Tag: 2022

Have you ever watched a cartoon or a show, heard a jingle, remembered a piece of trivia that you could swear up and down was exactly how you remembered it, only to find out that not only are you wrong, but you are wrong with a whole slew of other people who think they remember it your way too?

Yeah, welcome to the Shadow Realm… aka, the Mandela Effect.

So grab a book about a family of bears, get your clearing house check, and find out if we.. or just you… are going to need a bigger boat.

Ok, here we go!

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Hey All, PCR here!

While driving home from work yesterday, I was re-listening to when we were on Gutting the Sacred Cow (Our episode, 92, can be found here…) and we got off on a brief tangent about collecting comic books and.. it got me thinking…

I collected a lot of varied titles.. from popular stuff, to stuff I (mistakenly) thought would increase in value, to things I… just LOVED reading regardless of what other people thought or how popular it was.

So here’s a not-entirely-comprehensive list of the stuff that was my guilty pleasure, even though they weren’t mainstream titles!

Badger – First Comics

Created by Mike Baron and originally published by Capital Comics before it landed at First Comics, Badger was the story of Norbert Sykes, a Vietnam vet who suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder.  One of those identities is “The Badger”, a guy who calls everyone Larry, talks to animals, and is possibly the best martial artist vigilante around.

Dreadstar – First Comics

Originally published in Marvel’s offshoot “Epic” (it was Epic’s first title), it eventually landed at First where I found it during my collecting phase.  The stories of Vanth Dreadstar, Iron Angel, Oedi, Willow and Skeevo was some of the best writing I had read in comics.  The issues I had in my long boxes were written by either creator Jim Starlin or Peter David, and the artwork by Angel Medina was jaw dropping.

Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! – First Comics

One of First Comics’ first titles (you’re probably seeing a pattern here…) American Flagg! was one of my first ‘non mainstream’ titles, and the one that introduced me to all the other First titles I collected.  The story of Reuben Flagg, a former porn star turned Plexus Ranger in 2030 Chicago… Chaykin’s style was perfect for this title.  The gritty and stylized artwork, the amazing characters, the story…  Chaykin isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but man did I fall in love with this title.  It was the only title I collected that I went out of my way to eventually pick up the entire run of.

Aliens – Dark Horse Comics

I was never really in to Black and White comics.  Aliens changed that.  The artwork by Mark A. Nelson and story by Mark Verheiden (later of Falling Skies fame) were riveting, and the original 6 issue run is nothing short of a masterpiece

Grimjack – First Comics

While Flagg! was my first foray into… well.. First, Grimjack filled that void once Flagg! ended and is easily in my top 3 all time title.  Originally created by John Ostrander and Timothy Truman and later drawn by one of my favorite artists, Flint Henry, sometimes the character was John Gaunt, other times he was James Edgar Twilley, but he was always Grimjack and if you ever needed him, you just had to find your way to Munden’s Bar in downtown Cynosure.

For those who collected, or still do… what are YOUR favorite titles?  Let us know over at @STSTCast on Twitter!

– PCR

What happens when you give Michael Bay a ton of money, a Dutch movie about a hostage situation, and tell him to go to town?

You get this hodgepodge of big action, big explosions, big cameras, and a plot that drives by at the speed of a man who just robbed a bank.

Does it work? Is Michael Bay finding his footings as an artist? There’s only one way to know on Something In Review: Ambulance!

Ok, here we vroom!

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The internet has made us all boiled frogs.

The boiled frog syndrome is that people don’t accept bad situations at once. If I was to suggest you need to listen to screams all day, you would think I was bonkers. If I told you that you would be given a dollar for every scream every hour… maybe you would say yes. Then the scream got a little longer. A couple more screams, but a slightly higher payout. Longer screams. A little less payout. More screams. Etc etc until your life is now making nothing and listening to a scream all the time. You would be a boiled frog, the temperature getting higher and higher until you didn’t even know you were dead.

