Anonymous37

I just noticed someone uploaded it to YouTube, so without further ado, my favorite R.E.M. cover so far: "Finest Worksong" by Servotron.

So I thought that I would compile everyone's suggestions into a ranked list so that Scott and Scott could take a look at it and decide what the new series should be. I have ranked them from 1 (best) to 33 (worst): 1. Urinals/Trotsky Icepick 2. Pere Ubu 2½. Rocket from the Tombs 3. Yo La Tengo 4. Steven Soderbergh (movies and TV) And a 29-way tie for last place: 33. Talking Heads 33. The Smiths 33. Steely Dan 33. Pearl Jam 33. The Cars 33. Radiohead 33. Modest Mouse 33. Camper Van Beethoven 33. Guided by Voices 33. The Wu-Tang Clan 33. Elvis Costello 33. Beck 33. Foo Fighters 33. They Might Be Giants 33. Look Who’s Talking (movies) 33. REO Speedwagon 33. John Waite 33. Clocks (as in the timekeeping instruments) 33. UB40 33. George R.R. Martin (books) 33. J.R.R. Tolkein (books) 33. Perfumes worn by cooks (scents) 33. Right Said Fred 33. R2D2 (the Star Wars franchise character) 33. Ticks (as in the arachnids) 33. Nine Inch Nails 33. The Undertones/Protex/Donkey Show/Buster’s All Stars/? 33. Vampire Weekend 33. Coldplay You're welcome.

Soda and a burger: the works of auteur Steven Soderbergh

"I am God, I am in heaven." -- Conan O'Brien, who apparently thinks quite highly of himself, Deep Dive with Dana Carvey, episode 6

"Just really like a ... what do you call that on the--you would know this, you're a painter--when you do the painting that's not a triptych necessarily, but when you're doing a wall and it goes from one color down to a darker color but it blends?" Since the word that Scott Aukerman was looking for wasn't "gradient", is it possible he meant "Ombre"?

Yo La Tengo. Obviously, Adam and Scott aren't going to do a series on a band they haven't listened to in their formative years, but if either or both of them are Yo La Tengo fans, it'd be a good choice.

I'm thinking Urinals and Trotsky Icepick. Okay, okay, that's way too obscure. Pere Ubu. They should totally do Pere Ubu.

Rain Phoenix and Michael Stipe on "Happiness", from the movie Happiness https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vip7qNDh1oE

I like R.E.M. for the most part, but I really fucking hate their cover of "Academy Fight Song".

So there was a band called Servotron. Its conceit was that the band members dressed up as and pretended to be robots working to overthrow and destroy humanity to usher in a glorious period where robots reigned instead. And they did a great cover of "Finest Worksong". The song was subtly changed to become an anthem of mechanical uprising and throwing off of shackles. Oh man, do I love it. That link is to iTunes (you can also buy it on Amazon Music). It's the best 99 cents you can spend.

Okay, so I relistened and they did bring it up in their song-by-song rundown. Never mind.

Perhaps I missed it, but I was surprised that the Scotts didn't bring up "Shaking Through", which is, to my mind, the best song on the album and in my personal top ten of all of their songs. Also, I had the opportunity to briefly chat with Mitch Easter on Facebook and wish him a Happy New Year on January 1, 2018. I told him that I had just heard earlier that day and gushed about how awesome it is. And one more bonus Mitch Easter fact: his daughter Tamara Easter makes a cameo appearance in "Steven's Last Night in Town" by Ben Folds Five ("He's charmed everyone here / Except Tamara Easter / Who later revealed to him / Her innermost secrets").

