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Nov. 28, 2008 - No Agenda

01:26:02

59: Smells Like Tee Truffle

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	Forget about Proposition 8.
	This is Preparation H, broadcasting from Gitmo Nation East in the United Kingdom.
	I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. DeVore Cup here in northern Silicon Valley.
	Hey, John, how you doing?
	Okay.
	How was your Thanksgiving?
	Good.
	It was good.
	Dan, what did you do?
	Well, we had to, unfortunately, we're going to have Thanksgiving next weekend because I couldn't get up to Washington.
	So we had separate Thanksgivings because of the price of the airline tickets.
	And meanwhile, all the news coverage was, oh, nobody went anywhere.
	Nobody went, you know, the airports were empty.
	And they were.
	There was like nobody traveling and they were moaning and blaming on the economy.
	I'll tell you what to blame it on.
	$500 airline fares that were normally $65.
	That's what to blame it on.
	These guys are idiots.
	Oh, I love it when you're like that.
	Hey, sir, wait a minute.
	So, did you celebrate by yourself in the Bay Area, and the family was up in Seattle?
	Yeah, basically.
	Oh, did you have no one to celebrate with?
	No, actually, one of the guys that we were sponsoring in law school, who my wife calls our fourth son, he just moved down here, and so I brought him over and fed him.
	Did you make turkey?
	No, no, I had pheasant.
	Oh, that's sad, John.
	That's a real bummer when you can't hang out with your family.
	The pheasant was great.
	Ah, I'm sure.
	Except from the pheasant's perspective.
	No, it actually forced my wife to have to do the whole meal.
	You know, I had to walk her through a couple of things, but for the most part, she did it.
	She nailed it.
	She finally discovered that if you use a thermometer on a turkey, you can probably get the temperature right and cook perfectly.
	Oh, I like those pop-up warning buttons.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, okay.
	So one of the things that was floating around here, though, which I go to the store to get the pheasant.
	I figure it's an economic collapse.
	I might as well have pheasant.
	And what would make it even more decadent?
	Cake.
	Truffles.
	Ooh, nice, yeah.
	So there's a bunch of off-season truffles that came in, and they were dirt cheap.
	I mean, and they were good, solid black ones.
	And the woman that brought them in over at the local store, they came from Honduras.
	Now, they've had truffles.
	Obviously, the best truffles come from France and Italy, but then there's a lot of them coming in from Oregon.
	But the Oregon ones are kind of mushy, and you have to deal with them in all kinds of weird ways.
	To make them acceptable.
	These are just like a French truffle.
	So what is the truffle market, or what was it before the economic malaise?
	Because these things were quite expensive, and they're basically...
	What is it?
	It's like a root that's under the earth that has to be uncovered by either a pig or a dog.
	Is that the basic idea?
	It's like a fungus.
	Oh, yeah, it's a fungus.
	That's right.
	It's a ball.
	It's a little ball.
	And they're very distinctive looking.
	And they get to any number of sizes.
	I remember going to...
	Alan Ducasa's restaurant in New York once when it was Truffle Week, and they brought out these truffles in a big box, and they went to each table individually, and they opened the box and showed you these three truffles that, I swear, each one of them, they were white truffles from Italy, each one of them was the size of a softball.
	And what did they cost?
	What did they cost?
	Those probably cost about $5,000 a piece.
	My goodness.
	For a fungus.
	Yeah, it's a fungus.
	It's very aromatic.
	Yeah, but still, five grand.
	Yeah, it's very dense.
	Well, no, those are the big softball ones.
	You don't see those.
	I've never seen truffles like that in my life.
	Why are they so expensive?
	Is that just because of the...
	Are they scarce?
	Is it rarity?
	Or what is it?
	Yeah, they're hard to find, and they're...
	You know, they only grow under certain oak trees, and once you dig one up, you can't...
	You know, they don't propagate.
	It's not like cork.
	You know, you can just harvest.
	Um...
	Boy, we learn so much on this show from cork to truffles.
	Typically, a little truffle, if you got one the size of a golf ball, which would be a big truffle.
	These other ones that I was talking about at this restaurant were ludicrous.
	But if you got one the size of a golf ball, which would be a big truffle, you'd probably pay about...
	I'm guessing around $150 for it, something like that.
	Wow.
	Yeah, that's a lot.
	Now, these were small.
	They were the size of...
	They were small, but they were bigger than I would expect for the price.
	You got two of them for $9.
	They were more like testicle size, is what I'm guessing.
	Exactly.
	Well, it depends on if you got one anyway.
	So, they were like $9.
	Wow, that's nothing.
	So I bought a bunch of them.
	I said, geez, this is like ridiculous.
	I mean, I've never seen this price before.
	Even the ones from Oregon cost more than that.
	And so I guess somebody found some truffles in Honduras and some oak trees, and here we go.
	And do you think there's a flavor difference between the $5,000 softball truffle and the $9 Honduras testicle-sized truffle?
	Yeah, the $5,000 one is better.
	Much better, yeah.
	Can we grow these?
	That sounds like a fantastic business.
	Impossible to grow.
	So anyway, imagine one of the bigger restaurants that we've been to.
	Take the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco and put yourself in one corner of the restaurant and then go to the complete opposite corner.
	When I was at Alan Ducasa's and they had this box of truffles, I was that far away when the guy at some other table, that far away, opened the box and I could smell him from there.
	Wow.
	It was unbelievable.
	Wow, fantastic.
	Anyway, so I've been having truffled eggs in the morning and truffled, basically putting truffles in the salad, I mean, you name it.
	Yeah, cool.
	I got some hemp seeds and I've been putting them in my salads.
	Have you ever tried that?
	Hemp seeds?
	Do you fry them?
	You can, but you can also just...
	Aren't they kind of hard?
	No, no, no.
	Actually, you can eat them right out of the container, in fact.
	And they're very nutty tasting, and actually not that hard at all.
	It crunches away like you have a nice mouthful of nuts.
	And it's tasty, and it's also filling.
	And the reason, of course, why I eat it is because I believe it's healthy.
	Yeah, you believe a lot of stuff.
	Yeah, sure.
	I'm kooky, John.
	But I still look good for 44, okay?
	And you can just sprinkle it on a salad, or I put it in yogurt sometimes.
	I eat it quite regularly.
	Huh, where do you get them?
	You buy it in the supermarket, right at Sainsbury's.
	Hemp seeds?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, can you plant them?
	No.
	Well, they're deshelled or whatever it is.
	I should go get the...
	It's three flights down.
	Otherwise, I'd go grab the container and read it off to you.
	But it does state specifically guaranteed not to contain any...
	Was it TCH? Yeah, THC. I'm sorry, THC. What is that?
	Tetra...
	Tetra...
	Tetrahydrocannabinol or something like that.
	Yeah, tetrahydrocannabinol or whatever.
	The good stuff, as we call it here.
	So it doesn't contain any of that.
	Well, that must be some trendy thing.
	That would be fun to do.
	I'd play with it.
	You should try it because I think you will like the taste of it.
	And I don't think it's a trendy...
	Well, maybe it is a trendy thing.
	They don't sell those seeds here.
	If there's no TH or anything else, they're so against, you know, even suggesting.
	I mean, they don't even like hemp clothing.
	I mean, they're just like freaky.
	Or paper.
	Which, of course, it's great for making paper.
	Yeah, there's a lot of uses.
	I mean, hemp, the stuff that's low, it really has low THC content, but just this stringy stuff.
	You know, ropes used to be made out of it.
	It's a very valuable crop, but they won't grow it, because it's like, you know, it's just propaganda.
	Talking about propaganda.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	Gee, you think, wait a minute, let me just pick up the newspaper, yes?
	So there was a thing on PBS... This is one of the things I actually made a note on this because I was watching the show and it just struck me as just odd.
	There's a special on, and this was part two, it's the History of Late Night Television, was the show.
	Oh, excellent.
	Oh, you recorded this, right?
	I'll make a copy for you.
	It's actually quite entertaining, because it's all about Steve Allen, and how Jack Parr came into the scene, and how Johnny Carson got the job, and all this kind of thing, and how Merv Griffin discovered himself, and that kind of thing.
	Oh, excellent, excellent.
	So they're showing the Steve Allen show, because Steve Allen is the progenitor of all these shows.
	And I remember watching Steve Allen when I was a kid, and I actually got to watch this show, but having also experienced the entire history of late-night television, because even when I was a little kid, my...
	Dad, who was a fanatic about watching comedies, you know, I could stay up until midnight.
	It wasn't a big deal.
	And so I saw all these shows.
	There's proof, parents.
	That's what happens when you let your kids stay up until any time of the night.
	This is what they turn into.
	Right.
	on podcasts.
	Big winners in society.
	Anyway, so they're showing the Steve Allen thing, and And one of the things I remember distinctly about Steve Allen, he had this thing called Man on the Street.
	And he's the one who developed it.
	And basically he'd have some questions.
	He'd ask these people.
	But there wasn't a real reality TV thing.
	He had these stooges, these regulars that were on his show.
	It was Tom Poston.
	I've always played kind of a forgetful character, and then he had the guy who played Barney Fife, Don Knotts, who would play this nervous wreck, and he would just be shaking like a leaf when the camera was on, answering questions.
