Hucklebug, Episode 95: shout-outs, movies (Bet: I Vitelloni, The White Shiek; Stennie: Wedding Present, Galaxy Quest, Control Room), lowlights & highlights, fuck-offs and you-rules, Our Fake Memoirs (at last!)
Straw poll: Have you seen Matewan, yes or no? Also, please leave a favorite Hucklebug moment, if you have one, for inclusion in 100th Episode clip show.
I’m really glad you spelled out Matewan here, because I had no idea what you were saying.
One of my favorite HB moments: The very first episode. I loved the sex lives bit. I also really like it anytime Bet really “haites” something and when Stennie says “fuck”.
You know what I would like to hear on the 100th episode? I’d like to hear your top five topics of the week.
Another highlight: memoirs, fake. I loved that today! Nyssa, high five on an excellent topic.
I like the episode in which Stennie and Bet get in a big fight and threaten each other with physical violence, and swear and swear and swear at each other, then Bet starts to cry and Stennie says “fuck this!” and cuts the podcast short, and the rest of the time is taken up with a recording of Karl Leister playing the last movement of the Brahms “Sonata for Clarinet” in e-flat.
Like the Captain, my favorite moment was the episode where Stennie and Bet weren’t getting along and refused to talk to each other for the whole show.
Matewan – Yep, my first Sayles. Thanks to my ultrahip US History teacher.
Fave HB moment – You all realize that I’m still a babe in the woods here, right? So my range of HB knowledge is gonna be limited.
Um, I could really be a smartass and say the one where Bet brings up Alan Arkin. So I shan’t. Even though I just did.
As I mentioned before, I loved your dueling bad neighbors discussion. It reminded me of so many of my own bad neighbors in the past.
Finally…cue the orchestra….I’ll bring up a personal favorite moment where Stennie read my long-winded comment to the dreaded Carol of the Bells: a true shout-out. Unexpected, gutsy and made me laugh. It also made the ‘cast much more personal, like I was able to join in the fun. Haven’t missed one since, even though I sometimes get back too late to comment. Stupid real world.
Happy 2 years, Bet and Stennie.
Oh, and Fuck Off George Bush. There, now I feel better.
And that’s a “yes” on Matewan for me, too.
Matewan was kinda interesting to watch but not every accuate. Here’s a pretty good nutshell telling:
http://www.mc.cc.md.us/Departments/hpolscrv/knowlandl.html
None of the racial stuff inserted in the movie happened. The miners simply heard about workers that unionized and got a 27% pay raise. They invited the Union in and the coal company hired some thugs to stop it. When the thugs started throwing people out of the company owned houses without warrants, everyone got pissed.
The police chief, Hatfield, had a hand in the mess too. He was no hero. This is from official court testimony:
Mr. Avis. Mr. Hatfield, did you not within less than two weeks after Mayor
Testerman was killed, marry his
widow?
Mr. Hatfield. I did.
Mr. Avis. Are you now running his place
of business?
Mr. Hatfield. I am.
Mr. Avis. Don’t you know Mr. Hatfield,
that a number of witnesses who testified
before the grand jury, one of
whom also testified against you in
the last trial, have been assassinated?
The person who testified said Hatfield shot the mayor. Several others did too and were killed.
An interesting event.
I added Brother from Another Planet as well as Matewan to my queueueueue. Thanks for the personal recommendation.
More episodes I liked – from the Podcastathon – the whole series on dinner guests.
Another favorite HB moment: Things We Hide from Mom. Bet’s startling admission made me laff.
PS… So, would Bet change the name of that john to Mark the Blogless? Or Mark the Globless, even?
WTF? My original comment never posted. Here it is:
Matewan? OK. That’s what the hell you were saying.
Nice memoirs. I’m reminded a little bit of the 1970s or 1960s muckraking books, though, if you infiltrate a society or subculture, kind of like “Black like Me.” Or, uh, “Never Been Kissed.”
Bet: How about “Hooker like Me: The Double Life of a Newspaper Librarian,” as a title for the memoir. Or “Lives and Lays: A Memoir of a Hooker.” I find it amusing that being fired from a newspaper is the worst degradation that came out of part-time hooking.
