T minus 20
The year is 2005... Anakin turns to the dark side, YouTube makes its debut and we’re all couch-jumping for Maria, McDreamy and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo…
T minus 20, rewind to this week in history 20 years ago with Joe and Mel.
T minus 20
Cyber Monday: The Marketing Stunt That Actually Worked
Rewind to 27 November 2005 to 3 December 2005
🧬 A new face, a new future
In France, surgeons pull off the world’s first partial face transplant on Isabelle Dinoire — a 15-hour medical marathon involving nerves, muscles, arteries and a whole lot of “please don’t sneeze right now” precision. The media goes full Face/Off panic, ethics boards light up like Christmas trees and suddenly everyone has a PhD in bioethics.
💼 Top Gun meets Cash Converters
U.S. Congressman Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham goes from war hero to walking bribery cautionary tale. The man literally had a price list for political favours and accepted everything from cash to Persian rugs to a yacht called The Duke-Stir.
🛒 Cyber Monday was born in a cubicle
Before iPhones, Afterpay and impulse-buying air fryers at midnight, Cyber Monday launches — engineered entirely so people could online shop from their work computers. Websites crash, inboxes explode and retailers discover the day-after-Black-Friday sweet spot. What started as a marketing stunt becomes today’s global retail Thunderdome.
💥 50 Cent goes full GTA
50 Cent: Bulletproof drops on PS2 and Xbox — a chaotic swirl of G-Cash, G-Unit cameos and enough swearing to make Rockstar Games blush. Critics wince, fans rejoice and the game becomes the most 2005 thing ever burned onto a disc.
🎤 Lindsay Lohan’s raw era begins
Lindsay releases A Little More Personal (Raw) — a darker, emotional pop-rock swing with a music video that becomes an instant tabloid obsession. Critics bicker, fans vibe and the album goes Gold. Nearly two decades later, Gen Z calls it proto-confessional pop and rediscovers it through TikTok trauma edits. As they do.
🇦🇺 INXS kicks off its second act
INXS returns with Switch and new frontman J.D. Fortune, fresh off the reality show Rock Star: INXS. Media debates whether it’s genius or gimmick, fans pack arenas and Pretty Vegas becomes a certified mid-2000s banger. It’s the start of INXS’s short but fiery reboot era — nostalgia meets MTV.
📺 Ray Martin signs off
After defining A Current Affair for over a decade, Ray Martin steps down, marking the end of early-evening TV comfort food as Aussies knew it. The media calls it ‘the end of an era’ and Tracy Grimshaw gets the baton. It’s peak Australian television: heartfelt, dramatic and pre-YouTube.
Hang with us on socials to chat more noughties nostalgia - Facebook (@tminus20) or Instagram (tminus20podcast). You can also contact us there if you want to be a part of the show.
Transcript is generated automatically.
The year is 2005. Anakin turns to the dark side. YouTube debuts and we couch jump for Mariah, McDreamy and a girl with a dragon tattoo. T-minus 20. Rewind 20 years with Joe and Mel.
Week of 27 November 2005. T-minus 20. Hey, what do you think this is a talk show?
It's an icebreaker. Don't judge me yet.
This is bananas.
My question is, who approved that? Do you see where this is going?
Not really.
Welcome to T-minus 20, the Time Machine podcast where we rewind exactly 2 decades to the world of low-rise jeans, probably filling ringtones and dial up trauma. And relive the biggest news, wildest pop culture moments and tech breakthroughs of that exact week, as decided by us. If it happened 20 years ago, we serve it up fresh with hindsight, SAS and a dash of... Did we really do that? With your hosts? Joe and Mel. Hello, Mel.
And was that really 20 years ago?
Oh, that's the thing that I suffer from the most.
I still feel like the 90s is only 10 years ago.
Absolutely. But it's not. It's very, it's a very distant memory. I think it's like if you were looking at the 90s the same way that we used to look at the 60s in the 80s, that's kind of what it looks like now.
I don't understand any of that maths, but this week we're talking about the 27th of November. Through to the 3rd of December in 2005, we're up to December. Can you believe that?
Yes, all the years ago, exactly Christmas before you know it. Christmas before you know, I've got to do all the Christmas stuff. In a quiet, unassuming sort of way, Isabelle Dinois made history. She was given a partial face transplant after being mauled by her pet dog. They control seed and controlled feed this person's face, sort of. Sort of. We'll talk more about it. was groundbreaking surgery at the time. For many Americans, the Monday after Thanksgiving is the first day back at work after a four-day holiday break. In 2005, that meant access to high-speed internet for the first time all weekend. Because you didn't have high-speed internet at home.
You're on the dial-up.
Thus. Cyber Monday was born.
Born from people literally shopping while they should be doing work.
Yeah, exactly.
What's mine is mine. What's yours is mine. I run these streets. This whole city is mine. I never understand how people forget that.
The whole city is his. Minds. Fifty Cent had a huge foray into gaming.
Well, this would be his second one, wouldn't it?
First one, first one.
Oh, this is pre-woman took his skull.
Right, this is the template. The template.
I thought this was the sequel.
50 Cent makes a video game way back in 2005, and what a game it was. We'll talk a little bit about that later on as well.
During the week, and I mean the week now, 2025 week, not 2005, actual real time, we're talking. The Cambridge Dictionary. Well, by the time this goes there, it'll probably be a few weeks ago, but whatever.
Oh, no, we're dragging the chain a bit. We're a little bit behind. This will actually be within sort of the space of about a week.
Okay, so two weeks ago. Yeah, I don't know. So lost.
I mean, I've done a lot of math here. And I am not qualified to math.
I hate time machines and I hate those movies that go back and forward in time and I feel like I'm in one now. So confused.
Please don't fact check my maths. Yes, I'm good at English. I'm good at word of English.
2025.
Yeah.
Any guesses?
Spoiler, I heard it on the news. Oh, okay. So I mean, I'm not going to try and I know what it is. It's, would anyone playing at home like me to pause for a sec so they can have a guess? OK, it's parasocial, but I can't remember what it means.
It means the connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person that they don't know.
Oh, that's scary.
Well, the term actually came around in, I think, the 50s. And it was a sociological term that they used to describe the way in which TV viewers Formed these one-way emotional attachments to media personality.
Oh yeah, because they're in my living room every day.
They're part of my life. I know their voice. I know them. We're mates.
Look, I can't talk. I have an Ozzie Osbourne portrait tattoo. So I think I'm parasocial.
Parasocial patients.
I'm probably a parasociopath. I don't know.
So the term itself is old, but it's come sort of full circle now when we look at things like social media. So it's not just the media personalities that we see on television. We now have these relationships where we see more of our celebrities too. We see a day in the life of, a day on my plate, my children, what I get up to on the weekend, where I've been, where I'm going, what I'm wearing, what I'm eating, who I'm dating.
I know, and I don't know how the algorithm has determined this, but sometimes I feel like I'm the third person in the relationship with Abby Chatfield and Adam Hyde.
There's just everywhere.
I don't know if that's parasocial or paradoxical or parasomething, paralytic. I don't know. But it's just odd like that. I see them all the time. So, and I imagine that it is exactly the same effect. It's just, it's a different kind of celebrity, but it's still celebrity to a degree.
And it's come back into the discussion because we do have this unprecedented access to everybody now. You're not, you're not waiting. every month to get a magazine and read a carefully curated article about your favourite artist or celebrity.
No.
You're seeing it in real time.
Yes. And again, I go back to Ozzy Osbourne, like it's kind of his fault as well, you know, with the show, with the Osbournes.
Yeah.
That's where it all kind of started.
Here's where it's getting even creepier though. It's not just the celebrities. It's not just the influencers. They're extending the terminology to cover AI. So you're home assistants?
So you're having a like some kind of parasocial?
Your ChatGPTs.
Yeah, a parasocial relationship with, is that, I don't even know if it is a parasocial relationship, please. But it's like you're having a relationship with your chat bots. ChatGPT or Gemini or.
