View Episode 296
Originally aired 11.08.11
1:07:49
2:35 – The Hallmark Channel is having a “Countdown to Christmas” with more hours of holiday-themed programming than any other network. Seth reads off descriptions of 13 shitty Christmas movies: Love’s Christmas Journey, Mistletoe Over Manhattan, Lucky Christmas, Cancel Christmas, The Case For Christmas, A Christmas Wish, Trading Christmas, Holiday Engagement, A Princess For Christmas, Annie Claus is Coming To Town, The Christmas Pageant, Christmas Comes To Canaan and Christmas Magic.
8:33 – Million Dollar Mind Game on ABC was back this week. A question: “Pretend I’m holding a small black box in my hand. What is in this black box that can prove that 9 + 8 = 5 and 7 + 11 = 6?” The answer is a clock. Another question: “To succeed in this job, professionals need to think inside the box and make the ‘invisible visible,’ according to a famous one. They pull on ropes and they deal with strong winds, but you won’t hear them complain about it.” The answer is mimes.
36:33 – Seth watched Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and enjoyed an interview with Brittany from San Juan, Texas. The question is, “Do you know the party of our president?” The girl looks at them with the deadest-eyed stare. She says, “No.” They ask her, “Do you know what a political party is?” She gets all flustered and admits, “No.” Later, in her confessional: “I know, it’s Democrat, or, …. Grrrr!” and gets frustrated. The next day they have solo dance performances, and she gets freaky. She says, “Today definitely made up for yesterday’s interview. I feel a lot more better.”
45:13 – On Sunday, Nov. 13 on TLC, there will be a new show called All-American Muslim. Welcome to Dearborn, Michigan, where 33,000 of the city’s 100,000 residents are of Arab descent. It’s one nation under suspicion. … Tuesday, Nov. 15 on NatGeo, it’s Knights of Mayhem – full-contact extreme jousting.
50:30 – The Today Show tells Seth about surgical fires – where you’re on fire during surgery because elements of alcohol preparation, oxygen and any sort of electrical cauterizing device can blow your ass up.
1:00:25 – Deepak Chopra tweets these in one 24-hour period of time: “Growth is the willingness to let reality be new every moment.” … “Everything is the same spirit watching itself through the eyes of different observers.” … “Personal love is a concentrated form of universal love. Universal love is an expanded form of personal love.”
28:12 – Jah went downtown the other night and drove through Tent City by Skid Row and it got so bad. He said it used to be just the row, but now it’s 8 blocks of people. He thinks part of it is being in a big city and part of it is having phenomenal weather.
32:12 – Jah was at California Chicken Café on the way over to Seth’s apartment. Two cops came in to pick up a to-go order and two crazy gymmed-out gays were in there as well. There is one person in front of Jah, and the cashier is an attractive Hispanic woman who looks a little like Salma Hayek. She speaks very sweetly and very correctly but has a thick accent so certain words come out a little funny. The woman in front of Jah continues to say “I’m sorry, what?” and the girl continues to repeat herself. Jah orders his thing and has a few mix-ups where he has to ask her to repeat herself. He goes and sits down and two people walk up – most likely a dad in his early 60s and a daughter about Jah’s age. He only sees them ordering and can make out that there’s a lot of squinting and toing-and-froing between them. They come and sit down and the daughter looks at the dad and says, “I really couldn’t understand her.” Jah thinks it’s retarded because 80% of what she said was proper grammar, language, everything. She continues, “I guess she’s Mexican.” The dad turns and says, “Are you sure she’s not Chinese?”
56:38 – Jah had his phone turned back on. Right before that happened he was trying to talk to his folks in New York. He called them on his Google phone on their landline. They picked up the house phone and he tried to video his dad, but his dad could see him and Jah couldn’t see them. Jah’s mom sounds like she’s sort of far away and she’s talking at points that aren’t corresponding with what he and Jah are saying. When he videochatted his dad, it cut off the Google phone that he’d been using. He’s still having a convo with them and the whole time have been holding the landline phone and not hearing him come through the speaker because he’s been coming through the computer speaker for 10 minutes. Jah thinks it’s going to be so hard for us to deal with the new way that we do the same thing we’ve always done – even if we’re not interested in the new tech. Just the old stuff will be crazy.
