Chris

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Posts posted by Chris

  1. Posted

    3 hours ago, Bananana said:

    Sooner or later I'm going to have to buy one of these Quip brushes. I've used a manual one for so long, I think it'll feel weird to not move my hand on my teeth twice a day. It's muscle memory that has been trained for literally three decades.

     

    You're still supposed to move it. It sort of vibrates at a high frequency but you still move it back and forth across your teeth.

  3. Posted

    11 hours ago, Patrick R said:

    I don't know if anyone else is having this problem, but the last two episodes of IiT haven't been downloading properly for me. I use the ad-free feed on my iPhone's Podcasts app and every time I try to download them it goes through the whole progress circle before informing me there was an error and I couldn't download the file. Idle Thumbs still downloads fine, and I haven't tried the public feed with ads but I thought I'd throw this out there and see if anyone else has had this issue.

    Weird! I haven't seen any other reports of this. That is disconcerting though.

  4. Posted

    5 hours ago, Gormongous said:

    It's that odd intersection between cod-pretentious and actually quite vivid and clever that makes Fargo enjoyable to me as a show.

     

    This is I think how I feel about Legion as well, which makes me think it's largely the sensibility of Noah Hawley. Sometimes it definitely goes too far, but when it hits, it's really fresh and fun. I am very much looking forward to more work from Hawley.

  5. Posted

    3 hours ago, AnalogHole said:

    Yup, actually all of my cards are exactly the same as yours so far; your description and the nodes match up.

     

    Has anybody else gotten something different?

     

    Is there a discussion about this going on somewhere else maybe?

     

     

    People have definitely gotten different stories. And yep it seems like you're caught up so far. There's been some discussion in the #postcardconspiracy channel of the Idle Thumbs Reader Slack: 

     

  6. Posted

    2 minutes ago, Argobot said:

    The second season actually has too few episodes, which leads to a lot of clunkiness in the middle. Right before they started filming on season 2, the episode order was cut, so the show jumps forward with a lot of major plot developments that you can tell they wanted to take more time with. They also didn't know if they were going to get renewed until very late in the season. Overall, it makes for a weaker season arc, but the show's minute-to-minute beats are so amazing. And the songs are really, really good.

     

     

    I still think season 2 dragged a bunch, especially with all that "new guy" stuff. I think they could have done the second season's arc a lot more efficiently. Maybe not half the number of episodes, but definitely fewer.

  7. Posted

    The show actually does move forward, which is actually kind of shocking. By the end of Season 2 it has moved forward extremely dramatically. I agree that was really starting to feel like a risk, but they handle it I think very well. The main problem, and I agree with you here as well, is that there are simply too many episodes. It can't possibly sustain quality across big musical numbers when there have to be so many of them, and when the basic plot conceit relies on tension between specific characters. When it gets dragged out too much, it really weakens. Season 2 goes through a kind of a dry spell for this reason, but they get back into a groove.

  9. Posted

    On 7/2/2017 at 2:49 AM, Ben X said:

    One thing my partner and I do agree on is that awful title sequence - we skip it every time!

     

    The last several seconds of Season 2's opening titles, however, rank among the best recurring moments ever committed to television:

     

     

  10. Posted

    I recently watched through Season 2 of Fargo and I really really liked it. I think at times its ambitions and affectations outstripped its substance, but in general I think its shortcomings are justified by how stylistically appealing and solidly made the whole thing is. It feels lighter on its feet than a lot of "prestige" television that would accompany this sort of material with too much assumed gravitas and grit. It's basically the scale and scope that are entirely appealing to me in film when it comes to crime and thrillers: mid-budget made-for-adults taut stories that don't get too bogged down in utterly egregious violence.

  12. Posted

    5 hours ago, Urthman said:

    I can't tell anymore when Idle Thumbs is predicting/re-inventing dumb pop culture and when they are just gaslighting us about A Bug's Life, but I was leaning towards the latter when Jake and Nick were talking about the Santa team-up movie being a DreamWorks-type thing. 

