The end fight of Iron Man 1 was super long. And boring as hell imo. At least this was short and sweet and came at the end of an action extravaganza (drone chase)
Yes! Sean gives Gamers some love. The one he mentioned, Gamers: Dorkness Rising, is actually the sequel, although it stands on its own. It is thing of beauty, and I’m pretty certain that you don’t have to be a gamer to appreciate it.
They’ve gotten a bit bigger since I last saw, with more projects under their belt, but here’s the direct link to that section of their website.
I got to see Dorkness Rising long ago on Youtube. Glad to see it get some love here, because it truly is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in the last few years. 
HEY! I got more posts than Thot!
Gorramit!
Want to know the actor who played Dr. Julian Bashir’s real name?
It’s Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi. Yeah. That’s a mouthful. Imagine the cost for engraving something.
Wanna know why he chose Alexander? His best friend’s dog was named Alex. clears throat for best Sean Connery impression We named the dog Alex.
Great podcast. That is all.
just some thoughts:
the Crue almost made the 3-hour mark!
hey Chuck, Sean & Audra… you guys almost broke a record, of sorts, clocking at 2h 47mins and yet still able to maintain a global listening audience.
Crue, no body else on the planet can beat that except you guys!
the Gallileo report
I would add that Gallileo made those comments under pain of torture during the Inquisition. Gotta respect that! This was a time when Shephardic Jews were forcibly converted to Christianity. It was said that the feudal lord owned your body, while the Church owned your soul. The machinations of medieval European politics were too complex to put out of context.
The truth of the matter was that the world being round and all that jazz was actually a competing theory of that time, one that was hinted at during the use of mariner’s astrolabe during the Age of Discoveries (Os Descobrimentos) and formally realized by a one Fernao de Magalhaes(who defected to Spain to become known as the more famous Ferdinand Magellan).
Heck, you can’t circumnavigate the globe without first acknowledging it is round. 
There was a book out some years back covering the correspondence between Gallileo & his daughter that really showcased his intellect & brilliance.
The Catholic Church only recently issued an apology over the Gallileo affair I think this episode in her history did more to inform the Church’s attitude to science.
It may also be of interest to you that at even earlier times, the act of counting used Hindu numerals (1,2,3,4,…0) over Roman ones were boo-hooed as an act of mysticism and magic. (I can’t remember, for the life of me, the title of that maths book i read that factoid from)
the penultimate fight scene in Iron Man
i get that the Favreau/Johansson scene was meant to shock and awe, and get some laughs - all at the same time, with Favreau playing the straight guy to Johansson’s spectacular fight choreography.
but the martial arts geek in me just has to point this out - i would describe Black Widow’s style as sort of an old-school battlefield jujitsu/taijitsu
with some Matrix-style gymnastics thrown in.
In this highly individualized style, one goes into the fight fast & hard. It can be argued that Favreau did actually take on the biggest & baddest guy (and Black Widow counted on that fact) which would enable her to take out all of the other smaller guys.
The Galileo Affair was more complicated than that, being mostly a political argument. Eric Flint’s alt-history 1632 series covers this in 1634: The Gallileo Affair, in which Galileo comes across as a bit of a douche. Fun stuff.
i am so glad Keiko’s douchiness was mentioned…
on the subject of gross Winn Dukat relationship… i will leave you with this image…
In Siddig’s defense, he said he was young and a bit of a cranky brat.
My favorite part of that fight scene was that after all the high tech gadgets and fancy moves she used to take out everyone else, Black Widow just casually pepper sprayed the last guy. That got almost as big a reaction as Happy looking up after he took out his one guy.
Thanks for that link, CylonMatrix. Going through the rest now.
Have you done any Aikido? It’s more Judo than Judo, in a way.
Was that Galileo’s Daughter?
I think I have that somewhere. It must be in my stack of print stuff to read.
I JUST received my ST:DS9 Complete Series DVDs yesterday from Amazon and, coincidentally, happened to watch S3:E3, “The House of Quark”, as it will be featured on a ST:DS9 podcast I listen to, The Gamma Quadrant, this coming weekend.
I was reminded of Keiko’s douchiness almost immediately in this episode. She tells O’Brian that, because everyone is afraid of the Dominion, that she is closing the school. Much waaaaaaaaaaaaaambulance material follows in this unfortunate B-story in an otherwise excellent episode. Miles tries to wine and dine her, turn a cargo deck into an arboretum, etc., but nothing works. The whole time, I’m thinking, “have I EVER cared about Keiko? Why would I?”
Making matters worse is the fact that there was never even a hint of chemistry between Keiko and O’Brian. As a matter of fact, if you look carefully, you can actually see DISGUST on her face when Miles moves in to touch her or kiss her like any husband would his wife.
Sorry for the Keiko-hate, but I wish Keiko was a Pah’Wraith. I could deal with that better.