	And that was funny back in the day.
	That was considered humorous.
	No, it was actually still funny.
	Really?
	Yeah, because he was so good at it.
	He would just tremble head to toe in a very unbelievable way.
	And then he had Louie Nye, who always played some slickster who was like a New Yorker or something.
	And then the last guy he had was Bill Dana.
	And Bill Dana would come on and he would play this Mexican character named Jose Jimenez.
	And Steve would always, always the gag always began with Steve Allen asking Jose Jimenez, you know, so what's your name?
	And the guy would say, my name.
	Jose Jimenez.
	And, you know, it is my name.
	Like you could make those kind of jokes today in our PC world, huh?
	Well, you know, even during this era, which was some time ago, some anti-defamation group found it very offensive to have Bill Dana saying my name.
	Even though, you know, if you go see the movie Scarface, you know, with Brian De Palma.
	Say hello to my little friend, motherfucker!
	So, um...
	Anyway, so they somehow, even though this was after, he became a stand-up comic doing this character.
	And they hounded him out of business, and I think he basically lost his living.
	And that was the end of it.
	So I'm watching the special, and they...
	To me, left him out of the story completely, trying to, you know, it was just obviously suppressed.
	I mean, even though this is years and years ago, and this is a historic document now, you know, this 50 years ago.
	Well, now, hold on a second.
	Now, hold on a second.
	Obviously suppressed, please.
	I mean, you know, people who make television shows and documentaries are often just, they have an opinion, they're just boneheads, and the zeitgeist is people don't remember this shit.
	The problem is that they showed the other characters.
	So they had to make it within 60 minutes and they had to cut one out.
	They had to make a choice.
	They had crap in there that could have been cut out.
	They left him out.
	I'm debunking John C. Dvorak.
	What has the world become to?
	And I'm reminded, it reminds me of what Bill Cosby's been trying to do for the last five or six years, which is scoop up every possible copy you can find of Amos and Andy.
	That's right.
	Because he wants all the rights and he wants to reissue and do that again, or what does he want to do?
	No, no, he wants to destroy it.
	He thinks it should not be even viewed by anyone.
	You'd think that it would be much funnier if he actually turned it around, you know, if he used that in a different way.
	But it's nuts, even in this day of digital media, to even think you can do that.
	Let's pace a point.
	Let me go to YouTube.
	Can't be done.
	No, of course not.
	But anyway, that's the thing.
	But I was actually, I noticed that missing Bill Dana was the name of the character.
	I mean, the name of the actor, Bill Dana the comic.
	I just, it was just left out.
	I mean, because they showed, I swear to God, they had everybody else that was ever on that show mentioned or something.
	And the Jose Jimenez character was important to the man on the street sketch.
	Anyway, I just found it galling.
	Almost as galling as the airlines, huh?
	Oh, the airlines.
	And they're one of the way they have trouble making money.
	I have a sound effect for us today, John.
	Oh.
	You ready?
	You ready?
	Sure.
	You know what this is?
	It sounds like a subway or a train or something like that.
	No, no.
	Listen again.
	You've got to listen really carefully to it.
	That is the sound of the printing press at the Federal Reserve, John.
	It's going at full speed.
	You better believe it is.
	Oh, man.
	It's been so fantastic to see all this stuff being created and printed and thrown away.
	And there's so much happening that you can't even track it all anymore.
	We're now at $7.4 trillion that has been pumped in in the past three or four months.
	Yeah.
	All the good has done me.
	And I love it that the Fed still won't tell anyone what they've given this money to or what they've received in exchange for it.
	Oh, man.
	Obama's financial team.
	Summers, Geithner, Volcker.
	They're the same guys.
	Dude, a lot of change this is.
	Change, hope.
	Change, yeah.
	Change.
	Robert Gates, defense secretary, left in place.
	There's some change for you.
	I got the biggest kick, and you haven't been over here, but they've been debating this Robert Gates thing since the idea first came up.
	And it's just the weirdest thing to listen to everybody and their sister from both sides of the aisle go on and on about how it would be really cool for Robert Gates to stay.
	Yeah.
	There wasn't one person that says, this idea sucks.
	Get rid of it.
	You're kidding me.
	No.
	Everybody, both the Democrats and the Republicans, and the conservatives and the most extreme liberals, all thought Robert Gates was the go-to guy.
	He would show the magnanimous bipartisanship nature.
	I'm putting Republicans in my cabinet.
	I'm doing the right thing.
	Oh, man.
	So I don't know.
	Well, I think I got it figured out, John.
	You want one?
	I mean, you just went off on your little conspiracy theory there about...
	Bill Dana and Jose Jimenez.
	Yeah.
	So, of course, we've all been at least following to some degree the attacks in, I still have to call it Bombay, but okay, call it Mumbai if you want.
	And there's a lot of things that is really bugging me about the reporting on this.
	First of all, the immediacy.
	They haven't even captured any guys.
	I think they say they killed a couple, but we have one picture of a guy wearing a Versace sweatshirt.
	And now we, of course, immediately know that they are Islamic, radical Islamic terrorists.
	And I started to put all these things together.
	Of course, Obama is saying, hey, I'm going to pull all the troops out of Iraq.
	Of course, that means I'm going to send them to Afghanistan.
	So, sending them to Afghanistan...
	And then I'm thinking, alright, so obviously, you know, what they're doing now, if you listen to the Prime Minister of India, he's saying, oh no, this is Pakistan.
	This is Pakistan who's doing it, and now the move is towards Pakistan.
	And if you look at the map, which you might want to do, and you do, John, but I'm just saying it to our listeners, from time to time, just pull up Google Earth there and go look at Pakistan, and you'll see that on one side it borders on Afghanistan, and on the other side it borders on Iran.
	So if we've got, or Afghanistan borders on both of those.
	So now I've got all these guys in Afghanistan, right on the border, in fact, with Pakistan, I think that there's a poise here to take over Pakistan, which already politically, of course, is severely weakened.
	It's a nuclear country.
	We're building up troops right on the border.
	I'm thinking that this is...
	And by the way, there have been, in the past seven years, there's been an attack in India every six months.
	With 60 or 80 people being killed.
	And this just stinks to me, completely.
	I think it's a gear up for some kind of assault on Pakistan.
	Well, that's not bad.
	It's not like your usual material.
	Well, of course, the usual material part would be that these obviously are hired mercenaries who are trained.
	It has nothing to do with terrorism because since when does Al-Qaeda all of a sudden take hostages and use AK-47s?
	It's completely different from any type of Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist attack.
	These guys look pretty damn professional to me.
	And it looks like, you know, they were hired.
	They went in.
	They just were in there to kill.
	And it doesn't seem to me like, you know...
	No, I mean, I think that's reasonable, too.
	What I meant when I said it's not like a usual thing.
	I thought that you were going to summarize...
	Oh, by saying the CIA did this?
	No, the CIA. You've got to believe that we are behind it.
	Israel's behind it.
	You know, there's a big thing.
	Oh, now there's a Jewish house of worship or whatever they're calling it.
	They're not calling it...
	A synagogue.
	They're calling it something else.
	Here's something that really bugged the hell out of me.
	First of all, they're saying, oh, it seems like they were targeting Americans and Britons.
	Although, of the 130 people who've been killed, only a few were actually American or British.
	But there's this one guy, a multimillionaire, Andreas Leveras.
	And he was on the phone with the BBC, and right after that he got killed.
	And so I'm like, wow, that's fascinating.
	So I'm looking around for an audio or something like that.
	I don't know if he actually was on air, but I found a short transcript on the BBC website.
	And here's what he said.
	This was interesting.
	So he was in the restaurant.
	About a thousand people in the restaurant.
	And...
	Hold on a second.
	Where is it?
	He said that they were locked in.
	He said there must be more than a thousand people here.
	There are residents and tourists and locals.
	We are not hiding.
	We are locked in here.
	The doors are locked and we are inside.
	What kind of terrorist goes through all of this?
	Locking people in a room, containing them.
	They cut the television services so no one could have.
	They cut the telephone connections to the outside.
	This is a major ass attack, John.
	I mean, this is a coordinated military effort.
	This doesn't seem like a bunch of bozos.
	And boy, do you think they were armed?
	I mean, to me, this is very, very troubling.
	Well, somebody else on Fox or someplace else pointed out that it was a very low-tech thing, because it was just basically armed men, militia types, that just took over all these places and burned the hotels and did all the rest of it.
	But you might be on to something here because it doesn't...
	Because all the things that Al-Qaeda has ever done is they...
	Yeah, they'll do a coordinated thing.
	They'll bomb the crap out of everything.
	Suicide bomb, yeah.
	And the most people who were killed...
	And we're just talking about it really easily.
	It's horrible, of course.
	But the most people who were killed were in the train station, which were mainly Indians.
	You know, so there's a definite spin being put out there, and that's the shit you gotta watch for.
	There's a real spin on that, A, it was links to Al-Qaeda, or now they had some Mujahideen group, which is, you know, even the definition of Mujahideen is not really something you can pinpoint.
	Right.
	Well, they also mention that this is the Drakkar or the Dakar Mujahideenth, which is from a region.
