Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ya Gotta Take It… | 6/26/23
Episode Date: June 26, 2023Recalls; Toys and Cars… Dog nanny gig… Columbian dad of rescued children, questionable… OceanGate Gate investigation… CNN for sale?... Geraldo out on The Five… chewingthefat@theblaze.com Van...na lawyers up… The IDOL on MAX… Hanna / Keep Breathing... Who Died Today: Oscar Cabrera 28 / Dean Smith 91 / unnamed man into plane engine / Unnamed person from derailed roller coaster… Montana train crash… Julian Sands found?... Velociraptor statue stolen… Goodwill ain't Goodwillin' no more… To Subtitle or Not Subtitle… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Blaze Radio Network
And now, chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher.
Once again, we start with recalls.
Amazing.
I don't know what's happening around the world,
but everything is being recalled.
So now we have a recall of Honda vehicles
because there's an issue with the rear-view camera image.
That's according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The recall covers some 2018-2023 Odyssey's 2019-2020-22 pilots and 2019-2023 passport vehicles.
Due to a faulty communications co-axle cable connector, the rear-view camera image may not appear on the display.
Huh.
So now they extended the warranty of the vehicles affected by the issue because they knew that there was an issue,
but there hasn't been any reports of injuries.
or death related to the recall issue,
but, hey, bring it in
and we'll take care of it for you.
Okay? So, apparently,
the dealers will install an improved
cable harness between the existing
display audio and vehicle
terminal connections and a
straightening cover over the vehicle cable
connector to properly connect the
audio display unit.
So if you have a Honda
in one of those years,
just, it's only, you know,
I don't know, it's a million,
over a million vehicles in the United States.
So good luck.
If you have one, get it taken care of, okay?
This next recall is something I hesitate to talk about
because it's going to do something that I don't want to do.
But I'm going to do it because safety for the kids.
It's all about the kids.
So about 7.5 million singing and swimming baby shark bath toys
are being recalled after multiple lacerations and puncture wounds were reported in children playing
with them.
Those bastards, the California-based toy maker said it's recalling both the full-size and
mini versions of its robotic baby shark toys that have hard plastic top fins, which pose the
injury risk to children.
Now, consumers in possession of the...
recalled toys are instructed to stop using them immediately.
There also have been injuries reported from the big one, the full-sized toy, but they're also
recalling the Robo Alive Junior mini baby shark swimming bath toys out of say it with me now
and abundance of caution.
So far, there have been 12 injuries reported.
nine of these cases required stitches or medical attention.
Wow, that's according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
So if you have one of these toys, I say get rid of it.
Now, good luck getting rid of it.
Do it while your kid is not around.
You may, if you want to show the kid that, hey, this is a terrible toy.
Maybe when it starts up swimming in the bathtub and you hear
and then you just pull out your weapon
and you put the toy to rest
I don't know
that might have some sort of trauma for the kid
but it may be worth it
welcome
welcome to chewing the fat
well it's all ready to tell you about
a new gig that you could possibly have
and then I find out that they've already
taken it down because too many people
have applied
so there was a UK job posting
for a full-time dog
with the salary of $127,000.
And it had to be removed because, as I said,
too many people wanted the job.
The job was posted by Fairfax and Kensington,
a high-end international recruitment agency
for a billionaire American family,
now based in London.
That would be a good gig.
They wanted someone that was exceptional
and highly experienced.
and they wanted that person to provide top-tier care for their two beloved dogs.
They are truly looking for someone at the top of their field who can ensure the overall well-being,
happiness, and safety of their dogs.
That, my friends, is a good gig.
Just look after the dogs, $127,27,000 to be exact.
But I hope you were one of the ones that got your application in,
because once it was announced and it went viral,
they took it down because they had too many applications.
So, oh, well, congratulations to the person who got the gig.
I don't know how long you could do that job, though.
I mean, all you're doing is taking care of the dogs,
and then the dogs become attached to you,
but you can't get them too attached to you
because the owners are like, hey, those are my dogs.
