Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of Carmen Electron.
Oh sorry, do we not do the German voice for Carmen Electron?
Is that how you think Germans would say Carmen Electrone? I'm Jack bat over there. Well that's Blake what and he will be talking in his spot on German accent of the entire Utin talk. Oh that was actually good, Blake.
It was.
We started talking about uh, Carmen Electra earlier, because it's kind of a roundabout the way we got here. We're talking about people with fake girlfriends from when we were in uh, when we were youngsters in our relative scouting troops or or parent paramilitary police organizations. Neither of us were in a paramilitary police organization, but we'll have to know. Brian the editor on one time to tell that sig cute,
too cute and I had flat feet. Yeah, But anyways, we were talking about that and somebody was like, yeah, they made up their girlfriend's name like Carmen Electra, and I was like, Carmel Electra is actually too good of a name for a kid to come up with, Like,
that's that is an amazing name. Whoever made that name up is a genius, and we learned it was none other than Prince who met Carmen Electra as so I'll just read directly from I don't know the name of the website I found this song ta Le Wikarpedia, Wikipedia. Tara Lee Patrick is her name. She was Prince's muse and it was the Purple Rand singer who gave her the name Carmen Electra. Talking to Vanity Fair, she said she met him at his home when she was a teenager.
After Robin Power. But I have to assume Prince also named spotted her in a nightclub in La What a weird life that would be that somebody spots you at a nightclub as a teenager, like presumably snuck in with a fake ID, and somebody named Robin Power is like, hey, could I take you to Prince's house? And then Prince says, hey, this amazing magical combination of syllables is your name, And you're like, okay, and that is the name you go buy from then on?
Yeah, this is my friend Isabelle Thunderstrump. Like also, just so you know, it's everyone has a sick name here.
That's incredible.
I bet he spent no time on it. Too, Like I think that's just an off the top of the hell yeah, like one of his many skills. I would imagine he could just do that so quickly. Carmen Electra, Carmen Electra.
I bet he like did it, Like, didn't even say I'm going to make up a name for you, you know. I bet he was just like, your car just started calling her Carmen Electra, and it was like, that's your name, now, just go with it. What else could her name be? Terror Electric? No, her name could be Tara Lee Patrick. A worse, worse job by your parents there, Carbon Electra. Yeah, pretty sure that that should have just been his job in a in a just world, that's what he would
have done for a living. Is just named all babies.
And you know, and this is why we're fucked. This is why we're like music and.
We are fucked. Yeah. So obviously there was a horrible tragedy.
A obviously would be my name if obvious, well obvious, welcome, obviously.
Horrible tragedy when a black Hawk helicopter collided with a American Airlines flight that was going in for landing at Ronald Reagan Airport. I think we can just go ahead and blame Donald Trump for the thing, not just because that's one hundred percent what he would have done if he weren't in charge, and what he did, in fact do to Biden just a true profiles encourage. As the bodies are being pulled out of the Potomac, he called a press conference and immediately started blaming Joe Biden, the
past administration, and de color. So yeah, yeah, people of color. But in fact it was he who just froze hiring air traffic controllers. It is a you know, we we've talked on past episodes how this was inevitable, specifically that there is like a shocking rise in near collisions, near mid air collisions or like collisions in your at airport, yeah, near missus. For the past few years, people experts have
been and sounding the alarm. But the Biden administration had tried to, you know, ramp up the hiring of you know, in response to people saying this is a fucking disaster in the making. They had ramped up the hiring of air traffic controllers. And then you know, Trump basically froze
all hiring. But like people seem scared to like this is kind of wild, like a CNN employee tweeted something to the effect of, like, you know, blaming Trump for the collision, and then took it down and wrote, I fucked up, which just to give you an idea of like what's it like to be in the mainstream media
right now? They seem to be scared as hell of Donald Trump, despite the fact that the thing that he posted was a screenshot of a press release entitled Trump's Dangerous freeze of air traffic control hiring from eight days ago. But she's He's like, I better not post that. That's too too tramming. Yeah, the president wouldn't want that. So there hasn't been a serious commercial plane crash in sixteen years, but as mentioned, tons of close calls, usually involving aircrafts
nearly colliding with one another. We talked before about a New York Times investigation from twenty twenty three that found that there have been just loads of these that many of which had not been made public, but that report made them public and experts were like sounding the alarm.