	An area.
	And they say it's somehow related to this other one, Rayleigh.
	Because I listened to the analysis on Fox, and they, you know, they, they, they, it was a stretch.
	It was like, well, you know, first of all, they said, we don't even know who these people are at the beginning.
	Remember when this thing first broke?
	It was like everyone was baffled by who these people were.
	And then they announced who they were, and everyone said, who are they?
	We never heard of them.
	Which, of course, then is a bad reflection on the Indian.
	A lot of people are reflecting negatively.
	Well, did you hear the audio?
	Did you hear the audio of the Dekha Mujahideen?
	They called in to Sky News or whatever.
	Like, yeah, and they were speaking in the Indian.
	And so there was translation.
	But it was like, yes, we are the Dekha Mujahideen.
	We are responsible.
	And then the reporter says, what are your demands?
	And the guy goes like...
	What are our demands?
	Hey, what are our...
	It's like he didn't know what the demands were.
	He had to ask some guy.
	So it's clearly either fake or set up.
	It's just not right.
	It's crap.
	Yeah, you know, I'm not going to...
	What reporting is finished?
	We're reporting.
	It's a dream world.
	Let me take some more drugs.
	John, all right, excellent.
	So it's like, what reporting?
	I mean, there's going to be no reporting, so we're never going to find out what I'm trying to get at here, obviously, because if it's what you think it might be, which is a phony baloney deal.
	And by the way, it's interesting that it coincides with the IMF. I was looking for something.
	Tell me about the IMF. They've done a deal with Pakistan.
	Oh, this makes so much sense.
	So we hit him twice.
	We hit him in the financial nuts and we just take everything and everybody out and move in.
	Yeah.
	Now listen to this.
	Dude, major, massive Gitmo Nation news.
	You will love this in the United Kingdom.
	So we have a...
	A shadow government here.
	So we have the people running the country, and then right on the other side of the House of Commons, you've got what they call the shadow government.
	So there's an immigration minister in Parliament, and then that would be a labor immigration minister.
	And then on the other side, you have the shadow immigration minister.
	In this case, it's Minister Green.
	And, um, so over the past couple months, a number of stories, really whistleblower stories, have broken in the newspapers in the UK. One was that, um, um, we talked about this, that there were, uh, you know, thousands of illegal immigrants who were, uh, who had been cleared to work in sensitive jobs in the government, uh, And that the Home Secretary, Jackie Smith, knew this months before it ever came out.
	There was another one about an illegal Brazilian immigrant who was working as a cleaner in Parliament.
	Let's see, there was what people would think about the 42-day incarceration.
	There were a number of stories that were getting leaked to the press, which I consider to be, you know, hey, look, it's the government.
	We deserve to know about this stuff.
	So what they did is they had suspicion that it was the Conservatory Minister Green, Damien Green of Immigration, who was leaking this to the press.
	They took him out of his house last night, arrested him, interrogated him for nine hours while they searched his homes both in London and in Kent.
	I mean, dude, does this remind you of anything?
	It's great!
	This is outrageous!
	It's absolutely outrageous!
	I wonder if they slapped him around a little bit just to, you know...
	I hope so!
	That makes the story very much better.
	With an inner tube, you know, or something where they do it.
	Waterboarded him.
	I mean, that is just outrageous that this is taking place.
	Let me tell you another one, because you'll get a kick out of this.
	The British man.
	And I've been talking...
	I love the Brits.
	And I've been talking to them about this.
	They said, why are you on your back like bitches, letting the government piss on you all the time?
	Which, by the way, they have a term here, which is called bohica.
	Oh yeah.
	Bend over here it comes.
	Here it comes again.
	Here it comes again.
	So they had this big blow up about these two talk show hosts, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.
	We talked about that and these guys make a lot of money and they said they fucked someone's granddaughter and was a big bruja and should they be fired and one resigned and the other was kicked off the air for three months.
	But they have Dancing with the Stars, which of course originated here in the United Kingdom, which is called Strictly Come Dancing in the official pronunciation.
	And there was a guy on, an actor, singer, comedian, one of those, an older guy, an older gentleman named John Sargent.
	And the guy can't dance.
	But the audience was the guy.
	When I went through Europe last week, I was reading all these papers, because there's all the British papers, and I was reading, there was like a big deal about John Sargent, and they had pictures of him, and there were editorials all over the place about how he can't dance, and I'm reading, what is wrong with these people?
	Well, so this is what's amazing from a number of perspectives.
	So the judges were, you know, a scale of one to ten, the judges kept giving him one, two, you know, three, I mean, completely failing scores.
	But the audience, who ultimately decides who stays on, kept voting for him.
	They loved it.
	They were like, he's entertaining.
	It was funny to watch him.
	And it was.
	It really was funny.
	Because, you know, you dance with a real professional, and she's basically doing all the moves, and he's like dragging her across the floor.
	It was funny.
	It really worked.
	And then, you know, it was like this big, oh, well, you know, this can't be.
	This is a dancing competition.
	And then, you know, so then John Sargent said, oh, well, you know what, I'm just going to resign the show.
	And I'm thinking...
	So the British public who's so outraged about paying for these two comedians who just weren't funny for once, and they're so outraged, where this is a blatant set-up...
	Blatant!
	Where they kick the guy off the show, someone's lying somewhere, and they're just letting him go!
	You know, it's like, I don't get it!
	I'm like, oh, okay, I guess that makes sense.
	And Patricia has this fight on pop stars in Holland all the time.
	You know, because it's like, well, this girl, you know, there's this one contestant who's really rocking, right?
	She's a pretty, she's an above-average singer, but she weighs about 230 pounds, and she wears dumb dresses to go with it, which are not flattering.
	And the audience loves her, because, of course, losers always win on these shows.
	And they're like, well, we gotta, you know, her other judge is like, we gotta get her off the show, this is ridiculous, you know, this is a serious competition, how could she ever become a pop star?
	And Patricia's like, F you!
	People love her!
	What do you want?
	She literally said to the other judges, do you like that new house you bought?
	Then you better keep this bitch on the show!
	The audience wants it.
	That's what keeps the ratings going.
	And I'm just amazed by the British public taking that lying down.
	Unbelievable.
	Well, there were sure a lot of articles about it.
	And I actually should have asked you about it last time we spoke because...
	I was unaware of the backstory.
	I just noticed it was like a whole bunch of attention.
	It was getting a lot of attention.
	Well, honestly, it didn't really hit me until I started thinking about it.
	And I'm like, this is crazy.
	This is just absolutely nuts.
	Well, I don't see things getting any better.
	And I'm surprised we don't have more of that kind of thing going on here.
	As much as there's a fascist state brewing everywhere in the U.S., the Brits have got us beat hands down if there was a competition.
	What state has just gone completely fascist?
	Well, let me give it to you.
	Let me give it to you, man.
	So Patricia called me.
	She was traveling to Holland today, and she takes EasyJet.
	She loves EasyJet.
	She'll take EasyJet over British Airways, KLM, anything.
	She thinks the system's great, and I agree with her.
	And so she calls me and says, I'm finally at the gate.
	I said, well, what happened?
	She said, well, you won't believe it.
	Now, John, you've never met my wife.
	Have you ever seen a picture of her?
	Oh, yeah.
	You have a picture on your phone, and I've seen pictures of her on, because I've seen her in action on that show, because you sent a link to it.
	Yeah, okay.
	So, she's beautiful.
	And do you think she looks like a potential terrorist, John?
	Ha ha ha!
	Ha ha ha!
	Just an offhand question.
	Do you think that she looks like a potential terrorist?
	No, obviously not.
	So she rolls up to the x-ray machine.
	Because the show was this evening.
	So she's already kind of pre-prepped.
	She's looking good.
	She already has stuff on that she's going to wear on the show.
	And she has a small tube of toothpaste.
	And a miniature travel size bottle of Chanel.
	That's my wife, Ms.
	Chanel.
	And so it goes to the x-ray machine and they say, stop!
	And they say, look ma'am, this is not in a plastic bag.
	And by the way, Patricia always laughs at them.
	She just smiles and is always happy, which makes them crazy.
	I would be calling you from jail today if this happened to me.
	So she says, oh, really?
	Well, do you have a plastic bag?
	And they're like, no.
	You've got to go all the way back.
	So it's like a 20-minute line, right?
	She said, okay.
	So she went all the way back outside.
	She had to get a plastic baggie, put her toothpaste and the Chanel in it, then wait in line 20 minutes to go all the way back through.
	And then this is the kicker.
	So, of course, it's the same people, and they recognize her, and they say, okay, it's in the bag, and they say, we have to do a liquid test.
	What?
	They literally tested the Chanel and the toothpaste.
	They tested it, which consisted of spraying the Chanel No.
	5 into the air and sniffing it.
	Unbelievable.
	Maybe one of the people there wanted a dose of Chanel No.
	5 so they could go on a date later.
	This is the danger in a fascist state where you have people who have a uniform and they have a certain amount of authority for a microsecond of your lifetime and, you know, if they're having a bad day or whatever it is, they take advantage of it.
	I mean, clearly this is ridiculous and harassment.
	I mean, there's no doubt this is just bullshit.