I want the dogs to be attached to me, too.
You're just supposed to take care of them.
So that's a tough.
That's, you know, for 127,000 a year,
Yeah, I mean, that's good because you probably don't have to, they're not expecting you to live somewhere else.
You've got to be there for the dog.
So you're living in the guest house or a room upstairs.
So you don't have to spend any money.
I don't even know if you get any time off, right?
It's seven days a week job.
Maybe they give you a day off to go out and, you know, gallivant around town a little bit.
That's it because you have to take care of the dogs.
So I don't know.
I don't know. Does it sound like a good job?
Yes.
Is it?
It's questionable.
So I'm reading about the four children who survived a plane crash in the Amazon rainforest.
Remember, they were found by rescue teams after 40 days of surviving on their own in the jungle.
The three adults were killed when the small passenger plane went down,
including the children's mother and two pilots.
Investigators who reached the crash site found only three deceased adults.
Signs of the other four survived, including shoes and a disguised diaper.
and so they were off looking for the children.
And the children were aged 13, 9, 4, and 11.
And they survived in part by eating cassava root and fruit.
Members of the children's community attributed their survival to knowledge and experience of the jungle.
I mean, amazing, right?
And the 13-year-old took care of the younger ones,
and they survived for 40 days in the jungle.
Incredible.
Now, the dad of the kids is having to answer for his.
cheating ways. Now apparently the reason the mother was on the flight with the kids is because she was
leaving because he had beaten her and was cheating on her. The brother-in-law talks about how he cheated on
her and she was, you know, believing that they may be able to mend the relationship, but she was,
you know, that's why she was on the flight. And he won't answer any of the questions because he
has surrounded himself with minders. I want those. I don't, I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't
I don't think that's, I don't think the minders are attorneys.
The minders are just people that keep him in check.
They've seen him coming out of the hospital, and he's all dressed in new clothes,
and he's looking awful flashy, and he's got his little necklace on with the tiger and the
two cons, and, you know, he's part of the, I think they're all part of the
Wittoto indigenous group, H-U-I-T-O-T-O-Indigenous group.
So I believe that they're all part of the,
Huitoto.
I don't even know if it's
Hui or if it's just
Hui or it's just
Huito.
That's where they
apparently got their knowledge
and experience of the jungle
because they were part
of the
Huitoto indigenous group.
So now the father,
they're making claims against the father
and if he did
beat the mom
and cheated on her,
I don't know what that means.
So what?
There's still his kids.
So he said,
when he was asked about it
on the streets,
One of his minders shook his head and said, don't answer that.
So he doesn't answer that.
And his minders are keeping him on the straight and narrow
while standing outside of the Bogota Hospital,
where his children are recuperating.
So I don't know if he gets the kids back or not.
But after having such an amazing ride with these kids,
I know his minders will keep him on the straight and narrow
at least until he gets his kids back.
Good news as far as the Ocean Gate is the horrible tragedy of Ocean Gate.
The Coast Guard announced that it's going to do an investigation into the deadly submersible implosion.
Good.
The Guard's Marine Board investigation will aim to uncover what caused the vessel to implode and kill all five people on board.
Investigators have teamed up with Canadian authorities to collect evidence.
Once the investigation is complete, the board can recommend civil or criminal sanctions to the necessary.
authorities. The chief investigator said the goal is to prevent a similar tragedy by enhancing
safety. Is it? Is that your goal? Is it? Okay. All right. Yeah, by having more regulations.
So, you know, they're studying the voice recordings and other data from the mothership to try
determine what happened and whether there were any criminality that occurred. Well, the owner,
the CEO of the company, was on the sub. And so, and so,
So I'm guessing that everything that they normally do, they would have done that and more for the safety of the ride.
So I know that everybody likes to jump on board and they're happy.
I knew there was going to be a problem.
I took it.
I knew there was going to be a problem.
Did you?
Okay.
All right.
