View Episode 215
Originally aired 04.26.10
1:10:28
2:52 – UYD: It’s like COPS
27:41 – UYD: Straight glamping
37:40 – UYD: E coli equals feces
1:00:36 – UYD: Ride the tube
2:13 – Fox has renewed a TV show called COPS for a 23rd season. Its creator John Langley said “It’s an existential variety show – dramatic, life-threatening, philosophical and legal. We’re still the only show on television with no script, no actors, no host and no reenactments.” Jonathan said this is a lot like UYD.
7:25 – Seth references the PBS documentary The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan (Episode 202, 16:52), which was originally pulled but later aired. Seth watched it and had a full panic attack, watching businessmen purchasing boys to train them to wear makeup and dance erotically.
26:50 – Seth watched Private Chefs of Beverly Hills which featured a bunch of rich web entrepreneurs who wanted to go on a camping trip but not have it be too rustic, so they had private chefs come and cook for them. It was glamorous camping, or as they called it, “glamping.”
10:24 – Seth remedies the painful effects of being exposed to perverse TV programs by eating oatmeal and pouring Pepsi Max on himself.
1:09:38 – Jah tells people, “If you’re tired, have an energy drink.”
5:31 – Burger King is trying out a new brunch menu in Massachusetts that includes mimosas and cibattia breakfast sandwiches. The mimosas are non-alcoholic (O.J. and Sprite).
28:04 – 7-11 is introducing a premium beer at a value price called “Game Day,” which comes in Lite and Ice. You get a 24-oz single for $1.77, or a 12-pack for $7.99.
47:50 – Bruce Willis has announced he will unveil his new men’s fragrance on July 1.
41:07 – The guy who created oxycontin passed away. Dr. Mortimer Sackler, 93, was a psychiatrist that owned a small pharmaceutical company that developed oxycontin in 1995.
What Seth Learned on the Monsterweb
42:18 – Seth reads an article on the Daily Beast that talks about guys looking at less-slickly produced pornography, because they prefer stuff that looks real or might be real. It talks about guys going onto Facebook just to look at pictures of their female friends, co-workers, girlfriends’ friends, etc., to get the fantasy going and ramping/amping it up.
5:38 – Jah is going to send his brother to BK to check out their new menu items in Boston. Jah also declares he will be in Boston in May.
6:36 – Jah declares that he kicked it old-school this week. He went to Burger King and got a French fry hamburger, where he ordered a Whopper with no meat and just stuck the fries in the middle for a potato sandwich burger. He says all the hippies he knew used to do it. He used to go to Carl’s Jr. and get a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger with no patty and no bacon, so he just had the BBQ sauce, the cheese and the onion ring, then he would order a large criss-cut fries and carbo load it.
14:38 – Seth went to the Annenberg Space for Photography, an exhibition with National Geographic about water. They had a 5-gallon drum of water, which weighs 42 pounds. Seth couldn’t lift it, then watched a video of an African woman with a rod along her back with a drum on each side, and she walks 5 hours to get the water and then 5 hours back. Seth felt guilty because the free coffee they gave him only gave him $3.50 worth and his drink came to $3.75.
22:07 – Seth did a market research on Sunday for the first time in 2 _ years (Episode 060, 54:26). He got called out of the blue, and he immediately told the girl he was up for it. He was watching the shittiest half-hour comedy pilot he could ever imagine. The people in the room were so low-rent. He kept praying that someone would shout out “Uhh Yeah Dude!” and he wouldn’t get his $70. The host came out and was all chipper. They put out crappy Hydrox cookies, and people flooded the table to eat them. It’s about 26 degrees in the room, and Seth asked the girl next to him why it was so cold. Another guy offers his opinion, “They keep it cold so you won’t fall asleep!” He hears a 60-year-old white dude turn to a 14-year-old black girl and says “Did you have those cookies? Those cookies were delicious!” The people being polled are holding a device in their hand which they can spin the dial two clicks to the left or right for negative or positive. Every time they test it out, there’s one guy who somehow can’t comprehend turning the dial. One guy almost broke the dial because he was trying to turn it the wrong way. There are other people in the room who think their opinions matter and that people are dying to hear what they have to say. Seth reveals the secret he takes advantage of every time. There’s a little red button on the device, and Seth waited 10 seconds after the show started, hit the button and he was allowed to leave and collect his $70 check.