     

    https://youtu.be/aPLiBxhoug0

     

    (in which Santa, Jack Frost, and the Easter Bunny team up  to save Hoistmas or something) 

     

    At least for myself I can honestly say I was not aware this movie existed 

  13. Posted

    2 hours ago, Fractology said:

    I was just listening to this and came across the moment when Chris was describing his best dining moment and would like some clarification. I'm traveling with my girlfriend to Europe for the first time in just a weeks time and will be stopping through Paris. I want to make sure I know what this place is called because it sounds like the perfect experience for both of us! I apologize to say this, but it is incredibly hard to hear French words and then put them to text in a google search afterwards. What is this place called? Does anyone know of this place? I would very much appreciate anyone with information on this or if they have a better ear to French words-to-text than I.

     

    Much thanks in advance.

    Sure! It's called L'Aubergeade.

  14. Posted

    Idle Thumbs BONUS:

    Idle Thumbs BONUS


    Ruinations Online May & June 2017
    Enjoy this special double-length bonus episode drawn from our Idle Thumbs Patreon Ruination Online! Each month, we do a livestream where all topics have been posed by high-tier backers of our Patreon campaign: patreon.com/IdleThumbs. In order to rejigger the schedule to make a bit more sense, we're packing the Ruinations from both May and June into this episode—which means next month's July Ruination will actually be released in July. Brilliant!

    We'll be back with a regular episode of Idle Thumbs next week!

    Discussed: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Far Cry 2, terrible entertainment things, the use of unlimited newfound wealth, classic Idle Thumbs songs, global nuclear war, ghosts in mansions in video games, ancient Idle Thumbs podcast memes, hypothetical game remakes, autobiography titles, Something True podcast, best meals, spicy meals, our child selves, making podcasts, the etymology of "robot", dreaming, board games, comfort food, Idle Thumbs Patreon postcards, game development, Spelunky, the Great Games, the purpose of robots, video game art, internet micro-celebrity,

    Not Discussed: Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some!!"

    Wizard Jam 5 has concluded! Wizard Jam is the Idle Thumbs community game jam, and the latest one has just concluded. Head over to the Wizard Jam 5 itch.io page or the Wizard Jam 5 forum to browse all the entries and catch up on their development. Congrats to all the participants!

     

  15. Posted

    There's definitely more to say about each of these episodes than we can pull off in an hour, but I think you hit diminishing returns. I don't personally listen to many podcasts that approach an hour in length, and I've always like that as a rough target limit. (When we started Idle Thumbs originally, an hour was our intended limit and over time we did start to blow past that but these days I prefer not to.) I think it's also the case that with a listening audience, there's this issue: just about everyone is willing to listen to a show that errs on the shorter side, but not everyone is willing to listen to a show that goes too long. The longer you go, the more likely some subset of your audience simply doesn't have time for it, and I'd put myself in that category both as a listener and a host.

  17. Posted

    46 minutes ago, LillyBaeum said:

    HOLY FUCK

    Not sure what the double post rules are but I figured this stands on its own.

     

    I have chills. Maybe someone else has discovered this, but...

    This is the music from when the woodsmen pull the soul of BOB out of Evil Coop. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what piece it is, but hopefully someone here knows.

    I liked the sound and was curious since it sounded so slow and Lynch seems to have a tendency this season to slow music down a lot, what it sounded like sped up.

    In-scene it sounds like droning bass noises, but sped up.. I'll let you listen to the sound and hear it yourself.

     

    Christ. CHRIST.

     

    BOB harvest song.ogg

     

    Whoa! Thanks for doing that! That's Beethoven's Piano Sonata 14, known as "Moonlight Sonata," one of the most recognizable and commonly-played solo piano pieces in the canon.