All right.
So we'll see what the outcome of that.
I'm sure it's going to be more regulations for sure.
I saw where Mr. Beast said that he was invited to go on the trip and it probably would have.
have been this trip and he declined.
So he was probably pretty happy about that.
And the teen, of course, the stepmom talked about the teen that went down in the sub,
had brought a Rubik's Cube.
He was going to try to set the world record for the Rubik's Cube underwater.
No word yet whether the Guinness people were going to allow it.
She said they took a camera down too.
Now, if they recover the camera and he took the photos,
or the video and that survived,
and he did it before it imploded.
Does that still count as a world record?
I don't know.
But maybe something good will come out of the Ocean Gate
Gate investigation.
All right, let's go to the break room.
I need something cold to drink desperately.
All right.
Did you see where CNN might be for sale?
Speculation is growing, apparently.
that Warner Brothers Discovery is going to sell CNN in the coming year.
And Jeff Zucker has emerged as the possible suitor.
Zucker is among the contenders to buy the network.
Despite, yeah, I mean, so what?
He got ousted from the company.
So what?
He, you know, still believes in the company and wants to take it over.
And he sees a big opportunity ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
I mean, I'm sure that Warner Brothers Discover
receives that opportunity as well, but they may be sick of it and tired of trying to decide
what goes on the air and what doesn't. So I'd be interesting if Zucker takes over CNN and purchases
it. It'd like to be interesting to see what direction CNN goes in, although I think we know what
direction CNN goes in because Zucker is definitely anti-Trump. And so he'll be all in for
anti-Trump because they he left and then the guy they took septin office they ran him out because he tried
to be middle of the road and open the door to trump oh no cannot have that so it'll be kind of interesting
to see what happens there i also see where uh haroldo rivaa speaking of networks uh is out on the five
he had tweeted out that he's done with the five and so he's raldo's like what 79 now i mean he's still working all the
He looks great.
That's fine, but it's official.
He's out at the five.
And so I guess his final days on the five are the end of this month, which is June of
2023.
If you're listening live, today is the 26th of June, 2023.
So we'll see.
He said that he appreciates the opportunity.
Being the odd man out isn't always easy.
For the time being, I'm still correspondent at large.
for the time being.
So if he's out on the five,
he might be out at Fox altogether,
which means, does he go over to CNN?
That wouldn't surprise me at all,
especially if Zucker gets in charge.
Bring Geraldo over to CNN, and let's go.
Okay, great, Geraldo.
Good luck.
God bless.
I see also interesting that Vanna White
apparently has, you know,
hooked up with attorneys
and she's trying to negotiate a better
deal for Wheel of Fortune. She should have that already.
You know, Sejack was making, I don't know, 15 million a year for the show.
And Vanna was only making, I think, three a year, which, I mean, it's still a good living.
Pretty good living. And so, and she's apparently has not had a pay increase in 18 years,
which seems strange. But if she's just, you know, going through the motions and making
in three million a year.
That's from, you know,
Wheel of Fortune.
That's not from any of the sponsorships or anything.
And, you know, Pat was still the anchor of the show.
So he's gone.
Vanne needs more money.
She deserves it.
No question.
One of the things I found interesting,
and, you know,
I hope that she gets everything that she deserves.
No question.
But I see in this story,
which I was like, no way.
That's impossible.
It talks about the people that,
that they're thinking about replacing Pat Sejack with?
Okay, so there's just no way that this is true.
Well, all of them anyway.
One of them is Ryan Seacrest,
which I guess it's possible that he could be in talks for the gig.
The other was Whoopi Goldberg and Andy Cohen.
No.
Whoopi Goldberg is not going to take over Wheel of Fortune.
I am sorry, no.
That would not be good for the show.
It wouldn't be good for her.
Although it would be good for Mummo's by Jeffie,
because that's what she would be sporting as she was hosting Wheel of Fortune.
And I am more than willing to let Whoopi continue to be a proud sponsor of Mummoos by Jeffie.