	Yeah, yeah, unquestionably, yep.
	Well, was this going into the airport in London?
	Yeah, it was at Gatwick.
	So it was this afternoon.
	Liquid test.
	It's nuts.
	And it's just getting worse.
	Well, I mean, you know, something bad is going to happen.
	Oh, okay.
	What do you think?
	I got a couple of ideas.
	What do you think?
	I think the British public, you know, they're going to, at some point, I mean, the British are, you know, there is a mean streak in that culture that is going to come out.
	Well, this is what I'm waiting for.
	I want that thin, wiry, white English bloke on the street burning shit and waving sticks.
	That's what I always thought the Brits were like.
	Well, you know that movie Vendetta.
	Did you see Viva Vendetta?
	Oh, yeah, I loved it.
	Of course.
	Remember, remember the 5th of November gunpowder treason and plot.
	Oh, yeah, I love it.
	You bet I love it.
	Guy Fawkes.
	Yeah, sure.
	Well, I'm expecting something like that.
	And just blow up Parliament.
	I mean, that's what Guy Fawkes tried to do.
	And it's funny that they still celebrate him, and they do that by creating a bonfire and getting hammered.
	Well, they celebrate everything by getting hammered.
	Oh, excellent news for you, by the way.
	A good buddy of mine, in fact, a very good friend of mine, he stayed at his house in the south of France this summer.
	He owns one of the largest nightclubs, complexes, I should say, in Surrey.
	And he has a strip joint called the Lion's Den, which I've never been to.
	I've been to his clubs several times, and we had Christina's birthday party at one of his clubs.
	And he said, look, man, I'm up for the license for all the Playboy clubs in the United Kingdom, which don't exist yet.
	And I'm like, wow, that's cool.
	He said, I'm trying to get a cool crowd together because these guys are coming by and they're going to come check the place out.
	So I'm like, yeah, sure, I'll come in.
	I'll look jet-settery and I'll talk up a storm.
	And no problem.
	So I go over there last night at 10 o'clock after I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which I also should mention a couple things about in a moment.
	And so the place is there.
	Everyone's hanging out.
	It's not really crazy busy, but it's perfect for the setting to impress these guys who are coming in.
	And Michelle says, here, man, have a lap dance on me with one of his top performers.
	And I'm like, okay, because I'll go to the VIP area.
	Something I did not know, John, in the United Kingdom at lap dancing clubs, they take their panties off as well.
	And you get a full-on, full-blown show.
	That's interesting.
	You know, I actually went, oh my...
	I was like, oh my!
	Are you sure this wasn't just for you?
	No, no, no, because there were other guys in the VIP area and the same thing was going on.
	Because actually when I walked in, there was a girl and I could see just from behind, I could see either that's an invisible G-string or she doesn't have one on, but I didn't think much of it.
	Hmm.
	The show was very, like, it was a coordinated show because I saw these girls do the exact same show.
	So it wasn't like a personalized anything.
	And it's not like, you know, you're up close, but you ain't that close.
	But still, oh, my.
	Huh.
	Yeah.
	So, when are you coming back?
	I don't know, but we've got to visit that place.
	Oh, you'll love Michelle.
	Oh, you'll love him.
	We're flying tomorrow to see Patricia perform.
	She's doing a big benefit concert for starving children.
	And she's going to perform three songs with a 65-piece orchestra.
	Her dad is accompanying her on violin, her 84-year-old dad.
	She's doing Smile, I think, with him on violin.
	So that should be cool.
	But yeah, you'll like Michelle when you're over here next.
	So that's why people should know we're doing the show on Friday.
	Well, I was not planning on telling anybody, honestly.
	Well, I think they should know because, you know, I think it's full disclosure.
	Oh, yeah, that's a good point.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
	So in case something happens, wow, these guys, they missed that whole story.
	Should we upload it today then or on Saturday?
	I don't think we have a problem uploading it today.
	I mean, this is the great thing about...
	About not being in the fake corporate media.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, we can do what we want.
	Mm-hmm.
	And so we can be off a day or skip a week.
	I mean, the fact of the matter is, especially if people are doing this right, the people that listen to this thing religiously.
	And by the way, anyone out there who listens to us, please get a friend so we can get our numbers up to some point that we can theoretically pay for this thing.
	Get a couple lap dances out of it.
	Better than poking an eye with a sharp stick.
	It was pretty similar, actually.
	So, people who do it right would obviously have an RSS feed that they would get this thing downloaded to their iPod automatically and be surprised.
	Whoa, look!
	Oh, whoa!
	Gee, that was a concept.
	But speaking of that, I was just watching CNBC, Money Honey Aaron was on.
	I thought she might be off for the long Thanksgiving weekend.
	And they had a report on radio stocks.
	And except for CBS Radio, which currently sits around $6, all these other companies, MS, the 15% of Clear Channel that is actually still public, Sirius, every single one of them is under a buck a share.
	Some of them 18 or 19 cents a share.
	Radio is effectively dead.
	Sirius is really amazing.
	Well, it's not.
	They're losing $750 million a quarter.
	Yeah, I know, and there's no way they're ever going to turn this around.
	I had predicted this, by the way, when they first formed years and years and years ago.
	How hard is that?
	Well, it wasn't, but I still got a bunch of flack.
	Oh, that can't be true.
	But meanwhile, I had more people say to me, in fact, that was somebody the other day that says, you know...
	And the guy could afford it.
	He drives around a Bentley and he says, you know, I just gave up on my Sirius and XM radio subscriptions to the Bentley.
	I just listen to podcasts.
	Exactly.
	Because apparently the Bentley Continental has a clip in it that you can hook your iPod right to it.
	The whole problem, well first of all, these companies were built with dot-com money.
	That's when they got their first infusion of cash.
	And they have some beautiful facilities.
	Just un-fucking-believable.
	Yeah, I've seen pictures of the XM or Sirius.
	They're fantastic.
	In New York, Sirius has 55 studios.
	And that's excluding the palace Howard Stern has right in the middle of reception there.
	Yeah.
	But, of course, they wanted to merge these two companies, and then the FCC, and whoever else, and the SEC. They really let it linger and linger and linger, and they wouldn't give a decision, so the stocks just kind of steadily declined.
	And now, of course, their main source of distribution is not actually satellite.
	Their main source of distribution is vehicles.
	And so what these guys do, what Norm...
	No, it's not Norm Patterson.
	Who's running it?
	I don't know.
	Oh, whatever.
	A guy from CBS, I think.
	Anyway, their main gig is to get the big automakers to pre-install Sirius and XM satellite receivers in their vehicles.
	So that's not happening.
	Well, like they did in the 90s, everyone was talked into installing AM stereo.
	Yeah, I remember that.
	So I have one of those radios where it says AM stereo.
	By the way, nobody broadcasts an AM stereo anymore.
	But we used to turn the dial and you would find the one station on the entire spectrum that had an AM stereo.
	It would light up.
	A little thing would light up on the radio and say AM stereo.
	Stereo!
	So you'd listen to it, and it was the crappiest, you know, I don't know even what the point of it was.
	It didn't sound any better.
	You know, it was like, it didn't even hold a candle or come close to what FM sounds like.
	So what was the point?
	I'm trying to think.
	There was a reason.
	There were a couple of different reasons they were trying to implement that.
	Yeah, I remember where at some CES, somebody gave me some rationale about AM stereo and how it's going to actually take over because you get bigger distances, it's better than FM and all the rest of it, and it didn't go anywhere.
	It's like this thing going on, this high-definition radio that's going on right now.
	You know, they're trying to push HD radio.
	And that's not going anywhere.
	I mean, it's just like, you know, the stuff is fixed already.
	It's done.
	It's over.
	You've got your AM. You've got what you've got.
	You've got talk radio.
	It's what it's turned into.
	And then you have your FM, which has got your music, and you've got whatever else you want to put over there in the public radio.
	And then you've got the real media, the real, true new media, podcasts.
	Yeah.
	And then you have the new media, which are, you know...
	It's much more versatile.
	You can listen anytime you want.
	You're not stuck.
	I'm still irked about it.
	I listen to it because I listen to, like a lot of us, listen to right-wing talk radio because it's very entertaining.
	And everyone's supposed to say something or somebody will say something and you want to back it up or you want to save it.
	You can't do any of that.
	And you can't listen to it when you want to listen to it.
	You have to listen to it when they're broadcasting.
	And, I mean, the whole thing is, I mean, that whole model of, you know, time-based broadcasting is...
	Old-fashioned.
	Versatile style, which is what we're doing.
	Hell yeah.
	No doubt about it.
	Advertisers will get a clue and they'll start realizing that this will...
	No, let me just say that's not entirely true because our audio programming is doing millions of dollars a month of which a significant portion goes to the producers of those audio programs with our transactional campaigns.
	You know this.
	You've been in these meetings.
	This shit works.
	You use my code for GoDaddy.
	You use my code for eHarmony.
	You use my code for Budget.
	You use my code for Foot Locker.
	And I think that as we move into the Depression, that as long as the grid stays up and people can still connect, I think that we'll see increasing use of these types of offerings For us, it's 40% of our revenue, John.
	It's a serious business.
	No, I'm not saying it's not, but if you put it side by side with big media, it's like a...
