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April 12, 2008 - No Agenda

01:35:00

26: Feeling Fat?

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	In a world where the internet is filled with podcasts of people saying, I think this and I think that, there is a sanctuary brought to you weekly with no music, no commercials, no talent, and certainly no agenda.
	From the west side of Guilford in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
	And up here in Northern California, where it appears to be hitting 85 degrees Fahrenheit today, I'm John C. Dvorak.
	Holy moly!
	It's a nice day here, too, actually.
	A little bit of rain, but I left on a beautiful day.
	What was that?
	When did I leave, John?
	You left it was windy and kind of miserable, actually.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	That was Wednesday.
	Thursday.
	I left Thursday.
	It was beautiful.
	Yeah, it was warming up on Thursday.
	Yesterday it was about 80.
	Actually, in some places it hit 86, and today it didn't cool off last night, and it's hot already, and it's early in the morning, so this is going to be actually pretty miserable.
	Oh, a horrible day.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, no, not miserably hot.
	It's going to be hot.
	I may have to get in the convertible and drive around.
	In the convertible.
	In the Mustang.
	In the Corvette.
	Actually, I do have a Corvette, but this will be the Miata.
	Really?
	You have a Corvette?
	I didn't know you had a Corvette.
	75.
	It needs work.
	What was that?
	A Stingray?
	That's a Stingray, isn't it?
	Oh, those are beautiful.
	I love the Stingrays.
	Yeah.
	It's totally collectible.
	New York was beautiful.
	I was there for a day.
	You know, Maggie booked me on American Thursday.
	Good work.
	Yeah.
	Now, it wasn't an MD-80.
	She checked that.
	But I'm like, Maggie, they're going to be rebooking people on a million different flights.
	So I sat in a coach seat in the middle.
	Yeah, that was not...
	Oh, you know, there was a big benefit, actually, to sitting in the coach seat, because there are lots of people with laptops around, and, you know, I really couldn't move, because, you know, once I had folded myself in, I was just there, right?
	And if I wanted to get out, I'd have to ask the person on either the right or the left of me if I could, you know, get out.
	But, by the way, the good side of that, at least American Airlines has some leg room.
	Yes, absolutely.
	But not enough to really maneuver my legs.
	I'm 6'4", so it's kind of tough.
	What I love about the 767 is it still has a 3-2 projector for the in-flight movie.
	Oh, yeah, that's funny.
	That's true.
	But anyway, so I'm sitting there, and everyone has their laptop open.
	And I'm looking right in front of me.
	And there's this lady who's writing up a PR proposal in PowerPoint.
	And I'm staring straight ahead, so I couldn't help but read, and I've got nothing better to do.
	I do that all the time.
	Yeah, it is kind of entertaining.
	So here's what she was writing up.
	She was from a PR firm, apparently working on behalf of Skype.
	And so it was a whole PR plan to go to the media to say, email...
	Is becoming the snail mail of our age and that is being replaced by the use of Skype.
	By the way, I'm not saying that that's completely invalid, that IM and VoIP aren't replacing some pieces of email, perhaps.
	But what was apparent is that they had contracted Harris Interactive, which I guess is a surveying company.
	I don't know if you're familiar with them, John.
	Oh yeah, they're famous.
	Okay, well, so basically they paid Harris Interactive to extrapolate information to support this idea.
	It's not like Harris did a survey and, oh, look at this, look what we found out.
	No, Skype literally came up with the PR idea, or this PR firm, contracted Harris Interactive.
	I could see her going through the survey and pulling out pieces and bits and putting that into this release, so you can expect that to be really big news next week.
	You know, of course, that technique is not new by any means.
	No, but it's a great technique.
	It works all the time, doesn't it?
	Not if you're busted.
	Well, I'd say they're busted right now.
	If you're busted, it doesn't work at all and makes you look like an idiot.
	And Microsoft used to try to pull that crap all the time, but they would always get busted, mainly because they weren't doing it with any finesse.
	They were over-promoting their side of the issue.
	With, you know, phony surveys.
	And if you did any research, all it takes is just a little research, and you'll find the survey with, you know, this famous survey that, I guess, Harris will be rolling out.
	You'll find who sponsored it was the client.
	Right, exactly.
	And so they're the ones who designed the questions, and they're the ones who reinterpreted the data, and they're the ones who came up with this and that.
	Now, exactly why...
	I think the more interesting question here with what you've stumbled onto, and congratulations, by the way.
	Thank you.
	Is why are they doing this?
	Do they need customers?
	I mean, this is not a big moneymaker necessarily for eBay.
	I think, just looking at the surface of it, that the reason they'd be doing this is because they want to dump Skype on someone.
	Yeah, they want to prop up the value of it before they dump it.
	And they want to make it look like it's worth more part of some bigger trend that's so important.
	Well, there were a couple other pages to this presentation.
	One was that...
	Were you sitting right next to her?
	No, right behind her.
	I was looking through the seats.
	Oh, that's perfect, right?
	Yeah, oh, perfect angle.
	So the other one was Skype has a deal with Hearst, and Skype will become a platform for the presidential candidates to converse with the constituents.
	And Hearst Media Properties will be promoting that, so be on the lookout for that.
	And the third thing was, oh yeah, a show to mainstream media, particularly television producers, how incredibly useful Skype is in integrating into their programming.
	And Skype apparently has a deal with Harpo, which is Oprah's production company.
	So I don't watch Oprah, but if she's not doing it already, I presume that people will be video, because this is all about the video conferencing, that part.
	They'll be video conferencing into the Oprah show.
	Oh, God, amateur hour.
	You know, I mean, we can't even, and we're actually pretty smart, we can't even get a reasonable audio connection, let alone that they're going to do video with Oprah.
	Yeah, well, the funny thing is, is that, you know, this kind of thing, these video...
	When I was at Tech TV, they actually gave out something like 2, 3, or maybe 5,000 of these little cams that you can hook to your computer, and they'd have this as a feature.
	So they'd have various shows, and they'd have some idiot calling in on this cam.
	The guys who were running the company thought this was so cool.
	And every time we read a review of what was going on at Tech TV, they'd talk about the amateurishness of this, of their connections.
	They wouldn't really know what was going on because if you just were watching television and you turned on one of these shows and you had somebody in the studio talking to somebody on one of these Logitech cams with the herky jerk and the lousy voice and you couldn't even see them.
	They were fuzzy or they were pixelated.
	You'd go, what a bunch, this is the cheapest production I've ever, it just looked cheap and creamy.
	Well, you know what?
	I've seen this done lots of times.
	So yeah, spam the audience.
	Get them to buy webcams and call in.
	But then I've seen them actually put professional cameras in and make it look like it was a webcam call.
	I've seen that happen lots of times because it is.
	Yeah, they're both.
	Why?
	Is the question on my mind.
	Why?
	What is the point?
	Is it so you can be hip to have these things?
	You know, it's ridiculous.
	That's the only reason.
	I agree.
	I don't think it has any...
	It usually does not have any value to the programming.
	So anyway...
	Well, I've uncovered a few things in my day when you look in between the seats.
	And by the way...
	I, again, congratulate you for this because I've never really gotten that much stuff.
	That's good.
	But it was a six-hour flight, so I had plenty of time.
	And actually, I read along with her, John, until her battery ran down.
	That's great.
	Drat the battery.
	Very, very entertaining.
	So you must have had a good shot, a good angle, which really helps a lot.
	I was one time in a seat, one of these things where you had the, I'm behind, there's a couple of airplane configurations where there's this three and three on either side, and when you get to the emergency exit, all of a sudden there's two.
	Mm-hmm.
	And then three behind it, so people can get out the door.
	And your best seat in a plane like this, and Southwest has a few of these, is to be in that seat where there's actually not a seat in front of you.
	It's just an empty space.
	Right.
	Because that's where the emergency door is, which is a great seat.
	So I nabbed that seat, and I'm sitting there, and the guy seated in what would have been a middle seat, but there's only two seats there, pops open his laptop, and the angle I had, because I didn't have to look between anything, was the guy's presentation.
	Unfortunately, it was an insurance industry guy, and it was like, whatever.
	But I could read it.
	Well, I thought this was really interesting, so let's see how long it takes between this sighting of the email being killed by Skype until we actually see it.
	Yeah, we will.
	In fact, if anybody's listening to the show, they should keep an eye out for it and give us a date.
	First sighting.
	Yeah, that's right.
	First sighting.
	First encounter, whatever they call it.
	Let's just talk about airlines for a second.
	I think you sent me a note you wanted to talk about something.
	Yeah, this guy, Peter Inova, sent in a memo saying that he had this weird suspicion.
	And as soon as he said it, it rang a bell with me because I used to be, and of course you always ridicule all these little careers I had.
	Wait a minute, you were an FAA inspector.
	No, I wish.
	When I was a kid, I had, this is a lost era, by the way.
	When I was in both high school and college in the summertime, I'd always work.
	This was when Truman was our president, yeah?
	Sorry.
	You're going to get yours eventually, by the way.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	It's coming fast.
	Because you could get summer jobs.
	A few years back, I was in Port Townsend, Washington, and there was a bunch of kids sitting around.
	And I wrote an op-ed someplace about how these kids, a bunch of lazy bastards, they don't do anything during the summertime.
	It was during the summer.
	And it went on and on and on.
	And one of my readers, a younger reader, said, hey man, don't be so harsh on these guys.
	You can't get work.
	There isn't anything.
	There's no factory around.
	There's none of these things that you used to have when you were a kid to go work at.
	And so I kind of laid off of him after that because I looked around and it's true.
	There's nothing to do in the summertime.
	You know, maybe do volunteer work for Obama.
	How about does Grit still exist?
	The newspaper?
	Grit?
	You could win a bike, man, by delivering Grit.
	You know, here's a funny story about Grit.
	Oh, don't...
	Don't go into Grit yet.
	I saw a thing for Grit recently, and it was like a free two issues, and I wanted to see what it looked like, so I signed up, and all I got was the bills.