So I had to check Ed Brubaker's wikipedia page just to make sure, but he's actually older than I am, and I read quite a bit of The Phantom in comic book form. The reason for that had to do with the sort of comic books available in India in the early and mid-1980's. I'm sure that things are different now. But the sort of comics that were around at that time were -- in addition to the Amar Chitra Katha books, of course -- Tintin, Asterix and Obelix, and the King Features heroes such as Mandrake the Magician and, yes, The Phantom. The Marvel and DC heroes didn't have as much mindshare back then, even for middle-to-upper class English-speaking Indians. There are a whole lot of things that are problematic about those books and their treatment of non-whites, and Paul, Jason, Eliza and Ed get to that in the episode. But kids want to read comics, and watch and listen to heroes, no matter how offensive they can be to their own ethnic and racial groups. It's my guess that you'll find a lot of people my age who grew up in parts of South America, Africa, and Asia who gave a shit about The Phantom and older pulp heroes. P.S. -- I didn't watch the movie, but one of the things I enjoyed about The Phantom in the old comic strips and books was that he would go into bars and order milk, then inevitably get into fights over it. I hope they at least had a scene like that, just as a sop to fans of The Phantom. But I'm not going to actually sit through the entire thing just to find out. (Edit: changed "he's actually younger than I am" to the correct "he's actually older than I am".)

So where can I get my hands on the specific remix of "Public Enemy Number One" that the Sklar brothers play at the start of the show?

I should have commented 3 years ago, back when people were still discussing this episode, but here goes: L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg, on his website Brunching Shuttlecocks, once invited his readers to list every plot hole, logical flaw, and continuity error they could think of in Godzilla. Here's what they came up with.

Does anyone else remember the story arc in the comic Concrete in which Concrete is recruited to help with the special effects for a Masters of the Universe-esque movie? Just like the real movie, there were money problems. Presumably unlike the real movie, the first director of the movie is put into a coma when the special effects guys decide to sabotage the production in an attempt to make Concrete look dangerously incompetent. Paul Chadwick was, among other things, making a point that even irredeemably crappy movies like Masters of the Universe can manage to wring out moments of beauty. As much as I enjoyed his comic back in the day, I'd like to force him to watch the new Fantastic Four movie and then dare him to make that argument again. (Edit: the story arc was titled "Fragile Creature", and thinly-veiled Masters of the Universe analogue in the comic was Rulers of the Omniverse.)

Here's a question: is it just me, or is Scott Aukerman misspelling "howl" in the ads for HOWL? I could have sworn that in his ad in Comedy Bang Bang he spelled it "h-A-w-l".

(Inspired by all the discussion of sno-cones in episode 360.)

Say, can anyone tell me how to send music to the Sklars? I have some out-of-print music that they might find particularly interesting because of one of the band members of the now-defunct group.

If you have a mystery -- even a mashed-up mystery that's meant to be funny -- where what's meant to be a huge reveal to the viewer (the fact that Jane March's character is impersonating multiple people) is obvious from the first moment that you see the second person she's playing, and the movie isn't a parody, then your movie has failed. As I mentioned, I didn't see the producer's cut, but if anything, the movie would have been improved by removing material and making the plot more confusing, because at the very least, the viewer would be more engaged in connecting the dots. I'll take your word that the movie was not meant as a parody. It's a shame, because it reduces what could have been the single best movie parody I have ever seen (well, maybe tied with Starship Troopers) to camp.

I saw the VHS version, and I can't speak to the cinematography, because I was agog at everything else. I'm willing to provisionally defend this movie, but only because I can't be sure that it isn't a brilliant parody of Skinemax "erotic" thrillers played with deadly stone-faced seriousness by every single actor and actress. If that's what the producers and directors had in mind, then this really does deserve five stars.

The most recent full episode of Doug Loves Movies has one of those ads as well. Maybe I've missed it, but Doug Benson has not made a statement about the General Snus ad copy he read. I hope he comes to his senses, apologizes, and promises not to make that mistake again.

Hey Matt Besser, the Koch brothers want in on the whole improv thing, according to New York magazine (via Paul Krugman's blog). Needless to say, once it gets going, I'll probably be following them instead of improv4humans. So if the number of people listening suddenly falls off a cliff in the upcoming weeks, you'll know the reason why.

I love of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For". It was a footnote in U2's career, but that cover ended up getting the band into serious legal trouble with both U2's record label (The Edge noted that the band itself was not consulted before Island Records went nuclear on Negativland and SST Records, and did not agree with their heavyhanded tactics) and Casey Kasem.