1:04:24 – Jah’s phone just shut off. It’s booting as we speak. What will happen is the e-mails and texts that have been sent since the last time his phone was active will all at once begin to download from the mainframe into the handheld device and he would like to record the sound of it. He’s curious to see how long it will actually go on for. (It doesn’t work.)
11:57 – November is National Sleep Comfort Month
21:42 – People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issue will hit newsstands on Friday, Nov. 18. Jah guarantees it’s Ryan Gosling and Seth thinks he’s right.
39:47 – The US Bureau of Transportation released stats this week concerning the country’s largest airline. All told, major airline carriers collected $1.5 billion from checked luggage and reservation charge fees in the months of April, May and June.
41:42 – Late last week after the show, possibly Friday, Jah heard a blurb on NPR about the rice crisis that occurred a few years ago. It was about how wheat was incredibly expensive and India chose to buy more rice than wheat by making it illegal to export any rice grown there. As a result it started to spike globally throughout the market. The Phillippines got involved and bought it from brokers. The brokers would buy the rice, take their profit and split it with the Phillippines. The whole time it was happening, the U.S. paid an enormous debt to Japan in rice, so there are massive U.S. rice reserves in Japan, but the caveat of the deal was they were not allowed to sell the American rice – only use it on their own. There was 100,000 tons of it sitting there while rice was skyrocketing around the world. Two economists in America know the rice reserves are there and leverage America to allow Japan to sell the rice in order to stabilize the rice market again.
47:30 – The FBI recognized the Juggalos as a gang.
13:23 – UYD will be having a live show in Seattle in January 2012 on Friday the 13th at the Neptune Theatre in the University district. It’s an all-ages show and there will be a bar with ID. You can get tickets by using the click-through on the UYD website or by visiting stgpresents.org.
6:34 – Contrary to popular belief, most college students do not gain anywhere near 15 pounds during their freshman year, according to a new nationwide study. Rather than adding the “Freshman 15” as it is commonly referred to, the average student gains about 2.5 to 3.5 pounds during the first year of college. College has little to do with the weight gain, the study revealed. A typical freshman only gains about a half-pound more than the same-aged person that doesn’t go to college.
25:21 – Children who play more outdoors are smarter, leaner and stronger than kids more inclined toward indoor activity. A new study finds they have another advantage – they’re less likely to suffer from nearsightedness, in which objects in the distance appear blurry. That finding, presented last week at the American Academy of Opthamology yearly meeting, is based on data from 8 studies that explore the relationship between outdoor time and myopia in more than 10,000 children. For every hour each week a child spends in outdoor activity, his/her likelihood of suffering of nearsightedness declined 2 percent.
49:28 – New science unveils how your brain is hard-wired when it comes to spending and how you can reboot it.
54:50 – Newsweek article: “Don’t let chaos get you down. You’re not depressed. Our brains just aren’t equipped for 21st century life.” -- Dr. Andrew Weil, best-selling author, speaker and integrative medicine thought leader.
29:43 – Ask Amy / Ask Jah: “My son married a gal from another country. When I get together with her family, they don’t speak English. I feel they are speaking about me and I don’t like it. I’m a widow. In the past I’ve sat on my own in the living room with a magazine but this holiday season I’m thinking of even staying home. They’re nice people, but this is America and here we speak English. My grandparents came from another country but they spoke English in the home. Do you have any suggestions on what do do? Sincerely, Lost in Translation”
19:07 – Seth takes us back to November 2006 to tell us about “Reese & Ryan: End of the Line” After 7 years of marriage, they called it quits. It was also time for “Brittany and Kevin: It’s Over”