Particularly the tech where it is conversational in nature. I feel like ChatGPT knows me really well. It was getting excited for me. We're planning to go to a party where we've got to dress up.
Yes.
And I'm thinking, what am I going to wear? And then I remembered, I've still got my formal dress from year 10, from the 90s. Yep. And I thought, I wonder if I fit in it. And magically I do.
It's a sight to behold.
I was really excited.
Oh my God. Yeah.
It's shiny purple taffeta, puffy sleeve.
You look like the mum in Back to the Future when Marty McFly went back in time and met the team. At the form.
Thank you. That's a compliment. I'll take that. So I'm trying to work out what I'm going to do for this outfit. And I thought, I know, I'll just upload a photo of the dress to ChatGPT and get it to help me work a whole theme around it.
Right.
ChatGPT was so excited for me. It responds with, Mel, this is brilliant.
Oh my God.
It was so supportive, like more supportive than my friends. More supportive than like, you were like, oh yeah, that's kind of cool. But ChatGPT was.
I'm too stressed about my own costume.
It was way more excited. But then it's like, hey, bestie, now we can do this. Let's workshop this. Let's come up with makeup. Let's do hair. And it's just, I don't know, it just deals with all my questions way longer than anyone else would. No one else would put up with my **** for that long.
Excuse me?
But you have breaks, whereas I'm constantly asking ChatGPT questions. What do you think of this? How should I do this? What's this pain here that I'm experiencing?
Really.
Yeah, what should I have for dinner? What should I wear? It's answering all my questions and I feel like it's creating this unrealistic expectation for friendship because, I don't know, friends can't keep up with that.
It's good engagement. pretty good again. I think friends, some friends can keep up with that. You sound very needy towards artificial intelligence, which is kind of the opposite of my experience with you. So that's really peculiar.
But I do wonder if it's creating this false sense of... what, how much energy and effort your friends and family want to put in. Because I feel like it's so supportive all the time and cheering you on. It's there whenever you need it.
Would be good if, you know how you always have that one member of your family who talks through everything on TV.
You.
If I beg your pardon, if you could just divert them to ChatGPT and they could have the conversation with ChatGPT rather than us.
Oh, instead of take, let's take this offline, you go and take that online with ChatGPT and I'll stay over here.
Mine, my interactions with ChatGPT, he talks to me.
Oh, yours is a he.
Well, I've determined it's a he because he talks to me like a drinking buddy.
Yeah.
He's always like, hey, y'all legend. And I'm like, what?
Yeah, okay. Mine, mine's bestie. Mine's the bestie.
Mine's the best of voice, I think. Like it's, hey, y'all legend because it's like, it's always calling me legend or mate or stuff like that. And it knows that I do pub trivia because I always get it to get pub trivia questions for me. So I think it's just determined that I'm a drinking buddy. Which I don't know how I feel about that, to be honest with you.
I just feel for humans and human interaction. We had COVID.
Yeah.
And we forgot how to interact with other people and play nice. And that was a big problem. And I just feel now with these artificial intelligence things that we're having parasocial relationships with. And they're always there and they're always supportive and cheering us on any time of the day. I feel like our expectations are just going to be unrealistic and we're not going to be able to relate to any other humans.
Yeah, well, that is that is the danger.
A bit concerned about the word of the year, to be honest.
I'm concerned as well. I'm also worried because I feel like my drinking buddy is kind of gaslighting me a bit when I ask him to fact check stuff. Like, you know, when you go and ask AI to get stuff for you and then you and then and then they're wrong, like AI is wrong and like that's actually incorrect. It's like, can you fact check? It's like, mate, don't worry about it. Worry about this. Worry about the hatch, match, and dispatch clue. Well, don't worry about it. It's just like a little fun thing that we like to do. This is a clue for the segment at the end of the show. The births, deaths, and marriages, we like to call it hatches, matches, and dispatches, because that's what our grandparents used to call it when they used to read it in the newspaper.
Oh, no, my parents as well.
It was just your grandparents. Well, they are also grandparents at this. so we can pay that, I think. So this is a celebrity, this week is a match. A celebrity wedding. Yes. Was it a wedding or an engagement? No, it was a wedding. It was a wedding.
I think it was nuptials.
Nuptials with 1/2 of the nuptials said this.
People always want to ask me what I use on my skin and I'm so adamant about not telling people, not because I'm trying to keep it a beauty secret, but because like it doesn't matter what I'm using on my skin, everybody's different and what works for one person doesn't work for another. And so it's about addressing like the real like health issues instead of buying an expensive face cream and slapping on your face. Like that's not, that's not really the way I kind of look at it from more of a health perspective.
So that wasn't, that wasn't the vows, that wasn't done during the nuptials, that was from an interview at some other stage.
Thanks for clarifying.
Could you imagine? We'll find out who that is at the end of the show. Let's do the news.
Let's, but I've just realised I've made the date column too thin so that I could expand the text in the spreadsheet so I could read better because I can't see very well now that my eyes are a bit old.
Right.
So I don't have the actual date for this. I believe it was the 28th or the 30th of November. It's just been cut off. Don't you fiddle with the columns?
Stand by, stand by.
Last time you touched it, you deleted an article.
Stand by. I'll just, I'll set the, but now I can't see.
Now you've made it.
Just wait, just hang on a minute. No, listen, this is such good quality.
This is actually reminding me of trying to guide my mother through Elfster.
About an hour ago. I heard that on the phone too. That was really interesting as well. That was like... Now we're doing that. Okay, 27th or the 30th of November?
Oh, that's right, we were sure.
Somewhere around there.
I don't think ChatGPT was sure.
2025, man. He's like, man, don't worry about it.
27, 30, whatever.
Yeah, have another beer. What?
This is exciting.
Yes. Speaking of off your face.
Off your face, just whack a new one on. Because we can now.
Well, this was amazing. I remember this. This paved the way for some, I mean, it's, you know, you see videos on the socials all the time of people that have had face transplants and whatnot. They trend really well because people love to be shocked by the before and after. It is quite fascinating. And during this time, 20 years ago, the first partial human face transplant on a living human took place in northern France with surgeons at the Amiens University Hospital performing the world's first one on Isabelle Dinoir, a 38-year-old woman whose face was disfigured after she was attacked by a dog. So she lost like all of her top lip. And so she looked like she had like, you could see like a big part of her skull and her jaw, like her teeth, her top lip was gone and her teeth were really exposed and stuff. So they replaced, the operation replaced her nose, her lips and her chin. And the surgeons describe that as the central facial triangle.
Yes, you're not supposed to squeeze any zits in that area apparently because it does something bad.
Well, it can.
You can't do anything in the facial triangle.
You're getting like a really nasty staph infection in the same area where your orifice for speaking, eating, breathing and basic expression exists. And that's no good. So the surgical team led by Dr. Bernard de Vochel with collaboration from Professor Jean-Michel Dubinard, already known for the world's first successful hand transplant, was...
So he's moved on to faces now. He's like, I need a new challenge. He's done a hand.
He's like, no, well, I think Dr. Bernard de Vochel said to Jean-Michel Dubinard, he's like, listen, mate, I know you've done the hand. I'm going to do a face and I'd really like it if you were there just to kind of.
Give me some guidance.
Yeah. So the don't. And then this is the trippy thing about it, because it's like, you always think about the fact that, you know, it's skin, it's an organ, it's had to be donated by someone.
Yes, it came from a recently deceased woman and her family consented, obviously, and said, that's fine. But I guess that comes with a lot of ethical considerations because the deceased woman herself obviously didn't consent. So perhaps was an organ donor, but probably didn't go into the detail of, oh, sure, someone can have my face. I don't know if when you consent to organ donation, you're actually thinking that your face might then that your face might then appear on someone else.
Yeah.
So it is a little bit much really.
Well, it's party if I like your nose and your lips and your chin.
