mean the non-gold is a little greener taste?
	Is that what you're saying?
	Yeah, yeah, it has a little bit of a weedy flavor.
	I would call it earthy.
	It's kind of grindy, earthy.
	Yeah, okay, earthy is good.
	Hey, I forgot one thing as a part of my rebuttal, man.
	I forgot the most important bit.
	Speaking of honesty, you need to apologize.
	Yeah, I was hoping you'd forget.
	Yeah, last week, we have this no agendas, the theory here.
	That means we're not supposed to really come on with a lot.
	I do make lists of maybe topics.
	But last week, I had...
	What was the topic again?
	It was about the fresh and easy supermarkets.
	Oh, right.
	I got on a jag about these fresh and easy supermarkets.
	And so I sent Adam a bunch of links for him to study.
	And he did.
	And I read too much material.
	So it was actually a plan.
	So there was an agenda.
	It was me to bitch and moan about this stuff.
	And it didn't work, did it?
	It didn't work.
	No, it didn't work because you were overprepared.
	Which is typical, by the way.
	This is one of the things I always like to...
	In broadcasting, there's...
	I think I mentioned this before.
	There's two schools of thought about when you get a guest.
	You either pre-interview them or you don't.
	And you sometimes over-prepare.
	A lot of the life is sucked out.
	What happens is you'll have a pre-conference and I'm of the don't even talk to me until the microphones open school.
	What will happen is you'll actually say something.
	The worst is when you're on the air, you break for a song or a commercial, and then you're talking to the guest, and then something really amazing comes out, and then you'll immediately, of course, try to reproduce that in the next segment.
	And it's never as well told.
	It's never as funny if it was intended to be.
	It never, ever works.
	So I tell my guests, sorry, just don't talk to me.
	Yeah, I actually have to do that on Cranky Geeks because we take these two or three breaks and then all of a sudden someone will start talking in between and I have to really scold them to tell them not to because they're going to not bring it up.
	We're doing the show for the audience, not for them to buddy up with somebody.
	They can talk later.
	Speaking of which, did you actually find out where Veronica is going?
	I saw your video.
	No.
	No?
	Now, I want to point out that video, which is on the Dvorak Uncensored...
	I want to point that video was done with a little bitty, stinky, dinky little Kodak.
	Because Kodak has these microphones in their cameras that is just amazing to use to make these kind of slipshod videos.
	And I don't know what to tell you, but every time I listened to it, it sounded good, didn't it?
	It's fantastic, yeah.
	Have you seen the flip phone?
	Have you seen one of those?
	The flip camera?
	Yeah, I've seen those.
	I've been using that one.
	It's astounding how good it is.
	Yeah, you can get really good quality.
	I mean, this is for a little flash videos.
	I mean, obviously, I don't, you know, although, you know, Kodak has one I've been playing with, which gives a 720p HD 16x9 movie.
	Oh, holy crap.
	And, which is pretty amazing, especially when you put it up on a big projector.
	So I think it was like about three or four months ago, I was in Iowa at a digital television conference that's put on by the public stations there, but they had all these people from all over the country talking about digital TV.
	And they had the guys from Frontline there, and they were talking about how they moved to digital, and then they made the comment that, you know, the guys who were, or cameraman actually, you really have to actually have more talent to get these digital cameras to work right because of the color balancing issues and all these other problems that you have.
	So you can't, for broadcast television, you have to have a consistent look.
	- Yeah. - But I showed him one of these cameras.
	I showed him, in fact, this one Kodak that has a 16x9 720p HD recording capability and stereo mics.
	And one of the producers told me, yeah, he says, that's kind of like the camera.
	A lot of the times they're using cameras like that now to produce some of these because...
	Because apparently when you're like in Afghanistan or something and you pull out...
	I've noticed this too, by the way.
	If you have one of these little bitty cameras that looks like a little snapshot camera, a worthless little snapshot camera...
	Then they don't treat you as press.
	They don't treat you as press and they don't see a big camera shoved in their face.
	They see you holding this stupid little thing.
	It looks Mickey Mouse.
	It's not threatening.
	But in fact...
	It's non-threatening and it does the job.
	But I didn't realize that the network guys, the big boys, are using these things too.
	I've made quite a study of this.
	Whenever I used to interview someone, I would always say, could you please mic us both just with a lavalier mic?
	Because the whole idea of a stick mic and then talking into it and then shoving it in someone's face, it just gives you a different result.
	Yeah, no, I think so.
	The methodology actually affects, you know, it's like a McLuhan thing, you know, the medium is the message.
	The actual methodology will affect the outcome in kind of unknown ways, and you don't know what you would have got if you'd done it differently.
	Well, I've only seen by my own experience it is most definitely different when you're using the spooning technique or whatever.
	When you have the mic on the stick.
	Oh yeah.
	It's just night and day difference.
	It's also unnerving because some of these guys will have a little crew and some of them will shoot from below.
	So you've got a guy on his hands and knees standing outside of the shot.
	You've got a sound guy.
	Yeah, it's ridiculous.
	Especially if you're out in the middle of nowhere, if you're in the public arena and people are walking by seeing this, they think, what's going on?
	What's happening?
	What's happening?
	Yeah.
	Oh man, I got another Terminal 5 story.
	You'll love this one.
	So, last week it was all messed up.
	It's still messed up at Terminal 5 with the baggage.
	How can that be?
	Well, now British Airways, who have the use of the terminal exclusively, are saying that the automatic baggage system has now failed them.
	So first it was their resource planning.
	Now it's the baggage.
	I mean, they just never really tested this.
	Even I could have said, why don't you take...
	5,000 bags of bricks and try the fucking system out.
	It doesn't seem like they did that.
	But here's what happened.
	I'm sure you read this because it's two great stories in one.
	Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, Right.
	So she arrived well on time.
	Of course she had a whole shitload of clothes.
	And the story now, which I think is probably spin, the story now is that she had one super big case that was filled with sponsored clothes, which she has to wear by contract wherever she goes.
	But when she was on the plane, they came on the plane and they said, well, you know, Miss Campbell, we're really sorry, but, you know, one of your suitcases isn't going to make it on the flight because it's messed up.
	And, well, she wound up, of course, throwing a hissy fit and getting arrested.
	But I just thought it was kind of interesting that it's still a week later.
	And after someone now, see, here's a case of someone who you already know you don't want to piss off Naomi Campbell.
	So you should really try and get her suitcases on board, I think, certainly as a paying first class passenger.
	And they're not even capable of doing that.
	I think this problem may be a little deeper than they're letting on if it's taken them this long.
	They canceled another 12 flights today.
	Short haul.
	Because they just couldn't do the baggage.
	This is not the first time something like this has happened at Denver International.
	But that was all technical, right?
	That was from day one.
	It was the skis, wasn't it?
	They hadn't figured out how the skis would work on the automatic system.
	Well, I'm not sure that that was the only thing, because most of the reports we were getting here in San Francisco, where they like to ridicule these things, was baggage mangling.
	There would be one show after another with the guy, the microphone, and it showed the bag, and the bag looked like it was chopped up in some sort of farming gear or something.
	Oh, man.
	Yeah.
	It's just amazing.
	Just amazing.
	And everyone's so embarrassed by it, too.
	And in four years, man, we've got the Olympics happening here.
	Well, you know, the funny thing is they built a new airport in Beijing that's bigger than all those terminals at Heathrow, and they did the whole thing within this period of time it took them to get Terminal 5 finished.
	And it...
	From the sounds and looks of it, the thing is amazing.
	There's been a lot of specials on TV showing this new terminal.
	It's huge.
	It's something like two miles long.
	You know, I went to Beijing the first time before...
	They were working on an airport then.
	I think it was like the third airport.
	If I go to this airport, it'll be the third different airport I've been in that are in Beijing.
	The first time I went to Beijing, I went to the old airport, the old communist airport.
	And it was a nightmare, especially trying to get out of the place.
	I mean, to get...
	Through these bottlenecks of, you know, where they had passport checks.
	There was no lines, no organization.
