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Todd Mason

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Everything posted by Todd Mason

  1. Todd Mason

    Episode 43 — Wild Wild West

    "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" by Larry Niven http://www.rawbw.com/~svw/superman.html Niven was one of the brigh new stars in science fiction writing in the 1960s, though outside the literary sf community he's probably best known (or was) for the disaster novel/mild-sf bestseller LUCIFER'S HAMMER in the late '70s...though he's worked on things as far afield as the STAR TREK cartoon.
  2. Todd Mason

    Episode 11 — The Fogelnest Files

    http://videosift.com/video/FEAR-Saturday-Night-Live-1981-Historic-Performance ...starts out looking like the 12 dupe of a stretched tape, but improves...the DC punks remained pretty confused/amused as to why they were invited (someone thought they'd be easier to control than local punks?), but of course most of the press the next day was apparently fictional accounts of DC punks trashing the studio. (Those were the halcyon days in punk of goofballs talking tough about Their Scene vs. Yours, but then again there were folks about, like [Ms.] Lefty in DC, fondly remembered by some for being willing let anyone who bothered her in some way know of her displeasure, whomever they might be.)
  3. Todd Mason

    Episode 83.5 — 7/6/2012 TWO CHARTED 22

    That last e-letter was indeed a moment...as someone who has had a few odd responses to my short stories, though so far nothing quite in that vein, I can sympathize. On a much more earthy? salty? level, male dolphins rather famously use their members to manipulate things in their environment, including at times people who wanted to Swim with Dolphins. Tends to make things memorable for such people...the dolphins, after all, have only so many tools, so to write, at their disposal...
  4. "Also, I'm pretty sure there is no pushing involved in the Iditarod. Maybe I'm wrong, but the person on the back isn't pushing are they? I think they just ride on there and the dogs do all the work." There are occasions where the human passenger/driver/musher has to get off and push while the dogs are pulling. And, as I recall, "Bocephus" was a ventriloquist's dummy that HW, Sr. thought the infant Jr. resembled. He could've been nicknamed "Mortimer Snerd"...I suspect either wooden figure might've recorded better music...(apparently that talent skips a gen in the Williams family).
  5. Todd Mason

    Episode 80.5 — 6/15/2012 TWO CHARTED 19

    I like this, from Irving's article in Wikipedia: "He made his literary debut in 1802 with a series of observational letters to the Morning Chronicle, written under the pseudonym Jonathan Oldstyle." Irving was OG (original ghostface)...not the first horror-fiction writer in the US, but the first one still widely read.
  6. Todd Mason

    Episode 80.5 — 6/15/2012 TWO CHARTED 19

    Paul Revere flourished before Washington Irving (guess why he got that first name) published "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"...but Irving published well before Longfellow published his poem, "Paul Revere's RIde," which overstated Revere's importance as a deliverer of the news...
  7. And anarchists...who don't, as a rule, want to Tear Everything Down, so much as want to rid society of hierarchies. Governments too often being precisely Not about people taking care of each other, except in the most sinister sense of that phrase. The anarchists in Catalonia/Barcelona in Spain during the Civil War were able to withstand attacks from without (from the Carlists, Fascists, and lent-out Nazi bombers) and within (from the Communists) for about three years, not by tearing everything down, but because they were so much part of the society that they were propping up. (The Stalinists were so nasty that even the Troskyists such as George Orwell threw in with the anarchists...not a typical result.) This might not have much relevance to a guy with a bandana over his face throwing a rock at a fast-food restaurant or an international bank, but he might have hope to eventually fight such a Good Fight...or just want to [copulate][excrement] up. You usually have to chat with them. Might or might not be worth it. And had I not had one of my own hot buttons hit the other week (on a really bad day for me), I wouldn't've had the invitation extended, or at least I wouldn't've have complained and had that invitation extended as a result (and had I thought I could add anything to a coversation about what's more cruel/supercilious than funny that Besser and company hadn't presumably had to think about themselves over the years, I would've accepted).
  8. Todd Mason

    Episode 77 — Plant-Based Dick

    FWIW, Polynesians are Caucasian, as much as this means anything (the darkest-complected Sri Lankans are Caucasians, too). Hence the pale loonies always resorting to "Aryan" and such for their determination of Master Races. Rotten Tomatoes takes into account the assessments of That Guy in the bar whose WordPress blog is all about who Really Should be Caucasian, but also reviews films. Why people give it any credence, dunno...but, then, I'm clearly out of step...even if a friendly acquaintance of mine wasn't the survivor of what the court defined as a sexual assault misdemeanor peformed by Anthony Kiedis (and his lawyers hadn't wasted my time at work one day interviewing me to see if they wanted me testifying), I've always found the RHCP a buncha whiny bores. No Operation Ivy, etc., they.
  9. Todd Mason

    Episode 74.5 — 5/4/12 TWO CHARTED 13

    I suspect "cutters" are tagged such by the other Ms. Vilaysack because they lift and separate. Something DDs may not need to do (they just have to be cut Real High).
  10. Todd Mason

    Episode 114 — Phish Phriends!