	I never got a copy.
	Oh, no.
	That's outrageous.
	So it exists still?
	It's still out there, Grit?
	Yeah, well, at least as of a couple years ago.
	But I don't think kids are going door-to-door with it.
	They never did when I was a kid either.
	So how about retail?
	I mean, my daughter works weekends and summer and vacation days in retail.
	Isn't there plenty of retail stuff for kids to do?
	Oh, compare that to a factory job at full union pay and benefits.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I mean, I was walking out of every summer with just a ton of money.
	You know what's great about my daughter has this job at Jack Wills, which is kind of like an Abercrombie and Fitch type clothing store, really expensive, you know, like sweaters for 300 pounds.
	It's nuts.
	And what they do is, I love the system they set up.
	They hire all these beautiful kids who love this brand anyway.
	They give them a 90% discount on anything they buy in the store.
	And, of course, they pay them just barely minimum wage with absolutely no benefits.
	And so what winds up happening is these kids spend 60% to 70% of their salary on the clothing because they can get it at a 90% discount.
	So it's like this perpetual marketing ecosystem they've built up.
	And all these kids have to do is just, yeah, they restock the shelves, but they walk around, help people, say, oh, this looks nice.
	Don't you think that would look good on you?
	And they're basically Uber salespeople who are super incentivized.
	Yeah, but are they as good as the old-timers that used to work in those stores when you see shows like Are You Being Served?
	Mr.
	Humphreys, are you free?
	No, absolutely not.
	Certainly not as colorful as Are You Being Served.
	No.
	Anyway, the point is that there's none of these...
	When I was, like, again, I worked in sheet metal shops.
	Anyway, I got the clue early on that the job you wanted to have was inspector.
	And by the way, John, I've had a lot of jobs like that because it was still possible when I was young.
	So let me just show my age.
	Okay, inspector.
	One year I was working as a receiving clerk at International Harvester, which was a pretty good gig.
	But I noticed that my main job there, because I was working graveyard, which was kind of the drawback to some of these summer jobs, but it was okay.
	I was working because I don't get jet lag.
	Anyway, I had this graveyard shift and my main job actually turned out to be guarding the entire factory against some big boss coming in at night for some unknown reason and warning the inspectors who were all upstairs playing poker.
	And they would play poker until like 6 in the morning.
	Unless a train came in.
	This was the days when a train would come in.
	And they still do it, I think, in the bigger factories.
	Big train load of parts would come in and you'd have to get these guys rousted.
	And they'd come down and inspect stuff.
	Inspect the individual components or whatever was coming in?
	Well, they inspected the shipments to make sure that they were legit.
	Was this governmental inspectors or inspectors, the factory-employed inspectors?
	Factory-employed inspectors.
	Anyway, so I figured out that this is the job you wanted.
	So anyway, over the years, during the summer, I'd get various jobs as an inspector here and there at full union pay because I stumbled onto an interesting, I wouldn't call it a scam, but a technique that Because early on, when you were a kid and you went to get a summer job, they'd give you a summer job.
	You'd go to Ford and you'd get a summer job for college kids.
	Yeah, you got paid well, but it was a crap job.
	It was just horrible.
	Picking up spare bolts and putting them in a bin or something.
	That's all you did all day.
	Even assembly line jobs weren't that much fun.
	So I went and took this, just as a lark one year, I wanted to get this one specific job, and they asked me about my, I think I was a sophomore at Cal or something, and they said, so why are you taking this job?
	I said, well, college is too hard for me.
	I'm quitting.
	Yeah.
	So I told them I'm quitting school and I'm going to work for them.
	So I got this really nice inspector's job.
	And then the thing I stumbled onto, which was the note of genius, was at the end of the summer, and I actually probably stretched it a little further because of so much good money.
	I told them I had to go back to school.
	I really had to get back to school full time.
	So I told them that, you know, I've worked here for these many months and it's a great experience for me.
	I've learned a lot.
	But, you know, I've decided to go back to school.
	Oops.
	And they fell over themselves with congratulations.
	You are the hope for the American dream, son.
	Go back to school.
	Get your education.
	Become president.
	So instead of getting mad at me for just working the summer, you know, it was, oh, that's great.
	It's great you're going back to school.
	If you ever need anything from us, let us know.
	So, you know.
	How about a thousand bucks?
	So anyway, so, but there was an era when I was an inspector at Trailmobile where I had, being an inspector, we were working on cargo containers when they were still made in this country.
	And And this is where the story about the FAA comes in.
	So there's one guy that's on one of the lines that I'm inspecting who I just love talking to because the guy was essentially a stand-up comic.
	And he was doing his job all the time, but he would be talking to me a lot and telling me jokes.
	In fact, there's still jokes that I still use a couple of them.
	And this is years ago.
	And he had little magic tricks, and the guy was hilarious.
	And so one day, the foreman of that line comes over, And choose me out.
	I mean, he's not my boss because I'm an inspector there in Dependence.
	But choose me out for wasting this guy's time and being a jerk for being there.
	And he just went on and on and on and on.
	Just giving me crap for this thing.
	So...
	I pulled out, the way it was done, you'd have these little red pieces of tape, and then you'd have these little pieces of slips that you'd write on for errors.
	I started papering his products.
	Because, if you've never worked in a factory, and if you don't know how things actually work, which is one of the, I think, a drawback to the American public today, they don't get it.
	Nothing meets spec.
	Very few things ever manufactured Actually meet spec.
	They're all within a range.
	Tolerance levels, yeah.
	And sometimes it's way off spec, but it's still acceptable at some point.
	And inspectors have to have enough sense to let certain things go.
	It's like a cop when he pulls somebody over.
	He has to make a decision whether he's going to write up a ticket or not.
	And if you want to...
	Turn up the, you know, if you want to go by the book, you can plaster anything with rejection stickers.
	So I covered this guy's line because there was a lot of little things, little nicks and a piece of paint that's not 1.2 inches away from this spot, you know, where it's supposed to be.
	So what you're saying is that if you actually played it by the book, then not a single product would come out of that factory.
	Right.
	Exactly.
	Maybe one, you know, that got lucky, but you could probably still find something wrong with it.
	So I plastered his stuff.
	It was just so much, and he had to do all these little problems, and some of them are almost impossible to fix.
	The guy comes back to me begging, apologizing, I'm sorry, it was a bad day for me.
	Literally begging for mercy.
	Because I could have kept this up forever.
	Okay, I get it.
	Now, the guy who wrote in the email mentions that the FAA was called on the carpet by Congress just before they started doing what they're doing, which is exactly the same thing.
	You want us to follow the rules to the letter?
	Okay, we're going to start shutting down the entire system until you tell us to stop.
	And that's what they're doing.
	It's just a bunch of inspectors doing what they do.
	Hey, if you want to go buy the book, we can shut down.
	Let's start with American Airlines, AMR, one of the biggest corporations in the country.
	Hey, by the way, and if you don't knuckle under after we screw with them, we're moving to United.
	And then it's going to be one airline after another.
	They'll bring the whole thing to a standstill if the idiots in Congress don't figure out what's going on.
	So you can imagine, with my aviation background, I have an opinion on this.
	Yeah, I'm sure.
	So, first of all, I think you're absolutely right about the inspectors.
	I mean, that's like TPS report time.
	We can bring your company or your country to a grinding halt, absolutely.
	But it's a little different in this case because...
	The FAA does not actually go out and inspect every single piece of maintenance that is done on any aircraft that's registered under an N register.
	So this is two issues.
	One, it's about the FAA and the government and them saying, screw you, we'll bring everything to a grinding halt.
	And the other part is about maintenance in aviation in general.
	So...
	The way maintenance works, and maintenance is everything.
	It's like 99% of all accidents is maintenance, just because shitty maintenance makes the airplane break.
	Or things malfunction.
	You can get into bad situations.
	But every...
	So these planes are basically...
	They're not composite.
	They're all sheet metal and rivets, right?
	So it's the same type of stuff that you've been dealing with.
	And they don't all have to fit within a millimeter.
	Basically, if your wing is the right design and your engines stay on, then the rest will be pretty much okay.
	But every piece of the plane, every...
	Every element, every bolt, every wire, even the airframe, everything has a time to live.
	And it has an expiration date which is set up by the manufacturer who obviously is liable for a number of reasons if they're lying about the life expectancy of all these different parts and pieces.
	And even if these pieces aren't worn or aren't showing wear and tear, you have regular intervals of maintenance inspections that are done by the maintenance company.
	And these parts have to be replaced or certain checks have to be done.
	As an example, every two years, every year I have an annual inspection on my aircraft, every two years all of the avionics have to be removed and tested.
	Even if they're working fine, they have to go out.
	And of course it's an extra expense.
	The propeller has an X number of hours and you have to send it away.
	And even my plane, it will cost me like $8,000 to have the prop maintained.
	And that's once maybe, it depends on how much you fly, but it's all based on hours, etc.
	So...
	So the person doing the maintenance has to sign off on the – and you have to be an FAA-approved maintenance company or maintenance engineer.
	You have to sign off.
	And you signing off says, I did this work.
	I performed it.
	I did the check.
	And you are liable as an engineer if you're lying about that.
	We have to go back and find out how the story broke, but somehow someone figured out that the FAA knew that there was all kinds of shit going on with the maintenance records.
	So pieces were missing, stuff that was submitted but not signed off on.
	And what it came down to is basically wire ties, John.
	Wire ties for these big copper bundles that go through these MD-80s, which is what they chose to inspect.
	It's not that the FAA has to inspect every single one of those, but the maintenance companies have to do it at regular intervals and then sign off and send it in.
	This was not happening.
	As a pilot, I'd be really angry.
	I would quit.
	I would rather go work at Jack Wills than fly an aircraft where any piece of maintenance was not done only to save costs, because that's what it's about.
	It's not a big deal, these wire ties.
	It really isn't.
