View Episode 246
Originally aired 11.23.10
1:11:08 – Jah: “Seatbelts?”
38:22 – UYD: Team Lachey
1:09:38 – Superstition, feng shui and nostalgia: The Autobiography of Seth Romatelli
3:54 – J-Dawg’s old man did a three-episode arc on CSI: New York. Seth thought he was the killer, but he was unscrupulous and did it all for the family.
15:04 – Seth watched People magazine’s 2010 Sexiest Man Alive special on ABC. It featured Ryan Reynolds, whose wife, Scarlett Johannsen, who won 2010 GQ Babe of the Year. They were in the conference room brainstorming, and behind them is a white board where they’re throwing out names. Seth paused his flatscreen HDTV to see who was on the board: Leonardo DiCaprio, Bradley Cooper, Jon Hamm, Jake Gyllenhaal, James Franco, Justin Timberlake, Tim McGraw and ….. Ryan Seacrest.
41:43 – Seth tuned in for some What Would You Do? with John Quiñones. They did the old “slip and fall” routine where a supermarket employee sprays water on the floor and somebody else eats it. There was a guy there to fix the refrigerator, and they make the girl go over there to tell him she was having a hard day and asked him not to say anything. For a split second she was getting chesty with him, and it gave Seth the idea that they should make the show be a sex trap show and call it What Would You Not Do?
41:52 – Before Seth goes into his Quiñones show description, Jah stops him to ask if he watches Two And A Half Men. Seth says no.
47:46 – The Better Business Bureau has issued a warning bulletin called “’Tis The Season for Holiday Scams.” Although 20/20 last week did a scam watch on the BBB and realized that all you need to do is pay them money and you go from a C- to an A+. Some asshole complained about waiting an extra day for a book at a legit LA bookstore and so the BBB graded her with a C. They strong-armed her and asked for $300, and she did it and they gave her business an A. They started a BBB for a fake business for Hamas and Stormfront, the neo-Nazi business. They paid money and got A-pluses.
17:56 – According to a new study, dudes who get broken up with in Florida get wicked volatile.
54:38 – If Seth learned one thing from country artist Billy Currington, it’s that “God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.”
42:15 – Because this show is no longer around until Hollywood accepts UYD’s 3D movie version of TCAP, Seth is forced to give us recaps of watered-down “gotcha!” shows like What Would You Do?
13:37 – We’ve all drank on the job, but even when Seth was doing it at a video store with Randy Randall of the punk band No Age, they would still look at each other and wonder if they were really doing this now.
24:00 – Jah just got back from Colorado, where the people love him. He reports that the air is terrible in Denver and you get real drunk because of the elevation and feel really shitty afterward. A couple guys on the Jogger crew didn’t realize this and weren’t big drinkers and woke up feeling horrible. But Jah loves the city even though it’s a trippy town and he’s always been treated really well there.
30:48 – Jah’s friend always used to refer to the bass player in Pearl Jam, Jeff Ament, as “OK But the Hat Stays.” When the band moved from being a hair band into grunge, Ament kept a hat that seemed more appropriate for hair bands.
33:09 – Seth got thrown out of Dublin’s on St. Patrick’s Day during one of the last years he was not sober. His friend Nick Lang was in town and they were getting rowdy. Seth can’t describe what went on in the bar besides, “Things.”
34:00 – Seth talks about a notebook that a friend of his found about “the lost weekend” that turned into a reality journal about times during the late 90s in Hollywood that a friend of his scribbled and rambled in. He finds a portion in there about a party at Rufus Wainwright’s house during which Seth bought coke from a guy who had a SATAN t-shirt.
40:17 – While on tour with Jogger, Amir was watching Battlestar Galactica on his iPad, and at one point plugged the jack into car stereo auxiliary and he held it up so everyone could see the show. Jah doesn’t understand how people love that show. They were in Seattle and at the base of the Space Needle they had a Battlestar Galactica exhibit with spaceships and Amir was so stoked to go check it out.
50:18 – UYD Nation is thick in Salt Lake City. Listeners rolled out to the Jogger show when Jogger went on tour there. It was pretty dope. It was super cold but Jah was down. He got stiffed for his gig while he was there. There was a booking agent they fired after the last tour because the routing was horrible. He was still on board when the dates for this tour were being booked, and felt like he deserved to be paid, and so he contacted promoters and had them pay in full to the booking agency. By the time Jah and Amir showed up, they showed them Xeroxes of the checks that were sent to him. Jah and Amir were pissed and played the show knowing they were getting nothing.
