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Filtering by Category: podcasts

Radio, the Final Frontier, or To Go With Some Reasonable Measure of Boldness Where I Myself Have Not Personally Managed, Entirely, to Go Before

Chris Klimek

My first radio story will be broadcast today. You can listen to it here right now. The process of assembling and editing it was not all that much different from making these. Although in this case I had expert help -- WAMU managing producer Tara Boyle -- to make the piece sound better. The piece is about the starship Enterprise. That is, the impressively large, now-49-year-old model that appeared in every episode of Star Trek, 30 years before computer graphics became Hollywood's defacto visual effects methodology.

I initially imagined this segment as a Daily Show-style news package wherein I would feign indignation that an artifact as significant as the civilization-seeking, boldly-going Enterprise rates a spot only in the basement of the National Air & Space Museum. (Apparently they also have some spacecraft there that have actually flown in space.) That approach proved to a be little ambitious for my first time out of the gate.

I haven't spent enough time with the various spinoff series to get much of a read on them, but original-flavor Kirk-Spock-McCoy Star Trek is a thing I love. My favorite formal thing about the story is that I managed to use, chronologically, music from three eras of Trek: Alexander Courage's 1966 theme for TV series, two snippets of James Horner's score for The Wrath of Khan from 1982, and finally, Michael Giacchino's theme from the 2009 Trek reboot directed by J.J. Abrams.

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categories Radio, podcasts, audio
tags Metro Connection, Star Trek, space, Jim Garvin, Margaret Weitekamp, National Air & Space Museum

Pop Culture Happy Hour #161: Captain Phillips and What's Making Us Cry

Chris Klimek

Naturally I thought of a theory about why one of the songs I mentioned affects me so profoundly as soon as producer Nick Fountain turned off the mics in NPR's Studio 46 and episode #161 of Pop Culture Happy Hour -- on which I was honored to be a guest -- wrapped. But fortunately for you, dear listener, the three full-time panelists on this weeks's show -- Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and Trey Graham -- were all on top of their games. Their usual fourth man, my pal-for-life Glen Weldon, was on top of a raft or something, vacationing in Grand Cayman.

You can hear the episode in web browser here or download it from iTunes here. 

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categories podcasts
tags Pop Culture Happy Hour, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, Wes Anderson, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, SMOKE, Wayne Wang, Paul Auster, James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem, podcasts, Juan Ortiz, Dante Ferretti

The Cavil Over Henry Cavill, and other thoughts on Man of Steel

Chris Klimek

1. Pop Culture Happy Hour

I was delighted to sit in on this week’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, a Very Special Episode we -- okay, I -- have decided to call "The Cavil Over Henry Cavill." The A-topic this week was the arrival of Man of Steel, the muscled-up, darkened-down reboot of Superman film franchise that is, we all agree, short on humor. Also short on height. Zing!

Any regular listener to the show will know that Glen Weldon, my pal-for-life and 25 percent of the show’s regular lineup (along with host Linda Holmes and Stephen Thompson and Trey Graham), just spent the better part of two years researching and writing the marvelous Superman: The Unauthorized Biography. I recently ran a freezing cold 12-mile death race wearing a Superman T-shirt, so our credentials are roughly equivalent.

But they didn’t exactly need a second longtime Supes fan. I snuck in by mocking Henry Cavill’s average-ish height. He is, for the record, exactly as tall as I am if you believe IMDB, an authority on which actor heights seem to be self-reported.

“I think he makes you feel short,” Linda teased me during the show.

Ouch. But I am not alone. My film-critic crush Dana Stevens said on the Slate Culture Gabfest this week -- an episode featuring the Gabfest debut of one Glen (Superman:The Unauthorized Biography) Weldon --  that she kept picturing Cavill “standing on a milk crate. Amy Adams seems strapping compared to him.”

Cavill’s performance in the movie is the one element we all agreed worked splendidly. Otherwise we differed in our assessments, although it’s clear I liked it more than Linda, who liked slightly more than half of it, and more than Steven, who hated it.... which means he still may have appreciated it more than G-Weld, who in various podcast appearances this week has called the film “small” and “evil” and likened it to a Transformers film. I understand why he said that, but that’s still way harsh, guy.


 

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categories Movies, podcasts
tags Pop Culture Happy Hour, MAN OF STEEL, Glen Weldon, podcasts

Yulemix 2012, Drop'd! It's time to Stay Hungry to Feed the World

Chris Klimek

I don't have a Christmas tree in my apartment yet. My friends haven't seen me in weeks. My editors are all ready to fire me. I've been avoiding mirrors, but I assume I look like Ted Kaczynski.

It's all for a noble cause: Every November & early December I fall into a four-to-six week time warp attempting to create the funniest and most reverent, most entertaining and most beguiling Christmas mixtape possible. (You may have read the essay I wrote about this project recently in the Washington Post. If you haven't, please do.)

It is my great pleasure to unveil now for your hall-decking enjoyment entry No. 007 in my  Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable series. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the future of Christmas merry-making enforcement, Stay Hungry to Feed the World.  In keeping with the perpetually inflating ethos of this project, it's the longest one yet. When it comes to Christmas, less is less. And more? Is just the most.

PLEASE NOTE: These are large files; each side is a little more than an hour long and they're encoded at high bitrates. It may take a minute or two after you click the play button for you to hear anything, but have faith.

Side A

I can't tell you how thrilled I was to learn one of my boyhood heroes -- seven-time Mr. Olympia, five-time Mr. Universe, living tissue-over-a-microprocessor-controlled-hyperalloy-combat chassis former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- was available and willing to serve as master of ceremonies for this year's yulmemix.