	So you had to kind of muscle your way in.
	So this kind of pays off to be a little bigger than usual.
	And to get, just get in there.
	And in fact, I had this experience in, I was in Saigon.
	And the Vietnamese, the airport in Saigon is still, it was even worse.
	It was some old, it looks like, it doesn't even look like an airport.
	It's one of the few airports you've ever seen that doesn't look like, it looks like it's just a big, Square, horrible looking building, thick Stalin type architecture.
	And there's no signage, which is what really kills me.
	Oh really?
	In the airport.
	There's no arrows.
	So what you're saying is it's like a casino.
	There's no exit sign.
	Well, there's no any signs, and it's not quite as nice as a casino.
	So anyway, so you go in there, but the thing was weird, they had all these guards at all the doors, and there was all the people crowding around just to get into the airport.
	But if you were like a tall Caucasian, they kind of almost, which is kind of reverse racism there.
	They kind of like got you in.
	But once you got into the place, you know, I'm trying to get out of town, right?
	So you go in there, and there's nothing to tell you.
	It's not like a big United sign, or I think I was flying on Ava.
	I'm not sure what airline.
	I think Ava.
	But anyway, there...
	So you actually literally had to go from one of those things where you check in, ticketing thing.
	You have to go from one to another and go right up to the counter and look at the screen to see what airline and flight that was.
	Oh, right.
	So everyone is crowded around, people checking in, trying to see the screens and the nightmare.
	Well, but it's these individual screens.
	There's not like a...
	There wasn't a centrally located screen, you know, like most airports have, where you can look down at either the time or where you're going and figure out where...
	There was none of that.
	You had to go from one to the other to the other to the other.
	I finally found one that was for this carrier, and then I just asked them, and I finally found my way out of there.
	But I thought that was pretty bad.
	Now, since we're on the topic, or I brought the topic up of airline terminals, my all-time favorite...
	Horrible airline terminal.
	And I'm not sure if this has been improved at all, because I haven't been there since the fall of communism, but Moscow.
	I've been to Moscow's airport.
	So Moscow, you go into this airport, which was, I think, new at the time, and the place is dark.
	I mean, literally dark, and there's gypsy kids running around all over the place pickpocketing people in the terminal.
	What year was this, John?
	What year were you there?
	About one year before the fall of communism, which was...
	Oh, me too.
	Like 88, 89?
	Yeah, something like that.
	Yeah, that's when I was there.
	Oh, interesting.
	Yeah, well, I wouldn't have been able to see it because it's so dark in the terminal.
	But anyway...
	I'll be wearing the red rose.
	The funny scenes, besides the kids running around, there was also one, in the entire airport, there was one automatic door that opened and closed to let people in and out.
	And it was surrounded by kids who kept jumping up and down on the thing to open and close the door.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So you couldn't...
	Go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	You're right.
	It wasn't like an Argus-based electronic eye.
	It was a mat.
	It was a mat.
	Pressure mat.
	Pressure mat that would open it up.
	Right.
	Old school.
	So you can't get out that door.
	And meanwhile, they...
	I talked to somebody about this, why the place is so dark, by the way, and some guy told me that, well, the deal is that it was designed by a German company and they specced out all these lights.
	There's all these little bulbs that were inset and kind of cans.
	The whole ceiling was covered with them, but there was no light coming out of them.
	He said the Germans specced this thing out to a certain wattage bulb, not to a certain lumen, and when they used Russian bulbs, they got about half the lumens out of them, so the place was pitch black.
	I was there with the Moscow Music Peace Festival.
	Do you remember that?
	No.
	Oh, that was...
	Do you want to hear the story?
	Are you interested?
	Yeah, yeah, no, sure.
	Okay, so Doc McGee, I don't know if that name means anything to you.
	Yeah, it rings a bell.
	Yeah, very famous manager of bands.
	And in the 80s, he was the manager of Bon Jovi, Motley Crue.
	Well, those are the two big ones.
	And he had been caught, I don't know if he was, I think either he had rented the Learjet or was registered to his name.
	There was a Learjet that landed in Miami with like 5,000 kilos of coke.
	And so he got busted for it.
	And the judge gave him kind of a get out of jail free card.
	And he had to do some great community service.
	So the idea was he would do an anti-drug, anti-alcohol concert in Russia.
	And of course, this went up to some pretty high levels because this was a political thing as well.
	So he's clearly well-connected in all the right places.
	So off we went.
	And this, I think it was 88.
	In a rented DC-8.
	Some crappy plane.
	So Bon Jovi, Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, but with the other Black Sabbath guys, Geezer Butler, Tommy Iommi, Skid Row.
	We stopped in Germany, picked up the Scorpions, and then we landed in Moscow.
	And it was for this huge concert that would be held in Lennon Stadium.
	So we were in the hotel right near Red Square where they actually turned on the hot water in that part of the city as a gesture to their guests.
	And I could probably fill up three no agendas worth of stories about that trip there.
	But I'll just give you one that was pretty cool.
	Because, of course, this was the – I'll give you two stories.
	This was the anti-drug, anti-alcohol concerts.
	So on the plane, on the way over, and this is when Sharon Osbourne was still just a little rotund, kind of pale, no personality having English girl who was managing Ozzy Osbourne.
	So she was on board, and Ozzy was completely, I mean completely plastered.
	Everyone was plastered, but Ozzy was really, really out of it.
	And he's standing near the laboratory, because we were all kind of sitting together, and he's like, Sharon!
	Sharon!
	I gotta go!
	Someone in the loo!
	Sharon!
	Even because someone was occupied.
	And Sharon's like, oh, Ozzy, just wait!
	So he wets himself right there, right in the aisle.
	Just like a second grader, a huge wet spot in his pants, which really kind of set the tone for the rest of the entire trip.
	Who would pick that guy to go on an anti-alcohol tour?
	That's my point.
	Oh, like the Motley Crue guys were cool.
	Or Skid Row.
	Come on.
	Or any of them.
	Exactly.
	They were like four nights or five nights.
	So on the second night, which of course consisted of lots of vodka and just brazen drunkenness.
	It was crazy.
	The Moscow chapter of the Hell's Angels showed up in front of our hotel.
	Didn't know they had one.
	And remember, this was still before the wall came down.
	And they were on Java motorcycles, you know, these Yugoslavian-built bikes.
	And they were out of their minds, John.
	They were like popping wheelies, flipping off the back.
	It was just...
	It was like being in a fucking movie.
	And I'll just never forget.
	It's like...
	You have this idea of what a communist state, particularly what Moscow would be like, and you're there.
	And it's just...
	There was no control.
	It was mayhem.
	I looked at their technology...
	The technology was like old gray Volkswagen buses with curtains.
	This was supposed to be the highly technical KGB that could eavesdrop on everything and had superiority over the world.
	No way!
	Well, I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan when he became president and he was shaking his fist at Russia and he called him the evil empire and he went on and on and on.
	He did this for like a while.
	Mr.
	Gorbachev, bring that wall down!
	And he never – he went to Russia and it's almost like he went to Russia and had an epiphany and he never, ever again said anything about the evil empire.
	Because he saw it because it's not there, right?
	Yeah, he saw it was a big bunch of bull.
	I mean, I noticed it, but I was staying in the Mir Hotel, which is across from that Russian, that white building that got shelled.
	And got some nice photos.
	And they had Mike's in the room.
	That were obviously, because the mirror used to be, I guess it was the Diplomats Hotel for a number of years, and then it became a public hotel.
	Were they like big Sennheisers instead of micro stuff?
	No, they were.
	They were big clunky mics, but they had been painted over so many times because the room kept getting repainted, and they were all just a gob of paint.
	What's that bump there?
	Yeah.
	It's a big gob of pain.
	And in every floor there was a woman that was the floor woman that you had to check in with.
	They never really did any security.
	But you were told before you went, if you did your due diligence, you had to give them gifts constantly.
	Oh yes, the floor lady.
	If you wanted toilet paper or if you wanted to make a phone call.