29:15 – Jah had to go to Best Buy tonight to buy a cable he had forgotten to buy. He wasn’t that angry at the price and was quite happy with the guy who took care of him. He had some problems with his card, which got declined. The last thing they hit Jah with before he went into the registers was the candy aisle. He considers getting the Mambas, a sour candy, but bypasses them. As he’s looking at them, he sees a Nerd Rope, which is a rope of bubble gum covered in Nerds candy. He sees the dude behind him riffle around through the candy, and Jah looks back at him. He’s a big dude who is younger than Jah and probably 100 pounds overweight. His shirt is greasy in the front, and he’s holding DVDs in his hand. He grabs 4 Nerds Ropes and his fists are full at this point. Two of the DVDs are the Blu-Ray of Sherlock Holmes and another crazy version of Avatar. Jah looks at him and instantly knows he lives in a crappy apartment in Hollywood, but is spending $100 on movies that he possibly didn’t see in the theater. Jah doesn’t understand why one individual would cough up that much money for what he got.
40:35 – Seth talked to a guy who used to work at a sex shop. He said that guys would steal dildos by sticking them in their ass in the bathrooms and walking out the store with thiem.
50:13 – Jah called his dad after he got off a plane on his most recent trip. He said the plane he was on felt so old inside, all the plastic was yellowed. He was on the row just in front of the exit row, and his seat didn’t recline and his knees were hitting the seat in front of him. Half the carry-ons they didn’t allow on the plane. Jah’s dad explained that a plane can last forever, but J-dawg said they could at least update the insides. He prefers the Virgin Atlantic planes, which are more Euro-planes.
59:08 – Seth admits that the headache he got after seeing Avatar was such a deep, painful, intense headache. Jah got a similar headache going to see Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D.
1:04:32 – Jah thinks that the coolest things that happen to him now only happen when he’s alone.
1:05:50 – Jah interrupts Seth’s description of the website and the merchandise to talk a little bit about the legal troubles that he got into on tour and had to go back this past week to clear it up, which is why the last episode was doubled up. He didn’t feel at liberty talking about it prior to it getting sorted out, but now that it’s done with he explains that there was a big gap with pre-orders on merchandise from the web, and he apologizes about the delay in shipping merch to listeners. Jah then circles back, saying they talk about so much shit on this show, and it unifies the listeners in that they have a sense of the way things could be or ought to be or used to be and aren’t anymore. He said it’s also good to bear in mind to remember the world we’re currently living in, and if we choose to break the rules of the society we’re living in, we have to weigh up how valuable the things we’re doing are versus the consequences. It’s an adolescent lesson to learn, and it’s one he had to learn at that time, but clearly it beared repeating. He said we could still be open-minded and open-thinking people and still adhere to the way things are. Otherwise it might end up like Insane Clown Posse in this world.
3:18 – 150,000 of the 1.5 million kids in the U.S. are what people are calling “unschooled.” The kids make the rules – no chores, no punishments and no judgment. The parents allow for it as an exercise in what they call “personal exploration and discovery.” Jonathan says this used to be called college.
20:01 – Library of Congress has announced that they have acquired every tweet in existence. Since Twitter began in March of 2006, there are billions in their database. Twitter execs say they have 105 million registered users and are adding around 300,000 new ones every day, and there are about 50 million new tweets every day.
33:45 – 28-year-old married father with two small children Daniel DuPuis was arraigned on a felony charge of masturbating at the school where he works as an elementary music teacher. He admitted to masturbating five times in his locked office. School administrators were notified by the janitor, who found a tissue in the teacher’s waste basket that “smelled like semen.”
44:32 – The Supreme Court is hearing a case about a California SWAT team officer who sued the city of Ontario, Calif., for violating his privacy after superiors looked at personal messages he sent on his work-issued pager. He said they didn’t have the right to do it. He had been sending texts to both his estranged wife and girlfriend, who he worked with. The main problem is the Supreme Court judges aren’t that tech-savvy. Midway through the argument, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, “What’s the difference between e-mail and a pager?” At another point, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked, “All right, what would happen if a text message was sent at the exact same time another text message was sent? Does it say ‘Your call’s important to us and we’ll get back to you.’?”