So on one side of the internet, places like Facebook and Youtube have removed your ability to see things the way you would like to see them in lieu of providing you the things it expects you want to see. It doesn’t matter if you’ve seen them before or they are years old – their science has shown this content will provide them with the best situation for revenue, and what you want bedamned.

I spend more of my life than I would care to admit trying to find ways to give me data the way I want it. The people that have grown with the modern internet, at times, don’t even realize that these are options! The belief that for your video to be relevant it must be on Youtube or have high Ups on Reddit… all the while your work, your art, your podcast, your video, is chaff on the wheel of data aggregation.

Here – to help you all on your journey of freeing yourselves from the shackles of Big Data are some applications and programs I use to help me fight through the drudge of companies telling me what and how I want to look at things. If you have any more, you know where to find us….

BNTP – Bookmarks in New Tab
This is actually the thing that spawned this article. I lose links. Google is getting harder to find fine-tooth detail the way it used to. This bookmark app puts all of your links right up front and they’re super easy to read and organize. Love it.

Fluff-Busting Purity
Facebook is a nightmare. Ads. Data spread out. Timeline in hodgepodge order. Ads. Sponsored posts… which are really just ads. Only seeing 20 of your friends posts and feeling like you are missing out on so many other people’s lives. Fluff-Busting gives you a giant list of ways to change Facebook from dark mode to removing sidebars to tabbing everything. I have no idea what modern Facebook looks like.

Reddit Enhancement Suite
This is almost a gimme if you are a reddit user – but I have to assume there are some that aren’t aware of it. RES adds so many useful desktop features to Reddit. Sadly, organizational control over when articles came in isn’t one of them – but tagging users, mass opening, color coordinationn, tabbed viewing and grouping. It really makes Reddit a slightly less home for scum and villainy.

The first moments of a movie or TV show sets the stage for what’s to come… is it a tense moment to moment thriller? Is it confusing, where the plot reveals itself slowly? Is it a podcast that introduces itself the same way to you each week for the last 9 years?

Whatever the case may be – the first few moments of a show or movie may be the thing that keeps you glued to your seat… so join the Somethings as we discuss our favorites.

Did yours make the cut? Only one way to find out.

Okay, here we start!

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Happy Friday Somethings!

So, I’m 3 episodes in to Obi-Wan and… it’s…  shrugs.. Ok… I guess.

Mind you, I do not consume all things Star Wars.  Never saw Rebels or Clone Wars if only because I never checked them out… not because of some “anti show animosity”.  Mando was great, BoBF was… okish, but Obi-Wan I wanted to enjoy more.

Are there cool aspects of it?  Sure.  Are there mind-numbingly dumb things that happen for the sake of moving along the store in a 6 episode show?  Yes.  SHOULD it be 6 episodes?  Can’t give a full answer yet till it’s over, but I DO hate how these shows have become exposition to movies and nothing else.  D+ “Shows” went from 9 episodes (still short) to 6 and personally, I feel like they’re doing their fans a disservice… but that’s a conversation for another day.

What I *don’t* enjoy.. is that the Star Wars universe is SO VAST.. they literally could tell any story they want and set it in the SW universe, and it could be awesome and make that already rich universe grow even more.. instead, we keep having stories set around the main players we’ve already seen for years.  The latest SW trilogy took a half step in that direction, but rather hamfistedly in my opinion, and… to be fair.. the toxicness and entitlement of some of their fans (not that only SW suffers from this… EVERY fandom has it’s toxic side) makes it hard to strike out in new directions.

I’m hoping the last 3 episodes turn the show around for me, but if it doesn’t shrug oh well….

Want to hear some original Star Wars stuff?  Go check out our friend Crystal Storm’s audio drama “Legacy” in your podcatcher of choice!

– PCR

What would you do when an alien crash lands into your garage, what do you do? Call the FBI? Scream and run? Invite it into your home to eat your food and your pets?