	Yeah, and so you had to drop off toys.
	Apparently at the time, the most valuable thing you could give people besides cigarettes were like, I was told this, and they got a kick out of it, because most of them had kids, and these little Tonka toys or these little mini things, those little Hot Wheels, those little things, those were like gold in Russia at the time.
	And so you'd gift them.
	Did you go to the hooker boat?
	Did you see that when you were there?
	The what?
	There was like a hooker boat.
	No, no, but I went to the International Hotel or whatever it was called.
	Right, that's where we stayed.
	That's where we stayed, in the International Hotel.
	Well, you stayed there.
	Yeah, and they had a rope, and the rope was to, you know, hookers on one side, hotel guests on the other side.
	It was phenomenal.
	Yeah, I think we're...
	I lost you there.
	Oh, I gotcha.
	I gotcha.
	So anyway...
	Anyway, that place was crawling.
	It was unbelievable.
	It was.
	And the funny thing is about that international hotel...
	You still there?
	Yeah, I'm here.
	You have to cut this out.
	I gotcha.
	The funny thing about that international hotel is that I was told before I went there that it was modeled after the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.
	It was supposedly done by the same architects.
	And it was funny because you go in there and you could recollect certain things because it had the big open atrium.
	But everything was done on the cheap and the cement didn't seem up to par.
	There was just a kind of a falling apart nature everywhere.
	It was weird.
	It looked like it was genuine 17th century, but that was actually just shitty construction.
	Yeah, it was weird.
	So anyway, I haven't been back.
	I mean, I would love to go to St.
	Petersburg and go to the Hermitage Museum.
	That's the only thing.
	Here's one final thing about the floor lady.
	So if you had to request a phone call, I think it was either 12 hours or 24 hours in advance if you wanted to make a call, international call.
	So, you know, I wanted to call home.
	And if you weren't in your room when they came knocking, then you would lose your call, right?
	Because, of course, you know, the theory is the KGB had to set up all the recording equipment, etc.
	And so I was just, you know, that was very frustrating.
	And I'd only been, I'd been married for like six months and, you know, it was just, I was much younger and I wanted to call home.
	And I wound up hanging out with the, because I knew a lot of the video crew that was there, but Westwood One was doing all of the audio, and they had a satellite truck.
	So I went up to the satellite truck.
	I was hanging out with the sound engineer.
	And I was talking about the phone call.
	I said, oh, you know what?
	Here, just pick up that phone over there.
	And I pick it up.
	I got a 516 area code dial tone.
	So I could just dial, you know, 1201.
	I called home.
	Oh, man.
	Oh, before I forget, be sure to check out our complete show notes done every week by Bubba, the greatest, hardest working guy in the universe.
	And where's that?
	At Cagematch at...
	Yeah, Dvorak.org slash Cagematch or Cagematch.Dvorak.org without the www.
	That gets there.
	It's a subdomain.
	Bub always goes through the whole show and then does show notes, which is pretty cool.
	And then I usually retrofit them into the show notes page.
	I try.
	Yeah, he also sends some commentary once in a while.
	But yeah, no, that's very handy.
	I don't know how valuable show notes are in general, but I think they're good for search engines in case we're talking about something that somebody actually wants to say.
	Yeah, I think they're incredibly valuable.
	I mean, isn't there always a moment...
	If you're listening to a show, then you're in show listening mode, but maybe later you're in browsing mode and you'll think, oh yeah, let me just go check up on that.
	It's like a permalink, you know?
	You could say, I'm going to post it on Dvorak.org slash blog, but you could just say the show notes, and everyone should kind of know where that is.
	Well, it helps you find a show, because every once in a while, if I had this happen to me, somebody sent me a note, they said they looked through all the notes, they couldn't figure out which show it was where I mentioned something about, you know, it was actually off of Cranky Geeks, and they sent a note someplace else saying, you know, you were talking about this town in Arkansas that's so cool, and I can't find any...
	It's metadata.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it is metadata.
	But anyway, the town, which I ended up sending the guy an email, but there is this town in Arkansas that if anybody's in the neighborhood, I would recommend checking it out, called Van Buren.
	And Van Buren is kind of a pristine Victorian town.
	In the bottom of a...
	You kind of come in from Oklahoma and you look down and there's this, like, it looks like a fake.
	It looks like a Hollywood movie set of all these old Victorians.
	This is like an old Victorian downtown.
	And you go down there and it's, you know, these buildings are all from the, you know, turn of the century for late 1800s.
	And they're all in perfect condition and there's, you know, they turn the town into like a tourist trap for the area.
	It's gorgeous.
	Hmm.
	I shall have to visit.
	Yeah, you'll never get there.
	I mean, it's almost impossible.
	I would have never gone in a million years of it.
	I was between speeches.
	I had to give a talk in Dallas, and I had to give a talk like four days later in Memphis or Nashville.
	So I said, well, let me just drive.
	So I figured I'd take this drive.
	Cool idea, actually.
	So I drove from Dallas to Oklahoma.
	I went through Oklahoma, which is really depressing.
	It's big.
	Oklahoma is just really vast and flat.
	Well, there's a lot of decrepit is the problem.
	Anyway, so you get up there and then you go cut across.
	So I took a shot across the entire state of Arkansas, which started in Van Buren.
	I didn't take 40.
	I think it's 62 or something like that.
	The old US highway as opposed to the freeway, which shows you nothing.
	And the old U.S. highways, if you float around in the south, takes you through all these old towns where the highway used to go.
	Anyway, so I went all the way through and I found Arkansas to be an absolutely fantastic state.
	I think the underrated people don't, you know, they think it's, you know, they think it's just a bunch of hicks or whatever, but they make fun of themselves when you get up into the Ozarks.
	They have, you can buy t-shirts, you know, the toothless hillbilly on them.
	Quite funny.
	And there's actually, what fascinated me about Arkansas the most is that there's a wine growing region in the mountains.
	In Arkansas?
	Not only that, but there was this one winery, Familia something or other, you know, normally I should be prepared, but we don't prepare on this show, so I don't have to remember anything.
	Correct, correct.
	But there was a, the guy told me, and I got a long lecture from these winemakers, that Arkansas is the only state where they grow all four kinds of grapes.
	They grow the vinifera, and there's this weird grape that they, this big giant grape, this thing's the size of a small orange grape.
	It's a muscadine grape.
	And they make a wine out of it called muscadine wine, which you can get.
	They grow it all over the South.
	Is that like muscadet?
	Is that the same?
	No, no, no.
	Muscadet is a vinifera grape.
	This is called muscadine.
	It's called muscadine wine.
	And it's apparently really good with deer meat.
	It is almost impossible to choke down.
	Although I have to say this place, this one place, this familia, whatever, made one that was actually drinkable.
	And, you know, by the way, while I was discussing this, I looked up the Wikipedia.
	If you go to grape varieties and look at the Wikipedia, there's actually six varieties of grapes that are made into wine.
	But the main one, I'll go over for people out there, is the Vinifera.
	That's the one that we know and love.
	And then there's the Labrusca, which is the Conqueror, Catabua, those kinds of grapes.
	And the one that Muscadine comes from is called the Rotundifolia.
	And the Muscadine grapes, and I never had these grapes before.
	They're very interesting.
	I was in Atlanta once, and I went to the farmer's market.
	I always shop when I'm floating around.
	And there was this kind of a bin with these huge fruits in there.
	I never seen anything quite like that.
	They look like a really extremely large plum.
	And with the same coloration, only perfectly round.
	And I don't know what it was, and just as soon as I saw it, I said, are those muscadine grapes?
	And the guy says, yeah.
	And you know, like, what do you think they are?
	And so I bought them, and I ate them.
	You eat them like an apple.
	They're so big.
	And I brought a bunch of them home, and the kids loved them.
	It's really a good...
	But it's a big giant thing.
	It's not like a bunch of grapes.
	It's like these big...
	Does it have seeds in it?
	Yeah.
	No, it's just like a giant round grape that is like some sort of from another planet.
	They're pretty good.