And so there's the moral and ethical side of it, but then there's also the tabloid headlines because we had that movie Face Off. So it was all, oh, real life face off was the sensationalist headlines that came out. So partly in awe, a bit of moral panic, bit of sensationalism, a lot happening. After I leave hospital, I want to return to my family life. I want to restart a professional career and I expect to resume a normal life.
The pioneering surgery paved the way for transplants all around the world. People who had been severely disfigured now had new faces and new opportunities. So how did they do it? is the big thing because, they said, it paved the way for lots of other procedures. They graft skin, fat, muscles, arteries, veins, and facial nerves onto her.
They had to connect each nerve fibre and blood vessel with microsurgery. Yes. 15 hours straight they were operating for. a major leap in reconstructive surgery and transplant medicine, not just skin grafts or reattachments, but they had to transplant functional facial tissue. So not only did they have to connect it, they had to successfully connect it so that it could connect the muscles and the nerves and the blood vessels so that she could do things like smile, talk, eat.
Think about how many muscles are in your face.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
And look, I don't think, I don't think she would have had a full range of motion. post-transplant, but it would have been obviously a significant improvement to having nothing.
Well, I think within months she could smile, blink, purse her lips, speak, and then a little while later was able to eventually eat and drink normally.
Yes. Have you seen the pictures? I have, and it's full on. And then I've seen how it's kind of degraded over time too. So like you really need to look after immunosuppression with this.
That was the biggest risk, yeah.
Yes, because she, and she's on it for her entire life because they don't want her body to reject all these muscles and nerves and stuff that have been grafted to her face. So, and she did She did die. I think she died at age 48.
She was a little bit. I think 2016. Yeah.
49 she was and she was quite ill. I think she had cancer and I think her body did actually reject the graft. And the reason why she got cancer was linked to maybe the immunosuppression.
As well.
I think it was.
Yeah.
So it's almost like. Yeah. I mean, the alternative is, I think that obviously her quality of life was better while she had it. Anyway, it's, it was a profound, like a very profound case that raised profound questions about identity, ethics, consent, especially with that organ donation, recipient matching, putting someone on immunosuppression for their entire life.
Yeah, that'll do.
And the whole psychological adjustment, like.
It's all healed up and looking in the mirror. And obviously, she had been disfigured and she probably would have gotten used to what that looked like. But imagine looking in the mirror after all of that and seeing someone else's face on you. That, like psychologically, that...
Well, I mean, it's just a it's just like a skin donation. Like, I mean, that person wouldn't have had the same bone structure, for example. I wouldn't have thought. So, obviously, there would be features that... I'm not the same, surely. I mean, yes. And obviously, that's why you'd want to make sure you know you got a female's face, otherwise you start growing a beard or something if you've got a guy or something like that. So yeah, I don't know. I mean, I get, I mean, she obviously wanted it, you know. I think it's better than the, or she obviously thought, it doesn't matter what I think, but she obviously thought it was better than the alternative. And I know that with all of the sensationalism and stuff and those sort of stories and the face-off comparisons, I think the surgeons were quite angry about that. But it still is that kind of go-to pop culture reference for it all. And there's, you know, I think there is still that kind of debate about consent because what makes someone an individual and whether or not the psychological burden of the whole thing is too much because yes, That is somebody else's lips and, not their mouth entirely, but it's their lips and their...
But don't they also talk about things like muscle memory with transplants as well? Like, would that be a thing for a face transplant? I imagine it would as well.
Yeah. I mean, there's the, what's that movie? The Eye with Jessica Alba where she has the eye transplant and then she somehow in social things.
So she sees the things, yeah.
Ridiculous. Absolutely preposterous. No wonder surgeons get upset.
It did pave the way for that type of surgery. And since then, and as of now, over 40 partial or full face transplants have been performed. And the outcomes have improved a lot over the years because they're doing better donor matching. So that's to obviously help with. accepting as opposed to rejecting.
And also robotics even with the surgery.
Yeah.
So like, because you don't have to rely solely on, your hands and stuff. And the robotics have improved A lot.
And the medication as well.
Big deal. A really big deal and a massive like that's the game changer probably because the immunosuppression thing is still that's full on to have to not to have a weakened immune system for a long period of time is really bad.
I wonder if they I wonder if that. That's to do with rapamycin, which is the, it's a, it was found in, what's that place called? Rapa, with the, you know, with the stone heads.
The Easter Island.
Yes. What's its name? Rapa Nui or Rapa?
Rapa Nui.
Rapa Nui. Yes. So Rapamycin is named after that because they found some sort of bacteria in the soil there, which they then started using for transplants because it was able to stop the body rejecting the transplants. And it's supposed to be some miracle drug. People are taking it for longevity now.
Really.
So I wonder if that's part of the better immunosuppressant.
And you can only you can only get that at Easter Island.
That's where it was discovered. and I think they brought it back. If it was a bacteria or it was something in the soil there and they grew it in a little thing and then it became some sort of miracle drug that was used as part of when, yeah, for organ donation so that your body wouldn't reject it. So I wonder if that's... That's part of it, potentially.
Possibly. Well, the other thing is, they now recover sensation and movement within weeks instead of months.
Geez.
I mean, that's phenomenal. And then there's like 3D printing for like bone scaffolding, which helps them reshape like the underlying structures of the face before they attach the donor tissue. Because, you know, some of these injuries are probably, you know, your face is pretty banged up. They talk about functional identity and the idea that what really matters is restored and your capability of eating and blinking and emoting is really important as well, not just your appearance. Like it's not like you just like, because there still was an element. And I know with, this first case with Isabel, she, I think she started to lose a lot of that movement as well. And that had to do with the immunosuppressants and all of that stuff. So there was, because there was some times where she did some appearances and obviously there was a little bit of, I think, I don't know what atrophy maybe. I don't know if that's the word, but it just, it was breaking down. It wasn't doing as well as what it probably should have. So they have come a very long way.
Fascinating story. Let's go on to a scandal. We had a scandal. We had a scandal. Scandal in Congress.
The truth is I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my office. I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, Most importantly, the trust of my friends and family.
Oh, dear. Oh, no. Poor old US Congressman Randy Duke Cunningham, a decorated Vietnam war fighter pilot turned Republican representative from California, pleads guilty to bribery, conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud, and tax evasion. This was a big deal. He stood on the steps of the federal courthouse in San Diego, crying late. That was his admission right there. $2.4 million in bribes he took from defence contractors.
I like what he got bribed, what he got in the bribes. It wasn't subtle. He got cash, antiques, rugs and Persian carpets. What kind of bribery? Who asks for that when you're doing bribes?
Yeah.
Who'd be asking for a Persian carpet? I'd just be asking, I'd be asking for money and that's it.
Yeah, like somebody.
Maybe some nice jewels?
Somebody comes up too.
I would be going, yeah, you know, I'll help you out if you hook me up with a Persian carpet and a couple of rugs, mate.
Yeah, and then he goes down to the Persian carpet clearance house, you know, the one that's been closing down for the last 20 years.
That doesn't sound like a good deal.
And it's like, you know, oh, I really want to get this defence contract over the line and Randy Randy Duke Cunningham's there and he's like, well, you know what, you know, Persian carpets are really sweet.
Maroon with some nice gold details. **** pile.
It really ties the room together. Yes.
He also got a Rolls Royce.
That is amazing.
Lavish trips and a yacht.
The yacht.
The yacht.
The yacht. The Duke Stir. The Duke Stir.
The Duke Stir.
That is just extraordinary. That at like, yeah. And so he was basically just steering Pentagon contracts to towards business. who paid him. One of the most direct you pay, I play corruption cases of the era. It was jaw-dropping what he had done. He was a war hero, an ace pilot, and then he... And a rug lover. Yes, and then yes, he loved rugs and yachts and Rolls Royces. This was one of the largest bribery scandals in congressional history over in the United States.
