daveB from Oakland

(blood, blood, blood)

Howard is correct: This is a fantastic lady. So many Jenny Slate quotables ... "I'm pretty evolved" Perez Hilton should "go to bed ... he's a real collection of detitus". On Katy Perry: "I like how she forms her vowels" "I like to get blazed and see a movie that's easy for me ... I'll see any Woody Allen movie, even though some of them are real dust farts". She rules.

Jonah the 17-year old potential intern is also funny. It tripped me out that he said people explained rainbow parties to him, but he just "kept forgetting" the details. It's as if he's such an innocent that his brain just shuts down when he hears that information.

Why stop there? We should form a religion around him. Eric's got that rare Karl Pilkington vibe of unintentional hilarity (having said that, I was never very comfortable with Gervais and Merchant's over-the-top meanness towards Karl. I like the Matt-Eric dynamic better). I like the contrast between Eric's bumbling personality and the impressive technological jobs he gets. Facial recognition software? Consumer brain imaging? What the hell IS consumer brain imaging ... I think Matt and crew could make a good scene out of that ... maybe a scenario where a mild-mannered, clumsy kid turns out to be an evil genius who takes over the earth and all of it's Hue-monns.

Hey, if you're reading this right now ... you've got a dikfour on your shoulder.

That Scheer character is hilarious. He should bring it back.

All hail the Bammer! Strange coincidence: I listened to this episode right after picking up a prescription at my local Medical Merilleykis clinic.

I just remembered that "Swordfish" is the ultimate "everyone is an asshole" movie.

This is my problem with a lot of movies ... "Avatar" comes to my mind. I feel like the "everyone is an asshole" trend really took root in 1980s action movies, where you started seeing a lot of characters who weren't really characters ... they were more like delivery devices for shitty wisecracks. Yeah, French Interpol lady seemed pleasant and lovely, but she was entirely unnecessary to the movie. She didn't really belong within that universe of shitheads. I'm gonna backtrack a little on this position by saying that I did kinda enjoy the scene where we're initially introduced to Woody Harrelson's "mentalist" character. Harrelson's still got the ability to occasionally be funny within a dumb movie like this. The opening scene established that he was a skilled, but basically amoral, shakedown artist. But the scene is semi-redeemed by the fact that the victim of the shakedown sorta deserves it (Harrelson figures out that the dude's having an affair with his wife's sister). ... but after that scene, he was basically just an asshole like everyone else.

The "trap door into a bank vault" trick, and the subsequent "explanation" by Morgan Freeman were complete shit. Okay, so Morgan Freeman takes "FBI Agent" Ruffalo back to the scene of the Las Vegas performance. Ruffalo steps into the magic teleportation device ... to the viewer's eye, the device operates in such a manner that Ruffalo would almost certainly DIE from being crushed. Any explanation as to why Ruffalo's not reduced into a pancake of blood and bones? No. So instead of Ruffalo getting murdered by the teleportation device, he falls through a trap door into a "simulated" set of the French Bank Vault. Seconds after Ruffalo falls thru the trap door, Freeman and his compatriots walk into the fake bank vault. Where the hell is Freeman walking from? If freeman didn't go thru the trap door, then how does he instantly walk from the main stage into the fake vault? In the fake vault, Freeman's character "Thaddeus Bradley" ( ) delivers a condescending explanation that OF COURSE there was no magical teleportation to france, because this is a stage set, don't you see. BUT WHO CARES ABOUT ANY OF THAT BULLSHIT if the whole teleportation device/ trapdoor mechanism makes ZERO FUCKING SENSE in the physical world as we know it? The filmmakers are trying to combine the elegant mechanics of a classic heist film with Harry-Potter CGI nonsense magic. The combination doesn't work at all.

Happy First Year to Mr. Jake Files and all 'philes of the Files. I'm glad you chose that Sklar Brothers clip, that's the first thing I thought of when I saw this was gonna be a "best of" show. Their delight in describing that batshit clip, (and their demands that it be played again & again) was so infectious ... I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed when I got around to viewing the actual clip, but only because the audio hype-up was so hilarious. Here's to many more shows. As Buzz Lightyear Koechner would say: Bev, Bob, and Beyond!!!

Haven't listened to it yet, but Howie looks like a wild man with the top-knot untied. From Summah Samurai to Summah Tarzan (it's still technically summah, right?) Good to see the dynamic duo back together.

Neko should come back on the show as Sally Kellerman and/or Klaus Meine.

Howard, I hope you find a good Summah Lozenge flavor to relieve your scratchy throat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Until_the_Light_Takes_Us

I feel weird that these British guys know so much more about American pop culture than me. Also, I wonder how Michael Caine met his wife. Did they go into that at all?

Billy Merritt's joke twitter account is the new BEST TWITTER PAGE IN THE UNIVERSE. https://twitter.com/GourmetFoodTruk

Re: Shark Movies -- this will never live up to "Jaws" in Howard's heart, but he (and the rest of y'all) might be interested in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Water_(film) It was a low-budget indie thing, but kinda cool. I don't remember whether you even saw the shark at all -- it was mostly implied and conveyed thru camera work and thru the actors. It's sort of like they made a whole movie out of the first Jaws scene, where the lady who got chewed up by the unseen great white. "Open Water" is just a man and lady, scuba-diving, who lose their boat, and are stuck out in the open, and then some damn shark comes along and makes a bad situation all the worser. At the time of it's release (2003), it was marketed as "The Blair Witch of shark movies".

Yes, that was acknowledged at the end of the show. (The end of the show was a quick summary of the music that was played, and the hosts also talked about some of the source material that was used for topics discussed).

Related topics: I enjoyed this show about the folklore behind "Christmas". It turns out that a lot of the stuff we think of as "age old tradition" was invented relatively recently, by Madison Avenue/Don Draper type people: http://probablyscience.libsyn.com/probably-history-episode-001-christmas

Some PRE-INTERNET pop-music rumors from my middle school/ Junior High years: 1.) The thoroughly debunked "story behind the story" of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight". I can totally remember kids my age talking about this suburban legend with wide eyes and hushed tones: http://www.snopes.co...gs/intheair.asp 2.) "Hey man, did you hear that (Journey singer) Steve Perry DIED??!!??" -- that was pretty much the whole story. I don't think any details were divulged as to how or why he died. I'm not sure how widespread this story was, but I remember hearing it around my junior high school a lot. Anyway, Steve Perry didn't die. In retrospect, I think the main purpose of this story was so mean middle-school boys could get Perry-crushing middle-school girls to cry.

I like this show a lot! Starting things off by posing generational questions to fellow show-hosts was a great way to integrate this 'Cast into the Earverse (Earworld?) The topic of manufactured & mis-told stories becoming "fact" in the public mind is an eternally fascinating one for me. Loved everything about this premier episode ... except for when you guys dissed the Archies. Don't front on the Archies, y'all.

Finally ... after decades of waiting, I get to hear what Alfred E Neumann's voice sounds like? If he uses his "What, me worry?" catchphrase, I swear to god I'll LOSE MY MIND!!! Oh wait ... this is the other magazine that is not actually a magazine anymore. Well, I'll be interested to see what this is all about and whether it is worthy of the $0.00 investment that it requires.

This week's variation of "Jesus, Kulap!" was Howard asking Ku-Ku "Do you wear a wig to go with that mouth?" I'm not even sure if that makes sense, but it's hilarious. Another highlight was the expertly utilized echo effect for "SCAMMED. BY. HIPPIES."