The Gaming Den

Last week's episode of Doctor Who, "The Fugitive of the Judoon". It was great. Spoilers and fan gushing abound.

The show was awful under Moffat. Last season was okay. This season started strong, but then "Orphan 55" was a hot mess and the one with Nikola Tesla made Thomas Edison a good guy, which is not good. But "Fugitive" was great. . I mean, what the hell, a new Doctor? Gallifrey's destroyed but it's not? Jack Harkness returning? Cybermen coming back? And they flesh out the Judoon as a species on top of it all. It was classic Who mindfuckery, which hasn't happened since... gosh, the show came back in 2005?

...Okay, that might be an exaggeration. But it has been a while since the show has had such an intriguing meta-plot.

Also, Star Trek: Picard. The first episode was put out on Youtube for free (at least for a limited time). It's so AWESOME to see Jean-Luc Picard back in action. Also, the show name-dropped Commander Bruce Maddox as a someone major to the plot. Talk about obscure!

Also, Romulans on a Borg Cube? CBS really knows how to get me to fork over money for their stupid All Access thing...

Super Bowl Halftime show: Watched it on YouTube. I loved the little things about it. The nod to Kashmir. The Puerto Rican flag. The belly dancing. The speaking Spanish. The stripper pole. Bad Bunny and J Balvin. Lots of Fuck Yous. It was a great.

I have a new hero. I had no idea this was happening, but Mary Engelbreit is seriously awesome!

https://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/how ... 4bec2.html

The latest Chapo episode from the Iowa Caucus may be the single greatest podcast recording ever made. I've never felt more seen by a piece of media. That shit was a powerful powerful episode.

If anyone wants to listen; it's wild good

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house ... rever-2320

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qi3Evua2Cs
If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device - Episode 28: Custodian Hustle
This just keeps getting better and better!!

Dean wrote:The latest Chapo episode from the Iowa Caucus may be the single greatest podcast recording ever made. I've never felt more seen by a piece of media. That shit was a powerful powerful episode.

If anyone wants to listen; it's wild good

https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house ... rever-2320

I don't generally listen to podcasts; can you explain why this episode is so good?

Edit: I generally like Current Affairs and Jacobin, so I think I'm roughly in the target audience for Chapo Trap House. I listened to the first ten minutes or so and was pretty underwhelmed; but, again, I don't really do podcasts, and I try to avoid live audience recordings. I'm willing to have my mind changed though.

Chapo Traphouse in general is a good podcast because it is the only comedy source that jokes about politics the way you do in real life. They sound like me and my friends when we talk shit about the world except funnier, rather than the awful endless whingeing Daily Show-esque centrist "woke" comedy.

That said if you wanted them for the extremely funny podcast part there'd be other episodes to start with. Their conservative cartoons episode is super funny. The part of that that was inspiring to me was when everyone at the end is singing "Solidarity Forever". The fact that there were thousands of people gathered together in 2020 America singing the anthem of socialist unity and worldwide brotherhood is astonishing to me. Listening to their voices breaking, shouting out that song gave me hope. It makes me feel like anything is possible. Maybe the short version is to just listen to Solidarity Forever and be amazed that in 2020 we have a chance, however small, to fight for a future where all of us can sing it together.

Solidarity Forever
Chapo Trap House: Conservative Cartoons

I think a big part of the episode’s impact was its timing. I listened to it a few days after Iowa, so it didn’t have the same impact, and I found it a bit dull. I also started to get a little put off by drunk Matt. And I like Matt! We used to do bar trivia together.

I'm fully in the target demo for that podcast, and that was the first episode to which I listened. Thank you for suggesting other ones to check out, because I otherwise would have never given them a second thought. While admittedly almost nothing turns me off faster than group singing, I found that episode not only emblematic but possibly seminal of the stereotypes with which Sanders supporters are often accused.

Chapo does some call of c'thulu games that are funny.

I went and saw Birds of Prey on opening night, and I loved it. It's like it retroactively justifies the existence of Suicide Squad and Jared Leto (admittedly, I actually enjoy Suicide Squad, but I recognize it's a bad movie. Jared Leto is just bad and he should feel bad)

Prak wrote:It's like it retroactively justifies the existence [...] Jared Leto

Funny, since the movie goes out of it's way to avoid actually showing the Joker.

But yeah, Birds of Prey was the shit. Who knew DC could make a Marvel movie?

Something I noticed about the movie is that all the male characters in the movie are either incompetent, sleazebags, creeps, rapists, or all of the above. Must be something in the water in Gotham.

Prak wrote:I went and saw Birds of Prey on opening night, and I loved it. It's like it retroactively justifies the existence of Suicide Squad and Jared Leto

Do you say that just because this is a good movie that wouldn't have been made without the bad movie, or is there actually something in BoP that recontextualizes the original stuff?

