Jordan, Jesse, GO! - Ep. 55: Diamonds
Episode Date: March 17, 2008Jordan and Jesse are joined by their biggest guest ever. Discussion of Elliott Spitzer, SXSW and more. ...
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Give a little time for the child within you, don't be afraid to be young and free.
Unto the locks and throw away the keys, and take off your shoes and sex and run you.
I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
And I'm Jordan Morris, boy detective.
And this is...
Jordan, Jesse, go!
Icicles, tricycles, ice cream, candy, lollipops, popsicles, licorice sticks,
Salmon, friendly, maggoty its absolute 1,000% apex,
the greatest episode and the greatest guest of all time.
Let's go!
It's Jordan Jesse Go. I am Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
Jordan Morris, boy detective.
Welcome to the program, America.
Thanks for being here.
It's a pleasure to have you.
We're here at this, I think this is a really nice cocktail party that we're recording the intro at, don't you?
Yeah, it was nice of them to let, it's not our cocktail party.
No.
We don't know anybody in here.
I don't know a single person here, but everyone has been really nice to me.
You know what I mean?
Somebody made me a virgin gin and tonic.
That was nice.
What's in that?
Tonic.
Tonic.
Yeah.
A little twist of lime.
Yeah, a little twist of lime.
And for me, they were nice enough to help me do a beer bong.
Yeah.
So.
Which you need some people to help you out for that.
You know what I mean?
Somebody to hold it, and then you need a room full of people to chant.
Jordan. You can't just do it while people aren't chanting.
This week on the show,
right before we left for Christmas break,
which people will remember
as kind of the low point of
new programs
in all of Jordan and Jesse Go history.
Right around Christmas. One a month.
Right before then,
we promised that 2008 would bring our listeners the biggest guest in Jordan
Jesse Go history.
Not the physically biggest guest in Jordan Jesse Go history.
But.
That was when we had Chef Paul Prude home on.
Right.
He taught us about Cajun cooking.
That's when we had the world's fattest man on.
Yeah.
But no, today's guest, this is the guest.
I mean, we've had some great guests in 08 so far.
Yeah.
It's been a great year for guests.
And we've got great guests coming up in the future weeks.
Absolutely.
But as great as those future guests are, it's all downhill from here, folks.
Yeah, sorry.
Today is the day.
You should be glad because you are witness to history.
I think that's ultimately that's the lesson that we learned from this.
While this is the zenith of the program and we'll just be slipping and sliding down into the abyss from here on out,
you were there when Jesse and Jordan had
the biggest guest in Jordan-Jesse-Go history.
This is season four of The Simpsons, people.
This is Dylan right before he went electric.
Fifteen years from now,
we will still be doing Jordan-Jesse-Go.
And it will still be worth watching or listening to.
It'll be fine.
There'll be some good jokes in it,
maybe a something, something, something joke.
You know what I'm saying?
There'll be things that remind you of when it was great,
but you'll think back on this episode and this guest
as the apotheosis of what Jordan and Jesse Goh was about
when it was at its peak.
If only they could have kept up that level of quality, you'll say to yourself.
Exactly.
You'll think, you know, this is like...
When you're listening to us listlessly bantering with, I don't know, Joel McHale.
Yeah, I mean, the soup is fine.
Yeah, but...
He's a funny guy.
But I'm talking here about the biggest guest in the history of the program.
I'm not talking about the soup.
I'm not talking about basic cable, Jordan.
No.
I'm talking about something.
You're not talking about some other podcaster.
Not in the slightest.
Not even a little bit, my friend.
Not even a little bit.
There's only one way to find out who the biggest guest in the history of Jordan Jesse Goh is.
That's to stay tuned.
We'll be back in just a second on Jordan Jesse Goh.
It's Jordan Jesse Goh. I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
I'm Jordan Morris, boy detective.
Very special guest on this program.
Ladies and gentlemen out there listening in your headphones,
please welcome from KCRW Radio and National Public Radio,
Mr. Claude Brodesser-Ackner.
I'm going to applaud, too.
I can't believe I'm here.
Yeah. Yeah.
Wow.
This is a dream come true for us, Claude.
You've been a running joke, not to put too fine a point on it.
I am the bumped Matt Damon of this program.
He says exactly what you are.
There's a viral video featuring you in our future.
I see it coming.
Jordan, we, obviously, we both really like Claude's radio program, but
I really like
On the Media, too, and I don't think we spend a lot of time
talking about Bob Garfield.
How did we end up talking so much about Claude Rodessar-Ackner?
I don't, you know, I
Claude, I don't know, I just
I told you about this earlier, you came in
and I discovered your
show, The Business,
when I first moved to LA.
And this was in the pre-podcast days
and I had my first PA job
and was doing a lot of driving around in the afternoon
and your show comes on at 2.30 out here
and would really try and time my errands
so that I would be in the car for 2.30.
It was nice moving to L.A. and hearing a thing about show business
that wasn't stupid and inane.
I don't know.
It was nice.
It was a good – I was kind of discovering being in show business,
and the business was kind of – I don't know.
It kind of feels like it's in tandem with that.
It's like in my first TV experiences,
I also discovered the business and have been listening since.
Now that he's on Fuel TV, he doesn't listen anymore.
No, no.
You make it to the pinnacle of the television industry.
I've listened a few times, and I find myself going,
old news, Brodesser Ackner.
Yeah, sorry.
We've been talking about that at Fuel for months.
Sure.
And we like your jokes.
We like your humor a lot.
That's exactly why.
It's dad humor.
And now that I'm a dad, I'm allowed to.
That's so fantastic.
What the heck's going on outside our studio?
They've discovered our location.
We're going to need to move.
I didn't know you were a fugitive, Claude.
I am a fugitive from justice.
What have you done?
Something horrible? I killed a man just for a fugitive, Claude. I am a fugitive from justice. What have you done? Something horrible?
I killed a man just for snoring.
Oh, boy.
How bad was the snoring?
It was...
Could you have gone to the other room instead?
I could have.
It wasn't just loud.
It was grating.
It wasn't just brutal.
It was also wanton.
Can I ask about the circumstances
which you're sleeping near another man?
Well, first of all all it wasn't even
just it was extravagant you know what i mean it's a self-indulgent would you say it was opulent
yeah almost sort of like velvet it was it was no it was too down market to be
opulent it was extravagant without being opulent oh boy it was kind of outrageous
yeah presentational it had all the classic presentations of snoring.
Sure.
Yeah.
Would you say that it was Brechtian at all?
Wow.
Did you feel the V effect?
Its origins were not Germanic, no.
Okay.
I couldn't point to that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's a lot you can lay at the feet of the Germans, but this guy's snoring was not.
And no social conscience, I presume.
None.
None at all.
Well, Claude, if you need to go out the window, I'll take a bullet for you.
I appreciate that. I sense that already.
You exude a certain loyalty.
I will, but only in the arm.
I'm not going to take it in the guts
or something. No, not for me.
Not since I've seen that.
Elvis Mitchell, maybe.
Yeah.
Well, he associates with a better class of people than me.
He's running a classy operation.
Do you guys hang out?
We don't speak, actually.
That's for tax reasons.
He's an S corporation, and I'm not allowed to talk to S corporations.
Understandable.
Gotcha.
You'd move into another bracket if you said, what's up?
I would be paying, you wouldn't even imagine how much money in taxes.
You know that we're incorporated in Bermuda, right?
Is that going to be a problem at all?
I spoke to my attorneys before I came, and I think we'll be all right.
Claude Brodesserac.
Thank you.
Thank you.
It was great being here.
It was really a pleasure to have you, Claude.
Entirely mine.
What fun, huh?
What fun.
And informative.
That was the best part.
That was exceedingly informative.
Claude, you have a job besides the business, right?
I do.
What do you work for? Ad Age? Information Week?
I work for the Crane Corporation, such as it is.
The Crane Corporation?
It's Crane's business publications.
Crane Corporation just sounds like a corporation that covers up UFO landings.
I was going to say maybe a company that's owned by a superhero's alternate identity.
Yeah, there is a certain Iron Man kind of quality to Rance Crane.
But no, I work for Advertising Age.
Only in the sense that he shoots laser beams out of his hands.
Actually, it's the eyeball.
Oh, sorry.
It's really the retina is the focal point.
I got you.
Well, anyway, we're moving ast astray we were trying to talk about i work for advertising age and i cover
hollywood and sort of marketing of entertainment and marketing through entertainment uh which is
sort of an insidious phenomenon of the last i guess five six years or so isn't it interesting
that we've invited claude burrester aAckner onto Jordan, Jesse Go, and
now I'm accidentally interviewing him?
No, you know, I think your appearance kind of warrants a little bit of, you know, kind
of more classic interviewing.
I don't know, you're a little more prestigious than our other guests, who it's kind of fine
to goof around with, but I think you...
Oh my God.
You know.
We've had some
prestigious guests haven't we what about andy daly from the movie semi-pro sure my sister yeah what
about my house yeah from from your sister fame yeah yeah jordan's kid sister you know the one
who went to the john mayer concert sure you might remember her from such ages of mine as 12.
