Sun 3 Sep 2006
This week, Zan and Jana continue to harp on about Monkey Magic like big nerds. We also give a mini-review of the new Australian comedy film Kenny, and talk about Natascha Kampusch, horny UN peacekeepers and celebrity turds.
Plus:
* M. Night Shyamalan makes Zan yawn.
* National flags, republicanism and elected officials.
* Survivor: Crusade Edition.
* and a new Cooking with Jana.
September 4th, 2006 at 12:43 am
By length, I think I’m becoming the Tvindee of the comments section!
It’s Sunday a.m…. time for BYU! Yay!!! *Muppet arms*
Okay, what the heck is this at the beginning? Monkey Magic? I’ve dl’d the wrong podcast! Ahhh… must be a TV theme song.
Penn Jillette has a one hour show each day on the radio and every Tuesday is “Monkey Tuesday” where he solicits funny primate tales minus tales of poop throwing etc. that can’t talk about thanks to the damn FCC.
Xan got a haircut? It totally sounds like it!
Mockumentary… I remember seeing a witty one done by Peter Jackson about a bumbling filmmaker and the lost set for an epic movie.
Fish? What are their names? Will there be an Aquaman figure in the tank with them?
Bacon. My all-bacon diet never worked well.
“It’s better to have sex with a goat than sexually abuse children.” -Jana
Thos are words to live by!
Cruise poop: That artist’s work is funny stuff. Good commentary on celebrity worship/idolatry. Exactly Xan. People are taking it too seriously.
Thanksgiving in Japan… Ah, yes, commemorating the dinner between the Native Americans and Japanese settlers!
I guess Jana wouldn’t enjoy the classic “Dawn of the Dead”. It’s plenty gory and plenty good.
M. Night Shamalamadingdong… he has an ego totally out of synch with the fact that his films are sucktastic. I still like “Sixth Sense” but the rest are just… quite disappointing. “Lady In The Water” totally tanked here. I hope the lack of success clues Hollywood into his suckage.
We’re in the movie doldrums right now… nothing big out there. As the year grows later, all the potential Oscar winners pop up.
I dig that you guys have a resident M.D. in Woodrow Roosevelt. (Hope she said yes!)
Lyndon Baines Johnson’s wife was Ladybird.
Re: Naughty Nurses. I always worry about the day that I’m going to have to be admitted to a hospital and be naturally completely disappointed by the fact that the nurses are obviously just ordinary and middle-aged women for the most part, not a bevy of porn stars.
Our flag in the U.S. is rather omnipresent on products, clothing, logos, stickers and flagpoles of course. Luckily it’s not really just the domain of conservatives to fly it proudly on one’s front lawn/porch.
Yeah, the Survivor divided by race… Is that stupid or what? We really need that, don’t we? Unsavory indeed. I’m embarassed esp. after the treatment and revealed poverty of all the black people in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Yup. We all need more divisiveness.
Wait! How about a Superheroes Survivor! I like the Crusades/religious survivor idea though! Maybe there could be an atheist team in there that I could root for. While all the religious teams are battling each other, relying on faith and praying… the atheists move ahead and triumph. Weeeee!
Oooh! Special Segment! What will it be? Ahhh… Jana’s sexy Mmmmm..mmmm… I’d like to be cooking with Jana! (Sorry Xan.)
Seems like your pie recipe would work well for some kind of pastry puff too, say with philo dough. A good hors d’ouvres.
I prefer dolphin to tuna. It’s so hard to find tuna-free dolphin though.
Thanks for spending Sunday a.m. with me, you two! *muah for Jana* *raises coffee to Xan*
September 5th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Crikey!! They killed Steve!! Bastards!!
September 5th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Poor Steve Irwin - he’ll be sadly missed.
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Here in the UK we don’t fly a lot of flags either. You can’t even put up a flagpole without planning permission from the local council, and they don’t grant that easily.
It is possible for a flag with a lot of baggage to be reclaimed, though. The English flag, a red cross on a white background, was ‘taken over’ by the UK white supremacist movement The National Front, and as a result about 20 years ago almost nobody displayed it. Credit where credit is due: it was saved through the medium of football. The football World Cup every few years sees thousands - nay, millions - of England flags flying everywhere and now it has become OK to fly the English flag again at any time of the year without your neighbours muttering “racist” under their breath as you walk by.
