TheModernMoron podcast
Pushin' 65 & Still Alive. You could be a Modern Moron if: - You are a male. - You think your IQ is measurably higher than it actually is. - You regularly contribute opinions in conversations in which you have no business. - You use any of the phrases “drill down”, “take it to the next level”, “low hanging fruit”, “leverage”, “it is what it is”, “peel the onion”, “boil the ocean”, “reach out” or “price point”. - You're old and irrelevant. You’re not in anyone’s target demo except for AARP related matters. If you know what AARP stands for, you’re old and irrelevant. If you answer yes to more than one question you are probably a moron. I host this show because I answer yes to all of them proudly. Hopefully you have a child or even a grandchild that will show you how to download this podcast. Actually, have them subscribe to it. Don’t ask “what does that mean, subscribe? This isn’t a magazine!” just have them do it. Then have them put your earphones on you and press play. If you’re still able to do it yourself then God bless you. You’re ready to listen to this podcast and take it to the next level.
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Ep. 121 Best 4th of July Ever; Miles Connor in Nashville
07/27/2023
Ep. 121 Best 4th of July Ever; Miles Connor in Nashville
Ep. 121 Best 4th of July Ever; Miles Connor in Nashville Welcome to this mid-summer episode of the Modern Moron. I’m so excited to share the conversation I had with a young musician named Miles Connor. He’s currently a student at Belmont University in Nashville Tennessee and was born and raised in the Dallas Texas area. H’s e’s a bit of an old soul in that he was brought up with a lot of classic rock artists from the 60’s and 70’s. I believe his first instrument was the guitar but his father was and is an accomplished musician and toured professionally back in the day as a drummer. I’ve been wanting to talk to Miles for YEARS, literally as I’ve heard over and over what an accomplished musician he was becoming and how affable and friendly his was. Well, one of my fancy friends from my days in L.A. flew to Nashville for the 4th of July. In fact, Julie Welch has been on this program before when we did a tribute to her parents, Ken and Mitzie Welch, who were Emmy Award winning music arrangers for the Carol Burnett show and I believe the Jack Parr show way back in the day. Julie is also friends with a guy named Brad Paisley, who really is a household name if you ever play even a little country music in your household. Brad performed in Nashville on the 4th of July and it was broadcast on CNN without political commentary. Julie arranged for my guest Miles to meet her sister Gillian Welch, who has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards over the years and winning a Grammy for Best Folk Album in 2021. THEN… she took Miles to the Paisley’s home/music ranch(?) is that a thing? Where he got to not only meet Brad Paisley, but jam with him and talk music. Brad went to the same college that Miles is currently attending. He got to hang there the evening before the 4th with some more fancy people including SNL alum Kevin Nealon, who’s a decent banjo player himself. A couple of other names get dropped including Michael Hitchcock and Tim Bagley. Now those two names may not seem like household names but if you saw either of them you’d say, “oh, I know that guy!” Michael is probably most recognized for his role in Christopher Guest’s “Best in Show” where he was paired with Parker Posy as a couple showing Weimaraners and they both wore braces. See… you remember. He also wrote and produced many episodes of the hit show Glee which ran from 2009 to 2015 and you can see him all over the place. Tim Bagley is also a great character actor who’s currently playing Brad Schraeder in the HBO hit “Somebody Somewhere”. You’d also remember him on the show “Monk” with Tony Shalub, Tim played Monk’s neighbor Harold and of course “Larry” from Will & Grace… There I go down another rabbit hole… anyway, Both of these guys are hugely funny, Miles mentions them in his story, they are working ALL the time and are very dear to this old Moron as I knew them way back when I was in L.A. and they were… very, very young…. In case they ever hear this. Very, very young when I first met them. Back to Miles and an additional reason I think you’re going to love him is his knowledge of the history of rock and country. Glen Campbell… was known for his guitar playing as well and Miles recalls what a great session player Glen Campbell was back in the day playing for music producer Phil Spector as well as playing and singing with the Beach Boys. Brad Paisley is right up there in his guitar playing alongside Glen Campbell. In fact, I’m including the link to a YouTube Video of some legendary guitar players having a session at the Fender Custom Shop playing the theme to Game of Thrones back when that show was insanely popular. In that video are players like Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Scott Ian from Anthrax, Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme and… Brad Paisley. Now those first guys may not be number one on your Spotify list, but you have at least heard of those bands because of their longevity. And their longevity is partially due to those outstanding musicians. Okay, I’m off track again… So, Miles is going to tell us about his very, very exciting and fun 4th of July experience mixed in with some talk about music, guitars, steel pedal guitars and what it’s like to be a young, very enthusiastic musician getting their career started. This may be the first time you hear the name Miles Connor, but I bet it won’t be the last… please enjoy… CLOSE - I told you you were going to love him. To me, Miles has three key ingredients for success as an artist. Vision, Drive and Focus. He has the vision of what he wants to do, he’s got lot’s of drive and enthusiasm, and he’s got the focus to stay on track and not get distracted by… things… or people… like… girls. College girls. Okay, he’s doomed. But there’s nothing like a college breakup to fuel a few good songs! See? There’s material everywhere! Thank you so much to Miles Connor… remember that name America… and to Miles’ mom and Dad, Allison and Court for giving us such a great kid! Don’t forget to like and subscribe and forward this to someone you think would enjoy it. We’re going to leave you with a live recording of Miles last year in his audition for the Dallas International Guitar Festival 10 under 20 contest, which I’m guessing is the 10 best guitarists under 20 in Dallas. He auditions with Voodoo Child. I have a history with this song in that I’m always late to discover things like the Hendrix version of Voodoo Chile … no “d”... which I didn’t discover until 20 years after it was released in 1968 on the Electric Ladyland Album. I was working blowing up balloons for radio station KLSX in Los Angeles and I was mesmerized by the playing and the lyrics… and it was my favorite Hendrix song: “if I don't meet you no more in this world Then I'll, I'll meet you in the next one Now don't be late, don't be late.” A couple years later I was an actual disc jockey, when people listened to the radio instead of an app for music, at a station in Santa Barbara and I really liked this “new” guy… new to me named Stevie Ray Vaughn and I see Voodoo Child on his album “Couldn’t Stand the Weather” and I thought, “oh no, Stevie… I love your playing but some things should be left untouched. Don’t try to top Jimi, just leave it.” And then I played it. And I was humbled. Big time. Between Stevie Ray Vaughn’s Voodoo Child (a slight return) and his equally hypnotizing jazz soaked “Riviera Paradise” I was fully into the kool-aid of Stevie Ray Vaughan. And now, here is another guitarist who can pull off the Hendrix as well… Miles Connor. We will definitely see you again in this world and thank you for listening to The Modern Moron. - YouTube - YouTube - YouTube - Inner Western Nights - Steelin’ Hearts - YouTube
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Ep. 120 Larry Dorf and The Summer of Showbiz: Hollywood is Out on Two Strikes
07/17/2023
Ep. 120 Larry Dorf and The Summer of Showbiz: Hollywood is Out on Two Strikes
Hi… I have not been taking our relationship very seriously have I. I’m sorry… I haven’t called, haven’t written, you think I haven’t even been thinking about you probably. Well that’s not true. If fact this is the 4th attempt at episode number 120. I can’t tell why I haven’t been producing, creating, whatever this is and at the same time I have a few really important-ish reasons why I haven’t but we’ll talk about that later… maybe. My guest is my good friend Larry Dorf. I would consider him a “super friend” isn’t that in like the league of justice with the DC comics realm. Only we don’t use the word “realm” anymore. Now we say “multiverse”, right? That’s the craze for the last ten years… this obsession with the idea of a multiverse, from the 10,001 Marvel Comics movies to the animated Spider-Verse to Everything, Everywhere all at once, it’s all a multiverse. Maybe this is why I don’t do episodes anymore… I can’t stay on topic for shit. Larry Dorf is a super-friend, that’s how I digressed. Larry if you remember is a fancy (from my cubicle’d perspective) Hollywood writer, producer and actor. He and my other superfriends who he is partnered with have created Mike Tyson Mysteries for cartoon network and hit it pretty darn big with the Netflix show, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window” It did really well, I loved it and if you like a parody that’s not in your face schticky like Scary Movie, not that it doesn’t have a place, but this was more suspense and definitely more subtle but very funny and well acted and well written and yes I’m biased. We recorded this episode in the first week of June 2023 and here it is mid July and I’m just now trying for my fourth time to publish an episode. The writer’s strike had already been going on for some time, in fact by the time this episode sees the light of day the actors union SAG-AFTRA has joined the writers and we may have to call Larry all over again. We talk about shows they are pitching or shows they were TRYING to pitch and the general process of pitching a show and how that was put on hold well before the writer’s strike began We briefly get off track talking about TV to fall asleep to. That’ll really put you on the edge of your ear buds so you don’t want to miss that. Another thing is… I did not spend as much time editing this episode down. Will that make a difference? Who knows… but if you notice a difference please include it in all the virtual cards an letters that have been coming in by the thousands. I edited like the first 15 minutes and then said stop being so precious. It’s just the four of us listening to this anyway. Let’s see what happens. We start our conversation by trying to get Larry comfortable as I know he loves to spin around in office chairs and then I have to set him straight on the difference between an office for a TV show or movie… a production office versus an office in the real world where you and I live. I’ve worked in both and I can tell you… they ain’t the same. CLOSE - I think there’s something going on with Larry blocking certain things out from his childhood. Maybe we need to get his wife Sam on the podcast and dig a little deeper. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I’ve missed you. I have another summer episode to publish, hopefully it will be this summer of 2023. Stay cool, stay hydrated for God’s sake stay hydrated and thank you for listening to the Modern Moron.
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Ep. 119 Art History in Edinburgh Scotland, Cultural Capital, What's in Your Cultural Wallet?
11/30/2022
Ep. 119 Art History in Edinburgh Scotland, Cultural Capital, What's in Your Cultural Wallet?
Happy Holidays from The Modern Moron recorded this day, the 25th of November, 2022. It’s Black Friday and there’s no place I would rather NOT be than a mall, A Walmart, a Best Buy or an Amazon. Also, I literally got back from the grocery store and I thought I was going to have to take out a Home Equity Loan. I just paid over $5 for a dozen eggs. What the ever-loving- @##$%? At what point is it going to be …. That’ll b e a dollar…. Another dollar…. Okay, two for one. Thanks Grandpa Joe… for all the inflation. It’s your fault. Your fault there’s global inflation. Whatever country your in, it’s that political leader’s fault that there is global inflation. If you live in Canada, Thanks Trudeau. If you live in China, thanks JinPing. Great Britain’s revolving door… thanks Sunak. Or can we still blame Boris Johnson? Thanks Bo-jo. Or let's lay that on Liz Truss! She was only there 50 days, it’s all her fault. Thanks Liz. But let’s stay in Great Britain, because… My guest is the Senator’s daughter who has been on this show multiple times, this time from Edinburgh, Scotland! She is attending the University of Edinburgh getting her Master’s degree in Art History. We talk about: How wonderful and nice the people of Scotland are, dispelling the U.S. notion that everyone there is groundskeeper Willie from the Simpsons. The Art History Masters degree she is achieving specifically is in accessibility, and as I said in the previous episode, we’re not talking ramps and wider doorways, but accessibility in a broader sense. Is it accessible to all social classes, ethnicities and cultures and are they all represented in art museums? We talk about those little plaques next to the artwork that I almost never read. Are they accessible to all? I bring up something used in internet web content design and development called the Hemingway app. Hemingway’s style of writing, as you may already know, is very concise and direct. There’s not a lot of flowery language in it which allowed him to get to the point more quickly. It’s very efficient. And now… there’s an app for that. And it’s called hemingwayapp.com . It’s free. You go there, paste in your composition, or write in the page and the app will analyze your writing as you go. It will highlight areas where your sentences and paragraphs can be made more simple. We talk about her roommates in her flat… there’s 5 of em! She brings up the term “Cultural Capitol” which is a theory created by this french guy Pierre Bordieu who was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Seriously? There’s an occupation called Public Intellectual? What’s the annual salary of a Public Intellectual. I’m a private intellectual. I’m the most intellectual person in my bathroom at any given time. Back to Cultural Capital. I’m going to read you a few sentences about Cultural capital and the sentences are a little too complex to be comprehended by some individuals, which lowers their Cultural capital and creates further inaccessibility. Inaccessibility to knowledge. Confused? Me too. Cultural capital is defined as the social assets of a person that can be used to increase one's chances of success in life. These assets can be either tangible, such as clothes or educational certificates, or intangible, such as knowledge or life experiences. While everyone has some form of cultural capital, those from higher social classes tend to have more of it. This is because they have greater access to resources that can help them develop their skills and talents. Additionally, they are more likely to inherit cultural capital from their families. Cultural capital is not a static concept; it can change over time as people gain or lose access to resources. For example, someone from a lower social class who manages to get a college degree has increased their cultural capital. Similarly, someone from a higher social class who drops out of school may have lost some of their cultural capital. And, the meaning of cultural capital is not necessarily static. The social assets that society values can shift over time. There are three types or “states” of Cultural Capital: 1) There is the “Embodied” state which is the capital you have from your life experiences, learning your A,B,C’s and being read to all the way through education and socialization. 2) the second state is called the “Objectified” state, more commonly known about twenty years or so ago as “bling”, “cheddar”, “lit”, “Gucci”, etc. And it’s not just slang as we see it everywhere. I drive a Ford Pickup and you drive a Mercedes or a Lexus or a Tesla, you’ve got more “Objectitfied” cultural capital than me. Your grocery bags say Whole Foods, my grocery bags say Grocery Outlet. You get it. 3) Finally, there is “Institutionalized” Cultural Capital which is the way society measures social capital. The classic example of this is formal academic degrees; a masters degree carries more capital than a bachelors degree, a PhD even more and so on. And let’s not forget the degrees on the opposite end of academia, that being degrees from the School of Hard Knocks. Depending on the culture, there may not be much perceived value on a degree from that institution or street smarts, but if you do have it, you can still gain your objectified capital (cha-ching). She uses the expression or notion that museums and the historically European art contained within is “The purveyor of absolute fact”. And as part of the study of Art, she challenges that notion. I hope I’m getting this right, otherwise she could sue me for defamation! The point, as I understand or misunderstand it is when she says there should be multiple entry points that visitors to a museum can access the art. Something for everyone. I liken it to the ski trails at a ski resort. There’s the green circle or the bunny hills. If you know a little more about art you can tackle the blue trails; I think it’s a blue square? Then if you’re really down with the art, you can tackle the black diamond explanation of the painting or whatever the hell you’re looking at. Okay, enough babbling out of me, it’s time to learn about Art Accessibility, Scotland style. Grab yourself an Irn-Bru, unless it’s time for a wee bit o’ whiskey. As the lassie and me have a little Blether. Keeut Tine-g .. to TMM. Thanks for listening. CLOSE - The Modern Moron equates Cultural Capital to Willie Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. You know, as far as great speeches from a movie go, I will put Gene Wilder’s rant up against the best of them. Gordon Geko and his “Greed is Good” speech or even Gary Cooper in his “Luckiest Man on The Face of the Earth” speech… a lot of the best speeches are from sports movies. Especially if you’re a misogynist moron like me. I think we should do an episode on the best speeches from great movies. What do you think? Maybe some of them would apply to today as much as when we saw them on the big screen? But that is for another day. Thank you to my guest and best wishes on her upcoming Masters degree. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next time on TMM. - bookanalysis.com
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Ep. 118 Larry Dorf Pt. 2 - Parenting a junior comedian, Auditioning post pandemic, HBO’s Winning Time, Unattractive NBA Players and Poor Batgirl
11/06/2022
Ep. 118 Larry Dorf Pt. 2 - Parenting a junior comedian, Auditioning post pandemic, HBO’s Winning Time, Unattractive NBA Players and Poor Batgirl