We actually just had Kent Alterman
on our show talking about SemiPro.
Oh.
He's an interesting guy.
Did he have anything interesting
to say about SemiPro?
Well, I mean, we talked.
I haven't heard that yet.
That was last week's podcast.
Oh, your podcast last week broke for me.
Ah, yes. It didn't work. It's Steve Jobs,, your podcast last week broke for me. Ah, yes.
It didn't work.
It's Steve Jobs, up to his old tricks again.
Jobs.
Sometimes the podcast gets caught in his black turtleneck.
We don't have the, me and Jordan, we're Zoom users.
Oh.
Yeah.
I'm out of here.
It got stuck somewhere on the way to my Zoom.
No, stay.
Stay on the couch and watch me rocket some songs up Jesse's Zune hole.
Yeah.
Squirt me some jams, Jordan.
Pump you some hot tracks.
What led you to purchase a Zune?
Zune cost $90 when I bought it.
It's absolutely as...
I've used iPods before and I like them a lot.
Well, a Dirty Sanchez runs $45,
but that doesn't mean you should run out and get one
from some Salvadoran
prostitute.
It's equally functional as an iPod.
I didn't have an iPod
for a long time because they're kind of expensive
and this one, it does everything
that my fiance's iPod does
totally just as well. Screen's a little bigger.
The thing's a little bigger, but I don't really care
and it was $90.
Wow. My original iPod
is so old, it's actually made from wood.
Oh.
It doesn't really have a wheel.
It's organic, though, man.
It uses Roman numerals.
It will biodegrade.
You have to hook a wax
cylinder into the back.
It's actually called i, comma, pod. Yes. That's how old the back. It's actually called i, pod.
Yes.
That's how old it is.
It's from Roman days.
It only played stride piano.
I actually had two iPods break on me, and in my trying to get them serviced,
both times had the guys at the Mac store genius bar be very rude and condescending to me.
Well, they're geniuses.
I know.
They don't have time to talk to you.
I know.
If you'd passed the exam, they would have spoken with you.
These are all people who received a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Gina Davis was actually sort of.
Yeah.
She was practicing.
Jodie Foster was there.
So, yeah.
So, my purchasing of Zune was a pretty direct fuck you to apple so right i think
i think they felt it i think they felt the shock waves from my zune buying i know i got letters
from them desperate please can you please somehow jesse i know you're ambivalent about apple can
you please get us in with just get us a a meeting with Jordan so we can apologize. We cannot afford to alienate Fuel TV.
It's true.
Oh, Apple.
Twelve-year-old skateboarders across this country are flinging their iPods away.
Now, before we, I'm just going to change topics here.
Fine, let's do it.
Blatantly.
I'm just going to change topics here.
I'm just going to talk blatantly.
Claude, you mentioned, and we've been talking about doing more topical material on the show.
Have we?
No.
God, no.
I didn't think we had.
We don't talk about the content on this show beforehand.
My presumption was that we had had that conversation
and I had forgotten it.
If you had told me that, yes, we had,
I would have gone along with it.
Well, I just wanted to segue.
Claude had some feelings about this kind of recent political sex scandal that's going
on, and I wanted to hear about it.
I want to hear about it, too.
I'm tired of hearing your iPod bullshit.
Sorry, geez.
It was more of a Zoom bullshit, to be fair.
I'm not really sure that this can be borne out completely, but what I find interesting about the recent Spitzer scandal is that it sort of plays into the sort of classic stereotypes of Republicans and Democrats, which is to say, you know, I don't know how many diamond, how many whore diamonds.
Here on this show, I don't mean to interrupt you.
Can I say whore diamond? Here on this show, we refer to them as, what is it, spendocrats and-
Redumlicans.
Redumlicans, taxocrats, demo, I can't remember what we call them.
Well, anyway, Kristen, I don't know how many whore diamonds-
That really paid off, didn't it?
Were you thinking of spendocrats
spendocrats and then there's a there's a republican one too though it's redumlicans
there's nothing funnier than that okay there's no funnier option you need to sort of assign
some sort of quality that's yeah it can't just be dumb it has to be oh refart refart licking
because republicans like farts yeah no they smell like farts. Yeah, no. They smell like farts.
Oh, God.
Okay, so anyway, back to whore diamonds.
But back to whore diamonds.
Please.
Back to the serious business of whore diamonds.
Wasn't Jaiman Hansu in whore diamonds?
She was the only...
Can I ask you a wait?
Jaiman Hansu was upset about who's better,
Jaiman Hansu or Chiwwatelejifor um and that's
that's entirely reasonable for him to have been upset but i don't think he ever gets to be upset
about anything anyone impugning anything about him ever again now that he's in this movie called
like punch fight or something have you seen previews for this movie? Neck kick?
This is what happens in the preview for this movie.
This guy's like, I do not want to be a... I'm not a...
He gets invited by some cute girls,
pass him a flyer out of a minivan,
inviting him to, like...
Never back down is the name of the film.
Never back down.
I was going to say, I think it's punch fight.
Okay.
It's not punch fight?
I'm pretty sure it's punch fight.
No, punch fight is the sequel to neck kick.
Oh.
What's a prequel?
Blah, blah.
Anyway.
I am a mess.
Anyways, the girls pass him a flyer out of the window of a sport utility vehicle.
He goes to a secret underground fight, and he does not want to fight Claude.
He absolutely does not want to fight.
I mean, look at me in the eyes.
This man is not a fighter.
I had the same thing happen to me.
Someone gave me a thing for oil wrestling.
Right.
And I, look at me.
You do not.
Do I look like someone who enjoys petroleum?
But you know what?
I hate it.
Claude, I'll tell you what you did,
and I'll tell you what this kid did.
He said, he doesn't want to fight.
You didn't want to oil wrestle.
You go to Jaimon Honsu.
He's got a graying goatee,
and he teaches you how to, in case claude oil wrestle in this guy's
case fight uh over the whole rest of the trailer until at the end he fights and that's the movie
apparently the movie is about how he is training and training and training for the last thing in
the world he doesn't want to do wow well netflix anyway put it in the queue jaimon hansu talk
aside so whore diamonds so um the uh the fourimon Hanzu talk aside. So, whore diamonds.
So, the four things you look for, first of all, on a whore diamond are clarity.
Clarity.
Luster.
Luster.
It's the four C's.
Oh, God.
You know what?
Never mind.
We're not going to talk about how to select a whore diamond.
But what struck me.
I know what one C's going to be.
Craftiness.
Yeah, craftiness. How crafty is your whore um what struck charisma what struck me about the spitzer thing is how everybody uh
involved sort of has their their stereotype ready to go so for instance let's jump back set the way
back machine a few months when this florida congressman, I love this, I think Bob Allen is his name.
He's a Florida Republican from, I forget where.
Florida.
From Florida, from Swampyton.
It's called Swampyton.
He gets caught offering a black undercover 20 bucks to blow him.
Right.
And so then you've got David Vetter, you know, senator from Louisiana, Republican.
And the most I think he's accused of having been spending on whores was about $300 an hour.
So you can sort of see already that the Republicans' approach to screwing around on your wife is always fiscally conservative.
Whereas the tax and spend Democrats, bleeding hearts,
$4,500 an hour for this prostitute.
So it just, to me,
it just reinforces the old stereotypes.
They should just remake that Howard Dean commercial,
those cappuccino drinking,
Volvo driving,
expensive prostitute fucking.
You would not believe
what the prime minister of Sweden
Pays for his whore diamonds
It is unbelievable
80% of the Swedish
Gross domestic product actually goes
To high class prostitutes
Well the problem is they go to Tiffany's
For their whore diamonds
And if you go to Tiffany's for your whore diamonds
You're paying for the name
You're paying for the little blue bag That the whore comes you're paying for the name you're paying for the name and that's you're playing for the little blue bag yeah yeah but the whore comes in i was actually watching i was
watching larry king it's a small whore that's why she fits in the little bag um i was watching
larry king and he was interviewing um her former pimp um i guess her former pimp has come out and
said he's her former pimp and I think the term is personal coach.
Right.
Excuse me.
Personal coach.
Be the best.
Yeah.
My personal coach is Paige Davis from Trading Spaces.
And he said –
Boise, Idaho, are you there?
Yeah, right.
And then he asked the guy, so you know is it unusual for to have a
congressman as a client he says no we've um you know it's not unusual and he says how have you
have you served uh rich or famous people that we may have heard of and he says yes i have larry
he's like will you reveal those names here it's like come on larry king is this even anything anymore as if it's a silver chafing dish
to be whisked open voila the names of famous whoremongers right yeah exactly and he has a
little towel over his arm when he's doing it just for fun keep track of how many times larry says
how about that that that is the whole show i like that you're on first name basis with larry you know
i'll tell you a true story um first of all larry king is complete peckerwood i believe it i i went
to business back when i worked for a tmz which is a website that needs no introduction i helped
right launch it about a year a little over a year ago and uh we should talk about that because
that's one of the worst things in the world.
Yeah, it is a soul-staining operation,
but with a lot of soul Purell,
you can have a healthy life.