	Although, because of this issue, I think there's been 20 or 25 instances on MD-80s where the nose gear would not retract, and you do not want that as a pilot.
	You don't want anything going wrong with your undercarriage.
	So it's actually quite exemplary that the FAA, and this really adds proof to the point you're making, that the FAA would say, we're doing the spot check on every single one of these aircraft.
	That's a really big deal because they don't do that typically.
	But now they've taken their authority and made Uber authority and said, look, we don't just need to have all your records in and everything to be signed off on.
	We're doing spot checks on everybody.
	So it's kind of a double whammy.
	The airlines need to be fucking taken out back and shot.
	Because they've been skimping on maintenance, which is a very, very serious offense.
	I'm in agreement on that because I know a lot of the maintenance is almost, not quite, but borderline outsourced to shops in Mexico, for example.
	Oh, and let me tell you, I will not get in an aircraft, any aircraft, if I can help it, obviously, but certainly in a private aircraft, if I don't know who's been doing the maintenance.
	Because, you know, you get all, particularly, they talk about more than one pair of hands.
	So if you have more than one pair of hands working on your aircraft, it could very easily be that one guy thought he had tightened the bolt and the other guy didn't.
	And, you know, it's a confusion.
	And then it gets signed off on and, you know, you think you're good to go.
	And it's a really, it's a life-threatening situation.
	And I think all airlines need to be severely penalized for any type of lack of maintenance.
	So they're kind of the golden boys and girls in all of this, I think.
	They're getting off real easy.
	Real easy.
	Well, there's something screwy about the whole thing the way I see it.
	But I think you're right.
	I think you're absolutely right.
	They're going to figure out another issue.
	They'll bring down another airline, or maybe they'll just keep going at American.
	Who knows?
	But hey, it screwed up my flying time in the past couple days.
	Yeah, but it gave you a scoop.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Because had I not been unable to upgrade, had I not been stuck in coach in that middle seat, I wouldn't have known that email is dead.
	That's actually, sometimes you have to, you know, when you have lemons, you make something with lemons.
	That makes some lemonade, baby.
	Coming into the country, want an update?
	Yeah, you came into the country for a couple days.
	Yep.
	And you tell me, you didn't want to tell me while you were here because we wanted to do it on the show.
	Yep.
	What was your latest experience?
	Okay, so we had decided that I would ask for the TL, for the team leader, which I had learned was a way to get into the depth of the database quicker, because only the team leader has access to all of the notes that have been put next to my record saying, the guy's okay.
	So, I was not going to do it at the first initial customs booth.
	I was going to do it when you are ready to leave the airport.
	Now, I walk up to the, I got off the plane real quick.
	I walk up to the customs, border customs, border patrol agent.
	In the glass case.
	And he's real swift.
	He takes my landing card.
	He puts the one on it with a circle, which they all do.
	One guy, you can pass.
	He says, bring any fruits and vegetables in the country?
	I said, nope.
	He says, okay.
	And then he just swipes my passport and then he gets that look, right?
	The look that I'm now all too familiar with.
	And then I... I don't know.
	I broke my own rule.
	I said, yeah, I know you're seeing all kinds of stuff there, and I've been advised to ask for a TL, a team leader.
	He said, sure.
	So he didn't stamp my card.
	I had to go to, and I didn't know they had this.
	They have a room at SFO for secondary screening.
	And it's a little back office, so I'd never been in here before.
	I don't know if it's new or not.
	It was kind of hard to tell, but it's kind of off to the side.
	And there's all kinds of ethnic-looking folks who are being semi-detained in there.
	And so I hand off my passport and card, and I go through the wrap.
	It's like, well, this has happened about ten times, and it happens every single time, and the team leader should be able to get into the database.
	He said, okay, Mr.
	Curry.
	It was really nice, by the way.
	No one was mean.
	Have a seat, Mr.
	Curry.
	And it took probably about 25 minutes, and he said, okay, you're good to go.
	And then he hands me my passport and my...
	And my landing card...
	And I know that I have to go to the next...
	To get out of the airport, I have to show all that stuff again.
	And there's...
	John, there's like...
	There's an M on it.
	There's an I on it.
	There's a 1 on it.
	There's an L on it.
	There's like a B on it.
	There's like all these codes.
	I'm telling you.
	So I get my bag.
	I wheel it out.
	And, you know, the guy sees me coming.
	He sees this ticket, which is like filled with yellow marker.
	And he hands me the little blue clear plastic envelope, which is the protocol.
	And...
	And I walk up and I see the team leader who has dealt with me before.
	He's like, Adam, how you doing?
	I'm like, yeah, he says, man, this should not be happening to you.
	This should not be happening.
	Come on over here.
	And so he's there.
	So this is Agent Lund, I think his name is, and Agent Phillips, lovely young lady.
	She's already tapping away in the database.
	And what I realized pretty quickly is that she doesn't know.
	I've never seen her before.
	She doesn't know about my issues.
	She knows me from MTV. So I'm like, this is going to be fun.
	And we're chatting away, and we're having lots of talks, and I say, you know, we're really, really, really sorry about this.
	And they're going back and forth, and they're discussing, yeah, check that box.
	He said, we should be able to get you out, but we just can't seem to get you out of this database.
	And so I start saying, well, tell me about this database.
	Where's all the information coming from?
	And I just really want confirmation.
	But he says, well...
	It's really, it sits on top of all this other information from Department of Motor Vehicles and the IRS. He's telling me about this, I think, illegal practice.
	He says, and it's really hard to...
	It's really hard to get names out.
	He says, but it's not a no-fly list.
	It's a different type of list.
	I said, yeah, I'm quite aware.
	He says, there's now about a million people who shouldn't be in this database and are being stopped, and we're having a real hard time getting people off the list.
	And he said, have we given you the documentation about submitting your information for removal?
	And I said, what, one of those Freedom of Information Act things?
	He says, no, no, no, no.
	And he has a booklet, kind of like a rectangle memo pad, you know, where you can rip off sheets and one end is gummied.
	Yeah.
	And it's an instruction in English and in Spanish.
	Okay.
	About how to...
	And I've heard of this before, but I guess now it's...
	I thought it was only for no-fly lists, but now it's also for this type of secondary screening.
	To go to the TRIP system on the Department of Homeland Security website.
	So it's www.dhs.org.gov slash TRIP, T-R-I-P. And it is the...
	Hold on, I should look at what that stands for.
	It's like the travel restriction.
	Hold on.
	Let me find it.
	What did I say?
	DHS.gov slash TRIP. It's kind of scary is what it is here.
	Traveler Redress Inquiry Program.
	Great.
	Someone's like, hey, cool.
	The acronym is TRIP. This is really awesome.
	So you should look at that webpage, and I have to submit all kinds of information, and then they'll contact me for more information, and oh, don't worry, here's our privacy policy.
	Yeah, right.
	Well, it's not going to work anyway.
	Do you think I should try it?
	Yeah, well, you have to for the purposes of the show.
	But the fact of the matter is, your name is Adam Curry, and the problem is you're not even in the database.
	Well, I am now in the database.
	I'm definitely in the database.
	Yeah, but it's just notes on you proving that you're not the other Adam Curry.
	You can go through this trip process, and I would encourage you to do it, but it's not going to get you off this list because you're not on the list.
	But here's my question.
	For all this money that's going into the Department of Homeland Security, I think as a citizen I have the right for them to go track this guy down.
	He sounds pretty scary.
	Clearly they want him.
	Maybe you should sue the guy because you're the one that's suffering and you're the one that has to be detained a half an hour at a crack over and over and over again.
	Do you know what my time is worth, John?
	I mean, half hour of my time?
	That's just millions of dollars!
	You should find the guy and sue him.
	And to make the government part of the lawsuit, get a lawyer that can figure some crazy lawsuit out here.
	This sounds like one to me.
	And take some action and then get him off the list by getting him whatever, have him resolved.
	You know, taking the Gitmo or whatever they do to him.
	It sounds like that's going to cost me money.
	And a lot of effort.
	I don't really think I'm into that.
	I'm not a very litigious guy.
	Pray for the show.
	Think of the show.
	Oh, that's right.
	The show.
	Think of the show.
	Here's one for the show.
	So I left from JFK last night on Virgin.
	And at JFK, you can't actually check your bags in at the check-in desk.
	You have to take your bag to the TSA screening machine.
	Right.
	Which is a little bit further up.
	So, you know, I'm rolling my bag down.
	And I knew I had a huge delay, so I'm taking my time and I'm feeling pretty good.
	And so I roll my bag over and there's this TSA agent.
	She's about 6'2".
	She's extremely milfy.
	I think, you know, she's pushing 30, late 30s, 40.
	And John's stunning.
	A stunningly...
	I'm a sexy, tall woman in uniform.
	And so she looks at me and I look at her and we're eye to eye, right?
	And you have to understand when you're tall like I am, you just don't get that a lot.
	I'm like, oh, hi.
	And she's like, oh, hi.
	And I hand off my bag and I said...
	Don't you just miss hugging people your height?
	She says, oh, it's been such a long time.
	I said, come here, baby, give me one.
	So I hugged her, and we're doing this big embrace.
	And all of a sudden, she realizes, she's like...
	She gets all fired.
	But it was a nice hug.
	It was good.
	You have to understand, the only time that I had the best hug I ever...
	I think I told you that the best hug I ever had was with Shaquille O'Neal.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah, I was interviewing him.
	But he's a big dude.
	Yeah, he's seven foot whatever.
	And I was interviewing him for something.
	And I said, Shaq, can I just ask you one last question, man?
	He said, yeah.
	I said, you know, I know you can feel my pain here.
	Would you mind if I just hugged you?
	It would be so nice to be hugged by someone bigger than me.
	And he says, absolutely.
	He just engulfed me.
	Yeah, it's nice, man.
	Hugs are good.
	You should hug someone this week, John.
	I hug enough.
	I'm in California.
	You have to hug all the time.
	That's true.
	Hmm.
	Here's something that ties into what we're talking about.