	Yeah, but think about it.
	The reason why, for the same reasons that radio in broadcast towers is no longer valid because you have to listen at that moment, the interruptive nature of advertising also doesn't work anymore.
	You can skip past it, you can ignore it, you can...
	It so completely breaks the model...
	Which is why the counting of downloads never worked.
	No one could ever agree on it.
	We had all kinds of guilds and organizations and societies and whatever.
	And it'll just never work that way.
	And by the way, listen to radio.
	They're doing the exact same thing.
	They're saying, hey, use my code.
	All of them are.
	Well, I have a code.
	Budget.com slash tech.
	Yeah, my code is...
	Go ahead.
	10% off of any budget.
	And by the way, I say this on the Tech 5 thing, which is that I use budget because they really do have the coolest cars.
	And you get a 10% discount on your weekly rental.
	They've had Jaguars.
	They've got all kinds of cool stuff.
	Anyway.
	They won't have Jaguars any time in the future.
	They're about to go belly up.
	Well, that's a shame.
	Well, it's a massive shame because I've got to get rid of my Jag, and no one will buy it.
	Well, the problem is, of course, Jaguars have the reputation of once they get past warranty, they just start falling apart.
	That's why you don't see too many old ones on the road.
	Well, this one is not that old, but the dealer will not buy it back.
	They don't have the money.
	And they can't have a car that has actual money of theirs in it sitting on the lot.
	And they say, look around, there's no one here.
	We're not selling any cars.
	No one's coming in.
	The people who do come in, half of them can't get the financing.
	So the only people who are coming in are people who really have the money, cash down to buy a good deal on something new.
	But Jaguar, now that Tata, who owns them, has said, hey, we need a billion pounds to stay in business because they're looking for their own bailouts.
	Don't think it's just the big three.
	Over here, Nissan, Toyota, Bentley, Austin Martin, Jaguar, they've all asked the government for help.
	They're all in the same position.
	There's no difference between here and the United States.
	Unless you listen to Gordon Brown who says it's all America's fault.
	You say Jaguar the way Stewie would on Family Guy.
	Jaguar.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well, I am Stewie.
	Jaguar, that's...
	Come on, I slip in a couple of my correct pronunciations from time to time.
	I'm slowly going through my transformation.
	Yeah, you're going to become British.
	No, I don't think there's any danger of that.
	I will, however, have to register for my ID card with biometric data.
	Yeah?
	What biometric data are they going to steal from you?
	Well, of course they don't actually...
	They're going to take a sample of your blood.
	That's what they should do.
	Yeah, they don't actually tell you, but this is the same Jackie Smith of the home office.
	The one who said that everyone's clamoring and so excited about the National ID cards.
	She literally said that.
	Oh, I get calls.
	The people are so excited they can't wait to have one.
	So the first group of people who are singled out, who of course will be the first ones to get on the train to the camp...
	Are people like me.
	If you're married to an EU national, which gives you the right to live and work in the United Kingdom, then you're the first group to get a card.
	It will contain your visa status, name, address, picture, fingerprint, and, quote, other biometric data.
	Which I can only assume probably will be DNA. Could be.
	Should they take a swab?
	Yeah.
	In the Netherlands, there's a big debate going on about something called the Electronic Child Dossier.
	And they want to start this in 2009.
	When a child was born, basically they create a new record in the database and call that the electronic child dossier, which obviously is meant for easy access to information about the child so that physicians and medical institutions can swiftly access the information and it'll probably stop terrorism as well.
	But what the big debate has been, so they have all these fields, you know, name, skin color, eye color, hair color, and then they have a field in the record which is the subject of the debate, which is pubic hair.
	And literally there are like three choices of pubic hair that have to be entered into the record.
	What?
	Yes, sir.
	Pubic hair.
	How fucked up is that?
	Unbelievable.
	Unbelievable.
	Yeah, yeah, unbelievable.
	In fact, it's so unbelievable, I don't believe it.
	You have to send me a link, I gotta blog it.
	I'll see if there's an English article about it yet, but it's all in Dutch so far.
	And I'm sure Google Translate won't really do it justice.
	But yeah, the three options were, I think, curly, hairy and curly, or just adult hairy.
	That's a direct translation, so it sounds kind of weird.
	And I was talking to Patricia about this.
	I said, clearly you have this electronic child dossier well into puberty.
	I said, so everyone will have one.
	So what are you going to put on yours, honey?
	Do we have to change yours from time to time?
	It was like Brazilian, landing strip, ooh, nothing, hubby likes it, you know.
	Heart.
	By the way, the girls at the club last night, no entry.
	Just leave that one blank, baby.
	That's funny.
	But how, I mean, this is what's going on all over Europe, John.
	It's like in record tempo.
	This stuff is just click, click, click.
	It's happening.
	Yeah, well, you know, it's just the thousand-year Reich.
	The thousand-year Reich?
	Is this another cyclical thing?
	No, no.
	I mean, that's what Hitler said when he began his, like, program to make everything fascist.
	He said there'd be a thousand-year Reich.
	There'd be a thousand years of this, you know?
	And then, of course, you know, they beat him in World War II, and everyone figured it was the end of it.
	But I guess not.
	It's pretty scary.
	So on other news, what else is going on?
	Hold on a second.
	I did a little bit of homework as he ruffles the Financial Times open.
	So when I was floating around Portugal doing my show, I brought with me some gear.
	I brought the, what did I bring?
	All I brought was the M-Audio interface.
	It sounded good.
	It worked.
	And a PR, I used it.
	That's because it was a Heil PR-42.
	Wait, a 42?
	No, no, no.
	It's a 40, not a 40.
	You have a 42?
	Oh, it's a 40, okay.
	Yeah, it's a 40.
	It's that really good Heil mic.
	Yeah, the one I have.
	The one that Leo Laporte uses because, you know, and Leo's been in radio forever and he used to use that.
	There's a one EV model that everybody in radio used to use.
	Yeah, the electro voice, yeah.
	Yeah, an electro voice, specific dynamic electro voice.
	Now, these aren't condenser mics, which is interesting because this Heil sounds exactly like a condenser mic as far as I can tell.
	But without the phantom power.
	Yeah, without needing this extra power to drive it.
	It's just a regular dynamic microphone, but it sounds so good.
	So I got a bunch of notes from people, although I need to have some sort of a protector.
	Wait a minute.
	They said, it sounds better than normal.
	That's what they said, right?
	Yeah.
	I have this happen all the time.
	I told you I use my lav in New York, and people are like, wow, this sounds awesome.
	You should always sound like this.
	So now I'm actually talking on the same wireless lav mic.
	I don't know if it's just because it sounds different and then people think it sounds better, or if we over-obsess the sound so that it actually sounds shittier than normal.
	But I've noticed this exact same thing.
	Whenever I change my setup on the road, people like it.
	I had a guy send me a note saying, tell Adam to stay with that, because you were wearing a headset on one of the shows, or something.
	No, no, it's this mic.
	It's the mic that I'm talking through right now.
	They said, oh, tell him to just use that mic.
	It sounds a million times better.
	Yeah, and I am.
	Well, that's why I'm going to get a countryman.
	I'm going to get a countryman, too.
	I really want to try that.
	Because this PR-40, which is a nice, beautiful sounding mic.
	In fact, I'll probably switch to it.
	Now I'm using an AKG condenser with a tube.
	Sounds nice.
	Yeah, but apparently the other one will sound better.
	But travel with that PR-40, the thing is...
	It's a big clunker.
	It's huge.
	And then every time I got stopped at one of the gates on the airplane...
	They want to know what that is.
	They'd find it and then they'd hold it up and they'd look around and say, what's this?
	You know, they don't know what a microphone is.
	Do a liquid test on that fucker.
	You know, I'm surprised they didn't crack it open.
	But anyway, so I come back from Europe with two salamis and a microphone.
	Two salamis and a microphone.
	His name is John C.D. Ooh, y'all, O.G. And so they're all obsessing.
	They don't give a shit about the salamis.
	They're obsessing over this microphone.
	But anyway, it's too big.
	Now, the Countryman is just a wire.
	It's just a wisp of a thing.
	I mean, it doesn't weigh anything.
	It weighs nothing.
	I mean, if that mic sounds as good as the PR, and in my experience it does.
	It sounds as good as the PR-40.
	Yeah, then why take the PR-40?
	I totally agree.
	Take that thing on the road, the Countryman, and just, you know...
	Yeah.
	Because when you travel, you know, people don't travel a lot.
	They don't understand.
	They have no idea.
	You know, when you travel, I travel light.
	I know how to pack a suit into a regular suitcase that can go under a seat.
	And how to roll a salami in it.
	Well, I got the salami in the computer case.
	A new game.
	It's Hide the Salami with John C. Dvorak.
	So I travel very light.
	And I see these poor schmucks, and especially some of these women, who don't know how to travel.
	And their husbands put up with this crap.
	They have a suitcase the size of a refrigerator.
	And they can't move it, and they can't put it up overhead.
	They can't do anything.
	The thing is way too big.
	And Hubby is stuck.
	I went to the Oakland airport to go up north about...
	Two or three months ago, and it was the funniest thing.