But no, I say that I think... By soul Purell, you mean whore diamonds.
Yeah.
Ground up whore diamonds.
No, actually, I think they do,
for what they do, they do a great job.
I'm completely enamored of Harvey Levin.
I think had we 30 more of him, we would – all of Hollywood would be better for it.
But what do you think – I'm sorry to deter.
Wait, did you not say that if you had 40 more of the TMZ guy?
Yeah, of Harvey.
What about TMZ do you – is to you different or of a better quality than your defamers, your Perez Hiltons?
Well, I think it comes down to—
To be fair, they draw less cum on people's faces than Perez Hilton does.
That's why.
Considerable less ejaculate is scratched onto the photos.
That's certainly one principle defining quality.
Also—
I think it comes down to the media has has um
you can do this yourself if you're if you're online now and you're listening to this
is just go to google news and pick any topic that's just surfaced and the number of of sites
devoted to quote-unquote reporting the news and i use that i'm using the air quotes. I will confirm the man is using air quotes.
He also has a beard.
I say reporting with quotes because they're not.
They're re-reporting and really losing a lot often in the translation.
Despite the incredible growth of sites proliferating news,
the number of sites that do original reporting is shrinking.
To TMZ's credit, you may say, oh, well, it delves into topics that are whatever,
scuzzy or prurient or whatever.
But to their unending credit-
I would say inane.
Well, maybe.
But I mean, the marketplace doesn't lie.
You can't force people to go to TMZ.
It's not as if Time Warner is getting rid of AOL as a dial-up service.
You can't say, oh, it's just because they're on the AOL splash page.
People seek this stuff out, and it's no different than I think Romans and Christians.
It's absolutely no different than Romans and Christians.
I'm sorry?
Well, Christians and lions, I guess.
Oh, Christians and lions.
Two great tastes that go great together.
You got my Christians and my lions.
You got my lions.
Okay.
Those are old commercials, right?
But what the hell were we talking about?
How it is of a better quality than these other kinds of things.
Well, yeah, there's original reporting.
I mean, they are going out there and, look, we can have a speech.
They're going out there with $100,000 and buying stories.
Well, it's not often so much, I don't think.
Wasn't it recently $100,000?
Am I making up that number?
No, I think it was.
Wasn't there a big story that they had bought something for $100,000?
They bought some audio from the OJ thing, from the hotel room or something like that.
But, look i i think that
this we can get into a separate uh columbia journalism school discussion because on your
show i've heard your show before it's called the business uh and you oh i can't remember you ever
covering something that wasn't a thing that was had that didn't, I mean like you'll cover some things that are go like some moguls doing some
kind of mogul thing,
something like that.
Does the fact that there's a marketplace for this thing just justify it?
Absolutely.
I mean,
I just don't give a fuck.
I just hate it.
Well,
you're entitled to hate it.
You don't have to.
I mean,
that's why won't you let me hate this?
What are you going to force me to eat a tomato next?
I fucking hate tomatoes!
You eat this fucking heirloom right now.
No, I think that, and when I say had we 30 more, I'm not saying of TMZ,
but I'm saying guys like Harvey go out there, they don't give anyone a free pass,
But I'm saying guys like Harvey go out there.
They don't give anyone a free pass.
And so much of celebrity reportage for so long had been this sort of glorified analingus.
And he – Wait.
Here's the thing.
No, no.
Continue.
The man is talking about analingus.
That is a difficult thing to glorify as well.
And he goes out and he gets the original documents.
He gets – he has relationships with lawyers.
He has relationships with publicists.
He has relationships with cops. And he goes out and he gets the real story. I think that,
you know, that's the kind of journalism you just don't see practiced that much anymore.
But why does that have to be a binary between the analingus that you so eloquently referenced
and TMZ? Why can't there be things
that are about actual something i mean like i don't there can be but i mean the major news
i hate entertainment tonight too sorry the fred warts at entertainment tonight i feel bad if i
single it out i hate the insider listen and i i don't really begrudge people their entertainment
tonight i think you know an unceasing grind of we lost another four guys in Fallujah or we lost another four guys in Anbar province or whatever the hell happened.
I think you're entitled to see that.
The danger is the exclusion.
The danger is it's the same thing about the –
But that's what – here's the thing though.
It's when the diet becomes solely that.
That's when the republic's health is in danger.
Here's the thing, though.
It's when the diet becomes solely that.
That's when the republic's health is in danger.
The part that's creepy to me about it is not so much the fact that it's covering entertainment,
and entertainment is a light topic as opposed to a heavy topic.
It's the kind of personal— Well, I already disagree with you on that anyway.
We're going to get into that in a second.
Well, I mean, I—
It's the only thing we export anymore.
We don't make tires.
We don't make televisions.
We don't make semiconductors. We don't make semiconductors.
We don't make anything.
The only thing we make is entertainment.
And you're saying it's light.
I'm saying it's the economy of the United States.
Claude, I host the same kind of radio show you do.
Don't target that at me.
Go ahead.
We're the only two people covering these things in public radio.
Please don't put me in your crosshairs for that particular thing.
I'm giving you something else to put me in your crosshairs for.
I completely forgot what I was going to say.
I browbeat you into submission.
Yeah.
That's what I did.
I'm just crying now.
Come here.
I'll kick you in the testicles.
Yeah, just go ahead.
Take your mind off the emotional pain.
Help us.
Yes. Okay, I remember.
We're back into it.
It's not so much the...
I was going to ask you if you wanted to talk about the Super Smash Brothers.
I absolutely don't feel that entertainment does not merit coverage.
And that part is absolutely not.
No way. But what I don't like and what honestly kind of creeps me out and feels like weirder and grosser than that is the kind of like personal narrative of the things where people, celebrities' lives become this kind of continuous soap opera narrative
that doesn't have anything to do with anything other than their celebrity.
It's not about art that they create or entertainment that they create.
And that is the part that creeps me out.
I mean, if it was just people, if it was just coverage of –
and I feel like that's been the difference that i've seen in my lifetime
things have moved from you know there certainly was always celebrity weddings or whatever
but like that has become more and more the focus of entertainment news thanks to the kind of perez
hiltons of the world and that like it gives me the heebie jeebies. It just skeeves me out.
Well,
yeah,
I mean,
look,
I mean,
there's a,
there's an obsession.
A friend of mine works at,
um,
at us weekly.
Um,
and I,
I think I can say his name.
It's not like he,
I'm impugning his integrity here.
He's got Ken Baker.
And he said,
what does he do?
What does he do?
Seriously?
You're seriously fucking friends with Ken Baker?
Well,
Ken Baker.
I don't know who Ken Baker is. Ken Baker? Who Ken Baker? I don't know who Ken Baker is.
The Ken Baker?
Who is he?
I don't know who Ken Baker is either.
Well, anyway.
He's Claude's buddy.
Oh, okay.
We know each other a little bit.
So anyway, he said they'd done this focus group,
and one of the interesting things that came out of it was
they had all these housewives from Ohio into a conference room,
and they asked us to-
I'm surprised that they focus group us weekly.
I would think they were just following their muse.
It's stunning, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's in the deleted scenes from that Sharon Stone
movie.
Their original
intent was just to make a movie
about, I mean to make a
magazine about Albert Brooks and Albert Brooks
movies. I'm the king of the room.
And one of the things he said was that they love celebrity,
but they also love to see them fall.
And so you can fall TMZ and anything else that tries to be that.
And I think Yahoo has tried, sadly sadly with this OMG or what is it?
LOL?
Yeah, WTF.
It is one of those.
W-M-G-H-A-X-X-O-R-Z.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Oh, Yahoo.
Yahoo.
Yahoo.com.
Yeah, there you go.
That's what we were thinking of.
Internet.
Internet.
thinking of internet yeah so uh you can you can fault the um you can fault the makers of the sugary snacks and and the uh the salty you know heart-clogging food but like in the end someone
someone has to open their mouth and and guzzle that stuff down and you know i think that yes
that is true you're sort of abdicating people of personal responsibility. And I think used responsibly.
No, I'm asking the people who are creating things to accept personal responsibility.
Whether, I mean, there's this demand for that kind of stuff.
Sure.
And here I am sitting in this chair.
Like, you know, I mean, I guess it's's kind of it's not altogether important to the discussion
but i mean you know like people were concerned with the queen of england was seen you know with
a stable boy down by the dock you know it was i mean it seemed to just be a constant i mean people
were just concerned about her safety she shouldn't be down by the dock no it's true not when she has
bad humors yeah there could be brigands.
But yeah, I mean, I don't know.
She has a very phlegmatic nature.
Now we have the option of Photoshopping come onto their faces,
but isn't this just a thing that always goes on?
People like to speculate about the rich and powerful.
I'm not against people.
I obviously think people have the right to to look at this kind of thing i have
no i feel no need to you know like censor it or anything like that and i understand that there's
a commercial demand for it and where there's a commercial demand for it it's going to be filled
what i just wonder is like uh why not do a different thing if you that's going to be
like it's not like these people it's not like somebody who like a claude brodesser ackner Why not do a different thing if that's going to be like –
it's not like somebody who, like Claude Brodesser-Achner,
hasn't had relatively high-class gigs at your Variety and your Ad Age and your The Business.