Welcome to NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me! I’m Bill Curtis… Today’s episode titled “Wait Wait Don't’ Tell me it’s not Wait Wait Don’t Tell but actually The Modern Moron…” I’m still Bill Curtis and here’s your host of the Modern Moron… who is neither straight form a Hemingway Novel nor from the Sea… please welcome, The Old Man… Thank you Bill Curtis for that lovely introduction of The Modern Moron and The Old Man dot Show. I know what you’re asking yourself right now and the answer is yes, you can now find The Modern Moron on NPR by simply going to NPR dot ORG in your browser and then typing “The Modern Moron dot COM” into that same browser. This is part 2 of my conversation with my LA friend Larry Dorf. Larry is my personal version of an Albert Brooks type and I tell him so. I have a couple of those in my life and Larry is one of them. He’s a little… how do I say this… particular? A little particular about how certain things are. And somehow, to me, it’s endearing and entertaining. I love it. Maybe it’s the Goldylocks syndrome In the beginning of our conversation and a little bit into it, Larry… who I may earn the nickname “Goldylocks” for this show, has a little trouble getting comfortable as we chat about his son and dealing with his comic antics in the classroom. We talk post pandemic virtual connecting via zoom and MicroSoft Teams if you’re at work perhaps, and the requirements for an actor auditioning for roles and how that has changed drastically. Whereas before, if you had an audition, they would send you the part of the script they wanted you to read, commonly called “the sides”, you would memorize the lines, go into the studio or casting office and read with the casting agent, where they would record you on camera and submit that to the producers, the director and the show runner. But now, you’re expected to be able to record yourself, at home and submit electronically. This means you need to find someone to read the other parts, off camera, while you’re recording yourself. The upside is that you can do as many takes as you want and send in the best take, but you also don’t have the opportunity to take direction from the casting director if they see something and would like to give you some direction. So Larry tells me about the challenges of auditioning post pandemic, and he drops a line that starts out as something that could be a great quote that you might hear from a great author or philosopher, and to me, it’s one of those gems I can only get from my friend Larry. But as I’m giving him a bad time about it, I mention the great author of Moby Dick, James Melville. Only there is no James Melville… it’s Herman Mellville. So in the moment that I am criticizing someone in their lack of eloquence, I boldly show what an idiot I am by calling Herman Melville, James Melville. And you know what? I could have edited it out… I’m sorry had someone edit it out, we have a staff here at The Modern Moron. But then it wouldn’t be the Modern Moron. This is exactly why the show has it’s name. We get to the meat of this episode when Larry tells me about an audition he had recently for a show on HBO Max about the Los Angeles Lakers during the 80’s, the era that I believe was called “Showtime” but since there’s a cable channel with that name already, the show on HBO is called, “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” about Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul Jabar, James Worthy, Byron Scott, Kurt Rambis, their coach Pat Riley, and owner Dr. Jerry Buss. One of the Executive Producers, and the writer of the first episode is Adam McKay, who has created so many great movies, we should do a whole episode on him and his partner Will Farrell. The only problem is… I don’t get HBO. Rats. I’m a cable cutter and HBO is one luxury I have to live without… for now. Larry tells me that he auditions to play the part of Larry Bird’s father, but he’s concerned that Larry Bird was not considered a very attractive man in the NBA, so I go on to assure him there are many more unattractive guys in the NBA and we start going down the list. Mean spirited? Cruel? How can I say this isn’t cruel. Of course it is. Basketball players are not trying to be models even though some of them do. Mainly, they just want to play ball, but being in the public’s eye leaves them vulnerable to articles like the one we found in this podcast and is below this episode’s description and vulnerable to moron’s like us, neither of whom have been asked to appear in any fashion magazines. One thing I will say about the cowardice of this article is that there is no author. In fact this moron of a sports website gives the lame excuse that it was written by a combination of a few writers and editors and that’s why there no name associated with the article which is a bullshit way of evading the horrible things users would have said about them. Not here at the modern Moron. Feel free to let us have it at TheModernMoron.com or theoldman.show. The entertainment industry is going through a mass restructuring. This leads us to Warner Brothers canceling the release of what was going to be a major DC Comics film “Batgirl”. CLOSE - As it should be. If your going to get rid of animation, get rid of the stuff that’s for kids. Kids don’t need to be watching cartoons. They should be working. Making t-shirts and shoes and mining coal. Poor Leslie Grace… or is it? I’m sure she got paid, but to do all that work and not have it come out has to be extremely disappointing. I read one excuse, I’m sorry quote from a studio executive that said the DCEU, which stands for the DC Comics Extended Universe, was compromised in terms of telling the correct origin story for one of the DC characters that somehow hinged on the character The Flash. And you thought daytime soap operas got sticky? I think Larry… or Goldylocks had some great insight into the potential positive effects of pressure. In his example it was the additional pressure of going in to a casting office for an audition rather than doing it from the comfort of your own home. Always staying in your comfort zone is not a good thing, it’s not a productive thing and it’s when you leave that comfort zone that you challenge yourself to grow and maybe be a little better than you thought. Wow… That’s some deep stuff. I can actually tease our next episode as we will be having a long wonderful chat with the Senator’s daughter! She is attending Graduate School at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. That’s right, The Modern Moron goes global. She is getting her masters degree in art history specifically in the accessibility to art history… that has a lot more to it than wider doorways and ramps. Maybe wider doorways in a metaphorical sense. Very excited about that episode coming up next. Thank you for listening to The Modern Moron and the Old Man dot Show. We’ll see you next time. - HBO.com - sportytell.com - Screenrant.com - Screenrant.com
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Ep. 117 Larry Dorf: Adnan Syed, Morally Dubious Podcasters, a Prison Sentence Game Show and 2 Documentaries
10/28/2022
Ep. 117 Larry Dorf: Adnan Syed, Morally Dubious Podcasters, a Prison Sentence Game Show and 2 Documentaries
Welcome to another episode of The Modern Moron… my guest is producer, writer, actor Larry Dorf, yes, that Larry Dorf. We have a very light early fall chat about a few subjects, namely: We talk a little about some of the Modern Moron’s more successful shows, one being on Phil Hendrie and his mastery of deception with his characters improvising with each other and his work on various animation projects from King of the Hill to Rick and Morty. I refer to a story Larry told about an audition he had where he was being asked to play NBA legend Larry Bird’s father, a story I will get to next time. I’m sort of giving you this conversation backwards and here’s why. Larry Brings up Adnan Syed, who has been released from prison after doing 20 years for a murder he did not commit. His story was made famous by a podcast called “Serial” which was developed by “This American Life” that you know from NPR. The podcast “Serial” is owned however, by The New York Times. You already know I’m a moron, so you won’t be surprised to find that I am way late to the party on damn near everything and such is the case with the show “Only Murders In The Building”, which is a show about a podcast about a murder. It’s on Hulu and is into production of it’s 4th season and I’m told that the show was based on the real podcast “Serial”. I didn’t realize how much… you hear that? That’s the theme music of the podcast “Serial” about Adnan Syed… And this… is the theme song to the Hulu series, “Only Murders in the Building”... Jezz, they could have at leas changed the key it’s played in right? This brings up a subject I’ve been wanting to get to for some time and it’s the concept of the Morally Dubious Podcaster. It probably has other names, but i found an article with that phrase and I thought, “Morally Dubious? Modern Moron” They’re synonymous. I read an article, have an unqualified opinion about it, say it into a microphone, bam; Morally dubious podcaster. Only I’m not a celebrity and I don’t have guests who are celebrities so, there’s only the two of you listening and it works out about the same, just on a much, much smaller scale. Plus I’m not pretending to try and crack a cold case or find a murderer. So, Larry explains to me the case of Adnon Syed, and I’m oblivious as you can hear… like a typical old man, I can’t seem to get the story straight… Then Larry turns this into a potential gameshow along the lines of, “How much prison time would you do for a million dollars?” This is what Hollywood people do for a living. We join our conversation basking in the glory of the first episode Larry did with us called “The Mystery of Mike Tyson” referring to the Adult Swim Animated series “Mike Tyson Mysteries” which is still our most downloaded episode. Until this one… CLOSE - And that, friends, is how a game show is created… in South Korea. Isn’t that a little like the show “Squidgame”? I couldn’t stick with that show… it was too sad and dark for me. I have enough of that crap running around in my head without watching a tv show about it. Now that I’ve had two seconds to think about it, I would not do any time in a prison for any amount of money. The subculture that goes on in prison is not something I want to pretend like I could tolerate even for a minute. I did look up some of the lovely prisons both in California and across the country. Pelican Bay and San Quentin are both nasty, gnarly prisons and so is the downtown county jail in Los Angeles. Other residences I would not spend a minute in for any amount of money is the ADX, also known as the SuperMax in Colorado. One article I read on the internet-so-it’s-true… says that the structure is built in a way that inmates never see a guard or another prisoner. I don’t know if it’s true, I don’t want to know, I just trust that I don’t want to go there. Throw in Sing, Sing and Rikers Island in New York, and a few of the prisons in the deep south like The Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama and it just makes me want to be a law abiding citizen. Why am I going on and on about prisons? Well, I see in the news recently that a real sweetheart of a guy named Steve Bannon has been recommended to spend four months in prison for contempt of congress. Hmm. I wonder if one of the neighborhoods I just mentioned might be a good place for him? Is anyone else thinking of the movie Deliverance right now? Does anyone see a similarity between Ned Beaty’s character and Steve Bannon?... A couple of housekeeping items I’d like to pass along starting with two documentaries I’d like to recommend.. The first one is called “A Trip to Infinity” on Netflix. I found it fascinating, I’ve watched it twice and am currently forcing my daughter to watch it in 10 minute increments. Mathematicians, Cosmologists and physicists contemplate the concept of infinity… and it’s broken up into different chapters: Infinity is very small, it’s very large,infinity as a number in an equation, that the speed of light is both very fast and also very slow, that a circle is actually a polygon with an infinite number of points and in terms of time, infinity is a very very long time and that if you put an apple in an air tight box and wait for infinity years, that apple will eventually morph into anything and everything you could possibly imagine. Even live versions of Rick and Morty. So I highly recommend “A Trip to Infinity.” The other documentary is called “All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records”. This subject matter is perfect for our demographic! I’m sure you spent hours in Tower Records going up and down the isles looking at the amazing Album art that we took for granted then. Isle after isle until you decided which album you were going to plunk down five dollars and change for, and then I think seven or eight and change and then I lost track. But that was an important purchase. And then I would have to sneak by the living room with my bright yellow and red plastic bag hoping my parents wouldn’t ask me what I got. They never did, but if my dad knew I was buying Cheech and Chong, Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy albums? No way. And we also had Tower Books and Tower Posters across the street which was actually a head shop where you got everything from bongs to rolling paper to posters of fruits and vegetables doing disgusting things, incense, trippy candles with psychedelic waxes, macrame’d hanging plant holders… Tower records was the best. The documentary is available on YouTube and I believe right now you can stream it for free. It’s a great documentary. The only woman who made it as an executive at Tower back in the 70’s put it best when she said that whatever Tower records was the one you went to, you thought it was the first Tower Records they ever had. The documentary is directed by Tom Hanks’ son Colin and he does a great job bringing the nostalgia of Tower Records back, whether you found their store in San Francisco on Columbus Avenue or the one on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, Greenwich Village in New York or wherever you grew up, there was probably a Tower Records where you hung out. Elton John, Bruce Srpingsteen and Dave Grohl, who also worked at a Tower Records in Seattle, all reminisce about how special it was to roam the isles of a Tower Records. Hanks also does a good job of not letting the documentary end on a downer, even though the internet and a little thing called Napster caused the Tower to crumble, the Japanese stores became independent and are still huge today. Okay sports fans, that’s it, enjoy post season baseball, college football and lots of Halloween candy! We’ll see you next time on the Modern Moron and… the old man show at the oldman-dot-show. - YouTube - Netflix
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Ep. 116 Gas Prices, Immigrant Deliveries, Flavored Bourbon, Kanye West, Tucker Carlson and Sonny Barger
10/10/2022
Ep. 116 Gas Prices, Immigrant Deliveries, Flavored Bourbon, Kanye West, Tucker Carlson and Sonny Barger
Welcome to another episode of the Modern Moron dated October 10th 2022, which means we’ll be talking about events from at least two months ago. I’m going to try something new in that I’m not spending so much time on this episode. My guest is the Senator which is like Conan O’brien saying his guest is Andy Richter, but he brings up a couple of things with no real background or insight or explanation. He just saw a show for 30 seconds which is more than enough to have an opinion about, whereas I take the due diligence of watching for at least 5 minutes. We recorded on Friday and I’m publishing on Monday. Here are a few things we cover: Gas Prices - Especially in California where there are stricter environmental laws and also, summer and winter blends. The Winter blend usually isn’t available until November but apparently there will be an early harvest of the gasoline trees out here and they will start in early to mid October. California Gov. Gavin Newsom approved the switch from summer-blend gas to cheaper winter-blend gas. He wrote a letter to the California Air resources Board requesting the switch and here is a quote: “In light of the dramatic increase in gas prices that California is experiencing, we should not wait until the end of the month to start distributing or to ramp up production of our winter-blend gasoline. Also, please keep producing the special higher octane fuel I need for my batmobile. Thank you.” That is from a letter from Newsom to the California Air Resources Board. Something else to note about gas prices in California is that we have to refine our own gas due to those restrictions. There are no pipelines running from East to West at least not west of the Rocky mountains to my extensive, extensive knowledge. Governor De Santis sending immigrants to Martha’s Vinyard - yes, this story is extremely old but the topic isn’t and I don’t really have a problem with it. I still don’t care for De Santis and using unfortunate people who are looking for a better life to make a point is not okay, but I don’t see why all of the lower 48 states can’t participate in sharing the load of the influx of immigrants at our border. Boston is a sanctuary city that is two thousand miles away from the Mexican border. After a quick and uniformed check of the immigration statistics for Boston from The Immigrant Learning Center dot-org, the top ten immigrant groups are: China, The Dominican Republic, India, Haiti, Brazil, El Salvador, Vietnam, Canada, Guatemala and Cape Verde which is a group of islands in the Atlantic. The Senator mentions that he enjoys Skinny dipping in his pool - ew. For some reason he reminds us numerous times that he has a “second home” up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Remember when Pee Wee’s Playhouse used to have a secret word and when someone said it, everyone would scream? Today’s word is a phrase and it’s “second home” Flavored Bourbon. Both the type you buy and the kind you can make at home! That’s a fun home project. We talk a little about Football and why one might boycott it, and also news sources. For purposes of this show I usually site the source but if I don’t and I say I read something, it probably means I read it on the Associated Press, Reuters or the Wall Street Journal. If I say I heard something, it was probably NPR. And then… here’s a great topic for two irrelevant, pasty old white guys to talk about: Kanye West. The Senator has gotten in the habit of bringing up a topic without doing any research and by research I mean reading the whole article or following up on some basic who, what, where stuff and then he goes off half cocked and then says, “I don’t know, I thought it was interesting, and you should look that up and blah, blah, blah.” Well, I watched some of the interview between Kanye West and Tucker Carlson and I can tell you I’m not really interested in either of them or trying to understand their message. Why would I? I’m old and pasty and irrelevant. I mention a little bit about him from the Wikipedia page on him, but you guys know generally who he is and I don’t have the energy or the desire to articulate why I don’t care for him any more than I care for, say Keith Olbermann. We join the conversation with me asking the Senator how life is living alone as his wife is in Europe with her daughter and he’s generally a little wound up so I have to settle him down. Hope you find something interesting in this episode and don’t forget… the secret phrase is… “Second home” CLOSE: Regarding the funeral of Hell’s Angels leader Sonny Barger, the Senator was correct stating that the memorial service was held at a speedway in Stockton, California. Regarding Kanye West, he does have bipolar disorder and David Letterman asks him about it in the Netflix series “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction”... And his 2018 album is titled, ““I Hate Being Bipolar It’s Awesome”. 2018… THAT is cutting edge reporting for the Modern Moron. The Kanye West Album I did get was called “Called Late Registration” and has the song Gold Digger with Jamie Foxx when he played Ray Charles… remember that? Great performance. Also, as of this recording, West was suspended from Twitter and Instagram for antisemitic comments. To have bipolar disorder and be in the public eye seems beyond difficult. We are all responsible for our actions until it is deemed that we cannot be responsible for our actions. And then what? We get institutionalized? Is Kanye West a genius artist or insane or both? And how do we deal with free speech when people with behavioral and mental health disorders and conditions? In a democracy, does the majority ignore radical views until they go away naturally? One would hope and think so, but today so many people have this social megaphone and to get heard above all the noise we are reverting to more radical statements to be heard, to get attention. Why do I feel like I’m Jerry Springer at the end of an episode? That show was a perfect example of what I’m talking about. See you next time. - CIS.org (Center For Immigration Studies) - ilctr.org (Immigration Learning Center)
