Here’s our GWC Book Club TalkCast on Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in its entirety. (Originally recorded live January 3, 2009.) The Book Club TalkCast is a monthly event. If you’d like to participate, check out the book club discussion and book selection threads on the forum, and look for another TalkCast next month discussing Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot.
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Here’s our GWC Book Club TalkCast on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation in its entirety. (Originally recorded live December 6, 2008). The Book Club TalkCast is now a monthly event. If you’d like to participate, check out the book club discussion and book selection thread on the forum, and look for another TalkCast next month discussing The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
One alpaca breeding group gathers each year to create fleece hats and socks which they donate to cancer patients. Thanks to this enterprising (if somewhat slow-speaking) iReporter who turned in the story to CNN.
If you haven’t been playing along with GWC’s Geek Deathmatches, there’s never been a better time to give ‘em a shot. The community needs your opinion on these two current (and classic) matchups:
The tale of the tape leans a bit toward The Last Starfighter‘s gunstar, as its reach and wallop seem to exceed that of the sleek viper. But is the viper more maneuverable? And what about the death blossom?
They both don’t care (much). They’re both mean bastards. But if placed in sealed room for a fight to the death, who out not-cares and out bastards who?
Enjoy.
“About 12 hours ago” (in the vBulletin patois) one fan of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica–blissfully unaware of the original series’ tasty, stinky, running cheese–decided to take on the “real” BSG episode-by-episode, sharing his insights with the rest of the community in real time. His name, ironically, is Lucky.
Will he make it? I’m betting not. But he did survive the no-”craaaaap”-tastic Saga of a Star World, and that counts for something, doesn’t it? Some of my favorite moments through Lucky’s eyes:
- “8:19 Good to see that even skilled viper pilots still need FIRE and TURBO stenciled in large friendly lettering on the throttle. It’s easy to forget.”
- “18:04 Well, in both series Starbuck kills Zak in a roundabout way due to negligence. Baltar runs. Had to be Larry—he always shoots down an Adama.”
- “33:00 Starbuck crash lands. I am not feeling particularly emotionally moved at the colonies bombardment yet. Well, except for when Boxey’s dog died. He didn’t ask for any of this craaap.”
You can find the rest of Lucky’s first-timer discourse in the forum. And you can, if you choose, egg him on to take another plateful of cheese and shove it down his maw for our entertainment. I’ll be right there beside you. In fact, I think I’ll go post some encouragement right now.
If any of you visiting this site have only enjoyed the podcast to date, please hear this: the podcast we do every week is far eclipsed by the beyond-awesome GWC community. Really. I’m not kidding here. So to encourage you to check out the forum and its wonderful, ne’er-a-better-group-of-people-exist crew, I’ve rounded up five reasons they continually blow me away with their all-round cool:
We started doing frak parties back with Zack Exley founded his now-defunct FrakParty.com leading up to the season three BSG premiere. But we didn’t stop there. We frakked our way clean through a full re-watch of BSG through the long pre-season four hiatus, and we’ve been frakking on into Star Wars and a ton of other sci-fi (and just plain fun) flicks since.
But that’s not the half of it: the GWC community also organizes their own frak parties for anything and everything, and these parties are well attended. This means that pretty much any night of the week you can hop on the forum and watch something fun with some friendly and (possibly) like-minded (but always entertaining) GWCers. How cool is that?
4. The (Un)Official Introduction Thread
Wonder what kind of people GWCers are? Check out this thread. Founded just after the forum a year and change ago, this community-maintained thread serves as most people’s first stop in GWCdom. Here you’ll find dozens of introductions and hundreds of welcome responses. If you’re in doubt that this is a welcoming commmunity, a quick visit her will assure you.
Next to Twitter, long-time GWCer EmilyFromOhio’s Questions-Only Game is easily one of the most fun ways to express one’s self in few words. Think of it as Haiku for geeks. It’s fun, and that’s why it’s one of the most popular threads on the forum. Topics range from the absurd to the sincere, but one thing’s certain: you’ll always find new posts here — every day.
2. The B_tch & Moan Thread / Cool Craaaaaap Thread
These threads founded at similar times, and according to the (un)official rules GWCers try to make a habit of posting equally in each thread. But you’ll note that even the B&M thread doesn’t take much of a negative tone. Crazy, that.
