Author: RevVoice
[BLOG] Hatton talks Writer Strike
Has anyone else felt that feeling like this is never going to end?
Look, I support the writers and the actors. So, when the industry A-Listers listen to this, please don’t think I am not sympathetic to your struggles. That said, has anyone else flipped through their streaming services, amongst the hundreds of thousands of movies that you’ve never seen, the decades of television programming that is available at your beck and call, the Oscar winners, the Disney Classics, the comfort food horror franchises, and the Nick at Nite throwbacks and thought to yourself… ugh, there’s nothing on…
Sadly, it’s not going to get better.
Aside from the fact the parties have only just started meeting up again, it feels like the pains the Best Boys and Key Grips are much worse than that of CEO’s Peter Aramount and Nick Etflix. So what does that mean? Well, it means settle in and find something with a lot of episodes. Here’s a few suggestions of older shows I’ve found now that I’ve caught up with Strange New Worlds…
Alfred Hitchcock Presents – Peacock – I am certain I’ve mentioned this before somewhere, but Peacock has all of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Hour shows. But let me tell you that if you are looking for something to binge, there is absolutely nothing better. First, there are 350 or so episodes. Yes, some of them are duds, but there are so many that aren’t or feature enough actors before they were famous that there is always something interesting. Moreover, the great episodes… are truly masterpieces of suspense and twist story telling.
Columbo – Peacock – Ok ok I’m done… but just one more thing…. I’ve always been told I would enjoy Columbo, and now that I’ve started diving into the archive, those folks were right. Collectively, there are only 50 or so episodes of the original series, but each one is an hour and a half. Full movies about a sloppy brilliant man call people out on their stupid murders. Again, not all of them are gold, but none (of the ones I’ve seen so far) are not worth the watch.
Gilmore Girls – Netflix – Why worry about the impending heat death of the universe when you can go to a cozy little Connecticut town where everyone is pleasant and the scripts are triple the size? Gilmore is a guilty pleasure, but it is not without its laugh out loud scripts and cozy ‘everything will be ok’ attitude. I’m not defending my choices, you’re wrong… just ask Kurt.
Riverdale – Netflix – First, don’t watch Riverdale because it is a true to life telling of the Archie mythos. You will be disappointed. Watch it because it is a completely absurd, almost to the point of being artistic, teen drama show that just doesn’t care how batshit it gets. You want a cult? An asylum? A brutal music scene? Murder and gang warfare? Riverdale has you covered.. it’s Twin Peaks chewing bubble gum and it is amazing.
What are you watching? Sound off in the places.
[SOMETHING IN REVIEW] Know1ng
Tagged 2023, Something In ReviewHave you ever seen patterns where there weren’t any? Have you ever found some truth in the noise and were certain you could change the world? What if you also were a wacky scientist who can only act by breathing heavy? Oh, and also the world might be ending.. maybe..
So, none of these questions are impossible in the world of Knowing or KNOW1NG if you pay attention to the advertisements, a Nic Cage vehicle that can’t help but zig zag across the map all higgildy-piggildy and lets you hang along for the ride.
Settle in as the Somethings dissect a movie that sits somewhere between 2012 and an Asylum version of 2012.
Ok, here we go… (but read in a Nic Cage voice)
[THE WHEEL] Elevator Pitch: Horror Movie (w. Vanessa Guerrero)
Tagged 2023, guests, The WheelThe Wheel is back. The Wheel? You ask. Yes, the completely real creation of Swedish technology that determines what we are doing on any given episode.
..and this time it brought a guest!
Imagine the Somethings each get just one chance to pitch something, while the top CEO with all of the big spending dollars is forced to listen to them. One of them will get bankrolled to have their idea go to market. The other.. well, the other got that free elevator ride.
This week’s CEO Mogul Du Jour is the fantabulous Vanessa Guerrero. You may have seen her on G4, or know her from Game Grumps – or maybe you have checked out her podcast Popcorn & Pixels (and if not, you should!)
Who is going to the top floor? Only one way to find out…
Ok, here we girl from ipanima…
[BLOG] A Little Something About Tweeting…
Tagged 2023, BlogHey all – Hatton here.
Well, the world is talking about the dying gasp that is Twit… ahem.. X. So I thought I would run through a few ideas I’ve had recently that would be better names we could use instead of X to X-eeting.. Skexeet… Xavier-eeting people– better names for Twitter and why.
First let’s work with the assumption that we MUST change Twitter. We can invent some farfetched reason like we have a small peepee and can’t help but cram our greedy fingers into everything, or that we’re doing our best to sink the ship to try and recoup our lost millions somehow. Off the top of head. Fact is, doesn’t matter why.. we’re changing that blue bird of happiness.