The Union Jack is 400 year old this year. It is made up of flags representing Scotland - a white cross on a blue background, England - a red cross on a white background, and Ireland - a diagonal red cross on a white background. Wales had no national flag at the time. It now seems very reasonable to want to remove it from the Australian national flag, and I marvel that Hawaii still incorporates it in their state flag.
You will be discarding some ancient history with it, though. The Scottish flag is known as the Saltire, and is probably the oldest national flag in the World. According to legend, about 830 AD King Óengus mac Fergusa (Angus) led the Picts and Scots in battle against the Angles under King Aethelstan of East Anglia near modern-day Athelstaneford in East Lothian. King Angus and his men were surrounded and he prayed for deliverance. During the night Saint Andrew, who was martyred on a diagonal cross, appeared to Angus and assured him of victory. The next morning, an unusual cloud formation appeared: two lines of cloud made a cross in the blue sky above the battlefield. The Picts and Scots were heartened by this, and defeated the Angles. The Saltire, representing white crossed clouds in a blue sky, has been the Scottish flag ever since.
Two tricks you can play with a Union Jack to annoy old people:
1) hang it upside down. The thicker white part should be uppermost nearest the flagpole.
2) call it the Union Jack. Technically, the Union Flag is only called the Union Jack when flown from a jackstaff on a boat.
September 5th, 2006 at 10:13 pm
Lyndon Johnson’s wife was called Ladybird Johnson not Ladybug Johnson in case you were still wondering Zan. President Johnson and the former first lady were also from Texas. However, it’s widely known that President Johnson was somewhat of a scoundrel. They had daughters of which were known to be less than “easy on the eyes” to be polite. I’m glad you liked the flag. It’s made of materials that will last for years in the elements should you decide to fly it outside and become the Official Embassy of the Former Republic of Texas. I enjoy the show as always. Hugs to Jana.
September 6th, 2006 at 7:06 am
I have a feeling that zombie phone message was me. Quite often when I hear a song, I black out and start doing whatever the song tells me to do. In this case it was call your voicemail. Sorry that had to happen.
Would’ve been funnier if I had gotten a lot more people to call up, hypnotized by the music, but I thought of that too late.
Notes on the show:
There’s that Monkey theme! I forgot how fantastic that song is.
Thanks for informing me of Kenny. Once I signed up for Netflix, I immediately queued up every mockumentary I had wanted to see but could never find in a store. Never heard of this one, though, so I’ll have to look it up. The Peter Jackson one Kevbo mentioned is called Forgotten Silver and it’s really, really well-done and hilarious.
I saw the bronzed Suri turd. Seemed big for a baby’s. Didn’t know the same artist did the Britney birthing sculpture. That guy rubs me the wrong way. I get the point, yes people love the media, celebrities are the new gods and should be immortalized, hardy har har, but it’s been done a lot. The Britney reminded me of the Michael Jackson and Bubbles statue by Jeff Koons. Like half the art of the last 50 years has been about how awful the media is. And by making art out of current events, it seems like just a really easy way this guy to get noticed. So the media he’s mocking, he’s using to profit. At least the money goes to charity, but I’m sure he’ll benefit in other ways.
On the correlation of Halloween movies and horror movies. When someone speaks of “horror” movies, I think most people imagine there’s a supernatural connection in it (Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, people/things coming back from the dead, etc), automatically making it a Halloween movie by BYU standards. Scary movies without the supernatural connection are usually called “thrillers.” And thrillers usually involve a normal living human, not a reanimated corpse, killing people.
My favorite horror movies are, of course, the Evil Dead series and, going back to Peter Jackson again, Dead Alive, neither of which would be appreciated at all by Jana. Dead Alive is by far the bloodiest movie I’ve ever seen. So I’m trying to think of some Jana-safe horror flicks:
Blair Witch Project (Scary, but those camcorders are an acquired taste for some people)
Night of the Living Dead (Romero’s earliest zombie movie, smart, but might be gory? can’t remember)
Shaun of the Dead (really good, gets funnier the more you like zombie movies)
Nosferatu (the creepy classic)
The actor in Lady in the Water, a terrible movie from what I’ve heard, is Paul “The Pudgy One” Giamatti.