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Ep. 115 The Priest’s Triple A League: Getting ready for the Majors Pt. 2
09/21/2022
Ep. 115 The Priest’s Triple A League: Getting ready for the Majors Pt. 2
A lot more God talk in this one people, which you may or may not be into. A lot of Philosophical and theological perspectives on God, with a capital G. We continue our conversation with a very interesting Seminarian who has been studying not only theology but philosophy as well so he use big words, make brain thing hurtey. This recording dates back to August of 2022 and I’m just now getting to it… my friend the Seminarian was in a summer program of Chaplaincy at the hospital where I do some volunteer work, we’ve had some interesting conversations and I finally connected with him to be on this show. We start out with a simple question, that being: If God is all loving, how can there be so much hatred among us? If you are looking for an answer to that question, you’ll need to visit another podcast, but inevitably, the answer to all questions can be found in a podcast. A few glossary items referred to in this episode: The Eternal Now - It feels to me like I’m hearing more and more about this referred to as Mindfulness and mindfulness meditations, but to a Catholic Seminarian it is much more. It is his desire to be as present to God as he is present to us. This also sent me down a crazy rabbit hole that led me to a site called “faithhub.net”. Faithhub! Doesn’t that sound tasty? Like GrubHub only they deliver faith! Right to your door! There is a post titled, “God’s Eternal Now” it reads, “God, is present, here, and NOW. In each moment. It is our greatest desire to be present to God as he is present to us. It is we who are often missing from the moment and, therefore, are often out of touch with God.” Even if you take God out of the equation, and please do if you have a negative association with that word for now. Take God out of the equation, and most reasonable and thoughtful people would see the value of being in the moment and that, regardless of faith, we spend way too much time regretting or reliving the past and fretting about the future. I know I do and there really isn’t much value to it. Other than the satisfaction I get out of having a winning drop the mic argument with a fictitious person I’ve never met in a situation that will never occur. Back to the article on Faithhub… and get ready for a rabbit hole because it led me to a previous rabbit hole, that being author C.S Lewis. Remember I told you I thought he wrote Alice in Wonderland but it was actually Lewis Carroll? Well, this time it IS C.S. Lewis I am interested in. Lewis was an author of novels filled with Christian metaphor and before he wrote the Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, he wrote a novel called “The Screwtape Letters” which was dedicated to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien. “The Screwtape Letters” was published as a list of letters from a senior demon or devil, named Screwtape, to a lower level Devil, named Wormwood… sounds like JK Rowling snatched and changed a couple of names there doesn’t it? Wormwood is actually the nephew of Screwtape, and Screwtape advises Wormwood on how to treat his patient, which is an earthly being, so as to get him over to the dark side. Wormwood tells Screwtape, “Our business is to get them (meaning mortals) away from the eternal and from the present.” He also tells Wormwood that if the human “concerns himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once.” - Your affectionate uncle, SCREWTAPE.“ This all gets back to the Eternal Now our Seminarian tells us about in this episode. Next glossary term... Boethius - He was a Roman Senator and Christian Scholar in the Early Middle Ages, when Rome was embracing Christianity and wrote and translated a bunch of texts. There’s your moron definition. next…. We talk about How to pray for someone and give them their money’s worth. We learn the origin of the term scapegoat! You guys probably know already but I haven’t a clue. He also tells us who THE all time scapegoat is. Here’s a hint… the GOAT is not Tom Brady. Also, a note: There is a graphic description of death and dying in this episode that you may not feel comfortable hearing, specifically involving a patient dying from cancer. With that same patient there is a discussion about the power of forgiveness, which leads me to bring up a professor I have mentioned before on the is podcast, Dr. Fred Luskin from Stanford University. He has done extensive research on the training and measurement of forgiveness therapy. His research demonstrates that learning forgiveness leads to increased physical vitality, hope, enhanced optimism and conflict resolution skills. It also shows that forgiveness lessens the physical and emotional toll of stress, and decreases hurt, anger, depression and blood pressure. There is a link at the bottom of the description to a short talk by Dr. Luskin. We pick up our conversation right where we left off last time, in fact there’s a slight overlap as our guest is talking about the literal versus figurative when trying to interpret the Bible. It’s my conversation with a seminarian and his chaplaincy work in a hospital and thank you for listening to The Modern Moron… CLOSE - I hope you enjoyed that conversation with my friend from the seminary and I will try to keep in touch with him and hopefully have him back. Since I have a couple of minutes I’d like to tell you about a recent visit I made to a patient. I was on the floor walk along and came to the door that was closed and had a sign posted that before anyone entered they should check with the attending nurse. I did and found out that it would be okay and that he seemed to be in a good mood that day, as he had been doing Elmo impressions earlier. Not knowing exactly what that meant, I walk in and find a young man, probably in his 20’s to early 30’s, long hair with a gauze mesh over his entire left leg due to a burn, and not much clothing other than that. His blanket was covering his kibbles and bits, and he had an incarceration geo-tracker on his left ankle. Not much of a traditional conversation. Even though I’m a moron, I’m feeling like not only am I observing someone who could possibly be a meth addict to the point of permanent damage, I also have the very unprofessional feeling that I’m observing someone who could be schizophrenic. Also, he looked to be fairly healthy physically and lacked the gaunt look with accompanying sores and missing teeth. He seemed to have all his teeth. Yay! They certainly were not dentures… and if they were, he got ripped off. So which is it? Meth of schizophrenia? I looked it up and gosh darn if there isn’t some overlap between methamphetamine-Induced Psychosis and Schizophrenia. How about that. There is a link to a study of just that at the bottom of the description if you’re interested. It can be difficult, with out the proper educational background, to make the distinction between someone who is suffering from addiction to Chrystal Meth and someone who is schizophrenic. I was speaking with a new friend who is in one of my exclusive social clubs that has recovered from addiction to meth and heroin, and he told me based on his experience and not medical data or trials or anything professional, that someone on meth will hallucinate, see and interact with hallucinations, partially because the stimulant effect has kept them up for 4, 5 or even 6 days and they are literally trying to sleep while awake and it results in these hallucinations. Again, that is the experience of one person, not a science based or clinically based conclusion. He also said that in his experience, the withdrawal from heroine was more physical with an actual craving for the drug, while the withdrawal from meth was additionally psychological. Again, his experience. Also, I noticed he had rather long fingernails, which I was slightly concerned that if he got squirrely on me, I would not care to get scratched by this… um… person. He did seem to respect that I was a Chaplain, he did have a bible with him and at one point asked me what was my favorite quote from the Bible. I am not that familiar with the bible and you wanna know what this moron’s answer was? I said, “you know, the gospel of Matthew is the first thing that comes to mind.” I mean, why limit myself to a favorite verse? I’ll take the whole book, thank you. This patient was pretty cagey. In fact that’s a pretty good word to describe him. Every couple seconds his eyes would shift as could his mood. So I tried to wrap up my talk with him in some prayer. He asked me to pray for him and just like our seminarian recommended, I asked him, “what would you like me to pray for?” His response was, “I would like you to pray that I will be back with my wives and that I never test positive for Chrystal Meth again.” Not my wife, my wives and not to be released from the grips of Meth and it’s addiction, just don’t let me get caught. And you know what? That’s exactly what I prayed for… “Heavenly Father, please let Bob heal from his injuries so he can be reunited with his wives, and may he never test positive for Chrystal meth again. And also God, please release him from the grips of it’s addiction.” I threw that last part in there so I would have a clean conscious. He told me that prayer was very powerful, I bid him goodbye and as I left the room he continued a conversation with his imaginary friends. Out of curiosity, if you have ever prayed for either of those things, to be reunited with your wives or to never test positive for meth again, would you please… PLEASE contact the Modern Moron because we would LOVE to hear your story… provided you can string two sentences together. You might think you yourself, “how can you be a chaplain and not know the bible?” My answer is that so far, the patients I have sat with mostly want some one to just listen. Listen to them, listen to their story, listen to their suffering and just be present. Not to come up with my own fish story or my tall tale that one up’s your story. And, so far that has been acceptable… but I do have a lot to learn. Thank you for listening to these last two episodes that have been a bit different than what we’ve had previously. Hit like, and subscribe and write a glowing review and all the things people don’t want to do when they listen to a podcast. If fact, you know what? Skip it, I wouldn’t do it either. We’ll see you next time… - National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) - YouTube - Faithhub.net
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Ep. 114 Father-to-be as in Priest, Nietzsche, Jedi Knights and Egoism
09/10/2022
Ep. 114 Father-to-be as in Priest, Nietzsche, Jedi Knights and Egoism
Okay, the Moron doesn’t seem so moronic in this episode… well, I do, but we really have some divine inspirations in this episode. My guest is a real live Seminarian in the Catholic Church. Yes, THE Catholic church, not one of the knock offs. He’s been pursuing his coronation… that’s not right… ordination! That’s what I was looking for… This conversation is all over the place, and I have to take responsibility for that. If I get him back I really need to try and keep my questions more focused. And because we are so all over the place, this guy drops some people and terms this Moron had to look up, especially if you’re not Catholic or are a heathen moron like myself. Among them: Exegesis - not exit, Jesus - this is e-x-e-g-e-s-i-s and it’s a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. Traditionally, for work with religious texts, especially the Bible St. Ignatius of Loyola - who was a Spanish Catholic Priest and theologian that was one of the founders of the Society of Jesus otherwise known as… the Jesuits. We might have to do a separate episode on those guys. A St. Paul Moment - which is explained in the episode, but it’s basically an epiphany or a “moment of awakening”... I don’t like to gossip but apparently he heard the voice of Jesus and was immediately blinded for three days until a guy named a-nan-ias restored his sight and he was baptized. The 14 Discernments of Spirits - no it’s not a way to make bourbon, it is the path to living a holy life. is the interpretation of what St. Ignatius of Loyola called the “motions of the soul.” These interior movements consist of thoughts, imaginings, emotions, inclinations, desires, feelings, repulsions, and attractions, what the Buddha might call cravings and aversions. Spiritual discernment of spirits involves becoming sensitive to these movements, reflecting on them, and understanding where they come from and where they lead us. Yes, I plagiarized this from a site called IgnatianSpirituality.com and there is a link at the bottom of the episode description. Towards the beginning of our conversation there is the mention of a code blue. A code blue at a hospital Usually means cardiac arrest (when the heart stops) or respiratory arrest (when breathing stops). You may say, what the hell is a chaplain doing anywhere near a patient experiencing cardiac arrest? Usually they are on the sidelines, staying out of the way. However if family members are present, we will get with them and suggest they stay out of the way and perhaps go to a more quiet area while the team does there work. It can be very traumatizing to watch a loved one receive treatment for cardiac arrest and while we can’t make a family member leave, it’s usually best to just get out of the way and let them do what they were trained to do. Our guest entered the seminary straight out of high school and mentions leaving the Central Valley, that would be the Central Valley of California which is comprised of a LOT of farmland and ranching. You hear about how much of our country’s Fruits and veggies are grown here under normal circumstances so for all of the approximately 18,000 square miles of that valley, a lot of that are the same folks you’d meet in the Midwest. It looks like the Midwest and it has a lot of the same values as the Midwest despite the libby-McLibberson label that California has. So, that’s what he’s referring to when he mentions the Central Valley. Towards the end of our conversation we end up talking about Star Wars as my friend the Father-to-be is a science fiction fan and loves Star Wars. I ask about the possible parallels between the Jedi Knights and the path of a priest which he disagrees with completely and being that he has also studied Philosophy as part of a Priest’s curriculum, I had to get out the dictionary again as he compares priests to stoicism. Stoicism is from the Greeks and was the belief that we don’t react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us. They would advise that we should not worry about things beyond our control as everything in life can be divided into two categories – things that are up to us and things that are not. Then…THEN he brings up philosopher Nietzsche. Look, I can barely pronounce his name let alone discuss his philosophy. So Nietzsche is this fatalist philosopher that thinks in the end nothing matters and everything is pointless, like they teach on Sesame Street! So Nietzsche had this concept called The Will To Power, that our Seminarian brings up which is according to Wikipedia like self-determination, the concept of actualizing one's will onto one's self or one's surroundings, and coincides heavily with egoism. Egoism! There’s something I get get behind. We begin our conversation as I ask him how his last overnight shift went at the hospital. So, I hope you find this conversation interesting and do not try to look up words while you’re driving. Let me handle stuff like that. CLOSE - Wow… that did not sound like your typical conversation between two morons, right? A lot of very interesting stuff there, and sometimes I have to just lean hard on the old “God is Love” bumper sticker. Either I am in acceptance of that ideology, tweaked allover the place to make it fit for me, I’m not and if you’re not, then best of luck to you and may your blood pressure remain forever low. But scientifically speaking, I think you might find that having a faith in something, you could use the word God for the sake of convenience, but not the baggage that you might believe that word comes with… having that sense of faith and finding comfort in it, will actually lower your blood pressure and can relieve stress. Not necessarily clinically proven, but there are studies that show benefits. There are two articles at the bottom of the description on this point from North Dakota State University and from Psychology Today Magazine. There is a benefit. Just try not to get hung up on nomenclature. Don’t like the word God, don’t use it. Don’t like meditation? Try silent prayer. Many thanks and all the best to my guest, more to come and hopefully we will speak with him again! Take care, stay cool if you’re where its hot, stay dry if you’re where it’s flooding, may the road rise to meet you rather than the ocean and thank you for listening to the Modern Moron.
