Bugle 4140 - America Special

Hello novelists

this is Christmas

Christmas Christmas have you listened to the last post yet?

It's likely

but the world is moving

Sunday the 9th of February is a set special

The Bugle, audio newspaper for a visual world.

Hello, buglers, and welcome to Bugle issue 4140.

Now, with an all-new, special, choose-your-own introductory banter option.

Hello, buglers!

I'm fine, thanks.

Apart from slight stiffness in the back and a chronic worry about the state of our species.

You insert your response here, then delete according to preference.

Well, I'm delighted to hear it.

Stroke, I'm very sorry about that.

Stroke.

Wow.

Stroke.

Oh, God, that's terrible.

Why didn't you tell me before?

Stroke, right, listen to me.

You must get a lawyer.

Stroke, oh, I've never tried exorcism.

How's it working out for you all?

Stroke, well, then happy acquittal to you.

So I hope you enjoy the new introductory Choose Your Own Banda section.

What a show we've got for you this week.

Joining me today to pick the bones out of the week's news, eat those bones, choke on those bones and then try to heimlik our way to at least a state of passive acceptance.

Here in London, the man described as the British Asian male non-tennis playing, still alive version of Suzanne Longlong, Snish Kumar.

Andy, as you well know, that is one of the more flattering descriptions I've had

in the last week and a half or so.

So I mean what is your latest beef with

the beard ties?

Well

I mean in strict contravention of my Hindu upbringing, I am having beef upon beef upon beef.

Oh, gee.

It was.

So

the latest bout

started last Friday when

about a year ago I filmed some interstitial things.

There's a really fun TV program, which I suspect your kids may even watch, called Horrible History.

We have watched that a lot over the years.

It's a really fun

factually based show about history but they take the facts of history and turn it into very funny comedy sketches.

It was a series of books that I was a very big fan of when I was growing up and the TV show has been a real sort of big hit in this country and about a year and a half ago they asked me if I would introduce some clips about Britain and Europe

to coincide with Brexit Day whenever that was going to happen.

I forgot about that.

I said yes to it because I was very excited and a big fan of the programme and I filmed it and had a perfectly nice time and then sort of forgot about it and then it got released on Friday and what can only be described as a tsunami of feces

landed on me because a clip was posted on the internet of a song about how a lot of the things that we take for granted as being British were actually imported during the Victorian era

and

I introduced that with some sort of, I thought, sort of tongue-in-cheek comments about Britain's impending glorious independence revolution.

And, you know,

uh

it was not taken uh in the sort of cheeky spirit as it was intended and uh in the last week I've been accused of uh anti-British sentiment hating British culture and brainwashing British children which

I'm one of those things and

and I'm not going to say which one I was doing one of those things but yeah it did you know it upset the usual group of journalists a word I'm using incorrectly and it's you know it was just another sort of week of frothing at the mouth from the commentary out.

I mean, to be honest, I've got a point, Nish, because these things you say were imported to Britain.

Really, what happened was they only were discovered to be British, having come from overseas.

So, it's, I mean, it's we're getting into slightly semantic territory.

These things were always British, it's just they didn't exist in Britain.

People hadn't realised that yet.

I've learned some startling things, Andy.

The most startling thing I've learned is that Wandsworth in South London, where I was born, is now is actually not in Britain.

Right, because I've been consistently told to get out of Britain and go back to where I came from.

And so it was a real interesting piece of information for me to learn that I'd always assumed that South London was, in fact, in Britain, but actually, it's technically part of Madras.

Well, it's good to clear these things up.

Also, joining us from Chicago,

the windy city.

Sorry, I read that wrong.

The windy kitchen.

It's Hari Kondabolu.

Hello.

I prefer to be called Nish Kumar America.

But I'll accept my given name.

Just as a kind of a nice story to offset some of the negativity I've already brought to this podcast, Hurry actually texted me at one point during my last bout of press coverage and said, he sent me a very nice text saying, I hope you're okay.

And I said,

I'm all right.

And thanks for asking.

And I know you know exactly how this feels.

And Harry responded, yes, I know exactly how you feel.

Solidarity, brother.

Yes.

So

how's America, Hari?

Oh, oh, have you not been getting the news?

Oh, right.

Yeah.

It hasn't come over yet.