I'm almost 65 years old and I enter the twilight of my life. I intend to use the remaining time. that God grants me to make amends, and I will. The first step in that journey is to admit fault and apologize, and I do apologize. The next step is to face the consequences of my action like a man. Today I have taken the first step, and with God's grace, I will take the second.
Yeah, you will, buddy.
Hand back.
It's so funny because when he, when they, when the investigators came in, so all of these contractors are giving him all these gifts in exchange for obviously, him influencing the contract, them winning the contracts, right? But he had a menu. He would present them with a bribery menu.
A secret bribery menu.
So it would be like, oh, well, if you perform this task or if you, then I require, then I require this Persian carpet. Yeah. So I'm wondering why?
It's almost like a gift registry, isn't it?
What did he do for a yacht? Like. Yeah. Extraordinary.
Yeah, actually. I'd like to see that, because it is like a gift registry, because you've always got to put, you know, like a cheap set of glasses on there, like, you know, for, you know, fancy glasses that are a bit cheaper, because not everybody's sort of, you know, No, that's right.
Yes.
So, maybe that was the one of the rugs. But yeah, working his way up to a yacht.
Yeah, I mean, bug it if I know.
I would have thought the Rolls Royce too, but you know. It's not that he's got a menu though. That's great.
Check out my menu. Yep. Well, yes.
He hid the bribes through inflated home sales. He forged account documents. and backdoor payments, which he described on his invoices as consulting.
Yeah, and so...
Consulting him, just consulting them over his bribery menu.
Well, he just he just inflated the house prices a little bit too much, and that's what that's where he got caught out. The IRS and the FBI were like, Geez, those houses are expensive. It's gone up, isn't it? That's I could buy a Rolls Royce with how much he's got. That's I mean, you know, that little that one bedroom apartment is the equivalent to a super maxi yacht. What are you talking about?
He was facing a maximum of 10 years jail. Eventually ended up with eight years for months, which was the longest sentence ever given to a sitting member of Congress at that time.
Yeah, it was a big, the media were like, it's the war hero who's become the villain in the New York Times and the Washington Post do all these deep dive breakdowns of the bribery menu.
Oh, maybe we can find out more through that.
Yeah, we could probably dig it up somewhere.
Find him on the way back machine.
If it's behind a paywall, it's not happening though. Cable news guy. You guys talking about how it's, a lawmaker on defence committees abusing national security funding for personal games. Very bad. And the satirists just loved it. Like the Daily Show with, I think it was with Colbert at that time, or was it with John Stewart? John Stewart. I think it was John Stewart. No, it was John. It was The Daily Show with John Stewart because Colbert was on late night. Top Gun meets Cash Converters. Oh, beautiful. Pretty good. Pretty good.
Poetic.
Yeah. Pay to play politics. That's what it's all about there. And it became a big catalyst for all the bipartisan ethics that they have in the States, including stronger oversight on earmarks and contractor influence, although Jesus Christ, have a look at him now. It's, you know, like, what the hell?
Today his bribery menu is still taught in political science and law schools as what not to do, a masterclass in traceable corruption. It does underscore how defence spending secrecy does create these opportunities because obviously you are not publicizing your defence spending contracts. You need to keep that pretty hush hush. So it does allow for maybe some price inflation and bribery menus and a few Persian rugs.
Yes, well, so hang on. I've got some details of this menu here. Price list. One side of the card showed contracts in millions of dollars with the corresponding price in bribes on the other side. One example detailed a $16 million in contracts for a contractor to give up a boat he had purchased for $140,000. Oh, that's a moderately priced yacht. Yes.
So what did they get in return for the yacht?
Well, there was. What was the contract? That's $16 million in contracts.
Wow.
So that's $16 million in defence contracts. That's going to keep your business going, right? Additional contract work could be bought for every extra $50,000 in cash paid to him. The menu had other favours such as a Rolls-Royce with an initial price of around $13,000 in contracts. Yeah, there was a few things. Luxury travel on private jets with high-end meals, a condo in Washington, DC. So many things. I mean, assistance with paying off his mortgage on a new home. Yeah, that's fine. Just look after my loan repayments for the next couple of weeks.
I'll hook you up for some contracts.
I'll go into my internet banking. I'll add you as a payee and they'll be none the wiser.
No one will ever know. 28th of November 2005, we have the debut of Cyber Monday.
Oh my goodness. And lo and behold, it's a massive thing now. It goes for longer than a day.
Well, Black Friday sales don't just go for Friday. I've been getting emails. I think I've gotten an email from every single company where I've ever clicked on their website in the history of forever. I think I've had about 26 billion emails.
I'm unsubscribed to you, but apparently Black Friday is exempt.
It undoes the unsubscription button that I pressed, and now I'm on your mailing list again. Thank you so much.
This is never a thing for us, because we never experienced Thanksgiving in this country.
And then we didn't, well, we didn't have the Black Friday sales either. But Cyber Monday, because it's on the old internet, that's for everybody.
Yes, we can all have it now. We can all have it, especially now that we can all access it really quickly.
But back in 2005, you had to do it at work. That's right. Online shopping carts are clunky and Amazon is still really just selling books and DVDs at this stage.
Just if you look at it now, I think our average speed at home is around 500 megabits per second. Okay. But back then it was one to five megabits per second.
That was broadband.
That was broadband. That was work. That was the work computer.
That was the word computer, not the house computer.
Yes.
But something huge does happen this time 20 years ago. The National Retail Federation, the NRF, comes up with the term Cyber Monday because.
Nerf, for short.
Nerf, because they've noticed that the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, so that's the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sundays kind of Thanksgiving.
Yeah.
That there's a massive spike in online shopping traffic when everyone comes back to work on the Monday.
They've all been lying down with really full bellies with like lots of turkey and pumpkin pie watching, watching all the ads.
What does the turkey make you do?
Tryptophan, the tryptophan. It makes you sleepy.
Yeah, relax.
It makes you sleepy. And in that daze, the subliminal waves from the advertisements in between the... The breaks in play in the American football that everyone watches on Thanksgiving is just permeating into your brain. And as a consequence, you wake up on the Monday and you're at work and you're like, I need to buy something. And I've got the capability to do it because the internet here is really good.
And I think the online retailers were a little bit poopy because Black Friday was really a bricks and mortar thing. It was, I guess it's the equivalent of the old Meyer stock take sale that we have here on Boxingdale.
So you'd have to queue at the actual department stores in order to buy the goods.
You couldn't do it online. Very much stock take sale stuff where people are queuing at the doors and bashing each other and tripping each other over and fighting over a jacket, you know, that kind of stuff, punching on. And the online retail is like, how can we get some of that? How can we get some punching on happening for our stuff?
Cyber Monday.
Cyber Monday is born.
Cyber Monday. As part of, so as part of that, they'd push these one day only discounts to encourage that click and buy. It's like click frenzy nowadays, you know, click frenzy stuff. The click and buy behaviour, which was very new back then. Not everyone was like click and buy.
Well, wasn't push notifications back then. It was emails. Well, I mean, not too different now, really, is it? Emails. Your inbox was flooded with the cyber. deals in all caps. And back then it was credit card, credit card only.
So still finding our feet here, low trust, I think, some people were a little bit wary. I mean, over here, we're like, we didn't even know it. wasn't even a thing for us, Cyber Monday. Cyber what? You know, we hadn't really heard of it at that stage, but it was all credit card and that. And they crashed all the sites and did all the things that they do. That still happens. It still happens to this day.
Yes.
You know, and this This is people typing in credit card manually as well. There's no biometric scanning or sticking your finger on something.
Or putting your eyeball in front of something.
Or just having the saved password come out of your vaults because you don't know any new passwords. But to the face.
Transplant lady, if she had facial recognition, she'd be able to log in for Cyber Monday.
Well, you'd have to obviously you'd have to go into the genius bar and say, I've got to do a factory research on my computer because my face is changed.
Yes, mine doesn't recognize me when I'm eating.
Really.
When I'm eating, I usually have problems logging in.