Let’s start simple.
What if we called them Shawties?
The caveat is that you can only use them on someone’s birthday.
You’re welcome.
We could go fancy, and try to bring us back to a posher time and refer to them as Missives. A word originating in mid 1500s France – instead of our Tweetdeck being laden with the sale of plummeting NFTs and the dumbfuck opinions of anyone with a phone.. well now we can receive a missive, which will, of course, provide you with a bevvy of financial opportunities for fungible items in an exciting speculative market and give you the regular thoughts of the assinity of the proletariat as they send missives hither and yon.
Another short idea – we could just call it Reddit.. by next year that name will likely be just as available.
Next, I’d like to reach back just a little while ago on the internet, a trend you still see today although not as much. When the land grab for domains got hot, a lot of start ups couldn’t get normal uncopyrightable words, so they made their own. JOOMLA, XOBNO, HULU, SKYPE or they removed expensive vowels: BUTLR, FLICKR, GRINDR, SCRIBD.. hell, even Twitter was almost TWTTR — but now that we’re assuredly changing the way we TWT, why not go all in. No vowels. Not even in your missives. What will we call these.. I don’t care, I just don’t want vowels, so lets go with DPSHT.
Finally, since X is here til the Chapter 11 filings, we can praise Elon for one thing. Someone that works his puppet thoughts realized that with the advent of horrible short form video (a rant for another day) a shorter name saves people time. By X-ing, you’re saving yourself a fraction of a fraction of a second over Tweeeeeeeeeeeting, each time you say it. Efficiency is the name of the game, so we’re going to go one finally step further.
Instead of X’ing… instead of Tweeting… the best thing we can do is just not talk about them at all. Send a text message instead. Except on birthdays. Then we Shawty.
Biggest Audience Pops (w. Tim Stevens)
Tagged 2023, guestsWhat is a ‘pop’?
In professional wrestling terms, it’s the moment the crowd goes nuts. Maybe they’re cheering – maybe they’re booing, but there is a moment in a movie where the audience is so emotionally invested they can’t help but be there.
We’re talking about those moments.. but not alone! We are joined by long time SomethingFriend, Tim Stevens. You may know Tim from his time writing for any number of fantastic websites about the world of comics and pop culture. These days you can find him on TheSpool.net as well as The Wealth of Geeks. He’s also one bad shut yo mouth.
You ready to laugh? Ready to cheer? Ready to catch the ball to win the big game? Prepared to listen to a podcast you can’t help, but scream at?
Ok, here we OOOOoooh!
[THE BEGINNING] X-Files
Tagged 2023, The BeginningIn an ironic twist, we End the month, not with The End… but… The Beginning!
Now, this may confuse some of you – but it really shouldn’t, it isn’t that hard of a concept – previously we would talk about the last episodes of shows, and guess what, now we’re going to talk about the beginning of them. The End will still be around when it is relevant, but we have some great ideas for this new take on what we were doing.
We’re starting with a show that made millions look to the sky and wonder, ‘…weather balloon?’ – The X-Files. And, as you will hear, there is no possible way we could have done an episode on The X-Files without the resident X-pert on X-Things, the Scully to Hatton’s Mulder, making her Somethingcast debut Brittany!
So – does the start of the X-Files still smoke or is it just a cover up? Find out on the debut of The Beginning: X-Files
The Truth’s Ok, here we go!
[BLOG] Hatton Creates Old Internet Movies…
Tagged 2023, BlogLets take a moment and look at the internet.
With the Five Nights At Freddie’s movie coming out soon, with a couple other animatronic monster movies in its wake (The Banana Splits, Willy’s Wonderland) we can find certain internet pop culture moments getting their big budget day in the sun. A game made famous, primarily, streamer content isn’t the first time a ‘meme’ made big bucks. You only need look back at Slenderman, a creation of the Something Awful forum, the Netflix game show ‘Is It Cake?’, and ‘Shit my Dad Says!’ a sitcom based on a series of tweets.
What if though, the movie world was pilfering from the internet in 2001 instead? What old memes could we have seen?
HAMSTER DANCE: THE MOVIE – Before the Emoji Movie, we had an animated gif of a dancing hamster to a tune from Robin Hood. If Hollywood had been aware then, perhaps we could be living with that stupid song stuck in our head for the rest of our lives.
Here… enjoy it
MR T ATE MY BALLS – Out of any meme I remember very clearly in my early internetting, this is the one that is shockingly forgotten. Why was there a cartoon of Mr. T saying ‘I Pity The Fool Who Don’t Like Balls’? Look, I don’t know, everyone just got online and we were just figuring things out. That said, in an alternate timeline there is a movie about a man on the hunt for balls that nobody can stop.. that man.. well, you get it.