Right, but keep in mind that you're ascribing causality, right?
You're saying that we make it, and by we I mean when I used to work at TMZ,
and then they buy it, then they come in.
And what I'm telling you is the opposite.
People want it, and then you wind up giving it to them.
It's not as if by making it you somehow suddenly create this passion,
you inflame these desires within the public,
and that previously they were just sitting at home with their their king's bible and their proust you know on volume
three but like my feeling is why not just i mean obviously i don't think i i'm probably going to
alienate some of our listeners just because but like because it's something you do on every show
yeah you try and do it once a show but i mean mean, Perez Hilton is a dipshit, right?
So why not just leave it to him?
He's a dipshit. He can do the dipshit thing.
Well, is he though?
I think that's sort of like saying
Barnum is a dipshit.
Like, you know...
Okay, if Perez Hilton puts a midget
inside a mechanical man
and makes him play chess, he's going up
a couple notches in my book.
I mean, I think, you know, there's Barnum with his tents and his peanuts and his elephants.
His iced cream.
Look, I'm not suggesting that Perez Hilton goes home and puts on a smoking jacket.
He does have a Fiji mermaid, though.
Just a monkey sewn to a fish jesse
sorry sorry to break it to you i'm not suggesting he goes home and like you know
has serious conversations about gibbon and the fall of the roman empire and you know
lights a big pipe or something and uh you know no but it's a small pipe well it's not an austin it's more of a it's
more of a pipette yeah well but you know regardless of whether it's a a corncob or something right
sherlock holmes-ish uh he does what he does and i guess my concern is not with the guys who publish everything from Shaved Schniz to Beaver Fever or – you name the prairie –
Asshole Monthly.
Yeah, or the journalistic equivalent of that.
It's rather that the major news organizations are totally bereft of any responsibility to serious journalism.
And you can even see it in the way they schedule, never mind how much they fund.
I mean, the bureaus are drying up.
I mean, why is it that 11 o'clock comes around and serious, thoughtful people turn to the
Colbert Report and to the Daily Show?
Do you think, and you're actually in a position to answer this question, being in a career, working in both broadcast and print journalism in the entertainment world, do you think that the kind of TMZ, Perez, Eltonization of celebrity news, the kind of explosion of Us Weekly and those kinds of things, do you think that in any way feeds change in the traditional media that's positive?
No, I don't think so.
But I also think that it has less to do with anything that Harvey Levin does
and far more to do with media ownership and consolidation of ownership.
I mean, I started covering media quite by accident.
I didn't have any particular hard-on for television or media or anything like that.
I had come back from China.
I graduated college in 94.
I had the same butt-wipe BA that everyone gets.
I wasn't a particularly fantastic student.
What college did you graduate from?
I won't even say the name.
It's part of the agreement that I never even associated with them.
Just because they've actually gotten much better since I left.
It's a really good school.
It would imperil their U.S. News and World Report ranking if my name would sully their reputation.
They are now the number three party school, thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you. Home of the dysfunctional rich.
Didn't we go to the number three party school, Jordan?
Well, it depends on which publication you read,
but our college, UC Santa Cruz, was often,
when they make those lists of the top ten X, Y, or Z schools,
it was usually in the top ten when it came to party schools.
The fighting vampires.
The thing you were supposed to say.
The funny banana slugs, actually, but I think that was definitely at least a sub-mascot.
I remember the Res Life people talking a lot about how when parents would ask you about
that if they were walking around or something like, you were a tour guide for a while, weren't
you, Jordan?
Yeah, me and Jesse both worked for the college.
I was a tour guide and we were both RAs.
You were supposed to focus on the methodology. You were supposed to focus on the methodology
and point out that while many of the other schools were on the list because of binge drinking,
in fact, UC Santa Cruz was on the list, most likely because of a higher willingness to report
and because of the fact that worth many more points than binge drinking was hallucinogens.
Right.
We were supposed to focus on hallucinogens with parents.
Right, yeah.
So while Chico State may have had 50 drunks, we just had five guys on mushrooms.
We just had that one guy, Andy, naked in the field crying with one shoe.
He never found his shoe again, by the way andy didn't that
puts parents at ease if they know that really it's a natural high it's just peyote exactly now your
kid is is just gonna basically god made it god made it it's the same as eating yuca and chicharron
you know it's just a cactus yeah you know what i'm saying basically So, Claude, you were saying you have your butt-white degree. And so I graduated, and I got a great education.
For the amount of time that I spent trying not to educate myself, not understanding, there are great teachers there and all that.
But we had a relationship with a school in China, so I'd gone to China.
I taught English in an oil field for a while. A Chinese oil field? But we had a relationship with a school in China, so I'd gone to China.
I taught English in an oil field for a while.
A Chinese oil field? In a Chinese oil field.
It was like, if you've ever seen pictures from the Mars rover, it was like that, but with pigs and garbage.
It was just an oil field in Oklahoma, Jordan.
Right.
And they just took us to this one Chinese restaurant.
It's you all.
Yeah.
You all. So anyway, I taught English at Shui You Dash Wei,
and came back indigent and wound up sort of just trying to get a job
and took a bunch of internships.
You had a really hard time finding any good oil fields.
Yeah, there were no oil fields really in Manhattan.
There is over on 10th Avenue a taxi stand where there's a considerable amount of transmission fluid.
Can I ask you guys a question?
Why is it that when I drive to the airport, I drive through an oil field?
What is that about?
Yeah, you feel like you're sort of an extra and there will be blood.
Yeah, it's like right in the middle of Los Angeles.
Oh, is this on like driving down Sepulveda to LAX?
Yeah, there's a giant oil field.
It's not giant.
Oh, okay, excuse me.
Yeah.
It's not giant.
It's like five derricks.
No, it's not many more than five.
I would say a hundred derricks.
I drink your milkshake.
That's the catchphrase from the film and we're out um
uh yeah so wait okay so in manhattan you have a variety of internships i know so i'm right i'm
abused by a variety of different people right i'm pimped out uh you know i i was i didn't even have
a hoard diamond i had a cubic zirconium. Oh!
Hello!
I would pay you to lick your car clean.
Great.
Anyway.
Good Woody.
Wait a minute.
Where'd Claude Brodesser-Eckner go?
Ladies and gentlemen, Woody Allen has joined us here.
Yeah, actually.
The sad thing is I'm actually doing an impression of my producer, Matt Holzman, doing an impression of Hank Azaria doing an impression of Woody Allen.
So it's a couple times removed.
Anyway, the point is I finally get my first paying job.
It's at Media Week magazine.
Not going to do it?
That was an impression of Woody Allen doing an impression of Dana Carvey doing an impression of George Bush.
Wow.
Tension city.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I get a job at Media Week an impression of George Bush. Wow. Tension city. Yeah.
So I get a job at Media Week, and it's 1996.
Right.
And basically Congress passes this thing called... Remember 1996?
Wow.
I know. Good time.
This is the time like, you know, Broccoli.com was launching the premier portal for the distribution
of broccoli on the web.
We just need $50 million.
That was a good portal.
So every intern can have an air on chair
and the new color true black true black by the way we have to tell npr to stop that's not the
new color that's been a while that that has been 17 years doing stuff color sit for less.com
featuring the new color can we do something else instead can we tell sit for less.com to come
holler at the sound of young America?
Because I will talk about true black until I am blue in the face.
The new color, Obama.
True black.
Right.
Right.
Anyway, so I get this job.
And it's 1996.
The telecom bill gets passed.
And basically every mom and pop broadcaster in America gets cashed out.
And the idea of local news basically evaporates overnight.
And you start seeing Jack FM starts popping up all over the place.
And this is...
That was more like 2004.
Right.
But it starts...
Jack FM-esque.
It starts in 1996 with a huge leveraged buyout firm called Hicks, Mews, Tait and First.
And they buy like 300 radio stations.
They owned the Sound of Young America at the time.
I'm not surprised.
But the
point is, they own everything. There is no precedent in the Republic for someone owning 300
radio stations. I mean, think about that. That's insane. This is a republic, for gosh sakes. For
God's sake. And, you know, that's where you wind up where there's absolutely no commitment to news
anymore, is when news is sort of shoved aside and has to compete on the same level as
entertainment. Entertainment, you know, you sell tickets, you make this much, you're good to go.
But here is, okay, so here's a question though. If you're arguing in favor of your TMZs.coms
because the market justifies them, do you feel that one of the reasons that news budgets have been slashed and so on is that people have decided to forego the prestige of having a quality news operation and broadcasting in favor of lowering costs because relatively fewer and fewer people watch television news particularly, but also other forms of broadcast news.
Do you think that the fact that the market doesn't justify that?
Does the road go both directions?
To my mind, the issue is not that the market justifies anything.
It's that the government has allowed the use of public airwaves.
It's like the biggest free giveaway in history.
And they're basically saying, even though most people get their TV now through cable,
the point is that the means by which they do...
I happen to steal my television
over a paid-for internet connection. By the way, that thing over there I think is catching fire.
You should probably unplug a few things.