Stennie: You will definitely need to describe that Mother Superior, as played by Angelina Jolie, and you need to talk about the kind innocent sister, who eventually dies in a meaningful way. And what about the time you were abandoned at nunnery by your drug addicted, Presbyterian teenage parents? And the confusion you felt when you found out years later that they straightened out, got married to each other, and founded a search engine tech company that rhymes with Noogle and and are now kajillionaires? Hm. I’m not sure whether it’s better that they accept you as part of their multi-national adopted family or reject you. Better memoir story, that is.
I vote for that episode which I think was in this year’s podcastathon where Bet gets the giggles and can’t stop. I couldn’t stop giggling either after a while.
I have not seen Matewan, but I have heard of it.
Oh! I saw a movie this week in the the-ay-ter! ‘Leatherheads’. I’m interested in your take on it, even though it’s not on DVD yet. I think the papers have been unfair. It was a nice movie—very nice way to spend two-ish hours. It’s what people used to call a ‘cute little movie’. It was trying to be a screwball comedy—too bad Renee Zelwegger can’t stop sucking on that lemon. (The Washington Post noted the lemon thing, too). Boy that George is ugly—he really needs to have a bag over his head on screen to protect us from his awful mug.
I think the comparison between George and Cary Grant is a good one. This movie was definitely better than the Wedding Present (which from your description I think I saw many moons ago during my Cary Grant phase and I promptly forgot about afterwards), but I think George is one of those people like Cary you just watch on screen and even when the movie isn’t great, you get through because, well, it’s George.
I was afraid I was going to fall asleep in the movie theater, as it was dark and there was no Monkey on my back (or in my arms, or screaming nearby), but I stayed awake.
I just looked something up—there was a guy in the movie whose face was bothering me. I knew I’d seen him, but when he was a kid. Max Casella was the actor. It was Doogie Howser’s sidekick Vinnie! That’s another topic—child actors who act as grownups, the good, bad, and the ugly.
Never Give Up, Never Surrender!
Going back to 94 (93?): Not that I have any need to stick up for Special K, (for all I care, the entire population of Battle Creek, MI, can fuck off) but…I think the whole people who eat breakfast thing is about metabolism. It’s not so much _what_ you eat as _whether_. If you don’t eat breakfast, your body goes into a conservation mode and you don’t burn fat.
Matewan: seen it, loved it, got the t-shirt. Can’t say I liked it as much as Lone Star, Eight Men Out, or Limbo. Probably on the same level as Roan Inish and Passion Fish. But John Sayles is like Pixar — the gap between his very best and his lesser efforts is very small. (I say that not having seen Sunshine State, Silver City, City of Hope, etc.) One thing I love, in a perverse way is how he turned Kevin Tighe into a heavy. He was so sweet and mild mannered as Fireman Roy DeSoto on Emergency!
I think the word Stennie is looking for what I Vitelloni is called is an idiom. I was hoping Bet would come up with it so Stennie could say, “Dear sweet Bet, you shall not have died in vain . . .”
Oh, great moments in Hucklebuggery (that doesn’t sound quite right)… would it be terribly self-centered of me to say the one where I actually got to be on the show? It’s like Navin R. Johnson once said: “I’m just happy to be in there somewhere.” Honestly, I think you two could read the phone book and find a way to make it funny. Especially if you let Bet pronounce the Eye-talian names. IOW: my fave HB moments are whatever I happen to be listening to at the time.
How about some HB trivia? E.g., how many different versions of The Hucklebug Song have been used as Intro/bumper music?
For classic HB moments, I don’t think we can forget when Bet was caught doing TexTwist or when she made a play for Stennie’s dad.
Late topic idea! You can do this tonight, or spread it out over future episodes as you please. In each pairing, which do you prefer?
Chaplin or Keaton
Woody Allen or Albert Brooks
Audrey or Katharine
Bette Davis or Joan Crawford
Neo-realism or Film noir
Spielberg or Lucas
Kelly or Astaire
Billy Wilder or Howard Hawks
This IsSpinal Tap or The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash
Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs
Spinal Tap or The Rutles (the bands)
Al Green or Marvin Gaye
Temptations or Four Tops
Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson
Sex Pistols or The Clash
T. Rex or Mott The Hoople
50s rock or 60s rock
70s punk or 90s punk
Elton John or Billy Joel
Gerswhin or Porter
Bugs or Daffy
Sesame Street or Electric Company
Spanky or Alfalfa
The Bob Newhart Show or Newhart
Samantha Stevens or Jeannie
Ginger or Mary Ann
Frank Burns or Charles Emerson Winchester
Trapper John or B.J. Honeycutt
Eva or Zsa Zsa
Flintstones or Jetsons
American Bandstand or Soul Train
Dogs or Cats
WWI or WWII
Coke or Pepsi
Calculus or Trigonometry
Ketchup or Mustard
Summer or Winter
Post cereals or Kellogg’s cereals
Christmas or Independence Day
Your money or your life
Hell or High water
To Be or Not To Be
Sooner or Later
25 or 6 to 4
2 quick comments on last week’s HB since I was late:
1) Happy 2nd Birthday!!
