Geekly Speaking About… “Happy Birthday to Us!”

Late birthday cake is better than no birthday cake at all!

It’s the end of another calendar year, and I thought it was the perfect opportunity for me to start working on the podcasts again, starting with some episodes that slipped through the cracks. This was recorded towards the end of May and marked the anniversary of this site being up; hence, the name of the episode.

There’s not much more I can say about this, so let’s get to the show notes, hmm?

  • To start, I think this episode was recorded on Jill’s phone and I have to say the audio quality isn’t that bad. It’s not the best, but it’s not terrible, either.
  • Our birthday contest went very well, with Toronto, Canada writer D.C. McMillen winning the grand prize. You can read McMillen’s other works here, and do some stalking via Twitter as well.
  • Sadly, I haven’t gotten back onto the writing horse on any of the projects I have on the back burner; however, I am very proud of the flashback chapter I contributed to the “Dengler & Butts” fanfic which by itself raised $100 and as part of the entire story raised $1,000 for the Child’s Play Charity during the Desert Bus for Hope Internet telethon. (‘Netathon? Intelethon? We really need a better descriptor for what DBFH is.)
    Midnight in Paris really is that amazing; just re-read my review if you need some convincing. I’m not sure if Owen Wilson will be nominated for an Oscar on the basis of his acting work in it, but I’d give a statue to Kathy Bates for her supporting role as Gertrude Stein. The fruit-named movie that Jill was thinking about was Bananas.
  • How is it that the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype only became codified in 2008?
  • If you’ve never seen The Room and would like to attend a screening, check out this list.
  • Now that John Rogers is back to updating his blog with posts about “Leverage,” I need to finally sit down and watch the season four episodes I missed.
  • According to this article from May 12, Stephanie Krikorian wrote in The Wall Street Journal that an executive producer revealed that many of the voters for American Idol are girls, but also their mothers, too. So I’m calling that a partial win for my argument.
  • It was the blind auditions like Beverly McClellan’s which made me love watching “The Voice” at first. (I lost interest right around the time that my boyfriend and I finally started moving in together.) The fact that both Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera wanted to work with her reaches out and touches that part of me which feels really strongly that truly talented people will always win out over what is superficially attractive. Call it the egalitarian socialist in me.
  • Because YouTube/Google is really lock-stepped with NBC’s copyright lawyers, here’s the Nico Nico version of the Voice battle between Vicci Martinez and Nikki Douglas. Best iTunes money I spent this summer. If the official site still had the video on it, I’d link there but…
  • For current events and historical archives purposes only, I am linking to the Wikipedia article on Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster who believed that the world was going to end first on May 21 and later on October 21 in 2011. Because otherwise, I wouldn’t have remembered why I made that joke about the Rapture.
  • It’s almost as if The Guardian knew we’d be finally putting up this podcast this weekend. Check out Nick Cowen’s recent interview with developer Ken Levine about Bioshock Infinite, which will be released some time next year. As for the game’s official website, it’s a little buggy, but can be accessed here (after you verify you’re a legal adult, that is).
  • Seriously, the catalog of games available for purchase at Good Old Games is staggering, and the price is just about right as well.
  • If you haven’t seen the footage of the new Lara Croft in the reboot of Tomb Raider, all you need to do is click here, courtesy of IGN’s YouTube channel. Normally, I’d link to the game’s official website, too, but for some reason it doesn’t want to play nicely with my version Firefox and I can’t even select my language. Also, this is the Topless Robot article I’m referencing, written by a former co-worker of mine, the wonderful Rob Bricken.
  • No, I still haven’t finished Mass Effect, let alone started working on a male Commander Shepard playthrough. This crystal-infused leather isn’t going to skin itself, you know…

And that’s another episode in the can! Next up will hopefully be more interviews from the New York Comic Con as well as a special interview that we’re recording this week on Wednesday. If you have any feedback or questions about anything we talked about, please let us know in the comments.