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Ep. 113 Britney Griner; Psychiatric Psychedelics; to what Subculture do you subscribe?
08/22/2022
Ep. 113 Britney Griner; Psychiatric Psychedelics; to what Subculture do you subscribe?
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Modern Moron… I did say I have an episode coming with a seminarian in the Catholic church, and I do. This episode is the last half of my previous conversation with the Senator when I dropped out of it because I felt the need to address some science issues that we seem to be ignoring right now that place the economy as more important that the planet we live on and the resources that are becoming more rapidly scarce, namely water and oxygen. This conversation contains the beautiful faux paux from the Senator when he cannot remember the name of Brittney Griner, the WNBA player who is currently sentenced to 9 years in a Russian prison for possession of vaporizer cartridges containing less than a gram of hash oil. She had been prescribed medicinal cannabis in Arizona, and it is illegal in Russia. The Senator’s take is that if you’re going to travel, know the rules. Also, he’s never heard of Brittney Griner and who cares about her and we shouldn’t be trading a no name for an apparently notorious arms dealer. That’s a valid point I think. But to say Brittney Griner is a no name just because I’ve never heard of her doesn’t make her a no name. Between Brittney Griner and me, I think I qualify as the no name. But i think it does speak to the subculture we live in, and there are many. What is your subculture? Do you even think about it? Or do we think of it as a mainstream culture? My subculture is that I’m an aging white male… hell that’s not a subculture! That’s as mainstream culture as you can get! But I also live in a subculture of music as I was in the music entertainment business as a “DJ” for a stretch of time, so names that are familiar to me may not be familiar to you unless we share that subculture. And if you’re in it, you don’t think of it as a subculture. If I say I’m a big fan of John Paul Jones, you may think I’m a history buff. But I’m referring to the legendary bassist… and keyboardist… of Led Zeppelin. And I consider him, Jack Bruce, Getty Lee to have transcended the traditional roles of their instruments. What instrument? A scalpel? Are they famous surgeons? Let’s throw in Paul McCartney. Okay, there’s a point of reference we can all sink our teeth into. So Brittney Griner is not a household name, depending on the subcultures we subscribe to. And I would say if you are in the huge College Sports Industry, even on an administrative level, you know who Britney Griner is. I don’t, but she is legendary in her profession. Unfortunately, her profession doesn’t put as many asses in the seats as it would if she were male, where she would command a higher… salary. Back to money again. I could go on and on about her accomplishments on the court. She’s a phenomenal women’s basketball player. But what I think makes her such a high value trade for the Russians is that she checks a lot of boxes that are very sensitive in American culture today and there are a lot of boxes these days. Among those boxes: she’s a woman, she’s a woman of color and she is among the LGBTQ community. Those are all high profile, high sensitivity issues… if you’re a democrat or a liberal. But if you’re a tried and true conservative… do you honestly care about any of those? I mean behind closed doors. Of course publicly you’d give lip services to them but c’mon, just between you and me… do you give a rat’s ass about any of that stuff? Final note on Britney Griner… she does have someone in her corner that is going over to Russia to advocate for her release and he’s no stranger to snuggling up to communist leaders. That’s right folks, NBA Hall of Famer, reality TV star, and body piercing world champion Dennis Rodman has received permission to travel to Russia to help seek Griner’s release. "I got permission to go to Russia to help that girl," said Rodman. I don’t understand the “permission” part of it as he doesn’t need special permission from the U.S. to enter Russia — just a visa from Moscow. You may remember Rodman’s trips to North Korea to meet with leader, dictator and local sycophant, Kim Jung Un just to hang out, maybe shoot some hoops. And that’s as cutting edge topical as this podcast gets. We also talk about mushrooms! And not the kind you saute and put on a steak. I’m talking about yummy for your brain psychedelic mushrooms and their legitimate use in clinical trial programs to treat every kind of PTSD, depression, anxiety, cancer, addiction… the list goes on as to the medicinal benefits of psilocybin, the active molecule in these mushrooms. And in these trials they are measuring the presence of conditions not normally measured or considered with other types of medicine. There was, and perhaps still is, a clinical study at Johns Hopkins University Hospital using psilocybin where they have a questionnaire that can determine if a patient had what is termed a “mystical experience”. Questions like the following: During your experience did you feel: An experience of amazement Feelings of tenderness and gentleness Feelings of peace and tranquility Experience of ecstasy Freedom from the feelings of personal self A sense of unity or one-ness of all things Pure being and pure awareness The fusion of your personal self with a larger whole A feeling that you experienced something profoundly sacred From a mystical sense did you experience: Before you call me a hippy tree hugging liberal… I want to suggest a fascinating limited series on Netflix which is based on a book called “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence” by author and host of the show Michael Pollan. I want to play you a short excerpt from the 2nd episode on psilocybin, where Pollan asks a patient, who I bring up later in this episodes, some of the questions on a mystical experience I mentioned . The patient is right in our demographic and she is dealing with cancer. She is a devout catholic and you will hear her mention Mary in this clip. She is referring to the virgin Mary: Earlier in her life, this woman experienced a miscarriage which affected her deeply. She worked through it and hadn’t thought about it for decades. And in her psilocybin experience, she said she had an encounter with Mary who told her not to worry because she- the Virgin Mary- had that child the whole time. Pretty profound… if that testimonial doesn’t make you curious enough to watch the episode regardless of your faith practice, I don’t know what will… other than my enlightened endorsement of course. You obviously shouldn’t take my word for it on this and the host, Michael Pollan, doesn’t want you to take his word for it either. Professor Robin Carhart-Harris is a neuro-psycho-pharmacologist… let’s hear the Senator pronounce that. And he looks at and measures the effects of psychedelics on the brain and can they be useful… There is also reference to The default mode network of the brain, which I had to look up. This part of the brain is potentially the neurological basis for the self, meaning: Autobiographical information or Memories of events and facts about your self Self-reference: Referring to traits and descriptions of yourself Emotion of one's self: Reflecting about your own emotional state The default mode network is also involved in how you Think about others or: Thinking about the thoughts you have of others and what they might or might not know Understanding the emotions of other people and empathizing with their feelings Moral reasoning: Determining a just and an unjust result of an action Social evaluations: Good-bad attitude judgments about social concepts Obviously this is a gaping rabbit hole and I hope you find it interesting and will watch “How to Change Your Mind” on Netflix. We pick up our conversation with the Britney Griner conversation and The Senator’s mis-recollection of her name. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Modern Moron! CLOSE - Okay, there will be a new segment on this show for a while… we’ll call it Moron Chaplaincy. “But for the grace of God, go I”, the phrase can be traced back to a mid-sixteenth-century statement by John Bradford, "There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford", in reference to a group of prisoners being led to execution. Bradford was an English Reformer in the 1500’s and you can look him up if you want beyond that. I guess I failed to mention in the opening that we had a little reference to Caitlin Jenner, when we were talking about Britney Griner. It’s difficult to keep track of all the stupid things we say. And how about Wayne Gretzky as a hockey reference? He hasn’t played hockey since 1999. Both a tribute to Gretzky’s greatness and to our stupidity. Thank you to the Senator for being one of the pillars of the Moron Empire, best of luck to Dennis Rodman in Russia, and good luck to all of us in our search for enlightenment. See you next time. - Netflix - Johns Hopkins Hospital
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Ep. 112 Politics just makes me upset but that never stops me; The End of An Informed Democracy
08/18/2022
Ep. 112 Politics just makes me upset but that never stops me; The End of An Informed Democracy
Half cocked, half informed, full moron. Seriously, the things we talk about and the half-cocked opinions we spout are really so misinformed that I would like to ask you a favor. My favor is that you half listen but don’t really pay attention. Is that possible? Listen for one of us to mispronounce something or to say something completely off base but I don’t want you to really pay attention. If you could… picture us both sitting on a front porch in a couple of rocking chairs. That’s the best setting for this conversation. Can you do that? This is also not the cheeriest episode. We try to stay away from politics and that lasts for about… 10 seconds? I’ve cut some stuff from this episode but left in other stuff for entertainment purposes. For example: We talk about the huge bill that Senator Joe Manchin helped pass but the Senator mispronounces his name. I’m not going to tell you what our Senator thinks his name is but I know it’s wrong and then I get it wrong. So much moron in this episode folks. Next up, Nancy Pelosi goes to Taiwan, which the Senator is in favor of and I am not. However the Senator’s take is that China should not have any say in where any of our citizens travel and Taiwan does not belong to China. That part I agree with. I just don’t understand the trip specifically for her as the Speaker of the House. Was she sent over there on a diplomatic mission? Or is she just over there on a personal publicity trip. If it’s the latter, I am against it. This does not seem like the job of the Speaker of the House. Maybe, however… “unofficially” she was sent there as a representative of the US to thumb our noses at China. And if that is the reason, okay… I guess. This is just a pissing contest. While Pelosi was there the Chinese military conducted “live ammunition” drills and invading airspace, blah, blah, blah look how big my wiener is exercises close to Taiwan. However there is a tiny upside to this… the last time this high a ranking official visited Taiwan was in 1997 when then House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited. The Senator is incapable of saying Gingrich’s name… Then the conversation takes an unexpected turn and it gets rather sad. The Senator wants the President to do something about the economy and says “we have enough oil to last us another 300 years.” And I’m taken aback.. I don’t quite know what to say. I think you can hear the confusion in my voice. Has he been paying attention to what’s been happening to this planet? Am I just another tree hugger? The Senator thinks we should be drilling for more oil to fix the economy. Seriously. And he’s not alone… We’ve got weather systems creating temperatures that are breaking records set by previous years, and I don’t mean decades ago or centuries ago, I mean last year. Personally, I don’t think electric cars are a long term solution either. Does anyone know what the byproduct of mining for Lithium is? Me either, but if you sift out a bunch of some element from the earth, there’s gonna be stuff left over. What is it and how will it effect the environment long term? As in for your granddaughter. YOUR granddaughter. You know who I’m talking to. I’m talking to you, that old fart that loves their granddaughter more than anything. What are we leaving her? He thinks that SOME…mmm “some” of the climate change we are seeing around the world is from the way we’ve treated the planet in the use of fossil fuels but we should still be drilling to get the economy back on track. That, to him and many others, is more important than what is happening to this planet, because we really don’t know how much is caused by us… we don’t know! I thought we have decided as a nation to make a switch to renewable energy and to phase out fossil fuel. Mega droughts, Mega Heat waves, Mega floods…the horse has left the barn on our environment and we’re still chasing our tails trying to improve the economy and the mighty dollar. The laws of nature and the laws of physics don’t care about what laws congress passes or vetos. You may continue to say it’s overreacting, so I’m going to let a couple of those guys that wear the white coats talk later, what are they called? Scientists, I think is the name. We’ll hear from one dummy named Carl Sagan, remember him? I have something for you from him back in 1980. And another, more recent dummy you may have heard of named Neil deGrass Tyson about that subject instead of us two morons. So, why do I leave some of this Moron mayhem in? Three reasons: 1) The Senator was recently in France when there was a heatwave going on and it was when the UK had declared a heat warning. For the first time. Ever. Ever, ever. Maybe the Norse God Odin declared one once when it got over 25 degrees once. I texted the Senator an article about it asking if he still thought global warming was a hoax. You will find out his response. 2) He then says he’s depressed and wants to talk about sports after he brought up politics in the first place. 3) when I bring up France, he wants give a blow by blow account of his trip to a wedding in fancy France and how he talked to some dignitary and I’m not having any of it because I’m pretty sure you don’t care. I know I don’t care and I put the kybosh on that and shut him down. I guess I’m hoping you will find that entertaining. You can just hear it in his voice that he’s all bent out of shape because I’m not the least bit interested in his intellectual conversation about politics with some French dignitary. After I interrupt the show, the Senator has one final topic he’d like to bring up that he says is a sports topic more than a political topic and that is Britney Griner who has been sentenced to 10 years in a Russian Prison for possession of a cannabis product, I think it was hash but it doesn’t matter at this point. Let’s just say it’s not a good idea to take Marijuana or any drug to a communist country and saying, “I didn’t know it was there” is not the best defense. Also, this is not a sports story. It is definitely a political story. Why do I leave it in? Because the Senator… and maybe he’s doing this on purpose and I’m a naive Moron, but he says her name is… you know what, I’m going to let you find out. I hope you think it’s worth it and thank you for listening to the Modern Moron… Okay, enough from us Morons about the planet. Here is Carl Sagan, and I’m assuming you know and remember if but if not, he was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. He spent the majority of his career at Cornell University where he was the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He also argued the hypothesis, that has since been accepted, that the high surface temperatures of Venus can be attributed to, and calculated using, the greenhouse effect. Here he is from the original series Cosmos on PBS in 1980, over 40 years ago… Now, here is Neil deGras Tyson. If you’ve not heard of him I’m very surprised, but he is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. He studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. His resume goes on and on with published papers and books, from 2006 to 2011 he was the host of the television series NOVA. In 2014 he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which he called a “continuation” of astronomer Carl Sagan’s popular series Cosmos from 1980. Here he is talking about Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere. If there wasn’t any, the earth would freeze, but if there is too much, it warms the planet…the background music from the program may make it a little difficult to hear… Next he talks about the amount of carbon thrust into our atmosphere from volcanoes and compares that to the carbon from fossil fuels… Not even 2% of the carbon spewed into the atmosphere from volcanoes is contributing to the 30 billion tons civilization cranks out every year for decades. And we wonder why this problem is accelerating? Finally here is Mr. Tyson in an interview with Larry King from 2015 on politics and science… “The end of an informed democracy.” The all mighty dollar-slash-strong-economy is more important than the air we breath. I can’t help thinking about the 10 Commandments movie when Moses comes back down from the mountain and what does he see? He’s like, “what the hell’s going on down here?” It’s just a bunch of goddamn dopamine addicts! Worshiping false gods in the form of cars and McMansions and private jets and swipe right on your electronic devices that need to be replaced every black Friday. Only instead of a golden calf, it’s a bunch of rectangular pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them. Speaking of that golden calf, who loves gold more than anyone and wants you to know it? And here’s another irony for you: most of those right wing, gun toting whiteys who are afraid of losing our privileged status in this country are also bible thumpers. Apparently we aren’t reading the bible we’re thumping. You really should watch this old movie next Passover-slash-Easter. This was a film of our generation and during the orgie scene there is a tug of war with two guys who each have a woman’s arm and they’re pulling her in different directions so they can rape her. And what has she been directed to do by Cecil B. Demille? She’s laughing!... “Oh, you two are incorrigible!” This was a time when you were told, “When they say no? They really mean yes.” And that’s how this scene is played… there’s another big brute who literally has a woman under each arm and he’s carrying them both off and they’re laughing and just having a ball. Rape is fun! Or it sure seemed so back the good