In this episode, Dana Lash critiques the oddities of contemporary news. A Florida man faces charges in a bizarre bomb plot, while another surprises with his honesty. Dana light-heartedly mocks the chaos of Netflix’s broadcast mishaps amidst the Paul Tyson fight, leading into a satire on Art Basel’s banana artwork, questioning the dignity of modern art. She further delves into Walmart’s concerns over tariffs and highlights California’s unexpected payroll tax burden, delivering an engaging and witty commentary on today’s absurd truths.
Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast, sponsored by Kel-Tec.
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s his life mission to make bad decisions. It’s time for Florida Man.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. So first up here, I’ve got to pull this. An FBI arrested a homeless Florida man in an alleged plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange. Whoa. Okay. Haran Abdul Malik Yener, you have too many names, made a series of audio recordings that he wanted to send to NBC around the time of the bombing, according to the complaint. So he wanted to force a reset of the U.S. government. He came under scrutiny after he was someone tipped off the FBI that he was storing bomb making schematics in a storage unit in Coral Springs. And they got his permission. They searched the unit and they found all this stuff of drawings with landmines and explosives, missiles, all kinds of IEDs. And yeah, he said he was creating rockets and volatile chemical mixtures that would explode if they were mixed incorrectly. You know what it kind of sounds like? So when I was a kid, I was little. I was like four. I would try to be a scientist, and I would mix up my mom’s shampoo and conditioner and all kinds of weird stuff, her makeup and the little bowls. And I was like pretending that it was my lab, but I didn’t want to get caught, so I would shove everything under my bed. Right. I had all this weird stuff under my bed because it was my lab. Right. I’d pull my lab out and I would be a scientist. I’m not even kidding you. And she was vacuuming my room one day and she was like, what is this mess under your bed? And I feel like it’s Yenor’s little storage thing. I’m mixing up stuff, mom, because I’m doing some science. That’s what I was doing. I was doing science. Anyway, so yeah, this guy’s in trouble. Mine actually couldn’t blow up. I didn’t really have a goal in mind. And I was mixing up her various household cosmetic items. I didn’t have a goal in mind. It was just, you know. So yeah, he was charged with the attempted use of an explosive to damage or destroy buildings, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He’s in trouble. He’s in trouble. A Florida man found a $40,000 engagement ring and returned it. That’s really nice of him. How nice is that? That’s like so nice. That never happens. Yeah, he found this. He actually returned the thing. Isn’t that nice? I’d read this story to you, but the Central Oregon Daily News, where it is, is such a horrible website with their stupid pop-up ads that their web team needs to be fired and dragged publicly behind horses through the streets because… This is horrible. I mean, don’t make a site that has so many pop-up ads and everything else that nobody can find the story. You morons. Anyway, that’s nice that somebody found that. It was a Florida man. He found a $40,000 engagement ring. Another Florida man is suing Netflix because of the buffering that was taking place over the Paul Tyson fight. Thousands of people were upset, and now they want Netflix to pay up. There’s a class action suit that’s been filed. Maybe they shouldn’t have spent so much money on that game show deal, a suitcase chick, and that ginger spare. How many millions did Netflix spend on those two losers that didn’t even fulfill their contractual obligations or actually put any effort towards creating content for Netflix? Maybe they could have used those funds, I don’t know, to better stream the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight. So, yeah, they had major issues. So this lawsuit has been filed against them. And someone was saying it should have been on Amazon and not Netflix. I actually was surprised that it was on Netflix. Can I be honest? How did that happen? Netflix ended up getting it. It’s wild. I don’t know. But, yeah, interesting. Also, let’s see here. Got a few others for you as well to hit. So this… The Florida man said he was just being stupid. He got in trouble for allegedly shining a laser at a sheriff’s helicopter. And if you ask me, was this Florida man shirtless, Dana? Why, yes. Yes, he was. He was shirtless out into the woods, just randomly shining laser. These green lasers at a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office helicopter aerial video shows Cody Goodenough, 36. He was hiding behind a mobile home wearing a pair of red shorts and nothing else. And when deputies were guided to his location and asked why he did it, he said he was, quote, just being stupid. Now he’s facing a count of misuse of a laser lighting device. I mean, who does that? You’re out there just out there in your red britches, you know, out there standing, hiding behind, hiding in the woods, and you’re going to point up your laser device to the sheriff’s chopper. Who does this?
