Hot Dog

What's the matter with you? You've got no respect. What do you think you're doing? Why are you looking so sad? It's not so bad. It's a nice place. Welcome to Comedy Bang! Bang!

Welcome to Bang Bang Bang Went the Comedy.

Matt doesn't buy posters. Therefore, anyone who buys posters is weird. Or a child, apparently. Never mind the, as you say, real artists who took the time to create those posters. And y'know, someone hired those real artists to make those posters to promote Earwolf's shows, including i4h, so Matt, you're kinda missing the point, there. I figured, if I got mentioned on the show at all, Matt would make me out to be some kind of formerly bullied, oversensitive jerk. I also figured I'd be misrepresented, which I was -- I had more to say than the single message Thomas read on the air, plus Thomas and I had a brief conversation via private message that further clarified where I was coming from. When Thomas asked me to be on the show, I said no not because I was afraid of being bullied, but because I can't recall a single listener/Twitter follower who's been brought on as a guest who hasn't been, on some level, belittled or shouted at. And I have better things to do with my time than be a punching-bag for Matt. But I called it -- weeks ago, I'd said this to Thomas in a private message: Disappointed I was right.

Agreed that the intern can quit if he doesn't like his working conditions. Of course that's an option. I'm not trying to stand up for the intern's rights or anything. That's totally irrelevant to what I'm talking about. The intern's personal situation doesn't make Matt's behavior any more or less unpleasant in my eyes. I'm still listening to a guy laugh at another guy for buying milk. (Plus, I mean, the intern has a good reason for drinking whole milk. The guy's done his research. It's not that he loves milk so much -- it's that he's young and, uh, not wealthy, and needs cost-effective ways of eating a decent diet. Mocking your unpaid intern for, ultimately, not being as well-off as you are is something of a dick move, IMO.) Re: return guests, they're not usually the target of the thing I'm talking about. First of all, most of them are Matt's friends, so of course I expect some shit-giving there. (See: Gemberling.) I'm talking about when it feels like Matt's punching down, when he's beating up on someone in a lesser position of power, like during every Case Closed segment when he shouts down an Earwolf listener or Twitter follower. In fact, he's already had an ethicist on the show who called him out as a bully for doing exactly that, so I don't think this is an especially bizarre take on it. Not trying to convince anyone of my opinion here, BTW -- just wanted to see if anyone else shared it. If not, no sweat!

So no, then?

Specifically, we've got Connect Four, but we're missing two of the little red discs, so hopefully that's not a problem.

Oh, you weren't going to ask? Well, this is awkward.

Oh my God we're all going to die in here.

I came here to see exactly this: if anyone else thought that milk was a puzzling thing over which to bully someone. Fucking milk. I mean, I get that Matt's a manly man meathead macho man's man -- he's made that clear many times over whenever he berates someone over, say, their disinterest in sports -- but that the fact that he finds the very concept of eating breakfast cereal to be so alien and apparently effeminate is just mind-boggling. I haven't listened to every Earwolf podcast, Earwolf fan though I am, but I'd be surprised if any other host comes off as as judgmental and unpleasant as Matt does. Bullying his intern over buying milk (instead of what, beer, I guess?) doesn't help.

Hey! That wasn't Roswell! That was Groom Lake, Nevada! Area 51 and Roswell aren't the same place! Roswell's a town in New Mexico! People live there! There are restaurants! It's a tourist destination! Area 51's a bunch of desert and nothingness and also a secret military base! /pedantry

This space intentionally left blank.

Great episode! FWIW, "Solve for X" is a common phrase in algebra. (Except in Arkansas, I guess.) And since when is "contiguous" a fancy-pants word? Other than that, another great episode.

I do not like what any musical guest has brought to any episode so far. For one thing, they're almost never funny -- check. For another, the need to take time out for live music every ten minutes is a momentum-killer. The mere presence of a musical guest means you'll never get on a roll the way Fagin Platt or Adam Scott/Harris Wittels did. In other words... it's going to be okay at best. Before James Adomian showed up, it was pretty dire. Even still there was only so much he could do. And it was painfully obvious that Grant Lee Shepard just had no clue what he was supposed to do with "What Am I Thinking?" Hint: It's not a word-association test.

Welcome to the movies! Please silence your cellphones and pagers, and don't ruin the movie by adding your own soundtrack.

Great to hear Fagan getting some Earwolf love. [attachment=10100,233]

Nobody confuses an issue like David Huntsberger. This episode's example: thinking that "dimension" and "dementia" share the same word roots, which leads to another patented You Can't Seriously Believe That theory that tries to link them together. David, if you'd just written down and looked at those two words side by side -- or, I dunno, "researched" them on Professor Blastoff's go-to reference work, Wikipedia -- you may have been able to come up with some other equally ludicrous theory that didn't stem solely from your misunderstanding of language.

Ditto. I could mock up something on CafePress if I wanted to, but I want the Earwolf stamp of approval.

I've listened to this maybe four times and it still cracks me up.

Well, I figured he had to be *someone's* friend -- I don't see any other way an actual expert in a scientific field would end up on this show. He may have been told what he was getting into, but it didn't sound like he was up to it. Again, maybe give more of a shit about what your expert has to say than trying to come up with the next one-liner. Or maybe limit the expert's time on the show to one or two segments to give the hosts more time to get it out of their collective system. It's not like they were especially listening to him anyway. They seemed to have the patience of three fourth-graders. On the plus side, that also meant that there didn't seem to be time for a patented You Can't Seriously Believe That idea from David Huntsberger, the show's living embodiment of the Weekly World News.

Yeah, that's my complaint, basically. The only way to get there is to go to one of my own posts. Aside from not being able to access my profile at all, I think that might be the worst possible solution.

So I have a profile, but I see no way to get to it -- there's no "Control Panel" or "User Controls" link or anything. Anyone?

Here's an idea: If you're going to have an expert on whose expertise you supposedly want to hear, maybe don't shit on him every time he talks. It was fine at first, but after a while I really started to notice that when everyone was laughing, Dr. Cohen's voice was conspicuously absent. At the very least, make sure the guest expert knows what he's getting into. That is, that this is a podcast hosted by people with a vague interest in things they don't understand and who are more interested in cracking wise than learning anything. In other words, guest experts and this show might not be such a great match.

I would *absolutely* buy that paper/scissors/rock shirt. I'd buy the shit out of it. Please produce that, Earwolf, so I can buy it.