HOMESTARRUNNER PRESENTS: STRONG-BAD’S MOVIE FOR REALLY COOL GUYS, NOT YOU – Let’s finish up on the movie that I kinda still want. The Brothers Chap, braintrust to the Homestar Runner Universe are literally everyone’s friend that did cartoons, but not the annoying one that just did dots… like legitimate cartoons that made you laugh, had you quoting, and had an entire legion of people sitting every week waiting for StrongBad’s new email. I’d watch this tv show now. Hell, I’d Kickstart this movie. I’d try the MetaVerse if I was told Homestar was there.
Shockingly, the Brothers Chap worked with Disney for years based on their internet fame, and somehow the Mouse still doesn’t own Trogdor.. so there is still hope. No matter what, it’s Dot Com!
What internet memes that circulated on Geocities are still ripe for the entertainment plucking? Sound off in all the places.
[THE WHEEL] VS. X-Men
Tagged 2023, The WheelThe Wheel has brought us together again – and on this completely real wheel that spins and dictates our topic, what do we get this week?
Why, conveniently it follows in our X’iversary with us pitting two teams of the mightiest mutants against each other. That’s right, the Somethings are picking their X-TEAM and you get to decide who the winner is.
Will it be Hatton’s Big Brain Drama Factory? Or Rob’s Crunchy Family Throwdown? These are not official names, but we will be optioning the movie rights. Until then, settle in and pick which team you think X gon give it to on The Wheel: Vs. X-Men
Ok, here we go, bub.
[SOMETHING IN REVIEW] Fast X
If we’re celebrating 10 years, and we’re not going back to the island, we have to go back to something. Thankfully, a podcast favorite just celebrated its 10th movie… it’s like we planned it this way… (we didn’t)
So settle in with some family, because we’re going to get in our speedy Mustang 436 El Dorado Turbo Nitro Boost Alpha, which I assume is exactly the right car name, and jump on board with a tale of a few young go-getters just making their way in this big world. Fast X!
We’re not doing it alone though, joining us is one of our favorite people, from ACPN, the ‘bigt00l’ himself, Matt Nasiatic.
So get behind the wheel, charge up your spark capacitors and fan belt your thrust exhaust, Hatton knows nothing about cars…
Ok, here we family…
[BLOG] Hatton Talks Social Media
Tagged 2023, BlogFirst off, if you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on with our Patreon – we recently closed it down. Now, one of the things they got was an audio version of our Friday Blog on their feed.
We thought it was only fair to put that live up on the site for everyone now, so you can expect to hear from Rob and myself a little bit more over the month.
This week though, with the recent explosions of Reddit and Twitter, I thought I would talk about some of the modern problems I’m having with social media. Now, some of this comes from a guy who used to read Fidonet on local BBS’s, kept up with his Usenet feed, hung out on IRC, and made some of my longest internet friends on forums. I’m clearly not anti-social media… but…
The new crop of social media that are going to try and fill in the gap left in the financial sinkhole of Twitter and the growing corporatization of Reddit are a problem. A site like Threads, owned by Team Zuckerberg, has made it abundantly clear they don’t want you using a desktop computer, much like the restrictions they put on Instagram.. and do you know why? I assure you it isn’t because you *can’t* view the data on a computer, but that they don’t want you to.
On my computer I have adblockers, anti-trackers, and ways to make the data I receive cleaner. They don’t want that – they want, and I am in no way being hyperbolic here, camera control to make sure you’re engaging with the product, no way to stop ads, and no ability to adjust the way the data is viewed. They have that right, too, but I can say for certain I’ll never use any service like it.
Next is the content limitations. All of these companies want the ability to have high-end advertisers and you know what advertisers from big brands don’t like? …sex. For a prime example of how that story goes, go read up on a little thing called TUMBLR. If you allow sex work on your platform, you are drawing a line in the sand that you accept you won’t be getting that Pepsi sponsorship. Hell, even OnlyFans, the site that is synonymous with modern pornography, tried to ditch sex until it realized that was the entirety of its userbase.
So what do we do? Sadly, we aren’t going to go back to a world of forums when we’ve been shhown places we can talk to *everyone* since MySpace. So we will have to wade through the muck of places like Threads and Hive until a better option comes along. I hope it is something like Mastodon or Lemmy that allows people to find their tribe… but they have a long way to go and they’re facing down the diamond encrusted barrels of Google and Meta.
That said, you can find us on Threads @somethingcast, but Rob handles that stuff because it makes me feel gross.
What are you using? Sound off in all the places – and we’ll see you next week.