April 13th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 13
Another blast from my MySpace past! These are a pair of blogs I wrote about the final chapter in the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Revenge of the Sith. This first blog was written on May 18, 2005, after seeing an advanced screening before the film officially opened in theaters.
Don’t Believe the Star Wars Hype!!!
It’s no coincidence that “Sith” is a scramble of “Shit” Okay…that is too harsh. But The movie is not the amazing piece of Star Wars worth genius that Lucas, Spielberg, and even Kevin Smith are making it out to be. I don’t post this to convince you not to see the movie…I just don’t want your hopes as high as mine were when I went to see it. Go see it. You will more than likely enjoy it, but it will not meet your expectations.
I know what you’re thinking, “After Episode I and II my expectations are pretty low.”
You say that but admit it. All this talk on tv, radio, magazines…even the internet…you’re slowly getting convinced that this movie is a giant leap forward from Phantom and Clones. It’s not. It is better. I’ll go so far to say it’s much better. (Especially much better than Phantom) but it’s still not a “great” movie. And it’s still quite clearly in the Episode I and II ballpark and not anywhere near “IV, V, or VI.” I had bought into the hype that this was the movie that was gonna redeem the other two because it was so awesome. It doesn’t and it isn’t.
I will say the movie has many good points: Yoda looks amazing! (They’ve really spent some time improving CGI because he looks like a real…um…green thing) General Grevious actually looks pretty good too Ewan McGreggor turns in another fine performance! It is cool to hear Darth Vader talk again The darkness is definitely there. There are parts that are way darker than Empire ever was.
But they are balanced by the bad points: There are still glaring inconsistencies with the real Star Wars Trilogy. Anakin is still a whiny bitch. The special effects are still too phony looking (Less so than the first two, I’ll readily admit) Much of the acting is very wooden (Sammy…why?) Mace goes out like a BITCH! (Hell no! He’s a Bad Motha F***a!) R2 D2 is almost the Jar Jar Binks of this movie. And he again has new abilities that seem like they might have come in handy during IV, V and/or VI …ugh
All in all, it’s just a movie and the world will keep spinning and I will go about the rest of my life relatively unchanged All I’m saying is keep your expectations reasonably low. Better to say “Tim was way off the mark, that movie wasn’t so bad.” than to say, “What the hell is wrong with Kevin Smith?! I got my hopes up for THAT?!”
May the Force be with you.
That’s all well and good. Typical Star Wars nerd hating on Episode III. Nothing too amazing right? Well check out my very next blog from May 25…
Star Wars Hype: Second Thoughts
Okay…now I’ve read the novel (Yes actually read it! No book on tape this time) and I’ve seen it a second time and while I still don’t like Hayden’s performance. (He would have done well to study James Earl Jones’s tempo and manner of speech to turn his darker moments to more sinister rather than whiny.) I enjoyed the movie more. Knowing some of the things that the book expands upon made the movie feel a little more complete. And when I sat back and watched it without expectations it was indeed a fun little movie. Whether or not it fits into the “Star Wars” mythos and grandeur is irrelevant…it was a fun movie to watch and that’s all it’s supposed to be.
Wow. I actually paid to watch it a second time and then found excuses not to hate it. What a qumph!
April 12th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 12
You may have read back in September that MySpace had deleted all our blogs from their website. Well, they actually sent them to the people who asked for them. ANd I was one of those people. So today, for some easy content, I’m going to take you back to February 28, 2005 to read what 28 year-old Tim had on his mind:
I didn’t get invited to my high school reunion! If I hadn’t seen my room mate’s invitation on the kitchen table, I never would have known about it. That’s ..@$%ed up! I mean. I received my fair share of snubs back in high school, but I don’t think I was THAT disliked!
“Hey the whole class is getting back together for a reunion.”
“That’d be great…oh wait….that Tim guy isn’t coming, is he?”
“Good lord no!”