48:36 – An American Airlines passenger, Brad Bisallion, posted a picture of the plane he flew on, which had duct tape on the wing. American Airlines confirmed this, and said it was called “high-speed tape,” in the aviation industry. An aviation consultant said, “I would be surprised if today, right now, there’s not an airplane on every airline in the United States that’s not flying around with some of this stuff on it.”
56:43 – Analysts predict as many as 4 million 3D televisions could be sold this year. Manufacturers are making sure consumers are aware of potential side effects from the technology. User manuals warn that the viewer could experience intense headaches, eye strain, fatigue and/or dryness or blurred vision, muscle twitches, problems with balance, nausea, light-headedness. Pregnant women should take extra precautions and people at risk of strokes or seizures should consult a medical professional before watching it. Absolutely no alcohol while you’re watching it and users should take frequent breaks.
1:16 – Seth wants to know if people are still ghost riding the whip, and Jonathan attests to the fact that in the Bay Area, people are still ghost riding that whip.
24:41 – Jah gives a callback to the Elvis “fader” story from Episode 130, 28:43.
59:48 – Seth describes seeing Hubble in IMAX combined with Leonardo DiCaprio’s narration voice as a vanilla DMT shake with a protein boost. Jah wonders if it’s still playing at the California Science Center, and Seth confirms that it is, along with Kelly Slater’s Ultimate Wave Tahiti 3D IMAX, which Seth describes as “riding the tube.” Seth requests someone to illustrate a photo of him on a surfboard riding the tube with awesome board shorts.
1:03:33 - Jah lets out a nice little fart
11:38 – Research just released in the Archives of Dermatology says that as many as 1 in 3 people who use indoor tanning facilities may be addicted. Knowing all of the dangers, these people are having parts of their brain triggered by the ultraviolet light that is similar to those of a drug addict with drugs. Combined with the warmth and relaxation tanning gives you, it’s also deadly.
36:52 – Dr. Elizabeth Brooks, a biological science professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, conducted a much-quoted two-year study on public makeup testers when she was with Rowan University in New Jersey about five years ago. She says, “We went to department stores, specialty stores, drug stores. Everywhere.” Her researchers found staph, strep, and even e coli bacteria in the makeup testers. Her other quote: “Whenever you see e coli, you should just think, e coli equals feces.” She says that when they tested the makeup on Saturdays, the days when most traffic at cosmetic counters is up, the percentage of tainted makeup was 100%. You can also get herpes and pink eye from it, and the FDA has confirmed the research.
52:35 – A 1992 survey of 5,000 U.S. librarians was withheld by a now-defunct journal, but the man who did the study has now published them on his website. The study said 1 in 5 of the librarians had engaged in some kind of sexual act in the library they worked at in between the stacks. 51% of the librarians were willing to pose nude for money. 61% had rented an X-rated film. 22% of the librarians believed condom dispensers in the bathroom would be a good idea.
54:33 – The journal Biology has a study involving children with a rare genetic disorder called Williams Syndrome in which the kids are “hypersocial.” They lack the normal social anxieties such as jitters, nervousness or inhibitions that seem to affect all kids including them, and in turn they show no racial biases. However they do show pronounced gender biases and gender stereotyping.
1:00:59 – According to the Pugh Internet in American Life Project, an average American teen girl sends 80 texts per day and 87% of teens sleep with or next to their cell phones so that they can answer their phones or text during their sleep.
15:32 – Andy Rooney, 91, is still on 60 Minutes. Seth goes into full Rooney voice and recites a recent diatribe from the old codger: Why is it that most of us have a desire to eat more than we need, whether we’re having peanut butter on toast or leftover rice? We eat more than we need. It seems as though one serious and constant defect in the human character is desire. We have more desire for almost everything than we need. Can’t something be done about this? Those thoughts occurred to me recently when I brought my lunch up here to my desk from the cafeteria downstairs. I ate what I had then I wanted a cookie, so I went back downstairs and bought two cookies. Not because I was hungry but because I desired the good taste of cookies.