Hog Planet

With President Trump willfully asking other countries to investigate the Biden family’s unforced misdeeds in Ukraine, it is time for us to again discuss America's former mayor, Mr. Rudy Giuliani. As Trump’s personal attorney/international man of mystery, his trips around Eastern Europe were put front and center in the unnamed whistleblower complaint alleging that the Trump Administration explicitly asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden’s lucrative no-show board member position on one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies. To clear his name, Rudy has gone on an absolutely mind-bending media tour, hollering at any outlet that will listen, as former vice president Joe Biden’s campaign team pleads with the media not to put him on the air. In this episode, Sam, Dan and Rachey sit down to discuss the whistleblower’s complaint, the conspiracy theory Trump and Giuliani are “investigating,” and how we can make sense of it all. Of course, we end off with a discussion of the highlights of Giuliani’s most absurd appearances on Fox News, CNN and more.

Our Epstein obsession continues with another epic two-parter, this time re-evaluating Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 slow burn classic Eyes Wide Shut. For some reason, we continue to refer to Tom Cruise’s character as “Dr. Bill” in this one. In this second half, we pick up where we left off with Dr. Harford’s entrance into the Masked Ball, his expulsion from the ball, and his return to Alice, his wife, who recounts a bizarre dream in which she sexually humiliates him. From there we cover the end of the film and how to interpret the tantalizingly fleeting nature of the images Kubrick ended up allowing us to see in his final edit. Of course, we also tie this into Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide” and how trying to make any sense of it reminds us of Dr. Harford’s “completely useless” attempts to understand the conspiracy he stumbles upon at the Masked Ball.

Find the book Dan keeps referencing here:

Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film by Robert P Kolker and Nathan Abrams

books.google.com/books/about/Eyes…?id=39SxvAEACAAJ

Our Epstein obsession continues with another epic two-parter, this time re-evaluating Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 slow burn classic Eyes Wide Shut. In this first half, we discuss the context this film was released in, some stories from the record-breaking 15-month shooting period, and the events of the first half of the film, right up to the infamous mansion party scene. Of particular interest to us is the role of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), our leading man, as avatar for all clueless upper middle-class professionals, and his stilted, myopic view of the social hierarchy we inhabit, which is thrust open when his wife, Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman, of course) is revealed to have sexual fantasies of her own. When this film was first released, its relatively tame and seemingly dated view of sexuality led to mixed critical reviews. Upon a rewatch 20 years later, in our current post-Epstein gilded age, it seems all too prescient in the interactions it reveals between the rich and the super-rich, clueless men married to bored women, and “average” people when they are forced to confront the seedy underbelly of supposedly respectable society.

Find the book Dan keeps referencing here:

Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film by Robert P Kolker and Nathan Abrams

https://books.google.com/books/about/Eyes_Wide_Shut.html?id=39SxvAEACAAJ

It’s part 2 of the Epstein madness. We discuss his arrest, his “suicide,” and the questions we’ve all been asking since August 10. We’ve crossed over into the realm of the unknowable. We are beyond beyond the pale. If you didn’t believe in conspiracy theories before, you will now. We will guide you through this bizarre new dimension, which is ripe with ridiculous takes and mind-bending new revelations. But at least he’s dead now, right? Next episode we will work any new Epstein details into our main topic, a rewatch of Eyes Wide Shut in the post-Epstein world.

This episodes needs all kinds of warnings, folks. This is part one of a multiple-part episode about Jeffrey Epstein, the credibly alleged serial rapist, infamous pedophile, and registered sex offender who mysteriously died in custody on August 10, 2019. The official line is that he committed suicide, but speculators in every corner of the mediasphere are asking who might have wanted to silence someone whose criminal network involved some of the most powerful people in the world. In this episode we explore who Epstein was, how he gained access to the most elite echelons of New York City’s social, political, and cultural life, and how his predilection to preying on young girls at his mansion in Palm Beach, his townhouse in New York, his ranch in New Mexico, and his private Little St. James Island in the Caribbean went barely punished in a sweetheart deal brokered by former Trump Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta. Not Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, dumbass. In our next episode, we will discuss Epstein’s death and the resulting media fallout, so stay tuned for that if you can weather this harrowing journey into his decades’ worth of misdeeds.

Links:

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article232678997.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/business/jeffrey-epstein-wexner-victorias-secret.html

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/10/20689134/jeffrey-epstein-les-wexner-l-brands-victoria-secret-limited

https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/06/23/donald-trump-rape-lawsuit/

https://gawker.com/flight-logs-put-clinton-dershowitz-on-pedophile-billio-1681039971

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/jeffrey-epstein-documents-simpsons-creator-matt-groening-allegedly-received-foot-massage-from-16-year-old-girl-178079.html

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/horrors-of-jeffrey-epstein-private-island

https://t.co/IWtpiZCPKM?amp=1

https://t.co/cu85NWifby?amp=1

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/09/jeffrey-epstein-sex-trafficking-shredder/

https://gawker.com/here-is-pedophile-billionaire-jeffrey-epsteins-little-b-1681383992

https://t.co/J9QNSo1N2v?amp=1

https://www.thecut.com/2019/08/with-epstein-gone-will-focus-turn-to-ghislaine-maxwell.html