SPEAKER 04 :
Plus, we’ve seen how many stories that we had of this where the end result is always to get arrested.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yes. Always. Always, always, always. Like, you’re never not going to get arrested for that. I don’t know. Like, why? It just, I don’t know. It amazes me. I have to tell you this story because I am just blown away by this. And then we’re going to get into some of this other stuff. Do you guys remember this story about the art festival that takes place in Miami? It’s called Art Basel. Basel in Miami. So back in 2019, there was this I don’t know if you want to call it artwork. Is it artwork or performance? I don’t know. This dude duct taped a banana to just a plain white wall of the museum. And it’s sold, just sold for six point something million at auction. It sold yesterday at auction. So the art installation, so to speak, was just a banana duct taped to a wall. And Maurizio Catalan’s Comedian is what they called it. A banana stuck to the wall with a strip of silver duct tape. And they thought it was going to sell when it went to auction. It debuted at Art Basel Miami in 2019. And they thought it was going to sell for $1.5 million, according to Sotheby’s. I don’t know. I can draw better than the banana taped to a wall. And it doesn’t even have to be the same banana. Yeah. Listen to this. This is how they describe it over at Sotheby’s. Ready? Okay, there you go. No other artwork from the 21st century has provoked scandal, sparked imagination, and upended the very definition of contemporary art like Maurizio Catalin’s Comedian. whose debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019 captivated the world. Now with an estimate of $1 to $1.5 million, this viral sensation is making history once again as it heads to auction at Sotheby’s now and contemporary evening sale. Would you like to know about your potential purchase? It is comprised of a banana fastened to a wall with duct tape hung exactly 160 centimeters from the floor. Comedian belongs to the rare league of artworks that need no introduction. Yeah, I think they do. Oh, my gosh. You know why it’s controversial? Because it’s stupid. And they can sit here and subscribe all they can describe all these things to it. Oh, it’s sardonic. It’s this or that. It’s money laundering. It’s money laundering. That’s what this is. So it didn’t sell for $1.5 million. This thing sold for $6.24 million. So how do you know it’s… What are you buying when you buy it? Couldn’t you just get your own duct tape and tape your own banana to the wall in your own home? How would anyone know that it’s not Maurizio Catalan’s comedian? Right? Truth. He didn’t – it’s like a literal banana, an actual real banana and just some duct tape.
SPEAKER 04 :
One that will go bad.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, yeah. They got to keep replacing it. Why couldn’t you just do this in your own house? Because think of it. The components to the piece are already there. There’s no way that the banana is affixed to the wall. There’s no way in which the duct tape is applied that changes any kind of movement or mood to the piece. None at all whatsoever. In fact, even where it’s located makes it entirely arbitrary as to how it’s to be viewed because it’s on a white wall in a brightly lit museum. What if it’s in your home on your wall and you have all the other different mood lighting? Then it changes, right? Does it not change? It becomes more ludicrous, I think, even in that context. So this is dumb. This is so dumb. If you want to give someone a great gift and you can tell them that it’s a replica of a six and a half, you know, almost million dollar piece of art. You can say this is a replica of Maurizio Catalin’s comedian and just give someone guys. This is your naughty Santa gift right here. I’m helping you all out. All y’all that go to these Christmas parties and you guys do these goofy gifts. We do them in our family. You get a banana and you get some silver duct tape. And you can be like, no, this is a replica of a $6.24 million piece of art by Maurizio Catalan called Comedian. And literally just do it. Get a piece of styrofoam board and tape it to the styrofoam board. An actual banana with duct tape. And then just put a little label and glue it in the corner. Look, I got your Naughty Santa gift for you right there. It actually does work. It’s a piece of art, right? It’s expensive.
SPEAKER 04 :
Is it White Elephant or Naughty Santa?
SPEAKER 01 :
I don’t know. We’ve only ever done Naughty Santa.
SPEAKER 04 :
I don’t think Naughty Santa is the thing.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, it’s like the Naughty Santa game.
SPEAKER 04 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 01 :
Why? I’m just saying. Isn’t that what it’s called?
SPEAKER 04 :
I’m just speaking out loud.
SPEAKER 01 :
What is it called?
SPEAKER 04 :
I thought it was like a white elephant.
SPEAKER 01 :
I don’t understand what that is. There are no white elephants. They’re all gray.
SPEAKER 04 :
Just like there’s no real art that involves a real banana.
SPEAKER 01 :
What does this piece evoke in you? What are your thoughts when you look at this piece? Banana pudding and morons. That’s what I think.
SPEAKER 04 :
Smoothie ingredients.
