Ned/11 Truth

Since Joe is out of town with his lovely wife, this episode features guest star/point of fun David Lumb on the mic.

We talk about Game of Thrones.

Let's get this nerd train rolling, shall we?



Here's one of the sites Dave mentions in later in the episode. I don't imagine that it's as terrible as the theories it makes room for. This whole series can become rather labyrinthine in short order, especially if you're terrible with names or, like me, you read it years and years ago. Or both.

Dave and I were talking about the size and scope of the man of Westeros (as opposed to Essos), and here's a super cool hand-drawn map of the entire continent.

And on an unrelated note, here's a comic book page that succinctly summarizes every single one of the Harry Potter books. I present to you, the Summharry.

Hey, that book had some dragons in it, right? People love dragons. Get on that, future fantasy writers of America.

As we said before: Sean Bean always dies.

I think we can all agree that "Death or not to Death" is a funnier title.

Anyways, Brienne of Tarth was cast this past week or so for the second season. This could be good. She's got the right look and while there's that natural kneejerk reaction (in addition to a simple reaction from jerks) who will say, "Oh, she's not ugly enough" (which makes me think what people would say if they cast some poor homely actress in the role), but so what? People can be ugged up far more easily than you can teach someone to act. This should be fun. It should be good.

(And before you ask, clearly a Hufflepuff.)

What else? Oh, yeah. I have a blog of my own. I've been thinking about moving it over here, but for the mean time you can pop over there and check out my entry on comics and The X-Files. Sounds intruiging? No? Fuck you.

Finally, here's a link I missed the first time around and David thankfully corrected me. Check out the Tower of the Hand. It's the only website I've ever seen where you can scale the amount of spoilers in it's pages. Meaning: You can tell pages what books you've read and it'll remove spoilers from all the books after that. Pretty damn snazzy.

Before I roll out, I'll remind you all of one of the other tit-filled intrigue fests that's on HBO. Boardwalk Empire, like Game of Thrones, isn't a great show and it speaks more of potential than it does of actual accomplishment (besides that phenomenal Martin Scorsese directed season premiere), but it's still a pretty darn good show with moments of true brilliance sprinkled through out. Let's hope they both get their shit together come their second seasons.


There sure are a lot of these things.

"They Call Me Time Wizard"

Episode 15, "They Call Me Time Wizard" notes go!!!



Alternative Titles for Episode 15:
"In the Heat of the Underdark"
"The Organization*"
"Nerd Matters Pt. XII"
"Final Faggotry Tactics"

Anyways, let's get to the real nut meat--

Here are the stupid, stupid, stupid shoes I saw on my way to Long Beach. I still don't entirely believe that these are real. If someone came up to me and was all, "Yeah, that's just an ARG we made tailored specifically to people who watched too many episodes of Married with Children" that would make more sense that there being actual human beings that want to buy shoes with toes.

But, hey, fila, if you people want to send us some free shoes, I'm an 8 and a 1/2.



(Actually you can watch the whole episode on You Tube for some reason. I don't know if it's 100% legal or just Russian legal or what.)

(Ugh. I forgot that the DVD and online releases of Married With Children don't use the original theme. This is the worst thing ever. Worse than time crimes.)

My mistake-- Krull came out in 1983. Conan the Barbarian came out in 1982 (the same year as The Beastmaster, which features WGSG favorite Rip Torn).

Speaking of swords and sorcery, we mentioned Robert E. Howard on the program a while back (and we mentioned him in an upcoming episode), so I figured, I'd maybe talk about him for a bit. Or lazily throw up some links. He's most famous for creating Conan the Cimmerian, but he also invented other pulp heroes like Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, Bran Mak Morn, and El Borak.

(I could probably talk your ear off about El Borak and Afghanistan, but I think we're going to put that one in our pocket for the time being.)

