Chris

Idle Thumbs 152: Piercing the Fourth Dimension

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Another side effect I've found that comes from being involved and interested in municipal politics is cynicism and a slowly growing dislike of urban processes and the people who control them. Maybe I'm just predisposed to that kind of thing though, ymmv

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Regarding the theater Kickstarter mentioned at the beginning of the podcast: was there a Phantom of the Opera donation tier where you get a box seat reserved for you at every showing of every movie, regardless of whether you attend or not? Because I would totally do that if I were kickstarting a theater.

 

I wish I had more interest in local politics, but Canadian politics are generally kind of boring. For the longest time I was always able to go "well, they may be boring, but at least Canadian politicians aren't completely batshit like American ones tend to be."

And then Rob Ford showed up.

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Anyway, good discussion about media literacy. I'm a big fan of the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's work, and I sometimes have a difficult time articulating what I think is good about his films because at face value a lot of his movies are just awful people doing awful things to each other, particularly men doing awful things to women, or gay men treating each other horribly. His movies are really good at eliciting strong emotions, and then crystallizing them so that you can then view those emotions more analytically. That's a valuable thing for a director to be able to do, but it definitely requires a certain awareness of film language to really grasp so it can result in some awkward conversations with someone else that sees a movie of his and is just grossed out by it.

 

The thing about Fassbinder's movies is that they're purposefully breaking the rules of standard cinema.  Incredibly static, long shots with awkward improvised dialog (Katzelmacher), minority main characters with no "mainstream" personality to act as a cipher (Ali, Fear Eats the Soul), etc. (I couldn't come up with anything else off the top of my dome, but there's a ton more). :)

 

I think that most people who aren't film literate would be turned off by that sort of stuff and just not watch his movies in the first place.  Like, we don't have to be worried about a kid who buys a Berlin Alexanderplatz lunchbox, then watches some of Fassbinder's more disturbing works and misunderstand the nature of the critique.  The awkward conversations you mention are a byproduct of him showing something nasty is truthful or exaggerated way; his films are the definition of a bitter pill.  (And they're the best!!)

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That's a really good point, we're talking about a different sort of audience (basically film nerds) compared to something like South Park which is a cartoon on Comedy Central that is going to reach a much larger audience. So that comes with maybe a different set of expectations.

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A few notes on comedy. I apologize in advance for being such a poor writer who uses too many parentheticals. I'm thinking about getting into footnotes.

 

-Sean, the Gottfried example you brought up was at the Hugh Hefner roast, but I think you possibly may be thinking about the response to his tweet about the Japanese Tsunami that brought outrage and lost him his Aflac commercials. The general way the joke about 9/11 (which was something along the lines of "I'm sorry I'm late, my plane took a detour through a building" and 

) has been contextualized is as sort of a sharp relief by the comedy community. The transgressiveness of the joke (contextualized by the Aristocrats joke that followed it) was sort of a message to the comedy community (whose industry is heavily centered on NYC) that it was ok to laugh about their grief, the same way they tend to deal with all grief. 

 

Obviously the key difference between a New Yorker making a 9/11 joke right after it happens and the joke about the Japanese tsunami right after it happens is context.

 

-Eddie Murphy Delirious is the radically homophobic one. Eddie Murphy Raw is the radically misogynist one. Murphy was never a political comedian (the way Pryor or Rock or CK are) but his contribution (much like the first couple seasons of South Park, before they truly got satirical) was to assault "the tyranny of good taste". Murphy was aiming at the moral majority mentality with vulgar glee. I think that's significantly different than, say, Chris Rock's signature bit "Black People Vs. ******", but in the same ballpark as progressive (whether politically or through attitude) cultural forces.

 

- Matt Stone is Jewish and the character of Kyle is (or at least, was, in earlier seasons) a specific depiction of what it was like to grow up Jewish in Colorado. The idea that all these kids' classes are based on personalities (fighter, wizard, whatever) but one would just be defined by religion/ethnicity feels like a pretty amazing expression of that.