But I guess the number of near accidents had more than doubled compared to data from a decade earlier, and the reason for that was a number of things having to do with nationwide staffing, shortage and underfunding and all the problems that this system for organizing a civilization is causing that we're seeing everyone where. I'm sure there will be a way that we can blame it on private equity at some point.
It's just a matter of time. I can't imagine why. Maybe this is something to put throws some money at, you know what I mean, like airplanes colliding in the sky. I think the stakes might be high enough to you know, up that salary a little bit, maybe actually give these people benefits. You know, I'm assuming they don't because why why would anything be make any sense? But yeah, it's it's horrifying.
Yeah, it feel it feels like there things are going to get as bad as they possibly can. Like that that's just you know where like with this administration, and I feel like with this administration and like the media being in the position that they are where like everybody's just kind of pulling their fire or just like kind of going along with everything, like they'll be able to
get pretty bad. I mean with the RFK hearings happening as we're recording this, and you know, this being example of just like these systems that need to function, that are complicated and require a bunch of funding. These are all things that like need to happen on a day to day basis to like keep our society functioning and
like operating. If those things stop, which seems like they're going to or already have in this administration, then it's gonna be it's gonna be bad, and we're gonna start seeing shit like this, and I don't know, yeah, but hopefully it like causes some sort of resistance that I just can't quite see where that's coming from. Right now?
Do you remember that really weird plot? Did you watch Breaking Bad?
Yes? I did.
I I would say a flawless show except for this one bizarre plot line of like the air traffic controller being the dad of like Kristin Ritter and then like falling asleep and then that weird like it was. I would say not a on a scale of one to ten on like a nearly perfect show as far as it being a bizarre plot line. I'm like, on a normal show would be like a seven or and eight, but on that show, or like a two or three, but on that show, it's like a eight or a
nine because the show is so perfect. But I just remember watching that and I'm like, wait, what the fuck? Yeah, why did that happen? Just yeah, bizarre thing I did.
I actually liked that plot personally, but just such an asshole. I'm such an asshole.
I hated the way it ended personally the whole show. Yeah, yeah, I didn't finish. I didn't watch the finish the final season. I was bored out of my fuckingly. No, no, no, of course I watched it. I like the whole Walt plot, you know, the whole time. I just would fast forward through the Walt parts. And I like the Purple Lady. The Purple Lady, Yeah, oh yeah, yeah I do. Actually I did really like her. I was speaking with a tone, but I did actually really like her.
I thought it was good up until the second or last. I have a loose fan theory that I've talked about before on the sh so I won't get into it, but that he the whole last episode is him just imagining it because it doesn't like everything just went exactly the way he would want it to. It was like suddenly, like Walter White wish fulfillment.
Interesting.
So just back to kind of where we're at and like what you know, what we saw coming, like what everybody saw coming. The Biden administration tried to get funding to hire more air traffic controllers. There was this FAA Reauthorization Act of twenty twenty four, which passed both the House and the Senate, requiring the FA to set maximum
hiring targets to increase air traffic controller staffing. But the bill also contained a measure specifically allowing for more traffic at Ronald Reagan Airport, which is one of only two airports in the US owned by the government, and opponents of that measure pointed out that this would mean dangerously overloading the airport's operational capacity to benefit one airline. And
so I don't think it was American Airlines. I think it was Delta, but like a Delta funded pack basically got that thing inserted into the legislation so that it was allowing for that airport to be overloaded with flights so that they could make more money in so that politicians could you know, they were on board with it, probably both because of the Delta pack but also because it allowed them to fly home more easily, like more
flights out of Washington. Interesting yeah, it's remarkable that Trump immediately went up and started putting the finger that like as the tragedy was unfolding. But like both parties, you know, they pushed through that bill with the overloaded Reagan thing in there. But yeah, the helpful part of the bill was essentially eradicated by Trump's illegal hiring freeze, where he
was immediately like stopped all federal funds on things. And on top of that, as soon as he took off, as he fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and Coastguard before their terms were up, and eliminated all the members of a key aviation security advisory group. So you know, just all the big swing and dick fire everybody.
You don't get funding unless you agree to spy on my right to literally kiss my ass and spy on people for being too diversity that it turns out, shockingly came back to bite us all in the ass. So still very early, but just a horrifying situation all around. And really, yeah, it's just like a race between how bad he can be at his job and like how much power he can grab before it becomes evident to everybody that like he's a failed leader who is going
to kill a lot of people. It seems like the situation that we're.