I loved hearing the semi-remembered presidential trivia since I’m a big fan of presidents. The Lady Bug you’re thinking of is probably Lady Bird Johnson, Lyndon Johnson’s wife. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt was married to Eleanor, also they were half-cousins or something. Woodrow Wilson’s only known for being president during WWI and starting the League of Nations.
The one flag I’ve always liked is Kiribati, which has a sunset over the ocean and a bird flying over it. Seems more like a travel brochure than a flag.
Looking forward to the sushi cooking segment. I’m a huge fan (29 pieces in one sitting is the current record) and have tried making it myself to mixed results. I don’t trust any of the fish around here to be fresh enough, so I’ve only used smoked salmon for the fish. I’m curious to see if Jana encounters some of the same problems making rolls as I have.
September 6th, 2006 at 10:26 am
The funny thing about that Forgotten Silver mockumentary is that when it was shown on TV in NZ, a lot of New Zealanders thought it was true, and got all het up about the fact that New Zealanders hadn’t been recognised for inventing moving pictures and powered flight. Peter Jackson was later forced to make a it clear that none of it was true.
And, Ryan, you’re right; the whole celebrity comment art thing is old hat. Jeff Koons’s Michael and Bubbles statue was better, and his artistic back catalogue is superior because it includes photographs of him sodomising his ex-wife, former Italian porn star La Cicciolina.
As for flags, the difference between England’s St. George’s cross and the Australian Southern Cross, I think, is that the St. George’s cross was the official flag of England, regardless of who flew it. The Southern Cross has never been officially adopted, and I can’t see any future Australian government deciding to make it official given its history.
That’s bizarre about Hawai’i having the Union Jack in its flag. Maybe they felt they owed the UK after ritually murdering poor old Captain James Cook. Or maybe they’d been expecting the British to overthrow their government and annex they country, instead of the Americans.
September 6th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
I had no idea he was married to Cicciolina! I remember she was the porn star elected to Italian parliament. What a couple of lives. Too bad they didn’t last.
September 7th, 2006 at 7:18 am
As a native of Hawai’i, I object to you characterization of the killing of james Cook as ritual murder. I think it was merely a case of Captain Cook overstaying his welcome. Being from the area where he was killed (stood on the exact spot many times!) the story has always interested me. Long story short, his arrival with many men taxed the resources of this area greatly but he was met with hospitality. When he sailed off all was well. Sadly, for the great navigator he shortly broke his mast (on his ship) and with little choice made the decision to return to the only place he knew of that was close by. Having little left to offer, the people were not happy to see him and the rest is history.
September 7th, 2006 at 7:22 am
Oh, and the Hawaiian Flag was designed by Kamehameha I. I believe there is a stripe for each major island, for a total of 8, and the Union Jack celebrated the Kingdom of Hawaii’s friendship with Britain. Which was probably a political ‘offering’ to gain favor.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:30 am
Here’s how it is told from the British side:
Cook’s first voyage was primarily a voyage of astronomical inquiry. Edmund Halley, in 1716, suggested that the distance from the Sun to the Earth could be calculated by timing the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus are rare, and the 1761 transit observations had been disappointing. The next transit was to occur in 1769 (the following one would not happen until 1874) and steps were taken to insure better measurements of the phenomenon.
King George III was petitioned and a ship was arranged. The bickering and politicking of who was to be in charge of who began immediately. Surprisingly enough, the obscure but capable James Cook was put forward by the Royal Geographic Society and accepted by the Admiralty to command the mission.
Cook was given command of the H.M. Barque Endeavour with orders to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun’s disk, and also to explore the South Seas.
Also aboard was the young naturalist Joseph Banks, then a 25-year old Fellow of the Royal Society. The first voyage of Captain Cook met with great success. Joseph Banks became a shaker and mover in the circles of the Royal Geographic Society and elsewhere; Cook rose high in the eyes of the Earl of Sandwich, First Sea Lord.
A second voyage was planned, to find or disprove the existence of the Southern Continent, Terra australis incognita, and make whatever other discoveries were to be had South Pacific.
Banks (in the newspapers it was Banks’ expedition as much or more than Cook’s) promised many of his friends a chance to visit St. George’s Island (as Tahiti was known) in grand style.
