Wed 18 Oct 2006
In our second show for the week, we start with voicemail comments covering autism, card counting horses, more Soccergirl angst, podcast directories, obscure medical conditions, a professional medical perspective on the career of Pat Morita, hats with corks on them, old ment’s clothes, Japanese etiquette, Morris dancing and Irish dancing.
Then it’s time for a new Cooking with Jana.
October 19th, 2006 at 2:54 am
You know someone likes to talk when Tvindy’s voicemail lasts my entire drive to work and halfway through lunch.
About Soccergirl, we did listen to one show together, and I listened to another one by myself, and she asked for money in both episodes, and also alluded to presents that you could buy her. It’s not the asking for money that annoys me the most though. It’s the fact that she uses nudity to get those listeners and those presents. So many presents it appears that Tvindy’s went unrecognized. Even listening to her for the first time, I knew nothing about her, but thought her show was nothing special. So I wondered why her audience was so big, and I thought, “She has to be naked on the webpage or something.” And I was right. It’s just too cheap. Anyone can be naked. She reminds me too much of camgirls, those amateur webcam strippers of the late 90s who would ask for presents. Also, I take issue with her claims that she works the equivalent of a second job (40-50 hours a week) on the show, unless it takes her that long to write horrible music.
My problem with Podshow isn’t that they’re a bunch of sell-outs (I would love to sell out) but that they think of themselves as the podcasting illuminati. They’re somehow higher than everyone else. They can bring in their friends’ shows (no matter how terrible) and give them instant popularity. Also, another pretty cheap way to get listeners.
Anyhow, I’m looking forward to the Zan side project show!
October 19th, 2006 at 6:58 am
Also, a fun fact about The Next Karate Kid: The girl grew up to be Hillary Swank.
October 19th, 2006 at 7:10 am
No fucking way! I just checked, and you’re right. I guess Mr Miyagi taught her the skills she put to use in Million Dollar Baby.
October 19th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Yeah, especially the skill of dying.
Yow! Almost as bad as “The Irish can’t afford arms”!
October 19th, 2006 at 8:06 am
First, let me declare a lack of interest in Morris Dancing. However, I felt I had to adopt it, as someone should be a foil to your verbal attack on it. I did a little research:
O.K., you are so outrageously camp that you are willing to dress up and prance around as a Morris Dancer in public. But having done that for a bit, you find that it isn’t quite …enough… somehow. You want to be even more outrageous, but where do you go? The answer is to become your Morris Dancer side’s “Mollyâ€. Morris Dancer teams are called ’sides’. But “Morris Dancing sides do not compete in the conventional way sports teams do.” The Molly is the token “female†of the side, and that is what you spotted in the photo. (Perhaps the photo could go up in the Listners’ Submissions gallery?)
Real women were originally excluded from the Morris Dance, as in Shakespeare’s day when actresses were played by boys. But don’t fear for Mollys. Far from a butterfly in danger of being broken on the wheel, Mollys are unworried by a public backlash, since they wear big hob-nail boots or clogs.
Sadly, Mollys are dying out, as nowadays real women have penetrated Morris Dancing’s inner sanctum and you can now get real women to play the role of flicking the feather duster. There are even all-women Morris Dancing sides. One wonders, do all-women sides have a Molly dressed as a faux man? I could find no evidence either way.
More excitingly, I did find a reference to occasional Morris Dance grand finales using the sword star to remove the hat of the leader of their side, “potentially decapitating himâ€. Surely that’s worth a watch?
October 19th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Zebulon, you’re quite right - I’ve placed the photo in our image gallery.
October 20th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Hi Jana & Zan,
Congratulations on the baby! Surely if it’s a boy you’ve got to named him Bob!
I loved the Irish arms comment, it’s the biggest laugh I’ve had for awhile. I’ve had canned Irish stew that definitely tasted like severed limbs.
Zan, you’re a (hilariously) cruel guy when you want to be. My sister works with autistic kids. Why not a string of fire crackers?
I think Tvindy is busy browsing Soccergirl’s website when listening to her show. She’s going to need more than financial support in a few years!
Gotta go, PLANE OVER HEAD!
October 21st, 2006 at 10:47 am
Hi Z&J,
Just listened today. Sorry to be picky, but the rambling Tvindy is correct about biology: the corpus callosum is the plane of nerve tissue connecting the left and right brain hemispheres, and is not part of the penis! Zan, you are probably thinking of the corpus cavernosum, which are the penile structures that flood with blood to create an erection.
There are those who would argue a man’s brain and penis are indistinguishable, but I’ll avoid commenting on that issue.
Be well,
Vibeeen
October 21st, 2006 at 11:05 am
Damn! It would have been much funnier if Tvindy had said ‘corpus cavernosum’. Oh, well.
October 21st, 2006 at 12:45 pm
As a former psych major, the corpus callosum was big topic in the first year. This note is a bit geeky from here on, but some fascinating studies have been done on people who don’t have a corpus callosum. Interestingly, women tend to have denser connections between their brain halves, suggesting a richer connection between verbal and non-verbal; conscious and subsconscious parts of their brains (for example).
My own memory is not supremely lucid on things I learned so long ago, but I remember that researchers could display a picture of a common object to the non-verbal side of the brain, and since the two brain halves could not communicate, the subject could not say what the object was, but they were able to to write the name of the object using the half of the brain that observed the object (using the opposite hand, as it happens– right brain, left hand, etc.) Pretty cool, huh?
-V
October 21st, 2006 at 3:02 pm
I knew that the corpus callosum was part of the brain as well, although, I admit I only knew it because there’s a song about it. Yes, the “Corpus Callosum Cheer” by a girl named Katelyn Mueller. I got it off of IUMA, which sadly appears to be down now.
October 21st, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Re: Irish Step Dancing
My sister mentioned once that the British once put some weird restrictions on Irish dancing along with outlawing the Uilleann pipes. Supposedly one was forbidden to raise their arms while dancing. The Irish said Fawk You! and kept on dancing. Then Michael Flatley came along and ruined it for everyone. The end.
I’d do the research on it to verify it but I don’t want to.
In other matters, I think I once vacationed down in Corpus Callosum, Texas.
P.S. The whole hat with corks riches should have been mine but I sadly had only come up with the concept of a cork with hats attached and it never caught on.
October 22nd, 2006 at 5:31 am
I used to listen to the SoccerGirl podcast when PK&J first mentioned it, but it got old for me. I think Tvindy hasn’t seen her site lately… Every episode has a “Make a Donation” button in the description. She’s also reselling GoDaddy.com services, and there’s a link to her Amazon wishlist.
I also listened to the PK&J episode where J got a bikini wax while she was podcasting. I thought it was pretty cool at the time. I think I even had my wife listen to it, to possibly relieve her fears. Later I saw a documentary-type video of women getting plu… I mean, waxed (no nudity), and remembered J’s segment. Comparing the two, I wondered what happened to the distinctive sound of the wax being removed during J’s segment? There wasn’t a single sound but two women talking. In the video, it’s quite noticeable.
October 22nd, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Regarding Sam the Robot (from Sesame Street), here’s some info with pics:
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Sam_the_Robot