56:40 – You go through some towns when you’re driving from major city to major city, and you see the poverty for real, according to J-Dawg. He and Amir drove through the Four Corners District during their recent Jogger tour. The reservation was in dire straits when the world was good to us, and now it’s looking even more grim. There were starving dogs with bum legs and unlivable houses for harsh winter conditions. Jah saw some good meth action going on there.
1:06:53 – There’s an obit on the UYD website about a guy who runs the Albertson Wedding Chapel on Wilshire. Seth once went to a wedding there for a guy who worked with him at Rocket Video named Ron Shahoq. He got married on April Fool’s Day and didn’t know about the day (Episode 029, 5:49). They were drinking out in the parking lot and asking Ron if he understood that it was a thing. Seth thinks they’re divorced now. They went to Yamashiro after the wedding, and Seth stole a little soy cup that he clinks on his coffee table to let us know he has it. He thinks the date was April 1, 1999.
1:52 – Seth doesn’t know much, but he does know that Aaron Neville got married this week. Jah then proceeds to sing a Neville-esque song about the 69-year-old man’s journey to the wedding and honeymoon.
10:07 – The Wall Street Journal reports that NYU assistant professor and performance artist Wafaa Bilal, who teaches in the photography and imaging department of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, plans to have a camera surgically implanted in the back of his head. The stunt, which has already sparked some concerns about privacy, is part of a project being commissioned by the new Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art – set to open in Doha, Qatar Dec. 30 and aspires to “highlight and share contemporary art by Arabs and artists living in the Middle East.” The NYU professor’s installation will be titled “The Third I.” According to Bilal’s colleagues, the camera will be secured to his head via a piercing-like attachment, and over the course of a year photographs will be taken at 1-minute intervals and fed directly into the monitors in the museum.
12:09 – Freeway Rick Ross (Episode 236, 1:09:06 and Episode 221, 30:07) lost his lawsuit against hip-hop artist Rick Ross.
12:48 – A government watchdog group has found several incidents in which federal agents who were hired to transport nuclear weapons got drunk while on convoy missions. In an incident last year, police detained two agents who went to a bar during one of the transportation assignments.
21:17 – Wal-Mart will open 1,000 of its nearly 4,000 stores that aren’t 24-hour Wal-Mart SuperCenters on midnight Thanksgiving night in order to take advantage of Black Friday. All stores will offer $9 Wrangler jeans and a $198 32-inch Emerson LCD HDTV.
26:30 – Starting next month, Camel cigarettes will begin selling limited-edition cigarette packs featuring 10 different U.S. cities and locations chosen for their “Break Free Adventure Contest.” The 10 cities chosen will show neighborhood landmarks on the packages. Some of the cities/areas are Las Vegas, Route 66, the Bonneville Salt Flats, Sturgis, S.D., Winston-Salem, N.C., Austin, Texas, etc. Why they picked Austin: “Name a live show that rocked history – we’ll put money that Camel was there.” The Haight in San Francisco: “The Summer of Love – whether you started here or put flowers in your hair, grabbed a drum and hitched a ride on a painted minibus, Camel lights up this little piece of SF that pulses with the spirit to evolve, revolve or revolt – and follows the force to break free.” New Orleans, La.: “With a name like The Big Easy, Camel just had to ramble down to N’Awlins to snag a balcony and catch some beads and take in the bourbon-soaked fun below.” Seattle, Wash.: “Home of grunge, a coffee revolution, and alternatives will probably tell you they’re only happy when it rains. It’s the smell of vinyl in that hidden record store, the worn t-shirt and a ticket stub with a scribbled phone number on it.” Brooklyn – Williamsburg: “Some call it the most famous hipster neighborhood, but it’s not about hip. It’s about breaking free. It’s about last call, a sloppy kiss goodbye and a solo saunter to a rock show in an abandoned building.”
45:29 – After several years of major losses and store closures, Blockbuster will launch its biggest national ad campaign in almost 4 years to remind the country that they still exist. Jah knows they still exist because you can’t beat 4 DVDs for $20.