 

- Dave Barry was a newspaper columnist who wrote a humor piece FIVE DAYS A WEEK FOR OVER A DECADE. I don't care if 90% were dumb or cheesy, that is IMPRESSIVE AS HELL. Most his books were just collections of the best of those pieces.

 

 

 

 

If you are interested in the combination of suburban kid boredom and RPG elements in the South Park game, I would suggest Dungeon Quest. It's from an older perspective than South Park (high school), but it basically feels like a potent mix of

, 70's underground comics and D&D.

 

Also, do you have an internal rule about not picking episode titles from the little interstitials in between main segments? Because "Piercing The Fourth Dimension" is good, but that gazoo run netted a dozen amazing potential episode titles.

You should probably just send this whole post into [email protected]

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I think Danielle is great too. Guest episodes tend to be good (second only to Nick episodes!)

 

Also, pointless fact, the dagger symbol is the hermitian conjugate in quantum mechanics. I totally forgot people use it as a reference symbol and got confused for a second.

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I just felt the need to point out that Sarah Elmaleh (voice of Katie in Gone Home) reads the back of a box of junior mints in the latest GDC One Life Left (she shows up at around 40 minutes in)

 

#juniormintcabal

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I finally made an account on here (I'm usually not one for forums) just to say how great this episode was, and how awesome Danielle "Junior Mints" Riendeau was on it. Every episode she's been on is fantastic! If she were to, say, become a regular member of the cast, I certainly wouldn't complain.

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Oh, it's really awesome that I come into a thread with some opinions, read everyone's contributions, and then realize that everyone has already said so many great things I was also thinking. Every episode with Danielle is fantastic, and I hope that giving her a nickname is the first step that leads towards her being a permanent fixture on the show. 

 

Can I also say, though, and perhaps this is me being overly nitpicky, but it sometimes feels as if she gets interrupted quite a bit. Again, this is the nature of the show - everyone is super excited, and wants to share, and create something fun and incisive. I think that Sean did a pretty good job during the episode to come back to her points, and that's great! Now, I wasn't there, I don't know anything about the actual recording of the podcast. Her comments are so damn on-point, though, it just feels like she got pushed aside sometimes. I was hoping to hear her talk more about Escape Goat 2, to be honest, since I read her review and you could tell she had genuine interest in the game, but it was kind of swallowed up in another (also interesting) conversation. I know that Chris and Sean are both perhaps reading this thread, and I do not want this to sound like I'm being unnecessarily critical! Please know that the whole thing was great, but when I started noticing the interruptions, it kind of stuck in my head. 

 

Gah, I really don't want to sound like a turd.

 

Also, can I say, thanks tabacco, and everyone in the thread who's been showing the door to the shitheads who come in complaining that someone is talking about feminism and social issues? What world do these people live in? Why do trolls exist?

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RubixsQube,

Hopefully Danielle didn't feel too stomped on; I'm guessing it might be, in part, a result of Sean and I (and Jake and Nick) having been on so many podcasts together that we're used to just verbally bouncing around. Danielle is probably just more courteous than we are. Hopefully eventually she learns to cut us off as well when we get overexcited.

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Yeah, when we took a break I actually told Danielle I felt like a dickbag for not letting her finish a thought. But I would echo Chris's sentiments in that I'm used to doing that with the folks I'm on the pod with generally and she's just a lot more polite than us.  Luckily she'll be back on again in not-too-long and we can attempt to rectify that.

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I think that's always the case with guests on podcasts that are free discussions (as opposed to interviews). Guests are coming into a group dynamic where they're maybe not as comfortable interrupting a conversation (or re-asserting control when interrupted). Thumbs is especially interruptey as podcasts go, so I'm sure that has something to do with it.

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On a positive note, you guys interrupting each other on the cast and bouncing between discussions has greatly improved my brain's multi-threading capabilities.

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Relistening to the "fans of the genre" discussion reminded me: I once saw a review for a Sonic the Hedgehog game described it as a game that people who enjoy Sonic the Hedgehog games will enjoy. As trite as that sentence is, it's also what the entire body of every Sonic review should be.

