#Silly Old Bear Podcast

[arthurdrakoni]

Silly Old Bear is a delightful adaptation of the original Winnie the Pooh stories from A.A. Milne. It is great for both the young and the young at heart. This is my review.

I am a lifelong fan of Winnie the Pooh. I grew up with the Disney cartoons, and watched the video tapes constantly. Well, when I wasn’t watching Thomas the Tank Engine or The Tales of Beatrix Potter, of course. Though I’ve gotten older, there’s still very much a special place in my heart for Winnie the Pooh. So, naturally, I leapt at the opportunity to Silly Old Bear. 

Edward J. Bear, known to his friends as Winnie the Pooh, lives in a house in the forest. He has many friends, such as Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, and of course Christopher Robin. There’s lots of adventures to be had for a bear of very little brain. Pooh and friends will learn many lessons, and have many laughs, during their (mis)adventures. So, why not journey into the forest, and send some time with everyone’s favorite silly old bear? 

One fine and blustery day on Twitter, I saw a tweet. It was one of those “these people you follow also follow this” sort of tweets. It was promoting an upcoming audio drama called Silly Old Bear. It was to be an adaptation of the original Winnie the Pooh stories by A.A. Milne. It was created by @saucymincks, who has created several other audio dramas, such as @seenandnotheardpod. There was only a trailer available, but I decided to give it a listen. It was love at first sound. The gentle, calming, whimsical music perfectly capture the spirit of Winnie the Pooh. That theme music always manages to put a smile on my face whenever I hear it. And then there was the actor who played the titular silly old bear. Ashley Hunt was obviously not copying the Disney version of Pooh, but my goodness, did he ever nail Pooh’s character. The entire trailer was less than a minute long, but I was sold. I eagerly awaited launch day. 

The voice actors don’t attempt to copy the voice actors from the Disney cartoons. I suspect that this is done deliberately. That way, it helps to give Silly Old Bear its own unique identity. Well, that, and Disney’s legal team probably wouldn’t like it if Silly Old Bear sounded too similar to the Disney cartoons. The casting in Silly Old Bear also returns Winnie the Pooh to its British roots. The Disney cartoons used American voice actors, which has lead to the misconception that Winnie the Pooh is of American origin. To the contrary, it is quite British. In fact, A.A. Milne was considered one of Britain’s finest satirists and playwrights before he wrote Winnie the Pooh. 

The cast of Silly Old Bear is a veritable who’s who of British audio drama voice actors.  We have among many others, Sarah Golding as the narrator, Felix Trench as Rabbit, and Karim Kronfli as Owl. 

Our title character is voiced by Ashley Hunt. He does an absolutely fantastic job of capturing Pooh’s child-like innocence and optimism. Piglet is voiced by Sophs Hughes, who uses they/them pronouns. They nailed Piglet’s nervous and perpetually paranoid demeanor. Their performance as Piglet was one of my absolute favorites of the entire cast. It was equal parts cute and hilarious. 

And of course I must give praise Ethan Hunt, son of Ashley Hunt, as Roo. What can I say? He is just utterly adorable. I see a very bright voice acting future for young Ethan.

Silly Old Bear fills me with warm and fuzzy feelings, and always manages to put a smile on my face. It is an absolute joy from start to finish. It is an excellent audio drama for both the young and the young at heart. You certainly won’t want to miss it if you’re a lifelong Winnie the Pooh fan. 

Have you listened to Silly Old Bear?  If so, what did you think?

Link to the full review on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-audio-file-silly-old-bear.html?m=1

[skyfullofpods]

296 is Silly Old Bear!

An audio adaptation of the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne, suitable for all ages.

One season of 10 episodes currently available.

[trace-of-a-song]

Revisiting the Hundred Acres

Nestled in amongst the other projects I'm having a good time with is this. Revisiting and remixing music from the first book (season?) of Silly Old Bear to release as an album. It's probably going to take a little while to pick out the right bits and get everything ready, but everything about this music makes me feel good in a simple, nostalgic way! Plus, learning to make better videos is exciting too!

(Important note, this is an example of me Not Yet being better at making videos)

[woso-dreamzzz]

Outburst IV

Leah Williamson x Child!Reader

Summary: You go on a podcast

"And you know, as well as being a footballer and playing with Less and Tooney, you're also a mother to a little girl."

Any mention of you makes Leah smile and she glances off camera to where you're sitting with a crayon and a sheet of paper.

"Yeah," She says, that same dopey smile on her face as she tears her gaze away from you," She's four."

"And she's here today."

"Yeah, I almost didn't bring her because we're recording this so early but my mum had to cancel so she's just behind the camera. I think she's-"

"I'm drawin', Mum!" You call out and Leah grins.

"Are you, bug?"

"Uh-huh! Is it my turn yet?"

Leah glances at Vick Hope. "She loves a microphone. I may have promised her a turn on one of the mics in return for waking up so early today."

"Oh, yeah," Tooney says," We've got to have Bug on here."

"If you're okay with that?" Vick checks.

"Yeah. Honestly, I thought she would have interrupted more. She's very excited. Lovebug, do you want to come over here and you can have your turn?"

You're up like a shot, practically tripping over yourself to get to Leah.

The others have to hold in a coo as you come into view.

You'd arrived today in a big puffy coat and was immediately set up behind the camera, blocked by all the staff and the equipment.

Now they can see you clearly, in a pair of old Arsenal kit shorts but a white t-shirt instead of a jersey, black cardigan and a silly black hat just like Leah's, looking every bit her mini apart from the old Jordan shorts you're wearing.

"Alright." Leah lifts you up onto her lap and lowers her mic so it's more your size. "You happy now?"

You frown. "It's not like Auntie Alex's mic."

"Auntie Alex?" The strange woman that's not Less or Tooney asks.

"My auntie Alex always lets me use her mic at games because I have important things to say and mics help people hear me!"

"Alex Scott," Leah puts in, bouncing you on her lap slightly," Bug really loves her."

"Almost as much as I love Mummy!" You turn to look at the strange woman again. "My Mummy plays for Villa in Berm-ham."

"Birmingham," Leah interrupts again and you tilt your head back to look at her, patting her cheek.

"It's my turn now, mum," You tell her," You have to wait your turn to speak again."

Tooney sputters slightly and Alessia has to bite her lip to stop the laughter threatening to come out at Leah's affronted face as you land another condescending pat on her cheek.

"Mummy plays in Berm-ham," You say again," So I see her every other week. She plays for Villa but I like Arsenal more." You puff out your chest. "When I'm older, I'm gonna play for Arsenal."

"Bug already trains with us," Alessia says and you let her talk because she doesn't have to wait her turn because she doesn't share her microphone like you and Leah do," She's very good."

"And I go on camp! Sarina calls me up every time because I'm so good!"

"You must be," The strange but nice lady says," Because you've got two mummies who play football and you must work super hard."

"I do," You say, bobbing your head up and down," Mummy says one day I'm going to be scoring every game because I'm that good."

"We're very proud of our Bug," Leah says and you only let her have a little turn because she's being nice," She always does her very best."

"Enough for a puppy?"

Leah's face drops. "You've got Blu at Jordan's," She reminds you and you perk up suddenly, turning back to your new microphone again.

"Blu's my birthday buddy!" You announce gleefully," We're the same age! And we share a birthday!"

"Wow, that sounds really cool. You must really love your dog."

"I do! I do!"

"Do you miss him when you're on camp?"

You think for a moment. You've never really thought about if you miss Blu on camp before.

Camp is fun because you're got the other girls and auntie Keira and auntie Lucy and Mum and Bear. You've never really stopped to think about Blu when there's already so much to do at camp.

You shake your head. "I miss Bear more."

"Bear's Keira and Lucy's kid," Leah explains," They're best friends but they don't see each other too often because she lives in Barcelona."

"Bear's kind of funny," Tooney says," She's always nappin'."

"Don't be mean!" You snap suddenly, leaning all the way over to smack Tooney on the arm.

"Bug!" Leah groans," We've talk about using our nice hands. We don't hit."

You huff, sitting more firmly on Leah's lap again and crossing your arms over your chest. "No being mean about Bear! She naps because she's tired! Mum says napping is good, right?"

"That is right, Bug. I do say that."

You nod, turning back to the strange but nice lady. "Bear is my best friend and I love her."

Leah grins down at you, adjusting your hat slightly.

"Keira and I aren't huggers but those two certainly are. Always having a little cuddle those two are."

You frown, a little furrow in your brow. "But you are a hugger, Mum. You always give me cuddles."

"Well, yeah, Bug but I was talking-"

"You don't like my cuddles?"

"No, Bug that's not what I'm saying. I just meant-"

Your bottom lips wobbles and you move to slip off Leah's lap. "I'm sorry, mum. I won't have cuddles anymore if it makes you feel better. No more Bug Hugs. Promise!"

"No, Bug," Leah says firmly, pulling you closer into her body, arms curling around your body," I love Bug Hugs. I always want Bug Hugs from you."

[thelostconsultant]

Note: I have no explanation, I just had this idea while making coffee. Now I want to write that "team building event". Also, I can totally see reader yelling at Max at one point for something.

“You said things didn’t go well between you and Max in the beginning. How bad was the situation?” one of the podcasters asked. 

You leaned back, thinking back on your first year in F1. “The situation was so bad that Christian and Helmut had to intervene after the third or fourth race of the season. You know how some teams go out for dinner, or go play some sports as a form of team building? Well, that apparently wouldn’t have been enough, so they decided to take us to the middle of nowhere and leave us there as a part of a challenge.”

“On your own?”

“I mean, the PR and marketing teams saw this as a great opportunity, so they left a filming crew there with us. But what they did was give us a car, an old phone that didn’t have any kind of maps or proper internet connection, left us with food and water for two days, and an old school paper map. And then we were told we have to find our way back to civilization,” you recalled this memory with a laugh. 