	About accuracy of parts.
	Remember we had the conversation about the crystals?
	Right.
	Hey John and Adam, this is Scott from Virginia.
	I was listening to last Friday's No Agenda, where you were talking about the inaccuracy of system clocks, and John was saying how he couldn't believe that crystals, with all our technology today, couldn't keep more accurate time.
	Well, I'm a computer engineer, so maybe I can give you an idea of why these crystals are so inaccurate.
	Can you hear this?
	Because it's kind of scratchy, this audio.
	Yeah, no, I can hear it.
	Go.
	As with any component that you manufacture resistors capacitors, there are certain tolerances associated with both the manufacturing process and with other environmental variables like temperature.
	So if you buy a crystal rated for 1 megahertz, that's 1 megahertz maybe plus or minus 50 hertz.
	That's a pretty standard number.
	You can get lower tolerances than that or tighter tolerances and then your only effect is on the end cost of the device.
	Now whenever you put a crystal into a system, you hang off things like capacitors, resistors, and these things can affect the overall accuracy of your timing along with the temperature of the environment.
	So you can easily see why you would need to re-sync the clock every so often at the time server like the Atomic Clock or the National Institute of Science and Technology here in the United States.
	So I hope to shed some light on it for you of the show, and I hope to hear this on the air.
	So, one of my summer jobs was selling components, electronic components, in a shop that literally sold capacitors, resistors, etc.
	And I was listening to that comment, I realized, remember you could, I think you can still buy resistors, probably only over the internet these days.
	And the resistor would have a color code and would tell you what the ohm value was of that resistor.
	And it also had either a no band, a silver band, or a gold band, which would also tell you the quality of the resistor and the deviation percentage, which I think was like, is it 5% for gold and 10% for silver or something?
	I don't remember, but I do remember that there was this cool little code.
	Yeah.
	What's mil-spec?
	Oh, mil-spec is a military specification?
	Yeah, it was always the tightest, supposedly.
	Orange book, mil-spec.
	So there's your answer, man.
	It's cheap shit.
	It's actually, there's no question about it, that's exactly what the problem is.
	Now that gives me two anecdotes.
	Nice.
	Okay, now we know how the show works.
	It just triggers old...
	Well, when I was a kid...
	So, I have this couple of Kodak cameras.
	One's a 603.
	It's a dual-lens camera that has this unbelievable mic.
	And you can go to Dvorak Uncensored.
	Look up the Dvorak Uncensored videos on YouTube, and you'll find one on there that says, and the title of it is, Producer Questions Quality of Microphone, or something like that.
	And it's where I had Annalisa Savage in the Cranky Geek set, and I was shooting her with this little camera, which has...
	Which sounds like a studio mic in it.
	And there's actually, I have a 700 series camera that has a similar mic but not quite as good as this one.
	If I want to go out and shoot somebody and I want to get the sound perfect, I'll bring this black 6 megapixel camera and make a movie with it.
	Anyway, so you can listen to this for yourself and hear it, you go, oh my god, it's unbelievable.
	So I figured, and they have a, the camera's kind of weird, it has all kinds of little etchings and things, and I figured they had some special trick that they had done to make the sound so good, and so I called Kodak up to ask him about this microphone.
	The company was literally baffled by my queries.
	I did some more research, and an audio engineer friend of mine told me that essentially what's going on with these digital little cameras, these pocket cameras, these cheap cameras, is that these mics are like $1.50, uncalibrated mic.
	He says it would probably cost $100, add $100 to the cost of the camera to calibrate these mics so they would really be sounding good, because there are good mics out there.
	What he told me was essentially I got lucky.
	And so that camera is never going to leave my sight because it's astonishing what the sound sounds like.
	I will add one thing to that.
	Did you record her in the Cranky Geeks studio?
	Yes, but I've done it.
	I will swear to you, the Cranky Geeks studio is nice and sound.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That would have helped.
	It was a studio.
	I'm showing that the mic sounds like a studio mic in a studio.
	I don't think it was completely out of order.
	But why don't you use that mic for this show, man?
	Because you sound like crap.
	I can't get a compressor on it.
	Now, which brings me to the other story.
	And this is another example when I was talking about how these inspectors, you know, how there's no such thing as anything coming to spec.
	Everything is a little fluctuous, just a little bit, which is part of, I guess, is our theme today.
	So I'm working at Union Oil during the era.
	I was a chemist.
	Better living through chemistry, John.
	I'm a believer.
	So anyway, they had...
	There was a period in American gasoline history where they decided that lead had to get out of the gasoline.
	Because it turned out that to make a gallon of ethyl, which was the high-octane gasoline, typically running almost close to 100 octane, they had to put about 4 grams of tetraethyl lead into the gasoline so they wouldn't have NOC. And three grams of lead came out the pipe as elemental lead.
	So most of the road, anyone who lived near a road or anything was, I mean, the country and the world in fact.
	Was being poisoned, basically.
	Poisoned by lead, elemental lead that would form salts and it would react with the environment one way or shape before getting to the food supply and everything else.
	But it's also crap for your engine, didn't make your engine run well.
	Well, what it did is it lubricated the rings.
	And the real reason for it was for the octane to get a better performing gasoline.
	Because octane, higher octane means the gas that explodes with a more controlled explosion.
	And the rings, though, as a side effect, the lead, because it would melt as it blew off, it would lubricate the ring so the car wouldn't wear out.
	So they determined at Union Oil that all you really needed was a half a gram of lead.
	as opposed to three or four grams to keep the rings lubricated until they could change the way engines were designed.
	And so there was a spec that was put out because the oil industry didn't want to have to deal with all these people moaning or the public moaning about their cars falling apart because there was no lead in the gasoline.
	Viscosity breakdown.
	So they had this tolerance.
	They decided to put into play a law that says the gasoline can have no more than.5 grams of lead in a gallon.
	Now, which was fine, and so now we're making this gasoline, but because of the.5, it was.5, and then about two or three years later, some idiot changed the spec to.50.
	Oh, no.
	So, anybody who knows anything, and apparently, you know, again, we're dealing with a public that hasn't got a clue, and a state senate and whatever...
	0.50 for anyone out there that doesn't get what the importance is.
	What's the difference between 0.5 and 0.50?
	I can just see the argument.
	Well, the difference was with 0.5, we could make the gasoline at Union Oil 0.54, and it's in spec technically.
	And most of the gasoline came in at 0.50, 0.51, 0.5.
	And it could be 0.49.
	That's in spec too.
	But it was mostly a little bit over because the determination was that you needed at least a half a gram.
	But if you change the spec to 0.50, you're off spec at 0.51.
	Right.
	and .52.
	So everything had to be under to make spec because you're not going to hit.50 rarely.
	So all the gas things started going out at.47,.46, which started to affect the valves.
	So the next thing you know, people are having these issues with engines and the rest of it.
	And then, of course, eventually the...
	The car makers put in better...
	And also they came up with synthetic lubricants, right?
	That are added to the fuel.
	Well, no.
	They say really that the engines themselves...
	Really?
	I mean, there's stuff in the gas, that's for sure.
	That's pretty interesting.
	So is there now no lead in the gas, or are they still at some...
	No, no, there's no lead.
	There's zero lead in gas for the last, I don't know, 20 years or 15 years or however long it's been.
	But, no, there's no lead in the gas at all, and the engines are just better.
	I mean, they...
	They've just changed the way they use it.
	I mean, there was a thing back in the day, I've never heard the term sense, but they said, well, the real problem was valve seating, by the way, more so than the rings.
	The valve seats, what would happen if you didn't have lead, the valve would go and hit the head, and then because there was no lubrication, it would weld itself to the head, because it was hot, right?
	So it would pull off a little piece of metal, and And eventually just drive itself right into the engine.
	So they had these things called...
	So what changed is they put in these new expensive valve seats into the engines that were not susceptible to this problem.
	And then they used more...
	The valve formulation of the metal in the valve was such that it wasn't going to do this.
	And that's really what changed.
	What is your vet run on?
	That's unleaded?
	Was that unleaded days?
	It's a 75.
	So I believe it still wants leaded gas.
	Hey man, can I drive it?
	Does it work?
	Does it start?
	Does it drive?
	I'll let you drive it someday.
	Please, John, can I drive you a vet?
	I want to drive you a vet, baby.
	I got to get it.
	The back part, you know, the problem with this vet is a bunch of the stuff is falling off of it.
	Kind of like your Lexus, you mean.
	My Lexus is fine.
	So the, anyway, the Vet has a, there's a back, in the 75 there's this back thing that's made out of some sort of weird plastic, and it just essentially degrades in the air.
	Oh, that's right.
	And just falls, starts falling off in chunks.
	What color is it?
	Because they only made, right, I was going to say, they only made solid colors or one with a stripe, I think.
	You had white, you had yellow.
	Remember they had that one in yellow, which was extremely ugly.
	Yeah.
	Red.
	It's red.
	It's red.
	Oh, beautiful.
	Actually, around 70, I think it was a 79 vet, which had a real interesting roofline.
	I believe they came out with one in baby blue, which is, if you ever see one, it's just absolutely the prettiest thing you've ever seen on the road.
	Patricia had a C5 in Belgium, and she looked good in that Corvette, man.
	But by then, of course, the Corvette was completely made of, what is it?
	Fiberglass.
	Fiberglass, yeah.
	And so she was in the garage, and she pulled into the garage.
	She had the top down, and the garage door opener caught fire above her head, just some kind of short circuit.
	So she freaked out, and she had already stopped the car.
	And I already had the door open.
	And she sees this fire.
	She's like, crap, it's above my head.
	The roof is down.
	So she starts the car.
	She slams it in reverse to get out of the garage with the door still open, which plows into the boiler.
	So the door, of course, like snaps off into 18 million pieces because it's fiberglass.
	The boiler ruptures.
	We have a complete flood.
	Everything destroyed.
	And it was just amazing to see how that car just disintegrated before your very eyes, that door.
	Jeez.