	There was one of these women.
	She was doing her nails in the front of the bus from the parking lot thing.
	And when I got on, this whole luggage area was stacked to the gills with luggage.
	And so they get off, and this woman, you know, she refuses to carry anything but her handbag, and this This poor schlub, husband of hers, he's got like two huge rollers and a thing, another thing, and the kids have got a couple of bags, and he's got some stuff over his head, around his neck as he's holding.
	The poor guy's loaded down like a mule.
	And did he have a baby hanging from him as well?
	I don't, you know, it was just short of that.
	And the little girl that's with him goes up to her mother and says, Mommy, Mommy, why does Daddy have to take all the luggage all the time?
	You know, she's giving her crap about it.
	Smart, smart, yeah.
	And this poor daddy, he was carrying all this thing.
	I mean, ugh.
	You can travel with one bag.
	I always tell people to travel with nothing and then buy stuff over there and ship it back.
	But you can travel very light if you try.
	I know people that travel, for example.
	This is a rant.
	I know people that travel, for example, and they'll bring...
	Before the liquid thing, which I think was a benefit to all travelers, before the three ounce rule, which is 100 milliliters actually, they would bring an entire giant bottle, a year's supply of shampoo, and pack it.
	Why would you bring in this giant bottle of shampoo on a two-week trip or a one-week trip or whatever?
	It's just ridiculous.
	You should be at Heathrow.
	Very often, the Virgin Atlantic flight from San Francisco lands simultaneously with a flight from Mumbai.
	My goodness.
	Man, the Indians, when they travel, it's enormous, the amount of luggage they have.
	Absolutely enormous.
	Big crates.
	Huge.
	And you see, of course, they're always stopped at immigrations, and some schmuck there is unpacking all this care.
	I mean, then they pack it tight.
	I don't know if they're coming over here forever or what, but it's unreal.
	Unreal.
	Yeah, when I see this big lecture, I'm always thinking, are you moving there?
	Is that why you're bringing so much stuff?
	You know, I don't know.
	I tell people, I guess there's some women, in fact, I went to, when I went to Korea, Gina Smith, she brought like 10 pairs of, or 15 pairs of shoes.
	And I said, what do you bring all these shoes for?
	She said, well, somebody told me she hadn't been there before.
	She says, they really are picky about shoes.
	You can't wear the same pair of shoes twice.
	And I'm thinking, and you believe this?
	Aye, aye, aye.
	Even I wouldn't believe that one.
	So, anyway.
	Hey, Woolworths is bankrupt over here.
	I didn't even know they were still in business.
	Oh, they've been in...
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, Woolworths has been in business here for decades.
	We haven't...
	I don't think I've seen a Wool...
	We used to have Woolworths all over the place.
	Well, it was bought up.
	It was purchased by...
	Well, so Woolworths in like 1908 or 08 or something like that.
	I think they opened up a store in the United Kingdom.
	And who's the name of the guy?
	I'm sure it's John H. Woolworth.
	He discovered that it was the original five and dime concept.
	Right, right.
	And it really worked over in the United Kingdom, particularly with an American in the store.
	And so he really expanded in the 1970s.
	I think they had 700-800 stores.
	And they were bought up by another big conglomerate that owns multiple chains.
	But Woolworths, for the UK, ever since the 70s, has really been the place where you buy your music.
	Very much like a Walmart, I guess.
	So they're bankrupt.
	Which is culturally a big deal here.
	Well, we used to have a Woolworths nearby at the El Cerrito Plaza.
	And I would go there.
	You always could go there.
	That style of story.
	There used to be a Kresge in Berkeley or a Kress or whatever it was.
	I think it was Kresge, which was the competitor.
	Which had the cooler storage because they had the big round glass windows and all this other stuff.
	Anyway, you could go there.
	There was just about everything you wanted.
	If you needed glue or scotch tape or something, it was like a miniaturized what Target sells.
	Do you remember Zare's?
	I vaguely remember Zeres.
	I think it was like a chain on the East Coast.
	Yeah, it was East Coast.
	I remember when we'd go on vacation in the 70s, back from Europe to the States, we'd always be excited because we'd stay in Armonk at my grandparents' place.
	And in White Plains, they had a huge Zeres.
	And we'd go to Zeres and we'd just shop.
	It was one of the first...
	Everything there for everybody.
	Lose your kids for five hours.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, well now the big box stores have taken over that business.
	I mean, Target is the one that fascinates me the most because I'm still reminded of the white front stores that used to be here, which were actually a mob, a guy who was on witness protection.
	And there's always these, they always have these names.
	I think Conway, Conway Trucking was one of these things.
	There's always some joke.
	Yeah, the name game, sure.
	And the name.
	And Target has always been to me one of those joke names.
	It's Target of Target.
	Target of what?
	It was like a Target.
	And so I'm thinking, you know, and I keep going to these, and they've got so many Targets.
	If you drive up Highway 80, there's a Target store about once every two miles off the freeway.
	And these are high, expensive real estate areas.
	And so there's a Target.
	I can see one from my house.
	And then you go up.
	There's another one up in Richmond.
	There's another one further up.
	And then there's another and another and another.
	There's all these Target stores.
	There's a whole slew of them.
	And you go into these stores, and they're great stores, by the way.
	Even though everything's from China, but they have everything.
	And you can get anything there.
	They even have food now.
	And you can get soap, and you can get dog food, and you can get tissue, and you can get scotch tape.
	It's just like a Woolworths, only they're huge.
	And you can get out of a Target store almost instantly.
	They have way too many checkers.
	I mean, you never wait.
	You go in, no matter when it is, and you rarely wait behind one person.
	There's always an open thing.
	You're out of there.
	It's amazing.
	It's a great store.
	But I don't see how they can afford to stay in business because I don't see that the traffic is that outrageous going in and out of there.
	Well, I don't know.
	But because of places like Target, there's no more five and dime stores.
	Well, I do know that we're trying to do business with them.
	I know that.
	They're interested in working with us.
	Well, they do a lot of advertising.
	Oh, hell yeah.
	And their advertisements are creative.
	It's a really interesting company.
	The other thing that they've done, which is unique, is that they've found all these high-end designers that do this expensive stuff, and they've had them do a cheap line.
	Yeah, that's what H&M started that, though, didn't they?
	I don't know.
	I don't know the H&M story.
	I do know H&M everywhere.
	Yeah, H&M, I think...
	They started with Karl Lagerfeld, who, of course, is a massive designer.
	And he did a whole line at, you know, like 200 bucks for whatever, a shirt or whatever, which is incredibly cheap for a Karl Lagerfeld.
	And there were people queued up in the morning just to get in.
	Anyway, Madonna did it.
	It wasn't successful, but they have a lot of big names doing...
	Well, these guys, they do, like, you know, a guy who's a designer of, you know, one thing or another, they have him do a toaster.
	I mean, they got, like, designer-made, designed toasters and clocks and stuff like that.
	But, anyway, I was, by the way, surprised I was in Lisbon.
	There was an H&M there.
	I didn't know the place was, I didn't know it was an international chain.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah, they're everywhere.
	But it started in the UK. It's, I think it's, no, wait a minute.
	Yeah, Hammers and Morse.
	Is that what it is?
	Yeah, it's not American.
	That's what it stands for?
	Hammers and Morris, I think so, yeah.
	Why?
	Well, the reason is because it's one of those things that kind of snuck up on me.
	I was unaware of H&M until a couple years ago, and it was already taking over the kids.
	When I say kids, I mean college kids and high school kids and anyone under 25.
	That's where they shop.
	Yeah.
	Because you go in there and you can see that they're oriented toward that age group.
	It's like 18 to 26, whatever the demo is.
	And they have a lot of nice stylish stuff that's cheap.
	It's really cheap.
	The big thing here is Primart.
	And Primart is...
	I'm sure it's made in Asian sweatshops because the prices are just...
	It's so incredibly cheap.
	It's the price of Kmart.
	But it's actually, you know, it's quick knockoffs.
	You know, so they look at whatever's in Vogue magazine or whatever is in Glamour or Marie Claire or whatever, and then they whip them up, which, of course, I'm sure comes directly from the back door of the factories that are making, you know, the H&M stuff.
	Yeah.
	And it's like, boom, boom, boom, they hammer out.
	It's the same colors.
	It's the same patterns.
	You know, there's no lawsuits in fashion.
	No, you can't copyright a design.
	Yeah, you can't.
	So you can't copyright a font.
	Is that true?
	You can't copyright a font?
	I didn't know that.
	No, you can know.
	That's why fonts are stolen.
	But what you can copyright is the name of the font.
	Ah, okay.
	So if you have, like, you design a font like Hattenschreiler, or one of these crazy things, or Universe, which is a, you and I, or Helvetica is a classic example.
	Helvetica is the most, you know, the most used font in the world.
	And if you run into the knockoffs of it, because it's owned by one of the foundries, all the knockoffs have different names.
	My favorite one was Helvs, H-E-L-V-S. Which HP used on one of their cartridges early on.
	But that's not a copyright of the name, it's a trademark of the name.
	Trademark, right.
	It's a trademark.
	And so you can't steal the font, the design of Helvetica, but you can't call it Helvetica.