The female podcaster started laughing and was fighting her tears when she spoke up. “Bear Grylls style? I somehow can’t see you two eating weird bugs or other animals you catch.”

Shaking your head, you took a sip of your water. “No, it was more like a Top Gear slash The Grand Tour kind of challenge. It was silly, really. But it worked, because we didn’t kill each other and we somehow started to work together on the track too.”

[irradiatedsnakes]

the Big TMA Furry List

this list with commentary/choice rationale below the cut :] i wrote a lot of thoughts down do please check it out.

jon: common raven

martin: tan jumping spider

sasha: southern flannel moth

not!sasha: red postman

tim: jackson's chameleon

melanie: eastern copperhead

georgie: triceratops horridus

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

jane: cabbage white

michael: spiny softshell turtle

helen: common hermit crab

oliver: black vulture

peter: risso's dolphin

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

jude: black kite

agnes: ???

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

jared: american dog tick

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

dekker: mouflon

gertrude: great tit

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

manuela: gray long-eared bat

rayner: olm

salesa: sea otter

simon: dodo

elaboration below !

jon: common raven

this was a choice i made before i even finished listening to the podcast back in 2020. jon's 1000% a bird to me, and the curious nature of corvids works well here. plus, i think a bird so universally ominous as a raven works perfectly as a horror protag :P i used to draw raven!jon with a couple troodon traits, mostly just cus it was fun, but i wanted to make my designs more grounded for this iteration. made them plantigrade, didn't get silly with body styles like i have with mp100 designs.

martin: tan jumping spider

if you've been here for a while you'll know that my furry martin has gone through about two million iterations. he started off as a european pine marten, to bold jumping spider, to chinese pangolin, to nine-banded armadillo, finally to nurse shark.

out of all of these the spider and the shark are my favorites. i wanted to go back to the jumping spider though- the design is really fun and i wasn't able to get the expressions right, but i'm more confident in my skills now and i'm having fun with the design. i may revisit nurse shark at some point. i switched from bold to tan jumper- i originally chose bold just cus they're my favorite jumper, but their stark black/white and iridescent aqua coloration just doens't work for martin. so, the tan jumper!

sasha: southern flannel moth

another old choice. species chosen because of a friend's fic, pharos by right (another i'm planning to reread now that i'm dipping my toes back into tma..)! southern flannel moths are poofy and orange, and their caterpillars are those super painful teddybear ones. i really like the design.

not!sasha: red postman

wanted to have her be another lepidopteran, and with all the many examples of mimicry among the group i thought red postman was a fun choice. doesn't look anything like a southern flannel moth, but that's sort of the point.

tim: jackson's chameleon

yet another choice from the oldtimes- most of the main characters are, i've mostly switched around the more secondary chars. first suggested, i believe, by @/ofdreamsanddoodles. i think there's something very fun about chameleons being basically a living mood ring & tim's Descent s1-3 showing physcially not just through the worm scars but through like, constant stress coloration during s3.

melanie: eastern copperhead

one of my favorite choices. i have a young copperhead specimen named after her. this one is quite vibes-based, but i do really like the copperhead as a viper that is not deadly. and i'm always a sucker for the "animal perceived as scary and violent that in actuality only strikes when under extreme stress" thing in furry assignments.

georgie: triceratops horridus

another favorite choice. visually, i really like how this works out, and trikes as a social and protective animal works well. she's literally got a shield on her face. horridus was chosen because i like the shape of the head and horns better than prorsus.

basira: domestic cat (calico shorthair)

got a little cat/dog thing going on for dasira. i like the inversion of the usual cat/dog dynamic with their unhealthy devotion instead, and visually it just works very well for them both.

daisy: domestic dog (german shepherd)

yeah i know this one's an exceedingly obvious choice.

elias: barn owl. jonah: eurasian eagle owl.

it's the institute logo! it's him! barn owl for elias specifically because of its very sleek look, designing him went fantastically. also, i can make the eagle owl's face disk work as a mimicry of ben meredith's muttonchops, which i think is a fun design bit to give to magnus.

gerry: domestic dog (black doberman)

certified gerryguy @/gerrydelano's choice. to quote a discord message from 3 years ago (sorry ron): "i feel like.........my INSTINCT is some kind of canine because like. the whole symbolism thing about being either an obedient or rabid dog. something something muzzled all your life. being a dangerous figure if people only see the silhouette but you just want scritches and nobody'll get close enough to you." black dog symbolism + breed which has ears cropped and tail docked, unecessarily molded for a Purpose which the dog has no say in

annabelle: white-booted racket-tail

sort of my original choice- she used to be part white-booted racket-tail, part anna's hummingbird. kept with the racket-tail cus it's fun and very cute. i've had a couple people express surprise that she wasn't a spider, but i think that's way too obvious. hummingbirds, though- they steal the webs of spiders to use as material to make their nests, but can sometimes become trapped in the webs and eaten by the spiders themselves. which is probably the metaphor-via-fursona-assignment i'm most proud of in this whole list

jane: cabbage white

the cabbage white is a butterfly whose caterpillars are routinely parasitized by the parasitoid wasp the white butterfly parasite. in case you're not familiar, parasitoid wasps lay their eggs on (usually) caterpillars, which hatch on the still-living caterpillar, devouring it from the inside before eventually emerging from the consumed husk of the host. also, i really liked the image of parasitoid wasp larvae emerging from an adult butterfly, rather than a caterpillar.

michael: spiny softshell turtle

for michael and helen, i wanted to choose animals which were, in some way, their own home. turtle is an obvious choice- and spiny softshells are a favorite of mine, and sufficiently strange-looking.

helen: common hermit crab

see previous entry. also please google "hermit crab without shell"

oliver: black vulture

bit of an obvious choice, but i adore vultures so i had to. black vulture chosen because i think the monochrome color scheme + straighter face work better than a turkey vulture for him

peter: risso's dolphin

i really like the idea of a cetacean for peter and the lukases as a whole, a famously social animal for the seemingly contradictory nature of this lonely-but-huge family, plus with so many cetaceans being endangered getting that lonely angle (risso's specifically are not, though, as peter is lonely through his own choice, not by circumstance).

mike: caelestiventus hanseni

it's a dimorphodont. he feels like a pterosaur to me, and i like the idea of a vast avatar as a usually short-flying arboreal species, for the unnaturality/contrast of it.

jude: black kite

black kites are one of the species of kites known to intentionally spread fires by picking up burning sticks to flush out prey.

agnes: ???

the only one i'm still undecided on. will update.

nikola: stealing major's carousel horse

i can't top that

jared: american dog tick

great choice from @/magnusarchivememes. Takes Your Blood And Gets So Big

breekon&hope: Hog and/or Bear. you get no more information

vaguely russian animals that are large and imposing but remain somewhat generic. which is the hog and which is the bear is not consistent.

dekker: mouflon

dekker has very much mammal vibes to me. the mouflon is a neat species of wild sheep. i think the noble, imposing but kind image of the ram works well for dekker as that sort of true-good hero figure, and mouflons in particular are very nice looking with good shapes. the statement giver in distant cousin describes dekker as "though he was slightly shorter than I was, it seemed like he towered over me." which i think this sheep works well with.

gertrude: great tit

i wanted all the main eye avatars as birds, just like how i give them all glasses. just a fun little treat for me. great tit was chosen for gertrude as a kind of classic british bird, and as tits in general are VERY fiesty despite their round and adorable appearance. i really like this image of a great tit posing with a dead mouse like it's a hunter with a trophy deer. the cheek markings also work really well to bring to mind the image of old person jowls.

leitner: domestic cat (persian)

vibes. also i like the idea of him as a spoiled domestic animal. if i remember correctly, this was also @/ofdreamsanddoodles' suggestion

manuela: gray long-eared bat

she's a bat. what's to say. WELL actually okay there's the perception of bats as blind but actually having quite good vision which i think meshes in a fun way with the dark, and the way manuela does her sciency stuff.

rayner: olm

i mean, yeah

salesa: sea otter

largely design-oriented, suitably scruffy. ocean animal with strong social bonds, it was a slam dunk soon as i thought of it.

simon: dodo

how couldn't i, come on.

[srslyscary]

┊┊. NON-SKZ RELATIONSHIPS !

⟿ ATEEZ !

> CONTACT NAMES ᕯ captain hj, ddeonghwa , you know , yeosang(ie), mountain, fix on, lunatic, bear

➠ met during kingdom sports day, got introduced to the group after everyone else because she was sick the day the boys had gotten previously introduced to ateez and hadn’t been able to find the time to actually meet them like the boys did.

➠ got along with everyone as soon as they were introduced. everyone was very friendly and she hit it off well with all of them. ateez quickly became her favorite people to sit around and chat with.

➠ she talks to jongho, yunho, and mingi on a regular basis.

➠ she has arranged to hang out with wooyoung on multiple occasions, and fans have seen mingi and kabi out on social media.

➠ she calls jongho and yunho the most during livestreams just to see how they are doing,

➠ kabi has a groupchat with mingi and san, always being silly together and spamming the groupchat with the most random things.

➠ overall they are all really good friends and fans can show they have great dynamics.

⟿ P1HARMONY !

> CONTACT NAMES ᕯ canadian fucker, lil taeyang, caster of cough spells, taki taki, alien boy, rapper boy seobs

➠ she had known them from already being acquainted with theo.

➠ she used to train with theo when he was in sm. after finding out he debuted in a new group, she went and hit him up.

➠ they caught up and agreed to hang some time. knowing how theo was a bit of an introvert, she decided it would be best if they could possibly talk at a more “at home” place.

➠ specifically kabi showed up to their first concert without theo’s knowledge. she pretended to be a fan wanting autographs, and as soon as theo saw her he was certainly surprised.

➠ ended up going with them in the dressing area to talk to him before they got dressed out and ready to go.