	Anyway.
	A little sideline there.
	It was funny, man.
	It was a funny occurrence.
	I'm sure Patricia appreciates you telling that story in public.
	Yeah, she does not.
	Anyway, so that's kind of the thing about it.
	So the point is that some knowledge, I mean, changing things, minor, because somebody's a nitpicker or whatever.
	Well, why are you smoking 0.50?
	This kind of thing is, again, part of the problem we have as we're...
	Divorcing ourselves as a society from manufacturing and actually kids working on the assembly line or just anything where you're actually having to do more than just sit and ring up sales at a retail store, Chinese goods.
	With really no experience of any sort, it starts to sneak in, this kind of naivete and stupidity starts to sneak into the legislatures and the next thing you know we have a lot of stupidity that will just permeate all levels of society and we have to deal with this.
	Essentially we're going to have a bunch of people that don't understand what going by the book means and why it's not necessarily a good thing.
	In some instances it is good to go by the book though.
	You have to.
	You have to.
	The book is written to be flexible.
	Yeah.
	But still, when it comes to aviation, I ain't that flexible.
	Yeah, I know you keep harping on it, but I'm sure there's some...
	there's a, uh, I'm sure your plane is off spec.
	Uh, I bet you if I, you know, we do it together with some really, I'll bet you you could find all kinds of things, a red tag on that.
	I'll, I'll, I'll bet you that my, uh, that the wing commander would be severely pissed off if you heard you say that.
	I'll bet you that he knows that there's got to be something off spec, whether it's the distance from one door to the other, or the way the seat is.
	But that's not a regulatory issue.
	Yeah, there's probably everywhere you look, there's going to be something wrong.
	If you're going to go by, really go by the spec, so the thing is like, you know, blueprinted exactly the way it's supposed to be.
	No, no, but it doesn't have to be blueprinted, but the checks, the regular inspections have to be done.
	That's different.
	I know they have to be done, but I'll bet you there's a little tolerance in there.
	You're claiming there's zero tolerance for anything.
	No, because the tolerance level, so if you have a bolt that is known to last 1,000 hours, it will have to be replaced at 500 hours.
	The time between overhaul of components is a much shorter time than the expected lifetime of these components.
	I mean, that's not 5%.
	You just can't cut it that close in aviation because of deviation like that.
	That's what I'm trying to tell you.
	So the thousand hour thing is bogus, essentially, if you have to pull the bolt at 500.
	No, it's two separate issues.
	One is, here's how long this bolt will last, and the other one is, here's how you're guaranteed not to die because you'll put a new bolt in that'll be fine for another 500 hours.
	That's different.
	Yeah, I'm understanding what you're saying.
	I'm just saying, obviously, there's some fear.
	Because if the bolt is really good for a thousand hours, really good, guaranteed, let's say...
	Yeah, of course there's fear.
	John, there's fear of death.
	That's obvious.
	Exactly, but the point I'm making here is if that bolt, supposedly to spec, is good to a thousand hours, you shouldn't have to worry at all until it gets to a thousand hours.
	Why are you worried?
	Because you know these things aren't to spec.
	Exactly.
	So that's the more egregious to not even perform checks, which are probably well within limits, well within time limits, but to not do them, that's just...
	I'm not telling you not to do them.
	I'm just telling you that your plane's not up to spec.
	You know what?
	When you come over here, I'm putting your ass in the Delta Chiara.
	We're flying in a non-up-to-spec aircraft, okay?
	I can just imagine.
	Yeah, the weather's clear.
	We don't need no stinking weather.
	We got instruments, which are also up to spec.
	Well, let's hope.
	So anyway, we went out to dinner while you were out here.
	Yeah, and I realized, in hindsight, I don't think it's a good idea for us to do a proper dinner on the day that I come in.
	No, you crapped out right in the middle of it.
	I did.
	It was unbelievable.
	You could see it, right?
	I'm like a happy-go-lucky guy.
	And then you just hit the wall.
	I did.
	It was unbelievable.
	Yeah, I apologize.
	I was not a great table mate for half of the dinner.
	It was just...
	My calculation, it was 4 o'clock in the morning London time when that happened to you.
	Yeah, and we were eating caviar.
	Well, we were eating caviar early.
	You had to hit the wall after that.
	Yeah.
	So I was a little disappointed with the restaurant.
	Really?
	I've eaten there a million times.
	I like the place.
	It's La Folie, we have to tell people what it was.
	Yeah, it's one of my favorite restaurants.
	It's a good restaurant in San Francisco, but they got a Michelin star, received a Michelin star.
	And I think that they're trying a little too...
	I mean, it seemed to me, because I've eaten there forever, that they're trying a little too hard to be fancy.
	That's a good point.
	That's a good point.
	I agree with you there.
	And which is, again, you know, like, I don't need...
	I want to eat some good food.
	I want to have good, well-prepared food.
	I don't want some weird experimentation.
	And there was one...
	There were two or three things in there that were very disappointing.
	One was this...
	The dish I had, which was the crab...
	Whatever the heck it was.
	It was a crab appetizer that was...
	With grapefruit, right?
	It had grapefruit as the base.
	The grapefruit puree, which does not, by the way, go with crab.
	And there was these little pineapple things.
	So you essentially had a deep fat fried in some funny way with a bunch of other crap on there that was unnecessary.
	The whole thing didn't work at all.
	Can I just be, can I respectfully disagree that I've had several dishes that combined crab and grapefruit?
	Well, that's a possibility that it could work if the grapefruit was sweet.
	But this was not only bitter and sour, but it didn't work.
	And I, even thinking about it, it was sweet.
	I wouldn't recommend it as a combination.
	Well, but let's back up because we started with an ounce of caviar.
	Which I thought was spectacular.
	The caviar was good, but again, they had some botched presentation.
	Essentially, what we had was a caviar was on a really interesting spinach blini that was okay.
	Potato blini, yeah.
	And it had spinach and potato, but then they had a sour cream on top of that, and then the caviar doused on top of that.
	And that was all fine, but what was underneath the Bellini was like baffling.
	What was the point of putting a combination of small chunks of asparagus and little cubes of some fish or other?
	Well, the problem with that presentation was because they gave us mother-of-pearl spoons to eat it with.
	You couldn't really get the asparagus onto the spoon because the thickness of the spoon is really meant for scooping caviar, so you couldn't actually get anything off your plate without involving your fingers, which I felt was kind of wrong.
	Well, you could use a real fork, but the point is that what was the point of these additions to what should be kind of a simple...
	I mean, they already had the swirls of some chive green thing around to make it.
	It was a very pretty dish.
	And it tasted good.
	I like that swirly stuff.
	That was good.
	It tasted good.
	Yeah, no, it was good.
	I wasn't complaining about that.
	But what I was complaining about was the unnecessary weird crap that was put underneath the blini.
	It's just to be able to say, put it on the menu.
	Oh, we have nice little pieces of asparagus we have hidden for you under the potato blini.
	So anyway, I was disappointed in that part of it.
	I did like the caviar.
	And then the crab thing was just completely out of control.
	What did I have for my entree?
	Yeah, what did you have?
	I had the crusted tenderloin.
	You had like a lamb or a pork or beef or some damn thing.
	I didn't, I didn't, by that point, I had an hors d'oeuvre before that though.
	I had something else.
	By then you were gone.
	By the time that entree came out, it was some, something wrapped in it.
	You were shot by then.
	Yeah, but what was the hors d'oeuvre?
	The hors d'oeuvre, in my case, was the crab.
	I had something different.
	This is not good.
	This is not good that I already forgot what I had to eat.
	Yeah, no, that's actually a bad sign.
	Here, let me go look it up because the menu is actually online.
	I also felt a little bit in the service and the way the chef was kind of walking around in and out pontificating.
	I also felt that was a little unnecessary.
	It felt like, you know, just get the food on the table and just move it along.
	I didn't mind the chef coming in and out.
	It was nice that he came over to our table and said hi.
	I thought the service was stunning.
	It was right on the money.
	They never missed a beat.
	It was timely, but it felt a little...
	I don't know.
	I was not in my right mind.
	I was not sane.
	No, I think the service was fantastic, actually.
	Atmosphere, fantastic.
	Liked it a lot.
	Atmosphere was really good.
	I couldn't appreciate the wine as much as I usually do.
	It was good.
	Well, that brings up another problem, which is the wine.
	So I order a bottle of wine, and I've never had this happen before.
	Normally, I'd like to cherry pick.
	You find some good wine, and then the guys can't find it, or they're out of it, which is inexcusable for a started restaurant to be out of wine.
	Yeah, with a Michelin star.
	Excuse me.
	We should report them, John.
	They should be stripped of their star for that, dammit.
	No, I think all these ones, these starred restaurants that they're giving to the U.S., I think there's only maybe.
	I was looking at the list.
	There's a ton, like in, let's see, look at this.
	There's like so many restaurants with stars in California alone.
	It's ridiculous.
	I mean, it's ludicrous.
	These are not restaurants that compare to anything in France.
	I mean, La Felique is a good restaurant, but I don't think it would have a star if it was in France.
	And I don't think that the French Laundry should have three stars.
	I think maybe two.
	Because I think there's a rude operation.
	They won't take reservations except once a month for a couple hours a day.
	They won't answer the phone.
	I mean, there's all kinds of issues that doesn't warrant, that keeps it from getting three stars.
	Right.
	Arrogance.
	Well, yeah, totally.
	So, anyway, I can't find it.
	Oh, John, of course I know what we had.
	We both had the same thing, dude.
	Frog's legs.
	Oh, yeah, no, we had the frog's legs.
	The frog's legs were good.
	Then what did I have before that?
	Oh, I had the goat cheese and fourme d'ambert terrine.
	I had the goat cheese.
	It's a goat cheese salad.
	Right.
	That was much better than mine.
	Which was really good.
	And then we had the frog's legs, which we both thought were rather tiny.
	They were extremely small.
	Where were they from?
	They were from Florida?