When I read last year that Terrance Howard was not going to be in Iron Man 2 I did a ‘happy dance’. His portrayal of Rhodie almost ruined the movie for me, he was such a ‘milquetoast’… He was the weakest part of the film for me, followed by Gweneth in a distant second. Rhodie is a man of few words, not a chatterbox like Stark; but when he does speak. People listen! He has a strong presence and a quiet yet perceptible strength about him which people respect, Howard’s portrayal had none of that.
Gweneth’s uneven and fractured performance was a real puzzle to me, I knew she could have done better and it was not until some time latter I figured it out. If you go back and watch her in the first film you will notice that she is very strong when she plays alongside anyone other than Robert. I think Robert’s eccentric acting style really put her off-balance, she was not sure how to deal with it.
Well, clearly she has overcome that particular problem. She hit it out of the park this time! KUDOS to you my dear, well done. That spark which was missing the first time between you two was in plain sight for all of us to enjoy this time.
And Cheadle gave Rhodie the backbone and strength of character that was so sorely missing previously. Mickey was dominating in every scene he was in, when Tony entered that holding cell he looked like a petulant child beside Ivan’s cool and calm demeanor. And the way he manipulated Hammer and yet let him believe he was running things was golden.
About Winn…
I loved DS9’s villains, they were so complex. Winn used people like tissues and tossed them away, she dressed herself up and played the role of patriot or religious leader (whichever was most advantageous at the moment) but was only really interested in power, her power. She is a tragic character in some ways, when you learn about what she and some of the Vedeks had gone through during the occupation you feel sympathy. And she has two events happen which test her faith and view of the universe, and because of the fact it is a ‘Trek’ show… You think that maybe she will be so shaken by them that she will change her ways, but instead she just becomes embittered and even more resentful of the ‘Emissary’ and his privileged status among the Prophets.
And the way the writers handled Dukat was even more wonderful, he actually became down right likable at times. And occasionally even heroic and self sacrificing, wow, what a ride he gave us…
But Garak was always my favorite character in the series. All those episodes and we still never knew if anything we learned about him was the truth!
Dr. Julian Bashir: Out of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren’t?
Elim Garak: My dear Doctor, they’re all true.
Dr. Julian Bashir: Even the lies?
Elim Garak: Especially the lies.:rolleyes:
Enabran Tain: I can see that Garak hasn’t changed a bit. Never tell the truth when a lie will do. That man has a rare gift for obfuscation.
In a Bajoran Western:
“I’m lookin fer the man who shot my ‘Pagh’!”
the thing is she would have been fine and been great had she lived in a less turbulent world. she could have fooled everyone by dressing herself up in different roles and shifting the blame to others.
in fact there are people like that in our society today. but because most of the western world isn’t as messed up as Bajor, people like that can hide their true colors and made it pretty good for themselves…
About 15 minutes into the cast, and just have to comment, I am probably one of the other people who is very excited the reboot of the Dark Crystal. I was about 6 when this movie came out, and saw it in the theater, I don’t think my parents really expected it to be quite as scary as it was. That being said, for years afterwards, my father used to chase me around the house going mmmm-hmmmm-mmmmmm. To those of you who have not seen the movie, was one of the skeksis, who by the way scared the living crap out of me.
I was too young to realize that this stemmed from the same creator of the muppets and fraggle rock, I just knew that I loved the story, and the characters of this world. I think Jim Henson did a fantastic job of creating a world with believable characters. I was reminded of the world that Jim Henson created when watching Avatar, both seemed to take a lot of influence from underwater organisms, tube worms, jelly fish, etc.
ok, just had to get that out, more listening
Chamberlin scared the crap out of me too homie. Though I almost named my schnauzer mix Fizgig and we did name another dog Kira a long time ago.
Great story indeed - I wish more people had seen it.
Aughra is still one of my favorite Henson characters.
Yep, that sounds about right. Go get an ebook…save the trees! I hear Borders just signed a deal and launched its’ own reader called Kobo that sounds right for me - anything more advanced, you should just use your laptop.
Funny story…my only formal training was in Goju-kai karate when i was 7…then again when i was 17 in polytechnic. My first exposure to aikido was from a classmate back in 6th grade (we call it Primary 6 here) - his whole family trained in aikikai and he was telling me about this up-&-coming star called Steven Seagal (sic). haha…SO i first heard of Seagal from an aikido friend, NOT the other way around! i’ve just only realized that some people consider it a form of jujitsu (which is not wrong, semantically speaking). I’ve yet to take it up as i regard training a committment in terms of time & money - probably some time soon. i’ve always been a big fan of the art; read all the books, done everything except formally train in a dojo.
This is a bit of Wally Jay speaking, but to put things into simple terms, i’ve come to regards judo as more of small-circle techniques whilst aikido is more large-circle. It’s kinda obvious when you watch the randori of either style - watch the distance from whence the practitioners start to engage each other.
I remember this movie back in the 80’s… i was about 8 then and well aware it was from Jim Henson who also did fraggle rock… it kinda freaked me how asiatic the puppet-dolls looked. I felt the female lead looked too sensual to be in a kid’s show…