➠ made great friends after she met all of his members, hitting off with the leader as soon as she found out he was canadian as well. she also has “beef” with him. tis the reason for his .. contact name. they’re always picking on each other, so it’s all jokes.

➠ she practically adopted the whole group.

➠ understands soul more than his own members understands him. often takes the two youngest ones out when they’re free just because she finds them adorable.

⟿ ENHYPEN !

> CONTACT NAMES ᕯ scared of chris, heehee, chef jay, aussie kid of en, nonchalant kid, gossip hb, crazy riki

➠ for some odd reason, she loved to pick on them during the time they got to see enhypen in person. enhypen’s leader seemed a bit terrified of her leader, and she could never understand why. I mean have you seen bang chan? yeah he can be scary but that grown man is nothing more than a 5 year old in an old man’s body.

➠ regularly talks to sunoo for gossip time. as much as they would like to, they don’t hang out in person a lot.

➠ heesung was invited to join her on her podcast to be interviewed. they had a chill time talking about things that came up and topics that were being asked.

➠ they don’t really hang out as much but it’s fun when they do happen to be around each other.

⟿ KARD !

> CONTACT NAMES ᕯ j.seph-seonbaenim, do not answer mathew, sooomin, ms girl

➠ when I tell you kabi and bm have everlasting beef.. ooh girl I mean it. She literally hates mathew (not literally).

➠ loves the rest of the members, only talks to somin and jiwoo often.

➠ everytime the girls are all together, it’s usually calm and relaxing. the same thing with j-seph, she values the time she gets because she knows he can be very busy and it’s just one of her seonbaenim’s that she respects. although bm… somehow things just manage to get fucked up.

➠ she means well with all of them, never once having any real problems. they’re great friends.

⟿ NMIXX !

> CONTACT NAMES ᕯ haehae, lily jin morrow, sully, ms bae, k. jiwoo, cutejin

➠ she’s been watching over these girls ever since their trainee days.

➠ treats these girls as if they were her sisters, loves them to death.

➠ ACTUALLY tells people they’re all siblings and it happened to be a coincidence that they ended up in the same company.

➠ messes with bae and lily on a regular basis.

➠ kabi has been their #1 fan since pre-debut.

➠ talks about nmixx a lot during live streams.

➠ calls the girls at random times to say something stupid and then hang up.

➠ randomly comments stupid things on their posts.

➠ takes group photos of them and posts them a LOT.

⟿ THE NEW SIX !

> CONTACT NAMES ᕯ taehun (tnx), kyungjun (tnx), hyunsoo (tnx), junhyeok (tnx), hwi (tnx), sungjun (tnx)

➠ literally just in a group chat with them.

➠ has met these guys multiple times during their audition show.

➠ groupchat is titled “tnx + kabi-seonbaenim :)”

➠ she hasn’t hung out with them in person since they debuted, but she makes sure to keep in touch with them about all their projects and new music.

➠ one of those people in the groupchat that sends random memes that say “good morning” with random idols’ faces on it.

⟿ BIBI !

> CONTACT NAME ᕯ my favorite honorable mention

➠ social media besties and real life twins.

➠ definitely calls bibi twin everywhere she goes.

➠ bibi talked about making a part two to her song “vengeance” so that, and I quote, “kabi-unnie can hop on the track and spit some bars”.

➠ often hangs out with bibi every chance she gets.

➠ both of their cats have had play dates together. tazi, bada, and chichi have their own fandom name called “The 3 Kittiteers”.

➠ they interact with each other the most on social media platforms. they comment on each other’s Instagram posts too often.

➠ they plan to make a project together (an album collaboration).

➠ bibi would come to visit kabi during her hiatus a lot, bringing her food and having sleepovers with her to keep her company.

[gothhobbithoe]

What tv shows/films the Fellowship would watch:

Gandalf: Ok so Gandalf loves his true crime, he's always listening to podcasts and watching true crime tiktok. He also loves the cosy old lady crime dramas such as Poirot or Marple. Gandalf also enjoys hospital dramas. Basically if there's drama he's here for it.

Frodo: Frodo loves his period dramas, Bridgerton, Downton abbey, Call the Midwife all that jazz. He loves the old fashioned scandals and dramas. Will cry if a character dies.

Sam: Now sam loves his cooking shows, espcially Masterchef or Bake off and will attempt the challenges if he's feeling really inspired. He also loves gardening shows, you know the really british one where they speak in soft whispers so they don't distrurb the bees.

Pippin: Pippin is an absolutely a sci-fi fan, Dr Who, Star Wars, Star Trek you name it he's watched it. and yes he will talk in great detail about it. He's also obsessed with Marvel and has already decided what member of the avengers each fellowship member is. (Gandalf is Nick Fury)

Merry: Fantasy and horror all the way. He's more into dark fantasy like Game of Thrones but will watch Merlin and other shows to give himself a break from the gritty shows. He will also watch horror until he scares himself but he wont admit that to anyone not even Pippin. Also partial to a good zombie show. Knows all of American Horror Story off by heart.

Boromir: Secret Disney fan but can't let anyone else know. Also enjoys a good comedy show, stand up comedy or the comedy shows with his silly humour. He also loves Action films like Top Gun, Die Hard and John Wicks, has watched all the Fast and Furious films.

Legolas: Loves nature documentaires and finds David Attenborough's voice so soothing. He also enjoys a good fashion/makeover show and has binge watch RuPaul's Drag Race too many times to count (him and Thranduil watch it together)

Gimli: Now Gimli loves his history shows, you know the types that your dad watched on a saturday. Deep dive into the pyramids, Time Team, fancy graphics and digging up bones. Mainly about ancient structures and buildings really. He loves the ancient egyptians and has so many facts about their culture and their buildings. He also loves a good historical drama, as long as it's accurate.

Aragorn: Survival shows, Bear Grylls, Ed Stafford etc. He loves watching their shows and getting tips for future quests. He also enjoys shows about people who live int he wild e.g Alaskan Bush People as it give him nostalgia of his Strider days.

[focsle]

This may be a strange question, but is there any prep you think someone should do before reading moby dick? Or just anything worth bearing in mind for it? Especially for someone whos only read a small handfull of books that old

Hmmm I don't know exactly but here's my stream of consciousness answer to this hahaha.

I don't think it's a book that requires necessary prep to jump into (though it's always helpful and enlightening to hear other people's thoughts and analysis about it while you're reading). As far as the age of the book, a lot of people tend to be surprised at how modern and humorous the language is, though it's very dense and winding. I think it's a book that asks you to spend time with it--it's not one to skim. It has, mostly, very short chapters though that help make what it's saying digestible. But if you're jumping into it expecting an adventure novel about hunting a white whale, that's not gonna be it! I describe the process of reading Moby-Dick as watching a man unravel his soul in front of you for hundreds of pages. It's all his meditations and grapplings thrown out in the open. And maybe, in witnessing one man's soul unraveling, you can find little pieces that resonate with your own.

I think it's always good to bear in mind the time in which it was written: 1840s into the 1850s United States: rapidly industrializing, a period of European immigration in ways the country hadn't seen in the decades prior, the continued violence and land theft wrought upon indigenous people in growing westward expansion and idea of Manifest Destiny really making itself felt in a white American identity, a country extremely polarized and filled with tension around the institution of slavery and fugitive slave acts also destabilizing the lives of Black people in free states, and ultimately a nation fast on its way to hurtling into Civil War. It's a critical decade when it comes to the path of the country and I think many of the questions Moby-Dick raises arise from its time. And that time, if you ask me, feels startlingly close to our moment right now in a number of ways. I think the 2020s will be just as critical a decade. I'm rambling now, forgive me. Call me Ishmael. And also that it was written during the golden age of whaling, where it was one of the largest economic sectors in the country and so much of the energy and product consumption was linked to it. Whaling was a Big Deal, and so many of the issues mentioned above are inherently woven into the industry. I feel like an 1850s American whaleship was very much a male microcosm of its own country. And I think the Pequod in Moby-Dick reads that way as well.

Getting a cursory sense of Herman Melville too can also give an insight into this work. Because--this is perhaps controversial of me to say from a Literary Analysis standpoint but--so many of his books are autobiographical to some degree. He puts a lot of himself into them, I think. I think his personal experiences, at least to some degree, inform the sort of questions he asks and conclusions he reaches in the book.

The book has a LOT of references ranging from the historical to the biblical. There are podcasts that dissect Moby Dick chapters (tho I'm bad at listening to podcasts so I can't recommend a specific one). Power Moby Dick is a meticulously annotated virtual copy that can give context where needed.

Historian Nathaniel Philbrick wrote a book called Why Read Moby-Dick. He's the one who called the book a metaphysical survival manual which I think is such an apt way to describe it and the way I perceive it too. The book however was published in 2011 and has a very like.....Liberal White American 'Obama Is President So The Trajectory of the Country is All Lookin' Up From Here We're All Good Now' skew that, especially today, reads rather flat. But there are still interesting things he brings up.

Very silly, but there's also a book called Our Daily Breach by Dennis Patrick Slattery that engages an examination of each chapter through a personal lens, if that's your sort of Thing. If you're a Journaler.

Anyway! Read how you like! I think one can go in blind and when stumbling across something that feels confusing or intriguing, can follow that thread after reading the chapter. But it is an interesting novel to hear other opinions on (and man have the opinions been written. Throw a stick on jstor and you'll find 8 million essays), because it's a very weird book that can be read so many ways and mean so many things.