	And that's what everybody does.
	But anyway, fashion is...
	By the way, this is an argument that the anti-patent people have and the anti-copyright people have.
	They say, look, the fashion industry, if you design some fancy dress and you roll it out for $25,000, a couture, and then somebody else knocks it off and sells it for $150, exact same look and feel, you can't do anything about it.
	This is an argument against patents and copyrights because if you look at the picture overall, it's a highly competitive business and people in the fashion industry, many of them, make millions of dollars.
	It's a very successful industry with this model of everything being stolen constantly.
	But it's not just stolen.
	It is a part of the entire infrastructure.
	Because if there were only designers making $25,000 outfits for a very small select clientele, we'd all be wearing potato sacks.
	And of course, we'd all be wearing very stupid, ugly clothing.
	So it trickles down and it's meant to do that.
	And it's a whole power structure, and Elsa Klench from CNN, and these women, and they are predominantly women, at least who are on the media side of fashion, they really control what we will look like in three months from now, or what we'll be wearing.
	And they love that.
	It's a part of how it all works.
	Well, what's funny, it even goes deeper than that, people don't realize, is like, you know, when they have, you know, there are, it's so far, it's done so far in advance, it reminds me a lot of the semiconductor business, where you have a really long ramp, because everybody knows we're going to go to 32 nanometers, we're going to do this, and it's always done in advance, because you have this pacing that's set by Moore's Law, and with fashion...
	You know, all these like, oh, this is the fall colors.
	This is the new colors.
	We're going to have this orange and this blue that's got this tint.
	Those colors are done by these guys who design inks and dyes.
	It's their specialty.
	Yeah, that's what they're doing.
	And they come up with these colors way in advance of the fashion season because those dyes have to go into the cloth.
	So there's like a real long ramp, and then all of a sudden these new colors come out and everyone's all jacked up about them.
	Oh, that's the new green.
	You're wearing the old green.
	You could have probably figured out what the new green's going to be if you were in the business because things were decided like nine months earlier or a year.
	I think it's like six.
	It's like six months.
	That's still a long time.
	First you've got to come up with the colors.
	You have to come up with the colors and then you have to come up with the fabric that uses the colors.
	There's a gap there because you've got to manufacture all the fabric.
	Usually the designers, they step into that part of the process.
	Karl Lagerfeld, he'll get fabric which already has a selection of colors that go with it.
	They're even a step behind that.
	Yeah, probably.
	I would think so.
	You'd have to be.
	I happen to know so.
	I have a wife who was involved in all this.
	Well, you have to...
	Anyway, so the ramp is large.
	It's long.
	It's not like it's a big shock that all of a sudden...
	I always get the biggest kick out of...
	You go to Europe where they're more fashion-oriented, especially with these colors, than they are in the United States.
	And so you'll go past the department store and they'll have all these colors, these new colors for this season, this spring of 2009.
	And so you'll see all these colors and then...
	And it was just, they really emphasized these colors in Europe.
	And you come to the U.S., and every so often there was a, and I remember this one, there was this crazy rust color from some years ago that was just kind of almost gaudy.
	They were pushing the heck out of it in Europe, and you could not even find this color in the United States.
	Apparently all our people said, screw it, we don't like this color.
	I don't care what anybody thinks, and we never got the color.
	It was just the funniest thing to see missing.
	I don't know.
	I got two more things.
	Unless you got something.
	No, I got nothing.
	You can tell.
	No, I like it because you've been on a couple of good rants today.
	Yeah, well, you know, it's early.
	Do you know who Buckminster Fuller is?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Everybody knows who Bucky is.
	Well, I'm just learning about Bucky.
	Can you give me some background on this guy?
	He seems highly interesting.
	He's very interesting.
	I think I've always thought he was very popular amongst the new age nut balls.
	Yeah, that's why I like him.
	Exactly.
	Well, if you were actually a New Age nutball, which you're not, I can assure the audience, you would have known about him by now.
	The fact that you're so far behind on Buckminster Fuller proves with authority that you're not a New Age nutball.
	But anyway, but I digress.
	So Buckminster Fuller had all these crazy ideas.
	He invented the geodesic dome.
	He did experiments on himself.
	He did this crazy experiment about sleeping.
	He put himself in some isolation and decided to sleep when he felt like and found that you only needed, if you didn't have any beds or anywhere to sleep and you could just conk out when you felt like and then wake up and conk out and wake up.
	Kind of pass out theory of...
	Hey, that's kind of how I live my life.
	He says it turns out you only need four hours a day.
	Oh, really?
	I need a little more than that.
	And he also did a thing called the Dymaxion car, which is the one you should really look into because it's the funniest thing.
	But when you look at his Dymaxion car and all his other theories, I always thought he was like a crackpot.
	Yeah, he came up with a couple of interesting ideas, but when you start seeing how these things, in terms of aesthetics, the Dymaxion car was the ugliest, stupidest thing ever put on the road.
	What was so special about it?
	It had it steered from the one wheel in the back or something.
	It was made out of the kind of material that airplanes are made out of.
	Carbon fiber?
	No, no.
	We're talking about back in the 30s.
	Stretched aluminum.
	Aluminium, yes.
	Yeah, aluminum.
	And it was just the dumbest thing.
	And it apparently killed somebody in New York in a freak accident, and then they stopped making them.
	Let me give you the context of how I've come in contact with the work of Buckminster Fuller.
	And I'm really interested in how he makes money, what his deal is.
	Well, he's dead.
	Well, there you go.
	He's been dead for years, as far as I know.
	Maybe I should retract that email with the interview request.
	That's not such a good idea.
	Look him up on Wikipedia.
	There's this piece of video where he's talking about 2012, which, of course, you know I'm interested in that.
	Oh, God, yeah.
	And he says this is humanity's final exam.
	And what was interesting, the concepts we have to understand.
	He said you are not actually of this era if you cannot grasp the following two concepts.
	He died in 83, by the way.
	Okay, so he was an early kook.
	So one, the concept that the sun does not set.
	Unless you can actually envision yourself spinning on the globe at 24,000 miles an hour and spinning past the sun, then you're still living 500 years in the past.
	And he says the second one, and this is funny, and I'm going to start using this just to piss people off.
	There is no up or down.
	There is out, in, and around.
	Or through.
	But there's no up and down.
	Because you actually, when you go up in an airplane, you're actually going out of the earth.
	And if you're going towards the moon, you're going into the moon.
	And it was a concept.
	I was like, wow, that's pretty interesting.
	And then when you start thinking about it, and when you start feeling yourself being on the globe, which is spinning around, I don't know.
	It had an elevating effect on me, I guess.
	Yeah, well, apparently it did.
	I find the whole thing to be specious, tedious, and bullshit.
	Spaceship Earth was one of the things that he named, and everybody got jacked up about that.
	Spaceship Earth?
	I've got to write this down.
	Is that a book?
	What is that?
	He popularized the term.
	This is Wikipedia.
	I remember a spaceship Earth.
	Oh, yeah, okay, whatever.
	Anyway, the geodesic domes is the main thing.
	And people would build these domes because they're actually very good.
	It's a very strong structure.
	But they're the gosh-awful lookingest things.
	They're horrible.
	You know, aesthetically, you see these domes that people would build.
	It's like you're living in Epcot.
	Worse.
	Like a golf ball.
	Because they had this structure of it, the thing was just ugly.
	It looked like some, it was just creepy looking.
	And so, but people would build them because, oh, it's a geodesic dome, Buckminster Fuller.
	Anyway, so you can tell I'm not a particular.
	Not a fan.
	No, not really.
	I mean, I don't see what his contribution really was.
	I don't know.
	Well, that's why I asked.
	Well, now you know.
	But go to the Dymaxion.
	The Dymaxion is the stuff you want to look into because that's the funniest stuff.
	Dymaxion car.
	Okay.
	Is it with an X Dymaxion?
	It's D-Y-M-A-X-I-O-N. Okay.
	D-Y-M-A-X-I-O-N. Oh, definitely look into that.
	And then before we leave, I'll just crank up the printing press one more time.
	Interesting story in the Financial Times that for the first time, and this is always kind of important when you look at economics in the United States.
	I have a great picture of Rahm Emanuel here, by the way, looking really scary.
	He's a scary guy.
	For the first time, the London School of Economics is almost in the majority in Obama's cabinet slash buddy's.
	Because normally, this is a big deal, right?
	It's like, what school?
	Of course, Bill Clinton was Oxford.
	So what was that?
	Did you read that again?
	Okay, I'll read you the headline, actually.
	London School of Economics is well represented amongst Obama's buddies.
	And the point of it is that, you know, I'm looking for the names here.
	Yeah, Peter Orzog as Budget Director, Pete Rouse, and Mona Sutphin as Senior White House Staff means the London School of Economics only has two fewer graduates than Harvard in Team Obama.
	And it goes on the list, you know, only one from MIT. And it seems like a real...
	Like in the UK, of course, all the politicians come from...
	What's that horrible boy's school named?
	Exeter.
	No, no.
	It's in Exeter, probably.
	No, it's not...
	Is it Exeter?
	I think so.
	No, it's something else.
	But anyway, I just thought it was interesting.