It goes without saying, now that I know when the reunion is, I’m going to crash it. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be the one who’s done the least with his life. I’ve got a job that, while fun, is not exactly gonna put me on the Fortune 500 list anytime soon…in fact I’d be lucky to make the Fortune 29,408,223. I’m not married or even in a serious relationship. I’ve still never left the country…that’s right, not even Mexico or Canada! How is that possible?! Even drunk on a bet you make it to Canada!* I am living the dream of being a stand-up comic, but based on the three times I was booed off the stage in high school, they’re not gonna be too impressed with that. But I’m going anyway, you know why? Me neither! I wasn’t invited and I have nothing to brag about but I’m going anyway. What kinda dumb ass am I? no wonder they didn’t invite me!
*That bit of comedy was courtesy of Lewis Black making fun of our 43rd President. Sadly the same lack of culture critique applies to me as well.
I actually didn’t end up going to this reunion. Did I chicken out? Nope. Did I decide it wasn’t worth it? Nope. I just forgot what weekend it was. I had every intention of going until I got to work one morning and found the message “Where were you?” in my inbox from one of the people who DID go to the reunion. Rebel fail!
April 11th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 11
I probably should be blogging about Stephen Colbert or the new Captain America movie…but there will be time for that on this week’s podcast. Right now, my son is taking his nap in the next room and I’m reflecting on our day today.
WARNING: “Feet kicking” ahead
Pictured: “Live entertainment” for a 2 year-old
I love Fridays because they are “Daddy Days.” It’s just me and the kid. Not that I don’t love having mommy around (I did marry her…on purpose and everything). But Fridays, I set the schedule, and make the calls, and deal with the repercussions of those calls. I never feel more like “dad” than on Fridays. Read the rest of this entry »
April 10th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 10
Children’s books seem to get a pass on criticism…but I don’t know why. A lot of these books could use a few more rewrites before they hit the shelves. One such book is Froggy Eats Out
My son is obsessed with the “Froggy” series of books. Froggy is kind of like Curios George, except he’s a frog and he’s not so much curious as he is a total screw up. I don’t mean the loveable kinda of screw up like Charlie Brown either. A running theme I’ve noticed in children’s books is main characters who behave poorly and receive little to no consequences for it. That brings us to Froggy Eats Out. Read the rest of this entry »
April 9th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 9
In the spirit of my commitment to replace the misogynist term “bitch” with the gender neutral insult, “qumph,” I’ve started looking at other ways I use language that could use some improvement. I found one in my own stand up act.
I have a joke in my act about getting old….well it’s actually about MySpace vs Facebook as a metaphor for getting old. In part of the joke, I lament how I miss the women on MySpace because they were, “whores” who posted scantily clad pictures of themselves where as the women on Facebook just post boring pictures of food an their kids.
The point of the joke (and man does this process of analyzing the joke drain all the comedy right out of it) was that there aren’t two different types of women. My friend list from MySpace just got older and their priorities shifted. I can’t blame you for not believing me after reading this explanation of the joke, but it usually gets a pretty good laugh.
But recently, I was re-listening to an old set of mine where I told this joke and it sounded overly misogynistic to my ear*. So I’m thinking about revisiting the language of this joke. Specifically, I’d like to remove the word “whores” as a descriptor of the MySpace ladies. I think it makes it sound like I’m disparaging them for taking scantily clad photos…which I would never want to do for anyone. I’m not a fan of the term “slut shaming,” but I feat this might be the message folks are left with when they hear my joke. Which is unfortunate, because the message I’m trying to convey is the opposite. So how do I go about changing the language from slut shaming to slut celebrating? And will that even matter as the point of view of the joke could be viewed as, “women only have value when they dress sexy for my amusement?” This is, again, not my point. Women have much to value. Sexy dressing is just a “bonus,” if you will. An extra thing that I got used to (in the “story” of this joke) that is now gone.
I’m sure that comedians reading this are appalled that I would worry about my jokes offending people. (I’m totally kidding…no comedians are reading this.) That is also not what I’m worried about. My act is a representation of me….who I am, and what I believe in. So by taking a critical look at how I present my opinions of women on stage, I am actually taking a closer look at the misogynistic traits of Tim the guy. If I can see them in the act, maybe I can see them in me and hopefully correct them and be the dude I want to be and the example that my son deserves.