	But anyway, there's riparia, which is another variety.
	But anyway, the guys, they grow four of the six types, I guess, in Arkansas.
	So that whole grape wrap, all the different times, can you get laid if you lay that on women?
	Does that work?
	What, the grape talk?
	Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
	Yeah, it hasn't worked for me.
	But anyway, so the, but back to this winery.
	So I find out, I did a little research.
	There was four wineries there when I went there, but apparently according, or before prohibition, there were 45 wineries.
	And I visited all four of the ones that were in business, and one of them just was bought by Gallo, as a matter of fact, and they were thinking of adding more stuff.
	And the only thing, the only, I don't want to beat this to death, but the one thing that was interesting is that I had a I had a suspicion that this was a wine-growing area when I got into it because there is a kind of a fauna flora thing that I've run into in various wine-growing areas around the world.
	If there's a lot of oak trees around, there will be a ton of hanging lichen.
	Not dissimilar to what you'd see in Savannah, Georgia, or places like that, but without the humidity, just a drier kind of a climate.
	And you run into this down in Southern California.
	First I was driving in the mountains, and I ran into this hanging lichen, and it turned out to be one of the Paso Robles wine-growing area.
	And I've run into this in the mountains in the Napa Valley, and then when I'm driving through Arkansas, I get this exact same characteristic, and I go...
	And I turned the corner as a winery.
	And it was very interesting.
	Are there any wines from Arkansas that you drink regularly or that you like?
	No, but you know what?
	There's one winery that I mentioned.
	I would order wine from them.
	They actually made a Zinfandel that was better than you'd imagine.
	But they also had a really good sweet wine.
	They made a Cabernet that was credible.
	I like that.
	A Cabernet that is credible.
	Nice.
	It was credible.
	And there was a bunch of...
	All the wines that were actually...
	I talked to the wine guy.
	I took some photos.
	I didn't blog it because it was too long ago.
	I realize I could probably talk about marijuana the way you talk about wine and different kinds of strains and there's this great little place on Jamaica if you turn left from Montego Bay going up the new highway.
	There's probably a couple members of the audience that would appreciate that.
	Hell yeah.
	There's a lot of great weed podcasts I might point out.
	Really?
	Oh, yeah.
	You know the coincidence about that is that I have, you know, John Dvorak is a, there's four writers in the country with that name.
	And that's what we all use, or I use different, I make sure they use the C. John C, yeah.
	There's a John Dvorak plane, he's a medallurgist.
	And there's the other one I can't remember.
	It's John M or John H or John something.
	And he writes for High Times and he's one of the biggest proponents.
	Seriously, one of the biggest proponents of legalizing marijuana.
	And nobody has ever confused the two of us.
	I have never gotten an accidental email for him.
	There's been absolutely no connection.
	I've never met or talked to the guy or even emailed him.
	And it's almost like it's such a different track that there's no crossover whatsoever.
	They asked me to do their, this was just as we were raising our first round of finance, they asked if I wanted to be a part of the High Times, you know, the annual contest, which was being held in Amsterdam, where, you know, you have to smoke like 50 different types of weed, and then you decide which one is the best.
	I so wanted to do it.
	I really, really did.
	And Ron and I said, you know, man, that's not good.
	If we're like raising a round of finance, you might want to not do that.
	So they do that in Amsterdam?
	They have a smoking contest?
	Yeah, every year.
	Every year, big smoking contest.
	And I think it's sponsored by High Times, which I believe originates from...
	No, no.
	Wasn't it published at one time out of Amsterdam?
	I don't know why I'm thinking that.
	Anyway.
	It's just like, you know, it's like...
	In the wine business, instead of being concerned about the qualities, it would be like a magazine called, you know, Drunken...
	Oh, no, no, no, no.
	Shot.
	No, man.
	There's a lot more to this.
	Hammered.
	Hammered.
	Hi, I'm Adam Curry.
	Adam C. Curry from Hammered Magazine.
	I'd like to interview the candidate, please.
	Hey, by the way, I only have a little camera.
	I'm not threatening.
	Just let me interview you with this.
	Oh, man.
	So that's my Arkansas.
	So anyway, so I went all the way through Arkansas, and I caught, like I said, excellent music stations, country and western stations.
	Went to Memphis, spent the night in Memphis, which is kind of the, you know, there's the two music centers of Tennessee.
	Nashville and Nashville.
	And Memphis is the black, and Nashville is the white.
	And so I stayed in this motel, or not a motel, but a Holiday Inn or something.
	It was right downtown.
	It was just all black.
	And they had a...
	We had a basement band that was like a little nightclub in there and it was like I was the one white guy in there and nobody cared.
	And you made up for three.
	I did.
	They said, oh good, that was our quota.
	We're in, we're good.
	You can close the doors now.
	So I sat there and just listened to some of the best music imaginable and then took off the next day.
	It went around the town and it has a very nice, there's a good barbecue place.
	Then I went to Nashville and did what I did and took off, took a plane home.
	Nice.
	I've been to Nashville.
	Nashville is now the, it's like the new LA for music.
	Everyone's going down to Nashville.
	Yeah.
	It's really, really happening there.
	I haven't been in a long time.
	Well, when I was in Memphis, I did stop at Elvis Presley's.
	Oh, you got to.
	Yeah, how can you be in Memphis and not go there?
	Yeah, that was kind of amusing.
	Smaller than you think it is, right?
	Yeah.
	Oh yeah, no, it's very small.
	It would be a nice, it would be a comfortable house.
	Oh yeah, no complaints, but you see it in pictures and you have this much larger than life idea of what it really is, and then you see it, it's like, oh, okay.
	Is this where he shot the TV? That's all anyone ever cares about.
	You know what it reminds, it actually reminded me a little bit, Bill Gates' first house before he moved into this monster, you know, college size.
	Running on Vista, yeah.
	He had a house very similar to Elvis's.
	It had a lot of stuff.
	It was like not up and down.
	It wasn't like a two-story house.
	It was like a story.
	And then down below, there was like a basement with a bunch of rooms in it that were credible.
	Just like the Cabernet.
	Just like the Cabernet.
	But yeah, it was worth going and visiting.
	And then his grave was there.
	Yeah.
	Hey, we got a new fan of the show, and I want to play this guy.
	I'll just play a little bit of his comment, and I want to take the whole thing.
	But he has a great voice, a great rap.
	Listen to this guy.
	Hey, New Agenda guys, Grandpappy John and Adam.
	This is Dan, ex-New Yorker, marooned in Fort Lauderdale.
	I just know that you guys will want to talk about the banks pulling out of funding, the private equity capital takeover of Clear Channel this week.
	That's all I wanted to play.
	Huh?
	Did you hear about this?
	Yeah, I wasn't following it, though.
	It's a pretty big deal, John.
	That's not trivial.
	Since Clear Channel bought everything, yeah, I think so.
	They own so much, and I know through the grapevine, because I still have lots of friends in the industry, that these Clear Channel stations, now they're even consolidating stations in New York into the same physical space.
	There's a stop on hiring people.
	You know, that's worrisome.
	Well, you know, it seems to me that when you start to, you know, you're one of these big companies and you start buying up properties to corner the market, and then you cheapen the product.
	Because the product, let's face it, radio, since Clear Channel came around, and they're not the first to do it.
	I mean, they actually picked up on a trend that had begun long before then.
	No, wait a minute.
	They're the first to do it when the rules change and they actually could own all the stations in one market.
	I'm talking about they weren't the first to cheapen the product.
	Oh, of course.
	But radio is inherently the owners of stations.
	And look, big radios, big New York radio stations run with like five people.
	It's already really, really cheap.
	It's the lowest rung of the show business ladder.
	Right.
	And so, you know, but the product is not what it was in, you know, any number of years ago.
	And...
	I mean, of course, they have to compete now with CDs.
	I mean, I'd rather listen to a disc.
	And then the only real new addition to radio has been political talk radio.
	Which is doing well, actually.