	Tampa?
	What did you say?
	Florida.
	Florida.
	Florida frogs.
	Alright, back to the wine, because I interrupted you on that.
	Yeah, so anyway, I ordered a...
	Here we go.
	And then I had the quail.
	That's what I had.
	I found the menu.
	It's online.
	I'm looking at it.
	I'm looking at it.
	Oh, I couldn't...
	I was having trouble.
	Yeah, it was the Frog Legs...
	Laffoli.com.
	...which was good.
	That was actually pretty good.
	Mine was the Dungeness Crab Salad Napoleon on crispy pineapple chips, grapefruit, and pomegranate jelly.
	It was horrible.
	Horrible, yeah.
	And then, anyway, I just...
	I like, you know, the guy who's the chef, Roland Passant, he is a, or Passot, I guess, he's a really great guy, and I like the restaurant, but I was just so disappointed, and it just seemed to me that they were over trying too hard.
	In the olden days when Lutece was a big shot place to go to in New York City, it was unique in the fact that they really didn't go into anything that was complicated.
	It was all really well done and simple.
	It was always considered the best restaurant in Manhattan.
	So anyway.
	Why?
	Wine.
	So I ordered a bottle of a wine.
	It was a 2003 Chateau Marbusier.
	And he says, would you like the wine decanted?
	And I says, it's not that old.
	And I don't like, generally speaking, how these wines don't need to be decanted.
	It's pretentious.
	Just let it breathe.
	He says, well, it's a 2000.
	I said, no, it's a 2003.
	So he goes back and he says, oh, I got the wrong one.
	I got the Marbusier, Chateau Marbusier, which is a different winery.
	And then he goes off to get the other one, which is what I wanted to check out.
	So he comes back.
	He says he's digging all over.
	He's got a bunch of stuff.
	I can't find it.
	Which I thought was weird.
	Which is literally what he said.
	I can't find it.
	Monsieur.
	What he said.
	So we got the other wine, the 2000 Marbusier, which I haven't had, so I figured it out.
	It's not bad.
	And it was actually cheaper.
	And so we had that.
	It was fine.
	It was good wine, but it wasn't what I wanted.
	So that was kind of a problem.
	And of course we had a...
	What did we have?
	A white Bordeaux with the...
	Oh yeah, the Chateau.
	Actually, I was surprised how good that was.
	That was good.
	The Chateau Bonet.
	That was good.
	I liked that a lot.
	Just an everyday white Bordeaux.
	Anyway, so I'm looking at, so I got kind of into looking at all these Michelin stars that the Michelin guide people are throwing out like there's no tomorrow.
	Now just explain a Michelin star.
	Michelin is essentially like the ultimate Zagat guide, I guess, of France, and it It's the original restaurant.
	This began almost 100 years ago.
	Michelin decided that they should do some guides.
	Michelin, by the way, is a tire manufacturer.
	I think most Americans haven't had Michelin's.
	I think most Americans don't know.
	I think they're all thinking Pirelli's.
	No, I think you're wrong because Costco sells Michelin tires.
	Okay, so let me just bridge the gap between tires and restaurants because I don't think most people know that.
	Right.
	That's true.
	Go ahead.
	Now, the reason for the guides originally was to sell tires.
	It was a guide that showed you all these places you could travel in your car so you could wear out your tires.
	Yep.
	So over the years, they became like the experts, and they started in France, of course.
	And in fact, the red guide, I always tell people who have never been to France, if you don't have a red guide, Michelin red guide in France, when you're traveling around, you're crazy.
	Because it's really the way to go.
	I mean, they list all the little towns, and they have all the little hotels, and what they charge, and every restaurant in the country.
	It's unbelievable.
	And so they came up with this system some years ago to star, and there's only three stars is the most you can get.
	So when people talk, why is it a four-star Michelin place?
	You hear that once in a while, it's like, no.
	No, I don't think so.
	Three stars is the most you can get, and they only have a very few.
	In fact, they have the list here of the ones in Europe.
	They have three stars?
	In Paris, for example, there's only 9 out of 26 in the entire country of France.
	9 three-star restaurants.
	In Paris, there's 15 two-stars and 38 one-stars.
	Now, when you consider the fact that...
	We damn near have that.
	We don't have as many one-stars in the United States, but we have already too many.
	Because it's supposed to be the most strict, and if you've been to these restaurants in France, it's more than just the food.
	There's the food, there's the atmosphere, there's the service.
	John, this is my point exactly.
	I believe with the wine snafu and the frickin' asparagus under the caviar blini, I think we should write them up.
	Well, I would, except for the fact that the list of one-star restaurants in San Francisco, and let me just go over a couple of them here.
	It's ridiculously long, and they're probably not the worst offender.
	I mean, it's just a ludicrous list of restaurants with one star that if you were in France, these are just country places you'd find all over the place.
	And some of them are literally bistros that haven't changed their menu in years, like Bistro Janty in Yountville.
	And the other thing that's weird is that if you look at the list...
	The California, Northern California, San Francisco list, it's obviously the guy who's doing it or the team that's doing it, they obviously live in Healdsburg or Yountville or St.
	Helena or someplace in the Napa Valley because there's way too many restaurants that are in the wine country, which is, you know...
	I mean, how many restaurants can a population of five support?
	And there's hardly anything on the peninsula of San Jose, South.
	There's nothing, you know, there's one place in Los Gatos.
	But there's like, for example, I don't want to bore people with this, but there seems to be some interest.
	But let me just complain really quickly.
	I'm sorry, go ahead.
	Keep complaining.
	Well, the Michelin, I'm going to run over these names of these just to show you.
	There's a one three-star restaurant, which is in Yountville, which is the French Laundry, which to me, if it was in France, it would maybe be three.
	I doubt it, probably more likely to be two.
	Maybe because of some of their practices.
	Then he goes to the two-star restaurants, and then they have this all screwed up, because these are hardly the best restaurants in town.
	And they leave out, for example, the top restaurant in San Francisco is known to be, the two top places actually, are Gary Danko's I hate aqua.
	You hate aqua?
	Yes.
	Oh, no, I don't like it at all.
	There's a number of people that will literally say that when you mention it.
	They hate aqua.
	And I have a guy who used to work with me, used to work there as a sous chef, and he says if the chef's not around, the food just isn't worth dealing with.
	It's just shit, yeah.
	What?
	Is it possible, is it thinkable, John, that much like the International Olympic Committee, obviously there's a great marketing benefit to having one, two, or three stars, just like it's great to have the Olympics in your country.
	There's been great scandal with how countries are chosen, with payoffs and bribes.
	Is it thinkable that the team that awards these stars maybe has just fallen prey to bribery?
	Corruption.
	Corruption?
	I don't know.
	I mean, I think it's too complicated to do that.
	I think they're just incompetent.
	And I think that's a big difference.
	And I think incompetency is partially to blame here.
	But let's go over the two-star restaurants.
	Aqua.
	Nobody thinks it's a two-star restaurant.
	In fact, if it was me, I wouldn't give it a...
	Actually, here's my rating.
	If I was going to give stars out, I'd give two stars to the French Laundry, and I'd give one star to Gary Danko, one star to Fleur de Lis, a tentative star to the Ritz-Carlton because it's a hotel thing and it fluctuates a little bit, and then probably one star and maybe two just...
	Because of its importance to Chez Panisse.
	That's it.
	I wouldn't give another star out.
	Brainstorm.
	Don't say that.
	Don't say that.
	Brainstorm.
	I mean, look, we're well-known guys.
	You're very knowledgeable in this area.
	I'm the voice of the common man when it comes to the dinners we enjoy together.
	Why don't we just start our own rating and get some free food out of the business?
	Dude, this is fucking perfect.
	This is a great idea.
	So don't say you won't give out any more stars.
	We have to have something different than a star.
	We have to have a different rating system.
	Yeah, well, obviously.
	But anyway, the point is now, by the way, Quince, which is on the list as one star, is actually a really good place.
	Haven't we eaten there?
	Haven't I eaten there with you?
	I don't think so.
	No.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	You don't want to do a rating system with me?
	You're not picking up on that?
	Well, yeah, we can do a rating because it's so easy.
	I just named the five places.
	That's it for now.
	Yeah, I'm sure there's other places.
	Anyway, so let me go back over this.
	Two stars.
	Aqua, no.
	Shea TJ. I've not been there.
	It's a new place.
	It used to be one star.
	Now they moved it up.
	And if you go to Yelp, all people do is complain about it being listed at all.
	Cyrus, which I also haven't been to, which is up in Healdsburg, is probably, everybody thinks it's a great place, and I'm going to give them some slack.
	That's another two-star place.
	But again, up in Healdsburg.
	Healdsburg is a long way from here.
	Right.
	From San Francisco, it's like an hour plus to get there.
	Man Race in Los Gatos, which is about two hours from San Francisco.
	That's one of the few places that's actually rated south of San Francisco.
	The Meadowood in St.
	Helena, another place up in the wine country, a two-star restaurant.
	Hour minimum to get there.
	Michael Mina, which is a restaurant that opened recently in St.
	Francis, which I've gone to three times, does not warrant a star.
	The first time I went there, I thought it was one of the most interesting meals I've ever had.
	It was outstanding.
	The second time I went there, because I brought some other people to show it off, it wasn't as good.
	It was falling off a little bit.
	This is the same group that started the Aqua, by the way, so it's kind of an interesting situation.
	The third time I went there, the meal was just so-so, and I got baited and switched on the wine.
	Oh, my God.
	Another outfit we have to report.
	So what happened with the wine was I cherry picked, which is I think I hit two in a row actually, where the wine that was listed on the list wasn't there.
	They just didn't have it.
	It was there sold out.
	Okay, fine.
	So the guy comes over after the second time this happened, and he says, you know what we can do for the same price, which was a reasonable price, we can offer you this wine, which was a big upgrade, and they would have eaten whatever the $30 was.
	Because I think the difference was $30 or $40 for a bottle.