48:41 – Thieves and con artists are advertising on Craig’s List and eBay about the season’s must-have toys – many of which sell out at stores all across the country. Then they sell for inflated prices and fail to deliver the presents once they receive their money.
52:08 – Seth tells about a 31-year-old high school teacher who was arrested for having sex with a 15-year-old male student. They regularly met at her home and exchanged sexually explicit text messages. She had to come forward to the police to report an extortion attempt because another student hit her up and confronted her to try and get more photographs of her and $4,000.
58:36 – Hal Solars, 92, sat down for a family dinner at a downtown LA steakhouse Saturday night when he excused himself to go to the bathroom. Ten minutes later he had not returned. A grandson checked the bathroom and returned to the table with bad news – he didn’t know where he was. Hal has dementia. What followed was a 20-hour search as the family and friends chased a trail of clues. Solars appeared to be wandering the city in a state of utter confusion. The managers at the restaurant, The Palm, searched the restaurant and couldn’t find him. Perhaps there was a possibility he accidentally wandered through a one-way door that went into a narrow office building. They searched the building and talked to security and he wasn’t there. Relatives fanned into the street. In the shadow of L.A. Live and Staples Center, there were bright lights and people everywhere. His son, Neil, drove around for several hours hoping to spot him. Nobody knows where Solarz spent the night. But Sunday afternoon, his family got some good news: He had used his MasterCard at 9:30 a.m. at a Denny's on Wilshire Boulevard. "We were really busy," said the restaurant's manager, Patricia Aguirre, who took his order when she saw him sitting by himself in a tweed blazer and dress shoes. He ordered a Diet Coke and an omelet from the senior citizen menu. The meal came to $10.18. "He was a very nice man," Aguirre said. "He said 'thank you' a lot. He seemed pretty OK. He seemed happy." By the time police and his family arrived at the Denny's, Solarz was long gone. All that remained was video from a surveillance camera. His friends and family were convinced he was walking across Los Angeles toward his home in Brentwood. At the pace he was traveling, it would take days. "He likes to walk," said his 60-year-old friend, Howard Shabsis, who spends a couple of days a week with him. About 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Solarz called his house and spoke to a friend who was staked out there as part of the search effort. He said he was calling from Karen's Nails on Pico Boulevard, where he often got manicures. "Why isn't anybody coming to pick me up?" he asked. But when his son arrived, he learned Solarz had never been there. Then Solarz called again. This time, he gave an address. It was another nail salon, on Western Avenue, not far from the Denny's. When his family arrived, the manicurists said Solarz had been there napping most of the afternoon.
5:05 – Seth hears from his contacts who saw the James Franco vehicle 127 Hours, and apparently before his arm gets trapped in a crevice, he encounters two young girls and snaps digital photographs of them. At one point he thinks to himself, ‘I think I’m going to jerk off,’ and zooms in on the photo of one of the girls he took a picture of to zoom in on their chest to jerk off.
7:26 – Jah gives Seth another “Every Kiss Begins With Kay.” It’s not really the holidays for Seth until J-Dawg sings that jingle.
7:52 – Seth asks when the best time to propose to your girlfriend is. J-Dawg thinks that if you want a summer wedding, you should propose during the summer prior so you have a full year to prepare.
20:00 – Jah thinks Huey Lewis & The News should have just been called “The News.” Seth and Jah then wonder if listeners hated all the 80s music flashbacks from Episode 246.
17:56 – A study that was published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior looked at 1,000 young unmarried adults in Florida. They found that young men there experience more emotional distress when their romantic relationships are going badly than young women. The sociologist who led the study said, “Men come off as more vulnerable to these issues in their romantic relationships, possibly because culturally and socially they are less prepared for them.”
55:02 – A paper published in the journal Science reported on the discovery of “non-coding” DNA, or “Zombie DNA,” which can exist in the human body and just suddenly come back to life and cause an array of serious health problems.
1:10:36 – Seth’s prediction for Thanksgiving weekend is that people are just going to cut loose and get hammered.
34:58 – Seth goes off on Jessica Simpson for trying to act like she’s engaged to someone else (former NFL player Eric Johnson) right when Nick Lachey did the same thing following their divorce.