	I was doing very well, but that only came about, that's also part of the revolution in radio, because they changed one of the laws, I can't remember the name of it, where you had to have a balanced opinion.
	Yeah, you had to have equal airtime.
	Yeah, it was called the equal something or other.
	It's stupid, I can't remember.
	I was taught that in college.
	Equal access, I think.
	Yeah, I was taught that in college, in my broadcasting program.
	Yeah, equal access.
	Anyway, so if I said something negative about the...
	or say I was promoting some Democratic issue, they'd have to give the same number of minutes to a Republican.
	But that was killed.
	Fair use.
	No, no, no.
	It's equal airtime.
	There was a term for it.
	Anyway.
	I'm afraid to use my browser.
	I don't want to kill the connection, so...
	I'll use mine.
	But anyway, that was eliminated in 1987, and that's when Rush Limbaugh hit the scene, because he's the first guy to exploit it.
	That was my friends who did that whole network for him and who sold all his advertising the first, I think, five years.
	They syndicated my shows as well, Media America, a little company in New York.
	They made so much money.
	I'm just irked by the fact that I can't think of the term.
	It's equal airtime.
	No, no.
	That's not the term.
	It's the Equal Airtime Act of 1932.
	Let me type in Equal Airtime Act.
	You watch.
	It'll be the top hit on Google, man.
	I'm telling you.
	Equal Airtime Act.
	Hey, is something fucked up with the internet?
	Did I read somewhere that Level 3 was having some low-level networking problems?
	Because I'm having a lot of trouble with certain sites...
	Everything, like, really comes in fast, but certain sites just give me all kinds of trouble and broken connections?
	I noticed this last night.
	It was happening.
	Okay, I'm not the only one.
	And particularly, Google seems to be messed up.
	And I'm getting all kinds of...
	I did some trace routes and a little bit of, you know, like, really kind of...
	You know, semi-techy stuff to see what was going on.
	And I got warnings like, you know, this IP address is used by two different interfaces over at Google.
	I mean, I'm sure it has something to do with how they route their traffic, but I'd never seen that warning before.
	Let me see if I can reproduce it, actually, while you're looking up the equal airtime.
	They call it the equal time rule, but it's the fairness doctrine that maybe was the term I was looking for.
	That sounds like something much bigger.
	Well, it says the equal, and Wikipedia, which I hate to use all the time.
	Oh, God, don't do that.
	That really pisses me off.
	The equal time rule is sometimes confused with the fairness doctrine.
	Warning, mail.google.com has multiple addresses using 64.23.183.
	So now it's...
	I don't know, man.
	I thought I read somewhere that Level 3 was, and it's probably like border gateway protocol, someone's announcing some stupid route or something, but it's really, or either that or they're messing with China again.
	I was having nothing but trouble last night, and the connection that we have this morning, which is usually pretty clean, is pretty crappy.
	But anyway, the Fairness Doctrine, the Equal Time Rule, whatever the case is.
	Once they banned that in 1987, then this political talk radio began to emerge.
	And it became, it's a huge moneymaker, but it's so dependent on the people.
	I mean, Rush Limbaugh has like 15 million listeners.
	And he probably makes, you know, I can't imagine how many millions of dollars he makes a year.
	30.
	30?
	Yeah, that's just his base rate.
	If he has a regular year, 30 million a year.
	Okay, well then there's all these other guys, including the only other competition to this type of radio has been sports talk.
	And there's money there too, but not quite as much.
	That's a lot harder because you have East Coast, West Coast vibes and stuff like that.
	It's a little harder to do it on a national scale.
	With Limbaugh, it's just blasted out on all these AM stations that work everywhere.
	It's beautiful.
	Yeah, no, it's amazing.
	And there's maybe four other guys that are making nearly that much money.
	But that's it for radio.
	I mean, if I listen to radio, I tend to listen to that stuff.
	And then I put the CD on, or even I still play cassettes.
	I mean, the rest of the stuff is horrible.
	I mean, college stations are okay.
	Because you have some experimental stuff on there and music that you haven't heard before.
	But the rest of it, which is all programmed by some central location somewhere, is just not interesting.
	Well, that's really the trick, is to have some, with radio, to have some form of localization.
	And really, they also made radio a very untruthful medium.
	You've got one guy sitting...
	In one central place, and he's doing breaks on four stations at once.
	So he'd be saying good morning to Pennsylvania on one channel, and then he'll be saying good morning to Kansas on another channel.
	And it doesn't work that way.
	You really have to be in tune with what's going on in the community of your listeners.
	Adam, give us an announcement from Kansas.
	Hey, good morning everybody.
	It's Adam C. Curry and good morning kids!
	How you doing?
	We're wacky here on the Clear Channel Station.
	I'll be taking your phone calls.
	1-800-2420-100.
	Good luck!
	There you go.
	It's like turning on a switch.
	I actually remembered the 1-800 number, not of a Kansas station, but that was Z100 in New York.
	How sad is that?
	You said it so many times you remember it.
	1-800-242-0100 Good luck from Z100. So anyway, that's the problem with radio.
	So every once in a while, somebody will buy some little dyeing station and they'll pump it up.
	It gets really popular because it's the only thing in town.
	I love the romanticism of it.
	I really love the idea of a radio.
	I'm a disc jockey in that way.
	That's what always attracted me to radio.
	There was always that guy in the darkened room, smoking a cigarette, taking phone calls, and just talking to the people.
	I've always found that to be a very romantic...
	Type of business.
	And that's always what's attracted me to.
	And I think that's also what's attracted me to podcasting.
	And why I don't do...
	Despite everyone...
	I do my show now.
	I hook it up to Live 365 so you can listen to a live stream while I'm actually recording the Daily Source Code.
	And then people will Twitter stuff while I'm talking.
	But they always say, well, why don't you put up a video stream?
	It's like, I don't want you to fucking see me.
	I want to be in your head.
	I don't want you to...
	You know, it's like there's something about that theater of the mind that has always attracted me to the medium of just audio.
	Yeah, no, I've always been a big fan of it myself.
	And, you know, I'm a subscriber to Stan Freeberg's theories, you know.
	Who's that?
	Well, Stan Freeberg was this comic in the United States who was also a radio genius and became an advertising guy over the years.
	And he is the one who did...
	He did a bunch of novelty records.
	You probably remember most of them.
	Back in the 60s or 70s.
	But he was a big advocate of turning radio into this...
	things that weren't happening.
	I mean, I always like to work with somebody that has knowledge of this type of broadcasting where you can say to them, say, "So, we have in the studio, Adam Curry, and you have to be here to see it, but he's in here naked." Yeah, exactly.
	And then the other guy played, well, I came in naked because, you know, I thought you were supposed to be naked on this show.
	And, you know, you just go with that kind of thing.
	And people, I know there's a bunch of people that will listen to something like that and say, wow, that's amazing he'd come in naked like that.
	Yeah, but see, that's the part that I never liked.
	You know, that to me, you know, because that always got taken so far and we're like, wait, here we go.
	Let me do it for you.
	Hey John, I'm in the chopper right now.
	I'm flying over Guilford.
	I see that we've got some precipitation coming up.
	We'll be back later with the No Agenda Weather Chopper.
	Over to you, John.
	You're beating yourself to death.
	Yeah, that hurt.
	But I never liked that stuff.
	I think it was amusing.
	So anyway, but radio is dead, let's face it.
	There you go, radio is dead.
	But you know what?
	I think that we should actually consider putting up a live stream whenever we do this.
	If people want to tune in, they can fucking tune in.
	Would you mind?
	No, I wouldn't mind.
	I mean, we do that with Cranky Geeks.
	They run a live stream.
	But it's like such a small number of people that actually listen to the live stream that the work that it entails doesn't seem to be worth it to me.
	But if you want to do it, I don't care.
	I mean, we don't cut anything out of the show anyway.
	Well, the only thing that can make it different is if you then have...
	At that point, you can create a live feedback loop, and that's what I've enjoyed.
	And I've specifically chosen not to do a chat room or anything like that.
	That's just distraction.
