First podcast, y’all! As you might imagine, Dave and Tara weren’t completely confident in their ability to carry it all on their own (perhaps in part because their first two test podcasts didn’t record…ahem), so they also drafted Linda Holmes of Things What Things; Kim Reed of Fresh Hell, and her husband Jim Durr; and Adam Sternbergh of New York magazine. Topics covered include the timely — Hulk, The Office, how sick we are of M. Night Shyamalan — and evergreen, like one of our participants’ favourite bad movies.
Warning: This podcast has some poor audio quality in parts, especially near the start. We had to share one mic for six people. We’ll probably do better next time.
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May 12th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
I want Adam to know he’s not alone in knowing that “Yo Mama!” with Wilmer Valderrama was an actual TV show.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I kind of still don’t believe him or you. Feels like a mistake. I’m going to have to call the encyclopedia people.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Okay, so I wanted to like this podcast, but I really didn’t. It sounds like you guys had a good time doing this, but from a listener’s perspective, the continuous interrupting by one of the guys attempting to insert a randomly witty observation tended to make the other speakers’ words unintelligible, and no matter how witty the observation (Why is the hulk always Green, didn’t he used to be Grey?”), or not, the overspeaking and interrupting causes the listener to lose the entire conversation. It doesn’t come off as funny, it just comes off as annoying.
Also? One of the most interesting things said in the podcast was that one of the speakers was raised as a Quaker, and you guys skimmed right over this with a bunch of unintelligble, interrupting banter. As a listener, having never even met anyone who was raised as Quaker, it would have been very interesting to hear about that, instead of the not-very-funny-and-obvious quips about “Pro-silence? How do they express that?”.
In general, I thought the moderator brought up interesting and quirky topics, but the resulting quip-fest didn’t take them anywhere, IMHO.
I guess what I’m saying is that speaking, like writing, can remain at the utterly superficial level, or, like good writing, can involve the utterly superficial while exploring the deeper insights into the people doing the speaking, which is “THE HUMAN CONDITION”, which is ALWAYS interesting. Plus, you’ll get to know more about your friends, as will we.
Good luck, I’ll check back on your later podcasts.
May 13th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Yeah, we had a big problem talking over each other — there were big chunks of the original recording I just tossed because of it but hey it was our first try and we’re just figuring it out as we go along.
There actually was more Quaker talk but unfortunately Linda was too far away from the mic for most of the recording and a lot of it was too low for broadcast. Maybe we’ll get her back for a Quakerfest. That said — I’d also say if you’re coming here for some Deepak Chopra insights on what makes us tick as we find our place in the universe then we’ll probably continue to disappoint. :)
May 13th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
For what it’s worth, I was eating a BK “IndyTM Double Whopper” (”Bite Into Adventure!”) while listening to the podcast and while I liked the first part and the ending, I found the middle to be too icebergy and not cheesy enough. The burger, not the movie (or the podcast).
May 13th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Here in NY they have Indiana Jones M&Ms. Do they have those up there? They sound both gross and unIndianaJonesish. They are mint crisp flavoured. Did anyone like the original cripsy M&Ms? They are not on the market anymore AFAIK and now they’ve added the civil war-inducing mint to the mix. How mint or crispiness are connected to Indiana Jones I can’t figure out. Coffee I could buy — it’s tropical.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
No, the only Deepak Chopra stuff I’d be interested in hearing would be a comedy skit involving Deepak and Tom Cruise bemoaning the trials and tribulations of communicating THE TRUTH to everyone in the world who hasn’t quite understood THE TRUTH and how much better everything would be if people would JUST LISTEN to THE TRUTH. ;-)
May 13th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
A more logical tie-in? I’ll check on the M&Ms and stock up for your next visit. I could see them being IndianaJonesish if, say, you were tied to an altar and one-by one they drop into your mouth as torture. Or if they melt your mouth, not your hand, while ghosts swirl around you.
May 13th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
That’s true of SO many things though.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
In fairness, a big discussion about Quakers was not something I was looking for in this particular setting. If anything, I was thinking, “Mm, this is already way more about this than is interesting to anyone.” If anyone had attempted a serious religious discussion, I would have cut it off.
