How to be Me: Podcasts

March 4th, 2008 by Brack

Here’s the podcasts I currently subscribe to, along with some sort of comment as to their appeal to me.

Anime World Order - Despite the slightly annoying delivery the hosts can tend to have - everything tends to be pronounced with an upward lilt towards the end of a sentence, making everything sound like a rhetorical question - this is an excellent anime podcast, albeit a lot more infrequent than it used to be.

AST Radio - talking of infrequent, Matt Bellknap’s A Special Thing podcast hasn’t released anything since July, but there’s plenty of great interviews and comedy perfomances to be found in the back catalogue. Especially recommend the Doug Benson Interruption episodes and any Paul F Tompkins episodes.

Comic Geek Speak Podcast - Heavily superhero bias, sure, but they get a lot of good interviews, put out a lot of material in a week and now have a impressively varied voice. The most annoying thing is the tendency a couple of the hosts have to reduce explanations they are putting forward to “blah, blah, blah”.

Dave And Joel’s Fast Karate For The Gentleman - Probably my favourite anime podcast that I’ve heard. And the only videogame one I listen to. It feels like eavesdropping on a genuine conversation, even if I disagree with the review, I tend to have a good time listening to it anyway.

Fighting Talk - Colin Murray used to annoy the hell out of me when he was doing the afternoon slot on Radio 1, but his work on this Radio 5 comedy sports panel show I really like.

Friday Night Comedy From BBC Radio 4 - It’s the News Quiz at the moment, The Now Show is also offered when that’s airing. Not sure if anything else will get added - do they still put that Armando Ianucci thing on Fridays?

Jordan, Jesse Go! - The idiot cousin of Jesse Thorn’s The Sound of Young America. The show works best with a guest, as Thorn and co-host Jordan Morris can be a bit annoying on their own.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews - Grumpy fifties throwback Kermode’s film reviews as excised from Mayo’s Radio 5 show. The feed tends to include film related interviews from the show as well as some podcast exclusive material from time to time.

Never Not Funny - Jimmy Pardo’s (and Matt Belknap’s) conversation-based comedy podcast is easily my favourite podcast around. It’s moving to a pay format soon (20 dollars for 26 episodes) and I’m more than willing to pay.

The Sound of Young America - Jesse Thorn’s PRI interview show in podcast form. Often has extended versions of the broadcast interviews.

Quiet! Panelologists at Work - By all rights I should find this comics podcast annoying, but it’s really well produced and has a “Smith & Jones’ head to head”-esque idiot charm.

retroCRUSH - Just coming back to this after a long time forgetting about it. Robert Berry of retroCRUSH talking about pop culture detritus is what it is.

WFMU’s Seven Second Delay - Monk creator Andy Breckman and WFMU station manager Ken attempt to perform various radio stunts within one hour. Often collapses into an enjoyable trainwreck.

WFMU’s The Best Show On WFMU - Monk writer Tom Scharpling takes phone calls, occasionally has guests and invariably receives at least one death threat. The calls Jon Wurster makes in character are perhaps my favourite thing right now.

Wrestlecrap Radio - RD Reynolds and Blade Braxton fail weekly to discuss the week’s wrestling news. The greatest thing about the show is how recurring jokes expand and take on a life of their own, the Trolla Corporation being perhaps their cleverest conceit.

—

Anything else I should be listening to?

Posted in Radio | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments »

Stuff That Ruled 2007 - Part A

December 11th, 2007 by Brack

LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver

Ever since hearing Losing My Edge I’ve been in love with LCD Soundsystem, and by extension DFA Records. This was a great album that I have no qualms about declaring being better than the debut LCD Soundsystem album proper. Only the title track was a little disappointing, being a bit too close to The Mighty Boosh’s “Crimping” in it’s delivery. Everything else was good, good, good with “New York I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” my utter favourite.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Despite claims to the contrary, GAINAX had never really stopped being good, they’d just been being rubbish in equal measure. Hiroyuki Imaishi’s mecha series for kids brought the goodness that GAINAX had been confining to OAVs back to television audience. When animation talent is spread ever thinner in Japan these days, the dense amount of eye candy this show served up was amazing. Coupled with a story by playwright Kazuki Nakashima, it was concentrated anime pop thrills that few shows can match. ADV’s R1 DVDs cannot come soon enough.