I didn't know this when I first started reading Michael Moorcock's Elric stories (which are direct replies to the brash, brawny barbarian novels that became inseparable from the swords and sorcery sub-genre), but apparently he moved to Texas in his later life, which was the state that Howard had lived and died in. Life is funny sometimes.


Of course, it's a well established fact that the movie of In the Heat of the Night is bullshit because Virgil Tibbs isn't from Pasadena, but from Philadelphia for some reason. What a bunch of anti-Pasadena nonsense.

It's a form of hate speech, really.

Now, let's let ODB play us out in his own words--


*Yeah, that title doesn't work for a lot of reasons.

Episode 8 Notes

I'm going to valiantly struggle through this cold/allergies/dog bite to bring these annotations to you, the people.

Ugh, I want to die.

Anyways, here goes, notes for Episode 8:

We started off the episode by talking about the artist Frank Frazetta, who died last year. He's probably most famous for painting about a million covers for Conan and a bunch of other pulp novels.

Case in point:

Meow.

Here's a fun fact, Frazetta's most iconic creation, the "Death Dealer" was turned into a comic book that was written by Glen Danzig (of Danzig) and drawn by Simon Bisley*. That's the craziest thing I've read all day, including the instructions on how to use a Netti Pot when you're hopped up on half a dozen Dayquils.

Bust that one out at a party the next time you find yourself without anything to say. You're welcome.

After that we move on to talking about the Captain America Super Bowl teaser.



All in all, I think we can agree that it could use some more quick cuts. I mean, you've got 24 frames a second to work with, why let so many go to waste like that?

We also went on to say that Ed Brubaker's run on Captain America (at least towards the beginning) was really damn cool. It more or less encapsulated everything that makes Captain America cool without any of the hokum that comes with the character (not unlike some sort of nerd-barnacle).

Next up, we reviewed Captain America: Truth, a comic book that told a secret chapter of Captain America's origin**. We came to different conclusions regarding the quality of the book, but we agree on one thing, that it's worth reading and it has one hell of an ending.

After a cursory search on Google, I couldn't find any images of the comic that are worth a damn. Oh well.

Instead, here's an insane drawing from Jack Kirby.


This is what my dreams look like.

Alright, play us out, Patton.



* I met Simon Bisley once at a bar. He called me an asshole. True story.

** Joe was wrong about the amount of issues. There was seven of them, not five.

Hey, Here's a Thought

We should actually embed our podcast so people can listen to it!

Episode 7 is concerned with the Green River Killer, Brian "Jakes" Jacques' death, bad fantasy novels, and worse fantasy art. It's a gosh darn blast, I tell you what.

Click here to listen.

What a concept.

Episode 7 Notes

While Episode 7 discussion doesn't quite lend itself to hyperlinks like Episode 6 did, we cited more than enough stuff to justify making another bunch of annotations.

So, without further ado, we mentioned the "Green River Killer" AKA Gary Ridgway AKA "The Sultan of Slaughter" AKA "Hooker Killer MacGoo" AKA "A Major Asswipe" AKA "Best Buy Salesperson of the Year." Here's the article we used as our source. See, it's just as easy as sniffing around the BBC to pretend like you're an expert on crime and punishment.

And here's how James probably thinks he should be put down (blog exclusive content!!!).

Author Brian Jacques passed away this past week at the age of 71. Also, we should add a correction. We pronounced his last name as "Jaw-khs." Several people-- nerds-- have told us that his name is actually pronounced "Jay-kes." After a brief perusal through the internet, we have discovered that his last name is pronounced as "Ee-noh." You are welcome.

Lastly, here's a sample of the awful, yet strangely inoffensive art from Larry Elmore.

The man clearly has some semblance of skill. It's kind of odd that he seemingly refuses to use it. Here's his official website, because we just know you're looking to buy a print (Joe's wedding is coming up soon, hint, hint).

Does that about cover it? Probably. It's good enough for me. It's not like any of us are getting paid for this.

Now I'm going to let Creedence play us out.

Thanks, guys.