	And so I said, okay, we can do that.
	So he goes back, and the next thing you know, I see him, the guy, and the maitre d' getting into some discussion.
	The guy comes back, he says, well, you know, we decided, we decided now, we decided that this wine, this other wine, is probably even a better choice than the one that we've offered you for the, you know, as a substitute.
	Yeah, it was a better choice and it saved them $40.
	So I just thought that was the worst performance I've ever seen.
	Unbelievable.
	They're off the list, John.
	I'm keeping track now.
	So there was this restaurant that was in the St.
	Regis.
	The worst case scenario was the following.
	I'm in New York and there's a restaurant, I can't remember the name of it, but it's very famous.
	It was in the St.
	Regis.
	And they closed.
	Oh, I've stayed at the St.
	Regis a lot.
	You know that big fancy place downstairs?
	Downstairs, yeah, downstairs, yep, absolutely.
	So I go in there, and the place is really expensive.
	And so I order a bottle of Joseph Druhan's Oregon Pinot, and it's a newer release called Lorraine.
	And if you looked on the wine list, it was like, it would said, Joseph Druhan Lorraine, which is a specific vineyard that they grow as high-end Pinot Noir at.
	And there was no other Joseph Druhan Lorraine.
	Oregon wine is on the list.
	Just this.
	The guy comes out with the bottle and he shows it to me.
	It's not the wine.
	It's just the plain old Joseph Drew Henpino, which isn't even on the list.
	Oh, an outrage.
	And so I say, no, that's not it.
	The one I, it says Lorraine on the label.
	And curiously, I just had had the wine like a couple weeks before, and I know exactly where the Lorraine designator was.
	The guy comes back with the same bottle, without the Lorraine, and he says, no, no, this is it.
	This is the only wine they make.
	Put my finger on the bottle and point right to the spot where Loren is supposed to be set, you know, where the vineyard name is.
	I said, right here, it says Loren on the real wine.
	Not this piece of crap you're pawning off on me.
	And so the guy goes back a third time, and then he comes out with the right bottle.
	So I'm thinking, this is unbelievable.
	Suspicious.
	So I ran into the guy who was the hotel manager once at a wine tasting, and I was sitting next to him by coincidence.
	And...
	I told him this story.
	You know, I was so annoyed by it.
	And by the way, there was other incidents in the same dinner.
	And he says, oh, yeah, I know who that was.
	And he just, he apparently was just some corrupt practice that was going on at this place.
	Oh, no.
	And he also mentioned to me that that restaurant was losing something like a million dollars a month.
	Oh, wow.
	How's that possible?
	How's that possible?
	Not at those prices, but, well, it's possible because obviously they're stealing from them.
	I don't know.
	Anyway, so that's, I could go on.
	We could talk about the Michelin stuff more later, but I just found that the whole list with all these places up in the wine country are just ridiculous.
	And the whole thing is, and I don't know.
	To be continued.
	Yeah, to be continued.
	And then they have this other thing where all these cheaper meals, and just again, you know, Petaluma, St.
	Helena, Napa, Napa, San Anselmo, Windsor, Santa Rosa.
	I mean, where's the San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley?
	I mean, the whole peninsula, 231 Ellsworth and San Mateo is never even mentioned.
	And one of the greatest restaurants in the Bay Area is the Woodside or the Village Tavern or Village Pub.
	I'm sorry.
	The Village Pub and Woodside, not mentioned.
	And it's better than half the places listed here as one star.
	But obviously the inspectors live up in the wine country.
	It goes too far to drive down to Woodside, which is, you know, I don't know.
	It's annoying.
	The only place I know in Woodside is Buck's.
	They probably give them a star.
	So when the list first came out in the Bay Area, everybody's fussing, especially all the French guys, because they got screwed.
	And there's a couple of little places that aren't even restaurants, essentially, getting a star.
	And the Michelin guys came up with the argument that, well, for its type, your restaurant doesn't get a star, because for its type...
	Oh, there's classification now.
	That's a crock of crap.
	Where's the one-star taco truck?
	We could be it.
	Seriously, where's the one-star taco truck if it's for your type?
	In its type.
	In its class.
	Yeah, well, there's restaurants for the type.
	All right, you're boring me now, John.
	Okay, you take it on from here.
	No, I don't know.
	I like solving the world.
	You're solving something else.
	Yeah, my need to have a decent meal.
	Did you have any notes?
	Did you write anything down?
	Anything we can decode, decipher?
	Yeah, so I watched the Miss USA thing last night.
	Oh, crap.
	I missed that.
	Yeah, well, I've never seen that.
	I caught it during the bikini show.
	15 winners, you know, the 15 girls that would do the bikini thing, and it was like, it was like watching, it was like, remember Robert Palmer, and he had those women that all...
	Addicted to love, yep, absolutely.
	They all looked exactly the same.
	It was like, look, they all had the exact same body.
	It was like weird.
	Is this the Trump-sponsored one, or is that Miss Universe?
	No, same thing.
	Miss Universe is part of Miss Universe.
	So they had, there was a cookie-cutter group.
	They're all tall, between, you know, typically 5'8 to 5'10.
	They all had teeth that were bleached to such an extreme that it looked like if they put any more on, the teeth would just fall apart from whatever this crap is.
	It's hot.
	Yeah, it's hot.
	I like that.
	What else?
	So what's your point?
	Was something wrong here?
	I don't understand the issue.
	Yeah, there's a couple of wrong things, and here's what's wrong.
	For one thing, they picked the wrong girl.
	I mean, as far as I'm concerned, Miss Oklahoma should have won the whole thing.
	She was the only one that had...
	What was her talent?
	She's the only one that didn't look like a cookie cutter.
	She actually had kind of a...
	She was a blonde.
	She had a cute Danica Patrick look, so she had a more modern look, and she was very pleasant.
	A little tomboyish?
	Is that what you mean?
	A little bit, but she's 5'10".
	And dynamite.
	But anyway...
	What's her talent?
	There was no talent.
	This is not one where they have talent.
	Didn't she say something about saving the world?
	High heels is their talent.
	Didn't she say something about saving the world?
	Come on, they have to do the interview questions.
	Okay, well let me go to that part of my little list of complaints.
	So one of the girls who was really actually one of the better looking ones, and I could have been a winner, I believe was...
	And I just want to point out that you are the man that yelled at me for liking reality television, yet you're willing to sit through the Miss USA competition.
	Only to criticize it, not to praise it.
	So, here's the kicker.
	Miss Pennsylvania, who's gorgeous.
	She has to come up to do, and they pick this weird, they do this weird thing.
	They pick from a bin, or Donnie picks from a bin.
	Donnie?
	Or they pick from a, or Donnie Osmond.
	Oh, Donnie Osmond, they were hosting it?
	Oh, fantastic.
	So anyway, so they pick from a bin, and they give the thing to Donnie, and then Donnie says, okay, your question will come from, and they have like ten judges, and these are the top five girls, so this is five people are going to ask questions.
	They have these canned questions.
	So this poor woman from Pennsylvania gets that idiot, Heather Mills, who is one of the judges, as the questioner.
	Okay.
	So Heather Mills asked her what she thinks about selling, you know, that the big makeup companies and cosmetics firms are marketing to kids.
	Do you think this is right?
	And of course, probably the poor woman from Pennsylvania doesn't know what a nut job this Heather Mills is and how she's like a vegan and a screwball.
	A vegan?
	What do you mean a vegan?
	Pagan.
	Pagan is what you mean.
	Yeah.
	So the woman says, well, you know, there's a lot of, you know, she kind of hemmed and hawed, but says, yeah, it's fine, because there's some products, you know, like facial cleaners and things like that.
	She didn't say that, but that's what she was hinting at.
	Would be okay.
	And you could just see the look on Heather's face, like, she's lowballing this chick.
	Yeah.
	And in fact, Miss Pennsylvania came in dead last.
	Yeah.
	Because Heather probably zeroed her out, which you can do in these kinds of competitions and just lower the number.
	And Heather was just sitting there steaming that this girl would not have said what she would hope.
	She'd say, no, all cosmetic companies are evil, evil.
	They test on animals.
	Oh, she's an activist.
	So she was out.
	So I thought that was pretty bad.
	Just one thing, I'm looking at the website from MissUSA.com so I can follow along and look at these girls.
	So there's two huge banner ads on the entire website.
	Guess what they're for?
	Cosmetics.
	Weight loss.
	Oh, weight loss, right!
	Drop a stone in two weeks to the pinkpatch.co.uk.
	So it's actually a patch that you put onto your abdomen and it helps you lose weight.
	Yeah.
	My God, how sick is that?
	That's sick.
	Crystal Stewart, that's her name?
	The one from Pennsylvania?
	No, Miss USA. Oh, yeah, she's the girl from Texas.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I don't even, you know, she was okay.
	Except for the fact she's 26.
	She's 26.
	Yeah, but dude, her face has the features of the Crypt Keeper.
	You know what?
	I had questions.
	She looked a little bit too much like Condoleezza Rice.
	And here's the other thing that I saw on the show, and I actually took some photos of this.
	I was thinking of blogging it because I get carried away watching this crap.
	So Donny Osmond, and only one time.
	First, he takes the question out, and he opens it and shares it with Marie.
	Let's her read it.
	And with the woman from Texas who was a black girl.
	He pulls the thing out or she gives him the thing.
	He says, let me read this one, Marie.
	And he kind of holds it away from her.
	And Marie has to kind of look over to see what it is.
	And he says, your question comes from number nine, Sean Merriman, the only black judge, coincidentally.
	Oh, man.
	Okay.
	And then he keeps the thing close to his vest, and I think Marie got a glimpse of it, because you had, you know, you can pull this off, because it said anything on there, you know, whatever.
	And she had a weird look on her face, like this is like, something weird here is going on.
	So Sean Merriman, the only black judge, asked the only black contestant some softball question about something or other.
	She answered it rather poorly, to be honest about it.
	I didn't think he even pulled it off.