[cantsayidont]

Some bad teevee:

FIGHT NIGHT: THE MILLION-DOLLAR HEIST (2024): Tasteless, embarrassingly bad eight-part Peacock miniseries wastes a high-profile Black cast (including Samuel L. Jackson, Don Cheadle, Taraji P. Henson, Chloe Bailey, and Terrence Howard) in a clumsy attempt to turn a true crime podcast, about the armed robbery of an afterparty for the October 1970 Muhammad Ali–Jerry Quarry fight, into a self-consciously retro blaxploitation pastiche. Starring comedian Kevin Hart as Gordon "Chicken Man" Williams, the Atlanta hustler who organized the party for an array of top Black mob figures and then found himself on the hook after the robbery, the show is a tonally uneasy mix of grim drama and leaden shtick, which smothers some flailing stabs at social commentary while giving the more serious scenes (which are often quite brutal) an inappropriately campy vibe. Hart (who also produced) acts like he's in a latter-day FRIDAY sequel with all the punchlines removed, while Henson looks so uncomfortable that you can't help cringing every time she's onscreen; even Don Cheadle's weary dignity is very hard-pressed, and Dexter Darden's weak caricature of Ali doesn't help. Worse, the story just isn't interesting enough to sustain eight one-hour episodes. CONTAINS LESBIANS? No. VERDICT: One can see what they were going for ("COTTON COMES TO HARLEM meets ACROSS 110TH STREET, but based on a true story!"), but it's a complete train wreck.

NOBODY WANTS THIS (2024): Thinly plotted, stupid sitcom about an obnoxious blond shiksa (Kristen Bell), who runs a confessional podcast with her equally obnoxious sister (Justine Lupe), unexpectedly falling for a cute rabbi (Adam Brody), whose family and friends can't believe he's dumped the hot Jewish woman (Emily Arlook) everyone expected him to marry. Feels like a (bad) romcom feature script stretched awkwardly into 10 half-hour episodes, and it becomes more and more offensive as it goes on, villifying every Jewish woman older than about 15 in a vain attempt to make the boorishly antisemitic heroine seem like a reasonable romantic choice. CONTAINS LESBIANS? The main character periodically mentions that she was a lesbian for a year, but she's not now. VERDICT: Aptly titled.

PENANCE (2020): Eye-rolling British drama/thriller, based on a Kate O'Riordan novel (strictly beach and bathtub reading, one assumes), about a middle-aged mum (Julie Graham), reeling from the unexpected death of her 20-year-old son, who has a Horniness Crisis™ involving a hunky, manipulative young man (Nico Mirallegro), who's also dating her teenage daughter (Tallulah Greive) and is plainly up to no good. Not at all credible even before some absurd third-act contrivances, it's essentially a wish fulfillment fantasy (or porn scenario) drenched in just enough sour self-loathing and turgid melodrama for the target audience (Tory-voting sexually frustrated middle-aged white women) to reassure themselves that they're not really having fun. Just to make sure, Art Malik costars as the kind of insufferably chummy local priest Pat O'Brien used to play. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Nope. VERDICT: Probably well-tailored for its intended audience, but for everyone else, it's too silly to take seriously and too dour to even constitute good trash.

THE PENGUIN (2024): HBO Max dared to ask, "Will the market bear yet another Batman-less Batman TV project?" and came up this spinoff of THE BATMAN (2022), returning the film's version of the Penguin (Colin Farrell, buried beneath half his weight in prosthetics), maneuvering between the rival crime families of Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen) and Sal Maroni (Clancy Brown), with his only ally a Black teenager (Rhenzy Feliz) who becomes his driver and protégé (not unlike the relationship between Dwight and Tyson in TULSA KING). Cristin Milioti costars as Alberto's unstable sister Sofia Falcone, newly released from Arkham Asylum, with Shohreh Aghdashloo as Sal's ruthless wife Nadia. There's no reason to assume this show won't follow exactly the same pattern as GOTHAM and PENNYWORTH — i.e., a brief flirtation with gritty urban crime drama that quickly goes off the rails into campy derangement while stuffing its pockets with as many second-tier Bat-adjacent characters as Warner Bros. will permit. (Alberto and Sofia are borrowed from the Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale series BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN and DARK VICTORY, although this version of them bears only a vague resemblance to the original.) Since the show's only apparent reason for being is to juice interest in the eventual Matt Reeves/Robert Pattinson theatrical sequel without impacting that sequel (or even showing Batman) in any meaningful way, why bother? CONTAINS LESBIANS? TBD. VERDICT: Lucy with the football.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 92: Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about smooshing words together. But first, our most recent bonus episode was about secret codes, ciphers, Hildegard von Bingen, cryptography, cryptic crosswords, and Morse code romance. You can listen to it at patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: Also on Patreon, we have 80-plus other bonus episodes on things like swearing and linguistics in fiction and other behind-the-scenes things from Lingthusiasm.

Lauren: Bonus episodes are around the same length as main episodes, but we sometimes do slightly different things like a deep dive into a single academic paper or AMAs and updates on our other projects. Sometimes, we get a little bit silly.

Gretchen: We run on the direct support of our listeners, which means we don’t have to run ads. If you’d like to help us keep existing and making these free episodes for everyone, we’d really appreciate it if you’d consider becoming a patron. Or if you were a patron for a while, and you had to leave for a bit, we’d also love to see you back. There are more bonus episodes for you to enjoy now!

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, I have some words that are made up of two other words. I’m going to make you guess what the other two words are that they’re made up from.

Gretchen: Okay, sounds fun.

Lauren: Our first word is “motel.”

Gretchen: Ah, this one I know. This is a “motor hotel.”

Lauren: It is, indeed, because you can drive your car all the way up to the door of your room.

Gretchen: Absolutely. I assume this was invented around when the car became popular, I guess.

Lauren: I had thought that it was maybe a mid-century, being in the ’50s or ’60s when cars really took off, but apparently the earliest citation is from 1925.

Gretchen: That is earlier than I thought it was. Okay, next word.

Lauren: “Smog.”

Gretchen: “Smog.” Yes. This one I know – from “smoke” and “fog,” right?

Lauren: It is indeed that disgusting, thick combination of smoke and fog. That’s from 1905 – a particularly disgusting winter in London.

Gretchen: Also earlier than I expected.

Lauren: Mm-hmm. “Brunch.”

Gretchen: “Brunch.” Now, that is definitely a modern word from “breakfast” and “lunch.” I do it all the time.

Lauren: An absolutely indispensable part of my vocabulary, but it is from 1896.

Gretchen: 1896? They were having brunch in 1896. I love it!

Lauren: Yeah, because it is a very useful concept.

Gretchen: It is, indeed. Okay, I’m feeling really good about these portmanteaus so far. Hit me with another one.

Lauren: “Mizzle.”

Gretchen: Ooo, “mizzle.” I wanna say that one’s from “mist” and “drizzle”?

Lauren: It is, actually. Nice work.

Gretchen: It’s really giving me Ms. Frizzle vibes.

Lauren: If Ms. Fizzle wanted to be more efficient, she’d become “mizzle.”

Gretchen: Yeah. I have no idea how old that one is. Because all of these have been much older than I was expecting, so maybe it dates to around “smog,” I dunno.

Lauren: No, this one is much more recent. It’s one of those late-20th Century / early-21st Century as part of this explosion of these kind of words. The next one is “fozzle.”

Gretchen: “Fozzle.” That’s definitely a Muppet.

Lauren: It does sound like a Muppet name, doesn’t it? Something fuzzy.

Gretchen: Yeah, okay, no, that’s Fozzie Bear, okay. It’s a fake nozzle. It’s a fuzzy nozzle. Fuzzy nozzle is my final answer.

Lauren: Think of it in the context of “mizzle.”

Gretchen: Oh, um, wait, okay, could it be “fog” and “drizzle”?

Lauren: It is, indeed. Lots of subtle gradations on weather, apparently, require a more nuanced creation of new blend words.

Gretchen: I have never heard anyone call it “fozzle.”

Lauren: Great, good. Our final one is “brinkles.”

Gretchen: “Brinkles.” I wanna say, you know, inspired by “brunch,” that’s “breakfast sprinkles”?

Lauren: That does actually sound delicious.

Gretchen: You guys have fairy bread in Australia. That’s sprinkles on bread. That could be breakfast sprinkles, yeah? No?

Lauren: The list that I took it from has it as “bed wrinkles.”

Gretchen: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. That’s much less fun. I don’t care about bed wrinkles at all. I want some breakfast sprinkles.

Lauren: I deliberately chose some very effective classics and some maybe not-so-effective failures, but we are living in this era of portmanteau word explosions. I guess an explosion goes outward, and it’s more like an implosion of two words coming together to create some new word.

Gretchen: There’s a lot of different ways that words can get smooshed together – to use the very technical term of “smooshing.” I wanna say that in some ways “smooshing” is not a technical term, but I have actually been to a linguistics workshop where people were talking about words like “smooshing” into each other and “glomming” onto each other.

Lauren: Oh, “glom.”

Gretchen: Mm, “glom.” It’s not that this is never used, actually, despite seeming a bit silly. It’s tempting, when we’re looking at a dictionary-style sense of words, to think of them as these atomic units that have these clear, white spaces between them. But in practicality, words are often getting smooshed together, squished together, these very visceral [squish noises] words.

Lauren: It sounds unpleasantly messy to my mind, but I guess we’ll stick with it.

Gretchen: Would you say it “squicks” you out, for another one?

Lauren: It “squicks” me out a little bit, for sure.

Gretchen: Okay. I find them very delightful. I think it’s really vivid and, you know, like “slime” that all the kids are into these days.

Lauren: And, as we’ll discover in this episode, incredibly useful words are constantly coming together, crashing into each other, smooshing together as part of the process of how language grows and changes.

Gretchen: It’s a really fun concept. Portmanteaus are one relatively vivid example of smooshing because we’re often still aware of “breakfast” and “lunch” or “motor” and “hotel.” You can see the connection for how they came to smoosh together very vividly.

Lauren: In this episode, we’re gonna look at two very different kinds of linguistic smooshing and how bringing together sounds and meanings in different ways can affect the way that language is used and how it changes.

Gretchen: We did, ages ago, an episode about several different kinds of linguistic nothings, about different ways that aspects of nothing or silence or absence of a thing can mean something. Those came from a whole bunch of different areas. When we were talking about different kinds of linguistic smooshing, that also seemed like a chance to talk about different types of linguistic phenomena that all have this thing in common where the words glom onto each other.