2) I’ve been hesitant to see “Waitress” just because I know it’ll depress me—I hate it when an artist dies young and the director of that film is no longer with us—if the film isn’t that good, then I’ll feel bad for not feeling as bad she’s gone.
Am I alone in this kind of Mobius-strippish behavior? O_O
Venice: “Hooker like Me: The Double Life of a Newspaper Librarian”? Didn’t Ed Wood direct that? I think that was on MST3K—or wast that “Girl’s Town”?
I think it *was* me who suggested the clip show—and my second-favorite moment is a tie between Bet’s “I know it was you Frito” or that classic moment where you guys described rough sex between Ward and June. I carry that memory with me everywhere I go.
It’s like George Carlin’s Elmer Fudd raping Porky Pig joke. It’s something so wrong, yet so funny…
For my absolute favorite, I would have to say it was that time you guys had on the fellow who sold Keifer Sutherland a newspaper. He was a RIOT.
Smells like a peach…
Ralph Bakshi? Having worked in the same field, I know he has a reputation of being a right prick. I had one friend back in my HB days (Hanna-Barbera, not HuckleBug ^_^) who held the badge of honor of being fired by Ralph off of “Cool World.”
And long before I worked in the field, I saw “Wizards” and thought it was kind of boring and preachy and the ending was pretty much ridiculous. Imagine if Timothy Treadwell had pulled out a lightsaber and killed that bear—that’s how out-of-left-field the ending to “Wizards” is.
1977, wasn’t that the year Mark Hamill starred in “Corvette Summer”? Oh, no—that was 1978.
Sorry.
I have not seen Matewan but I am a huge Sayles fan.
I’ll stick it in YOUR queue!! HA!
I do have 105 other titles in mine… :\
Personally, I think that lights-out-night thing is a nice sentiment, but until giant corporations do it, what we lowly citizens do won’t make a dent. The majority of greenhouse gases in the world come from factories and buildings, not cars or houses, believe it or not.
I used TurboTax online.
I think that main Lt. guy from “Control Room” ended up working for Al Jazeera. Also, AJ English was in the news recently—Bob Marash, the former CNN anchor was anchoring AJ English and quit because he said the main AJ was trying to control him too much.
I heard Condi is being considered for the VP slot with McCain! <3 <3 <3
I think Condi was not press secretary, I believe she was Bush’s National Security Adviser. And I beg to differ about Powell, he left without a scandal, but he did overtly lie to the UN to help encourage us into invading Iraq. Remember those “mobile weapons labs” and the little vile of crack cocaine—I mean—“anthrax”?
GOOD-BYE PICKLE!
Hey Bet, sorry to hear about your old boss that fired you after he paid for sex with you. So, he was licking forward to firing you?
I’m afraid I don’t follow you…
Perhaps Alan Arkin can play your boss in the movie version of your life?
Hey, Stennie, I’ve BEEN to that Nunnery in Burbank! It’s the one with all those women in the black outfits, right? I dated a girl there once.
Eventually we broke up when she left the church to become a ninja.
You’re right about the wireless access…to GOD.
Great fake memoirs. If I didn’t know better, I’d completely buy them as truth!
And so would Oprah.
Hey, don’t forget that you guys promised to play instruments on the 100th show!!
Sorry to use this forum but I tried to post a comment on THEPETE’s blog and I was disallowed because I somehow don’t have javascript enabled. I was very bummed because I really poured my heart into it. Boo Hoo to me.
I’m so sorry, Sal—my site’s been a little wonky after it’s recent server upgrade, but I think I’ve got the kinks out now. If it still gives you trouble, email me at thepetecomATgmail if you want. Or just email me directly and skip trying again. I hate when that kind of thing happens, too.