old Biblical times of Moses 6,000 short years ago. And one of the great period actors of the time, Edgar G. Robinson comes in to challenge Moses… yeah see, you wrote them commandment yourself see, right behind the water cooler see? I saw ya do it see? Wow, what a rabbit hole! What the hell was I talking about?... Science! Scientists, that’s right! How did I got into the Bible when I’m supposed to be talking a bout Science and the Scientific book of Revelations we are experiencing! (Yay) CLOSE - Wow… I had every intention of getting back to my conversation with the Senator but me and those rabbit holes I go down. I think I mentioned in the opening that we talked about the Britney Griner situation and how the United States is trading a murderous arms dealer for a basketball player who “forgot” that she had pot in her suitcase. There’s obviously more to it than that, but when the senator brings it up he can’t remember her name and refers to Britney Griner as Gloria Gaynor… the singer. Maybe I’ll go back and find that for ya. Also, I don’t want to leave you with total gloom, doom and despair. This is our old friend Al Gore, who the Senator said was right when he was in France, on our ability to change… Let’s hope he’s right. Another story about conserving water is in South Africa. I think I’ve mentioned it but the drought there in 2018 was so serious they were looking at a “day zero”- the moment when some four million inhabitants would be left without water. It’s almost four years since it edged dangerously towards that day. "We underestimate the ability of citizens to adapt to a crisis," said Dr Kevin Winter, an environmental expert at the University of Cape Town. He points out that the city's water consumption nearly halved in the space of just three weeks in early 2018, from roughly 780 megalitres per day to under 550, before sinking even lower. An extraordinary display of public unity. That’s something we don’t see too often or at least we don’t see it broadcast, published or tweeted, but we Americans are going to need some extraordinary displays of public unity. I wonder what it’s going to take? I also wonder if I could make another podcast episode that is more preachy and self righteous as this one. I think I may have out done myself. Or out Moron’d myself. Here’s something I rarely do, I’m going to promote my upcoming episode. If you thought this episode was a downer, you should find the next episode uplifting. In stead of science we’re going with divine intervention as my guest is a real live seminarian from the Catholic Church! Yeah, that one! The original OG. Old Gangsta or Old God? We have a pretty spirited conversation, pun intended, and if nothing else I think you’ll love his enthusiasm, he’s not jaded yet by papal politics. I think I ask him if he plans to run for Pope, but I don’t remember now. I think you’ll find it interesting and I hope you will tune in or download the next episode with a Father to be… not that kind. Thank you for listening to The MM… - Forbes.com
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Ep. 111 Walruses Politicians Integrity Eggmen and gun insurance
07/18/2022
Ep. 111 Walruses Politicians Integrity Eggmen and gun insurance
Welcome to another episode of TMM…where you can also find us at “The Old Man-dot-show”... try it! Also, happy post 4th of July. I have WAY too many tabs open in my browser most of the time. It’s as cluttered and messy as the rest of my house. I leave these tabs open because I think they contain something I want ot share with you, which is another way of saying something I want to complain, rant or brag about. I have a few items I’d like to complain about before hopefully getting to something hopeful. Item #1: Forth of July Message from California’s Governor Gavin Newsome 4th of July message: In it he starts off by saying let’s talk… translation: let me talk… about what’s going on in America… translation: let me bag on Florida Governor Ron…ald McDonald Desantis. Governor Newsome, don’t start off saying you want to talk about America and then attack another Governor, the images contained Desantis and the graphics were about Desantis. It’s this kind of rhetoric that actually contributes to the divisiveness in our country and it is not taking the high road. Mean what you say and say what you mean. In other words, if you tell your citizens to wear masks, YOU wear a mask. Even in Napa Valley. Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending Wrong Desantis. I am NOT a fan of that egomaniac. However… of the numerous laws Desantis has signed, the “Parental Rights in Education law, which prohibits discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade classrooms.” This is going to sound like I’m a crazy conservative, but is that all that bad? Kindergarten through 3rd grade. Four and five year olds to what… eight years old? There shouldn’t be ANY sexual education talk of ANY kind in those grades, should there? What a great bargaining chip to use to look for compromise. And if there’s a kid having sexual identity issues in those grades, can’t we deal with it on a case by case basis with some compassion? Do we need a law for that. My recollection of grade school was a one night presentation with fathers and sons in attendance in the auditorium. That was it. My biggest takeaway from that was on the ride home I was able to get away with saying the F-word in front of my dad. And I said it with a little pause before adding the “i-n-g” so it seemed like I didn’t even now how to pronounce it. And my dad said, “yes, yes. This is fucking.” Man, I felt so victorious that night. I’d pulled a major coupe. Back to Gavin Gruesome… at the end of his message talking about America… if America was Flrorida, he invites Floridians to join us here in California. Hey Gavin, we’ve got 39 million people in this state plus a housing crisis. And you want more people to come to California? Seriously? We’re driving wealthy residents out of the state and you want to bring disenfranchised poor Floridians to California? You think the rich ones that can afford housing on the beach in Miami are going to come? No. We’ll have even more homeless….oops, unhoused people than we already have. Why? So you can win your reelection campaign? That’s who paid for the message by the way. Silicon valley isn’t the only place where businesses are leaving California. I’ll get a Netflix, Stranger Things plug in here and I’m sure that if you’ve been watching Stranger Things you don’t watch the credits. You think that show was shot in Hollywood? Even the scenes that were supposed to take place in Los Angeles were filmed in and around Albuquerque New Mexico where a LOT of productions take place as well as Wilmington, North Carolina and Vancouver, British Columbia for that matter. And it’s rarely for the landscapes. I’m sure you know that Southern California can provide damn near any landscape you want, except maybe a rainforest. Heck that’s what a soundstage is for. So, there’s a whole other industry besides high tech that has left California. Okay, see how my rants just swirl around and don't’ really go anywhere? (toilet) I guess if I had a point, it’s that California’s Governor shouldn’t be inviting a population to come to California when we can’t house the ones we have already. And if it was a political stunt for his reelection campaign and he’s calling out Florida’s Goofy Governor “Wrong” DeSantis, then I’d have to go with “Shame on You Gavin Gruesome”. Chucking barbs at your opponent or the other party is just perpetuating the horrible divisiveness we’re already bogged down in. Find another way to craft your message. What was I talking about? See? Okay, horrible politicians on the left and right. All that for only item #1! Item #2: C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll are not the same person. I obviously have way too much computer time. I try to keep my daughter from it but at the same time I can spend hours sitting in front of my computer… accomplishing, what? Am I fooling myself into thinking I’m educating myself? To what end? So I can take some information that’s little more than trivia, and regurgitate it in a conversation (or a podcast) to make people think I’m educated and worldly? Please. So here’s how I went from C.S. Lewis to Lewis Carrol to the Beatles to The Animals to… what? It really led to nothing. I was initially trying to find the origin of the saying, “Don’t judge a person before walking a mile in their shoes.” I still don’t think I have it but it led me to some very random places. The oldest origin I found was from a Native American prayer that goes: “Great Spirit — Grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.” While that rabbit hole didn’t lead me to a satisfying end it somehow got me on to C.S. Lewis and the Christian metaphors he used in his books, specifically “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe”. But instead of C.S. Lewis, I thought it was Lewis Carrol who wrote Alice in Wonderland, no… Through the Looking Glass. And in that book, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, who would be perfect guests for this show, recite the poem, “The Walrus and The Carpenter” to Alice… The poem tells of the Walrus and the Carpenter luring young oysters out of their beds and on to the shore where they are all eaten by the Walrus and the Carpenter, even when one of the older oysters warns them. In the Disney movie the Walrus eats all of the oysters and the Carpenter doesn’t get any. In the book it appears both eat some of the oysters but it appears the Walrus gets most of them. Their untimely end comes when the Walrus says: "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings." "But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, "Before we have our chat; For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!" "No hurry!" said the Carpenter. They thanked him much for that. Even there at the end of that stanza the Carpenter cuts them some slack. Many have analyzed Carrol’s work to look for hidden meaning an metaphor including the Walrus and the Carpenter represents Communism vs. Capitalism or that one represents Christianity and Western religion while the other represents Buddhism and Eastern Religion OR… that Lewis Carrol did drugs when he wrote Alice in Wonderland. The general consensus on that is NO, he was simply writing for children to entertain them and their imaginations. If fact, one of the illustrators for a later edition of the book said that the original illustrator had the choice of a butterfly, a carpenter or a baronet (the holder of a rank of honor below a baron and above a knight, oh my god the rabbit holes people, I’m gonna break an ankle). Because, you see, butterfly, carpenter and baronet all have the same number of syllables and would keep the cadence of the poem. But what I did find interesting is that The Walrus from the poem is what John Lennon refers to in the Beatles, “I am The Walrus” from their Magical Mystery Tour Album, and if I play one second of that song this whole episode will get deleted from most platforms it’s published. Oops! Her is an excerpt from the 1980 Playboy magazine interview with John Lennon: LENNON: "The first line was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend… PLAYBOY: "What about the walrus itself?" LENNON: "It's from 'The Walrus and the Carpenter.' 'Alice in Wonderland.' To me, it was a beautiful poem. It never dawned on me that Lewis Carroll was commenting on the capitalist and social system. I never went into that bit about what he really meant, like people are doing with the Beatles' work. Later, I went back and looked at it and realized that the walrus was the bad guy in the story and the carpenter was the good guy. I thought, Oh, shit, I picked the wrong guy. I should have said, 'I am the carpenter.' But that wouldn't have been the same, would it? (singing) 'I am the carpenter....'" So this got me to thinking if John was the Walrus from a Lewis Carroll peom, then who is the eggman? It turns out the Eggman is Eric Burdon. Please don’t say who is Eric Burdon. Did you just say who is Eric Burdon? Shame on you. How about Eric Burdon and The Animals, does that sound more familiar? How about the band WAR? That Eric Burdon, who Rolling Stone named #57 on their list of top 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. Why is Eric Burdon the eggman? Apparently, Mr. Burdon had this sexual fetish that involved cracking a raw egg and I won’t get into anymore details on that. However, Eric relayed the story to John Lennon and Lennon nicknamed Eric “Eggman” as in, “go get it Eggman.” How’s that for a rabbit hole? The rabbit hole continued by the way as I found an interview of John Lennon speaking of the Beatles songs he liked personally… It also led me to this bit from Lennon not long before his assassination on being 40, on not being the person his fans wanted him to be, on what it’s like being in your 20’s and having people hang on your every word Basically the message is that we all need the time to grow out of our misconceptions about life. Many teens and twenty-somethings are full of energy and piss and vinegar and it lacks focus and direction because they haven’t figured it out yet. It comes with a lot of frustration and even anger. And the last thing this age group needs, particularly males… particularly white males… are guns… particularly assault rifles. I had to do it, didn’t I? I had to ruin a nice nostalgic romp by bringing in politics. Here it is: you shouldn’t be allowed to purchase a gun, particularly an assault style weapon until you are 25 and here’s why: leave it to experts in assessing risk and see what they do. The insurance industry. They don’t let anyone rent a car until they’re 25 years old. Why? Because when it comes to a vehicle that travels at high speeds and can kill someone, they are relatively irresponsible, they make bad decisions and they are a bad risk when it comes to renting a car. Bad risk, bad business decision, so they don’t do it. No one complains about that. It’s a fact of life and it’s common sense. So do the same with guns. And you might say: “Oh but I can get drafted and then they GIVE me a gun! Very, very different situation. 1) they train you very specifically and thoroughly on the use of said weapon, 2) You are not allowed to carry it around wherever you go unless, #3) You are going into combat where there will be many others with the same weapons. It’s called our military or militia which we did not have… at all, when the 2nd amendment was written, including all that stuff I said in another episode about how many shots could be fired per minute when the 2nd amendment was written. It’s 3 shots per minute by the way, maybe 4 if you’re an expert at reloading a musket. Not 40 or 60 or 100 or whatever number you come up with. Okay, I apologize for ruining a nice story about a poem with politics. Actually, the first story was about politics too only I was mainly bagging on the other party. I try to be an equal opportunity offender. Well, I might as well make it three for three… ITEM #3: the Saturday Night Massacre - What the heck was that? I’m sure you guys know because you’re not morons but I had never heard of it and it was brought up as a parallel to the January 6th shenanigans of our former idiot in chief Donald Dump. On October 20th 1973 Nixon ORDERED his Attorney General AND his Deputy AG to fire the guy investigating the Watergate break-in. Not only did they not fire him, they both resigned in protest which left the role of attorney general to the Solicitor General. This poor bastard went along with Nixon’s request and fired the special prosecutor Cox. Less than a half hour later, the White House sent FBI agents to shut down the offices of the Special Prosecutor, AND the Attorney General AND Deputy Attorney General. Can you believe that shit? Well, the 1970’s version of the internet blew up, that being Western Union telegraph. Have any of you ever sent a telegram? Me neither. Over 50,000 telegrams came in to Washington DC from citizens. I wonder what the equivalent number of tweets would be? Members of Congress, presumably democrats, called for Nixon’s impeachment. So… Nixon had to appoint another prosecutor for the Watergate scandal named Leon Jaworski, remember that name? No, not the Eagles quarterback, that’s Ron Jaworski. Well, Jaworski pressed for the release of those tricky Dick tape recordings… the one’s that mysteriously had like 17 minutes missing? And he got them released and the following August tricky Dick took a final trip… home… Touching. Well, it appears our favorite reality show president, how’s that for irony, literally held an episode of the apprentice in the oval office and considered pulling the same stunt. He had his AG and his Deputy AG along with the nutty environmental attorney Jeffrey Clark. Clark is the one that was told to go back to his office and they would call him when there’s an oil spill. Trump was told he would face massive resignations and he knew this Clark guy would not make it happen for Donny boy. But it’s an interesting parallel between the teflon Don and tricky Dick. ITEM #4: NPR wants you to make them your only news source. I heard this just a few minutes ago. No Emmie Martinez No, Ari Shapiro. And even a no to, “Oh goodness gracious It’s Scott Simon”. The days of trusting one news source is gone and if you are using only one news source, then shame on you. Go and read some news from a site that’s a little bit to the right or left of where you normally sit in your comfort zone. But no single news sources anymore unfortunately. Wow, I got through that last one pretty efficiently. CLOSE - In closing, I think one thing is very obvious… I need to find guests for this show. Otherwise It’s too much. Too much of me, too much opinion, and way too much work. At least twice as much work, probably more and it’s not as enjoyable for either of us. Also… an addendum to try and correct my moronoscity, did a quick search and it seems you can rent a car if you are under 25 these days, but you will pay a premium to do so. Drivers under the age of 25 can expect to pay an “underage fee” and depending on the location that is around $25 to $30 a day which adds up. But the rationale is the same: younger drivers are less experienced at driving (or life) and and are more likely to take risks and this holds especially for males as they are generally more likely to take risks in terms of health and the enjoyment expected from risky activities. See the University of Pennsylvania research paper at the end of the credits… sorry to blather on so long, see you next time! - Beatlesinterviews.org - History.com - jdpower.com - University of Pennsylvania Music by from
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Ep. 110 Retirement, College and A Retiring School Teacher’s Husband Brags. Also: How Many Morons Does it Take To Change a Light Bulb?