    Still have no understanding of Winfrey worship. None. But, then, I don't know why women don't want sons, either, though I can at least speculate on that. Wayne Dyer is a self-help health guru, does a lot of PBS pledge specials.
  11. Well, even unbroken, I probably wouldn't be the best potential correspondent on this issue...but I must admit I'm not sure who would be, instead.
  12. Todd Mason

    Episode 69.5 — 3/30/12 TWO CHARTED 8

    Jangly: The Searchers and the Byrds were the first great self-conscious exponents of jangle in rock, I'd suggest. The word for that kind of Animal Collective music that comes to mind is "ethereal"...kinda taps out around Clannad. Echoing everyone else's concern--get chedked out, sir. Hypoglycemia can be pretty damned serious.
  13. (damn. my strategy of playing hard to get clearly won't fly.)
  14. OK, after the fact apologies, too...I'd say I overreacted to some of the lines (such as He's homeless because he's boring) before giving up before getting to "My craziest day? I was warm for the other day for a half-hour," which is certainly not adding insult to injury. It just hit me sideways. And LA is right about this...this is, in total, an excellent episode, among the many excellent episodes, and thanks for doing them. (And thanks for the offer.)
  15. Matt Besser: I'll take another spin through what sure sounded like that to me. Apologies if I was wildly off target.
  16. LA--or, maybe kicking folks when they're down isn't that (the fuck) funny. But thanks (the fuck) for your helpful suggestion. I'm sure you're (the fuck) full of them.
  17. Nothing's funnier than making fun of the homeless. Well, maybe making fun of babies dying of wasting disease. Because, after all, they both have such free rides at all of our expense...oh, wait, that actually refers to wealthy and powerful people, whom it might actually be funny to make fun of.
  18. Todd Mason

    Episode 65.5 — 3/2/2012 TWO CHARTED

    Fnord. You Isley/Eisley, you.
  19. Todd Mason

    Episode 65.5 — 3/2/2012 TWO CHARTED

    It seems a LOT more likely that Egyptian engineers found ways to use lots of slave labor to do what they needed to do (pointing a monunment at a star isn't that tough) than that aliens have managed to visit, but just decided to build 'mids and split.
  20. Todd Mason

    Episode 64.5 — 2/24/12 TWO CHARTED

    In re: Y THE LAST, Kulap you (and Dustin, and perhaps even Howard) might particularly enjoy a long short story by Alfred Bester called "5,271,009" which also deals, in part, with the fantasy of being the only fertile male human on Earth, in part...Howard might approve of the variant title the novelet has, "The Starcomber"...the story might well've helped trigger the Y creator's thinking. (It's also a very trenchant and funny story about a man-boy learning to face maturity...). Bester is probably best known for his novels, such as THE DEMOLISHED MAN, but early in his professional writing career, in the 1940s, was writing scripts for DC Comics as well, and has a few amusing anecdotes about that in his memoirs. http://www.collectorshowcase.fr/IMAGES2/FSF_5403.jpg is the cover image of the 1954 magazine issue which gave the story its original title...it's been reprinted widely since and is pretty easy to find...
  21. Todd Mason

    Episode 63 — P. F. Toddler

    Steampunk is indeed Murrican in origin...hell, even before the fiction (is books), there was THE WILD WILD WEST...and then folks such as Howard Waldrop started writing stories about the television industry in the 1850s...and then the really bored Etsy guys started, in Maria Bamford's words, to take a typewriter and make a heavier typewriter...
  22. Todd Mason

    Episode 73 — Dead 'Rents and Whores!

    I must admit, I've never begun to understand Winfrey-worship. "Full of herself" is about as kind and restrained a description as I've heard.
  23. Todd Mason

    Episode 78 — Pottery Barn Prodigy!

    MODEL LAWYER, just before the second break of the fourth episode: "Your Honor, I'd ask that that pose be stricken from the transcript!"
  24. Todd Mason

    Episode 59 — A Real Asssscat!

    In re: the Web Bonus discussion: There is the old bumper sticker: "Vegetarians taste better." I've been fortunate enough to be told that this is actually at least arguably the case. (And there is at least one Vietnamese dish that tastes almost exactly in the other direction, if you get my obtuse drift. I shall have to seek that out again.)
  25. Todd Mason

    Episode 55 — Crack and Hookers

    And the fishing show KRAKEN HOOKERS will be on the Manly Man Channel any time now.
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