In, and how quickly he because he called the press conference to do it, where it almost reminds me of like a child, you know, like you walk into the room and the kid just goes nothing, and it's like, wait, what did you do?
What did you do? What you do?
What you're doing? In this case, Yeah, he fired all the people who were in charge, and that's funding away from preventing disastrous like this.
All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back, and we're back. Well. Ai the world of ai, and what goes around comes around. News open ai is complaining about being plagiarized by the Chinese AI model deep Seek. They're saying that deep seek used open ais data unfairly and without compensation, and that's not fair. Okay, that's wrong. This is a headline from four oh four Media open ai furious deep seek might have stolen all the data
open ai stole from us. Obviously hilarious considering that open ai is essentially powered by plagiarism. It's made by out of plagiarism to help the seamless plagiarizing of things. You know a plagiarism engine. Yeah. One report from last year found that sixty percent of open AI's GPT three point five outputs contained some form of plagiarism.
Sixty percent was how couldn't it? How could it not?
It's just remixing existing content.
No, it's learning.
Yeah, you hate to see it, folks. You really do love being in a country where I'm like openly rooting against the everybody in power because they're so bad and going to just make things worse and worse. Yeah, how is.
Deep Seek the good guy? I don't want to root for deep Seek. It don't make me root for deep Seek.
Yeah, it's pretty frustrating, pretty bad situation. Are you a white Lotus person? You're a white Lotus fan?
Blake, I am. I love I love it and I'm psyched for Goggins. Baby, I'm a huge Yeah.
So they just I'm like big Goghead myself, Like the Goggins and Vice Principles is like one of my favorite characters of all time.
A very underrated show, very funny. Yeah, it's great.
For people who don't know it's Goggins. The Danny McBride in just one of the most unhinged shows like Righteous Gemstones, but it's about vice principles, but in a school, yeah, in a school.
Yeah.
Yeah. Anyways, we got two big trailer HBO trailer drops in the past couple of days. One of them is White Lotus Season three, which looks about like what I would expect from a White Lotus in Thailand. My one note of caution, I don't know if that that doesn't make sense. But the one thing that I wasn't saying, Walton Goggin seems to be playing someone who's like just like kind of exhausted, and I feel like I like
him when he's got a little verve to him. You know, he's got a little uncle baby Billy, he's got a little uh, you know whatever his character's name was, and vice principles.
If you can take away that guy's charisma, you got it. Do you gotta do it?
Exactly? That's what I'm saying. Like he's playing like a rich white guy who's like tired, and I'm just like, I don't know, like that's those guys are the fucking worst, Like I'm so tired of That would be my one problem with like past seasons is like there they are. They do have a bunch of really boring, insufferable people at the middle of it. Some of them, it's pretty I don't know, you're like, oh, I do know that person, and that is an incisive dissection of that type of person.
Yeah, it is funny. Or oh if if he was able to make a neo Nazi in Justified likable, you know, like he might be able to do it with a rich guy on vacation.
Yeah, I think I still left.
And they're both pretty bad. Yeah, and some are the same.
Mm hmmm, Sorry, I needed my fruit.
You need listen. Never get between Jack and his fruit.
Don't get between me and my mango. Did you ever get.
That advice as a kid. My wife and I were laughing about this the other day, where like our moms, it gave us like very similar advice about being safe around dogs. Where one makes sense, it's like, never touch a dog when it's eating it's food is one where it's like, okay, I can see that. But then there was another one where my mom was very seriously like, never ever touch a dog's tail, And I like don't
know what the thinking was behind that. So I think until my late twenties, I would just like you can't. Even if you're petting a dog and it's friendly, you touch that tail, that thing will flip. That thing will get rabbied immediately. And it's like, I guess you can just touch a dog's tail. It doesn't.
It's like a little Rabies switch. You didn't know exactly. Yeah, it's a lever. We didn't have dogs growing up because my little sister had a phobia of dogs, and so we just never had them, and my parents I didn't know they existed. I got out into the adult world and I was like, what the fuck is that? Yo? What is so good? God sing? What is on that belt? Your character? What was on that extremely large belt thick string? Yeah?