That's extraordinary.
Yeah. So your face, my face must look very different.
So like if you've ever got to do a heist, you don't even need to pull a stocking over your head. You just want to be snacking on an apple or something. They'll be like, no problem.
No one will know.
And then you're in the lineup and they're like, well, I don't know. That can't be her. The other person was eating.
The first Cyber Monday, they thought it was a bit of a quirky marketing stunt as the online Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That's a bit cheesy. That'll never take off the term cyber. Come on. That's like information superhighway or global village. No one will go for that. And you know, the news outlets are running the stories about workers secretly shopping from their cubicles. Don't tell the boss. The tech blogs mocked it saying it was manufactured hype. It did.
It really did.
2006, the second year, so the year after the launch, spending reportedly jumped by 25% to around 608 million US from the previous year.
Wow, that's crazy. That's a lot of money. It is. Just for stuff that's probably being bought impulsively online.
Yes, it's probably already marked up and then they just take it back to what the usual price is.
It's even worse now. Nowadays, it's like $10 billion. Isn't that a story?
And I think that's in the US alone. I don't think that's worldwide, is it?
Yeah, no, it's not. That's just... I mean, it's just e-commerce gone absolutely berserk. And now they're even, now it's with AI, and I think you'll find it's going to be even more so because they're going to be managing all the inventory and predicting demand and all of that stuff. And personalizing stuff.
They're starting it two months early. But I do wait because there are a few brands that I'm loyal to and the only time of the year they do sales. They don't do Christmas sales, they don't do any other sales, they only do Black Friday sales.
Yeah.
And I wait. One of them is my activewear company and I love their stuff and it's super expensive but it's great, good quality. And every year for Black Friday, it's... One of the only times they'll do a discount, they do 30% off everything. And that's it. 30% off everything every Black Friday. So I just wait. Do they wait?
And I wait and I wait. They just do Black Friday.
They do Black Friday, but they do it for a month. It's not even on the day. So for a whole month, it's 30% off site wide till it all sells out. I've been holding off getting my favorite protein because that went up in price and they only do sales on Black Friday. I've stocked up on my raw coconut protein. I haven't been able to use that in my baking for a few months because I've been waiting for a Black Friday sale. So I've been using the vanilla, but we'll be having the good waffles and coconut in a few weeks.
Can't wait for the good Black Friday waffles. That's exciting.
They're on their way. A couple more weeks. What's next? On back order.
Bread and milk. Black Friday bread and milk sales. Right. Right, let's do music. I'm sure that music was popular at the Black Friday sales, although physical media are on the decline.
IPods and headphones.
Devices, technology. Yeah.
The Dr. Dre Beats would have been a big ticket item. Was that 2005?
No, probably not. 2005, a little bit later than that.
Anyway.
Yeah, a bit sketchy on the details.
Always. Number one here in Australia, my lovely lady lumps.
You love my lady lumps. My hump, my hump, my hump, they got you. She's got me spending all your money on me and spending time on me. She's got me spending all your money on me.
Just get those animated ships of the desert.
Number one is still Madonna.
Yeah, it is.
And I've hacked the billboards websites. You know how we can't?
Be careful. That's a big, that is a big admission.
No, not hacked like a hacker.
God.
No, like a life hack.
You seem to forget sometimes that we actually publish this podcast.
Like an IKEA hack, but an IKEA, not like a not like a hacker hacker, computer hacker. I mean, like, I've.
As part of my Cyber Monday celebrations, I will be hacking the billboard site.
No, I've found a workaround when I pressed. the date. So you've got to go into the charts and then you've got to go all the way back. There's a little calendar and then you've got to click the calendar all the way back to 2005. It takes a while, all the way back. And so then you go to the week and then what happens is you click on the week and it used to give you the whole chart. And now it just, it puts it behind a paywall. But for a nanosecond, the chart flashes up.
Oh my God.
So I press it and I've got to quickly look and then I see #1 and then I've got to scroll down a little bit and I press it again and then I miss it because it goes too fast and I press it again and I miss it and then I press it again and I see #2. So it took me about half an hour, but I've got the top five for this week.
I've got, I can give you a website.
You've got a website. Great, you should tell me that earlier. But I got there in the end.
I've got a website.
Yeah, I was doing the way back machine, but then I couldn't get into the way back machine and it was just too hard.
I'll give you a website.
That'll be handy because it took a long time to find all these.
Well, and it goes a little something like this.
Look at this photograph. Every time I do it makes me laugh. How did our eyes get so red? Yeah. So survivor. Yeah. No, the game don't stop Tryna make it to the top for your skin I love my lady love My hump, my hump, my hump, my hump They got you She's got me spillin' her I ain't sayin' she a gold digger But she ain't messin' with no broke, broke Nah, I ain't sayin' she a gold digger But she ain't messin' with no broke, broke Get down, girl, go ahead, get down.
That must be really frustrating too, when you have to, when you've gone through that procedure. A, it's probably frustrating that I didn't give you the website and I do apologise.
No, it's fine. I was really excited. I was like, oh, I figured I figured a way around this. Where there's a will, there's a workaround.
What a letdown when it's all the same songs as last week. Although there was a new number.
One, there is a new number one. So I got, I was like, whoa, new number one. And then it took me, yeah, I had to come down.
Reeling, you were shocked by that, and then?
I missed a few, few clicks, but we got there in the end. Photograph, Nickelback #5. Oh, yes. Acorn with a Cold Soul Survivor #4, Mohammed's #3, Goldie #2, and yes, Chris Brown in #1. The same songs, just different.
Yeah, different little order. Just Chris and Kanye had a little switcheroo. That was about it. But it is kind of probably, I think, the last week that we're going to look at this photograph. Every time I do, well, it's not going to make me laugh anymore. It's going to make me sad.
That's a shame, isn't it? Well, I'll cheer you up. We had an album release from Lindsay Lohan.
Oh, God, be still my... enthusiasm.
Yes, a little more personal, open bracket, raw, close bracket.
Oh yeah, look, I got some of the music off this today.
Did you?
Just for the sake of the podcast, to add a little bit of context to the discussion as I like to do. You enjoyed it? No, it's, well, the film clip, I had to go and get the album version of the song that I'm talking about here, which was called, what was it called? It was called, Confessions of a broken.
Heart, open bracket, daughter to father, close brackets, lots of brackets.
And so it is a very, very raw and exposed Lindsay in this, a lot more personal like you were saying. And that's the album version. The music video, which was directed by Lindsay, has like all of this domestic violence going on. It's so the dad's yelling and carrying on and abusing the family. It's terrible.
I saw the stuff with the mum. What was the mum's name?
Dina. Dina, Dina. Yeah, so it's a dramatized version of the whole family turmoil that she experienced. It was quite disturbing, I have to say.
Well, it's a bit of a shift from the, I'm tired of rumours starting. They're always talking about me, you know, the other one that she did last.
A little bit. She's kind of, she's kind of directed her, it's more interesting. She directed it inwards. You know, she's like, well, I'm sick of all of those people. Now she's like, well, I'm sick of my own as well.
Yes.
Yeah.
So I'll think about that too. There was a surprise cover of Stevie Nicks's Edge of 17 in there as well. I don't suppose you grab that. Did you listen to it? Was it any good? I don't think she's a terrible singer.
I just don't think anyone else can sing Edge of Seventeen except for Stevie Nicks, to be honest.
Yeah, well, that's true, but she's not the worst singer.
No, and she did perform that one at quite a few of the awards ceremonies, I believe, because it was awards season as well. So they were trotting Lindsay out quite a bit. So she'd start with that Confessions a daughter to father thing and then go into Edge of Seventeen, I believe.
I also believe she was recording this while she was filming one of the Herbie movies.
Right.
I think she sang some of it in her trailer. Really? And recorded her in the trailer while she was on set.
I hope it wasn't that song in the trailer because Herbie's like, you know, about it's a good movie that functional families sit down and watch together.
