Comments on: Episode 64: I Am Going To Let You Finish

By: Gab

Gab — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:20:12 +0000

Re: Categories- I think the lumping of “variety, musical, or comedy” is much too broad, yes. I have taken issue with how weekly shows like Bill Maher’s can lose to a one-time Barry Manilow special or _American Idol_. In my perfect world, music specials would have their own category, as would audition/elimination, panel, and variety.

I think one of the interesting things about this year’s Emmys was how it made fun of itself and TV. It really went meta a lot, like in the bit where Dr. Horrible “took over” the show for a while, or the way some of the nominees were announced (clips of non-actors like director or writing).

By: lee

lee — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:39:48 +0000

Re: the tangent we went on on best vido game weapons. In the original SNES Mario Kart, the red shell was of course a highly effective weapon, yet still blockable by a well-timed and well-placed green shell or banana peel drop. Can’t speak for any of the subsequent versions, though–I keep it strictly old school.

By: sarielthrawn

sarielthrawn — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:52:42 +0000

I have seen the Queen musical – We Will Rock You. It ran in Australia after it opened in the UK. It was written by Ben Elton and it’s a pretty good show. If you like Queen you won’t be disappointed.

By: Matthew Belinkie

Matthew Belinkie — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 22:09:36 +0000

I’m still mulling over my half-hearted idea of Swayze being an 80’s John Wayne. First of all, I’d say there are only three major Swayze movies: Dirty Dancing, Roadhouse, and Ghost. Maybe Red Dawn. So it’s hard to talk about his body of work – not enough data points.

But what struck me is he always plays outsiders (quite literally in “The Outsiders”). He plays lonely men with strict moral codes. In Dirty Dancing, he’s the boy from the wrong side of the tracks. In Roadhouse, he’s the mysterious loner who travels from town to town. In Ghost, he spends a lot of the film completely unable to communicate with the world.

I suppose a LOT of action heroes are loners, so maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see. But one of the biggest recurring themes in John Wayne’s films was lonliness, and his brave acceptance of it. He protects society, but he’s not part of it. He lives alone, and he dies alone. (I’m thinking immediately of The Shootist, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and True Grit.) Swayze had that kind of stoicism too.

By: Daryl Neubieser

Daryl Neubieser — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:07:14 +0000

Have you seen the apple speech montage of Steve Jobs and co.? I saw it a couple days ago, so it was really interesting to me when you happened to mention other montages in this podcast. This is where I saw it – http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1921290

By: Bianca

Bianca — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:55:15 +0000

A good reference to determine how many celebrities died in a given year is http://www.nndb.com. It has a well updated list going back to 2006, but it also has a “dead people” search option for which you can input dates. For dates after 1990, it’s best because birth dates are also included in the search results, however it does reliably indicate that our concept of “celebrity” status has significantly broadened since 1970. The lists pretty much range from porn stars to world leaders. For 1980, 143 people are listed (I didn’t verify that they are all deaths). For 1990, 163 people are listed. There were 172 people listed for 2000. Nonetheless, the peak number of deaths were in 2007 at 315. As of September 17th, they have 205 people listed for 2009, so 111 people have to die in the next 3 months for 2009 to be the deadliest year for celebrities.