Lauren: We couldn’t help but start with the portmanteau.

Gretchen: Absolutely. The thing that fascinates me about portmanteaus is that some of them really work, like “frenemy,” that’s great. What a good and useful combination which, surprisingly, dates back to 1891.

Lauren: I feel like it’s one of those such satisfying combinations that I’d be unsurprised to discover people have coined it and coined it again.

Gretchen: Yeah, because it’s got this great sense of dissonance between frenemies, but yeah, the OED has it from 1891, even though it feels very modern – to modern-day “Kenergy” or “Kenough” from Ken in the Barbie movie. Portmanteaus are still going. We’re still coining them.

Lauren: English in particular seems particularly prone to them.

Gretchen: I have encountered some examples of portmanteaus in Spanish. If you’re combining English and Spanish in the same sentence, some people might refer to that as “Spanglish” in English. But I’m told that you can also call “Espanglish” in Spanish.

Lauren: Oh, that’s very satisfying. The portmanteau works in both languages so similarly.

Gretchen: I have also come across “amigovio,” which is from “amigo” and “novio,” so that’s “friend” and “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” to refer to, you know, some relationship that’s got a few aspects of both – maybe friend-with-benefits type thing.

Lauren: Ah, yeah. I do like how portmanteaus pop up when there’s this really satisfying meaning that’s carved out of the two words that come together. They often do fill these cultural niches for some period of time.

Gretchen: Exactly. There’s a really fun Wikipedia article for “blend words,” which is the more technical linguistic term for what’s popularly known as “portmanteau” that has lots of fun examples in various languages. We’re not just gonna read a Wikipedia article to you, but if you want to go click on that, you can.

Lauren: I think “blend” really highlights how you’re blending together the sounds at the end of one word and the beginning of another word, but you’re also blending together the semantics of both of those words.

Gretchen: Do you wanna hear my favourite example of an absolutely multi-step, amazing blend in English?

Lauren: Sure.

Gretchen: Okay. Do you know the word “brot3”?

Lauren: Uh, I absolutely do not. Is that a robot?

Gretchen: This is not R2D2’s cousin.

Lauren: My favourite Star Wars character when people ask now, I’m gonna say, “It’s brot3.”

Gretchen: This is a very Tumblr-in-the-2010s word, I will say, which dates me.

Lauren: I think it’s also good to point out that cultures can be the entirety of English when it comes to “motel” or Tumblr in the 2010s when it comes to “brot3.”

Gretchen: It starts with an acronym, which is “OTP,” which stands for “one true pairing.”

Lauren: Okay, acronym, another classic 20th Century obsession of English.

Gretchen: Absolutely. People who would say, “Oh, these two characters on this show” – or in this book or movie – “I think they should get together. They’re my one true pairing.” Things like that. But then this takes on a hyperbolic meaning, so it doesn’t have to be an actual one pairing that I think is the best, it can just be like, “I think these two characters should get together” or it would be interesting if they got together. Then people start saying, “Well, what if three characters got together?” So, instead of an “OTP,” you had an “OT3”?

Lauren: Mm-hmm, I’m following.

Gretchen: Yeah. But then, if you want three characters to interact in more of a platonic way, maybe like they’re bros, you could then have a “Bro-T3,” which is where the portmanteau part comes in.

Lauren: Amazing. So many processes happening to create this one lexical item.

Gretchen: It’s beautiful, and I love it.

Lauren: And, again, really carving out this particular cultural need. That’s part of what makes a successful portmanteau successful. There’s some really great work from Constantine Lignos and Hilary Prichard where they quantified what makes a good blend word, which I thought was really great. Some of those words I chose for you at the start, Gretchen, came from their less-successful list.

Gretchen: I thought those were very unsuccessful words like “fozzle” and “brinkles.”

Lauren: They also had on that list “wonut.”

Gretchen: “Wonut.” Uh. Oh, wait.

Lauren: It’s not a sad donut.

Gretchen: It’s a donut full of woe. It’s a sad donut. Okay, no, wait, it’s probably like a “waffle donut”?

Lauren: Yeah. In the vein of the “cronut,” the croissant donut, there was this – or it still is an ongoing combination of carb-based bakery foods that tend to get portmanteaued.

Gretchen: Yeah, okay, I dunno. The cronut is fine, but I don’t think wonuts are gonna happening any time soon.

Lauren: And “wegotism.”

Gretchen: No.

Lauren: I love that you refuse to even try and define it for me. You’re just like, “Whatever that is – no.”

Gretchen: I mean, I guess it’s from “we” and “egotism,” but I don’t like it.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s egotism but for more than one person. There’s nothing like seeing a portmanteau that falls flat to make you appreciate how satisfying a really good one is.

Gretchen: Tell me some other good ones. Please wash my brain out of this.

Lauren: Some of the good ones include “mathlete,” “guestimate,” and “mockumentary.”

Gretchen: All really satisfying in a way that “wegotism” just doesn’t do it for me.

Lauren: That’s because you can understand them, and you can figure them out from their constituent parts without needing me to prompt you that we’re talking about baked goods or weather.

Gretchen: One of the other ones that they pointed out as a – I’ll let you guess whether this was a good or a bad example, but I think it’ll be pretty obvious – was “groutfit.”

Lauren: A “groutfit.” Is that when you have an outfit with lots of tiling grout holding it together?

Gretchen: Well, this is the point they make in the paper is “Is it a green outfit, a grey outfit, a great outfit?”

Lauren: No, it’s a “grout-outfit.”

Gretchen: That’s the only version that’s satisfying.

Lauren: If you had an outfit that was made of grout, that would be a very satisfying blend word.

Gretchen: You can dress like that for Halloween.

Lauren: I feel like that’s low on what they call “applicability.” It’s not very applicable to many contexts except maybe if you’re at a fancy dress party for tilers.

Gretchen: If anyone has any pictures of internet groutfits, we do want to see them. One of their factors is understandability, which “groutfit” fails on if it stands for “green” or “grey” or “great.” And another factor is applicability, which “groutfit” fails on if it stands for “grout” and “outfit.”

Lauren: A word has to fit your mouth in a really satisfying way that “guestimate” and “mockumentary” do. The overlap there is so nice, and it feels like a real word.

Gretchen: It has this sense of it feels English-y already. It feels like it’s typical of the language. It helps – and think this is a really interesting factor when it comes to portmanteaus – if the combined words share a syllable or at least a sound, especially a vowel sound. So, “glitterati,” “gaydar, “hacktivism” – all really great.

Lauren: There’s a nice, big, clear hinge at the two points of the word.

Gretchen: You have that “litter” – “glitterati,” which goes from “glitter” to “litterati.” You’ve got a whole “litter” for them to overlap at, which is great, whereas something like, what do you think of “legacyquel”?

Lauren: “Lega- legacy” – “legacy” is a word, and “sequel” is a word, but there’s too much overlap there for my mouth and brain to cope with.

Gretchen: Also, they’re spelled very differently, the C in “legacy” is with C-Y, versus S-E for “sequel,” which makes it look really weird on the page.

Lauren: I’ve just looked at where you’ve written that down on the page, and like, I didn’t even look at that as an English word.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s really bad. How do you feel about “privelobliviousness”?

Lauren: It sounds like a very fancy word, and it looks like an absolute car crash written down.

Gretchen: It just doesn’t look like the other words that we have in English. Or “gymtimidation.”

Lauren: Again, I think with English it’s such a writing-based language that for any portmanteau to have legs, it has to be satisfying written down as well as spoken.

Gretchen: They also had “condesplaining” in their list, which I will grant, written down, doesn’t look too bad, but yeah, I dunno.

Lauren: I think that’s because a lot of the time another thing that blends have going for them is that they’re fun.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: It’s a fun and playful thing, and “condesplaining” is not necessarily a thing you’ll use in a fun way.

Gretchen: I mean, like “mansplaining” has definitely caught on, but it doesn’t have that extra syllable of “condesplaining,” which really makes the word seem more insufferable. But their examples of fun words like “Sharknado” and “sheeple,” I’m like, “Yeah!”

Lauren: Yeah, I think portmanteaus are definitely a kind of word play, and the more novel-but-satisfying a portmanteau you can come up with, the better a success that is.

Gretchen: I first got introduced to the linguistic analysis of portmanteaus through a paper by a linguist that I knew in grad school named Cara DiGirolamo. She was analysing specifically fandom pairing names. This is things like if you have Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and you call them “Johnlock” or something like that. She was analysing, in particular, names from the TV show “Glee,” which was popular at the time, and how the fans talked about various combinations of wanting those characters to get together by combining their names into portmanteaus.

Lauren: Right. A very useful activity for people deep in this particular fandom.

Gretchen: And a very useful activity for linguists because sometimes it’s hard to come up with, okay, we need these two words to combine with each other, and then we also need it to have a plausible meaning, and so on and so forth, whereas with the characters, you can just pick any two characters and be like, “What if they were a couple?” You can end up with these phonologically implausible combinations because, obviously, the creators of the show weren’t thinking, “Oh, I’ve got to name my characters stuff that will be combined well.”

Lauren: Of course, this is why big linguistics bankrolls major TV and pop culture so that we can create the conditions in which we can study the ways that people blend character names to create fandom pairings.

Gretchen: Absolutely I wish that was the case.

Lauren: I assume this is how she collected her data.

Gretchen: I think she may have been hanging out with the fandom, to be fair, at the time.

Lauren: Right, okay, was more of an anthropological observation thing than billionaire-media-mogul-creates-natural-experiment thing.

Gretchen: Please, if there are any billionaire media moguls listening who want to fund this research –

Lauren: Have we got some natural experiments for you to run.