Don't ruin Herbie.
Yes, exactly. You know. Goodness me. So easy on Herbie.
It is, but I think you know. In hindsight, it's seen as a bit of an artifact from the early 2000s. I think people have rediscovered it. I believe it's had a resurgence on the TikTok.
Has it? Lindsay's making a comeback.
Popping up on the TikTok.
What did she do? She's just recently... They've just done the new Freaky Friday, Freaky Friday. She's back in January. That was a good movie first. And look, I mean, everyone gives Lindsay a hard time, but you've got to give her a little bit of credit for trying to I guess, open up to her fans in this way. It is very, it is very personal. It's not my cup of tea, but it's very personal content. You know, and she was somebody at that particular time who was just under the spotlight the entire time. She kind of didn't know anything else or anything better because she'd been under that spotlight ever since she was very, very young. So.
She was probably one of the first. Disney stars where we did see that paparazzi treatment and her coming of age with the paparazzi watching her every move. And then you saw that for a lot of other Disney stars and childhood stars like your Miley Cyruses to come from that. And they all seem to sort of do this squeaky clean Disney image and then have this coming of age rebellion, whatever that looked like. There was quite a few that came after her went through that. Some of them didn't turn out too well for others, but they were fine.
I don't want to generalise too much, but it all seems like they all have horrible parents, you know?
Stage mum and dad.
And she's done this in 2005, like Christmas dinner 2006 at the Lowen House. Whoa, boy.
Well, that was a time.
That's going to be nah, that would have been a time.
Another album release. This one was very anticipated here in Australia.
It ain't really where the pretty leads you and no place to go. If you think you want it, just come in and call it. It ain't pretty.
In excess experience their first full body transplant.
The album Switch, their first studio album.
Switch, oh my gosh.
Since the death of Michael Hutchins in 1997. Obviously, JD Fortune became their new frontman after the reality show. That's right.
We spoke about him a few weeks ago because they fast tracked the album. They didn't muck around.
We had just one, yeah.
They'd written everything. That would have just been like, get in there and do exactly.
What you tell you. So these words, read the exactly. Don't change any of them. That's what you're doing.
Yeah.
That was the lead single that you played there, wasn't it? Pretty Vegas. Which was co. he got a credit, so he got some cash.
Yeah, he got some money for that one.
But we're all very excited for it. And it wasn't terrible.
Look, it wasn't terrible. I don't think it was great. I know they had that tribute song to Michael Hutchins, Afterglow, and then there was the Devil's Party, which was going to be the next big radio hit for it. But I think that it kind of stalled out after Pretty Vegas, if we're being honest.
And then all the touring drama.
Yeah. I mean, it's still sounded like in excess, and I thought, I thought that he was a good replacement in that he didn't stray too far away from that sound, And I think the Australian media was probably more complimentary of it than maybe the rest of the world.
I don't think the rest of the world cared, to be honest.
No.
I think it was just us. Sunrise. I remember him on Sunrise.
Yes. Playing at.
Way too way too early for that.
Bit too raunchy.
Yeah, it was a bit much. I think Mel Doyle didn't mind though. I think she was having a good time rocking out there.
Big fan of JD Fortune.
I think so. And then, it all went basically after that.
He really did. He just couldn't handle the fame. And I don't think the rest of the band wanted to have too much to do with him.
And you said he's touring now, singing some of the songs, isn't he?
I think he is, or if he's not doing it right now, but I think he's aiming to sort of towards either the end of this year.
Coming to the Canberra Southern Cross Club, Top of the Cross. I reckon he'll come to Top of the Cross.
He probably will, if JD sings in excess. Maybe I don't know.
I'd like to go. We could go to the Golden Grill afterwards.
Can I just go to the Golden Grill? grill and skip the concert, that'd be all right, wouldn't it? Look, given that, you know, there's a Harry Potter movie that's just come out, I mean, there's really not much to talk about at the movies. Although in Australia, we were happy because Heath Ledger was in the Brothers Grimm. So the Brothers Grimm was number.
One in the Australian box office.
Harry Potter was number one in the US. Yes, and I'm guessing that's quite deliberate, which is good. because it gives our heath a chance to sort of, go to the top of the box office in Australia, which is wonderful. So not much happening in film, but oh my lord. The Current Affair.
Booner News.
After, well, yes, and I think it's because it really started to go downhill after this.
And it was still a little bit highbrow at this stage, wasn't it? wasn't full boring neighbours swearing at each other and people running down the street.
There was a little bit of that, but I think it was all sort of, it was a bit more dignified because Ray Martin was at the helm. Ray Martin was at the helm.
Not going to swear on TV phrase there.
Yes, and after more than a decade, he announces he's stepping down from a Current Affair. Now he'd stepped down previously in 1998. He was there from 1998. Don't fake this out. Yeah. And then in 2003, he started back up again. And this time 2005 was the Swan song. He's gone.
So did they change it to ACA, the acronym, when he came back the second time? Was it a bit of a rebrand?
I don't know. I can't remember if it was ACA or a Current Affair. Maybe it was ACA when Tracy came in. I don't know.
Oh, that does feel like a Tracy movie, actually.
Tracy.
Tracy and ACA. ACA with Trace.
Kind of works, kind of. doesn't really, doesn't it? But so he was retiring from there. But it was also there was a bit of a reshuffle at Channel 9 ahead of ratings season. So he's like, I'm going to refocus on long form journalism and special projects rather than the nightly tabloid grind, which I think is code for them.
Maybe he felt it was getting a bit too booner news.
Time for a bit of new blood in here, Ray.
This doesn't match my social brand.
Look, you'll never know the full story behind the scenes. That'll be.
I told you how I met him and he let me touch his hair.
Yeah, he's a nice fellow.
What a lovely guy.
That's a bit much though. Why did he, what did you ask?
Because remember, remember there was all that stuff, there was all that joke that he was.
Like on Full Frontal went up.
Yeah, they said he had Lego Man hair. There was all that joke.
Yes.
And he was playing Kino downstairs at Casino Canberra once. And look, I may have had a few shandies at the RSL pre that.
Yes.
And I saw him and I went and had a chat to him.
And he let you touch his head.
And I said, look, everyone says it's not real. And he said, you can touch it as long as you tell everybody it's real.
Yes, great. So Ray Martin's hair was trending before trending was intended.
And he didn't mind. He was fine. He was lovely.
Yeah.
Lovely guy just having a game aquino on his own there.
Yes.
Mind his own business.
I think he draws the line at things like John Safran going through his garbage. That's when he sort of becomes a person. That's when he got a person.
Yeah, well, I asked first. I got consent.
Yes, exactly. It was consent, and consent's big in Canberra and all the rest of it as well, which is great. But he did. I didn't find the tone of a current affair back then. And I think the tone was changing, which is the way he went. But Ray is, approachable as exhibit A. Very approachable. As Mel can attest to. Occasionally a bit fiery, as John Safran can probably attest to. Very audience focused though, Ray Martin.
Happy to be amongst the common man, as I would attest to.
Yep.
And just doing his thing.
Because he started on 60 minutes, though, too, didn't he? Yeah, he's one of the greats. I look at him, I look at George Negus, I look at that era of journalists, you know, those, yeah, those guys. And ACA at the time was a flagship of Channel Nines. Like, people watched it back then. They didn't just sort of get outraged over there. up the dishes after a current affair. That's what used to happen. Yeah, he was very cool. He was very cool. And he, look.
Now someone told me today that when I started on this program five years ago, 1200 shows ago, my first words here were, am I nervous? You betcha. Well, tomorrow night is my final program behind this desk. Am I nervous? Well, not really, just a little nostalgic. So tomorrow night, we'll wander back through some great characters and some special moments. Certainly special moments for me and hopefully for you. So, see you tomorrow night, same time, same place.
Good night.
So, I could, that's all I could find. I could not find his farewell message, so I just got the one from the night before. It's like that's.
He's pre promoted.
