This was too good not to share.
If ever I get to be in any way shape or form someone of consequence, I totally never want to be on these guys' bad side. While nominally fans of Doctor Who, listening to their podcasts, one gets the idea it's about as healthy a relationship as Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini's in the movie Blue Velvet.
It is, on the whole, a lot funnier, and therefore more OK thank Blue Velvet.
What does this have to do with anything? In their latest podcast, in addition to coming up with the perfect definition for Twitter ("it's a way that famous people can ignore you while simultaneously showing off in front of you") they also take the following shot at Battlestar Galactica, the beginning of which I am moved enough to transcribe for you (it st arts about 3:30 in):
"Are you the creator of a cult television programme with a complicated story arc? Have you written yourself into a corner? Are you endlessly grappling with pigeon symbolism? Well stop worrying, because help is just a phonecall away! Call . . .GOD!
"The Lord God Almighty can dig a lazy writer out of any stubborn plot hole. Got a dead character you want to bring back to life? Call . . .GOD!
"Can't figure out how to logically explain that really cool off the cuff plot contrivance that seemed like a pretty good idea at the time? Then pick up the phone and ask God for a free, no-obligation quote. And for heaven's sake, don't waste your time writing a satisfying and coherent denouement for your story. No! Simply drop in some airy-fairy religious nonsense and turn four years of metaphysical debate into a Sunday school sermon for idiots! Then sit back and hope for the fucking best!
The only thing you have to lose is your audience's respect. So don't delay--Give God a call today!"
It gets even funnier from there. Also, transcribing that was a pain in the ass and so you should totally go download the whole thing to salve my wounded feelings. Also, very quickly after they answer the question on everyone's lips (which is "Should Doctor Who fans really be criticising anyone else's plotting?"--yes. Russell T. Davies has taught us to bitterly fear and hate the deus ex machina, possibly because he's used it eight million times a series) They also take some shots at Dollhouse, as if they knew the illustrious Diana Kingston-Gabai would be somewhat more interested in that case.
Things get a bit more inside baseball from there, but the first 13 minutes are actually comprehensible to people other than obsessive Doctor Who fans and other highly evolved neurotics and can be enjoyed by all.
You know, I just thought of this--maybe the Prattle needs a Doctor Who week? How many of the three readers would survive after six days of that, I wonder?
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24 comments:
Hello. I'm Rula Lenska. And I approve this podcast. :)
To Whedon's credit, "Dollhouse" has improved in the last two or three weeks, but it's still a deeply flawed series...
I love that Americans and Britons both think Rula Lenska is a punchline, for reasons that are the same and yet very different. :)
You should listen to their "Cyberwoman" podcast--I laughed so hard I think I strained something
I suppose--still haven't watched it--but the question then becomes "well, is it too late and should he maybe haves pent more time trying to get things moving faster and more engaging, maybe?"
Horrid as decompression is in comics, in weekly TV I can only imagine it's several orders of magnitude worse.
Sort-of-aside: My only memory of Pee-Wee Herman is his genie-head-in-a-box doing an imitation of Rula Lenska by calmly saying "Friends are here from Europe." :)
I'll do that!
Oh, absolutely. It's the same thing I say to those comic writers who urge us not to judge a storyline until it's finished: well, no, because if you're doing a six-part arc, you'd damn well do something with the first five to make me care about #6.
Fortunately, weekly TV is bound by certain medium-related constraints that limit just how much you can decompress - come hell or high water, it's still a set number of minutes per episode and a set number of episodes per season. With comics, there's a bit of a gap between content and medium (as any Bendis-written issue will show you: double-page spreads of people repeating the same two words to each other again and again, etc.)
I remember that! Holy cow--maybe Rula was extremely famous after all. :)
It put the suffering I went through with Torchwood in its proper perspective, I thought.
Yeah--thankfully there is pressure on TV writers not to drag everything out as much as possible (mind you, it didn't stop most of series 3 of BSG from being as boring as whale shit) however, you can have a lot going on and if it doesn't move it's still spinning your wheels, which is what Bendis gives us now--instead of talky and boring, now we gets action-packed and somehow still inert.
Does "in her own mind" count? Because if so, she was at least as famous as Oprah. If not moreso. :)
Of course, to make sense of the podcast, I had to go and rewatch "Cyberwoman". I'd forgotten Gareth David-Lloyd's "sad" face. Oy.
Or worse, utterly disjointed like Fraction's X-Men, where you have a dozen potentially interesting storylines being seeded and then completely ignored for six months.
Then again aren't we all, Diana? ;)
I'm sorry for that. That "Cyberwoman" was well-regarded enough to have a damn action figure made puzzles me more than any other mystery I make myself crazy trying to contemplate.