You haven't gotten those telegrams.

It's not good, Andy.

On this day in the year 1497, there was the bonfire of the vanities in Florence.

The controversial priest Girolama Savaranola set fire to, and I quote, shitloads of stuff that might tempt one to commit sin, including vanity-related items such as mirrors and cosmetics, dresses, playing cards, tapestries, musical instruments, as well as books and works of art, which for our younger listeners are ancient physical objects that people used to use before the invention of the mobile phone to convey ideas, images, and expressions of the human soul.

He destroyed works of Ovid, Dante, Boccaccio, Hendricks, Gillenhall, Benno, Rehanna, and Gretzky.

And ironically,

Savaronola himself got on the wrong end of a bonfire the following year, hung from a cross in Florence and set on fire.

And he must have chuckled to himself.

And apparently, his final words were:

smells a bit like chicken, I've always wondered.

And Tuscany is so overrated.

So we're asking this week, what would you set fire to today in an effort to clean up society from sin?

Nish?

I mean, could you set fire to the whole of the internet?

Is that possible?

I don't really know how you would even start with that.

But certainly, I think setting fire to the internet would be...

Because

it is a whole mess of sin out there, Andy.

I don't know if you've tried Googling porn recently, but there's a lot of it out there.

I'm too busy googling you.

Hari, what would you set fire to today to make the world a happier place?

You know the answer to that, Andy.

And and if I say that answer, the government will kill me and my family.

I'd set fire to my own diesel car, possibly a counterproductive gesture.

On Monday, the 10th of February, it will be the anniversary of the 10th of February in 1355, when a riot took place in Oxford, the St.

Scholastica Day riot.

There was a disagreement in a pub.

A couple of students complained about the quality of the wine.

That dispute then spilled out into the streets, and three days later, 90 people had been killed.

That is a proper British pub squabble.

And the moral of the story is, do not live in the 14th century.

It was f ⁇ ing nuts.

And on the 10th of February, 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert.

Oh, happy anniversary.

Yeah, and that's also the

11th of February was the anniversary of the invention of bunting.

because that dates it's quite an interesting historical story the origin of bunting um it was um because there was a tradition then after a royal wedding that people would gather outside the windows of

outside Buckingham Palace and look up at the matrimonial bedroom window to see, you know, just to applaud the holy deed.

And

a much more formal time.

And

so there was a huge crowd gathered outside and they looked up.

And obviously, Queen Victoria, unusually for the time, very much in love with

Albert.

And they had got quite enthusiastic, it must be said, on

their conjugals.

And there was just a load of you know, uh I think her Union Jack bra and panties set and his Union Jack posing pouch that he he'd had specially made as a gesture of of uh you know welcoming himself to to the the British nation.

People looked up, saw these triangular bits of fabric hanging from the window and thought, Oh, that's how we're supposed to mark great national occasions.

So ever since then we've been hanging up little bits of punting.

And it's you know, it's lucky, isn't it, they didn't look on the other side of the room, otherwise bunting today would involve gimp masks whipped by race.

why do you hate britain andy

i don't hate it nish i just want it back

uh as always the section of the bugle is going straight in the bin this week cartoon characters it's the 80th anniversary of the first tom and jerry cartoon tom and jerry were then performing under the pseudonyms of jasper and jinx

before they finally came out as themselves uh subsequently um and so jasper and jinx never really been heard of again.

But we look now in the special section, there have been other cartoon characters that have been left on the cutting room floor and have never made it to the mainstream, as Tom and Jerry famously did.

We look at the sadly never broadcast cartoon Horace the Hammer and Susie Sickle and Caesar and Cheesa.

That was a could have been a classic, if only it had had the right release, time-travelling, crime-busting cartoon romp in which the dead Roman leader Julius Caesar pairs up with Cheesa, a novelty shape-shifting cheese who can change into any variety of cheese depending on the situation to A.

stop the baddies taking over the universe, B, help Julius Caesar get the power of Rome back up to what it was, and C, support the global dairy industry.

That section in the bin.

Amazing to think that all of those cartoon characters were consigned to history by individual documentaries presented by Hori Kondava.

I was going to say it if you weren't.

If any of you have cartoons that you have issues with, I am looking for a new project.