Yes, it's like that's Steel Panther song. I'm going to a party tomorrow night. Yes, I just, I couldn't find it. I'm sorry.
He's farewell Eve.
Yes.
Well, that was nice. That was nice. He said he was feeling nostalgic. Ray, I've got a podcast you might like to listen to if you feel if you're a nostalgic kind of guy.
Yes, exactly, mate. Come and have a listen. I think that the whole landscape shifted seismically after Ray stepped in.
And then obviously Tracy.
Yes.
And who was after Tracy? Was it Stan? Stan Grant? Or was he? Oh no, he was today tonight.
Tonight is the competition look out.
Oh, whoops. Yeah.
You're getting your bogan news channels mixed up.
And who, yeah, who was the other, who was after Trace?
Wasn't it the wife of one of the execs?
Yes, what was her name? Started with an S, I think.
Did it?
Layla McKinnon.
Oh, that doesn't start with an.
S. I don't know why I thought it started with an S. Layla McKinnon. And now, isn't it Ali Langdon?
Oh, yeah, we need.
To do the show with Karl.
I'm going to the Buna News. I got work on the Buna News. I'm trying to hang out with cantankerous neighbours and deal with that ****. It's been a while. It's been a long time between drinks for video games, but this one's definitely worth acknowledging. I mean.
Well, it was released actually a week ago, but we missed it.
And then we thought, oh, it was released a week ago, so missed by that much. I mean, it's a bit like getting raised second last night on the air.
Pretty much.
But we got there in the end. 50 Cent released a video game this time 20 years ago called Bulletproof. That was a current affair. This is bulletproof.
What's mine is mine. What's yours is mine. I run these streets. This whole city is mine. I never understand how people forget that.
No, I'm just, I'm just kidding. Anyway, that was, Bulletproof 50 Cent. Late 2005, Hip Hop's going crazy. You hear it on the charts every ******* week. You can't get away from it. It's dominating everything. And he had books come out of few. That's right. Like last month. His graphic novels. His graphic novels. That's everywhere. There's the Xbox 360s out. The PlayStation 2s there and 50 Cent has just slammed this game Bulletproof right on both of these consoles. Yes. And he's very proud of it.
The name of the video game is 50 Cent Bulletproof. It's almost like a whole nother screenplay to my life. This is not the reality of what I would actually be doing in the street or anything. It's actually a game, but it has so much details to it that it feels real.
It feels real, except for the fact that when you're playing it, you're not in G unit, all 50 cent, you're just. It was, it was, this is the template for my favourite 50 cent game, Blood on the Scene.
I thought that game first.
This is the first one. I didn't realise. This is the template.
It's based on his real life mythology.
Yes, it's embellished a little bit.
Survives a hit and covers a conspiracy. Wonder if it involved Persian rugs.
Possibly.
Shoots his way through New York. Underworld. And not just him voice acting in it, the whole G-Unit crew.
Yeah, everyone showed up.
Lloyd.
Everyone showed up.
Tony, Young Buck.
Eminem plays a cop in it, like a detective, I think. Yeah. From memory, I think. He gets shot in the leg in the end. The soundtrack was like a whole bunch of new stuff as well. So this is very strategic on 50 Cent's behalf as well, because I don't think there's an album out at the moment.
Yeah, because he's doing like the game and the load backs, like he's producing for all of GPU.
So people are still, and 50 Cent is charting and whatnot, and he's still in the top 100 or whatever. But he's, very strategic. So people are just wanting more and more 50 Cent, and he's just trickling stuff through. So he's like, well, I've done this and I've done the graphic novels, and now I'm doing a video game. We'll get to an album eventually. Yes, which made people who probably weren't that into it, but were really into 50 Cent, want to get the game as well. Very clever, very clever. I mean, how could you not be into it? Slow motion dives, dual pistol wielding, sidewalk executions, lots and lots and lots of swearing. If you've played the game Max Payne, it was very similar to that, but a little bit more arcade-y. It had a music player in the game so you could pick your tracks. You build your own playlist.
That's cool.
Yeah, you could buy upgrades using a fictional currency called G Cash, the official currency of 50 Cent Bulletproof. Very mid-2000s. Very, a little bit of toxic masculinity, gritty violence, very, very branded with all of his stuff. It was great. And then the reviewers come out and the critics hate it. They're like, it's really clunky and repetitive. But the 50 cent fans don't give a ****. They're like, it's 50 cent music. We do not care. We do not care. Over a million copies, a cult favorite because of the soundtrack and the novelty of it. Entertainment shows thought it was just a big extension of the whole 50 Cent myth-making thing. CNN said it was a rapper stepping fully into gaming. MTV went berserk and promoted the crap out of it. And then all the moral guardians were like, this is video game violence to the extreme. And it really was. It was great. And of course, it paved the way for 50 Cent Blood on the Sand, which I still rank as one of the greatest video games of all time. Gosh, books we didn't read because we're too busy playing 50 cent video games.
Yes, I would have read 50s books if I knew about them at the time.
Yeah, I definitely would have read those. Again, like I remember there was some sexy stuff in there and I don't, I just don't want to, I don't want to know him like that. I just don't want to know him like that.
This wasn't a sexy. Oh, actually.
No, it would have been, it would have been, there would have been.
A Feast for Crows. That's the, is that a Game of Thrones related thing?
It's sexy, but on a brothers and sisters. We don't have sex with our siblings, okay? It's not the dumb thing. A Feast for Crows. What might be good in Westeros is certainly not good here.
George RR Martin.
You're not in Westeros anymore. yeah, okay, so we need a synopsis, don't we?
Yes.
Feast of Crows. Oh, what do I have? I don't know that I've really got anything kind of Feast of Crowsie. That's a bit Miami Vice. Let's do it Miami Vice style. Yeah, I like it. Bloodthirsty, treacherous and cunning, the Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne in the name of the Boy King Tommen. The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermath, new conflicts spark to life on the beaches of Miami. The Martells of Dawn and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Uran Crow's eye, as black as a pirate as ever has raised a sail, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles from the icy north where the others threaten the wall. The master apprentice, Meister Samwell Tarly, brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel. It's really not working with this music, but I am going to persist. Against A backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory will go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel and the coldest hearts. Sure, I've read the first book of the... Yeah. And then the TV series came out and I thought, well, that's a bit easier. So I did that.
Did you like the book?
Oh, like I did, sort of, but it jumps around a lot and there's lots and lots and lots of characters to remember.
Is it a chapter, each chapter is sort of told from a different point of view, a different character.
Yeah, well, that's the first one was. And it was just like, there's so many characters to keep track of. I'm like, when does it all come together? And then I don't know if George is going to bring them all together in the end. I don't know if I should invest in this book because I know that the dude who's written it is really slow to write like a whole bunch of other books and he's not the fittest looking guy in the world so there's a very real possibility that he could die before the end of it and then what do we do then? And that's what they were thinking with the TV series which is why they completely f***ed up the last season.
Risky run.
Yes, exactly.
Well, Connor Leo felt the same about the different characters.
Well, when I first saw that, I thought it was like, Connolio.
So did I. Yes, but it's Connor Leo. So did I. Yes. I think it might be Connor and Leo, maybe, together.
It's a joint account. You should never trust people with joint social media accounts. It's your own identity.
After my sister recommended I skip Circe's entries and my co-worker told me to skip Brand's entries and my friend told me to skip Sansa's chapters, I began to wonder which part of this book is actually worth reading. I recommend you skip all entries and save yourself frustration by reading the abbreviated story on Cliff Notes.
Good idea. He's just, he's basically been told not to read any of the major characters bits. Yeah. I mean, there's other bits. Joan gave it one star. This certainly was no feast. Just a big bloated doorstop of a book and a waste of time.
Oh, Joan. Brian won star. Martin didn't just lose his muse. She tossed her half empty goblet of ambrosia in his face, kicked him in the nuts, and then set fire to his house as she left.
Wow.