And I just want everyone to mark it down right now, because the day, it is historic: “Linda was too quiet.” BOOYAH!
May 13th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I enjoyed the podcast quite a bit, a lot of topics that I found interesting came up. There were some over talking issues, like a previous commenter mentioned, and sound problems, but I think that’s all stuff that will get worked out as you go. The one change I would like to see is to lose the little music segue and have the conversations flow from one topic to another. On the whole though, I thought it had a lot of potential and I’m looking forward to listening to more of them. Are you going to try and do these weekly?
One last comment, I don’t know who made the Heroes vs Lost comment, I was having trouble figuring out who was who most of the time, but I disagree that Heroes is a better format. Personally, I find Lost to be a vastly superior show to Heroes, though I also enjoy Heroes most of the time. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with either format, I like to think that there is a place for both the season long Heroes arcs, and the epic series long arcs of Lost.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I’m not sure how to do those topic transitions without the music seque without it being jarring. Maybe a better shorter little blip would do the trick. I’ll work it out I’m sure.
That was me about Lost and Heroes and what I forgot to say is that Heroes opens and closes around the same number of mystery doors each season while Lost, like X-Files before it, likes to open 5 doors for each one they close. It’s intriguing for sure but when they end up wrapping up about 10% of the loose ends at the series end you get all mad and pissed off. :)
May 13th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
The music segue is a very minor detail in the grand scheme of things, just thought I’d throw it out there.
There were a few points in season 2 and 3 of Lost where I was frustrated and nearly quit the show, but the later half of season 3 was so amazing that it kept me in. I’ve also been loving season 4, assuming the finale maintains the momentum they’ve built up, I think this is going to end up being one of the strongest seasons of any show ever. Putting an end date on this show has done wonders for the storytelling, there’s been a few points this season where I almost felt they were giving information too fast, that’s definitely not a complaint I ever thought I would have.
This is the sort of show I love though, so I probably cut it more slack than I would other shows. The only other show I can think of that pulled off a series long arc was Babylon 5, which I also loved. As much as I like the format, I do think that most shows should stay away from it, just because of the difficulty of maintaining the story arc. I’m no writer, but I can’t imagine it’s easy to tell a single cohesive story across 5 or 6 seasons of a TV show.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
True, I have trouble remembering what I said yesterday.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:09 am
All it’s missing is Uno! (and if it matters, I really like the musical seques). So fun.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Really enjoyed your first podcast, and don’t be so hard on yourselves about the quality control issues. You’ll work that out, I’m sure. I just wish I could figure out who was saying what–since I’m not used to hearing your actual voices (just the voices my brain provides for you when I read your blogs and stuff), I’m not sure who to credit for each witty comment!
I laughed plenty during the podcast, but never harder than when the Intro quoted one of my favorite NewsRadio episodes. Had to restart the podcast since I missed the first 2 minutes laughing. Thank you!
May 15th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Yay, someone got the Milos reference!
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 am
I liked listening to that (it was funny), even though I have never really listening to a podcast before. And if I may pass along some geek knowledge, the Hulk was grey in his first few issues. The grey ink bled into the paper too much and looked like a big blob so they switched to green. Later on they, some time in the 80’s the grey hulk reappeared, he was a different personality then the traditional green “hulk smash” hulk. He was more intelligent and was like a mob enforcer.
July 8th, 2008 at 1:10 am
On tbs right now is playing “Signs”. I just realized that you might appreciate this: “Signs” was partly filmed in my and Fouad’s hometown. The newtown book and record exchange that the kids go may have closed since then, but the pizza place was still open the last time I visited home. A couple years ago there was even a little shrine to the movie in the window, I don’t know if it came down during Mel Gibson’s “public relations problems”. I only watch the first bit hoping to see people I know in the “let’s go into town proper and do some chillaxing” scene and to hear Joaquin Phoenix’s anti-nerd tirade.
“This is exactly what the nerds want.”