I mean, is it is it like

a kind of commission on achievement of the eradication of the de-offending cartoon no no it's it's by it the 15th uh the 1500th death threat that's

it is a successful document 1500 wow

wow we've hit the mark

oh the magic number magic number i've pissed off just enough people

i don't i've never had an official death threat.

I think I did have a...

Oh, I'll knock one up for you right now.

Thank you.

I did, after another BBC thing, have a kind of gently worded invitation to become dead, but I don't think it could be described as a death threat.

Top story this week, America.

Well, Hari.

USA.

USA.

It's been,

I think, what we can safely describe as one f of a week in

America.

Your president, it turns out, was innocence all along.

After, despite many people and indeed the overwhelming weight of evidence suggesting otherwise, the impeachment case, a court case that will be known immutably in the annals of legal history as Bubble versus Bubble,

pitched the unwinnably watertight prosecution against the completely threadbare defense, and only one result was possible under the extraordinary way that America decides these things.

How's the reaction in

America?

Not surprised at all, actually.

We all kind of knew that this was not going to happen.

We also knew that watching the trial would be boring.

We also knew that lots of money would be spent.

So it's achieved all those goals.

Right, okay, that's nice.

And the one thing I will say is that it does bring to mind the old adage: the truth will set you free, or many, many, many lies.

So it's nice to see that in action.

There were certain elements.

I mean, it's quite hard, obviously, for us outsiders in this, to understand the process in America.

I mean, the one thing that really stood out for me was

the Republicans not allowing witnesses to be called

in a legal case that needs people to give evidence in the greatest democracy in the world that

witnesses were

not I mean this is

we really changed it up

yes I mean I guess you know for too long witnesses have been part of a

yeah let's just judge Judy this bitch just get just have a just just have one person just randomly assign a verdict based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever this is what happens when you leave things in the hands of Mitch McConnell a man who looks like a mid-transformation ninja turtle and who

has

who had already promised from the beginning that he would not be an impartial witness, and really delivered on that.

And I think many of us possibly were hoping that over the Christmas period, Mitch McConnell might be visited by three ghosts.

But the reality is that even if Mitch McConnell was visited by three ghosts, they wouldn't cause him to change his behavior because he would consider them, as they from the spirit realm, to be immigrants and would immediately draw up papers for their deportation.

Actually, it's interesting that hauntings have come down in America since Tom took office.

He built the wall.

You can't argue argue with the facts.

Keep out the Mexicans, keep out the spirit realm.

I mean, it's a curious way of conducting this judicial process.

I mean, essentially, because normally you expect to have an independent jury in a trial, but obviously what happened in this was that essentially the same people were the defense lawyer, the jury, the judge, the stenographer, the clerk of the court, the witnesses who then didn't testify, the court reporter for the local rag, and the defendant were basically just essentially one and the same person or basically identical.

Yeah, it's the kind of legal shenanigans that even John Grisham would find implausible.

I mean, if this was happening in another country, you could probably successfully apply for asylum in this one.

So.

Hurry, are you saying America is now a failed state?

This seems to be a big marker.

A sham trial of the president usually is an indication of a failed state.

I'm not the I'm not, I mean, the military coup, whenever that happens, that's when we'll know for sure.

But

not yet.

Trump said, I went through hell unfairly.

I did nothing wrong.

And I guess as people who've gone through hell go,

he didn't do anything wrong.

He actually clearly managed to hack out a pretty favourable deal with B.L.Z.

Bubba himself.

There's an ancient saying in my culture that sprang to mind a little bit watching Trump this week, and that saying is, when you're sucking the devil's cock, may he piss until you drown.

Which bit of the Torah was that in?

Oh, I've never said it was the Torah.

I said it was my culture.

A shameful day for the US Senate, said Elizabeth Warren, a somber day for the U.S.

Constitution, and a sad day for the United States of America.

Bernie Saunders said the evidence of Trump's guilt is so overwhelming that the Republican Party, for the first time in the history of presidential impeachment, obstructed testimony from witnesses.

This will truly be remembered as a sad and dangerous moment in the history of our country.

Trump himself reacted with dignified humility, conciliatory openness, and a heartfelt pledge to learn from his mistakes, plus a renewed commitment to uphold the true values of the US.

Oh, hang on, oh, I wrote this before the verdict.

