Podcast Reaction: The Pitch-A-Revamp Edition

Frank Drebin is on the case!

This week on the podcast, the Gabbing Geeks celebrated Watson’s 40th birthday by having Jenny use a faulty mic, so it sounded like Watson was senile and talking to voices in his head.  That was amusing as technical errors went.

But then they pitched some revamped old projects, like the Munsters and Flash Gordon, despite some attempts to actually revamp both of them as Mockingbird Lane (look it up) and an awful Scy-Fy channel show, also known as any Scy-Fy channel show that wasn’t Farscape or BSG.

I have an idea of my own for this.

Announcing A Terry Pratchett Discworld Read-Along

Terry Pratchett, author of Discworld

In light of the recent death of fantasy-humorist writer Terry Pratchett, of whom I have had plenty to say, I am announcing here a read-through of the 40 (soon to be 41) books in the Discworld series.  Many I have read before, though some I have not.  Plus, I think I may be the only one of the Gabbing Geek contributors whose read any of his work before, but I could be wrong about that.

We’ll start at the beginning, when he was writing straight parody humor of writers like JRR Tolkien and still finding his eventual voice for the series.  The first book is The Color of Magic, one I actually have not read before, so this will be a new experience for me as well.

On a side note, while many of these novels are short, and most of them are a good, quick, fun read, I’m also an English teacher currently working my way through Infinite Jest, Shakespeare’s Othello and King John, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and the first of the Harry Bosch mystery novels, so I have no idea how often this column will appear, but for now, let’s see if we can get through the first one and go from there.

And Now…A Shakespeare Lesson

Verily, I can pulleth off this collar.

I’m teaching William Shakespeare’s Othello this week.  That means I can use a free space to lecture the loyal Gabbing Geek readers (both of them) with some hard Billy the Shakes knowledge.  Some Geeks are, after all, Drama Geeks.

For that, we will look at Iago and his motivation.

The Entertainment Industry To Nitpickers: Historical Accuracy Is For Chumps!

Awards season.  A prominent director releases a movie that garners some Oscar nominations.  Controversy arises among some, though.  The movie is based on the life of a man many Americans think of as a hero, but who in his own time has proven to be somewhat controversial.  It seems some have found the movie has taken a few liberties with past events, and since said past events are based on real, living people, this is a cause for concern among some people.

I am speaking, of course, of Steven Spielberg’s 2012 movie Lincoln.