Thus completes the least funny thing ever written about comedy. Nailed it!
*This has NOTHING to do with Suey Park. In fact, if I knew she hated this joke the way it is, I would open with it every time just so she’d leave my show)
(I added the watermark because this entry is technically their property now)
So to me, the joke is just “don’t put too many bumper stickers on your car. It will mess up the paint.” But others in the comment section assumed I had a more political agenda. If you notice, the stickers all have a left leaning political bent. So some folks thought I was saying that liberal bumper stickers specifically will lower the resale value of your car.
It’s fine if people think that. I can’t control my joke after I’ve released it into the wild…but it got me thinking. Did the judges pick this entry based on the joke I intended to make or the joke I accidentally made by picking this random image of a car with liberal bumper stickers on it.
Then I remembered that $100 spends the same either way! WOO HOO!!!
April 7th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 7
I’ve finally gotten around to starting our taxes (because my wife says we can’t see Captain America 2 until we get our taxes done…responsible adulthood sucks) and I know I’m not the first to have this opinion, but I HATE TAXES.
Not in a right wing, “Keep your dirty government hands of my damn money” kinda way.
And not in a left wing, “I don’t want my taxes dollars to support your bloody wars and torture” kinda way.
It’s not about the money at all…I just really hate all this stupid paper work I have to do! C’mon, Uncle Sam! You make our employers and banking institutions record all our payment data and then they send us a stupid form and then we enter the info onto another stupid form and send it to you. Why can’t they just send the forms to you and you can figure this crap out? I don’t have time for all this 1040-A, W2, 1099-INT…am I paying taxes or is this some Star Wars droid fan fic?! Just figure out how much you need and send me a bill.
Hey Tim we took $1,069.88 for your taxes this year. If you want to contest this, you can deal with all this BS paperwork. But we’re betting you’d rather just cut us a check and go back to binge watching Justice League Unlimited on Netflix.
-The Government
You would win that bet, government. You would win that bet.
April 6th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
This week Andy’s Whitness gets hm out of trouble, Noah finishes Breaking Bad, and Tim hates ants. Then it’s Zardoz vs. Barb Wire in the “Worst. Movie. Ever. Tournament.”
00:00 – 01:12 Pre show
01:12 – 06:11 Intro
06:11 – 35:17 How the #$%* was your week?
35:17 – 55:07 Worst. Movie. Ever. Tournament
55:07 – 56:31 Wrap Up
56:31 – 57:24 ?????
[CONTENT WARNING]TANcast features mature language and immature hosts but is NOT a representation of the stand up act of Tim Babb. Listener discretion is advised.
April 6th, 2014 . by Tim Babb (TANcast's #1 Host/Editor Fan)
Tim Babb’s April Foolishness
Day 6
As often happens on the podcast, I forgot something until after we were done recording. This time, I have more to add about the suck that is Barb Wire.
First off, I wish I had grabbed the trailer audio BEFORE we recorded. YOu may have noticed that it didn’t have a lot of talking. Observe:
Her acting was SO bad they only dared to put two of her spoken lines in the trailer! Even then, when she says, “Don’t…call me babe.” It sounds less “bad ass” and more “awkward class presentation.”
The other thing is the main bad guy. The one I mentioned says “This reminds me of my favorite song, ‘I Got You Babe*'” before Barb Wire gives her super-awesome catch phrase again. What I failed to mention is that for most of the movie, he is an ice cold, emotionless evil guy. But then in the last act some one flipped a switch on that dude and he went bonkers! Just over the top acting that Jim Carrey would be proud of…or maybe ashamed of. I’m not quite sure.
Okay…that’s it. Not ground breaking but two more jabs at that movie before we rip the next batch of flicks a new one. Sooner or later we’re going to have to stop round one and start pitting the winners against each other. So if there’s a bad movie you think needs to be in this contest, be sure and let us know before it’s too late.
*Also Andy’s joke, “Our land could be decimated by civil war, it would still not remove from our consciousness the wonder and majesty that is Sonny and Cher,” deserved a much bigger laugh than it got. I laughed quite heartily when I was editing the show together. Way to go, Andy!