1. Themed Avatars
Ever since we began filling the pre-4.5 break with other sci-fi, GWCers have taken to customizing their avatars for each arc. Almost everyone has a good time with this, but Pike’s are some of my faves. In order of BSG, Matrix, Terminator, and Back to the Future:
0. It’s The Friendliest Place In Geekdom(tm)
In honor of our recent I, Robot re-watch, I’ll add this: I’d love to link you to a couple of posts to prove to you how incredibly cool, relaxed, insightful, and generally awesome GWCers are, but I have no idea where to start because there are so many. We’re varied in background, belief, opinion, and geography, but we share one thing in common: we’re decent people who enjoy each other’s company. If that sounds like you, why not click the “forum” tab above and join the fun?
For those of you who may have missed our TalkShoe discussion of GWC’s October book of the month, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, here’s the conversation in its entirety. (Originally recorded Nov. 8, 2008.) And don’t forget to join us in GWC forum to discuss this month’s group read: Asimov’s Foundation.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
What do Men in Black, Independence Day, and I, Robot have in common?
…if you said 7 Degrees of Scifi goodness, step right up and get your geek card validated.
Men in Black -> Tony Shalhoub -> Galaxy Quest
Independence Day -> Mary McDonnell -> Battlestar Galactica
I, Robot -> Alan Tudyk -> Firefly/Serenity
The three movies also feature an up-and-coming actor, Will Smith. Make a note, this guy is going to go far.
Want to join in the discussion? Find Frak parties here:
Men in Black Frak Party
Independence Day Frak Party
I, Robot Frak Party
Since the launch of GWC’s Geek Deathmatch forum we’ve seen some crazycool matchups. And with voting coming to a close on some, I thought I’d share some results.
First up we have a group of sci-fi classics:
- Unicron > Galactus
- Twiki > Muffit
- LeeLoo > River
- Viper > X-Wing
- Starscream > Cobra Commander
- Kaylee Frye > Chewbacca (Mechanic)
- Chewbacca > Nien Nunb
- The White Star > USS Defiant
- Starbuck > Sarah Connor
- Old Ewok Song > New Ewok Song
- Muppet Yoda > CGI Yoda
- Adama > Roslin (Better Leader)
- Firefly Chinese > Terminator One-Liners
- Spike (Buffy) > Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
So GWCers prefer clasic Star Wars (for the most part). We also apparently love Chewbacca but harbor some concerns about his ability to patch together the Millenium Falcon on his own. Viper over X-Wing, though? How can FTL lose to no FTL?
- Family Guy’s Blue Harvest > Robot Chicken’s Star Wars Special
…though Peter’s take on the Holy Trilogy grabs us a bit more than Seth Green’s. Though there’s much love for Seth around these parts.
- Malcolm Reynolds > Han Solo
- Indiana Jones > Mal Reynolds
GWC’s badass pecking order: Jones, Mal, Han. I suspect that while we’re all Han fans, we worry about his ability to get the job done when it comes to nastiness. He’s just too nice a guy to be a true badass.
- Anakin > Luke (Whine Off!)
Anakin, on the other hand, can whine like no one’s business. I suspect voters in this match took into account Luke’s vast foray into the expanded universe, in which he’s much, much less whiney than in the movies. Also key in Anakin’s “victory:” GWCers fought an excellent battle over the definition of “Anakin,” eventually deciding that Anakin ceased to be Anakin once he became Vader.
- Darth Vader > Alfred Bester
…though black armor seems to trump psi-core.
- Professor Xavier = Magneto
- Patrick Stewart > Ian McKellen
After a difficult match, wheelchair and helmet fought to a surprising draw. This is quite telling: in hindsight I believe these two are almost identical, pushing to a single end via different means. Note that stripped of their characters, Stewart had no problem crushing McKellen.
- Tolkein > Asimov
- Ewoks = Hobbits
Clearly we have more than a few fantasy buffs in the GWC community! Thankfully we’ve been expanding that way; look for more fantasy (and comic) coverage in the podcasts soon.