	But that was that, and Donnie says, good answer!
	And he gives her a big kudo, and he ditches this thing into the drawer.
	The next one he pulls out, the two of them look at it together, and it was like everything was kosher after that.
	So I think that the whole thing was rigged.
	Well, dude, here's the judging panel.
	Okay, Heather Mills...
	Oh, this is cool.
	I'm reading from the website.
	It actually gives their credentials, okay?
	These are the people who have the credentials to choose Miss USA. Representing the proud United States of America, ladies and gentlemen.
	Heather Mills, a Brit, who was a contestant on Season 4 of Dancing with the Stars.
	Not mentioning that she divorced Paul McCartney.
	Rob Schneider, star of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry...
	Joey Fatone, host of The Singing Bee, formerly of Boy Band Blue, I think.
	Christian Alfonso, entrepreneur and star of NBC's Days of Our Lives, a soap star.
	Olympic gold medal winner Amanda Beard.
	Christian Cyrano, the season's winner of Bravo's hit show Project Runway.
	San Diego Chargers linebacker Sean Lights Out Merriman.
	Celebrity hairstylist Ken Paves.
	Kelly Carlson, star of Nip Tuck.
	By the way, Kelly Carlson looked better than all those girls, generally speaking.
	I betcha.
	And then founder and CEO of Planet Hollywood International, Inc., Robert Earle.
	And Vanity Fair celebrity journalist George Wayne.
	They should have put Perez Hilton in there.
	That would have completed the lineup.
	Well, they had that one guy, that little weird gay character who ended up asking Miss Oklahoma who I was rooting for.
	Who's the little weird gay character, John?
	He's the little weird gay character.
	I just gave you all the names.
	I know.
	He's one of those guys.
	He's just a weird little gay character.
	Donny Osmond?
	Was that him?
	Was that the weird little gay guy?
	He's a little skinny little gay character.
	I don't even know if he's really gay, but he sure plays one.
	But it's like that exaggerated phony baloney, almost insulting gay.
	And he asked the Miss Oklahoma question about, you know, some idiotic question, where Britney Spears came into the conversation.
	Oh, thank goodness.
	We worked her in.
	Which sunk Miss Oklahoma, actually, so it was the end of her.
	So, can you just, I mean, my point is being made here, John, that the interviews is the most important part of these pageants.
	Because you can totally get, you know, lose it on your answer.
	Absolutely.
	Right, and that brings me to the only point I was actually trying to make.
	Okay.
	Which is that there's been numerous studies done by universities all over the place about the order of appearance and the resultant scores from judges.
	And so everything that happens last, it becomes more important than what happens early. - Makes sense. - And it's particularly true with people who come rolling out on like, you know, here we go with the bathing suit contest and let's judge number one, number two, number three, number four.
	The number one person 99% of the time, no matter how they look, will get one of the lowest, if not the lowest scores.
	And the last person tends to get higher scores.
	And so it builds because the judges, as they get warmed up, they start getting looser and then pretty soon they're giving bigger numbers.
	And that's what happened in this.
	So I watched the gown thing after the bathing suit thing.
	They had the girls come out in gowns and it was like some of these gowns are just horrible.
	But the girl who came out with a really nice black dress and she was really pretty and she was supposed to be able for elegance and all this other stuff.
	It comes out as Miss Massachusetts.
	So I took my pen out and started writing down the scores as they came out because they put them up.
	So you could see this trend.
	So she comes out first.
	8.4.
	Okay, fine.
	Then the next person comes out.
	It's kind of pretty, but she's no better than Miss Massachusetts and probably not as elegant because the Massachusetts girl was wearing black and she could walk in heels.
	8.6.
	Then New Jersey comes out, who I thought was good looking anyway.
	She should have gotten a really high score because she was gorgeous.
	8.9.
	So it's just almost like they're just adding, you know, it's not even looking at anybody.
	Now, do their scores determine the ultimate winner or was there like an SMS text vote?
	It's part of a combination of scores and then I think they do a final, I don't know.
	Did they do SMS texting?
	Did the public choose or was it just the judges?
	No, just the judges.
	So we go 8.4, 8.6, 8.9.
	Next one, Pennsylvania girl comes out.
	She is stiff.
	She's the one who got screwed by Heather.
	She's stiff.
	She doesn't look like she really likes to walk around in gowns at all.
	9.0, or 9.1 almost.
	It just gets worse.
	The Danica Patrick girl from Oklahoma who had one of the worst gowns, imagine it was just a horrible looking thing.
	She comes out and actually trips.
	She stumbles.
	She gets 9.3.
	I love it when that happens.
	That's like...
	Or they fall down the steps.
	It was subtle.
	It was just a little bitty stumble.
	It wasn't like she fell on her ass.
	Hey, but you know what?
	You should not be getting a 9.6 if you stumble.
	I'm sorry.
	9.3.
	She got a 9.3.
	But the point is, is it builds and builds and builds.
	And then next, Mississippi comes out, who had another horrible outfit on.
	I mean, she made her...
	Because you just saw her in a...
	In a bikini, she's beautiful shape.
	She's wearing this, I don't know how you could even find a dress that makes what's probably a perfect body look like it's got a big square butt that's huge.
	It's like, is this the same girl?
	Gluteus Maximus.
	It's amazing what dresses can do.
	She got an 8.9, which is way too high.
	And in Texas, when she comes, all the scores are bigger at the end, except I have to say they backed off, which is unusual.
	Indiana got slammed at 8.5, and Florida with 8.5, who looked like a horse in this thing.
	Now, the point is, though, the first girl got the lowest score.
	And if you'd rearranged the order, she wouldn't have it.
	That's why it should be an SMS vote.
	This makes no sense.
	These idiots, I mean, people listening to us will say, who are you guys to judge?
	But who are those guys to judge?
	The whole thing is just a ridiculous exercise.
	I'm surprised.
	I wasn't even going to watch the whole thing.
	I was just getting madder and madder watching.
	And then when Heather Mills pulled that stunt with the makeup cosmetics question, they should have just shot her.
	So the banner just rotated.
	Feeling fat?
	Lose the tummy fast and easy with pink.
	They're drug dealers, dude.
	This whole thing is pushers.
	That's what it sounds like.
	Produced by NBC Entertainment.
	I was wondering if it was like a Burnett.
	It probably sucked.
	How was the production?
	Just sucked, right?
	No, actually the production was quite good.
	Usually it's fun.
	Actually, I was most surprised by the studio.
	They were doing it in this new casino that I didn't even know existed.
	What do you call it?
	The Planet Hollywood Casino Hotel.
	It's been around for a while, hasn't it?
	Yeah, we had a promotion on our network.
	We opened it up with the Black Peas.
	And a band could perform on stage.
	I forget who won.
	But yeah, that was late last year.
	Whatever the case, the...
	They have a stage and a facility for doing productions like this that is absolutely fantastic.
	Nice.
	I thought the production was good.
	It wasn't bad.
	It didn't have any...
	Is that there's a lot of promotion going on during the thing.
	Donnie and Marie kept plugging each other, you know.
	Yeah, we got a show over here.
	By the way, between and after this, you can come by and see us.
	We'll be doing our 10 o'clock, you know, or whatever.
	That's kind of the deal with those shows.
	You always want someone who has a new show coming out or something to promote because you can get them to host it on the cheap.
	That's like Circus of the Stars, if you remember that show.
	I was on that one.
	I don't remember why I was on it, but...
	Were you one of the guys that was stuffed in a small car?
	No, I told you I was in the rocket car of death.
	I told you that, didn't I? Yeah, I think so.
	It's pretty funny.
	I wish I could find the footage of that.
	If someone has footage of me in the rocket car of death, Circus of the Stars, I think it was 1992 maybe.
	Someone will have it.
	I've been looking for it on Hulu.
	They do have Swamp Thing on there.
	I did a whole episode of Swamp Thing, but that's Season 2.
	They only have Season 1 up.
	You were on Swamp Thing?
	Yeah, I was the lead role in the episode Smoke and Mirrors.
	What did you play, a bad guy?
	Nathan, rock star, out of control rock star.
	Quite a stretch, I have to say.
	Quite a stretch.
	Typecasting.
	Hey John, it's about an hour and a half now and the dog is freaking out here.
	Alright, well let me just say I got one more thing to say and I'm done.
	Okay.
	William Shatner was on Jay Leno last night.
	Oh yeah, I missed that too.
	I saw the plug.
	How was he?
	Well, he was William Shatner.
	But I want to tell people out there, if you ever see William Shatner, this is a short thing to note.
	He only admitted to this once, by the way.
	It was on Letterman years and years ago.
	When he comes on the show and starts telling these stories, the stories are all crap.
	They're bullshit.
	And he had the story about sliding just on the way over, kind of.
	He crashed his motorcycle and he was wearing a skivvy shirt.
	It's all he had on.
	It's just a bogus, phony story.
	He does these...
	He lies.
	It's all a lie.
	It's all a pack of lies.
	But it's funny.
	It's entertaining.
	That's why he does it, obviously.
	But just note that when you see him.
	Don't go, wow, what a fascinating life he leads.
	Hey, dude.
	He played opposite Heather Locklear, so he's my hero.
	Yeah, he would be.
	I like him.
	I love Boston Legal, too.
	The writing is spectacular.
	Yeah, I've stopped watching it.
	I think this season is getting slow.
	Well, I'm behind here because we get it later, obviously.
	But I'm still enjoying it very much.
	Well, that's probably the next season when you start to see it, you'll probably think less of it.
	Oh, okay.
	All right, John, my friend, my wife is coming home soon.
	My wife and daughter are from Amsterdam, so I've got to prepare the house for them.
	Yes, get to work.
	This was fun.
	We've got a lot more to talk about.
	Should we do it again next week?
	I think so.
	You got yourself a date.
	In the Curry Manor in Guilford, I'm Adam Curry.
	And as the temperature goes up and up and up, I'm John C. Dvorak in Northern California.

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