Also, Greg Land art, which is about as helpful in making sense of anything as a three-legged table. All I have to say Diana is that as bad as UXM has been, Invincible Iron Man is setting new records of lameness in terms of plotting. And it won awards. I'm a man without a country aren't I?
If I ever had any desire to be famous, the Cautionary Tale of Susan Boyle has done away with that. :)
Well, it's as the podcast boys suggest: she's wearing a metal bikini.
The nice thing about today's comic climate? You're never in a minority of one. :)
If anything was needed to make me never wish I was famous, the rest of Britain's Got Talent did it for me. There is a really thin line between "talent" and "mental illness."
Yeah, but if metal bikinis were all you need, Heavy Metal would be the most successful magazine, ever. :)
It's nice to have company. You can split the lunch tab then. :)
I still feel dirty after watching that poor little girl break down because she forgot the words. Made me ashamed to be British.
True story: I saw a Heavy Metal movie with Michael Ironside. Even he couldn't save it.
Bill it to Joe Quesada - a refund for all the crappy comics we've been buying to feed his XBox addictions...
Was she the one who flipped out and got the do-over? I heard about that . . .
I've seen that one. Oh lordy--even Julie Strain couldn't save it, and it was her bloody vanity project. ;)
His XBox addiction . . .or his lunchbox addiction? He's a hefty lad.
Yep. It was horrible. She's what, ten? Ugh.
Granted, sealing Billy Idol in a tomb for the rest of eternity isn't the worst idea she ever had... ;)
For all we know he's got X-Boxes in his lunchboxes. You can never tell with that twit.
Yeah, as if we needed proof that this kind of instant fame is as destructive to one's mind as cholera, I think that pretty much all we needed to put paid to that.
Heavens yes. It would certainly do Billy a few favours as well, seeing as how he's 2 decades removed from any relevance and counting.
Yes, and now he's spreading his half-chewed funk all over CBR! Because I wasn't sick of him enough.
And if I'd replied to this earlier in the week, a Michael Jackson joke would have been entirely appropriate. :)
Ugh, I saw. Between that and Rich Johnston going solo, I try to keep away from CBR most days.
Sadly he was hit and then struck by a smooth criminal, and bang goes that idea. :)
Yeah . . .Bleeding Cool has made for a good counter to CBR here lately, hasn't it? Mind you, Steven Grant's still well worth reading.
True, Grant has the occasional gem, but to be honest, I'm not much enjoying the new format over at "Bleeding Cool"... the layout's a bit too complex for my tastes, and Rich just mixes everything together: toy news, interviews, comics previews, and somewhere in there you might actually pick up a news byte or two. Maybe.
In theory, Bleeding Cool by its very existence is a challenge to staid old Newsarama and CBR.
In practice, Bleeding Cool is they very definition of "a mile wide and an inch deep." Apparently trying to stretch LiTG into an entire website means you get meagre scraps of news, most of which is generally useless stuff (this may sound cruel, but I couldn't care less what Rich thought of Borat. Do not give a shit. Likewise, the constant starfuckery is getting a bit eye-rolling also) and add in columns by Warren Ellis and whatever Si Spurrier is supposed to be and lift me, Lord, to a world where people are smart enough to join me in not giving a shit about what either of them have to say.
Wow. That turned into a rant. Long story short, Bleeding Cool ends up being a news site so skimpy on news I often forget to visit for days at a stretch and to be honest, I don't feel like I'm missing much.
Totally agree. The whole thing just reeks of Trying Too Hard, which is amusingly enough the thing Ellis and Johnston both have in common now. I'm also gradually tapering off in terms of how often I check the site... won't be long before I drop it entirely.
I'm thinking of dropping it myself--so far, for a site that prides itself on being "independent news" the ComiCon updates have been rather wanting. It's getting to be a woefully annoying place full of crap news, Rich Johnson starfucking, and Warren Ellis pontificating about bullshit and fuck that guy.
There's something to be said for the weekly LiTG format--it required him to be a little more selective about what qualified as "news."
I just went ahead and ditched it a week or so ago... it's been a while since he's had anything up there that interested me in the slightest. Though I suppose I'll get wind of it if he does in the future...
I occasionally check in, but oh lord, I think it's getting to be more morbid curiosity, as it's becoming less a "comic news site" and more of a document of Rich Johnson's slow slide into irrelevancy. :) I was the same way when WCW imploded.
I figured as much when Warren Ellis - poster boy for Modern Irrelevance In Comics - started doing guest columns. :)
And Diana, he's not even the worst columnist there. I'm horrified and morbidly fascinated that in an otherwise functional physical model of the universe allows this to happen.
That's the karmic price we pay for House to Astonish, I imagine. :)
. . .which is, to sum up, the heat death of Rich Johnson. :)
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