Was he going through a divorce or celebration when he was writing it?
I don't know who his muse was. I tell you what, that is, have you seen George R.R. Martin? No. I just, I feel like... They couldn't pay you enough to be his muse.
That's a bit mean.
Oh, look, it's just he's a heaving, sweaty man who writes about incest. Like, and you're telling me I'm being mean? I mean, he's created this world. He started himself. He put himself there. Exactly. Robin, one star. Nothing but overly complex descriptions of lavish meals, fashions and disgusting sexual encounters.
Fashions and disgusting sexual encounters.
I mean, you can't have one without the other, really.
They really go hand in hand.
Exactly. Fashions and disgusting sex. Let's just let's just get into some fashion and have some disgusting sexual encounters while we're at it.
But Kishi one star.
Yes.
I must admit that I'm not a fan of high slash epic fantasy. To me, high fantasy is a literary equivalent of Kim Kardashian. Bulky, voluminous, artificially pretty on the surface, yet without much depth or substance.
What's wrong with that?
And even as a guilty pleasure, it quickly becomes tedious by its own generic blandness. Similarly to the aforementioned assy minx. Instead of sassy, assy.
He's the assy minx. Oh, yeah.
So she's not a fan of the Kardashians.
But she still says she's.
A nor the Game of Thrones.
Well, because she still says that she's a minx, though, which is.
She's an assy minx.
An assy minx as opposed to a sassy.
But.
So he's not a **** guy. No. Oh, I mean, that's high fantasy, but you know, what about what about high fashions? and sexual encounters. Can we go back to that? was good. Just not with your sisters. Once again, T-minus 20 strongly recommends not having sex with your siblings. Well, ****** me. Actually, don't not have to talk about George R.R. Martin. Attaches, matches and dispatches time. We're nearly at the end of the show. So we'll get straight into this. A match, a wedding with a celebrity that said this.
People always want to ask me what I use on my skin and I'm so adamant about not telling people, not because I'm trying to keep it a beauty secret, but because it doesn't matter what I'm using on my skin, everybody's different and what works for one person doesn't work for another. And so it's about addressing the real health issues instead of buying an expensive face cream and slapping on your face. That's not really the way I kind of look at it from more of a... a health perspective.
That is somebody who has an extraordinary skill of being able to form incredibly long sentences.
That was a run-on sentence.
That was a massive sentence. That was a massive sentence. And what's funny about that is that's the first time I think I've actually gone to any effort to hear her talk. If you said Dieter von Teese... Well, that's who that was. And she married Marilyn Manson this time 20 years ago.
Goth royalty meets burlesque glamour. Yeah, it was a very theatrical wedding, as you'd expect.
Yeah, so I was going to say it's a match made in heaven, but it's probably... I'm not appropriate. I might offend them. It was. And they looked, I mean, they were both quite pale. They both had black hair. They looked really good on red carpets together, didn't they? And at fashion shows, they stood out.
Yes. They married at a French chateau. I think it was in a castle, actually, owned by an eccentric artist by the name of Gottfried Heinwein. Helmwein. who was a long time collaborator with Marilyn Manson?
Yes, but I mean, I think Dieter brought a bit of class to the proceeding.
Vivian Westwood.
Yes, whereas, you know, Manson is all sleaze. She's kind of all class. So she's got her Westwood corseted purple silk ball gown. which looked pretty good. She did look pretty good. It's like wedding meets gothic fairy tale meets installation performance arts meets fashion magazine.
I think they described it as everyone dressed like they walked off a Tim Burton set, basically.
Yeah, that would have been a bit much. Not my cupboard. They'd be like, oh, get over yourselves, everybody, honestly. But the fashion magazines loved it. They were the its couple. Believe it or not, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar. Marilyn Manson is like this heavy metal performer, this guy that's making these huge statements against the establishment and being quite vulgar. He hasn't really changed or anything like that. He's still Marilyn Manson and now he's in Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and all of that sort of stuff. He's high fashion. It's bizarre. Very strange. People loved it. Critics speculated about their future, and that's probably fair enough because they did get divorced. They only married, they only lasted.
For a year later, I think. Irreconcilable differences.
Well, yes, but she still speaks reasonably fondly of Marilyn these days.
Oh, yeah. I mean, he was super encouraging and, you know, we did a lot of like, you know, there's a lot of crossover in our careers and, you know, it was good to be He'll have that creative. He encouraged all my eccentricities. He did a whole album that was, you know, kind of burlesque themed and we made like, you know, music videos together. And I can speak fondly about him now because it's like... I mean, if you would ask me like four years ago, I'd have been like, shut it down. We can't talk about it. But we're friends now and it's fine, you know?
Yeah, it just took a little while.
It took a little while.
I remember I saw Manson on that burlesque tour. He played at the Canberra Theatre. And it was, yeah, and it was just so weird because he, it was very low profile and suddenly like Marilyn Manson is doing a show and it was when he was sort of peak with Dita Von T. So I believe they were dating it. I don't know, or maybe they were married. I don't know, but it was the whole grotesque burlesque tour.
Oh, I remember. Yes, I didn't go to it, but I remember that. It was great.
It was really good. And it was kind of...
All the wowsers didn't want him in Canberra, I remember.
Yes, well, he put on a fantastic show and it wasn't, it didn't sell out. I can remember the attendance was, it wasn't like the place wasn't empty, but it wasn't really... great either. And at one stage, that didn't deter him. He still put on a fantastic performance. And at one stage, he just screamed out to the crowd, make some noise, ************ because you're all I've got. And everyone went berserk and we all had a wonderful time and it was really good.
Interesting. He's trending at the moment on Instagram. I saw something the other day. People are talking about Gen Z will never understand this. And they're talking about the Marilyn Manson rumor in the late 90s, early 2000s, which we all know. And they're talking about the fact that rumor went around and it was pre-internet days.
Yes.
And people in America were talking about it. And they were very surprised to hear people from other countries going, oh yeah, we had that rumor as well. And then there's this girl and she's from Russia. She's like, yep, we had that. We all knew about that in Russia. And then there's this And he was from, I don't know, like Norway or somewhere. And he's like, I lived in this little remote town. We didn't have TV, we didn't have radio, certainly didn't have the internet or house computers. But everyone in my year at school knew that rumor. And people are just reflecting on how everybody knew that pre-internet days. And how did everybody know that? And where did it start and why? And nobody knows, but everybody just knew it.
It's like, did you know that Marilyn Manson is Paul Pfeiffer from the Romney years? Not that rumour. That is such an innocence. Oh, the one with the rib.
The rib rumour.
The one where he had the rib removed so he could do things. Yes, he could, yeah, look after himself. Whatever, I'm too old for that now, you know. I just want to go to bed. Yes. It's the end of the show. Well, we've got stuff next week though. We've got, how many, we've got a couple more episodes.
I think a couple more and then we might look at it. No, well, we've got to do sort of the best of 2005. So we'll look, you know, like the biggest songs, the biggest movies, you know, that stuff. Got to do that. So it's still a little bit more work to do.
Right.
And then we're summer programming where we're lazy.
I don't know where I'm going to find time. I've got to put up the Christmas lights. I've got to do the tree.
I've got to do all the shopping.
Well, you can just wait till Cyber Monday.
That's a good idea.
Yeah, come and find us on the socials, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever you want to do. Look for T Minus 20 Podcast. You'll find us somewhere thereabouts. Slide into our DMs. You can send us a boom if we open up the boom box next week. If you just joined us, you never heard an episode before and you're like, what's the boom box you speak of? Well, listen, there's a couple other episodes you might find out. It'd be a revelation. It'd be amazing to you. Whatever you do, just support us. We support you by putting this out every week and we really love that you like it and you you listen to it. So thanks. Yes, thanks. Bye. See you.
Thanks for taking the time to rewind. Join us next time for another week that was 20 years ago. In the meantime, come and reminisce on the socials. Search for T-minus 20 podcast on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.