06/29/2022
Ep. 110 Retirement, College and A Retiring School Teacher’s Husband Brags. Also: How Many Morons Does it Take To Change a Light Bulb?
My guest has been on the show once before along with the senator and we refer to him as Templeton, as in form Charlotte’s Web. We’ve been besties since high school where we were both relatively scrawny, neither of us was on any sports teams but we hung out with a couple of the jocks. We took a bunch of the same college classes together and always talked about our own business partnership firm being called “Wrong and Wronger” and then fill in the blank after that… wrong and wronger accounting firm, wrong and wronger legal consultants, wrong and wronger construction company, you get the idea… whatever we did we would kinda screw it up. His idol back in high school was Woody Allen. Not the pervert Woody Allen, but the Woody Allen that brought us Annie Hall, Play It Again Sam, Manhattan, Sleeper, Bananas, Take The Money and Run. Unfortunately today we can’t separate Woody Allen from his sickness, but his work in the 60’s 70’s and 80’s alone was incredible and that… for very understandable reasons is why Woody was my friend’s idol. Here Woody in an interview from 1971… But what Templeton was always good at, and still is, he’s good at recruiting people into some kind of scheme, like in our 20’s we played a LOT of softball. He would recruit a couple of ringers and then get us into a D-league where he would say, “guaranteed sweatshirt”, like that was something to covet… a D-league softball champions sweatshirt. So he’s always been known to have some sort of scheme going, an angle or something (bite) We’ve been roommates, At parties and night clubs we were always, always the wallflowers, and I got to be best man at his wedding. His wife has been a teacher for over thirty years in the public school system… no easy feat. She retired on Friday of last week and we talk about what it takes to be teacher, how highly our society values teachers… at least we say we do, it just isn’t reflected in their paychecks. We also talk about our equally… well almost equal ineptitude at being handy around the house. Usually he has the good sense to not even try whereas my ego sends me to Lowe’s three times in one day and half a day just to complete a task that a normal human would complete in an hour. This time, however, Templeton has me beat and he shares his misfortune. One of the main things Templeton is absolutely beloved for is in the way he butchers the english language. I have several friends that do that including the senator…. But Templeton does it in a magical way that kept him with his business partner for over 30 years. I don’t think he quite demonstrates it fully in this conversation, and if he does I don’t call him out on it, but his usual response is, “You know what I meant”. As we start our conversation he is somehow under the impression that we are not recording yet and that at some point we are going to “go live”. I don’t think any podcast is live, otherwise it would be a webcast wouldn’t it? A husband brags about a retiring school teacher and how NOT to change lightbulb on The Modern Moron, and thanks for listening. CLOSE - Congratulations on 34 years of teaching our little one’s. Enjoy a great retirement. Before we part ways I want to keep trying to have a little segment called Moron Chaplaincy or maybe I have to set aside whole episodes for that, but I wanted to tell you about one very small, incident that I thought was going to be fairly routine but it wasn’t. Maybe that’s one of the things I like about Chaplaincy in a hospital, sooner or later you get something unique, as long as your paying attention. So I’m making my rounds a few weeks ago and usually the door to the patients rooms are open so I can knock gently on the door and see if they’re up for a visit. If the door is closed I figure one or both of the patients don’t want to be disturbed. For some reason, I knocked on a closed door, opened it and walked into a room with one patient in it. The patient was quite literally chained to his bed. With a chain. Not a strap or restraint, but a chain. And sitting with the patient are two Highway patrol, or if you’re not in California a State Trooper. One of them might have been a county Sheriff. I’ve opened the door and stuck my head in and actually am halfway in the room. So I said something to the effect of, “hey, what’s up?” One of the officers stands up and turns to address me so I introduce myself, ‘hello, I’m Charlie the Chaplain or whatever, I didn’t say that. But I did identify myself and the officer said it would be fine if I visited the “patient”. So I cross the room, I pull up a chair, and I sit with this guy, a pretty good sized guy… Are you feeling any pain? Where are you from? Does your family know you’re here? Not much of a conversation. I asked him if it would be alright if I prayed for him. He said yes. By the way I’m not big on prayer myself but if it’s for someone else and they value it, which some really do, I’m happy to do that. As I was leaving that room and walking down the hall, I thought of that incredibly sad hospital room. And it wasn’t just the patient chained to his own bed. Were either of those two officers realizing their full potential sitting in that room all… day… long. Staring and scrolling on their phone. Is that what they imagined when they decided to get into law enforcement? I doubt it. I felt bad for everyone in that room. What made me think of this is that today, I’m in one of the units, I’m walking down the all and I’m behind two law officers again. You do see officers around a hospital, particularly the ER Department and the front desk perhaps but not usually IN the hospital. So now I look past the two officers and I see a guy with gray hair, who I think is shuffling along because, that’s what patients do in hospitals who have just had surgery and many times they’ve got their IV stand they’re pushing along beside them. This guy has all that and he’s shackled AND he’s got some contraption around his waist that looks like they’ve got big brick sized batteries on his sides. AND, there’s another officer in front of him. This could have been Hannibal Lecter Junior for all I know. What gray haired man need three armed guards around him when he’s already shackled? Jesus, I’m lucky I still have a face. Music: "Lightless Dawn" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com); Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Ep. 109 Investments, Flings, Home Improvement is boring, Movie Candy and Standup Comedy
06/20/2022
Ep. 109 Investments, Flings, Home Improvement is boring, Movie Candy and Standup Comedy
Welcome to another episode of TMM… In this episode we finish my chat with my friend and comedian Christine Lederman, but as usual I want to cover a couple of things first. One is from an article in the Wall Street Journal from Sunday June 12th. I have to recommend the Wall Street Journal. You should at least get the online version plus the Sunday/weekend edition and here’s why: 1) it’s a very credible conservative news source, so if you’re a conservative I don’t need to convince you. If you’re a liberal and your bias against this paper then you’re being exactly what you complain about. People need to be more open minded and accepting of others lifestyles and opinions. I agree. Start by reading something that may take you outside your comfort zone. 2) Senior Moron discount! I’m currently getting the digital version of the Journal app plus I get the paper on Sunday morning which is very nice to nostalgically read an actual newspaper and since it’s the Wall Street Journal it leads me to 3) I feel like a grown up reading the paper on Sunday morning. Back to the article - this is moron curmudgeon stuff too… the title is: “ - From social media to job applications, the pressure to declare our feelings in public is turning us into gushing adolescents.” If you remember the beginning of last episode, Christine mentioned how hard it is to get kids to hire and actually show up for work because they are in constant need of mental health days. In a sense we parents are responsible for that mentality. When they were kids playing soccer or whatever sport, everyone had to get a trophy… and every kid had to have a speech made about what a gift they were to the team and with 95% of the kids, they forgot the goddamn plastic trophy when we left the pizza place. Seriously. It’s ridiculous and with all the value that team sports provides, we ruin it by giving everyone a trophy. Please knock that shit off with our grandchildren. That’s not how life works. Back to the article, she recounts a birthday wish from one of her fellow 21st century parents that posted on social media… “Happy 17th Birthday, Miles!” reads the typical parent-to-offspring entry. A previous generation might have stopped there, deeming the well-wishing sufficient acknowledgment of the day. But today’s parent has only just begun her tribute to the sunshine golden star-child who grew into the brilliant, gorgeous, side-splittingly funny, preternaturally gifted athlete (‘Go, Big Blue!’), not to mention the kindest person upon this earth as well as the head of the yearbook committee, who is loved “to the moon and infinity and back and to infinity again and to whatever lies beyond infinity…” We can’t just say happy birthday anymore, it’s got to be this ridiculously syrupy emotional outpouring and it has GOT to be made public so everyone can see how grateful I am. This Sunday’s Journal… as in June 19th 2022, has a couple of articles that caught my eye… one from the “intelligent investor”, Jason Zweig, titled “To Stand Up to a Bear Market, Act Cool- and Act Your Age” meaning, if you’re young don’t sweat this depression- recession- stagflation or whatever the hell you want to call it. Still invest slowly and regularly. In fact ‘Ol Warren Buffet says this is the best time to buy, when prices are going down. Quote, “if you like hamburgers, you want the price of hamburgers to go down not up.” So have your kids and grandkids look at this as a great time to start investing when prices are low or going to be lower. It’s us old farts that need to worry because we are about to make those investments part of our annual income. I’m sure If you’re thinking of retiring in the next couple of years, you have been giving it second thoughts. Another interesting tip from this article is: If you’re going to retire anyway, think about retiring without drawing your social security. Can you do that? I think so. They advise delaying Social Security until 70… if you can pull that off. The reason is that the fed will increase your benefits based on inflation and your eventual SS check once you start. The more you can put it off the better your payout will be once you need it, “need” being the operative word. Another tip to note is that with the prime interest rate going up, the yields on income-producing assets are going up as well. What the hell is an income-producing asset? Hell if I know… some to learn more about might be rental properties, which could be a pain in the ass unless you employ a property management company or you could invest in Property management companies themselves… suggests “Rightmove” and “onthemarket” which are both on the London exchange, there’s another in Germany called Scout24. Obviously I’m talking outta my ass and if you have any kind of a stock portfolio you would never take advice from a Moron, but you could check with your professional investor and see what they think. This would be a perfect topic for the Senator, and I’ll get him on eventually. Also, safer and therefore lower yield investments might be something like Certificates of Deposit which should have higher yields than the last five years as interest rates have gone up and will probably continue to go up. The problem with CD’s for a moron like me is that CD’s are usually sold in blocks of $10,000 which I would never have but if you’re the Senator you’d have that much just to buy a puppy. Okay… I can’t believe I talked that much about finance. And i wonder if you thought for a half second, “wow, sounds like he might know what he’s talking about.” I do not. Can you imagine the level of bullsh*t you get from so called experts in the field whose main goal is to make you think that? That they’re an expert and you should hang on their every word. Remember Jim Cramer? That investor guy who used to be on CNBC… he had a show called “The Street” and he would hit buzzers and bells over stock buys and he always had his sleeves rolled up to make you think he was a hard working joe like the rest of us. Remember him? There was the housing bubble of 2007 and then the Fanny Mae Freddy Mac business and then in 2008 Cramer said that Bear Stearns, one of the biggest investment banks in the world, was doing fine… … and then the following week they collapsed. Hell I can do that. The Modern Moron Investment Firm. We make money the old fashioned way, we burn it. Man I can talk can’t I? There’s no one to shut me up, which is why I need guests. Like my guest Christine Lederman. We pick up where I ask her about a nice little romance she had during quarantine in her condo complex which leads us to a conversation about the house she recently purchased, home improvement projects and how they are never finished and she painted the interior and then… she catches us in the midst of a boring conversation and she puts the brakes on home improvement talk. Thank God… Where was she when we needed her in the middle of this intro. So… Pandemic fling, home improvement, movies we’ve seen recently and a discussion about movie candies… what’s your favorite and do you buy them at the movie theater or do you stop at the drug store and get candy like this Moron? Investments, flings, movie candies and other things on The Modern Moron… and thank you for listening. CLOSE - I forgot to tell you we talked about Johnny Depp and Top Gun for about a minute, sorry about that. We are going to keep tabs on Christine’s standup schedule this fall and if you’re in the Denver/ Boulder area you can probably catch her workshopping parts of her upcoming show. Wouldn’t it be great if she just exploded on the comedy scene and we can all say I remember when she did that podcast. It could happen you gus. As always thank you for listening, please forward this to someone you think would enjoy it or to someone who would hate it but tell them you think they’d love it. It’ll be fun, try it… see you next time.
