We’re back after an office move and my trip to SXSW, where I got to hang out with Our Friend Bill Nye the Science Guy. (More on that on the site soon!) This week we talk about the major astrophysics announcement out of Harvard, the suckiness of Flixster, why we’re totally justified for our online piracy, and our Editors’ Picks.
Check out the episode right here, or subscribe on iTunes and leave a nice review!
We started the show off by recapping some of the SXSW adventures I had. Without giving too much away before the videos go up, I bow-tie-raced Bill Nye and got to ask him a bunch of reader-submitted questions. If your #OurFriendBillNye question wasn’t the one I read on StarTalk Live, then there’s still hope that you’ll get an answer in video form in the coming days/weeks.
Did I mention Bill Nye is great and is our friend?
We also discuss the recent backlash Warner Bros. is facing after cramming Flixster/Ultraviolet digital versions of the Veronica Mars movie down the throats of Kickstarter backers. We all recount our failed attempts at using the terrible streaming service, and go off on a tangent where we all kind of admit to pirating content sometimes and try to justify our actions.
In bigger news, researchers at Harvard yesterday announced evidence of gravitational waves that support the Big Bang Theory, then everyone yells at me for correcting Dan when he says it “proves” the Big Bang Theory. It’s a very exciting discovery, but the findings have yet to be peer reviewed, and it’s a little odd that they were announced at a press conference rather than in a scientific journal. Still. Exciting!
We also got off on a tangent about the show The Big Bang Theory and talk about what Mayim Bialik said on an episode of StarTalk Live about the characters on the show being more than their stereotypes. It was an interesting point, but we’re not sure it’s convinced us that the show isn’t just about mocking nerd stereotypes.
I don’t remember if we talked about it on the show before, but it comes up a lot in the office where we implore HBO to make HBO Go a separate service we can pay for to stream their content so we don’t have to pirate it. We feel bad about it, just not bad enough not to do it.
As for your Editors’ Picks:
Carolyn isn’t happy the HBO show Hello Ladies won’t be continuing, but she likes the season it had:
I’m a longtime fan of Stephen Merchant, ricky Gervais’ oft-neglected creative partner on the UK Office, Extras and The Ricky Gervais Show, so naturally I was excited for Merchant’s solo American debut on HBO. Tragically Hello Ladies was cancelled after just eight episodes, but the finale will satisfy fans and a rumored series special is in the works, so I suggest (ahem) pirating the series as soon as possible. Unless you’re a lucky HBO sonofagun that is, in which case by all means watch it legally, this is a quality show worth paying for and just might become the Freaks and Geeks of the egomaniacal beanpole set.
Dan is trying to inherit the Hawthorne Wipes fortune with a Community-inspired game:
While keeping tabs on Reddit’s quest to turn the MeowMeowBeenz app from Community into a real app, I found out they’re also working on a playable version of Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne. It’s a recreation of the game they all played on the show to compete for Pierce’s inheritance, and it’s awesome.
You can choose which character from the show you want to play as, and each has a bunch of different costumes including “darkest timeline” costumes with beards and missing limbs where appropriate. Then go ahead and live out one of the best episodes of Community ever on your computer. It’s still a work in progress, so you can help by reporting any bugs and making suggestions on the game’s subreddit:Â http://www.reddit.com/r/Hawkthorne
The subreddit also has the free download for both Windows and OSX versions, so if you’re a Community fan and you haven’t tried it yet, you should go and give it a try.
And Victoria is taking some inspiration from an unlikely source — Skeletor:
(Image via Skeletor Is Love)
This week, my pick is Skeletor is Love, a Tumblr devoted to positive, life-affirming image macros of Skeletor. Positive affirmation Tumblrs aren’t new or anything, but this is definitely the funniest one I’ve ever seen, if only because it’s pretty much a requirement that you read all of them in Skeletor’s actual voice. Plus, they’re actually full of some really great advice and phrases you can use on your road to self-actualization, if that’s a thing you’re interested in. Love yourself and all that, friends. But do it because Skeletor told you so.
My pick this week is the upcoming HBO show Silicon Valley which I saw a preview of at SXSW. I wrote more extensively about it in my review, but in short:
Silicon Valley will be the best nerd-centric show on television when it premieres. Besides a few jokes about the main characters being uncomfortable around women that fall flat, geeks stereotypes aren’t the jokes. That’s typical for Mike Judge. Look at King of the Hill as an example. It’s a show about a specific section of American culture, but it doesn’t parody that culture. The humor comes from the characters in both shows, and it’s a recurring thing in a lot of Judge’s work.
It manages to put nerds at the forefront of a mainstream show without making clowns out of the characters. The characters on Silicon Valley all come across as real people, due largely to the great cast involved.
The lack of female characters on the show is a little jarring and seems like an unnecessary problem to have, but the show is still really great. I think you’ll like it. Now if only HBO would make HBO Go available as a separate service so everyone could watch it…
(Image via Geekosystem on Instagram)
- On the last episode I spoke to GE Global Marketing Director Linda Boff
- We really dig Cara Santa Maria’s new podcast
- We explained why the doors of the General Lee were welded shut for Judge John Hodgman
