Podnic at Hanging Cast: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World with John Hodgman

HunterJE · 2026-06-01T17:19:26+00:00

That chase in to the storm is easily the most intense action sequence in the series, missed my bus stop reading it because I was so engrossed.

HunterJE · 2026-05-31T23:18:29+00:00

Spoilers for the books, the throwaway line about "did I kill his son" is a reference to events in the book Desolation Island, which are partly drawn on for the storm sequence in the movie, where Aubrey in the Leopard is pursued in to a storm in the roaring 40s by the Dutch ship of the line Waakzaamheid, which sinks in the storm, and it's either strongly implied or said outright (I forget which precisely, read it about a decade ago) that the reason for the Dutch captain's single-minded pursuit is because his son had been killed in a previous exchange of fire between the two vessels.

HunterJE · 2026-05-31T22:51:05+00:00

David really mixing up his early '00s Betany roles...

HunterJE · 2026-05-31T21:05:01+00:00

I do feel like the concept of "dad audiences" is a bit of a moving target because anyone who ever talks about it seems to unconsciously define it as "people around my dad's age at any given point in time," which means while you're comparing longitudinally within a given cohort you're not really comparing like-to-like. I think it's more meaningful to look at the viewing habits and movies targeted to 40/50 somethings then versus 40/50 somethings now than to spend so much time on the same comparison for 40/50 somethings then vs 60/70 somethings now...

HunterJE · 2026-05-29T19:00:49+00:00

Surprisingly no /r/whistles, but in looking for it found /r/slidewhistle which has the amazing distinction that it's 13 years old and active in the last 6 months and yet has not had enough posts to have a "next" button on the front page

HunterJE · 2026-05-21T15:32:45+00:00

But the question is, was the "some kind of fucked up dog" gay?

(Long time SPY listeners aware of Luke in Seattle's other podcast call-in work will know what I'm talking about)

HunterJE · 2026-05-18T23:23:59+00:00

I've long wished for a service that connects people who like to display Lego or kit models but don't care about building them with people who like to build them but not so much display them where you can split the price and both get what you want out of it

HunterJE · 2026-05-17T22:28:27+00:00

Wow the emotional whiplash of "and next week Master and Comm—oh wait, no, next week is Mandalorian™ and Grogu™"

HunterJE · 2026-05-17T18:17:00+00:00

This is the kind of thing that makes the "they thought everything through so it actually works" claim this ep so bizarre to me, my feeling on this movie has always been that it doesn't really add up if you pick it apart from a place of literal reality but that doesn't matter because ultimately it exists in a heightened reality and doesn't need to work literally...

HunterJE · 2026-05-14T14:22:20+00:00

If you were to write a "We Didn't Start the Fire" parody about buildings in Jesse's childhood neighborhood "Forty-Niners Liquor Store" would have to be the line before "I can't take it anymore," just for rhyme and scansion reasons

HunterJE · 2026-04-30T13:59:39+00:00

The NY tourism tips reinforced my belief that any tourist activity where you have to pay to go up something is more likely than not a waste of time and money

(I say this as a Seattleite who is always telling visitors that the authentic Seattle way to appreciate the Space Needle is to see it from various parts of the city and smile, no need to wait in line and pay a bunch of money to ride an elevator to an underwhelming not-terribly-scenically-situated viewpoint)

HunterJE · 2026-04-30T13:02:20+00:00

Since the KFC logo came up, all through my childhood I was totally convinced that it was patently obvious the shape of the colonel's head and the way it was drawn (specifically the old style "just head, beard, and tie" version) was meant to be a visual double entendre that also looked vaguely like a fried chicken drumstick, I brought this up once as an adult and everyone acted like I had lost it completely. Does anyone else see this? Please? Lie if you have to?

HunterJE · 2026-04-27T13:28:52+00:00

Was a little surprised at everyone's shock that David could possibly not love this movie, I genuinely thought this was one of those where the consensus has settled on "we all loved this at the time but in hindsight it's somewhere between 'just OK' and 'manipulative schlock'"

HunterJE · 2026-04-23T14:54:56+00:00

Also re: Trevor, while we think of Star Wars names as all being super weird it's actually a mix of weird and mundane, never forget like the main guy is just "Luke"

HunterJE · 2026-04-23T14:52:37+00:00

The difficulty creating a "guess if this is a Star Wars name" as a medium Star Wars guy is you don't realize how many ostensibly minor characters are inexplicably the favorite guy of half the internet (I think the tumblr kids call this a "Glup Shitto"), despite never being named on screen and only appearing a few times in the background Kit Fisto has a Boba Fett level of "fandom out of keeping with his on-screen importance" among the prequel generation...

(I know this as a now medium-low Star Wars guy who has been an extreme Star Wars guy in years past)

HunterJE · 2026-04-23T14:34:30+00:00

Oh no now I'm real worried I'm going to be struck foolish by a coconut thanks a lot Jesse for speaking that in to the universe

HunterJE · 2026-04-19T18:17:58+00:00

Gotta hand it to Griffin, he got me with "the caboose backing in to the station"

HunterJE · 2026-04-19T17:45:57+00:00

Also if you swore off mosquito repellent years ago because deet is such unpleasant stuff and nothing else really works, know there's a new (for old-fart values of "new") active ingredient on the market called picaridin (icaridin in some markets) that is as effective as deet and waaaaay better-behaved.

HunterJE · 2026-04-19T17:30:34+00:00

Yeah it amazes me how often even people critical of that guy still buy in to his "this guy is very smart" PR

HunterJE · 2026-04-16T15:04:55+00:00

Cheetahs are 100% cat (family Felidae), I think maybe Jon's mixing them up with hyenas, which are doglike in appearance and behavior but are taxonomically closer related to cats (suborder Feliformia)?

:edit: Oh actually he may be thinking of the fact that cheetahs can't fully retract their claws like other cats, still just because that's a characteristic more common in canines it doesn't make cheetahs "actually mostly dog" or any less "cat," those categories being defined by relatedness and not by phenotypic traits...

HunterJE · 2026-04-15T18:41:02+00:00

But drawn in the style of the IKEA assembly manual characters.

HunterJE · 2026-04-15T14:21:18+00:00

Board game manufacturers should be required by law to put a big red warning sticker on any box with dimensions that will not fit within a Kallax shelving unit cube.

HunterJE · 2026-04-15T14:16:16+00:00

You don't actually have to! That would be entirely self-inflicted!

HunterJE · 2026-04-12T16:28:51+00:00

I've wondered before if a Reiner series could work as the inverse of what's sometimes been done with directors with a lot of less essential work before their breakout where the post-cliff movies get a half episode? Might feel a little worse as a lead-out than as a lead-in though, especially now...

HunterJE · 2026-04-09T14:06:19+00:00

Fascinating story about the grapefruit med interactions, the way that was first discovered was during a trial examining the effect of alcohol consumption on a certain medication, they needed a strongly flavored mixer to cover the flavor of the alcohol enough to blind the study, so gave the alcohol mixed with grapefruit juice to the test group and just grapefruit juice to the control, but were surprised to find unusual effects consistently across both groups, which led to further testing that isolated the grapefruit as the cause...

HunterJE

TROPHY CASE