The movie barely acknowledges the fact that Suicide Squad even happened. Harley has a throw-away line of dialogue where she states that she saved the world, but that's it.

And honestly, that's how it should be.

Schleiermacher wrote:

Prak wrote:I went and saw Birds of Prey on opening night, and I loved it. It's like it retroactively justifies the existence of Suicide Squad and Jared Leto

Do you say that just because this is a good movie that wouldn't have been made without the bad movie, or is there actually something in BoP that recontextualizes the original stuff?

The former. Suicide Squad was a really bad movie (even if I personally enjoy it), but without it, we'd probably not have Birds of Prey.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken is good, clean anime fun that oozes style and has the catchiest intro ever.

Also seconding Chapo Trap House.

Shrapnel wrote: Something I noticed about the movie is that all the male characters in the movie are either incompetent, sleazebags, creeps, rapists, or all of the above. Must be something in the water in Gotham.

I think that's fairly standard to one degree or another in various Batman and related properties. Especially when Harley's story is involved.

I've never followed Chapo Trap House. I'm not going to. Every time they come up in any other context, it's them doing extremely not-OK shit like this. Those people are not OK. Giving them clicks and eyeballs is not OK. Fuck those guys.

-Username17

Great, now I'm gonna go watch them.

Shrapnel wrote:Something I noticed about the movie is that all the male characters in the movie are either incompetent, sleazebags, creeps, rapists, or all of the above. Must be something in the water in Gotham.

Now, I can think of at least two male characters who are not any of those. It's just the white men in Gotham.

The only thing I like about Chapo Trap House is that sometimes evil people rightly identify their grandstanding as an easy target for ridicule but then proceed to own goal themselves in the rush to go up for a dunk. That's not enough for me to give Chapo Trap House a pass though given that it's usually not all that hard to find other ways to embarrass idiots.

So am I supposed to read this as offensive because it's homophobic towards Mayor Pete or offensive towards Mayor Pete because it's likening him to a character slicing off someone's tongue in 120 Days of Sodom?

Because likening him to a psychotic, murderous, sadistic fascist seems kind of worse than the Twitter reading of CTH being bad because they're saying "ew he has teh gay".

e: This is not condoning homophobia. They're cutting off that motherfucker's tongue in the image.

Mask_De_H wrote:So am I supposed to read this as offensive because it's homophobic towards Mayor Pete or offensive towards Mayor Pete because it's likening him to a character slicing off someone's tongue in 120 Days of Sodom?

Because likening him to a psychotic, murderous, sadistic fascist seems kind of worse than the Twitter reading of CTH being bad because they're saying "ew he has teh gay".

e: This is not condoning homophobia. They're cutting off that motherfucker's tongue in the image.

It's many layers of bad. First of all, it's obviously going to be read as homophobic by the audience, because fucking obviously. And the protestation 'It's actually from a movie with Sodom in the name.' is still going to have it be read as homophobic by the audience. The explanation of it supposedly not being homophobic still sounds homophobic!

But also that image is disgusting and definitely not safe for work. Even without the obvious and undeniable homophobia angle it's still almost exactly the same as Goatseing twitter. Whatever 'point' you were supposedly making is utterly trivialized by the fact that you basically posted a surprise link to lemonparty like you were a fucking teenage edgelord from 2005.

Posting that kind of shit is unacceptable full stop, even if it wasn't directed in a direction where it would obviously and justifiably be taken as a homophobic slur. But it was directed in such a direction, and that makes it so much worse.

And it would be one thing if that was just a one time thing. But the Chapo douchebros get in trouble for this kind of shit all the time. I didn't cherry pick something out of context from three years ago, that was just that particular fucker's latest tweet. Eventually you have to stop giving these assholes the benefit of the doubt. The reason they come off as hateful immature jackasses, is because they are hateful immature jackasses. The reason they keep getting accused of harassing people is because they keep harassing people. They are literally indistinguishable from Russian bots sent to sow tensions in the left.

-Username17

The Adventurer's Almanac wrote:Great, now I'm gonna go watch them.

They do a podcast. I'm assuming you're not gonna go look at one of their live shows so it'll be more listening to them.

I've since given Chapo Trap House a couple more hours of my time, which I would like back. I'm hesitant to consider them quintessentially Berniebro, but feel that an inadvertent association with them lowers the public discourse. I feel almost obligated to state my support of a given candidate is not to be misconstrued as an association with that sort of people.

On a more positive note more in keeping with the thread subject, I have an abiding crush on the violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Her directing the Ojai Festival was solid, as is her work with Camerata Bern. I'm fond of her rendition of Raga Piloo with Anoushka Shankar, in that I'm enamoured by performers emoting with their face.