- Cylons > Borg
- Zombies > Cylons
We see the Cylons’ conniving nature as more effective than collect(ive)ing, but the brain-eaters triumph. Interesting!
- HTML > WYSIWYG
- New Twitter = Old Twitter
No Geek Deathmatch would be complete without battles like these, though it seems the GWC community is more meh than others when it comes to Twitter’s new look.
- Yang > Yiin
- Ninjas > Pirates
- Black Spy > White Spy (Spy vs. Spy)
- James Bond > George Smiley
I wonder how Pirates would’ve fared if the match hadn’t closed before Talk Like A Pirate Day? And the most infamous GDM to date:
- Gold > Poo
If you’re unhappy with any of these outcomes, feel free to create your own re-match in the GDM Forum. Remember the rules: re-matches should have a catchy name. And don’t forget to vote on the matches currently open. My fave: Sarah Connor vs. Ellen Ripley. Wow!
The votes are in, and Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash has won the day…erm, month. So put down the remote, step away from the computer and pickup your copy of Snow Crash. You can join in the conversation here in the GWC Forum. We’d like to thank all the voters for contributing, and we’re already engaged in lobbying for next month’s book of the month candidates. We can’t wait for the voting cage match (Chuck Cage match? Only time will tell).
The Terminator arc is happening, and it’s going quite well. Having not seen T1 in a long time, I was still prepared to enjoy the hell out of it — even if its ancient effects would distract. (20 is like 200 in VFX years.) But it turns out that the only part that I even noticed as slightly dated was the stop-motion movement of the pure-machine Terminator at the very end of the flick. And even that wasn’t bad. So here you have it: a 20+ year old sci-fi movie that still watches like one made a few years ago.
I mentioned in the last podcast my concern that there might be some, um, simpler solutions to the can’t-bring-future-guns back problem involving storing said weapons in uncomfortable places. (Yes, like in the back seat of a Volkswagen.) It turns out I’m not the only one with this idea. Forum newcomer BrokenCosmos passed on some even uglier solutions developed by the machines.
And speaking of Kevin Smith, are any of you planning to catch Zack and Miri Make A Porno this Halloween? I was going to give it a pass or catch it later on DVD — cheapass that I am — but I saw Smith’s blog post today about his experiences at the Toronto Film Festival and followed a few links to a trailer. Damn this movie looks funny. I’ll be there opening day. Why did I doubt? Kevin Smith + Seth Rogen = well, you get the idea.
Sean, Audra, and I had a killer discussion about ’80s flicks just before we turned the mics on for GWC #117 — about 20 minutes late, by the way, because the discussion was just that good. It started with Sean and I disputing which Porsche Gary drives in Weird Science. (It’s a 928, just like the one in Risky Business.) This led to me bemoaning the fact that everyone says “like the one in Risky Business!” when they see my beater daily-driver 944S2. And this led us to recall that a 944 appeared in Sixteen Candles, giving me the perfect comeback: “No, like the one from Sixteen Candles.” That’ll stump ‘em.
Anyway, you can imagine what happened next. (No, he didn’t fix the plumbing.) We spent a good half-hour bumbling down every person our age’s alternate memory lane: John Hughes movies. Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Pretty In Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off come immediately to mind, but don’t forget National Lampoon’s Vacation and Christmas Vacation, Uncle Buck, and even Mr. Mom. Cusack’s early work falls in there, too, specifically Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer.
It’s at times like these that I sometimes wish GWC wasn’t solely sci-fi/fantasy/comic-based. Wouldn’t an ’80s flick arc be awesome? How ’bout a Kevin Smith arc? But there’s a problem: while the hardcore GWCers here and on the forum would most definitely stick around, would the thousands of others that listen but don’t participate otherwise? Or would such an expansion of focus draw even more listeners?
That’s a question that we have yet to answer. My initial thoughts: we podcast best when we podcast what we love. Maybe that should be our guide.
According to Engadget’s live coverage of Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event today, NBC and iTunes have ended their feud and are now making with the TV again. In HD to boot. A quick check shows that as of right now there’s still no BSG in the iTunes store, so I’m guessing that we’ll see NBC’s content reappear with the release of iTunes 8 later this week.
This means that those of you without cable will once again have a legal option for watching BSG.
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