Yeah. Anyway, we'll get to that in a minute.
Yeah, in just a second.
But I think that you're talking about market forces,
and I'm saying that pure markets obviously don't work.
I'm not a Friedman kind of guy.
I'm a Keynesian kind of guy here.
And what I'm suggesting to you—
You're going to talk about economists, Jordan, notable economists.
I'm just saying, I think that the market as it stands now,
yeah, it justifies itself in the sense
that that's what it's doing,
but it's not happening in a vacuum.
It's happening in a very specific context,
which is that media has suddenly become
concentrated in the hands of five companies,
and they're not interested in serious reportage anymore.
They're just not.
They're interested in profits.
I don't even know who owns The Sound of Young America anymore. For a while,
it was Motown Universal. I think it's the Sheinhardt wig company.
That's an illusion we can get behind, folks. We'll be back in just a second on Jordan, Jesse, go.
Love you, love you, love you Love you, love you, love you
Love you, love you, love you
Love you, love you, love you
Jordan Jesse Goh, I am Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
I am Jordan Morris, boy detective.
With us, the single most prestigious guest in the history of Jordan Jesse Goh.
One more time, one more time, give it up.
Your claude, your percuss progressive palms are like a warm bath
that's the warm bath that you're in we drew that bath for you more rose petals mr b.a by the way
should this cable be in this you're dead you died oh we killed claude brodesser will finally be famous. Yes.
Jordan, you just went to South by Southwest.
I did.
I just got back yesterday from SXSW.
It's a big music industry thing in Austin, Texas, where a bunch of bands play in a bunch of...
Like 10,000 bands.
10,000 bands, something like that.
And I still, and Claude, maybe as a showbiz insider you can tell me i
have no idea what the fuck it's for like why it's there it's do people sign deals at that like i
went with some business guys from my network and they didn't seem to be signing any kind of deals
anyway austin has always been this sort of strange city where you know music kind of
percolates up yeah i don't pretend to understand it. I don't either.
I understand it, but I'm not going to explain it to you.
It's not worth my time.
Too sleepy.
You guys aren't my guy.
If Matt Holtzman had asked me to explain it...
Then I could see doing it.
Sure, that's my guy.
And two kind of important things happened to me.
One was kind of a tender moment, and the other is kind of a realization.
And I'll start with the tender moment.
You were defenestrated, weren't you?
Yeah, I was.
Wow.
It was a powerful experience.
Anyways, we set up, I was interviewing bands there for my network, and one of the bands, it seemed odd when we got the request in, but NoFX.
I don't know if, Jesse, you're familiar with this.
Sure.
NoFX is a punk rock band, particularly popular with people between the ages of 12 and 16.
Yes, absolutely. And definitely when I came to know them was between 12 and 16.
And they're kind of the archetypal punk band in a lot.
You know, lots of songs about getting messed up and hating the president
and, you know, real by the numbers, but they do it real well.
Classic.
And also sometimes somewhat irreverent.
Why do 12-year-olds hate the president so much?
Yeah, I don't know.
Because he won't pass that anti-homework bill
yeah he keeps getting snared in committee yeah it does he won't use his veto power to
eliminate bedtime um or vegetables to make tgif every night of the week on abc
more step by step say 12 year olds anyway so
but I mean they were
you know when I was
nation 7th graders demand to hang with Mr. Cooper
when I was 13 they were just like
you know
the most important thing a 13 year old ever heard
like these guys get it
it's weird because when I was 13
the biggest band was Das effects oh really what's that isn't that spiggity spiggity special
check yourself i don't know what you guys are talking about i'm not gonna explain it to you
it's fine i'll just go to sleep so tell us more of this punk band anyways and uh so funny thing one and and they all have
they no one uses their original name everyone has their punk rock name in the band so another
archetypal thing about them um and the publicist who i was setting up the interview with and um
publicists all seem to be this one kind of hyper lady. And the publicists for the bands aren't necessarily from the subculture that the band is from.
The hip-hop artists don't have a hip-hop publicist, and the punk artists don't necessarily have a punk.
They're just like...
They're just this lady.
It might as well just be the same lady.
Hyper, well-dressed um she's 30 maybe a little
right yeah it'd be kind of funny if johnny rotten had like a janie mediocre who was his
yeah yeah um anyway so i was talking to her on the phone setting up the interview and she said um
now i think if you show up around nine after the sound check um we can get most of the guys
in to do the interview although um i might not be able to guarantee you smelly.
Which, to why I said fuck you, most of my questions are geared around smelly.
The whole interview hinges on smelly.
Yeah, it was a profile on smelly.
Jordan, how are you supposed to address the smelly situation?
I know.
smelly. Jordan, how are you supposed to address the smelly situation? I know.
Anyways, but I
met them and I interviewed
Fat Mike and El Jefe,
one of the two guys from NoFX
I interviewed. That's funny. El Jefe was
the name of my first El Camino.
Anyways, and I...
Maybe he named himself after my El Camino, is what
I'm saying. I brought it up.
And then he barfed, so he
didn't answer um anyways and after
it and you know there it turns out smelly isn't a member of the band it's just a name for el jefe's
bar i might not be able to guarantee you smelly he may not barf um and you know it goes kind of
as expected they say some some interesting things and I think they are actually pretty smart guys,
smarter than you might think.
You know, and then they swear a lot
and talk about doing coke
and, you know, some other stuff
that can't possibly be on television.
You know, and it's fine.
Because we've already won the war on drugs.
Yeah, exactly.
Now we're fighting the war on terror.
Yeah.
Hey, I'm trying to focus on the war on TMZ.com, please.
And then we move on to the war on bedtime.
I don't know.
I was trying to think of another 12-year-old thing.
Brussels sprouts.
There you go.
Thank you.
Thanks, CBA.
Anyways, but the real tender thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, Claude Burndesser-Ackner is here.
Thank you.
So afterwards, Claude, can we talk to Woody Allen?
Is Woody Allen here?
He's gone home now.
Anyways, afterwards –
It's actually Soon-Yi's bedtime.
Yes.
I'm going to read her a story.
Yeah, I'm going to have to tuck in her a rudge in his zone.
And I was talking to Fat Mike and he – I was like, thanks a lot for doing this
and he's like, yeah, yeah, you know what, thanks for the interview
you're real good at your job
and then I got to say, you know, you two
your band was real important to me when I was a kid and I'm glad to see you guys are still at it
and I'm not saying this to be cute or funny,
but I teared up a little bit.
It was, I don't know, real tender.
You're real good at your job.
I don't know.
What a nice thing to hear somebody say to you.
Absolutely.
It was real, you know.
And from someone, so anyways, that was lovely.
Jordan, you are good at your job.
Thanks, Jesse.
Well, that doesn't mean anything anymore.
You're not a punk rock celebrity.
You're way better than Fat Dracula.
Thank you.
Or Smelly Dracula, for instance.
Claude, just to fill you in on a little backstory,
Jordan's having a feud with another guy whose job it is to dress up in a costume
and do red carpet interviews.
That's Jordan's job on Fuel for the most part.
And the other guy is...
Not Woody Woodman.
No, but oh, I don't like Woody Woodman either.
I don't think...
Anyways.
Yes.
This is like going to do Hot 97.
I didn't realize there would be all these rap beefs going on.
There's beefs going down.
We actually tried to get...
It's funny that you mention that.
We tried to get Jordan and Fat Dracula in a room with Minister Farrakhan so they could squash it.
No.
Increase the peace, man.
What's Woody Woodman's deal?
Woody Woodman is this odd guy who does red carpets and he puts on this fake mustache and he kind of yells at celebrities in this odd voice.
And I'm always like right next to him and I'm like, and I feel bad for the celebrities.
I'm like, sorry, you have to do two joke interviews in a row.
Anyways, he's a little more caustic than I am.
Well, the real question is, why are celebrities willing to do joke interviews?
I don't, I think to shun the joke interview, you would look bad.
Let me ask you this question.
What brings you here, Claude Brodesser?
I don't know.
You know, I know. Only child.
Anyone who pays attention to me at all,
I just come around like a stray dog.
To be fair, I have been emailing you
every few days for the past six months.
I was going to say,
just get these guys off my back.
For God's sake.
Just for...
If this will stop the JPEGs of your penis,
Jesse.
Jordan, they were animated GIFs.
Oh, excuse me.
You answer one ad on Craigslist, and then you're screwed forever.
Sorry, you'll never get that hand job for $4.20 that you wanted for snowy $4.20.
It's snowing outside.
Anyways, so here's my revelatory thing that happened and i don't know if
i'm i'm late to the party on this but here is something that because i was kind of hanging out
with uh most of my hanging out uh happened with kind of the guys from work i was there with and
here is i think the the the plight of the modern man or the plight of of men of males
and it's we all need to get together as a sex and find a way to both have fun without trying to get
laid or alternately try and get laid without acting like a total dick because i was with two
camps of guys there's kind of the married guys,
and then there was the guys who were cruising
for poon or tail or trim or what have you.
Anyways, the guys who...
I'm sorry, are you talking about Beaver?
Yeah, Beave, Booch, Bonkers.