	But with Twitter, it takes about two or three minutes before a tweet comes through.
	And of course, everyone can figure out how to get Twitter working.
	IRC channels are sometimes a little more challenging, whatever.
	It's the thing du jour.
	But because of that two-minute delay, things kind of come in after I finish the thought while I'm playing a record or a song.
	And it's an interesting feedback loop.
	I don't know if it's something we'd want to use, but that's really the only reason to do a live stream.
	You know, I don't think it's a, you know, it might be worth experimenting with because the fact is the public that is listening, I mean, and I've said this before, I feel that way with my writing.
	Generally speaking, the collective knowledge of the listeners is way beyond anything that, you know, the content provider has up his sleeve.
	And so you get, except for the jackasses out there, generally speaking, you get, often get interesting takes.
	In fact, Jim Rome, the sports broadcaster, uses that term takes, and he has people, it's mostly, the show, when you break it down, is largely the public.
	Well, exactly, that's, exactly.
	That's the same thing with my show.
	Instead of taking live calls, I just have people call into the voicemail, and I just play their comment and stop it midstream and comment on it, and it's kind of become my art form.
	Yeah.
	No, and I think it's a good one, but we can try it, and I think the Twitter thing might work.
	You know, we can pick up on what somebody's saying.
	Well, particularly if we do it Saturday, you know, Saturday is kind of a day when people wouldn't mind, you know, looking out, because also Twitter is a great alert mechanism.
	You know, I'll say, hey, I'm going to start the show in 30 minutes, and then it kind of replicates, you know, so...
	I have followers, like 4,000 followers or whatever, and so they may or may not see that, and then other people will tweet it themselves, kind of like a mini blogosphere, and they'll tweet that and their followers will hear about it, and it kind of expands pretty quickly.
	So within 15 to 30 minutes, you can get several hundred people listening in on a stream.
	Okay, well, let's give it a shot.
	I need to get a Twitter account, apparently, because I keep getting people inviting me and everyone is demanding that.
	And there's all these, you know, they say, you should use it for marketing.
	I'm going, oh, whatever.
	It's just another thing I don't feel like doing.
	It's like a ping.
	What I'm not that interested in, although from time to time I'll do it, is I'm at the gas station.
	I'm here.
	That is not so interesting to me.
	I don't follow many people, maybe 100, 150.
	But if I just want to alert people to a blog post that I've just done...
	And I use it sparingly, because you have people who every blog post, they'll tweet that they've posted something.
	It's like, I don't care.
	But if there's something really urgent, and a Twitter showed up from you, I'd check it out, I'd click it, I'd say, alright, it's a good alert mechanism for whatever you're doing.
	You follow 150?
	That seems like a lot.
	No, it's very low.
	Oh, it's very low.
	Most people...
	In fact, I'm number 50 on followers.
	There's this kind of like Hall of Fame thing.
	I forget the URL. And you can see who has the most followers.
	And you'll see that the people at the top...
	Like Barack Obama has the most followers.
	But he has the automatic switch set on that automatically makes everyone who follows you someone you follow.
	And I think there may be some correlation between that.
	Huh.
	So what you want is a lot of followers and only follow a few select.
	Yeah, I don't have time to list all these people.
	Because it's obviously a fake to say that, you know, if you've got 5,000 followers and you're following 5,000 followers.
	Yeah, that's stupid.
	No, it's stupid.
	It's stupid.
	But the 150, that's just about right, you know?
	And, you know, there's a lot of stuff that goes by, and I miss a lot, and I don't go back into archives.
	But there are other things, like, this is what is kind of cool about Twitter, because their API... It has been open to developers for a while, and a lot of the people who use it are geeky developers, apparently.
	You have stuff like Twitter Mail, which...
	Do you know how Twitter has something very interesting?
	If you use the at sign...
	Do you know about this, John?
	No.
	Okay.
	So, here's the concept.
	I'm following these 150 or 160 people.
	So whatever they put on Twitter, it comes up, it kind of scrolls by continuously, just like an IRC channel, kind of.
	But then if someone...
	So my Twitter name is Adam Curry, all one word.
	If someone in a tweet...
	I have to use the vocabulary.
	If someone in a tweet does at sign Adam Curry, then it will show up in my Twitter stream.
	So it's kind of interesting, because you can get drawn into other conversations.
	Oh, so in other words, not somebody you're following, but somebody who wants to get your attention.
	Well, how come that's not abused by spammers?
	Well, you can block people, so that's another nice thing.
	You can say, I never want to see something from this person ever.
	Yeah, but what if you have to get it to them?
	I mean, you can spam them once, then.
	Yeah, I mean, so the universe isn't that big yet that that problem has cropped up yet.
	It will.
	But then there's this other place, crap, I keep forgetting, but it will go into Twitter and it will build the threads for you.
	So if I put something on Twitter, then it'll show you a graphical threaded view of all the responses that came into that.
	It's interesting, John.
	I think you should check it out.
	I mean, it is not the chat room, CB radio type piece of shit.
	I'm going to do it eventually when I have a few extra minutes.
	It's not that hard.
	But what you need to do is you need to get a client.
	Don't just use the website.
	I have something called...
	Twitterific, which is like a Mac app.
	There's all kinds of different apps that'll run it, and you can run it through, I think, Gtalk, and you can have it to IM and to SMS, and it's interesting.
	Let's just ask the public, what is the best Windows app that would link into this thing and make it practical?
	I'll take their advice.
	You do like getting email, don't you?
	I don't get any spam, so it's not that big of a problem for me.
	It's all high-quality stuff.
	Well, I don't know about that.
	I get a lot of email, and it takes up an hour a day at least.
	But I don't look at all.
	I mean, I do look at all the mail that comes from people that are...
	Actually trying to get a hold of me personally, but there's an awful lot of press releases and, you know, somebody's just to subscribe to your video and that kind of thing.
	I just kind of just...
	If people would only use the subject line a little more...
	With a little more intelligence.
	If you want to get a hold of me, you've got to have a great subject line that works.
	That's where it's got to take place.
	That gets a click.
	I agree, and I think the other thing that people should know about subject lines is they should have some sort of archival value.
	Yes, thank you.
	So in other words, like you sent me a note about something or other, and then I say, oh, Adam sent me this.
	I remember him sending me something about this.
	Let me do a search on the subject line, hoping that the keyword is in the subject line.
	You know, like whatever it was, T. And so I should hit the subject and then boom, there's your note.
	You don't use Gmail, right?
	It's some other search-based email that you use?
	Or it's just a client?
	I'm either using Thunderbird, which I'm not happy with, or I'm doing web-based mail using SquirrelMail, which has a search function in it.
	Well, I'll give you an example of how incredibly cool Gmail is, because I was looking for this...
	Remember, Jared had emailed us about using a different client instead of Skype, and I wanted to take a look at it and set it up just for myself.
	We didn't even get to doing that today.
	So the only things I could remember were that you had replied in this thread and you had said, just being realistic.
	So I put in John and realistic and it was the top hit, man.
	I mean, that's good.
	I don't have a problem with Gmail per se.
	I do have a Gmail account.
	I use it as backup.
	I just do not like to be at the...
	I don't like to be dependent on third parties over the internet like that in case somebody takes a dislike to me and say, you know, let's pull his account or something weird happens or gets hit by some bot or somebody, you know, steals it.
	But that's why you want control over your MX record so you can change that and redirect it somewhere else.
	I mean, that's the ultimate control, right?
	That's all you really need.
	Well, I do send my Gmail to my regular box.
	I'm talking a level up.
	At Dvorak.org, in the DNS entry, there's an MX record, which is for mail exchange.
	What you're thinking is I should use the Gmail client, run it through Dvorak.org, so if something weird happens, then the Gmail doesn't make any difference.
	I should just go back to my old-fashioned one.
	Yeah, but you're still not at the...
	So take it at one level, not the domain name level, but you can actually...
	Maybe we're just miscommunicating.
	But just like you can say, okay, this is where you send all traffic for port 80 for web traffic.
	So dvorak.org resolves to this IP address.