Well, if you are the Tanner family in the 80’s, it’s obviously the latter. That’s when Gordon Shumway found his into their home and lasted 4 years on NBC Monday nights. Hatton remembered this show fondly, Rob remembers it as a moment in television. Does it hold up? How does it end?

Honestly, it’s finale is pretty infamous, so you may know what’s about to come… but what did the Something’s think?

Find out on this week’s The End: ALF

Ok, here we go (to Melmac!)

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It’s that time a year again… my least favorite time of the year.

It should come as no shock that I’m a bit of a homebody, and the last two years have done absolutely nothing to help that. I enjoy going out and doing a thing on occasion, like hosting burlesque or having in-ring segments for UWA Elite, but by and large – I’m content at home. Inside.

Now though, as we reach the beginning of the Summer, the inside begins to bake. My apartment, for as much as I like it, has one major flaw… and it is that it is made out of some sort of anti-thermos material. It makes the tepidly warm things hot in the summer and cold in the winter – and on a nice breezy day, it ruffles their hair. So given we are on the cusp of my most miserable time, I thought I’d do a quick run down of the seasons, and my opinion of them. In order of favorite to least favorite.

WINTER – It’s a delight. You’re cold, so you put on a sweatshirt. You’re still cold, so you wear a blanket.  Still cold? Drink some coffee.  Seriously, nothing is better than being ever so slightly chilly, but having reasons to wear thermals and sweatshirts. Everything is crisp and crunchy and dead, which isn’t some gothy outcry.. you’ll understand in a moment.

FALL – I know a lot of folks who love the fall, mostly because of Halloween, but I do appreciate the change of fall. It’s probably the most visually pleasing of the seasons, and aside from Christmas smells, has the best flavor profile of the seasons. I would have to really think hard as to whether I like eggnog or apple cider more… so yes, Fall’s enjoyable, but it doesn’t get snow.

SPRING – Here’s where the pain begins. The first third is the inverse Fall, which is all the growing, budding, pollening, flowers with a nice breeze.  The rest is a wet sloppy mess that starts climbing the roller coaster towards ..

SUMMER – No, I don’t want to go out. It’s hot. Yes, fine, I’ll go and enjoy the beach for a day or a pool, but I’m going to go home – and it’s still going to be this miserable sticky skin-blistering rage virus on my skin. And the bugs are out. So many bugs. All of the flying, buzzing, wooshing, biting, tree-falling, stinging, swarming, crawling bugs are out because outside is a dirty hellscape filled with monsters that are all trying to usurp our land with their nests. Remember that adorable and charming image of how you get warm in the Winter?  Yeah… all you can do in the Summer is reverse it, and eventually you’re left naked, with nothing else to take off, and making whimpering noises every time the oscillating fan moves beyond you.

The Summer sucks, and if you are one of those ‘Oh Summer, rah’ types… I don’t want to hear you bitch when the thermometer hits three digit temperatures and you feel like saying things like ‘Real scorcher out there!’ — of course it is.

It’s Summer, and it hates you

– Hatton

Morning Somethings!

You get A Little Something Extra a day early today because Livestream For the Cure kicked off at 9am TODAY and we couldn’t be more excited!

We’re raising $20,000 for the Cancer Research Institute over 3 days!

Head over to Livestream’s Twitch channel and watch all the amazing creators, and check out our “Movie Quote Trivia” segment Friday night at 9pm!

– PCR

We are the terror that flaps in the night… we are the podcast you listen to when you already caught up with RadioLab – we’re… the SOMETHINGSOMETHING DUC—CAST!

This week, we are going to Gotham with the newest installment in the neverending saga of one man’s fight against eye make-up.

How did Pattinson do as the man known as the Bat? How did he do as the Wayne? Did he sparkle in either role? What about the Riddler? The Catwoman? Egghead? Xyzzaz? The Condiment King?

Find out on this week’s Something in Review: The Batman!

Also – please be sure to tune in this Friday @9pm to support the Somethings as we get to be a part of Livestream For The Cure – Donations are open.

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