SPEAKER 01 :
How is this not… Money laundering. And also, Hunter’s probably going, damn it. Hunter Biden’s out there just kicking himself that he didn’t tape some fruit to a wall.
SPEAKER 02 :
Please tell me you read the follow-up in the reply that NBC Story put under it in their words. Please tell me you saw that.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, that’s next. Oh, I’m sorry.
SPEAKER 02 :
You jumped the gun. Sorry.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, no, no, no. I’m glad you reminded me of that because I was getting ahead of myself. I’m glad you brought that up. So here we go. So the guy who bought it His name is Justin Sun. He’s a cryptocurrency investor. What? Everything just screams money laundering. He spent $6.2 million on a regular banana duct tape to the wall, right? You could say that the artwork is appealing. I hate myself now. So what does this do to the price of bananas, by the way? Right? Anyway, so he bought it. And it’s, again, Maurizio Catalin’s comedian. He battled six other morons to launder their money through this banana tape to a wall thing. And he paid in crypto, of course. And he said, quote, in the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique autistic experience. He is going to eat the banana. He’s going to eat it. What in the world? I don’t know, man. So he’s going to eat it. He’s spending all that money. He’s laundering.
SPEAKER 04 :
So what we get for a dollar, $1.20.
SPEAKER 01 :
So what if I can make you a banana duct tape to the wall and only charge you $2 million for it? That sounds like a deal. I’m saying it’s the exact same thing. The exact same tape, the exact same nanner. Right? So I was looking at this. This is how lazy this is. Because obviously they have to change the banana outright. In some of these installations, because the banana rots and it’s just nasty, the stem of the banana is cut differently. Sometimes it’s a slanted cut. Sometimes it’s cut straight across like the image that Juan is showing on the simulcast. That’s not even consistent. They’re not even being consistent in the stem or even the angle of the tape. It’s literally just half-ass taping fruit to a wall. I hate everything. But this is money laundering because there’s no other reason. There’s no other reason for this. This is why I hate modern art. I really do. I reject modernity, embrace tradition. I hate modern art. Kel-Tec. It’s the P15, stands for 15 pews, and it is the lightest, thinnest double stack 9mm on the market. It’s sleek. It’s compact. and it ships with two standard capacity magazines. One’s a 15-round with a minimal pinky extension. The other’s a flush-fit double-stack mag that holds 12. Tritium and fiber-optic front sight, fully adjustable fiber-optic 2-dot rear, striker fire reliability, and has a great trigger pull, lifetime warranty. It’s compact and ideal for concealed carry self-defense from the inventors of the micro-compact pistol category. This is just all a part of their mission of game-changing innovation and performance. It’s the P-15. Innovation, performance, Kel-Tec. Learn more at keltecweapons.com. That’s K-E-L-T-E-C weapons.com. It’s the P-15. Tell them Dana sent you.
SPEAKER 04 :
And now, all of the news you would probably miss. It’s time for Dana’s Quick Five.
SPEAKER 01 :
So Walmart is saying that prices are going to get more expensive. They’re talking about the tariffs. They’re like trying to saber rattle about this. And I mean, I think there’s a lot. We’re going to talk more about this as we get closer towards, you know, January and the new administration. And but they’re expressing concern, apparently, Walmart, that the president elect his tariff proposal is going to impact consumers wallets. They don’t want to raise prices, they say, but they’re warning people that it may happen. We’re going to talk more about this coming up, but that’s just the latest from Walmart. So this Italian village is offering – there’s a million of these villages that are doing this. They’re saying if you’re trying to leave the country, like, for instance, if you’re upset about the election, come here and you can buy a house for a dollar. But there’s a lot of caveats attached to it because the building materials usually – You have to spend X amount to rehab your property and you have to do it in a certain time. Otherwise, it’s all forfeit. Yeah. But there’s like there’s some Italian villages they’re saying over at ABC. They’re like some of these there. Some of these villages are offering, you know, accommodation and you can stay here and you get your house all fixed up or your property fixed up. But there’s always a catch. And then to say nothing about the taxes over there. I mean, I love Italy, but the taxes are kind of crazy. I didn’t realize this. So apparently Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey, they both have their their homes burglarized and their invest. The authorities are investigating it, but they’re saying that it looks like this wasn’t just like a random. Even it was both of them break ins that it was a very sophisticated kind of like a cartel of people doing this. So the FBI is involved now. They said it’s a very sophisticated crime group and it’s part of a spree of robberies in the Kansas City area. Very interesting. So, I mean, this would be the first time. Didn’t the bling ring? Wasn’t that like kind of the same thing? Yeah. So they’re saying it’s there. So the FBI is investigating it. A Michigan medical examiner is urging hunters to get checkups after three so far where they died. They died from heart attacks. So