Man, I wish that that was actually real because it should be.
It should be.
Anyway, there's no chance.
There's no chance.
chance if they want the show to survive that they would put whoopi goldberg in as host of the
wheel of fortune okay i started uh watching the idol on hbo i thought uh i made it through three episodes
and apparently there's only five episodes of the idol which is really disappointing uh there's
so for me i've got a couple episodes left but i believe the final episode has already aired
in some places and it will be out July 2nd here so it's coming up next week anyway I've been
kind of enjoying it I don't know why they've been saying that it was too much sex and too
much darkness but I enjoyed it and I don't they claim that the show is with this aspiring
pop star but she's already a star she's just trying to get back into it because her mom died
and she freaked out after her mom died and had a nervous breakdown
and they're trying to get her back to the top
and the weekend is this self-help cult leader guy
who comes in and starts taking over everything
so you know trying to get her straight
although I don't know that that's actually going to work in the end
fascinating and I don't know that they can get there in five episodes
holy cow as slow as this show these shows have been moving
there's no way they could get to
the breakup of him and her and her group and his group and what happens to her as far as trying to make this comeback
in another two episodes after the after the first three wow uh they'd have to really pick up the pace
and i don't see that happening i do not see that happening it is a big guy show though uh there's
no question about that if you don't want uh sex and the talk of sex and the struggle
that goes along with that,
don't watch it.
But I am.
The promos were that there's too much of T&A.
Yeah, well, I'm watching it.
Don't you worry about it.
I also watched a couple other things this weekend.
I didn't realize,
and this is just me being an idiot,
is that Hannah, the series that was on Prime,
is really good.
I really liked it a lot.
Well, there was a movie in 2011,
Hannah, based on,
the same story. And I
thought, wow, I didn't know that. And it's
on Netflix or Prime or one of
the, one of the, one of the
apps. And I thought, wow, that's the movie.
So it had to have been, you know, based on
that. And so I started to watch it.
I've made it about halfway through and it's exactly
the same story. But the characters are not as good
as the series on Prime. I'm sorry.
The people
that put together the show on
Prime did a fantastic
job. And the people from the movie
was, okay. You know,
It's okay, especially since I watched the series first.
Probably should have watched the movie first if I knew it was out there.
I would have.
So I'm a little disappointed in that.
And then I watched, my wife was watching this show called Keep Breathing.
And that was, I mean, I guess that came out last year on Netflix, which pretty fascinating.
It was six episodes, right?
I think it was, I think it's six episodes on Netflix.
and it's fascinating.
This girl is struggling with her life
and she gets in a plane crash
and she's in the forest.
I guess that the wilderness is in a Canadian wilderness
and she has to survive
whether she can or not.
She's in this plane wreck.
And as she's struggling in the wilderness,
she's having flashbacks to her life
and what got her to the point she's at now.
Pretty fascinating.
It was really good.
And honestly, I didn't know how it was going to end.
Well, I kind of didn't know.
I mean, I felt like it was going to end the way it ended.
But as it got closer to the end, I thought, maybe not.
Maybe they're just going to end it like one way.
And it'd be kind of a bummer if they ended it like that.
And they didn't, of course.
But it was pretty close to ending it as a bummer.
And yet it wasn't because if they ended it as a bummer, we couldn't get season two.
I don't know if Netflix has greenlit season two,
for Keep Breathing.
Yeah, keep breathing.
I just kept calling it
Just Breathe all night last night,
but it's Keep Breathing is the name of the show.
So I'm with the writer's strike,
who knows?
We're ever going to get season two of anything anymore.
Heck, the actors could go on strike
at the end of the week
if they don't reach a deal
with the union.
So, I mean, we may never get new shows again,
which is very disappointing.
Although, how long can the strikes go on
before someone says,
you know what, screw the strike,
we're going to start making our own work
and we don't care.
I don't know. I don't know, but it's got to happen.
We've got to have content
and somebody needs to break through.