Gretchen: We can connect you with some grad students. She has this really fun case study of the two characters Rachel Berry and Quinn Fabray, who various members of the fandom wanted to get together. At first, they made their pairing name “Quichel,” which is from “Quinn” and “Rachel.”

Lauren: Okay, I guess it is – “Quinn” and “Rachel.” “Quichel”? “Quichel.”

Gretchen: Yeah, well, so it’s sort of fine if you say it out loud, but if you write it down, a lot of people see it, and they think “quiche,” like the food.

Lauren: Oh, “quiche” – “Quiche-el.” Yum?

Gretchen: Yeah, but not exactly like the connotation that they were trying to convey. The fandom actually decided that “Quichel,” “Quiche-el,” was too difficult of a pairing name combination to have. They held a vote for what should be the replacement name for referring to the combination of these two characters.

Lauren: Very democratic.

Gretchen: They ended up with “Faberry.”

Lauren: “Faberry”?

Gretchen: Which does have this nice B overlap. Because remember if two words have a sound in common, you can overlap them at that common sound from “Fabray” and “Berry” to “Faberry.” She used this poll to argue for, okay, “What are the criteria that people are using to figure out whether a combination feels satisfying or not?” One of those is pronunciation, but another one of those is “Does the spelling seem to correspond to that?” using English’s notoriously irregular spelling system.

Lauren: So, that stuck, and they stopped being called “quiche.”

Gretchen: Apparently, yeah.

Lauren: So good.

Gretchen: No more “quiche.”

Lauren: The playfulness of blends fits into their origin in a lot of ways. People have been playing around with this way of doing things in English off and on for a long time. As we said, definitely, the 20th Century was the rise of the portmanteau, but Lewis Carroll is generally credited with making them something quite popular with his 1872 poem “The Jabberwocky.”

Gretchen: So, “Jabberwocky” starts, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: / All mimsy were the borogroves, / And the mome raths outgrabe.” This is a poem of mostly nonsense words in between normal English function words like “the” and “and.” You can tell what they’re supposed to do, but you don’t actually know what a “borogrove” or a “rath” or a “slithy tove” looks like.

Lauren: Some of these words were the combination of two other words.

Gretchen: Right. So, “slithy” is from “sly” and “filthy.”

Lauren: That’s interesting because I pronounce it as /slaɪði/.

Gretchen: Oh, I mean, apparently Lewis Carroll wants people to say /slaɪði/. I just looked at it and said /slɪθi/ because that’s what it looked like to me, which is, again, an example of how English orthography is not necessarily a guide to how to actually pronounce something. This shows up in portmanteaus a lot. He also really wanted it to be /gæɹ̩ ænd gɪmbl̩ ɪn ðə wɛɪb/ but like, I instinctively pronounce that /d͡ʒæɹ̩ ænd d͡ʒɪmbl̩/, so you know, this is one of the things that happens with coining a word is that you don’t necessarily retain control of it.

Lauren: What’s really interesting is that some of his portmanteaus from the poem have stuck. So, “chortle,” which is generally considered a blend of “chuckle” and “snort,” has become a word that has its own life outside of “Jabberwocky” the poem now.

Gretchen: Carroll called these words “portmanteau words” because a “portmanteau” was, at the time, a relatively commonly used word in English to refer to a briefcase or a travelling case or a bag for clothes or other necessities and, originally, from French meaning a coat carrier, to carry a coat. The idea was, for him, that it was two meanings packed up into one word as if you put them in a little suitcase together.

Lauren: It’s so funny that we’ve kept the meaning of the word for words and not for transporting clothing.

Gretchen: It kind of is. I find – like, the technical linguistic term is “blend,” which is a very bland choice of like, “Okay, we’ve blended these two words together.” “Portmanteau” is interesting but also a bit obscure because we don’t use that word for suitcases anymore. We can call them “suitcase words,” I guess, but that also seems a little bit weird.

Lauren: I was devastated to discover that “portmanteau” is not actually a portmanteau. It’s long enough, and it has the feeling that it could be a blend of words, but it’s just actually a compound in French of like, “port,” “carry,” and “manteau,” “coat.” Disappointingly not a portmanteau.

Gretchen: I love it when words like this for, especially, silly linguistic phenomena are themselves examples of the type of thing they’re trying to describe. What if you could make a name for blends or portmanteaus that is itself a combination of two words? I dunno. “Blerd” for “blend word.”

Lauren: Aw, it’s hard when your portmanteau creates a word that is a word already. We have “blurred,” so that’s probably not –

Gretchen: That’s true.

Lauren: Or it just sounds terrible saying “wordbination.”

Gretchen: “Worbination,” “werbinate” – hmm.

Lauren: “Word” and “combine” don’t actually have anything in common. Trying to smoosh them together is an exercise in failure. It doesn’t help that “word” and “blend” are both words that are very short.

Gretchen: What are some other words that are related to words that are longer?

Lauren: I guess if you had a lot of blends – because they create a lot of utility in the way that we speak – you could say that a group of blends is a “flexicon.”

Gretchen: Ooo, like a “flexible lexicon.” It’s got this nice little “lex” combination there.

Lauren: I think I’m definitely stretching what could be relative to referencing a portmanteau word.

Gretchen: Yeah. And a “flexicon,” it’s a satisfying word as itself, but it doesn’t transparently connect to the meaning of a blended word or a smooshed together word or a combined word. I guess we have to keep calling them “portmanteaus” and “blends” because there isn’t a better self-defining option, but I wish there was.

Lauren: Do you know another word that’s a portmanteau word?

Gretchen: Many, but it sounds like you have one in mind.

Lauren: “Lingthusiasm.”

Gretchen: [Laughs] Oh, hey, of course it is! So, our podcast, in case you hadn’t noticed this from the byline is a combination of “linguistics” plus “enthusiasm.”

Lauren: It’s a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics.

Gretchen: We sure are. I think we did an okay job at coming up with this blend, but I will say it is a little bit hard to pronounce.

Lauren: It definitely writes better than it speaks.

Gretchen: Yeah, it writes better, but when I’ve tried to be on other podcasts or tell people about podcasts, I’m like “ＬＩＮＧ – ＴＨＵＳＩＡＳＭ.” I have to say it very carefully because having the /ŋ/ before the /θ/ is just sort of a lot.

Lauren: Yeah, that /ŋ/ is right on the back of your mouth, and /θ/ is just tucked in at the teeth there, so you’re moving really far through the mouth.

Gretchen: It’s ironic that, as a linguistics podcast, we have a name that is linguistically objectively difficult to say.

Lauren: What I enjoy about it, Gretchen, is it lets us see the different ways that people deal with this. Some people hyper-articulate and hit both the /ŋ/ and the /θ/. Some people just don’t even bother sending their tongue all the way back for that /ŋ/ sound, and instead just pronounce it something like /lɪnθʊziæsm/ or /lɪmfʊziæsm/ – I quite like that.

Gretchen: Or sometimes people introduce a bit of a K sound or a G sound in between to provide a transition the way that sometimes you hear people say /hæmpstɹ̩/ as “HAMP-STER” with a P even though there isn’t originally, etymologically a P there, but you can produce a P in /hæmpstɹ̩/ to help you say it. You can have like /lɪŋkθʊziæsm/, like give it a bit of a K there. All right, I’ll take it. It’s an interesting, fun linguistics experiment that we’re doing on everybody.

Lauren: The great thing is that this way that people either create that K by taking the /θ/ back a little bit or create a /n/ instead of a /ŋ/ and bring the tongue forward, this is a very common type of sound change process that creates another kind of smooshing.

Gretchen: This is our second kind of linguistic smooshing which is often happening within a word but sometimes happening between words when they’re said very close together and making the sounds more similar to each other.

Lauren: This is a process known as “assimilation,” which is a very useful, does-what-it-says word when it comes to linguistic sound processes.

Gretchen: “Assimilation,” as in the sounds become more similar to each other.

Lauren: Yeah. Not a great word in other contexts.

Gretchen: No, it has rather unfortunate social implications, doesn’t it.

Lauren: Yeah. People assimilation – not great. Sound assimilation – super common.

Gretchen: Very common. Really in, I think, basically all of the languages, at least languages that are actually being used by humans who have bodies in this day and age.

Lauren: We are efficient.

Gretchen: If you are learning to cook or something, and you’re a new cook, you’re gonna take your knife and chop the carrots in a very slow and awkward and clumsy process, whereas if you see a video of someone who’s very professional and they’re just like [chopping sounds] and doing this very efficient, smooth, no-wasted-movements process for chopping their onions or whatever, that’s what you’re doing with your tongue when you’re making the sounds just a little bit more similar to each other in order to make them a little bit easier to produce.

Lauren: You get these really interesting consistencies in the way that sounds get smooshed together.

Gretchen: Because we’re working with bodies that have very similar constraints. One of my favourite examples of linguistic assimilation is what happens with sounds like M and N in some contexts. Let me give you some words and tell me what they have in common.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: I have “inactive.” “inedible,” “imperfect,” “imbalance,” “independent,” “instable,” and “incurious.”

Lauren: They all start with I. I want to say they all have a prefix that means the same thing like “not.” You’re not edible; you’re not stable; you’re not cautious. They’re basically the same prefix. Some are N, and some are M.

Gretchen: Sometimes, we write this prefix like “im-” – “imperfect,” “imbalance,” “immaterial,” “immovable.” There’s loads of them. Sometimes, we write this prefix like “in-” like in “inactive,” “inedible,” and “incautious,” “infrequent.” But we pronounce it slightly differently, especially with that “IMperfect,” where it gets an M, versus “INdependent,” where it goes an N. This is because of the next sound.

Lauren: So, “imperfect,” we have a P. “Independent,” we have a D. P, like an M, is made with the lips, and D, like an N, is made just behind the teeth.

Gretchen: Exactly. In writing, we make this distinction between /m/ – M and N – but there’s actually a few more subtle differences in terms of how the sounds are made between “infrequent,” which you could say as /infɹikwɛnt/. But often, people actually move that N a little bit closer and pronounce it with the teeth on the lips as well as the F – /in̪fɹikwɛnt/.