These words you're using.
Bevo.
I don't know them.
These are...
Barn?
Barn door?
Yeah, barn door and finally Volkswagen.
Anyway, so the guys, the merry guys were kind of dull and didn't...
Jordan.
Jordan.
Yeah, yeah.
Sure, Jeddah.
And...
Jeddah.
Jeddah.
Didn't really want to, you know, didn't really care about engaging people outside the group
and were kind of listless and, you know, wanted to turn in at 1030.
But the guys who were there to meet girls were insufferable.
It's like, yes, they were trying to have fun, but in the worst possible, you know, desperate.
The great unlaid.
Yeah, sure.
Like the most, like, obnoxious forced party animalness I've ever seen in my life.
Anyways, how do we do this?
Like how as men, when we go out, can we.
Wear a wedding ring.
Right.
But how do we have fun?
Like how do we have fun if we're attached?
But also how do we try and get laid without acting like dicks?
Three words, Jordan.
Dave and busters.
Am I right?
Am I right? Am I right? You you know the bloom and onion out there yeah yeah a little bloom and onion you trip to the fun zone
you're good yeah yeah i have my favorite thing to do with my pals is hit jimbo re
it's for babies jesse oh no wonder we get all those weird looks.
Two-for-one drinks, though.
Two-for-one jello shots.
Two-for-one drink boxes.
I don't know.
I don't know if you guys have thoughts on that.
It's just something I've been thinking about.
You know, it's funny.
I lost my wedding ring.
I don't mind saying it strictly by accident.
Because when I got married, I got married twice.
But my wife and I eloped the first time.
She surprised me on my birthday.
I was changing jobs.
We needed health insurance.
And I was also converting to Judaism at the time.
And now I'm converting to Islam.
As we're sitting here?
Is this part of it?
This is halal, right?
Yeah. The whole This is halal, right? Yeah.
The whole show is halal. So she bought my beautiful wife, Taffy, bought me as a surprise on my birthday a wedding ring, and we went to Vegas and got married.
And then you had health insurance.
And then I had health insurance because this is a crazy country where you can't go to a doctor unless you're married.
a doctor unless you're married. And anyway, so she bought the ring. And, you know, I guess no,
you can't really fault a woman for buying you a ring. But she bought what was what basically looked like a pirate's earring, like sort of a huge, I could hula hoop in this wedding ring.
Right. And so on the best of days, it's kind of, you know, swung around like a...
You know, you can get that adjusted.
You know, the funny thing was, I did.
I went twice.
Once I went to a place in Beverly Hills and they, you know, hammered it and sawed it and
soldered it and plasma, whatever they do to it.
And they...
Shot it with a gun.
They gave it back to me.
They rocketed it up my zoom and uh they gave it back to me and then uh you know uh it still didn't fit so i was
my lunch hour i was like oh i got all right i'll come back and it's just i i've been back twice
and now they say if you go back again it may not be able to cut the ring you can only the metal
gets fatigued so anyway recently i mono, and it's still so loose.
Anyway, it fell off.
It fell off somewhere in my house.
I just heard it.
I heard it fall.
I have not been able to.
It's like an alternate universe.
It's like a rip in the space-time continuum.
So now I'm not wearing a wedding ring.
I've got to tell you, it's a very weird feeling to be a married guy and not wear a ring.
Because when you wear the ring...
And to be Claude Bredesser Agner, I imagine.
Please, I've got to scrape them off my car in the morning.
Like barnacles.
Lust barnacles.
Please, ladies, please.
No, but when you wear a wedding ring,
it's like kryptonite to super chicks.
Yeah.
Stay away.
Yeah, no one of those super chicks.
That's half your problem right there.
They'll fuck you so fast you go back in time.
If you can get your posse to wear wedding rings, then yeah.
Okay.
But how do we get them to also be fun?
Yeah, that's what we're...
So if no one in the group is picking up on chicks, how do we also have a good time, I think, is the...
Bowling.
Yeah, have some activity, I guess.
You can't just hang out.
I don't know.
One word.
Quoits.
Quoits?
What's that?
Also known as lawn darts.
Oh.
Lawn darts are just...
I thought those were called jarts.
Really?
Yeah.
No.
I think so.
Only in India, maybe.
Okay. I did grow up in India. Those are junk darts, Jesse. I? Yeah. No. I think so. Only in India, maybe. Okay.
I did grow up in India.
Those are junk darts, Jesse.
I grew up in Mumbai.
Ah.
So.
Anyways.
No, I have some more things I could say about South by Southwest, but we should move on,
probably.
You know what?
We're going to move on to solo Jordan, Jesse, go topics in the next segment so Claude Bredeser
Ackner can take care of the aforementioned baby child.
Well, I'll do my utmost.
Gentlemen, it was a real pleasure.
Thank you.
Finally, the Claude Brodesser-Akner.
Thank you.
Yes.
I'll join in that.
Wave after undulating wave of praise.
Claude, can we get a preview of next week's Hollywood News Caravan?
You know, for that I would have to
leap into the future and tell you
Jordan's doing the music.
I thought it was South Park.
Something.
Star Wars.
I don't know. It's going to be a good show next week.
The CEO of Blockbuster will be on.
Oh, wow.
He's so bad.
But talking about his – is the business failing at Blockbuster?
It's slowly turning around.
Jim Keys was the CEO of 7-Eleven and he's been cutting costs like crazy at Blockbuster.
But we're going to talk about fun things happening with basically your entertainment future.
How's it going to shake out?
And he's going to spend time with us.
I don't know if you've done the interview yet,
but if you...
It comes on Monday.
Please mention to him that I went to my local Blockbuster
looking to run a copy of Point Break
and they did not have it.
Bullshit! Impossible.
They didn't have a Point Break.
It'll be my first question.
Lead off.
And then also just talk...
Just like this. Let me run something by you asshole
that's how i would start it i'm in professional energy do you want to jump or jack off mean
anything to you clearly it doesn't because you don't have a copy of point break and i'm just i
think that'll be the first question is you know my friend jordan went in to get a copy of point
break and um what can i say this proves that your business is outdated question is, you know, my friend Jordan went in to get a copy of Point Break. And what can I say?
This proves that your business is outdated.
Not only did you lose out on that $3.55, but no Twizzlers were sold that day either.
No.
All that reminds me of this.
Can I be your friend too, Claude?
Yes.
Yes!
Yay!
Friends, friends, friends, friends, friends, friends, friends, friends, friends.
That's all.
What have I done?
You opened up the gates to a hellish demon world.
We'll be back in just a second without Claude Rodess or Ackner on Jordan Jesse Go. Love you, love you, love you. Love you, love you, love you.
Love you, love you, love you.
Love you, love you, love you.
Love you, love you, love you.
Love you, love you, love you. It's Jordan Jesse Goh.
I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
I am Jordan Morris, boy detective.
Jordan, let me ask you a question.
Hmm.
Look in my eyes for a minute here.
Yeah, I'm doing it.
Do you want to go see the movie 10,000 BC?
Yes.
So do I.
Why do we have to have this conversation?
It seems unnecessary.
If only there was a way to have done that over the internet.
Yeah, well, Iwanttoseethat.com is the solution to this problem.
Oh, I forgot about that helpful website.
This is a great website where you tell it what movies you want to go see,
and then your friends tell it what movies they want to go see. So in our case,
I tell it what movies I want to go see. Big time Gene O'Neill tells it what movies he wants to go
see. Teresa tells it what movies she wants to go see. And then I look forward to the day when I
have $10 of expendable income that I can use to go to movies.
There you go.
That's what I'm talking about here, Jordan.
This is a nice website, Iwanttoseethat.com.
Absolutely.
There's forums.
You can post reviews of movies you've seen.
There's a podcast with movie reviews.
Jordan, I told people last week, I'm not going to add you as a friend on Iwanttoseethat.com
because I'm not just going to go to a movie
with anybody that happens to listen to this show
going to a movie, something for real friends
and in my view that's the difference
between Iwanttoseethat.com
and your Facebook or your MySpace
it's about actual friends who are your actual friends
in real life who you'd actually go to a movie to
Jordan you took the contrary position
I just want as many friends as possible.
And thank you to the half dozen people who friended me.
Keep them coming.
Yeah, well, can they just look you up by Jordan Morris?
I think so.
I don't know.
Yeah, look them up on the Iwanttoseethat.com.
We'll see how it goes.
I don't want any more friends.
Yeah.
In fact, just in life, I'm done with friendship.
Yeah?
I'm over it. All the'm over it all the way over.
Now that you've got CBA on your side. Yeah. I've got Claude Brodesser-Ackner and that is all I need.
It's just, if you've got, this is how it goes. If you've got a good dog, a good friend in public
radio and a good taxidermied squirrel, you are square for life. You're sitting pretty.
Congratulations.
Well, I should amend that, Jordan. If you've got a good dog, a good friend in public radio,
a good taxidermied squirrel, and a good website to find out what movies your friends want to go
see that you also want to go see and make plans for them to see them. Yeah, which one do you want to see taxidermied squirrel?
Squirrel the movie?
Not a movie.