Maybe it'll be me.
Or not.
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So who died today? Who died today? Well, a basketball player from the Dominican Republic,
his name was Oscar Cabrera, just died of a heart attack while performing a stress test at the age of 28.
Now, Oscar had previously fell down on the court in the middle of a game,
and he blamed the myocarditis that he had been diagnosed with on the COVID vaccine.
He said, I knew it.
I got a damn myocarditis from taking an effing vaccine.
I got two doses of Pfizer, and I knew it.
Many people warned me.
So it was a requirement for him to play professional basketball
and that he had no pre-existing health conditions.
Okay.
So now he has dropped over on a treadmill while they were testing him,
dead at the age of 28.
I didn't say it he did
I didn't say it
he did
rest in peace Oscar
also Dean Smith
Olympic sprinter
turned Hollywood stunt
performer
died at the age of
91
he
is from the great state of Texas
he worked on screen with
John Wayne
John Ford Paul Newman
Dale Robertson
the guy was
in a lot of stuff in Hollywood.
He also got help from James Garner,
who got him
a lot of work in Hollywood as well.
So Dean Smith,
famous Olympic sprinter and
stunt performer in Hollywood,
dead at the age of 91.
We also have an unnamed
person at an airport
in San Antonio, the San Antonio International
airport. He's a ramp worker,
He died after being ingested into a Delta plane engine that was taxing toward the gate.
No, thank you.
No, thank you.
Remember, we just had somebody else in Alabama, I think, last year that had that happen to.
What is happening?
Stay away from the ingestion into the airplane engines, please.
Plus, you know how many planes got backed up on the runway because of that?
A lot, a lot, I'll tell you that.
So rest in peace, plain, ingested person.
And we also have a one person killed, nine injured when a roller coaster train derailed in Stockholm.
They're going to close up the park for seven days, a whole seven days, to allow for an investigation.
That doesn't sound like a fun way to go either.
We're enjoying our life one second on the roller coaster, and then it derails, and then you're dead.
Speaking of trains derailing that, we had the big train crash in Montana, right?
And cars with hazardous materials plunged into the Montana River.
I heard that.
Okay, and I thought, okay, here we go.
And then they said, well, yes, the bridge collapsed over the Yellowstone River,
causing at least seven train cars carrying hazardous materials to fall into the water.
They said that one of the train cars had sodium hydro sulfate.
and that did not leak into the river,
which would have been the worst case scenario,
I guess.
That was averted,
but cars carrying asphalt and molten sulfur had been compromised,
so they were testing the water quality from them.
But on top of all of that,
the collapse severed a main fiber optic cable
that runs through Montana,
hampering internet access for global net customers.
So if you have internet access,
listening to Chewing the Fat in Montana,
man, good for you
because you either didn't use Global Net
or they've got it back up and running.
But, you know, thank you for listening
to Chewing the Fat. I appreciate it.
No matter what internet provider
you're using. Thank you.
And we may have found
Julian Sands.
The remains were found near a hiking
area where British actor
Julian Sands went missing.
Remember we talked last week about
the
search party going back out there looking for Julian
I mean he's been missing since January
and so they don't know where he is
but an unidentified human remains were discovered by
hikers in the Mount Maldi Wilderness area in California
and that's the
according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff
so the remains were discovered where
it's possible Julius Sands went missing
in January so we may have
found him although he's missing since january i don't know how much human remains were found or what
type of human remains were found so it could be something else we'll we'll see i mean i hope it's him
and the family could get closure on this really sad that uh they haven't been able to find him and then
of course he's missing and hopefully you know i do i i guess they um they stopped searching because of
and hazardous state trails were, you know, with the weather.
So it's possible that the body was really, really decomposed.
I don't know.
I don't know.
When they say human remains, I don't know what they mean by that.
Was it an arm and a leg or was it a full body?
I don't know.
Well, we should know in a week anyway.
So they have enough remains to be able to identify whether it's him or not.