Did that actually happen?

He might not have gone through hell, but I don't know.

Do you see the press conference where he sort of held up the Washington Post?

Yes.

Whoever is in charge of the spray tan

overcooked it.

Like, it genuinely looked like, like, it's, you know, occasionally you see somebody has, like, gone a little too hard on the orange.

And yesterday, I mean, he looked like he was going to a costume party dressed as Justin Trudeau.

That's all I'll say.

I mean, it does show, Harry, how just totally and irreparably partisan politics in America has become.

I guess maybe it's always been that way to an extent, but the fact that the voting and the impeachment trial, there was basically one vote against

party lines, and that was Mitt Romney on one of the two charges.

So, and essentially, politics is, I mean, is there any chance of any meaningful debate at all?

No.

Right, okay, good.

That's

just the fact that Mitt Romney's getting this much credit

is shocking because he had a unique method of taking all the evidence into account and making a decision based on said evidence instead of just making up his mind before the trial.

And that is seen in America at this point as honorable and a rare act.

It seems generally politics in America particularly, but really around the world, and we've seen this in the Brexit era of British politics, is

all of political discourse now is essentially like an argument between a Renaissance art expert and a devotee of agricultural machinery, interrupted occasionally by a tennis fan, in which the dialogue goes along the lines of, I'm telling you, it is impossible to overstate the influence of Giotto on the later evolution of High Renaissance painting.

F you!

The Massey Ferguson 399T is not only one of the most important tractors ever produced, it is also one of, if not the, best.

What are you f ⁇ ing talking about, you clattering numbskull?

Peter Bruegel the Elder left a legacy of art that not only remains relevant today for its depiction of the human condition, but also constitutes a priceless insight into the everyday way of life of a long-lost time.

Cock!

You are a cock!

What is your problem with agricultural fertilizer?

If it's used correctly, it actually benefits the environment overall.

Guys, guys, cool it.

Can we not at least agree that tennis seriously missed an opportunity to control the advance of racket technology in the early 80s?

And the shift from McEnroe to Becker at Wimbledon through the 1980s marked the end of what we may broadly call primary era tennis.

Well, you can f off as well.

If Caravaggio was here today, he'd paint you and then he'd fking kill you.

Well, you're both a pair of pillocks.

The John Deere Combine 9870 STS would easily beat both Herodomas Bosch and Pam Shriver in a who can harvest the most grain in our competition.

Fact.

Owned.

You've been owned.

If you were a tennis fan of a particular era, that must have meant a lot.

It's not like handy to delve into a riff based on obscure sports knowledge.

You'd have to check out some tractors, though.

Malice and beautes.

Absolute buttes.

Trump also said at his weird press conference, which he himself described as a celebration.

It was corrupt.

It was dirty cops.

It was a disgrace.

If this had happened to President Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail for many years.

The answer to which is yes, one of those people would have been President Obama.

If he had taken so much as a pen on his way out of the White House, the police would have had him face down on on the lawn.

The verdict in the impeachment trial followed the State of the Union address, the annual jamboree of,

well, I mean, presidential propaganda.

And I mean, it showed once again Trump's unique ability to meld bumbling incoherence with swaggering grandstanding.

Actually, that's not unique, if I may think briefly about our own Prime Minister.

It was classic Trump, trademark cocktail of half-truths wild exaggerations and flagrant uh disinformation and uh included the extraordinary award to um the conservative um

what's the what's the term for rush rush limba

that's it yeah it's a technical uh technical term presidential medal of freedom was uh presented to rush limba who is now dying of uh of cancer and um how i mean in terms of deliberate acts of divisiveness this was uh it's right up there isn't it Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

This is bad.

This is very bad.

Let's put this into perspective.

Mother Teresa won a Medal of Freedom.

A.

Philip Randolph.

And now Rush Limbaugh.

That's like Charlie Brown getting elected into the NFL Hall of Fame.

This is.

There's going to be lots of disagreement on that.

This is like a real honor.

This isn't like the knighthood that you give out willy-nilly now.

What is that?

You sing well.

You used to have to slay dragons.

What is this?

Well, Harry, in terms of the actual awarding of it as well, there's not really a precedent for a president just stopping the State of the Union to start handing out silverware, right?