Lauren: /in̪fɹikwɛnt/.

Gretchen: Or /in̪vəlɪd/.

Lauren: Congrats to everyone joining us on public transport or while out for a walk just going “Fuh-ree-kwent,” “Innnn-frekwent.”

Gretchen: Yeah, please make some sounds and make people next to you look at you a little bit funny. It’s fine. Welcome to the club. Or, you know, make it with your mouth and don’t articulate if you have to. There’s this /in̪fɹikwɛnt/ – and the same with something like /iŋkɑʃʌs/ or /iŋkəɹiʌs/, /iŋkəɹɛɪʃʌs/ where you tend to move the nasal sound – the N – to be more of an /ŋ/ like in “sing,” move it back to the same place that you’re constricting your tongue as with the /k/ sound – /iŋkɑʃʌs/. It’s like “ink-cautious” – “ing-cautious, “ing-conceivable.”

Lauren: It’s so interesting some of these turn up in the writing system, and some of them don’t and completely escape our notice.

Gretchen: The M is right there in writing, and so you have to remember, “Oh, you have to write it different,” but the pronunciation is right there and straightforward. Then the N in “incautious” or “incurious” is not there in the writing, but you know to pronounce it that way because it’s just easier to do even if no one’s actually told you. You’re just like, “Oh, well, that’s easier.” There’s a few that are just totally in the writing system. You also have words like “illegible” or “irreplaceable.”

Lauren: Because we’re just decided instead of saying, “IN-legible” or “IN-replaceable,” it’s just easier to make that one sound.

Gretchen: That’s just way too hard. These words – the “in-” prefix in English – goes back to Latin, so you find words like this in a whole bunch of languages that have gotten these words from Latin because already in Latin they were like, “Yeah, you just have to make it more similar. That’s what you do.”

Lauren: It’s not just in these prefixes that this assimilation happens because we saw with “LING-thusiasm,” it’s that same kind of thing with the nasal moving to accommodate for the next sound. Or my favourite, which is if you listen to pretty much anyone say the word “handbag” in rapid speech, a lot of the time it’ll become “HAM-bag,” as in –

Gretchen: The bag that you keep ham.

Lauren: The place where you store your ham. Mmm.

Gretchen: Mmm.

Lauren: But it’s pretty unlikely that you’ll be talking about ham storage situations at the same time as you’re talking about the purse that you grab every day, and so we don’t actually pay attention to the distinction because we normally don’t need to.

Gretchen: My favourite example of this is in the word “input,” which is not from the kind of “in-” that means “not,” because it’s not the opposite of “put” – you can either PUT something or you can IN-put it – it’s from the thing that you “put in,” where this other “in” means “inside of” and is not the same thing. But because it’s so hard to say “IN-put,” most of the time in rapid speech, people are actually saying /ɪmpʌt/.

Lauren: I feel like I often type “imput.”

Gretchen: Yeah, me, too! And then they underline it in the red squiggles, and I’m like, “No! C’mon, you know what I meant. This is the better way to spell it anyway.” There’s a bunch of Latin prefixes that do it like the Latin prefix “com-” as in “with.” You have “companion.”

Lauren: With an M.

Gretchen: Someone you break bread with – “com-pan.” There’s the M before the P. But “collect” – that “coll-” – the double L – is still a nasal that’s just been [whooshing noise] made to be like the L.

Lauren: Really? I’m so mad right now.

Gretchen: And “consume” – there it is as an N.

Lauren: Uh-huh, it’s not “com-sume” because that’s too hard to say.

Gretchen: Even “coordinate,” before a vowel, you just drop the following nasal entirely in that case.

Lauren: I’m also angry.

Gretchen: They’re all the same prefix. It just means “with.”

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Same with the Greek prefix, which comes to us via Latin, “syn-” meaning “together.” So, “symphony,” where that M becomes like the P-H sound, the /f/, /sɪmfəni/. And “syntax.”

Lauren: As in –

Gretchen: All the same “syn-”.

Lauren: “Syn-” and “sym-” in “symphony” and “syntax” are the same.

Gretchen: They’re all the same “syn-”.

Lauren: Ugh, this thing with nasals turns up all over the place – and not just in English and Latin and Greek. We have links to papers in the shownotes to Jakarta Indonesian, Arsi-Bale Afan Oromo, and also Akan, which is a language of Guana. There are so many languages where this is a super common process.

Gretchen: This is basically if I found a language that had a nasal and then another consonant, and they didn’t assimilate, I’d be sort of surprised at this point.

Lauren: Mm-hmm. It’s so common that the phrase “homorganic nasal assimilation” is just one of those phrases that you pick up, and it sticks with you because it turns up again and again.

Gretchen: I like “homorganic nasal assimilation” because it seems really complicated, but you can break it down etymologically in a way that’s really satisfying. You have “hom-organic,” so that’s the “homo-” prefix meaning “same” and then the “same organ.” So, it’s the same part of the mouth – whether it’s the lips or just behind the teeth or towards the back of the roof of the mouth or various other places. You want to have the nasal sound be at the same spot in the mouth as the sound that’s coming after it.

Lauren: “Homorganic nasal assimilation.”

Gretchen: It’s really nice.

Lauren: Very satisfying. Of course, not the only process of assimilation. There are a lot of these processes that happen. They happen with vowels getting more similar to each other.

Gretchen: We did a whole episode about the kind of assimilation that happens with C and G before different vowels, like why C and G seem to come in hard and soft versions, unlike most of the other consonants, because they tend to be affected and made more similar to the next vowel that’s coming after them.

Lauren: And rest assured that signers as well as speakers are good at being efficient when it comes to articulation. You get assimilation in signed languages as well.

Gretchen: There’s a really interesting video from 1913 – which has got to be some of the older videos of signed languages – about this signer named George Veditz in his film called, “The Preservation of American Sign Language.” It shows him signing the old ASL word “remember.” In this video from over a hundred years ago, he’s signing it starting with an open hand at the forehand, and then the hand would come down and close into a fist, and the thumb would touch the top of the other thumb from the non-dominant hand. Now, it’s just the thumb at the forehead to the thumb touching the other hand, both in fists the whole time. You can see videos of this. We’ll link to it in the description.

Lauren: It’s such a charming old video. He just has this olde-y time-y – the footage is old, but he also does this little head nod while he’s doing it. It’s incredibly charming. But as you said, you go from having the open hand to a fist with the thumb, and now, over a century of assimilating the handshape, people just go from the thumb at the forehead to the thumb down at the other thumb.

Gretchen: It’s an example of making it more efficient by not changing the movement midway through the sign.

Lauren: You see a lot of these changes in signed articulation where people will just keep the same handshape, or they won’t change location for a sign where the position of the body might have moved in an older version of it to keep things efficient.

Gretchen: I think it’s neat to look at the sign examples because, when we write words down, it’s not always clear that M and P have this particular relationship of both being produced with the lips. You have to go back and think about that as a speaker. A lot of sounds happen inside the mouth so that can’t really see them very well. You can see the signs becoming more similar to each other in a way that’s obscured for us by writing systems sometimes.

Lauren: Writing systems are really holding us back when it comes to thinking about assimilation because they’re so conservative. We really lose a lot as written language users when it comes to keeping track with changes that are happening in speech but don’t necessarily reflect well in the writing system.

Gretchen: Sometimes, we do start writing words in ways that correspond more closely to how they’re being spoken. I’m thinking of words like “gonna” and “hafta,” which have been respelled from “going to” and “have to.” I don’t think very many people at all say, “I HAVE to go to the store.” You might say, “I have TWO donuts,” but “I HAF to go to the store.”

Lauren: But you definitely can’t write “gonna” or “hafta” in a school essay.

Gretchen: No, they’re not part of this formal register, but they’re very much part of the texting or social media or informal written register, and there are relatively consistent ways of writing them even though they’re not formalised. Like, “gonna” tends to be written with two Ns, “gotta” with two Ts, “wanna” also with two Ns. They have these consistent ways of spelling them even though they’re part of this informal writing register.

Lauren: It’s interesting to watch this little “to” here, this function word, which, if you say it by itself, you get the full word.

Gretchen: “Going to.”

Lauren: But when it is in these quicker phrases, you can see that it’s getting squished into the previous word. That sound is being assimilated, and that vowel “to,” which is very much at the back of the mouth with the tongue, but it gets more and more towards the middle, and the lips get less and less rounded as it becomes less articulated.

Gretchen: Yeah, it gets more and more of a neutral, default /ə/ vowel – the schwa vowel – which is the least extreme of anything your mouth can be doing. It’s the most efficient vowel that you just say if you’re making an “uh” – like making a grunt sound or an “uh,” a neutral sound. It gets made to be the easiest thing to do because these words are super high frequency, we’re saying them all the time, and you don’t really need that added information of what else could it be in that context. So, “going to” becomes “gon tuh” becomes “gon na.”

Lauren: This reduction that constantly goes on is part of how language gets used. It’s like a path that we continue to wear down, and things become more assimilated through that phonetic process, and they start to lose particularly clear meaning, and then you create this ability for the language to generate things that eventually just become part of the grammar or part of a single word through this smooshing.

Gretchen: It’s a trajectory from very concrete words to very abstract, grammaticalised words, so from something that means like, “go,” as in physically move to a place, versus something that just means a generalised, abstract concept of “future.” So, “I’m going to the store” is physically moving to place, whereas “I’m gonna bake a cake” is a notion of future that doesn’t mean that I’m going to walk to the cake in the same way.

Lauren: I love it when you eventually get to it’s totally fine to say, “I am going to come,” and it’s just like, if you think about them in their semantic sense, it’s a contradiction, but this happens across languages. The future is often created in this way. If a language didn’t have a future tense, it will create one through this process.