I don't like to brag, but Arnold and I have been friends for years, ever since he brought me in to do an emergency script polish on his 2001 action thriller Collateral Damage. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD.

Look, I don't need you to tell me that Collateral Damage, as released, is no Predator, or even -- let's be honest -- Raw Deal. All I can tell you is you should've seen the Ambien-shooter of a script they were going to make before I got there. It would've made Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life seem like, I dunno, Taylor Hackford's Proof of Life. (Full disclosure: I have never actually watched a film in its entirety that did not star Arnold Schwarzenegger.)

Anyway, Schwarz -- that's what his good friends call him -- and I got to be very close. We used to tease one another: "How much did you squat this morning?" And the answer was always, "How much did you squat?" Invariably the other person would reply, "I asked you first!" And then we'd both be like, "Let's both say it at the same time -- JINX!" And then we'd laugh until we wept.

I have fond memories of those long, languid Sunday afternoons when we'd ride our Harleys up the Pacific Coast Highway to Neptune's Net. Sometimes just for a laugh Schwarz would strip naked in the parking lot, then saunter into the bar, face down the 200-odd bikers inside, and announce, "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle." And these tatted-up lifers would just be trampling one another to give him the keys to their hogs. I swear that Schwarz could never get one of these guys to fight him. He used to get really frustrated by that. I'd do my best to cheer him up: "Hey Schwarz, don't let it get you down man, you were Mr. Olympia for like 15 years. And we'll always have Collateral Damage." Except we didn't, really, not in the end. Hey, Andrew Davis had made The Fugitive. How were we supposed to know he would phone this one in?

But I digress. Schwarz was a big part of the success of my 2007 yulemix, Santa's Got a Big Old Bagge, so I was thrilled to offer him an expanded role here. The Austrian Oak favors us with his recollections and musings on success throughout the album. In celebration of his return, I have reprised a handful of songs from five years ago, but they only add up to about 11 minutes out of 130. When Rhett Miller very gamely agreed to sit for an interview about writing Christmas songs, how I could not play "Here It Is, Christmastime," the Old 97's (sic) yulejam that I first used upon its release in 2007?

Side B

LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This set has some. Lots, actually! Poetry and prose. But there're also a few stray F-bombs bandied about. Parental whatever whatevered.

Total Recall, Schwarz's revelation-packed autobiography, is in stores now.

NOW PLAY THIS CHRISTMAS LOUD! I command it! These halls ain't gonna deck themselves!

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categories music, podcasts
tags Old 97s, Rhett Miller, Patterson Hood, Drive-By Truckers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, yulemixes, Christmas, yuletunes, Stay Hungry to Feed the World

Wherein I return to Pop Culture Happy Hour, and everyone attempts a Schwarzenegger impression except me.

Chris Klimek

I was delighted to appear on Pop Culture Happy Hour again last week. (Listen here, you.) The show's A-topic was movie action heroes, inspired by the publication of Arnold Schwarzengger's memoir Total Recall (which I'd only half-read prior to taping, on account of its 624-page girth and the fact I'm reading it in tandem with Salman Rushdie's equally substantial memoir Joseph Anton) and, I thought, Taken 2(which I haven't seen, and won't until it turns up on Encore Action at 11:30 p.m. on a Tuesday eight months from now).

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categories podcasts
tags Bruce Springsteen, galleries, Mike Cooley, movies, podcasting, Salman Rushdie, Trey Graham, Stephen Thompson, Daniel Craig, James Bond, NPR Monkey See, podcasts, Joe Haldeman, Drive-By Truckers, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Glen Weldon, Pop Culture Happy Hour, Dirty Harry, The Forever War

Righting the Outlaw Wrongs in Brooklyn: Notes on The Thrilling Adventure Hour's first out-of-L.A. show

Chris Klimek

I finally saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark this weekend, but that was just to kill an evening in New York City in advance of the event that had precipitated the trip from DC: The very first East Coast performance of The Thrilling Adventure Hour.

I'm glad you asked! The Thrilling Adventure Hour is a podcast that my pal Glen Weldon turned me onto early last year. It lost no time shooting to the top of my list of favorite things. Recorded at the Los Angeles nightclub Largo at the Coronet the first weekend of each month, TAHis a collection of hilarious serial narratives that affectionately parody the pre-television radio dramas I discovered when I lived in LA and was spending too many of my precious few hours of life in my car.

The best of them are the two that bookend the monthly live show.

Sparks Nevada, Marshal on Mars is basically The Lone Ranger set on the Red Planet, only with more musical numbers, like its marvelous theme song. It stars Marc Evan Jackson as Sparks and Mark Gagliardi as "his faithful Martian companion, Croach the Tracker," whose fidelity to strict codes of Martian honor often has him "under onus" to the Earth-man he works for, who means well but is sometimes a bit of a jerk.

There's a rotating feature in the middle, plus some funny fake commercials for fake sponsors Workjuice Coffee and Patriot Brand Cigarettes.

The closing feature is Beyond Belief, starring Paget Brewster and Paul F. Tompkins as Sadie and Frank Doyle, a high-functioning, alcoholic 1930s society couple who help people with their supernatural troubles. Especially if those supernatural troubles stand in the way of the Doyles' next drink.

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categories podcasts
tags Ben Acker, Paul F. Tompkins, podcasts, Ben Blacker, Thrilling Adventure Hour, Mark Gagliardi, Brooklyn, Spider-Man, Glen Weldon, travel, Marc Evan Jackson, Paget Brewster