No, this is a talk show

element that he is incorporated into the State of the Union.

Well, because he also then had

reunited a troop with the troop's family

in sort of mid-speech, which is a sort of genre of YouTube videos that kind of existed.

I mean, it is a shame he didn't use one of the many banisters for some skateboard fails.

That would have really livened things up.

But it just shows you, you know, James Corden has Carpool karaoke.

People need bits now.

People need viral bits.

Even

the State of the Union is the ultimate late-night talk show.

And to his credit, Trump did bring out a very diverse range of human props.

It's there's three types of Trump speech, isn't there?

Because there's sort of type one, which is his rallies, where it feels like somebody's let a baby in charge of the volume control.

So he just sort of screams and then whispers and then screams and then whispers.

And the entire structure of the speech seems to be that he printed it out, took all the punctuation out, put the punctuation in a salt shaker, and then just sprinkled it liberally all over the entire thing.

And the topics, there's really no form or structure to them.

His mind sort of just floats around like a turd in a swimming pool, just causing problem here and then problem there.

Then the second sub-genre is him standing outside the White House talking to reporters, but somebody has left a tactical helicopter on.

So he has to sort of shout over it so you can't really hear what he's saying because there's no guarantee that at any point he isn't going to say the n-word or threaten Delaware with a

nuclear attack.

And then this is the third genre where it's considered important enough a speech that they force him to read out the speech as it's written and not just sort of go off on one of his riffs.

But the problem is that when he's in category three of his speeches, he doesn't really enjoy it.

Like he thrives when he can just riff.

And he delivered the speech with all of the enthusiasm of a hostage reading a list of demands.

The Rush Limble thing is completely extraordinary.

For those of you unaware of his era, he's a black belt provocateur described in his own words as the rusty knitting needle in the weeping eye of American social cohesion.

I mean, he didn't say those words in that, but he probably has said all of those words at some point in his life, and I've put them in that order.

He has been through through his career proudly racist, sexist, xenophobic, very much a hero in the RSX Plus community.

You know, an icon to those without a voice, other than the myriad voices they have used, listened to, and agree with on a daily basis in the mass media.

But was this a strategic play by Trump?

He's renowned as a master of the behavioral arts, Trump.

And he's put his opponents with a classic catch-22 situation with this because either you are railing against a dying cancer victim or you're sanctioning the origin of a total shitback.

There's no good way out of this, is there?

But I mean, come on, you're not thinking about the positive side of it.

Right.

We are all now a step closer to getting a medal of honor.

I seemed so far away at one point.

It seemed impossible.

And now all of a sudden, I feel like I could.

In fact, I think I've already earned one.

Yeah, I mean, I can't see you getting it

this year.

It very much depends on how the election goes.

Yeah,

your Medal of Freedom is November Dependence.

Nancy Pelosi rather ostentatiously tore up the speech as Trump ended and then said it was the courteous thing to do.

But strategically questionable, again, they all look a little petulant.

Surely just an over-the-top yawn or some bunny ears behind the head would have done the job or maybe reading a copy of the U.S.

Constitution and then laughing uproariously at the absurdity of it all or just silently eating a live chicken would have got that message across.

And he's going to be furious later on if she goes to the toilet and has run out of toilet paper.

she had plenty of good butt wiping fodder right there.

But yeah, it is a sort,

sort of semi-pointless gesture.

But at the same time, what else is she supposed to do with it?

Like, you're not supposed to keep it and frame it.

Right.

At some point, that's going in the recycling.

Or have I been a leftist hippie there?

Why do you hate America as well, Mitch?

I mean, she was in such a difficult position.

She's sitting behind this man when he's saying some of the worst things ever.

Like, she's putting on a smile as hard as she can.

She swallowed so much blood biting her tongue.

Like, she was talking to herself.

If you pay attention, she was talking to herself.

I'm not a lip reader, but I believe I read, you dirty motherfucker.

I hate you.

You orange motherfucker.

Oh my God.

If only I had a sword.

Also, she sat next to, and I'm going to presume, a fully erect Mike Pence.

Is there any other kind?

Mike Pence is, you know, when everyone stood up to give an ovation, Mike Pence had to be like, let me just, I need a minute.

I will say one thing about...

Pelosi's decision to like rip up the speech.