Sorry, pal.
Oh, that wasn't really nutsy talking,
if anybody out there was confused. That's my nutsy impression.
We'll be back in just a second on Jordan, Jesse, go.
Jordan, Jesse, go.
I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
Jordan Morris, boy detective.
Jordan, that was probably the greatest thing that's ever happened to me.
Yowza.
We're friends with him now.
He told me I could be his friend.
You got permission.
I thought about passing him the note.
I haven't even given you permission to be my friend yet.
You haven't?
No.
I thought it was implicit.
No, you need expressed written permission.
No.
I thought it was implicit.
No, you need expressed written permission.
Oh, so this is sort of like replaying publicly a Major League Baseball game?
Mm-hmm.
Jordan?
Yes.
Can we be, will you, can I be your friend?
I will give it some serious consideration.
Wait a minute.
You sound like a radio station that I've called about the sound of young America.
I will.
I will give it some thorough, heartfelt thought.
What's wrong?
I don't fit into your key demo?
I'm just saying that my friend's schedule is packed right now.
I don't edit my interviews enough?
No, I'm just saying that you fill a very specific friend niche.
We'll focus group it.
I'll focus group you with my other friends so you'll go well hanging out with us
or hanging out before or after them.
Do you think I could hang out behind the one-way glass
so I could kind of get a taste of how I could improve?
Yeah, sure, absolutely.
Thanks, pal.
I'll bring donuts.
Don't jump into the pal thing just yet.
I can kind of jump in the gun.
Thanks, Mr. Morris.
I'll bring donuts.
Absolutely.
You're welcome.
What's your favorite kind?
Mine's a maple bar.
Old-fashioned.
Mine's old-fashioned old fashioned too That's good
I meant, you know, good old fashioned maple bar
Right
It's not a maple bar, but it's an old fashioned
Right
Well in the olden days
Maple bars were
Were round
And they didn't have any maple flavoring.
Jordan, can I tell you the real truth about what's going on with me right now?
Yes. What?
I'm having an emotional breakdown.
Really?
No, not really. On the relative scale.
Sure.
I'm lost.
What's going on?
Teresa went on vacation.
What? Come on.
I don't even know.
I have no-
Cowboy up, Jesse.
Cowboy up.
Jordan, I had no idea.
Now, let's be clear about this, Jordan.
I grew up in a very dysfunctional family where my parents broke up when I was three years old,
split time between them, had to become in some ways emotionally mature beyond my
years. And the result of that is that I'm a very independent guy. Sure. You know, people might
notice how emotionally distant I am from everything on this program. When I cry, you don't say
anything. No. In fact, one time I hit you when you cried. Yeah. It took me to cowboy up. Yeah.
So like I'm a really independent fellow, right?
Mm-hmm.
And I was really nervous to move in with Teresa when I did, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
I don't even remember what it was like not to, like I, three days, I mean, here's the
thing.
Like I've traveled a fair bit without Teresa because I travel sometimes for work, like
go to a conference or something like that. And Teresa's saying oh I miss you so much at home and I think it's
just because she's a one of those types a scrotum right you know like uh lacking sure yeah gotcha um
but I the past two days I can barely even get it together. Like yesterday, I couldn't even figure
out what to cook for myself. I'm the one who cooks. I cook much more than Teresa cooks. I know
how to cook relative to Teresa. Right. At least. But for some reason, her not being like, does she
make decisions as to what to cook? Maybe she does. I think she might. I think, I just ordered a pizza.
I didn't know what to do.
I seriously just like, was like,
oh, I don't know.
I'm going to order a pizza.
That was after I-
And then you slept in the pizza and ate the bed.
I was, I was going to order Indian,
but I couldn't find the menu from the Indian.
And then I didn't know what to do
what sounds like she's her being gone has made you dumb it really like yesterday to use the
internet did you not think to look it up no i didn't information i could have but i didn't i
didn't i ordered pizza because i found the pizza menu i didn't even really feel like pizza jordan yeah
i don't know what was going on yesterday i played marvel ultimate alliance for like three and a half
hours straight wow your character's must be pretty powered up then yeah i learned how to do extreme
attacks so that's one good thing about uh theresa leaving i didn't know i did fantastic fire with
the human torch making good use of your time yeah that really took care of uh mysterio good Oh, good. Teresa leaving. I didn't know. I did Fantastic Fire with the Human Torch.
Making good use of your time.
Yeah, that really took care of Mysterio.
Good.
Is that the name of the guy with the fishbowl head?
Yeah.
Mysterio?
Mm-hmm.
Okay, good.
Good.
Well, at least I have one thing under control, Jordan.
Yeah, I know.
For fuck's sake.
It's that Mysterio.
The only thing I have here is it's just me and Coco.
Yeah.
If Coco was in here, I don't know what, because who would I talk to?
You should not talk to somebody for a while.
Jordan, I don't know, dude.
Not talk to anybody.
All right.
I don't know if I can handle that.
I'm gone, Jordan.
I'm done.
When is she coming back?
I'm driving to San Francisco tomorrow to meet her there.
Were you supposed to do that, or are you just doing that?
I don't remember.
Holy shit, Jordan.
You just have it in your head that you have to get in the car tomorrow?
Do I have a car?
I think you have a car.
Which one's the faster and which one's the slower button?
Well, it's not.
This doesn't work like that.
There's a gas and a brake.
I guess that's what I meant.
Yeah, well.
You know, Jesse, just go lay down on the pizza and I'll finish the podcast.
Thanks, Jordan.
A little rest, it sounds like.
We're talking.
Is this not doing anything for you?
Is this not?
It helps.
Yeah.
We just talked to claude brodesser
ackner are you are you do you feel like you have your mental faculties back that means i i know
what i know now here's the thing jordan what i know that when claude brodesser ackner is here
i have at least one friend yeah besides coco one friend that's a person one non-dog friend
um are there things that, like, I mean,
this seems to be what I hear from people who cohabitate
or are married or something, is that they can, you know,
like, are there things that Teresa doesn't necessarily like to do
that you can do now because she's not,
like, are there shows you want to watch?
I masturbated a bunch of times,
but you can only do that so many times.
That's true.
And then you're done.
You've got to have a refractory period.
Exactly.
Wait, a refractory period?
Are you coming into a prism?
No, isn't that what they call it?
Refractory period, when your body's making more semen?
I don't know, maybe.
I think so.
Look it up.
I think that a refractory period is when you ejaculate into a prism and then it turns into a rainbow of ejaculate.
That's gross.
I'm looking up refractory period.
Refractory period.
It's a period of time during which an organization or a cell is incapable of repeating a particular action.
In this case, the cell is the wang.
Yeah. I have a single-celled wang, by the way.
I was trying to think of some joke to say that I have a big one.
Multicellular, but that doesn't even imply bigness. It's a multicellular penis. Like,
yeah, of course it is.
Yeah. Pretty much any animal is multicellular.
I just don't know what to do with myself, Jordan.
I couldn't, I had a hard time sleeping.
You know what I did, Jordan?
Brought out my security blanket.
What?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Man, you're a disaster area.
Brought out my security, not during the day, just in bed.
Oh, okay.
And I was going to sleep.
Well, as long as you're only carrying around your binky at night.
Okay, number one, it's called Cubby, not binky.
Excuse me.
And number two, that's why I have it in the closet in case of emergencies, like this.
In case of non-Therese.
Are you guys talking on the phone a lot?
Yeah, I talk to her a couple times.
But, you know, she's only in New York for a weekend because her friend beat cancer.
And so she went to the beat cancer. She's going to the beat cancer party sure um and so she's got
a lot of like friendship to do all her friends live in new york because she went to sarah lawrence
for college so all her college friends live in new york so she's got a lot of friendships related
activities to do uh and doesn't have so much time to talk to me about something that i'm thinking
about bidding on on ebay right which is mostly what i want to talk to me about something that I'm thinking about bidding on on eBay. Right.
Which is mostly what I want to talk about.
Or your refractory period.
Yeah, exactly.
So far, this is what I've accomplished in the past three days.
Okay.
Okay.
I bid on something on eBay.
I went to dog class and I had to have a friend at dog class.
So I asked you to come to dog class with me.
Gayest thing we've ever done. Yeah, it was really gay, but it was pretty fun, right? Yeah, it was great. It was real fun a friend at dog class so I asked you to come to dog class with me. Gayest thing we've ever done.
Yeah, it was really gay but it was pretty fun, right?
Yeah, it was great.
It was real fun.
I like dog class.
Talk Coco come and how to eat a treat without biting.
Yeah, gently taking a treat.
That was the skill that she learned today.
And then we should mention we got a certificate.
Well, Coco got a certificate.
No, it says I didn't learn anything.
Well, my name is on the certificate. Well, got a certificate. I didn't learn anything. Well, my name is on the certificate.
You and I didn't get anything.
Technically, it's Coco's certificate.
Anyway, so I did dog class.
You're not the one who learned cum.
I went to a couple of thrift stores.
That's cool.
I bought a sport coat to sell on the internet.
Okay.
That's it.
