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.

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Anything else I should be listening to?

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Pop Culture’s Relentless March Continues

February 4th, 2008 by Brack

MONK - MR MONK PAINTS HIS MASTERPIECE


This episode was noteworthy as being Jon Wurster’s debut script for Monk. Wurster, as well as being Superchunk’s drummer, is the character playing half of Scharpling & Wurster, alongside Monk writer/producer Tom Scharpling. You can catch them weekly on the Best Show on WFMU, or on their compilations through their Stereolaffs labels. Their material started as a sort of Phil Hendrie-esque prank on the audience, before turning into something more. Over the years they’ve woven an comedy world centred on New Bridge, NJ. It’s a world populated by a range of malicious idiots, all played by Wurster, who ring into (or are rung by) Tom Scharpling’s radio show, and invariably end up threatening to kill Scharpling by the end of their phone call. It’s a wonderful thing, and I highly recommend checking out the Best Show podcast.

So how does Wurster shape up as a Monk writer? If you like the episodes that focus on comedy then this should work wonders. There is an element of mystery, but it’s fairly obvious, and there’s never really a question of whodunnit. It’s more an opportunity of Shalhoub and guest star Peter Stormare to indulge in some great comic acting. Not my favourite episode of the season so far, but still full of good fun.

HAKABA KITARO - EPISODE 1


Apart from Yatterman, this adaptation of Shigeru Mizuki’s original Kitaro manga was the only winter anime that caught my eye. This time in the popular noitaminA slot, rather than more family friendly slots that the GeGeGe no Kitaro anime have occupied, it’s a lot more macabre that the previous shows. As AniPages Daily has mentioned, the OP is probably more impressive than the show itself. Unfortunately, set against last years Mononoke, the show fails to really inspire the right sort of mood. It’s close, but the bar has been raised. That being said, it’s still better than most shows, and I may come back to it later, if the word is good about future episodes.

MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM 00 - EPISODE 1

Not exactly got my finger on the pulse for this one.

This was, well OK. I wasn’t angry at it in the way I was after I watched the first episode of Gundam SEED. It didn’t feel like they were trying to remake a previous Gundam series. Instead it unfortunately reminded me of the dreadful Dancougar series from last year. Both felt like hamfisted attempts to say something important about the world today, but with giant robots. As it turned out this first episode of Gundam 00 wasn’t anywhere near as clumsy as Dancougar, but it was a bad first impression. The main problem was that a lot of the characters seemed very faceless in this first episode, only the strategist and the sniper seemed to get personalities, and they were both fairly one note. I’m not sure there’s enough to entice me to keep watching.

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