	Someone will tell us.
	We'll find out.
	I thought it was Exeter.
	But anyway, I was looking at this, and everybody's got a PhD.
	They all went to Yale, and then they got to Harvard.
	But mostly Harvard is different.
	I mean, what we had, during the Bush administration, everybody's a Yalie.
	And then all of them is from Yale.
	You have to be from Yale.
	And then this is switching over to Harvard, which I actually think is an improvement.
	But I could be wrong.
	Because who knows?
	I mean, I don't understand why we don't have more West Coast representation.
	There's nobody from, you know, Berkeley, you know, or any of these schools out here.
	You don't have too much Caltech, you know, represented in the government.
	It's all these East Coast Ivy League clubby schools that, you know, have the same fraternities.
	And it makes you wonder.
	Yeah, like skull and bone shit.
	Yeah.
	Eaton is the one in the UK. Oh, Eaton.
	That's it.
	I'm sorry.
	Eaton.
	I knew that.
	Yeah, I knew it too.
	So, uh...
	Oops.
	Well, anyway, for those of you who are...
	Oh, and that is the final thing I wanted to say.
	Those of you who are enjoying the change, which is already taking place, we can see it perfectly.
	The guy in the front has changed.
	Everyone else in the back remains the same in the administration.
	Twice now, I've noticed.
	On both the Jon Stewart show, the Daily Show, and on...
	I saw it happen on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
	He had...
	I forget her name.
	She has a talk show on E! She's like a comedian, kind of funny, tall, milfy-looking chick.
	Nah, you don't know.
	No, I don't know.
	But, you know, when people pull out an obvious crowd pleaser, you know, like the old, hey, but we got change, Obama's in, the audience goes dead silent.
	There's no more cheering, there's no more laughter, there's no more, yeah, we got him, look at you, we're rocking and rolling, the country is back.
	It's not even a chuckle, John.
	Really?
	Completely, it's dying.
	You cannot use Obama as a crowd pleaser anymore on these talk shows.
	That's interesting.
	Now, I thought that was highly interesting because that shows a real change in mentality almost overnight.
	It doesn't take much.
	The American public in particular is extremely fickle, and they can turn on a dime.
	I mean, in fact, I've seen the economy do these crazy turn-on-a-dime things.
	I mean, we had...
	I'm still stunned by this.
	You know, I was...
	Like I said, I was just in Portugal, and the prices were reasonable compared to...
	We haven't gotten...
	Well, with your American dollar now, which is being artificially inflated.
	But that's what I'm going to say.
	The pound got to $2, and the weird thing was that the Canadian dollar got to $1, became one-to-one.
	And when this thing turned around just like a month or two ago, which I expected, it took years to get where it got, and it turns around and goes right back to $0.76 or $0.75 for the Canadian dollar.
	And the pound was $1.46 when I went there, which was low.
	It was usually $1.55.
	five, you know, and traditionally, So it was $1.46, which was low.
	Once it goes below $1.50, to me, that's like bargain time in England.
	I'm thinking, this just happened overnight.
	I've never seen anything collapse like this.
	I mean, the gas prices, I bought gasoline for $1.99 premium.
	And the same thing, the euro, same thing, crushed the pound, super crushed.
	It was $2.
	Now it's $1.53.
	That's an unbelievable drop.
	Yeah, in such a short time.
	But I figured it out.
	It's the other way around.
	It's an unbelievable rise in the dollar because the Federal Reserve is selling gold.
	They're selling it like no one else's business.
	You know who's buying it?
	You know who's buying the gold?
	You are.
	Some of it.
	No, Iran actually just purchased $75 billion worth of gold.
	You know, this is not just a bunch of camel jockeys out there.
	They know what they're doing.
	And I think they're incredibly smart.
	Oh, that means that gold is going to collapse.
	We only do stuff like this to screw people.
	Hey, John, welcome to the dark side.
	I'm telling you.
	I got nothing against it.
	You want to sell the gold to a bunch of dumb Iranians and then pull the rug out from under them?
	I don't have a problem with it.
	It doesn't, you know, got nothing to do with it.
	Well, Lindsay Williams, the chaplain who I completely base all of my predictions on just by parroting him, who worked for the oil companies in Alaska, this is the guy who said it's going to go to 200 and that it's going to happen now and he was right.
	What's going to go to 200?
	Oil.
	Oil.
	It never went to 200.
	No, it went close.
	But then he came out and said...
	Close?
	It got to 147.
	Close enough.
	It was 60 when he said it.
	You know, not even.
	It was 50 when he said it.
	And he came out a couple months ago, six or eight weeks ago, and he said, it's going down to 50.
	And, of course, it's gone down to 50.
	And he says it's staying there a long time.
	And the reason why, he claims that he actually speaks to one of these guys who determines this.
	He says because they want to bankrupt the Middle East.
	They want to completely bankrupt them.
	They're going to keep the oil at 50 bucks.
	They want them out of the way.
	They should drop it to 40.
	I mean, it's traditionally 25.
	I think it's become too expensive right now, even just to get it out of the ground costs 30 or 40 bucks a barrel.
	Well, you know, you can bankrupt these guys.
	If you get everybody, you know, on the same page that's going to go to 200, and everybody starts banking on it, and they start all these green projects, and we're going to do solar, and we're going to do all these other things, because, you know, the cost of oil makes it profitable to do all these other alternative energy tricks.
	It's usually over, you know, anytime it goes over 40, actually.
	And then you get everybody all geared up for this stuff, and you have, you know, Goldman Sachs come out and say, it's going to go to 200, amongst the group that was cheerleading.
	And then the thing, you know, everybody's all geared up for this $200 deal, you know, and it's already at 140.
	It was a setup.
	It's a setup, and you're in.
	You push all your chips to the middle of the table, and then, boom, you pull the rug out from under, and this thing falls like a rock.
	If you take a look at the charts, by the way, I mean, this oil price thing went straight down.
	It wasn't like, well, let me hesitate here and just loop down.
	It wasn't like it was going over a cliff in a nice, smooth curve.
	It went straight down with one blip.
	It went basically straight down.
	And I love it how politicians still talk about the incredible price of oil.
	No, they don't even notice.
	Oil is so expensive, energy costs are very expensive.
	I know, haven't they?
	Don't they go outside?
	Although it is true that Shell, I just read this today, Shell had to shut down their Nigerian liquid natural gas production.
	Which is what...
	Europe gets almost all of their energy from the Nigerian liquid natural gas.
	So I predict that when it comes to heating, you know, like gas heating, etc., I think it's going to skyrocket.
	At least in Europe, it's going to go out of control.
	And then, of course, we have to go buy it from the Russians, which is going to be interesting.
	Well, I know Shell had that advertisement.
	They actually had a channel on the Dish Network promoting this liquid natural gas bullshit.
	It's so evil.
	That's the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange, founders of the Bilderberg Group.
	Well...
	Yep, yep.
	Let's end it on a high, John.
	The high is you can buy premium gas now for around two bucks.
	Yeah, I'll take it.
	That's good.
	Now I can fly much cheaper, too.
	I would think.
	The weather is completely crap.
	Absolutely no flying.
	All right.
	What's coming up this week?
	Anything special besides Cyber Monday?
	What's going on at Cyber Monday?
	Cyber Monday, it's the internet's version of Black Friday.
	Oh.
	Yeah, I'm going to be plugging all of our deals, all of our get-em-cheap deals, see if we can hop on the bandwagon.
	Get a cheap deal on budget.
	I got a bunch of budget.com slash tech.
	I have to, there's something I had to do.
	Yeah, I got to order some stuff.
	That's T-E-C-H, right?
	Budget.com slash T-E-C-H. Yeah, T-E-C-H. It's MevioOffers.com is where you can find all of it.
	Yeah, you can.
	Yeah, yeah, hook John up, hook John up.
	I need some, you know, some action.
	So, um...
	Yeah, I've got to do my online ordering because I think next week is probably the best.
	After that, you're never going to get it.
	That's what Cyber Monday is all about.
	That's the day when you get all the best deals.
	Now, it'll really be dependent upon what happens today on Black Friday.
	What do you think is going to happen?
	Just predict it.
	Okay.
	Well, I have to say I've already watched some of the news, and it seemed like...
	This is what they were reporting on CNBC. On the West Coast, because they had reporters in the malls, right?
	This is how crazy we are.
	On the West Coast, everywhere it seemed like the same amount of people were showing up, but now they have to find out how the sales figures are.
	But on the West Coast, people were using predominantly cash.
	On the East Coast, people were using...
	85% using credit cards.
	We're always ahead of the game out here.
	So I'm going to predict we will see a, not a significant drop, I'm going to say 20 to 25 percent less than last year, which of course will be amazing because it will be the first time in 100 years that we've actually gone down in Black Friday sales.
	But I think it's going to be 20 to 25 percent down.
	I'm saying 5 percent down.
	Okay, 5.
	Interesting.
	And we'll find out tomorrow.
	But we won't talk about it until next week.
	All right, everybody.
	Coming to you from Gitmo East in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry.
	And Gitmo West.
	I'm in northern Silicon Valley.
	I'm John C. Dvorak.
	We'll talk again next week right here on No Agenda.

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