the medical examiner is saying, go undergo a doctor’s evaluation before you come out. And so that, you know, in the wild, in search of game, because they said that, you know, you want to and they said that these are preventable. Just make sure that you’re healthy because you don’t want to be out there in the woods and then go through this and et cetera. And it’s very interesting. He was also talking about cardiac disease and people that. He had not seen it before unless they were elevated in age. He said, for instance, I’m seeing cardiac disease in arteries that I only saw 20 years ago in 65- to 7-year-olds. Now I’m seeing it in 40- to 45-year-olds. That’s wild. I’m behind on this, and I really wanted to get to it. I first saw it from our friend Chef Grohl. He owns a restaurant out in Los Angeles. And he had said, we just ran payroll. The payroll taxes were $2,000, $2K higher than calculated. We called the payroll company. They summarized, they explained in summary that California has a budget shortfall and that the federal government wants money back that it lent California for UI that it lost. They’re making up for it by having business owners pay it. Keep in mind that it was about 10%. of our total payroll. And when people say, he adds, why isn’t California business friendly? Remember this. So the state defaulted on their loan. And apparently businesses were the co-signers and they were unaware of it. This is one of the craziest things. So they’ve had, they, they had this 18 and a half billion dollar federal loan that was supposed to be for, for UI unemployment insurance. Right. And they, So because they’ve had they’ve had all these financial difficulties, they well, they apparently signed on. They had these business owners, all these business owners. They did not know that they were co-signers on this loan. That was supposed to it was the unemployment insurance that was supposed to cover California during the pandemic. Right. And when the state decided to stop making payments on the loan, that’s when these businesses were hit with us. That’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard in my life. Their payroll taxes, 2,000 times higher than calculated. That’s nuts. That is nuts. They did not know. I mean, remember, they had a bad IT system that… appropriated and distributed these funds from the Employment and Development Department. And they were one of the states that had some of the highest levels of fraud with getting these funds. So they said they had somebody who impersonated – a person impersonating a one-year-old, someone who impersonated Dianne Feinstein, $30 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims during the pandemic. And they said a single residential address got checks for 60 separate individuals filing from that one singular address. So they – They had a $100 billion state budget surplus last year because of the state’s top earners. They got $27 billion in federal aid for the pandemic. They had a $300 billion plus 2022-2023 budget. All of this could have gone into dealing with this debt. And even after they defaulted, they could have still paid off and offset the burden on businesses. That’s what they were planning on doing in their 2023-2024 budget. But now instead they’re making businesses do this with these taxes. I can’t even imagine. You’re a business and that happens to you. And Chef Groll, he’s in the restaurant industry. And it’s already tough in the food industry. It’s even tough. It’s still tough for restaurants. They haven’t entirely bounced back, I think. Some of them have. Some of them haven’t. By and large, I don’t think you can say universally the majority of them have. But this is wild. You know the system that helped them to default on this because it allowed all these fraud payments? It’s from the 80s, Cain. The software is over 50 years old. That’s the – hang on. That’s the – I’m going to get this right. The Employment and Development Department. The software literally is over 50 years old and the IT system is from the 80s. And they’ve said that their IT people tried patching the system. They tried fixing it for years, and they couldn’t. They said it’s just inadequate. They got a grant in 2013 from the Obama administration, and they were supposed to get this new software. And the software costs $2 million a year. What? Yeah. Yeah. It was supposed to be a very effective software that, quote, searches over databases and uses proprietary AI algorithms to identify fraud and abuse. And they discontinued its use in 2016 for some reason. The grant, it was $2 million. Well, the reason they couldn’t continue it is because the grant ran out. It’s $2 million a year to run it. I’m not even kidding you. This is the stupidest thing. It is like a knot of yarn trying to get through this. This is crazy. Nobody. So what you’re telling me that you switch to the software that’s two million dollars a year and then you have to discontinue it because the grant money came out. No one anticipated that that would happen. Are you telling me that no one in EDD in California anticipated that they would run out of money knowing that they had a certain amount of funds for a grant to implement the system and it costs X amount per year? Really?
SPEAKER 1 :
No.
SPEAKER 01 :
So now that’s what’s happening in California. It is one of the craziest things. How do people live there? I don’t know. The weather, that’s not good enough for me.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thanks for tuning in to today’s edition of Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