It's like people, like the media was criticizing her for like breaching decorum.

Are you allowed to criticize anybody for breaching decorum when Donald Trump is president?

Is that particular?

He just gave Rush Limbaugh the Medal of Freedom.

I think she could rip up a speech and not worry about tradition at this point.

I mean, it's like Kim Kardashian accusing Megan Markle of marrying someone just because they're rich and famous.

It's not been a great week for the Democrats.

The Iowa caucuses

have been chaotic, to put it charitably.

Iowa, of course, is what America generally says to itself after checking its national debt.

Iowa!

And

particularly after Trump's economic miracle.

Harry, it was total, total chaos.

An app malfunction, then there was a cover-up, and then a trickle of results, some with errors, all combined with a classically American,

mathematically embaffling system that sort of seems to bake injustice into every phase of the electoral process.

And the results that the Democrats have ended up looking shit and incompetent at just the moment they least needed to, with Trump surfing high on his tsunami of exploitable bullshit headlines.

It's more shocking because this is all Iowa has.

Every four years

there is a presidential caucus and everyone cares about Iowa for several months.

This is the only thing.

Every four years, they had four years and they still it up.

Like they used an untested app

called Shadow.

The only thing worse is if it was called Illuminappy.

Oh my god, I didn't know it was called shut-up.

Oh no, it's

Luminappy's fing great.

Oh god.

The upshot is the result was rather unclear.

It was neck and neck between Pete Butijej and Bernie Saunders.

Not so good for Joe Biden,

who, as Trump's impeachment verdict proved, is actually a Ukrainian secret agent working to install a Guatemalan refugee as president in the White House.

I think we can infer that.

Let's just confirm that by putting it to an imaginary vote: 52 to 48.

Yes, he is definitely, definitely that.

Pete Buddhajudge announced that he won the caucus well before the results had fully coming in.

Like the caucasity of this man

to

do, just to claim that.

And also, not the most professional thing to do.

You wait until you're sure.

It's almost like he's an inexperienced mayor from a small Midwestern town.

I absolutely love it.

Dress for the job you want and then just say you have the job you want.

Right.

How do people feel about Buddha Jej there, Harry?

It's very split.

I feel like there are people who like Biden, but every time he stutters, they're like, oh, he's going to die.

All right, Buddha Jej.

I feel like

that's kind of the move.

You know, he's gay, and I certainly

a huge step in this country if we had a gay president.

But outside of that, a lot of his,

you know, values outside of like

certain social issues are horrendous, in my opinion.

Well, not horrendous.

I mean, not like Trump horrendous.

They're more like,

oh man, this is totally not going to get us back to where we were four years ago, at least.

I find it really upsetting that Iowa and New Hampshire have so much power in determining the candidates for president.

Like these two small states help decide what happens to the future of the so-called leader of the free world, right?

Like it's like if the world made decisions based on the whims of Portugal and the island nation of Kiribati.

Shout out to Kiribati.

There's not enough love for Kiribati on this podcast.

Absolutely.

There'll be underwater systems.

Would that not be

a better system for the world, though, than really leaving it in the hands of America?

I mean, to be fair, the last time the world took instruction from a small, seemingly geographically insignificant country, it ended very well for us.

Sorry, not us, you, as has been made abundantly clear to me.

Book news now, and Barnes and Noble has pulled a new series of, quotes, culturally diverse classic book covers

after receiving a well a welter of of criticism they launched diverse editions which featured covers showing the main characters of classic books such as Moby Dick as people of of colour

understandably this hasn't gone down universally well with well anyone really I mean it's different times I mean it's it's always been the case through history and back in the day there was a special version of the New Testament that came out that showed Jesus as a middle-class white guy and that thing flew off the shelves

and

the rest is history.

Nish,

have you ever been put off reading

Jane Austen books because they weren't

Asian men in them.

Because it's absolute honkytail.

I think it's one of her one of her more obscure books.

Honkiton Abbey, I think, was

one of her more obscure books.

No, I listen, Antig, we've um you know,

those of us who are people of colour who have grown up in majority white countries have sort of got pretty used to uh um

reading about

you know, have you been got got used to reading books that are written from a white perspective with largely white characters.

And I mean, it just seems like the publishing industry will do anything except publish books by artists of colour.