So hopefully, I don't know what you wish for.
Do you wish that it's him and so you have closure?
Or do you wish that it's not him and you still hold out hope that he's alive?
So whichever you wish to do, do.
One of my favorite stories, police have hunted down the Velociraptor that was stolen outside of South Dakota Arts and Science Center.
This is awesome because who wouldn't want to take the Velociraptor outside of the South Dakota Arts and Science Center?
So Friday, a security officer spotted three people carrying the statue away from the pavilion.
They called police just after midnight.
The surveillance video then helped officers track the statue to a nearby apartment.
Ah, see?
So when opening the door, the detectives could clearly see the velociraptor was sitting right inside.
Oh, you think?
So they got this giant statue.
So these three guys stole the statue.
Thought it would be funny.
the suspects are charged with grand theft okay i mean why did you just take it back and have them put it back at the
at the pavilion at the arts center one was 18 one was 19 and one was a juvenile so the statue wasn't damaged
and so just let them take it back and leave them alone they were just having some fun they thought
it'd be funny to have the statue inside their apartment they probably would have it
have taken it back sooner or later?
I don't know. Come on. Do we need to actually charge these
kids? Because that's funny. I would love
to have. Maybe not. It would have taken it back then. If they didn't get caught,
would they have taken it back? I don't think so. So it was one of two
Velasiraptors featured outside as part of the collection of
dinosaur statues. One was perched on the roof of the building, looking out at the
city, and the other was almost directly below, which is
the one they took obviously
so would they have brought it back
if they weren't caught? I don't know
I'd like to think they would
so
I mean it would be really cool to have one
in your house though I can understand why they took it
why not it's Friday night
we've got nothing else to do we're walking by
the arts center let's take the Velociraptor
and they did
and they almost got away with it too
if it wasn't for those meddling kids
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So the story of a TikToker who donated something to Goodwill and is upset that what she donated is priced at a certain price is kind of interesting to me.
Because I've talked on this show quite a bit about Goodwill changing its ways.
I love shopping at thrift stores.
I spent a lifetime shopping at thrift stores.
Love them.
I loved, and I love the haggling.
Those days you don't get back.
Nobody haggles anymore.
Everybody has a set price.
They believe that what they have is, you know, an antique or a collectible.
And I told you about the one goodwill that I used to go to a lot here in a DFW
where they have a separate section for the stuff that they believe is too good to goodwill.
And so you have to put a price that you'll pay for it.
And they have an auction for the stuff.
They have it setting in a case.
up front and you have to and they auction it off instead of setting it give you a price and then they have
a room up front that's separate from the regular stuff that is the hoity tooty stuff of goodwill
goodwill has their hoity tooty section okay enough already okay the point of thrifting is to get a
good deal on some of the hoity tooty stuff that's the point of thrifting and the point of haggling is
always fun to me uh saying how much i'll give to you i talked about the days when i really was
seriously, broker than I am now, which is saying a lot.
And I used to go into a thrift store, St. Vincent DePaul's,
and this is a hundred years ago.
And the ladies that ran it would make it less for me
because I used to just pay and change.
It's all I had.
And so I would always go in with, you know, a pocketful of change.
So that when I brought up shirts and pants,
some of my favorite clothes came from that thrift store.
and you know for sure the ladies how much is this and you pull out a handful of money coins from your pocket
oh that's only 25 cents that's only 50 cents it was so much fun and still got some great clothes out of there
but the idea of donating to these places and i have donated a whole bunch to goodwill over the years
and what they charge they charge and you know i know that they think they have the antiques and the
collectibles now it's very frustrating when i go in that store
so, you know, whatever.
If I saw something that I donated and the price was something other than what I thought
it should be, oh, well, you know, I donated to them.
I hope they get it.
I hope they get it.
If you were to set it up in a yard sale, you're not going to pay the same price that you're
paying at the thrift store or the Goodwill store because people buying stuff at a yard sale
or a garage sale think that everything has to be, you know, cheap.