  18. Posted

    Re-reading this six years after I first read it, I found it just as gripping and compelling as I did the first time, but find myself less sure about what to do with the class angle. It feels brilliantly observed, but also so full-bore as to be practically malicious in its examinations, particularly with respect to the Brex (Grex? weird!) family. In some ways I wish the book had been written later, so I would be able to find a more widely available body of writing about it, but on the other hand I'm glad it wasn't, because I suspect that body of writing would be largely consumed by breathless takes.

     

    As far as meticulously plotted crime writing, man, Rendell clearly knows her stuff. I think in a lot of cases a story this tidily wrapped up would grate on me, but Rendell takes such a workmanlike approach, carefully laying down every brick and covering every seam, just like Teddy does, that by the time everything concludes, even my second time reading it, I was utterly rapt. It felt far more earned than one would expect.

  19. Posted

    5 minutes ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

    The link for Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective in the show notes is not particularly helpful, seeing as there's one copy available and it's $149 (albeit with free shipping!).

    Oh whoops, it looks like the original edition is no longer available. I've replaced the link, the one there now is the one I recently bought.

  20. Posted

    4 hours ago, fondue said:

    Maybe it's just a UK thing, but we call them orange segments - slices invoke an image of a much thinner slither of <whatever> created with a knife.

     

    Before a trip to San Francisco a couple of years ago, I was after restaurant recommendations, and one of my friends recommended The Stinking Rose, a garlic restaurant. We didn't go (too many other places to try first!), but was wondering if any of the Thumbs had?

     

    Yeah "orange segments" is definitely better. I've heard both, not sure if one is dominant here or if it's regional or what.

     

    I've actually never been to The Stinking Rose! It's one of those restaurants I've always been vaguely aware of but have never made the effort to investigate.

  22. Posted

    2 hours ago, cgoc said:

    On the podcast Chris mentioned that there's a one armed man that shows up in the Ike/Dougie segment, but the guy clearly has two arms earlier and later in the scene, his jacket being blown open by the wind just obscures his arm briefly at one point. I get that with a show like this, where basically absolutely anything is feasible, it can be easy to pick up on something someone somewhere on the internet says  and just take it as fact and assume you missed it because you weren't watching carefully enough, but some of the things getting thrown out there on the podcast are a little dubious. There's already so many insane plot holes that actually a part of the show that it's frustrating to have to go and sift through a whole additional layer of internet rumour mongering every week.

     

    I don't mean that as a criticism aimed specifically at Chris and Jake, and it's not even something that's particular to Twin Peaks, but with other shows I at least feel that rumour mongering/theorycrafting takes place within a much more intentionally structured drip feed of information, whereas the plotting and pacing of this season are so all over the place, basically anything goes and is unlikely to ever be directly addressed or disproven within the show.

     

    If you'll allow me to be histrionic for a moment, there's that Jonathan Swift quote that goes "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect", and I feel like a lot of my time discussing this season has been spent mopping up other people's suspect theories. Someone comes up with an interpretation but doesn't bother properly investigating it, and then sends it in to the podcast where it's read out and just assumed to be fact. We really do need Cooper and his investigative rigour back.

     

    You're right, that's my bad. I should have vetted!

  23. Posted

    Oh man I love it! 

     

    I dont really consider it all that similar to Tina Fey shows. I would on balance take it over Kimmy Schmidt though.

     

    It's true that it doesn't quite have the consistency it should, and it would probably be better served by shorter seasons allowing less filler. But I think it's worth sticking with. It's ultimately smarter than it pretends to be, which is a welcome reversal in modern television.

  25. Posted

    6 minutes ago, Kyir said:

    Orange slices are also naturally formed though, and I've never heard them referred to as anything else. Furthermore, slices much more clearly describes the nature of the garlic sections, while clove does not.

     

    Garlic cloves have to be individually peeled, though, which orange slices don't. I don't think "garlic slice" describes a garlic clove. A garlic clove is an entirely self-contained unit, which has to be peeled, and can from that point be sliced, minced, grated, smashed, or left whole.