Well, that would be another way of going about it, wouldn't it, right?

You know, it would be nice just to have a book written by some Indian person and not have to look at, as I'm currently doing on my screen, an inexplicably black Frankenstein.

You know,

it's very strange.

Also, I mean,

I'm not sure how empowering it is to sort of see, you know, to sort of see a black person on the cover of Treasure Island rather than just

commissioning some f ⁇ ing people of colour to write some f ⁇ ing books for stupid f ⁇ ing children.

well also it there's a level of absurdity like like do you want to be like me but it's like no no that didn't happen to us

like that the chances of huckleberry finn being an asian boy in the 1800s is slim to none

it's just very rare you see something that you know is going to upset everyone.

Finally, something bringing the world together.

Actually, in a way, I've turned around on this entire thing.

There's been too much cultural division, and at last we can, racists and people of colour can get behind the fact that this is a stupid

idea.

Sport now.

Hari, it was the Super Bowl last weekend, a very exciting Super Bowl.

Kansas City Chiefs coming back from 10 10 points down with only nine minutes to go to beat the San Francisco 49ers.

And a half-time show featuring Jennifer Lopez and

Shakira.

And as it's becoming an annual tradition when I watch the Super Bowl, I watch the halftime show and I think, oh, it was...

It was a bit shit.

And then find out everyone else absolutely f ⁇ ing loved it.

I'm starting to think I don't have my fingers on the pulse of modern culture.

I've only seen the halftime show.

I mean, Andy, what would you prefer the halftime show to be?

Like

a Pogues concert?

Really?

Just some blues, some acoustic blues?

Andy, I cannot imagine a halftime show where Robert Johnson comes out.

Why not?

Plays crossroads

and then Sashays off stage.

People want spectacle.

Yeah.

People want J-Lo and Shakira.

Give the people what they want.

Right.

They don't want

Muddy Waters.

Listen, Andy, I like Muddy Waters as much as the next man.

Right.

Unless the next man is you.

But

even I, in this specific instance, can see that having Jennifer Lopez is a more super bowl-y proposition.

I just don't think the sport needs that extra level of rasmatasm.

Well, then you have not watched an American football game because I've never seen an American football match where I haven't thought this would be enlivened by J-Lo's butt.

But how was the game, Hurry, apart from the J-Lo's Bar show?

It was good, but it was a weird experience just because I was watching, okay, the Chiefs, like, they appropriate Native American culture and their fans make a racist tomahawk chop motion and make up a racist Native American chant.

Good lord.

So that's like very uncomfortable.

So that made me feel kind of bad.

And also, the other team,

the team the Chiefs were playing were the 49ers, which are the team that used to be led by one Colin Kaepernick.

And the whole time I felt guilty.

Like, am I selling out Colin Kaepernick by watching this?

And what made it harder was that my girlfriend sat on the couch with a blanket over her head and with headphones on, repeating, I am not watching the Super Bowl because I stand with Colin Kaepernick and I stand for justice.

So that was a little distracting.

So I did feel terrible until the fourth quarter because, damn, that was a good ending.

Three touchdowns by Pat Mahomes turned it around.

Does it make up for the blacklisting of Colin Kaepernick?

No.

Does it make up for years of racial injustice and police brutality?

No.

Yeah, no.

that was that was from our end, what I would describe as a concerned pause.

Yeah,

I just I think we should have half-time shows.

She's 50, yes,

her butt looks better than my face now.

I'm 34 years old.

My face looks like a sorrow-addled ball sack.

That's racist, Nish.

So after the Super Bowl, Trump had to check in.

So he tweeted that the Kansas City Chiefs made the great state of Kansas proud.

And the problem is, though there is a Kansas City, Kansas,

this team is actually from Kansas City, Missouri, which is is actually the famous Kansas City, which, to be fair, is a common mistake for an American child to make.

The thing is, Harry, he speaks to the Midwest.

He doesn't know which bits of the Midwest he's really thinking to.

But he speaks to the Midwest.

Well, that brings us to the end of this week's America Special Bugle.

Hari, thanks very much for joining us and sharing your pain.

Our condolences.

I think I've said this pretty much every time you've been on, but hopefully at some point

we'll have you on the show at a time when you've got a lot to be excited and optimistic about.