No, I went to an estate sale how that going to estate sales and thrift stores is the only thing i'm capable of doing by myself
yeah that's literally it because theresa doesn't like to go with me particularly there you go so
i went to some isn't that a positive you got to do some of that stuff you like you got to play i
don't imagine theresa likes you playing video games.
That's true.
She's not crazy.
She's not against them, though.
No, right.
She lets me go do my estate sailing as well.
Yeah.
Sometimes she even comes just because she wants to spend some time with me. But you didn't have to manage it.
You didn't have to manage the time of day or anything.
You could just go when you wanted to.
Yeah, that's true.
I didn't have to be sensitive to her study schedule at all.
There you go.
You got to be real loud.
Yeah.
Got to be loud around the house.
Yeah, I finally got to play my kettle drum.
There you go.
Yeah, no, I mean, you guys are getting married.
You need to like, I don't know.
And I don't know if she's going to be business tripping around.
Here's the question jordan yes is it important that um is it important that i it does the fact that i'm
gonna get married mean that all of this is a moot point what do you mean and thus i should i should
just surrender any uh solo identity that i may have right now and just be resigned to the fact that from this point on,
I will only have couples, friends and you. Yeah. Until you're eventually in a permanent couple and
then you can be couples, friends with me and Teresa. Sure. Um, or does this mean that it was
this disastrous because I'm going to get married, that raises the stakes.
You see what I'm saying?
I don't know.
It seems to me like maybe the healthiest relationships are ones where you can kind of manage your time apart, like you know how to do that.
time apart like you know how to do that you know um because you know that the the ones where you you know are just 24-7ing around that i don't know that seems like that that's that that gets
weird quicker i i don't know but but but the times where you each have kind of designated
a part time or like you know or more business trips or anything you know i i you know i think
it's it's nice when you know you have to go away for work for a little bit,
and then you come back to your person and then have all that new experience.
I don't know.
You know what I always say?
What do you say?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
There you go.
It's a cliche for a reason.
Can I tell you something really important?
Yeah.
This is just another thing that's going on in
my life uh leslie nielsen just kicked the shit out of liam neeson nice i i didn't uh i didn't
imagine it would go any other way leslie nielsen 58 to 41 in the leslie nielsen versus liam neeson
poll we had going we had so many phone calls this week so many people called in with their um
We had so many phone calls this week.
So many people called in with their, particularly our action item, putting together a local jingle mixtape.
Has just been a rip-roaring success.
So many phone calls, and we had to get Claude in here, and I got to go out of town.
So we're skipping calls this week, but we got some good calls that we're saving for next week. Oh, if we don't play one of the calls, I think there's something that needs to be clarified.
Last week, the caller called in about having the sex dream about me.
I think we all remember that.
We talked about it as if she said that I was.
How did we talk about it?
She had said that you were gentlemanly, but, we heard, not very efficient about it.
Sure.
Or, yes, not efficient about it.
Right.
And I made the argument, I'm sorry if you want efficient sex.
If you do, I'm not your guy.
Right.
Because I'm an artiste.
As it turns out, many people have informed us.
We just misheard that.
Sure.
You guys get a cleaned up version of the audio when you hear it.
Ours sounds even worse than it does.
On the podcast, which is bad.
On the podcast, which is pretty bad.
She actually said that you weren't a sissy about it.
And I'm going to, and I, you know, one more correction. I am actually a sissy about it and i'm gonna i'm and i you know one more correction i am actually a sissy about it
i will have sex while wearing um you know short pants and uh i have a lolly yeah usually it's a
lollipop one time a girlfriend of yours uh uh told me more than i wanted to know about your sex life
while she was uh drunk we were at a party yeah And yeah, you are sissy about it from what I understand.
I put my hair in ringlets.
Yep. Absolutely.
And I pout. I pout if it's not just the way I want it. And I will call them mama while
we are having sex. So sorry to disillusion you caller. Yes, I will be a gentleman, but I will absolutely be a sissy.
And since we're...
In the sack.
Since we're not taking any calls this week,
I don't want to open it up to too many new topics of conversation,
but I want to open it up to this one new action item, Jordan.
Yes.
It was prompted by me thinking more and more about the woman
who had a sex dream about you.
Okay.
I want to know who you've had a sex dream about.
The audience.
The audience, not you.
I'm speaking to the audience through the medium of podcasting.
Yeah.
Who have you had a sex dream about?
And obviously, I'm most interested in unusual right people if you've had a sex dream for
example about bob vila you know that's a doozy if you've had a sex dream about your science teacher
yeah and i i would actually like love to hear instances where you've had the sex dream and
then actually got to have the sex oh wow if that's
brilliant how did it stack up i'm guessing there's going to be less flying
um so uh yeah we'll we'll leave it at that we'll be back in just a second on jordan jesse go
it's jordan jesse go jesse Thorne, America's Radio Sweetheart.
Jordan Morris, Boy Detective.
Jordan, let's wrap things up, shall we?
Why not?
I'm going out of town.
The next episode of this show might be a little bit late.
I'm not sure.
We'll have to figure out when we can tape next weekend, that kind of thing.
But we're very excited to have you listening to this week's program,
The Peak of the history of Jordan,
Jesse go.
Yeah.
So thanks and enjoy,
enjoy our decline and mediocrity.
We are looking forward to disappointing you for years to come.
We are going to keep at this and it's just going to keep getting worse.
Yeah.
Is we're on a slippery slope to nowhere,
Jordan.
Yep.
Action items this week. The only new action item we're adding to the pile and we're on a slippery slope to nowhere, Jordan. Yep.
Action items this week.
The only new action item we're adding to the pile,
and we're still taking, if you've got some ideas for the $20,
we've got some interesting ideas that we'll talk about next week, etc., etc.
The new one is, who have you had a sex dream about?
Have you ever had a sex dream about someone particularly interesting? And Jordan's addendum which is jordan i'll allow you
to present it have you had the sex dream and then actually gotten to have sex with the person and
then how did they stack up exactly so uh um the lady who called in earlier have you fucked jordan
yet um there's a website have you fucked me not? Have you fucked me not?
So you make an account.
You tell it what people you think you may have found it while you were really wasted.
When you were drunk and during your blackout period.
You list all the people that you uh went out to dinner
with and then woke up in their bed the next morning and if they also click that then you
know you fucked them also there's user reviews a podcast have you fucked me There's some really nice moba-sodes.
Our theme music, Love You by The Free Design.
It's available on the best of The Free Design from Light in the Attic Records.
You know, back in business, Brian Lane?
Yes. He posted on the message board about how he finally got around to buying the best of The Free Design
and how much he fucking loved it.
It's great.
I have it, too. It's loved it. It's great. I have it too.
It's really good.
It's really cool.
If you just casually put it on in the car, it blows people's minds.
Yeah, people cannot believe it.
They're just like, this is amazing.
What is this?
Yeah.
This is unbelievable.
This is alarming.
Alarming.
Totally fantastic.
Oh, Jordan. Yes. What? alarming totally fantastic oh jordan yes what i don't think we've even mentioned on jordan jesse
go yet that we're doing jordan jesse go live yeah we are yeah so if uh i forget when and where i if
you go to maximumfund.org and click on live you can find it along with the other uh sound of young
america presents shows but uh we're doing it i believe the date is saturday april 12th in amherst
massachusetts at umass amherst it is totally free and open to the public we're doing it, I believe the date is Saturday, April 12th in Amherst, Massachusetts at
UMass Amherst. It is totally free and open to the public. We're going to try and get it together to
put together some kind of a meetup on that, maybe that afternoon or something like that.
We're trying to sort out details of that on the message board on the maximumfund.org slash forums.
And yeah, we're going to do half an hour of Jordan Jesse Go. It'll probably go down like a lead
balloon. We'll see. In order to say, if you have
any ideas of features you would like
to see in the live show, feel free
to post those on the message board.
There's a lot of other cool acts that are involved
in it, including Team Submarine.
I think they're headlining the night
that we are, the night that we're
performing. You may have heard Team Submarine
on the Live in Chicago issue episode of the sound of young america really fun uh very funny young
comic duo it looks like uh it looks like it's going to be a lovely uh couple of days of comedy
yeah two two two nights of comedy it's all totally free it's all put on by uh this thing called
student valley productions at umass amherst they have this seriously at umass amherst they have
free improv every night of the week.
Isn't that crazy?
It's pretty crazy.
Maybe it's every week.
The point is they have really super crazy regular shows.
They actually do stuff,
and then they go on to achieve things.
How novel.
In that sense, it's sort of an anti-UC Santa Cruz.
Yeah, yeah.
We definitely, Jesse and I,
put on our fair share of improv shows at UC Santa Cruz,
and it was always kind of an uphill battle finding a place to perform.
Getting somebody to do something.
Right.
Even if they're already on your improv team.
Something non-drum circle related.
Anyway, they're like, man, I just got these mushrooms.
And I ate them.
I already ate the mushrooms.
But yes, sounds like a neat event.
Hopefully we see some of you out there.
Yeah, and we'll be saying hi, and like I said, we'll try and put together a meetup or something.
Anyway, we'll see you next week on Jordan, Jesse, Go.
Bye.