	You have a separate record.
	For mail exchange, you can actually put in several.
	So if this one fails, i.e.
	this one has gone nuts or whatever, then after X amount of tries, then you have a preference setting, then try this mail server.
	It's really a whole separate architecture.
	And that is really the ultimate.
	No one can screw you as long as you control that.
	Yeah, no, I understand that.
	But the thing is, I still have to run...
	If I can get it to go through Mark Perkell's spam filters...
	First.
	Before it goes to, because I don't get any spam, before it goes to Gmail, I might find it useful.
	But I'm not sure that's doable.
	Of course it's doable.
	Okay, it might be doable.
	Okay.
	I'm telling you it's doable.
	Let me put that on the list under number three, Twitter.
	Yes, Twitter and then forward email to Gmail.
	Because Adam likes Gmail.
	Hey, hold on.
	Listen to this.
	Hi, Adam and John.
	This is Falco calling from Germany.
	You guys were talking about the famous hot dogs from Copenhagen, Denmark, and you didn't know what the special stuff was on it.
	It's roasted onions.
	You can find them here all over the place in all the grocery stores.
	I just wanted to let you know.
	I love the show.
	I'll hear you.
	Bye.
	Another mystery solved on No Agenda.
	Well, I thought it was roasted garlic, and the only reason I say that...
	Roasted onions is obviously what it is, because they would know.
	But I was in Brazil one year, and they had some dish.
	It was a special dinner, and they rolled out this exact same stuff.
	It seemed like the exact same stuff that I had in Denmark.
	And it was, indeed, in Brazil, garlic that was roasted, and it was chunky, and it was actually quite tasty.
	And I thought it was the same thing, and it had a similar quality.
	So that's where I made the connection.
	Anyway, so we're at an hour and 20 minutes.
	Did you have anything written?
	I got a couple things.
	Did you have anything written down for the show?
	No, I wrote nothing down because of last week I decided I wasn't going to come in, even with vague notes.
	But it's okay to write stuff down.
	I'm always thinking about what I want to talk to you about.
	Yeah, I decided to, as penance, I decided not to do that.
	All right, here, let me give you a couple.
	BBC threatens ISPs with a blacklist over their iPlayer.
	I have the FAA sucking the airlines off.
	Three airlines have gone out of business in the last week or so.
	Yeah, well this is all this FAA stuff and all this maintenance crap.
	Well, they're blaming it on fuel costs.
	Which airlines went belly up?
	ATA went out of business.
	And then something called Skybus, I never even heard of, went out of business.
	And then I think there's a third one.
	And then there's apparently shootings on the freeway are re-emerging.
	We got two people killed in the last couple of days up here by up to Highway 80.
	And I guess in L.A. there's been five people shot down, gunned down while driving on the freeway.
	Well, that's an American tradition.
	And I'm quite happy to see that return to the public space.
	That's nice.
	Freeway shootings.
	Very nice.
	You have to be armed when you're driving.
	So, on your next trip, wherever you go, don't fly on a 777, okay?
	What's the problem there?
	Well, there's this whole thing about the FAA. I don't know if you heard about all these planes that got grounded, 737s mainly because of maintenance.
	Okay, so here's what I have deduced from the information.
	There's a lot of it out there.
	The FAA, somehow, they've gotten into bed with the airline carriers.
	In fact, to quote one article I read, the FAA is treating them like customers.
	Which, in a way, by the way, you know, we are customers of the FAA, and we pay special taxes and dues for use of certain things, and there's a lot of it that's free.
	But, you know, basically, air traffic control, they don't...
	They don't actually control everything.
	They're there to help the pilots and the air carriers.
	So they are really, in a technical sense, subservient to the people doing the actual flying.
	And we can overrule them at any point.
	You don't want to, but you can.
	So when it comes to maintenance, I think they've just been really, really easy.
	And they've let a couple of airlines really get away with shoddy maintenance records.
	And a lot of it had to do with checking hulls that might have cracks.
	And as I say as an airman, maintenance is absolutely everything.
	That will keep you alive time and time again.
	And this 777, remember the one that had the high fuel pressure pump problem that landed short at Heathrow and bounced around a bit before making it on the runway?
	Yeah.
	So the fleet has not been grounded, the 777.
	The problem has been identified, but there's been no, like, get everything down and start fixing these things.
	It's mandatory, and I think it's a part of this problem.
	The FAA is, for whatever reasons, is in bed with the carriers, and they're trying to skim...
	Skim on expensive overhead and help each other out so that they can kind of weather through the storm of, I don't know, whether it's the fuel costs or whatever the problem is, but I don't think that the public is being served by the FAA. I don't think that they're doing their job properly and looking out for our backs.
	I think this 777 is dangerous, and I will not fly it.
	Well, I'll avoid it.
	They don't fly...
	It's like a plane that was always kind of sketchy because nobody wanted to fly across the Pacific.
	With two engines.
	Yeah, you only got two engines.
	Although, you know, supposedly it can fly across the Pacific on one engine.
	Yes, it can.
	But the...
	And it's a comfortable plane.
	It's a really nice plane.
	I've been on a number of them.
	And, of course, the first ones that came out, I flew it to Washington, D.C. or something, and they had designed it so all the seat movement stuff was right on top of it.
	Of the arm rest.
	Just about the point where you put your elbow.
	Elbow.
	Yeah.
	So you sit down and you start to relax and the next thing you know you're getting a back massage and the thing is moving back and forth and back and forth and jerking all over the place.
	It's the friendly skies.
	I love it.
	You lifted your arm up and you realize that you couldn't put your arm on the arm rest because all these buttons were on it.
	And so I thought that was kind of dumb.
	There are some other issues I've had with that plane, but generally speaking, it was always pretty comfortable.
	I still like the 747.
	It's still my favorite plane for a long flight.
	Yeah, mine too.
	I like it over the Airbuses, actually.
	I really like the 747.
	I haven't flown the big 380 yet.
	I hope to do that soon.
	Yeah, that should be entertaining.
	I mean, the biggest Airbus, which I can't remember the number of it, but the one with the four engines...
	I've always found it kind of a distress.
	I was sitting in one of those once in a flight, and there was like the wings.
	I had a roommate in college who was an aeronautical engineer, and he described to me the wing theories.
	He says, you know, these companies like Boeing or just...
	Wing designers is what their real business is.
	And he pointed out that McDonnell Douglas and Boeing, he worked for McDonnell Douglas, had two distinct theories of wing design that were different.
	And Boeing had a flapping wing, and McDonnell Douglas had a rigid wing.
	And I have a phone call, so I think maybe we should continue this conversation next week.
	Hold on one second.
	Take the...
	Maybe I should play a little music.
	I don't know.
	Let's listen in on John.
	Too late.
	It's gone.
	Turned out to be somebody I didn't have to talk to.
	So that's our cliffhanger?
	Our cliffhanger is rigid versus...
	Yeah, let's talk about rigid wings versus the fixed wing.
	Because you have the same in helicopters.
	You also have fully articulated, rigid, you have all different kinds of wings.
	It is.
	There are two theories.
	I don't know if it's going to be tremendously exciting to our audience.
	Well, then let me finish it.
	So the difference was that you had to maintain them differently.
	And Boeing has these wings that bend like a mile.
	And they flap, literally, in the air.
	And they're designed to flap, but they need to be, you know, they have to be checked a lot.
	And the rigid wing guys, their stuff is built like a truck.
	It doesn't have to, you know, so there's a maintenance difference, but the rigid ones cost a lot more to make.
	Anyway, that's the basis.
	But anyway, so I'm in this big, giant Airbus, the biggest one before that new one.
	It's a 360, 340.
	I'm not sure.
	And it's got the flapping wings just like the Boeings, only they're like really flapping.
	So I'm looking out the window at the wing and it's flapping and flapping.
	And the engine at the far end is flopping around.
	And so I'm thinking, this isn't right.
	And the engines are flopping around and the wings are flapping and we're going across the Atlantic and I just said, I'm not going to fly on these planes.