Cook, not thinking of style and comfort but of seamanship and good sense, found the Marquis of Grandby and Marquis of Rockingham, north country collier ships, which were brought into the service under the names Drake and Raleigh. The ships were refitted, and renamed Resolution and Adventure to avoid offending the Spanish.
While they were in dry-dock, Banks took it upon himself to supervise the construction of adequate quarters for himself and his entourage. Cook, ever the optimist, hoped that it would all work out in the end but before she could have her first full trial Cook had to have the outrageous upper works of the Resolution cut down.
Banks stormed off the ship in a rage and did not return to Tahiti or the South Seas. Banks and Cook did eventually patched things up.
The second voyage serves to demonstrate the caliber of seaman that Cook was. He set out accompanied by Tobias Furneaux, commander of the Adventure. Furneaux was considered a good, humane officer, distinguished in his service, but there is no comparison.
Cook did more than any other man of his time to promote the health of his crew and through his example, seamen in every vessel afloat. In an age when ships of other nations would lose hundreds to scurvy, Cook reported deaths in the single digits - and most of those due to conditions existing before the beginnings of his voyages.
Cook caused his men to wash every day, to air out their hammocks; he used every means at his disposal to force fresh food and vegetables down their throats: he tried soups and spruce beer, he even got his men to eat sauerkraut by serving it to the officer’s mess.
At one point Furneaux had 20 men down with scurvy and one died, while Cook had a only a couple who had mild symptoms, and those were recovering on special diets. An absence of accidental and preventable death mark all of Cook’s commands.
His second voyage lasted three years and eighteen days - 112 officers and men aboard a 462 ton, 111 foot long, 35 foot wide wooden ship sailing into the stormiest seas on earth; through uncharted, pack-ice filled southern latitudes as high as 71º. Cook lost four men, one to sickness.
Cook returned to England and was “retired” to the Royal Hospital in Greenwich. Eventually a third voyage was planned. Cook was naturally consulted on the details of ships and men to do the job and just as naturally volunteered to do the job that he was most capable of doing. The purpose of the third voyage was to seek out the elusive North-West passage (between the Atlantic and Pacific) from the Pacific side.
A 21-year old William Bligh was put into the Resolution as sailing master- an important position for one so young, but Bligh, whatever his other traits, was a first class seaman and able to carry out his duty with distinction. Bligh learned from Captain Cook’s example the ways to keep a crew healthy at sea, though he did not learn how to command without tyranny; but that’s a different story altogether.
Cook set out from England (with the company of Clerke in Discovery), made for his usual landfalls at New Zealand and Tahiti, then sailed north to find the passage. He encountered some of the smaller Hawai’ian islands, then proceeded to the north-west American coast and started charting and exploring.
He eventually rounded the tip of the Alaska Peninsula, through the Bering Straight and into the Arctic Ocean where he is impeded at every turn by ice.
After spending as much time as he could, Cook turned south to replenish and repair for the next year. Cook found Hawai’i and began to circle it looking for a good harbour which he found at Kealakekua Bay.
Now it just so happens that this time (November-December) was the beginning of the season of the Hawai’ian god Lono makua. To usher in this season, the inhabitants of Hawai’i would process clockwise around their island bearing banners of white tapa hung from a cross-piece fixed to a long staff.
Cook came at the right time, went the right way, and was propelled by huge, glorious emblems of Lono. Cook was naturally taken to be the avatar of Lono.
When Cook landed, he was wrapped in a sacred red cloth, led on a tour of Hawai’ian religious artifacts, then introduced to the general populace who promptly fell on their faces at his feet.
After completing his stores, Cook again thought to head north. The month was February when Cook set out (when the ascendance of Lono ends- Lono is symbolically sacrificed at this time to make way for the other main Hawai’ian god, Ku-nui-akea, to take over) only to have his foremast badly broken within the week.
He came back to Kealakekua Bay to repair it. Upon his out-of-season return, there was a shift in the behavior of the Hawai’ians - incidents of mischief and theft became much worse than before.
Matters escalated, items of increasing value were being taken, work parties were being stoned, then the Discovery’s large cutter was stolen. Cook decided to take a chief, Kalei’opu’u, hostage for the return of the cutter. This strategy had worked in the past on other islands.