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Question for Chris: Was the guitar chord break intentionally placed before Sean talking about South Park making you feel like a "fucking kid walking around your fucking home town"? It really sounds like the little guitar break they put in the actual show. If so that was a reference. References are the worst. Blaaaaaargh. 

 

Also I really like Danielle being on the show. Bring her back on whenever possible. 

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You could also put this text in all reviews: "Fans of Sonic Heroes need not to read this or any review as they are generally without taste."

 

The comedy discussion was really interesting to me. I watched those two Eddie Murphy specials a while ago and was also shocked at the his jokes about homosexuals. They're not a large part of his bit but it was still super uncomfortable. He even comments on the backlash in Raw which I thought was interesting (I think it was pretty funny too, but I don't really remember it exactly). It was a weird experience for me to go back and watch that stuff because I was watching a lot of material that would talk about how Murphy was considered the funniest comedian on the stage and person off of it and that stuff wasn't funny at all.


I didn't know about the Colbert twitter backlash, but the concept is really familiar to me as my Dad cannot stand that guy. I don't watch much TV now, but there were periods where I would try to always catch him and Stewart. At some point I was talking to him about it, and he told me how he doesn't enjoy or appreciate his Canadian jokes. So I went over the whole satire concept, and he said that he gets that but felt like those specific jokes weren't core to the Colbert character and were just accepted along with the rest of the schtick. I didn't really agree or feel that way about Colbert's jokes, but it's just one of those intractable things, because once you do actually think he's being genuinely disparaging and unfunny it really breaks down the rest of the concept. It's kind of a bummer because my dad enjoyed the parody of right wing news anchors, but what can you do?

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Just wanted to weigh in on the chorus of Danielle love and say that she's always a welcome addition to the show.

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Sean and Chris, thanks for your quick comments! While I would also love it if every guest learned to verbally spar with you guys, I think it's probably pretty tough in practice. It sounds like you're well aware of the situation! I really appreciate how good you are to your community, and your guests. 

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Question for Chris: Was the guitar chord break intentionally placed before Sean talking about South Park making you feel like a "fucking kid walking around your fucking home town"? It really sounds like the little guitar break they put in the actual show. If so that was a reference. References are the worst. Blaaaaaargh.

Nope, not an intentional reference at all. That's just a stinger we've used for a while at this point.

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One of my favorite casts in awhile! Love JR Mintz.

Wish I had more interesting stuff to say except I was really suspicious when Steam highlighted Goat Escape 2 or whatever the other day. I seemed to me like maybe they were trying to trick people who heard "some cool goat game is coming out!" (Goat Simulator buzz) into an inadvertent purchase.

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Come the fuck on. No real comedian feels this sorta horseshit persecution and perpetrating it is ridiculous.

Is this something you believe is true of something you want to believe is true despite all evidence to the contrary? Sounds like you need to point your browser to Salon.com more often.

Jerry Seinfeld isn't a "real comedian"? Neither are Louis CK or Steve Martin? Or Patton Oswalt? Or Steven Colbert? Or The Onion. Or INSERT NAME OF ALMOST ANY COMEDIAN HERE.

It would be great if persecution for not being "politically_correct" or comedians not being persecuted by "social justice warriors" or however you want to phrase it was not a thing, because it being a thing forces one to think about being a "social justice warrior" in ways beyond cartoon good fighting vs. evil. (I put those terms in quotes because I don't like them or use them myself) But the reality is that a lot of liberalism does veer into persecution and pile-ons for questionable reasons, and that is certainly true in comedy.

I'm not a fan of dismissing people as "SJWs", but dismissing real issues out of hand simply because you don't want to believe in them is no better. I don't know if Jerry Seinfeld genuinely feels persecuted (maybe he doesn't give a shit about what some Gawker idiots say) but a lot of outlets did their best to try to make him feel that way. This is not "ruining comedy" but it should be embarrassing for people who consider themselves liberal.

Article I largely agree with:

http://betabeat.com/2014/02/outrage-porn-how-the-need-for-perpetual-indignation-manufactures-phony-offense/

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