	I don't like it.
	Too much wing flap.
	Actually, when you hear a helicopter and he's going overhead slowly and you can really hear the blades, it's called blade flap, literally.
	Yeah?
	Yeah, because that's what it is.
	That's not the engine.
	That is actually the blades.
	So anyway, that's my story.
	I'm sticking to it.
	Oh, man.
	I forgot to load up the theme music.
	I'll post-produce that.
	It'll sound just like I started it just on time as usual.
	That's it.
	I feel I could talk a lot more, but I think that it's also like an hour and a half.
	Although people don't care, John.
	They've said time and time.
	They just don't care how long it is.
	I don't think we have anything else to talk about is the issue.
	We do have one thing.
	You're coming in again, you said, this week.
	I think you should do some more experimentation with the customs guys.
	Right, so I did think about that briefly, and I was thinking of two things.
	One is I need to ask for a team leader immediately, because that's what I've learned, right?
	The TL has the power.
	And you haven't done that yet.
	No, I haven't done that.
	And I also should say...
	When I'm speaking to the team leader, I'll ask him if he could put a flag next to this guy named John Dvorak who writes for High Times.
	He sometimes goes by the name of John C. Dvorak.
	You might want to keep tabs on him.
	Yeah, that would be appreciated.
	A known drug fiend.
	I mean, do you have any other ideas?
	I don't want to get in trouble, but I'm sure I'm going to get stopped, so...
	No, I think that you can't do too many things different every time because then the stories, you don't know what caused it.
	I think this time, I think that's all you should do when you come in.
	Don't do anything else different.
	Just ask for the team leader.
	Should I do that at the first customs or where they always give me the secondary, which is when you leave and you have to hand off your customs form?
	Should I ask for the team leader right away?
	Well, I think you're going to have to do it one way.
	One of each, right?
	And one way the next time and see what the difference is.
	I would not do it right away.
	I would take it a little further and then the next time do it right away.
	Yeah, because I think if I do it right away, those are the guys that they tend to give you a really pissed off look no matter what you say.
	Oh, well, why don't you do it to them then?
	No!
	No, I'm afraid, John.
	I don't want to get in trouble.
	I'm going to Gitmo.
	I don't want to go.
	Okay.
	So what?
	Let me give you one more, man.
	This BBC thing was just funny, and I think you'll enjoy it.
	You know their iPlayer?
	Have you followed this at all?
	Only, no.
	Okay, there was a little controversy over, or controversy, I should say.
	The iPlayer, essentially, they're making all of their programming available for up to seven days after it airs, which is great, because here we pay for our public television.
	It's a separate fee that you have to pay.
	And people really enjoy it, and it's really good quality, and they made an iPhone version.
	There was some controversy earlier because it only worked on Windows, because it was like an ActiveX plug-in or whatever, so the Linux people mainly got up in arms and said, this is unfair, we're paying too, you should make it available for Linux.
	So I think they solved all of those issues.
	But the basic Windows version actually is a peer-to-peer client.
	So, when you fire it up, you're becoming a node on this peer-to-peer network, which of course saves the BBC a lot of bandwidth on these high-quality video shows that they're making available.
	And it is also, I think, a DRM issue, which is quite important to them, which the Windows stuff gives them.
	But what a number of ISPs are now doing with peer-to-peer traffic in general, but also now with this BBC iPlayer, is they're shaping the bandwidth.
	And it's giving people a shitty experience.
	So with file sharing, it may not be that bad if you're running BitTorrent or whatever, because it may just slow down, but eventually it'll all come in.
	But when you're trying to watch something in a live stream and it's peer-to-peer, it messes up the whole experience.
	The BBC has now come out and said they are going to publish a blacklist of ISPs that are doing this, saying that the users deserve to have the best possible quality.
	So they're basically...
	Siding with the users on bandwidth shaping of ISPs, which I thought was pretty interesting.
	Yeah, that's good.
	It's very good.
	It's a huge step in the right direction.
	Let's see where it ends up.
	These guys, these ISPs are backing off on most of this stuff.
	They're trying to figure out some other way of making money.
	Comcast, for example, looks like they're going to experiment with a 50 megabits per second system.
	They're going to roll it out in Minnesota.
	Yeah, like $150 a month or something.
	Yeah, something like that.
	And at that point, if they can make $150 a month from everyone, they don't need to be doing TV and all the rest of it.
	They can just be a carrier of the internet and make plenty of money.
	I mean, there's always this, oh God, we're going to ruin our own business if we go to IPTV. And no one's going to buy cable TV anymore, and they're just worried sick about this.
	But it's a foregone conclusion that that's where things are headed.
	So if these guys own that, they own the pipes, and all they have to do is put meters on.
	It's like being the public utilities company.
	You just make nothing but money.
	I don't get their thinking that they don't want to do this.
	I think they want to do it.
	I think they were just underprepared.
	Comcast still believes it's a media company.
	Everyone wants to be in show business.
	Who wants to be in the pipe business, if you have a choice?
	Yeah, I know, but they've got to be realistic.
	I mean, not everybody's supposed to be in show business.
	It's true.
	But it's the same, man.
	I used to have to go to all the Cable Ace Awards when MTV was trying to stay on basic cable, which they succeeded in doing.
	We had to go to affiliates all the time.
	These guys thought they acted like they were NBC, except they were trench diggers who had 30,000 customers.
	I think it's all about the girls.
	Dude, it's always about getting laid.
	Absolutely.
	Speaking of which, and then we'll wrap it up, I did a pilot for a game show, which is being sold in Cannes this weekend and this coming week.
	Yeah.
	And I almost got laid off of just doing the pilot.
	Wait until you see this show.
	You're going to love it.
	Alright, I'll wait.
	One of the contestants actually offered herself to me.
	I was so proud.
	That's good.
	Thank you, Papa John.
	Make a DVD of it and bring it over.
	Yeah, I have a DVD. I have a full DVD. So they have like a promo and then they have a pilot episode.
	Go ahead, I'm sorry.
	It's called Baba Boom.
	That's a good name.
	Baba Boom.
	Not Vava.
	Baba.
	Triple B.
	Okay, well, I'll be better with the V.
	But also, you're supposed to make me some DVDs of that show.
	Yeah, Little Britain, but I don't have all the shit to do that.
	I don't have...
	You don't have a little DVD recorder for your TV? Oh, I do have a recorder.
	I never record stuff.
	Yes, I do.
	You just push the button.
	It says record.
	It's like a VCR. And the DVD pops out.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I got to do that.
	Yes, I think I can.
	Although the Skybox, I think, because I can record it on the Skybox, but then when you play it back, I don't know if the DVD will record it or if there's some, like, anti-copyright theft shit in there.
	If it goes through an analog port, it's not a big dish.
	Yeah, but I'm not set up analog.
	I'm set up digital.
	I'll try.
	I'll try.
	But can I just buy the DVD set for you?
	No.
	You're missing the point.
	Wait a minute.
	This is wrong.
	Alright.
	No cliffhanger.
	Crap.
	Oh, well.
	Alright.
	I got a cliffhanger.
	I'm banning the Olympics.
	Oh, we got a cliffhanger that you forgot to discuss and we're not going to bring it up, which is soy.
	Oh yes, you know what, I do want to know more about that because I'm genuinely concerned for my health and a lot of people say that you're right and I did not know this, but I'm very willing to listen and open to switching to something else.
	I gotta have some kind of milk, but I don't want just milk.
	And my wife has coronary disease, she can't drink milk.
	Pasteurized.
	Pasteurized, really?
	No, I mean, the bad stuff is pasteurized.
	We'll leave it as a...
	But I'm going to sound like a complete nutball if I go on and on.
	That's okay.
	We'll talk about it next week.
	All right, John, so I'll see you Tuesday.
	You'll hopefully get something set up for dinner.
	Yep.
	Okay.
	That's it for the program.
	It hasn't started snowing, but from definitely a very wet Britain in the Curry Manor, I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. DeVorek from Northern California where there's no snow in sight.

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