You know, I question that thinking, but that's the way it is.
So the lady, big pressure, 854, I guess, is a content creator on TikTok.
She said she will not be donating to Goodwill anymore.
It's just crazy Goodwill.
She said in her video, Goodwill ain't Goodwillin anymore.
And I donated these a few weeks ago.
And they got them here for $25.
Goodwill it ain't goodwillin no more.
Goodwillin and goodwillin no more.
Welcome to the party.
So I was reading this article by Devin Gordon in the Atlantic, and it is a fascinating story.
He's talking about closed captioned on our television screens.
And the article talks about his story about the first time it happened.
He assumed it was a millennial thing.
Our younger neighbors had come over with their kids and a projector for the backyard movie night.
And I said, as the opening scene began, you left the subtitles on.
And the husband said, oh, we always leave the subtitles on.
Why?
They don't, and he goes on.
I mean, the article is really good if you have an opportunity to read the full article.
I'll try to, you know, I'll try to get through it here without giving you the, you know,
you can go read the whole article, but it's really good.
And he asks why?
They don't like missing any of the dialogue, he said.
And sometimes it's hard to hear.
Someone is trying to sleep or they're only half paying attention.
And the subtitles are right there waiting to be flipped on.
so why not?
Well, because now I'm reading TV, not watching it,
because now instead of focusing my attention on the performances,
the costumes, the cinematography, the painstakingly mixed sound,
and how it all works together to tell the story
and transport me into an alternate world,
my eyes keep getting yanked downward to read words I can already hear.
My soul can't bear the notion of someone watching the Sopranos for the first time,
and as Tony wades into the pool looking down to the bottom of the screen to read quacks,
reading ducks quack.
So I know that the subtitles serve an important purpose for people
with hearing our cognitive impairments,
but,
or for translation from a foreign language,
they're not for fluent English speakers watching television in fluent English.
Then the couple months later,
he talks about on New Year's Eve.
My wife and I were about to start watching
Don't Look Up with another couple.
And so both of them have spent their entire art life,
working at movies, television, theater, visual arts,
where voice and imagery are sacrosanct tools of communication with the audience.
Surely, a screen actor like Ken would be aghast at the notion of so many people
choosing to miss so much of the detail and nuance that he builds into his performances.
Nah, the following story is the most important thing.
He told me recently when I asked him about it for this article,
if you're getting knocked out of the story because you can't follow the dialogue,
that by all means turn on the subtitles.
It's fine. You have my permission.
That was alarming to my man, Devin Gordon.
You know, subtitles are creeping into our homes.
From TikTok, gets a lot of blame for that.
It's conditioning multiple generations to watch content with text plastered all over it.
And the war is raging throughout, you know, living rooms and bedrooms across America,
the great subtitle war.
So then he caught his wife watching a show with the subtitles.
Doni realized I've lost her too.
And then we got three years ago,
the South Korean filmmaker
Bong Jong-ho took the stage at the
Golden Globes to accept the best foreign
language film award for Parasite
and made a heartfelt speed urging us
to watch more stuff with subtitles.
So once you overcome the one-inch-tall
barrier, you will be introduced
to so many more amazing films.
And then Paraside won Oscar
for Best Picture and the
World Health Organization declared
the coronavirus pandemic. Okay.
So, and he talks about Squid Game, you know, making a breakthrough during the pandemic, and he didn't care about that.
So now subtitles are everywhere.
And in fact, they may already be our default mode.
This is some of the interesting stuff that's in the story that I found fascinating as he gets past his explaining of how it's now taken over our world.
Subtitles are everywhere.
They may already be the default mode.
According to Preston Smalley, Roku's vice president of viewer product, a 2020, a 2020,
internal survey revealed that 58% of subscribers use subtitles.
36% of them switched the subtitles on because of a diagnosed hearing impairment.
32% do it out of force of habit.
The remaining third site astute of situational issues, kids, you know, other people in the room, poor audio quality.