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Ep. 108 Gun Laws, Christine Lederman, Tarot Cards and Unemployment (Not in That Order)
06/15/2022
Ep. 108 Gun Laws, Christine Lederman, Tarot Cards and Unemployment (Not in That Order)
Welcome to another episode of the MM… this was supposed to be an easy-peazy light episode with my friend and stand up comedian Christine Lederman. Until… I decided to include something that I felt looked at both sides of the 2nd amendment-slash-gun violence issue that, along with some other issues, you can throw on the pile of burning tires that divides this country right now. And it has taken me a week to calm down enough to try again. I do this tiny podcast for the half dozen or so of us because I have fun doing it, I find some interesting people and stuff and I really am at a crossroads of being a complete shut-in that does not want to engage at all with our civilization as it has become and another part of me that wants to be able to stay connected in some way. So to do that I have to read, watch and listen to the news with a sense of curiosity rather than with an opinion. I’m really trying to get rid of my opinions that have collected like in a garage that can’t fit a car inside it anymore. You ever see garages like that? Maybe you have one. So the guns issue. Selfishly, i think the thing that pisses me off is that I can’t use this anymore… I love the ol’ machine gun sound effect as a symbol of over reacting to trivial matters. If I owned an assault rifle, I would probably be sharing with you how I went off on my dishwasher, or my weed eater or my garage door opener… some inanimate item that is the object of my wrath. But I can’t do that anymore because of the right to bear arms… the 2nd amendment written in 1791. Couple of things to note about 1791: The population density of the entire country or colonies was the same as the city of Los Angeles or the State of Connecticut. Many folks needed guns to acquire protein. The most common guns were muskets and flintlock pistols The most skilled hunters and marksmen could load from the muzzle of the weapon, fire, reload and fire again about every 20 seconds, maybe 15 seconds… so three to four rounds per minute. Those firearms were highly inaccurate. They didn’t use bullets shaped for aerodynamics that would rotate to keep their aim true. They were musket balls, which does not refer to the genitalia of a male muskrat. I said musKET balls. They did not fly true at all. I feel like there is a silent majority of conservatives, I know there is because I talk to them. Maybe they voted for Trump, but were embarrassed to say so, because… you should be embarrassed of him and his lack of integrity. Most of these silent majority wish he would just go away. They also believe in the right for a woman to choose but don’t want to speak up because it goes against their faith tradition. Most of the republican or conservatives I know maintain their political viewpoint for fiscal reasons and fiscal policy. “Run your government like you run a household. Don’t spend more than you have and if you borrow money, have a plan to pay it back. Balance the budge, blah, blah, blah.” But when it comes to social policy, they’re reasonably positioned. But to speak out in the midst of your contemporaries, and I’m using air quotes, “just isn’t worth it.” And over and over, the right to keep these automatic weapons and assault rifles is a more important right than the right of a kid to be able to go to school without having to be concerned about being shot, murdered, having their friends murdered, etc. Because it radiates out. Imagine how it radiates out from Uvalde, Texas and that school district. All the schools across the country who have to reestablish and practice their active shooter drills, with 5, 6 and 7 year olds asking, “why do we have to sit in this closet and keep quiet for how long?” And someone has to explain that to them and not bullshit them by making it some kind of a game. I want to bring to your attention a couple of articles on the recent shootings and the two groups of frightened people who either fear they or their children will be the next victim of a mass shooting because there are too many assault rifles or the frightened people who think there aren’t enough assault rifles to combat the assault rifles. I’m absolutely enraged as you probably are of the lack of functionality of our government, their inability to compromise and the … and I have deleted so many expletives today; group of people that subscribe to the “bad guy with a gun needs more good guys with guns” philosophy. I mean I’m having trouble sitting still in my chair to write and outline of what I want to say after listening to complaints about how 120 gun laws don’t work so one more isn’t going to help. The reason we have to have 120 gun laws in the first place is because you gun toting idiots dig your heels in and won’t allow one or even a couple of thorough laws get passed because you’re either afraid the russians are coming over the hill or there’s going to be Marshall law declared so you need your guns to protect your families but those guns are actually killing each other’s families. Go drink a pot of coffee on an empty stomach and that’s how I feel right now, it’s that bad. However… I do have an interview-slash-article… from a gun advocate… that I feel is worth listening to if you are opposed to guns as I obviously am. It’s abo I also have an article for those who are in favor of fewer guns, guns, guns and I’ll get to that one later. This first interview is from NPR, yes it’s left leaning, but it felt like at least it was an intelligent conversation… to me. The interviewee is David French who is the senior editor of “The Dispatch” which is a subscription-based and advertisement-free online magazine. Mediabiasfactcheck.com puts them as a right-center bias publication with a HIGH factual reporting credibility. They are NOT as far to the right as say Fox News which has a MIXED factual reporting credibility. David French is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic which is a HIGH credibility LEFT bias monthly magazine. This cat went to Harvard Law School where he graduated with honors. I know I wouldn’t want to have a debate with him. He is in favor of a concept called red flag laws that allow the proper authorities to reclaim or seize guns from those deemed to be a threat to the public or themselves by a similar legal procedure as getting a restraining order. I make a confession of an odd purchase for me in the form of a deck of tarot cards. What? I know, but Christine is the perfect person to confess this too because she is very much under the impression that she has psychic abilities. Not only that but she will also tell you that the reason her intuitions about me are completely wrong is because I don’t believe she has “the gift.” So, it’s all my fault. She proceeds to prove her inaccuracies during our call but I think we might have a regular segment called the psychic eye of Queen Christine. Something like that. We start our conversation with me inquiring about the hotel business and what seems to be the overall difficulty in our culture these days to get people to want to come back to work… CLOSE - That was a kind of weird episode right? Too much politics at the top and then tarot cards? A couple of things before we part ways… as of the recording of this episode The Modern Moron is exactly 14 downloads away from it’s 10,000th download. Doesn’t that sound impressive? Let me put a little perspective on that huge, huge milestone… - New York Times/ Yahoo - NPR - Ranker.com
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Ep. 107 Moron Chaplaincy
05/31/2022
Ep. 107 Moron Chaplaincy
Open - So I have begun to volunteer at a local Hospital which is also a trauma center. What separates a trauma center from a regular hospital? I look at it the same way you might look at the difference between a four star and a five star hotel. A five star hotel needs two dining rooms, one formal, and I believe 24 hour room service and concierge service… probably some other stuff. According to which is a blog about hospital medical directors: A level 1 trauma center must have a trauma/general surgeon in the hospital 24-hours a day, along with an anesthesiologist and a full O-R staff available in the hospital 24-hours a day as well as a critical care physician 24-hours a day. There must also be immediate availability of an orthopedic surgeon, neurosurgeon, radiologist, plastic surgeon, and oral/maxillofacial surgeon. There must be > 1,200 trauma admissions per year. There are also requirements for the number of hours these surgeons and physicians must have each year. Finally, These centers must participate in research and have at least 20 publications per year. The main difference between a 1 one and a level 2 trauma center is primarily the lack of research and publication requirements. So, I have just barely started volunteering in one of California’s 17 Level I trauma centers. So far, I go on only one day a week and I shadow one of the current 6 or so resident chaplains. There are some chaplains that are stationed on a particular floor as well, along with another set of chaplains that deal with palliative care, but that’s another kettle of fish altogether. Is it inappropriate to refer to palliative care as a “kettle of fish”? I hope not, but you know there are always going to be people who are offended by something so… insert expletive. You may be thinking at this point… “what? Why? Why would a moron want to do something like this?” Great question. I have no idea. Actually I do… The thick of the pandemic. Lost a patient from Covid Case Investigation work. Not just a case number. I had to write an essay. So, knowing that i am NOT a religious person, how do I write an essay about being a chaplain, with no religious foundation? What is my faith tradition? Spiritual tradition: Catholic High school. 1 year at Catholic College. Studied Buddhism and attended service regularly in Los Angeles (Shin Buddhist) I definitely drank the kool-aid of Improvisational theater. Don’t underestimate this. In fact, it probably gave me the most valuable tool in doing some of this work so far. CLOSE - In conclusion… I hope to be able to provide some insight, some reflections of my experiences and who knows maybe even a guest or two! I don’t know how long I will be permitted to be a volunteer before they find out I’m a moron and a heathen, but so far it’s been a very positive experience. Coming up in future Modern Moron episodes, I will be speaking to my college graduate who has a degree in art history, and we will be discussing a VERY interesting 2018 documentary called “The Price of Everything”. The film features interviews with people prominently involved in contemporary art and the market for it and it is fascinating. The title of the film comes from a quote from the 1892 Oscar Wilde play “Lady Windermere's Fan”. The quote is delivered in the film by art collector Stefan Edlis: "There are a lot of people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing". Chew on that for a while, right? Also, in line with The Modern Moron remaining on the cutting edge of technology and pop culture, I just bought an air fryer and I simply must tell you about my favorite dishes. Until next time, thank you for listening to The Modern Moron, please forward this episode to someone you think would like it, or to someone you think would hate it as a joke. Thanks.
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Ep. 106 Larry Dorf Pt. 2 The Woman In The Window, The Oscars, Will Smith, Chris Rock and Kareem Abdul Jabbar
04/02/2022
Ep. 106 Larry Dorf Pt. 2 The Woman In The Window, The Oscars, Will Smith, Chris Rock and Kareem Abdul Jabbar
OPEN - Welcome to another episode of the Modern Moron and another very… long… intro. We all could use a little respite from Russia’s violent invasion of Ukraine, not as much as the people of Ukraine could use it, but you get the idea. So why not turn to the entertainment industry? How about the Oscars? Let's watch Hollywood celebrate itself. Of course you know where I’m going with this and that is the incident where Will Smith walked on stage and slapped comedian Chris Rock after Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife Jada and her shaved head. He made a G.I. Jane joke, which wasn’t particularly good, it was made off the cuff, not in the rehearsed segment. After slapping Rock, Will Smith yelled twice in a very full and articulate voice to, “Keep my wife’s name out your fucking mouth”. It was at that point that everyone went beyond shock and dismay that it might be a rehearsed stunt, because you shouldn’t use the “F” word on live television… twice. So now we’re all Monday Morning quarterbacking this whole thing. Lucky for you I have all the answers because I am an omnipotent being who is all knowing. My take on it is similar to the take Jimmy Kimmel had and the take is this: Chris Rock made the G.I. Jane joke about Jada Pinkett’s shaved head. The camera cuts to the two of them and Will Smith appears to be chuckling and rolling with it. His wife, however, is not. The camera cuts back to Chris Rock and we can only ASSume, and you know I love to assume, that Will looked over at his wife and his chuckle quickly disappeared. I’m willing to bet it was a look like, “If you don't’ want to sleep on the couch for an indeterminate amount of time, you better do something.” Or maybe he just saw that her feelings were hurt. In any case, the rest is history and and it was ugly on so many levels. So, on a night that should have been a celebration of his great achievement in his industry, instead he’s stuck in a very, very bad situation. Chris Rock has made no statement but ticket sales to his standup performances have skyrocketed. And there’s one other person we have not heard from and that is the person who was on the butt end of the Chris Rock joke and that is Jada Pinkett Smith. She has only posted a cryptic message on Instagram stating, “This is a season for healing and I’m here for it.” I’d like to say this is not a season for cryptic messages. This is not a season to keep quiet, when you had some hand in this whole occurrence. No, you’re not responsible for your husband’s foolish action, but you are responsible for your reaction. While you didn’t like the comment, who would, it was your look of disapproval or disgust at your husband… who you’ve been married to for 24 years in what you have indicated was an open marriage, had to know what you were communicating to your husband in that moment. Or even put that aside, you still have an opportunity to alleviate some of the pressure on your husband by making a clear statement owning some of your reaction or… making a statement about your medical condition having alopecia and how many people have it. But you have not. I would suggest folks look to Kareem Abdul Jabar. Why in the world would I bring up his name? By the time you listen to this, his essay on this incident will have gone viral and in it he goes over the myriad of issues this incident, in those few seconds, has created. The piece is titled, “” I’m not sure where you will end up reading it but it’s source is a site called “Substack” which is similar to “Patreon”. If you’re like me you have no idea what either of those are. They are both “platforms” meaning they are websites and mobile apps for people who what to make money from their blogs, podcasts, Tick-tock, Instagram, etc. I digress… Kareem’s subtitle says it all: Will Smith’s act was a blow to men, women, the entertainment industry and the black community. Kareem addresses each of those things and says that Jada Pinkett was and is completely capable of defending herself, especially against words, namely a joke that she didn’t find funny. On that note, I would like to read you a quote from a video on Jada Pinkett’s Instagram account from 2021 showing herself with a shaved head, she said, "Now at this point, I can only laugh.” So, besides being extremely ironic, it also shows how it’s easy for anyone to say they have let go of something and realizing that “thing” they thought they let go of is still very raw. Plus it’s one thing to make jokes about yourself and another to have them made at your expense. I would also include that, I don’t know if she was ever a professional model specifically, but I think most folks would agree that Jada Pinkett is and has been very beautiful in terms of traditional beauty and features that are, on a broad scale, considered beautiful. Jesus, do you see how friggin careful I’m being right now, not to overtly show how shallow and superficial I am? Political correctness takes wayyyy to much time to make sure I haven’t offended someone. And I think taking too much time making sure you haven’t offended anyone, you haven’t impressed anyone either. And by impressed I mean, have you provided value in terms of being either entertaining, educational or informative. How’s that for being a blowhard. Enough of that, and at the same time we can’t get enough of that. We love a train wreck don’t we. Especially when we’er not on either one of the trains. This is part two with my friend Larry Dorf, creator, writer and producer of the Netflix hit, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”. We spend the rest of our time talking about: what the promotions process was like in terms of doing interviews before the show was released. They actually had to be coached on how to handle certain questions like a politician. What it was like shooting a production on location during the Covid Pandemic. Once the cast was set, you couldn’t just bring someone in on short notice because of the Covid protocols at the time. We talk about one of the executive producers for the series which was Will Farrell and there’s an interesting story there. How to segue your business from hanging a shingle outside your door to actually having a company with a name and a logo. How do you do that? There’s a chat about Larry’s parents, and this fits right into the Modern Moron listener sweetspot demographics, we talk about senior living facilities… I’m sorry… communities. Communities. I think the main difference is cocktail hour. All this and more on the Modern Moron and thank you for listening… CLOSE - Another element in “The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window” besides how tiring the Title gets after saying it a few times, is what I’m going to call an homage to, let’s call it the Scorsese montage. If you’ve seen “Goodfellas”, you know what I’m talking about. Scorsese grabs a hip, rocking piece of music, adds the narrator with some clips of what transpires. To me, the most famous is in Goodfellas when we see all the Gangsters get whacked to the fantastic guitar of Eric Clapton in “Layla” by Derek and the Dominoes, in fact it’s in the second half of the song…. The Woman in the House, kills it - no pun intended- with their homage to that cinematic mechanism with the Rolling Stones “Can You Hear Me Knockin’”. Why am I so excited about this? Music is so, so powerful in evoking emotions and this song in particular has so many moments within it, so many builds and mood swings, from the iconic guitar intro with Mick Jagger in the background…To the chorus… To the incredible saxophone solo… to the cold ending. Set to images, it’s fantastic and yes I’m going on and on like a nerd about this but when you watch it you’ll see and feel what I mean. Great job by Rock, Paper, Scissors Productions. That’s it for the Modern Moron for a while, unless you want to be on the show… I’m not going to babble about my opinions week after week just because I’m omnipotent. If I find something interesting like the concept of Bitcoin mining, yes that’s a thing, and how much electricity is required to power the thousands of computers that engage in Bitcoin mining, so much so that the town of Hardin, Montana that had a coal fired power plant that was going to be closed down was purchased just to run the Bitcoin mining computers. An entire powerplant. It was going to be closed, but now it’s back to running around the clock burning coal. To make money from Bitcoin. The same thing is happening in New York near Ceneca Lake. Reported 15,000 computers that could power something like 30,000 homes. For bitcoin. If I could get someone who claims to know about that, I would definitely talk to them. So until next time, thank you for listening to The Modern Moron. - Substack
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Ep. 105 Larry Dorf, Netflix, The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window, Norm MacDonald, This Podcast IS A NEWS Source
03/20/2022
Ep. 105 Larry Dorf, Netflix, The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window, Norm MacDonald, This Podcast IS A NEWS Source