The only the only dog advice I had gotten entering adulthood was to let sleeping dogs lie, yeah, which was usually given to me by priests for some reason.
I don't know if I remember about saying that. And this was after you were diagnosed with having the dog in you.
Yeah, yeah, I have been that dog in me. Unfortunately, the dog is very sick and docile. It's just the dog I had ready always rolls over and shows its stomach to other dogs. The dog guy got in me. Yeah, yeah, that was my last dog was really cute guy, the eyes facing in like just all different directions, just a complete mess, wheezing all the time. But the land Speed records, he would say Finny was his name in rolling over and showing his belly to anything and anyone and any
dog was really kind of remarkable. He was just like, Hey, you're gonna want to see this. I love that Finny boy rip to a real one. And finally we got Quentin Tarantino, who gave a talk at sun Dance. I guess this is around the time that his he he had announced that his final movie was going to be called The Critic. He's going to be about a film critic who he liked writing film criticism in the late seventies,
and then he was like, nah, fuck that. And now he just like gave a sun Dance interview where he claimed that movies haven't been a thing since twenty nineteen, basically saying like the pandemic allowed distributors to shorten the windows between theatrical release and home video releases, but he's taken that to be like, and therefore none of these movies count. They're not real.
They're long specials that They're specials, is what they are. They're not movies.
I think we need to fight for movies personally, Like I feel like streaming content for the most part is fairly disposable and movies are like better, And there's still an appreciable difference between the two for me, like movies stick with me and streaming content just like never really sticks to me other than like a handful of shows like The Wire and some seasons of Breaking Bad. But in the real world, Yeah, the real world, did you say?
Yeah? Yeah, of course, And I burnt through that this week, the whole all forty eight.
I'm caught up on the real world.
Yeah, I'm ready for the next, the next one. I actually never I don't think I've ever watched it, but I yeah, when it comes to streaming, it does stick with you because you don't have more of it, I guess, like because it's as if like, Okay, I met these people that I really liked I'm talking about like movies, and then like I don't get to see them ever again.
And then with series, especially if the whole like multiple seasons are out, it's like, oh, I get to keep hanging out with these people over and over and over again, and then by the time they leave, it's like, all right, well.
I was ready for them to leave halfway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's particularly funny take given that twenty nineteen just so happens to be the last year that he released a movie. Hmmm, So which one was that? Is the Hollywood one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Lifetimes Hollywood, Hollywood Forever, forever, Hollywood Nights, Hot stays in Hollywood Nights.
You should bring back movies. Tarantino a guy who bought a fucking movie theater.
No more movies. He now says that he's working on a play instead of making the final film he's been talking about for years. So they maybe we're gonna cut out at nine. But I don't know. Uh, that's all I got, man, I don't fucking know. Uh. Bad day at bad bad times in this country.
But at least Quentin Tarantino's writing a play.
These Quentin Tarantino's writing a play. So that's something we can all think. I'd see a play written by him like his His dialogue is entertaining.
And with live rounds and whatever whatever he's gonna do keep things interesting.
Yeah, all right, well, those are some of the things that are trending on this Thursday, January thirtieth. We are back tomorrow with the whole lest episode of the show Blake. Where can people find you? Follow you, see you all that could stuff?
People can find me and follow me at Blake Wexler on all social media stand up. I have some live dates coming up martch thirteenth. You can see me live. It's like a play, like you know, yeah, it's like a play me to make.
A Tarantino play. There will be life rounds.
It's examply well as always and rounds of applause.
Oh that's what I meant.
Yeah, oh so yes, no, of course, yeah, I just like saying synonyms for things. March thirteenth, Fort Collins, Colorado at the Comedy Fort March fifteenth the Ice House, which is in Los Angeles, and then April fifth through the sixth they'll be in Minneapolis at Sissipis And all those tickets are available in my social media bios and at Blake Wexler dot com.
There you go, all right, Well, thank you so much for all the thank you all the guest hosting work you've put in. We appreciate it.
It's always fun and yeah, obviously thinking about Miles and his family.
Yeah, yeah, should be back soon. That is going to do it for us this afternoon. We are back tomorrow with the Who, last episode of the show. Until then, be kind to each other, be kind to yourselves, get the vaccine, get your flu shots, don't do nothing about white supremacy, and we will talk to you all tomorrow. Bye.