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-high-society-contacts.html

So this is our most sexually explicit episode yet. But it’s not our fault. Rachey joins us to discuss the widely-memed “Striking Vipers” episode of the newest season of Netflix’s Black Mirror, in which the dystopian anthology series asks what would happen if you could have sex with your friend in a video game. Of course, the episode devolves into melodrama and technological plot holes, but we are still forced to wrestle with a series of stoned questions: does the video game make you hard in real life? Is it gay to have sex with a female avatar controlled by your bro? What will your wife think? We aren’t sure we figured it out fully, but it’s the process that matters, I suppose. To bring things back to something resembling normalcy, we also discussed this generation’s remake of a Star is Born with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. Check this one out folks - Dan really tried to do his best Andrew Dice Clay impression on here.

On this week’s Plunge we dive into the wild world of right wing YouTube to explain the controversy over its recent statement cracking down on “supremacist” content, how average young men are gradually radicalized into far right ideologies including race science, antifeminism, Islamophobia, and white nationalism, and how this dark corner of the internet likely played a role in radicalizing mass shooters in Christchurch, Quebec City, Pittsburgh, and most recently, Dallas, Texas and Concord, California. We discuss some of the “luminaries” of YouTube’s right wing and the fabled “intellectual dark web,” including Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Stefan Molyneux, and Dave Rubin. As you will see, these figures are not so much troubled geniuses slaying liberals and leftists alike with logic and reason as they are sophists appealing to the most reactionary tendencies and traditions under the guise of truth-telling and an oft-stated-if-not-acted-upon willingness to hear out both sides. We also shout out some of the YouTube creators countering the proliferation of right wing gibberish on the platform with reasonable arguments meant to provide an alternative to the insular, violent worldview that young people are regularly exposed to on their YouTube recommendation feeds.

"The trailer was like when a guy says I know this is racist, BUT... and then the movie is like if you stick around to hear what the person is gonna say after that"

In this episode Matt Greenberg of the Co-Pilots podcast (@WeAreCoPilots) joins us to discuss Jeremy Saville’s “movie” Loqueesha, an unvarnished portrayal of the psychosexual turmoil of its creator, in which a white, divorced, middle-aged bartender becomes a hit on Detroit talk radio by impersonating an imaginary black woman named Loqueesha. As we state countless times in the show, please do not watch Loqueesha. We only took this bullet so that hopefully none of you have to sit through this modern day minstrel show. We are begging you to not watch this movie. Even a seasoned fan of cult movies like The Room, films that end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000, or any other “bad” movies should be forewarned about the staggering levels of self-delusion, pathological obsession, and straight up racism that Saville must suffer from to have made this cringey attempt at comedy. As usual, we love dredging up the foulest aspects of politics and pop culture for you and this is truly the bottom of the barrel. This is the reactionary right wing entertainment that reactionary right wing people deserve.

Strap on the feed bag and get ready for some content to fuel your body and mind. This week we examine Mayor Pete BootyJudge's campaign, and its bold progressive ideas like reinstating a military draft and suppressing people in prison from voting. Next we visit the gropey overgrown wrinkle Joe Biden, who wasted no time co-opting images of racist violence in Charlottesville for his campaign video, despite the fact that his political career began with opposition to integrated buses. After a brief digression on Roger Stone's upcoming strip club appearance, we dive deep into the story of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal, a fraud perfectly encapsulating the absurd reality of our Silicon Valley elites. A Stanford drop-out with a closet full of Steve Jobs turtlenecks developed into the most famous female CEO in the world by hoodwinking a bunch of horny old rich men into investing hundreds of millions towards a product and technology that never existed. We pick apart what went wrong with Holmes' attempt to create the Apple of health care and how an industry powered by hubris allowed it to happen.

Follow @spaventacular @wagstank @plunge_podcast

Notez:

Nathan Robinson on Mayor Pete

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete

Biden Uses Charlottesville For Video Without Asking Victim's Mother

https://theslot.jezebel.com/heather-heyers-mother-had-no-idea-her-daughter-would-be-1834326929

Original Theranos Story

https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901

Welcome back, folks, to another session of cultural and critical takes on current events. Joe Biden hasn’t even announced his candidacy yet, but he has finally addressed his lifetime of being handsy with women in a wheezy “apology” video that belongs in a horror movie. We examine his career of bad political decisions as well as the bizarre defenses we’ve seen of his behavior from the likes of Alyssa Milano and others who met him at a Gala once or something. After breaking down Biden's lack of personal boundaries, we will spend the rest of the episode in a special pop culture corner known as… the Twilight Zone. Now that the Jordan Peele-produced reboot has landed, we will recap the first two episodes (with minimal spoilers) and see how they compare to two classic episodes from the original series, “Judgment Night” and “To Serve Man.” Our brand-new outro and relatively new intro are courtesy of Joey Bags, and his SoundCloud page is here: https://soundcloud.com/josephsbags