INTRO - Welcome to another episode of the Modern Moron. I’m pretty excited about my guest for a number of reasons, number one being that I find Larry Dorf to be an extremely entertaining person that I’ve known more than 20 years. Did you hear that Larry? That’s a long time. He’s a funny guy and I’m not completely sure that most of the time he’s not really trying to be funny. A second reason, probably the main reason, is that Larry is one of the creators, writers and producers of the Netflix hit, “The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window”. I feel pretty sure you’ve at least heard of it and I’m going to insist that you watch it. It’s a great title and a really, really bad hashtag. “The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window” is a parody… a satire of the suspense thriller novel genre like, “The Woman in The Window”, “The Woman in Cabin 10”, “The Other Woman” and on and on. We talk about the fine line of walking between making fun of the genre and dropping in jokes and still honor the genre of a suspense thriller. For example, this series is not like the movie Airplane with gag after gag. In an interesting way, a suspense thriller or even a horror movie is not unlike comedy. You have to have a setup where you get the audience to think you’re going in one direction and then the surprising reveal is the punchline of a joke or the scare of a thriller. How do you honor both? I found it to be a very interesting conversation and I hope you do too. Finally, Larry was on this podcast once before, our most listened to episode by the way… and I tell him this fact. It was when he and his partners were writing and producing “Mike Tyson Mysteries” for Adult Swim’s Cartoon Network. On that episode Larry claimed to “break the news” that the show was not being picked up after it’s 4th season. We recorded that episode at the end of May, 2020 and that information came out in January, so this wasn’t exactly a cutting edge news exclusive, at least we didn’t think so. However, apparently it had not been officially announced and somehow, there were a few nerdy news websites that actually sited this podcast, yes, THIS podcast to announce it’s cancellation, thereby explaining the mystery of why that episode had more downloads than any of our other episodes. I don’t believe him at first, so Larry proves this to me by sending me a link from his phone to a site called that sites The Modern Moron as it’s news source. How ridiculous is that? This podcast is a news source? Please… I’m just a journalist trying to be true to my craft. But the reason I bring this up is because of how pee in my pants giddy I become over this when I actually read it in disbelief. You can almost hear my ego expanding… So, yes we were sited in the publication screenrant.com but it also appeared in The U.S. Sun. Their about page states: “The Sun.com is a US online edition of The Sun, Britain’s largest newspaper.” We also appeared in a website called comicbook.com How about this…. A little publication called “”!!! EVER HEARD OF IT? It has the same quote from larry and sites “The Modern Moron Podcast” however Newsweek did not create a hyperlink where the name is, so hey, ? Lawsuit is forthcoming. You’re gonna want to put your best people on this case. By the way, Mike Tyson Mysteries, which you can still catch streaming on Hulu, has a 97% positigve fan rating on . Can we please not gloss over that? That is a huge rating, from fans. Also, One of the voices of Mike Tyson Mysteries, was that of comedian Norm MacDonald who passed away in September of last year. I ask Larry about working with Norm and he talks about how the producers of that show valued Norm’s opinion on what was funny and how much they wanted Norm to have been able to see their Netflix hit. From all the appearances and interviews of Norm after he passed, it seemed like across the board, not only did people love him for how genuine he was but how they valued his unique perspective on comedy and how hearing his laugh was the best compliment of all. So, please enjoy this part 1 episode where I get a little too excited about being mentioned in a website. It’s THE Larry Dorf from the Netflix hit, and terrible hashtag, “The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window” and thank you for listening. Close - You know how movies many times have product placement in them and the production company can make a little money? Well, this production had to have Corning Ware as a major donor because there was shitload of casserole dishes in this production. Also, you’re the first to hear the bombshell that “The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window” is done. It was a limited series with no season two. I wonder if part of the allure they were going for included calling it season ONE? Hmmm mysterious. How cool was the Amy Schumer story? I wonder if she would do this podcast just to talk about Larry’s show? I mean this podcast is a news source now so she bound to listen to it. In part 2 we talk about what the promotions process was like in terms of doing interviews before the show was released. They actually had to be coached on how to handle certain questions like a politician. What it was like shooting a production on location during the Covid Pandemic. We talk about one of the executive producers for the series which was Will Farrell and there’s an interesting story there. So many reasons to tune in to part 2 with Larry Dorf and “The Woman in The House Across The Street From The Girl In The Window” and thank you for listening. - Netflix - The Modern Moron sited as an actual news source!!! - Newsweek
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Ep. 104 College Senior Pt. 2 Some Stuff on Ukraine Kiev is Keeve not Key-yev
03/12/2022
Ep. 104 College Senior Pt. 2 Some Stuff on Ukraine Kiev is Keeve not Key-yev
Oh my god, I have so many elderly meandering things to ask you and tell you… so many things I don’t understand. A couple of items I found interesting in the past couple of weeks regarding some minor events we’ve experienced, mainly what I’m hearing is the first war in Europe since WWII. A couple of things: On the day Russia invaded Ukraine I heard a story on NPR, one of my main news sources along with the Associated Press, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal. In this NPR story, which I could not find later, the reporter in Ukraine was asked how citizens were handling it on the first day. She said “humor”. She said the usual tensions of day to day life seemed to dissipated and that there were more Ukranians helping each other. Particularly helping the elderly with their supplies… helping them carry groceries and assisting with finding bomb shelters and that there was a sense of quiet unity. I found that sort of hopeful and very cool. Another NPR story which I did find the link to and so will you at the bottom of this description, is regarding US Military intelligence for Ukraine that was being delayed and therefore was not nearly as valuable, because of attorneys. The interview is with Republican Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Yes, it sounds like an oxymoron, but let’s leave that alone for now. Also, while we’re on Ukraine can we talk about how to pronounce it’s capital, Kiev. I always thought it was Kiyev. In fact I thought it was a different city, but then I found out it wasn’t so I thought it was like Niche. Remember when the word niche was pronounced niTCH? But then I wasn’t fancy enough to have a nitch and I had to have a niche. So I left my niTCH in Key-yev. Actually there’s more to it. Key-yev But this episode is about my guest… my college senior and the value of learning to write, to convey a thought and support an argument or position. Isn’t there a thing called a position paper? My senior mentions writing in MLA.. MLA style refers the style recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA) for preparing scholarly manuscripts and student research papers. It concerns itself with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and, especially, documentation of sources. The “Modern” Language Association was Founded in 1883. How that makes it modern? I have no idea. Maybe the same thing that makes this moron modern. Do you remember doing research papers and having to have a bibliography… and citing sources? Remember ibid? I remember using that a lot so I had to re-look it up and ibid is when you’re using the same source but a different section, so you just put ibid… I-B-I-D which is latin for in the same place —used to indicate that a reference is from the same source as a previous reference. Which you probably already knew… and proceeded to forget, like me. We talk about studying art and applying techniques vs. studying art history and studying techniques. Also how most artists that create art piece together their career and their income. Most artists at one time or another teach art. I’ve heard the expression, “those that can’t do, teach”, which is utter horse manure. Most artists, in addition to creating art, teach or find commercial applications for their art. You’ve heard of actors who do one film “for the studios” and for the money, so they can take smaller roles or roles in smaller independent films for art’s sake. In the art world not everyone can become a Takashi Murakami, Jenny Saville, David Hockney or Yayoi Kusama. And to those iconic names you’re probably saying, who said what now? No, I’ve never heard of any of those artists either but apparently they are among 10 artists you should know about. There is a link to the article at the bottom of the description. We get back to our discussion about mental health and the growth that occurs between freshman and senior year of both high school and college. More wisdom from youth and my college senior on the Modern Moron… thanks for listening. CLOSE - What better way to conclude an episode about art than to talk about the Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers. Like most shows I was way late to the party when it comes to Bob’s Burgers. My daughter and I watch it and it does crack me up. And if you appreciate the aesthetics of different animation styles you really should watch episode 1 of the 8th season of Bob’s Burgers. Some refer to it as a “fan-imation” episode where non professional animators were allowed to animate a scene of the show. I really enjoyed it and again it is the first episode of season 8 called “”. Thank you to my guest and an early congratulations on her graduation in just a couple months! Now… it is a rare occasion where I actually know who my next guest is and can promote it and I have a pretty great guest coming up next time. Are you familiar with the Netflix show “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window”? It was on Netflix’s top 10 when it first came out, and has received some great reviews. It is a satire of the psychological thriller, keep that in mind when you watch. My GUEST is one of the creators of the show along with being one of the writers and producers. He has been on the show before when he was writing for the animated show Mike Tyson’s Mysteries, an episode that included an interesting story about Mike Tyson and it’s our most downloaded episode! Of course I’m talking about Larry Dorf. He’s my guest next time, I’m very excited, so stay tuned… to the Modern Moron. - NPR - Artsper Magazine - YouTube | Vulture Magazine
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Ep. 102 College Senior Moron Minor- You cant have too much perspective
02/26/2022
Ep. 102 College Senior Moron Minor- You cant have too much perspective
Welcome to an… episode of the Modern Moron. Wow. Long, long time since we’ve done an episode. A lot of water under the bridge, a lot of swabs up noses, needles in arms and a lot of masks being worn and NOT being worn. So… why? Why do an episode and why did we quit? Why I quit… seemed like it was getting stale, I was told it was getting stale, listening to the Senator and me bickering over the same old political issues and politicians mainly. It seemed like I became more interested in my opinions than my curiosity. And this podcast. Podcast? It’s more like a one way conference call, but with over 1 million podcasts, think about that… 1 million podcasts, I’m sitting down behind a microphone with my big fat ego and all of it’s opinions… and I don’t want that. I don’t want to have opinions. If anything I’d like to lose opinions. My opinions are like the crap you stick in your garage or a storage unit. It’s a bunch of worthless crap. If it had any value, it wouldn’t be in a storage unit or collect dust in your garage. That is what I think of my opinions and my ego keeps trying to sell me these worthless opinions as if they have value. They don’t. My goal is to evaporate my ego and lose all of my opinions. This podcast doesn’t really do that. So why this episode? I have a bit of a problem. Not a huge problem but it’s something that is on my mind daily and it’s something I worry about as I’m sure you worry as well. It’s our children. I have a soon to be teenaged daughter that is soon to be going into high school. She’s got some issues as all kids do and her grades are not currently “the best” and she doesn’t particularly like school. Some kids like school and some don’t, mine doesn’t, at least not right now. And like many kids this age, not all, mine doesn’t look to me as a source of wisdom. In fact, based on the tone of her responses and the receptiveness to my advice, she thinks I’m an idiot, or rather a moron. I have to bear some of the responsibility for that. First off I put the word Moron in the name of this podcast and I am also known to use self deprecating humor from time to time so I have not done a lot to garner a ton of respect by my own hand. Still, there are many parents who find themselves in the same boat. So, grades are not the best right now and her small group of friends seem to be getting better grades and after next year will be heading to the local private Catholic high school to which she now wants to attend. However A) she may not have the grades to get into that school and B) the private catholic high school she wants to go to is even more expensive than the private shool we’re sending her to now and I’m not sure I want to pay that kind of money for a kid who doesn’t like school. Again, I’m sure I’m not alone in this situation but I have chosen to talk to a sort-of expert. An expert in high school and college preparatory school because she recently went to one, in fact the same high school as my daughter has her eye on. She is now a senior at a liberal arts university in New York. We’ve talked to her before, she’s the Senator’s daughter and we talk about post pandemic academic life and how that was just as hard to get used to as it was to go into quarantine. We talk about post graduate work and the perspective on high school advice from a college senior. Maybe you will find some similarities in the changes to your routines as well. We start our conversation by talking about what it was like to come back to college. I thought she was going to say rainbows and unicorns but it wasn’t. It was hard and like most change it took some adjusting. It’s a Re-egowakening with a college senior and a Moron minor on the Modern Moron… CLOSE - What she said at the beginning of the episode, “the weird thing about time is when you’re in it, it feels like forever but once you’re out of it, it doesn’t feel long at all.” The wisdom of perspective. And I love the ease with which she was able to discuss her mental health going through high school and in college. I don’t know how another college kid would ever end up listening to this episode but wouldn’t it be great if one found it that needed to hear that message of not being alone in feeling alone, or feeling anxious or nervous. You never know. Next episode, whenever that is that I just show up in your headphones, we’ll continue our discussion about writing papers for college, breakups and therapists and good luck finding a therapist since the pandemic, because they ARE ALL BOOKED. Seriously, if you feel you need some therapy right now, and who doesn’t, it just isn’t available at least in the health care systems I’m familiar with. We also spend some time talking about what it’s like to study art and art history vs. creating art in college. I hope you’ll check it out, thanks for listening to the Modern Moron.
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Ep. 103 Ted Lasso the Christmas Episode, Old Men Fawning Over Younger Women is So Gross and The Fear of Getting Old
09/15/2021
Ep. 103 Ted Lasso the Christmas Episode, Old Men Fawning Over Younger Women is So Gross and The Fear of Getting Old
Welcome to the Modern Moron where we take a brief break from the shitstorm that is our civilization and spend some time taling about the hugely popular Ted Lasso, some of the characters and it’s co-creator Jason Sudeikis. Part of the show’s attraction is that despite the aforementioned shitstorm this planet seems to be currently embroiled in, Sudeikis and Ted Lasso seem bound and determined to find a bright spot, grab ahold of it and refuses to let go. All in the midst of their endearing character�
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Ep. 101 Peed my pants again, a sincere apology, Afghanistan X2 relieved of duty
09/07/2021
Ep. 101 Peed my pants again, a sincere apology, Afghanistan X2 relieved of duty
Welcome to a very full episode of the modern moron, a bit longer than usual. We cover a lot of ground so I’m mostly going to just give you some bullet points… mostly, so you can either be prepared, be in on the joke, or decide to skip this episode entirely. Sort of a spoiler alert without too much spoilage.
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Ep. 100 She's Leaving Home
08/24/2021
Ep. 100 She's Leaving Home
Welcome to episode 100 of the Modern Moron! We do have a special guest for this landmark episode depending on how you define the word special. Our guest is special to me as I’ve known this guy as my bff since junior year in high school. We were both undersized, red-headed umm what? Misfits? Class clowns? Maybe. Outcasts? No, he certainly wasn’t an outcast. In fact he was smart enough to surround himself with two of the biggest guys in our class. Neither of us were academics but he a
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Ep. 99 Its Corinth Not CorNith!
08/16/2021
Ep. 99 Its Corinth Not CorNith!
Welcome to episode 99 of the Modern Moron. In this episode we welcome back the Senator not that he was gone that long. I mostly berate and harass him which is no surprise, but I really do give him a hard time, downright mean. All because he has trouble pronouncing certain words, in this case the city of Corinth. There is so much moronoscity happening on so many levels in this episode.
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Ep. 98 The Journalist
08/08/2021
Ep. 98 The Journalist
Welcome to another episode of the MM…for this episode...Going to do something different...we’re going to try a guest who actually has some credentials. He is a journalist, a publicist and a published author & yes, you’re still listening to the Modern Moron. As a journalist he wrote for the St. Petersburg times, now known as the Tampa Bay Times, the second largest newspaper as well as a staff writer for the Washington Post. He has also been the press secretary for one of California’s Lieutenant
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Ep. 97 My College Roommate Pt. 1
07/04/2021
Ep. 97 My College Roommate Pt. 1
Welcome to another episode of the Modern Moron and in this episode we turn the way back machine on to go all the way back to college. Specifically… actually it’s not specific at all, as my guest is my old college roommate.
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Ep. 96 - I'm So Fancy I'm EXCLUSIVE
06/20/2021
Ep. 96 - I'm So Fancy I'm EXCLUSIVE
Welcome to a program where if you hear the phrase tick-tock you can rest assured we are talking about either a clock or the time of day… it’s the Modern Moron
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Ep. 95 The Crown and The Clown, I Mean the President
06/13/2021
Ep. 95 The Crown and The Clown, I Mean the President
I have some good news for you. The majority of this episode doesn’t involve politics! I know, right? A breath of fresh air. Also, my guest is NOT the Senator! How about that? My guest is my OP from my radio days and like you she is coming out of quarantine/ hibernation and like most of you… probably… she’s watched a little more television, I’m sorry, streaming content in the last year and change than usual. And we settle on talking about “The Crown” on Netflix. Yes, it’s be
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Ep. 94 Kaitlin Jenner Wheaties Box Peace in the Middle East Again and Wagyu Beef
06/10/2021
Ep. 94 Kaitlin Jenner Wheaties Box Peace in the Middle East Again and Wagyu Beef
In this outdated installment we banter about a number of things including my great idea that Caitlin Jenner should be on a box of Wheaties and we mention some athletes who have been on Wheaties boxes, yes they still make Wheaties, including Kyrie Irving, who the Senator doesn’t know and I say he plays for the Celtics when in fact Kyrie Irving is currently with the Brooklyn Nets who are one step away from going to the Eastern conference finals!
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Ep. 93 Where's Kamala? Not at the Border or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon
05/29/2021
Ep. 93 Where's Kamala? Not at the Border or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon
Welcome to another Episode…
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Ep. 92 Dr. Fauci Derek Chauvin and memmo.me - what is a celebrity anymore?
05/15/2021
Ep. 92 Dr. Fauci Derek Chauvin and memmo.me - what is a celebrity anymore?
Welcome to another episode of the Modern Moron… I sit and listen to the opinions coming out of our mouths and I just think where the hell do either of us think we are coming off with these grand opinions about shit neither of us has a fucking clue about. I’ve never been to Europe, I know nothing… noth-thing about any culture even in this country and yet I truly think my analysis is infallible. For realzies. The humility gene… literally fell off our DNA strand.
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