Many of the people using subtitles, in other words, do not need them.
As it turns out, it is a millennial thing, or at least millennials are leading the way.
two-thirds of Roku's millennial customers use subtitles more than any other generation, including seniors.
Though Smalley attributes that in part to technical hurdles, which is apparently a polite way of saying that the older users don't always know how to turn it on,
which is kind of silly because I feel like they do, but, you know, whatever.
And then the writer-director Hannah Fidel, he goes on in this story,
whose Hulu series A Teacher, starring Kate Mara, said that Habits,
changing viewer habits with subtitles she would feel violated on behalf of the camera shots.
But she was anything more aghast at trouncing her sound mix.
Subtitles make you literal-minded and oftentimes descriptive words transcribed on the screen
say one thing while the actor's performance of them says another.
I asked Vidal how she would feel if a friend turned on subtitles while watching the pilot episode
of a teacher.
She went quiet for a moment.
I would be so pissed.
But you know it's happening, okay?
Now, it goes on some fascinating stuff about the subtitles, okay?
And I know we're talking about, you know,
how different shows have different audio qualities
and some shows, you know,
you feel like you have to have the subtitles on.
I don't, I don't turn them on for every show,
but if they're on a lot of times, I leave them on.
But apparently, they're working on this system.
so you're going to be able to move the subtitles around on your screen, which I love,
and you can write it into your own font,
or you can have a font specifically made for the show.
Like if the director or the showrunner of the show wants a certain font for their subtitles,
they'll get it.
They can build it in.
Okay, that's kind of cool.
So according to Annalie Blank,
the four-time Emmy Award-winning sound mixer on Game of Thrones,
it's not your fault.
you can't hear well enough to follow a lot of the stuff.
It's not your TV's fault either or your speakers.
Your sound system might be lousy,
but that's not why you can't hear the dialogue.
It's everything to do with the streaming services
and how they are chosen to air these shows.
Specifically, it has everything to do with the LKFS,
which stands for the loudness,
K-weighted, relative to full scale,
and which, for the sake of simplicity,
is a unit for measuring loudness.
Traditionally, it's been anchored for the dialogue,
For years going back to the golden age of broadcast television and into the paid cable era,
audio engineers had to deliver sound levels within an industry standard, LKFS,
or their work would get kicked back to them.
That all changed when streaming companies sees control of the industry.
A period of time that rather neatly matches Game of Thrones.
According to Blank, Game of Thrones sounded fantastic for years.
She got Emmys to prove it.
And then in 2018, just prior to the show's final season, AT&T,
bought HBO's parent company and overlaid its own.
own uniform loudness spec, which
used was flatter and simpler
to scale across a large
library of content, but it was also
crucially unanchored to the
dialogue. So instead of this algorithm
analyzing the loudness of the
dialogue coming out of people's mouths,
it analyzes the whole show
as loudness. So if you have loud
music cue, that's going to be your loud
point, and then when the dialogue comes, you
can't hear it. Pretty incredible
that it's because
of that and how they're
digitizing it into our system.
Netflix still uses a dialogue anchor spec.
Okay.
The silver lining, the companies are trying to fix the problems.
In case you want to pay a second company to fix the own dialogues,
you can just turn out the subtitles in any version of our streaming future.
Subtitles will be the simplest, most cost-effective solution.
So it's at the point now where they're either going to fix it and you're going to have it right,
or you're just going to all be out with just,
use the subtitles and we don't care about that but that takes away from the music and the dialogue and
what adds to the difference in the shows anyway so much is fascinating and i i've loved this article
if you have a chance to read the full article from devon gordon i know i've gone on and on about this
article it just fascinated me with the sound of these shows and you know how subtitles are used and why
and how some of it we would think is our fault but it really isn't huh isn't it isn't that
that the way things usually are.
We feel like they're our fault,
but it really isn't.
Okay, that's enough for today.
Follow me on Twitter at Jeffrey JFR.
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Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher.
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