But

I'm not sure it's happened yet since late 2016.

At what time do you think this is going to happen?

Is this before or after New York is underwater?

Let history be the judge of that.

Any shows to alert our listeners to?

Yes, I'm doing a tour of a lot of cities that I wouldn't normally play, which is another way of saying I'm working on new material in cities that will not hurt my career.

Well, if that is not a blurb, I don't know what is.

February 19th in Durham, North Carolina at MotorCo Music Hall.

February 20th in Savannah, Georgia at the hilariously named Victory North.

February 21st, two shows at The Secret Group.

Indianapolis Helium on March 10th.

The Taft in Cincinnati on March 11th.

This one is tentative.

March 12th at the Paramount Ballroom in Oklahoma City.

It's being moved from March 6th, but it's still tentative.

March 18th in Buffalo at the 9th 9th Ward at Babeville.

Do I know what I'm getting myself into there?

No, not at all.

March 18th, Ithaca, New York, Hangar Theater.

March 26th, Portland, Maine, in the Empire Comedy Club.

March 27th at the Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

And then bringing it to the big city, April 1st, in the space ballroom in Hamden, Connecticut.

Hurry, are you going to be driven to these gigs by Vigo Mortensen?

Oh my God.

Very few people will know that reference because it's from the green book.

So, unless you, like me or Nish, probably saw that on an airplane because nothing else was there.

It's a very funny joke.

I like it.

It was the winner for Most Problematic Film at last year's Problematic Film Awards, and also Best Picture at the Oscars.

Nish, thank you for joining us.

No problem.

Unusually I have something to plug.

Oh.

February the 17th, if you're in London, I'm hosting a benefit for Fringe of Colour, which is an organisation that gets young black and minority ethnic people into Edinburgh Fringe shows and is exactly the sort of shit I would be affiliated with.

They're a great organisation.

They do amazing work and we're fundraising for them.

The bill is fing spectacular.

Desiree Birch, Rose Matafeo, Ahir Shah, aka my biological son, Cindu V and Keema Bob.

It's going to be a great old night at the Union Chapel, February the 17th.

White people are allowed to buy tickets.

I've seen on Twitter some people saying, Am I allowed to buy tickets?

You are allowed to buy tickets.

Are they allowed to actually go into the gig as well?

Yes, they're just the money.

We just want their money.

See it as a form of reparations, honkies.

Okay?

Thank you very much for listening, Buglers.

We will play you out with some lies about our premium voluntary subscribers.

subscribers.

David Mees thinks the future of entertainment will almost certainly include a return to prominence for the slide projector.

People have had enough of stuff that works really easily, says David.

They want to get back to the irritating human reality of stuff being annoyingly fiddly.

Eric Woolley still cannot get over how weird eggs are and is fascinated by the rumor, as yet unsubstantiated he admits, that if you were to crack an egg on the moon, it would have scrambled by the time it hits the ground.

Neil Brooks points out that even if this were true, it would not apply if the egg in question were a peacock egg.

Peacock eggs, according to legend and Buzz Aldrin's autobiography, Neil has heard, are impossible to crack in space because the shell becomes rubbery and can only be popped, not cracked.

John Woodcock overheard the George Michael song Careless Whisper whilst out and about last week and pondered on how a careless whisper really is quite unforgivable.

If you're whispering in the first place, rails John, you're clearly aware of the need to take care with your words, so whispering carelessly is doubly inane.

Anita Benton thinks there may be no sadder species in all of nature than the curious houseplant.

other than perhaps the ambitious goldfish.

John Millington had some explaining to do after being told to put kindling on the fire.

He threw on his granny's Amazon Kindle e-reader, causing a minor explosion, and for some reason, a burn market on the carpet in the shape of Charles Dickens snogging Jane Austen.

Here endeth the lies.

Yes,

it's me,

the ghost of the bugle,

again.

And you can't find anyone to turn the recording off.

I've had a smoothie and a coffee, and so I'm a bit overenergized.

Hi, buglers, it's producer Chris here.

I just wanted to very quickly tell you about my new podcast, Mildly Informed, which is in podcast feeds and YouTube right now.

Quite simply, it's a show where me and my friend Richie review literally anything.

So please come join us wherever you get your podcasts right now.