 

Never Not Funny

I picked up on Jimmy Pardo’s podcast late last year after near constant mentioning from The Sound Of Young America’s blog. I think the appearance of Paul F. Tompkins as a guest sealed the deal. After a somewhat sudden end to the first “season“, it came back better than ever with the rotating third guest of season two. After a year, I still can’t wait for Fridays to come around so I can get my fix of NNF.

 

30 Rock

The best sitcom in the world right now. Despite some truly dreadful trailers for it on Channel 5 in the UK that sucked all the humour from the clips they showed, it seems to have caught on in the UK, at least among critics. Of course, through the evil powers of the internet, I’m watching the second season at the moment, and it’s still going strong though with more of a focus on character’s personal lives rather than the show within the show.

One Piece

Eiichiro Oda’s manga rounded off the epic Water Seven/Enies Lobby saga at the start of the year, and began the more humorous Thriller Bark story full of homage to Tim Burton and Hammer Horror. The now 10 year old series has been credited this year with an increase in Shonen Jump sales in Japan this year, and it’s a good estimate to expect it to run another 10 years. Oda’s boundless imagination (Thriller Bark looks at times like 2 years of doodles escaped onto a page) and the series structure of story arcs that have their own resolutions, seems to guarantee it’s longevity.  The anime has suffered a little from talent drain to other shows (Lovely Complex and the aforementioned Gurren Lagann to name but two), but seems a little surer footed as the year ends with even an anime-only filler story proving appealing.

Posted in Anime, Comedy, Manga, Music, TV | Tags: | No Comments »

NNF Jimmy Cam

November 22nd, 2007 by Brack



Never Not Funny

Posted in Comedy | Tags: | No Comments »

Five Awesome Links

June 5th, 2007 by Brack

Danny Baker’s All Day Breakfast Show - It’s the radio show that Danny Baker always does, but in podcast form. Yes, a phone in show (well, a phone out show) as a podcast. While I could take or leave Baker as TV presenter (his Letterman-aping was always too strong for me), I think he absolutely kills as a radio presenter. And the promise of a football podcast with Danny Kelly makes me even happier.

Interview with Mamoru Hosoda - by Wes Black, taken from that new and promising Otaku USA magazine. Pleased to see he brought the issue of One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island and it’s relationship to Hosoda’s experience at Ghibli. He doesn’t real get an answer, but at least it was brought up. I was watching it again the other day, and with K-F’s translation the reading into it of the potential scenarios that took place when Hosoda was in charge of Howl’s Moving Castle become a lot clearer. I hope to write some more about that film at the weekend - and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time too.

Hey! German OST to Vicky the Viking - as my recent post on Vicky the Viking seems to be attracting people to this blog, lets see if I can milk the Viking fandom some more and link to this blog that discusses/rapidshares the german OST to the norse-orientated cartoon.

A Bloody Zombie Mix, Part 2 - The Good Reverend Frost at Spread The Good Word comes correct with another awesome zombie themed mixtape.

Mecha Mummy vs. Mokujin Ken - 10 minutes of out of this world grappling action from CHIKARA. Mecha Mummy faces off agains Mokujin Ken in a battle of the ages.

Posted in Anime, Music, Wrestling | Tags: | No Comments »

Five Awesome Links

March 11th, 2007 by Brack

The Calvin Pelorian Cat Project - A history of cats being made to pose for photos as if they were humans.

Namennayo Cats Website - More cats dressed as man.

VBS.TV - Shows: Soft Focus - Ian Svenonius’ chat show on Vibe’s internet TV thing. Yes, Ian Svenonius has a chat show now. And next week he chats with Andrew WK. I get the feeling stars are aligning somewhere.

Matt Gill has been running The Silent Penultimate Panel Watch blog for the past year, where he recorded when the cliche of a silent penultimate panel was used in newspaper comic strips. He’s moving that to a weekly blog now, and his new daily blog is Today’s Rockstars, where he does the same for the cliche of comparing someone or something to a rock star.

Never Not Funny is Jimmy Pardo’s weekly podcast. I’d heard the trailers on TSOYA, but they weren’t really selling it to me. Cut into to tiny clips it seemed a bit too “zoo radio” for my liking, which it is I suppose, but more in line with how Danny Baker or Ricky Gervais have carried out the format. Anyway, after hearing Pardo on TSOYA’s “Jesse, Jordan, Go!” podcast, I gave it a shot and was pleased I did. It’s just 3 guys (and occasionally a guest) chatting about stuff for 45 minutes to an hour, but it’s good stuff and good chat.

Posted in TV | Tags: | No Comments »