Usually the chiefs and Cook were on such good terms that the “hostages” came willingly. At any rate, this plan was ill conceived from the start. Cook landed with one officer and nine marines to attempt to take Kalei’opu’u by force.
Kalei’opu’u accompanied Cook to the beach agreeably, then his wife and two other chiefs argued with Kalei’opu’u, after which he balked at going aboard the Resolution.
Hawai’ians began to arm themselves with spears and rocks, then muskets were fired at the other end of the bay to stop a canoe from escaping and a man was killed. Cook was threatened with a knife and stone while trying to get to his boat.
Cook fired one barrel of his pistol (loaded with shot) which did no damage against the Hawaiian’s war mat.
Things rapidly got worse; the other officer was attacked, Cook killed a man with his other barrel (loaded with ball). The Hawai’ians beleived the war mats - a sort of straw body armour - could resist muskets. They couldn’t, so the Hawai’ians dipped the war mats in sea water to see it that would stop musket fire. It didn’t.
Then other Hawai’ians rose to attack, the marines fired, there was no time to reload, then there was a scramble for the pinnace to escape.
Cook was killed on Valentine’s day, 14th February, 1779. It is believed that Cook stood helplessly in knee-deep water instead of making for the boats because he could not swim. Hopelessly surrounded, he was knocked on the head from behind with a rock, and he fell down. Then, many Hawai’ian warriors passed a knife around and each hacked and mutilated his lifeless body.
In consequence, little more than the principal part of his bones could be recovered by the British seamen. But by the possession of them, the navigators were, at least, enabled to perform the last rights. The bones, having been put into a coffin, and the service being read over them, were committed to the deep on the 21st February with the usual military honours.
Whatever happened that day, he was a pretty amazing sailor, by any measure. R.I.P.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Bloody hell! I typed all that out and forgot the main point I was trying to make:
Kevin says “I object to your characterization of the killing of James Cook as ritual murder.”
O.K. the Hawai’ians were pissed off, and with good reason, but if this isn’t a ritual murder, what is?
“many Hawai’ian warriors passed a knife around and each hacked and mutilated his lifeless body.”
September 7th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
I also put my name up for the Tvindy of Comments Challenge Cup.
September 8th, 2006 at 10:34 am
“O.K. the Hawai’ians were pissed off, and with good reason, but if this isn’t a ritual murder, what is?
“many Hawai’ian warriors passed a knife around and each hacked and mutilated his lifeless body.—
While this is true (and could be characterized as ritual murder I suppose) the reason they were doing it is important. In the Hawaiian culture, the “hacking” was common when important persons died and was in fact a show of respect for a great man. In the Hawaiian culture it was believed that a decedents bones must be stripped of all flesh and carefully hidden to ensure the person passed on to the afterlife. There are even stories of people hiding bones of particularly important people then taking their own lives so that no one could know where they were. So, maybe it was more of a ritual burial rite, post murder.
September 8th, 2006 at 10:52 am
In re-reading your post, it is interesting how neither account precludes the other.Some interesting points: He “completed his stores” thereby depleting the stores of the Hawaiians. Upoun his return the Hawaiians stole from the ships perhaps in need of resources.
One more thing, not only is the water knee deep but it is very rocky being comprised solely of fairly new (at the time) lava making the footing uncertain. There was certainly no way to run or get very far. It is sad that such a great man should meet his end in such a bewildering fashion.
September 9th, 2006 at 1:49 am
Interesting!
In Mumbai, India, bodies of deceased Zoroastrians are taken to the “Towers of Silence” and ritually left for vultures to devour the flesh, and there they are left exposed until the bones have been bleached by the sun.
Apparently this is because they believe the flesh of the dead body will contaminate the earth. Death is considered to be the work of the eveil God Angra Mainu, whereas the earth and all that is beautiful is considered to be the work of the pure God Ahura Mazda.
Does the old Hawaiian religion, and the stripping the flesh ritual persist to the present day?
September 30th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Here’s the link to the sushi instructional video I spoke of in one of the voicemails I sent in today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8c2fMDatoU&eurl=
I also came across this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4971426701921585512&q=how+sushi