Gretchen: Or sometimes create a second, bonus, extra future.

Lauren: You can never have too much future. You get this reduction in the sound. You get this reduction in how much meaning is in a word, and it becomes less concrete and more abstract.

Gretchen: Or sort of, yeah, a reduction in terms of how much concrete meaning but an enhancement in terms of the ability to express more abstract concepts.

Lauren: Well, yeah, it becomes a very useful part of something that becomes more grammatical.

Gretchen: My favourite example of this process and how cyclic it is is the French word “aujourd'hui.” “Aujourd'hui” in French means “today.”

Lauren: Great.

Gretchen: That’s just what it means. If you look at it, and you have a little bit of French, you might say, okay, “aujourd'hui,” we could break that down. The “au” means “at the” or “on the” – itself smooshing from “à le,” but we’re gonna ignore that. The “jour” part means “day.” Great. Itself also a smooshing from something in Latin, but we’re also gonna ignore that.

Lauren: Yeah, it’s smooshing all the way down.

Gretchen: It’s smooshing all the way down. There’s really so much smooshing smooshed into this one word. The “d’” – the D + apostrophe – is from “de,” which is itself, again, smooshing – it means “of.”

Lauren: Oh, I’m shocked.

Gretchen: So, these are fairly well known French words if you break them down. And then you have this last part which is spelled H-U-I. It’s pronounced /wi/ – “Aujourd'hui.”

Lauren: I’m gonna guess, Gretchen, that that’s been smooshed down from something.

Gretchen: Oh, Lauren, you’re so right. “Hui” /wi/ – which sounds like the French word for “yes” (oui) but is not – is an obsolete word that also means “today,” which is what the whole thing means.

Lauren: Amazing. So, the word “today” in French, if you break it down etymologically, means “on the day of today.”

Gretchen: But we don’t even need to stop there.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Because “hui” comes from Latin “hodie.”

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Which is a contraction of “hac die” meaning “on this day.”

Lauren: “On this day.”

Gretchen: So, “aujourd'hui” – “au jour de hodie” – is literally “on the day of on this day.”

Lauren: Amazing.

Gretchen: It’s got two days in it. It’s not today – well, it is two-day – but it’s “two,” T-W-O.

Lauren: It is extremely today.

Gretchen: It is extremely today. It is extra much today because it’s like you had a path that started eroding, and so you put some extra paving stones in to sure it up and added an extra “day” so you wouldn’t get confused about the word “oui” that means “yes.”

Lauren: It’s stories like this and it’s the realisation that language is constantly doing this that makes me feel really comforted by the kind of processes of use. Because it’s not a wearing out of language; it’s a lovingly using and laying down – and, you know, our portmanteaus today will become concrete words, and then they might get eroded down or re-blended or used again to create new, what could be grammatical forms. It all just continues on across history. It’s easy to see when you look across time how language continues to just get loved and used and worn.

Gretchen: It’s like how we can forget that “chortle” started off as a joke word from Lewis Carroll in this poem, and we’re like, “Well, that’s just a word that means a thing.” It’s not particularly a portmanteau. It’s just a word that I have. And we could then re-portmanteau it into another word and keep doing this process over and over again and building things up and smooshing them together and then building up more stuff and smooshing it back together. It’s a really exciting process of making stuff. I like how smooshing reminds us of the physicality of language and how, when you say a word that’s been smooshed, your body – your tongue, your hands – are tracing a path that so many other people’s bodies have also traced. It’s like when you’re walking down a set of stone stairs that have this dent in the middle from this very soft groove of everyone steps in it over centuries. You can feel that you’re going where some else was going. When you’re using a smooshed word, you’re participating in this language pathway that has been part of so many people’s bodies for so many generations.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all of the podcast platforms or lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode at lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including the IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like our “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and aesthetic IPA posters – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: My social media and blog is Superlinguo. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you wanna help keep making the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus topics include secret codes, inner voices, and how we made vowel plots with Dr. Bethany Gardner. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[strange-august]

Tag Yourself as Me and My Friends' Favorite Colors

💜Purple💜

Neon signs in the night, Visiting the barcade, Taxi rides, Cracked sidewalks, Aviator sunglasses, Wild violets, Glitter covered hands, Heavy stage curtains, Spilled soda pop, Astrology, Planetariums, Train tracks, Dyed hair, Zippo lighters, Bathroom tiles, Crystalline bubbles, Lavender honey lattes, Faded street signs, Animal hair on clothing, Heavy eyeshadow, Holding hands, Running 'til you're breathless

🩷Pink🩷

Fresh morning air, Sunshine reflecting off your hair, Raspberry stains on clothes, Winter snow melting away, Sunlight streaming through the window, Busy hands, Antique porcelain teacups, Fields of wildflowers, Old books with yellowed pages, Palace ballrooms, Bubble baths, Sleeping in late on a friday morning, Thick fog, Flushed cheeks, Carousel horses with chipped paint, Gacha machines, Piano music, Soft serve ice cream, Cat paws, Stawberry milk tea

🧡Orange🧡

Bonfires in the woods, Smooth river rocks, Late summer thunderstorms, Street lights, Converse shoes, Stepping in puddles, Goldfish bowls, Childhood TV shows, Sharing a clementine with a stranger, Fireworks on the 4th of July, Flannel jackets, Fresh paint on a house, Old brick buildings, Candy shops, Glass blowing, Quotes highlighted in your favorite books, Splashing in the pool, Podcasts, Cassette tapes, Bagels in the morning for breakfast

💙Blue💙

Steely gray eyes, Raindrops on the windowpane, Jellyfish in the aquarium, Mirror mazes, Acoustic guitar, Cars on the highway, Bowling alleys, Old televisions, Glass bottles, Watercolor paints, Flying over the clouds, Blueberry muffins, Dip dye, Late night cooking, String lights, Movie theaters, Pedestrian bridges, Locker rooms, Cigarette burns on hands, Glow in the dark stars on ceiling, Crying in the bathroom, Skateboard tricks

🩵Cyan🩵

Lake water, Clear skies, Wishing on dandelions, Long hallways, Old cars, Analog clocks, Pillow forts, Record players, Gummy bears, Paper stars, Messy hair, Empty soda cans, Payphones, High rise buildings, Messy bedrooms, Butterfly houses, Airports, Karaoke with friends, The smell of chlorine, Driving with the roof down, Clear slime, Silly string, Wooden floors, Icicles, Concrete steps, Sea shells, Motivational posters, Parking lots

[skyfullofpods]

Random Podcast Recommendations - Year 2 Masterlist Part 2!

Part 1 is here!

(Updated 13/11/24)

182 - The Orphans 183 - Among the Stars and Bones 189 - A Ninth World Journal 192 - Inn Between 194 - Electromancy 196 - Inhale 197 - Second Star to the Left 199 - Victoriocity

201 - Thin Places Radio 203 - Retribution 205 - ars PARADOXICA 208 - Everything is Alive 209 - Temporal Light 211 - Liars & Leeches 212 - The Rest is Electric 213 - Unwell 218 - Tartarus 221 - Margaritas & Donuts 228 - Wolfwhistle 229 - Dart 230 - Greater Boston 231 - Ostium 233 - Stories from Ylelmore 234 - Counterbalance 238 - The Phosphene Catalogue 240 - Cry Havoc! Ask Questions Later 244 - Black Friday 245 - Keep It Steady 249 - Death by Dying 256 - The White Vault 258 - The Orbiting Human Circus (Of The Air) 260 - Down 261 - The One Stars 262 - Desperado 266 - Zero Hours 268 - Starfall 273 - Elaine's Cooking For The Soul 274 - Within the Wires 275 - The Godfrey Audio Guide 276 - Look Up 277 - Girl in Space 278 - WOE.BEGONE 279 - The Subjective Truth 281 - Back Again, Back Again 282 - The Path Down 285 - Diary of a Space Archivist 286 - Jupiter Saloon 293 - Dirt 296 - Silly Old Bear 298 - Janus Descending

304 - Falling Forward 305 - In Transit 309 - The Pilgrimage Saga 310 - Spire 311 - ROGUE RUNNERS 315 - The Prickwillow Papers 318 - To Chart a Well-Trod Course 319 - Forgive Me! 320 - Arden 324 - Light Hearts 330 - What Will Be Here? 332 - Fireside Folktales 333 - Unseen 335 - InCo 336 - The Ballad of Anne & Mary 337 - Dos: After You 338 - Directive 342 - The Secret of St. Kilda 344 - Come On In, The Water's Fine 350 - Scary Stories for Modern Minds 352 - Crash of the Mellifera 354 - Tell No Tales 355 - The Last Voice 357 - Wake of Corrosion

[jimmyaquino]

My heart has broken in pieces. One of my best pals John Cassaday passed away last night. 52. Way too young. I'm fucking devastated. I've been waiting to post anything as I was trying to find the right words. Plus, I was digging up old photos. Still so many to go through. I may ramble a bit so please bear with me. 

I was at the hospital when he peacefully passed away and I got to say goodbye beforehand. I heard about his hospitalization (I wont go into details on what happened) on Wednesday and went to the hospital every day before work. I would go into his room each time and just chat with him. I randomly texted him last Monday night, 

“Hello! I just wanted to say hi and send some mad Jimmy love. Careful. It’s spicy!”  He replied at 10:46pm with “Love you back!” And as I found out later from his girlfriend Tara, he was taken to the hospital about an hour or so later. Some small solace that my final text was one of mutual love. 

Yesterday, I went into his room and spent some time with him and said good-bye just a couple of hours before he was no longer with us. I gave as much love as I could, mentioning as many as I remembered. And I know this may seem silly, but when I held his hand, I felt a small twitch. I know it”s just an unpredictable body thing but I’ll take it. As you can imagine, I’m a wreck and have been openly bawling off and on. He is my best friend. And that’s what’s great. He is a lot of people's best friend. He is so loved. And even though we may not have hung much as we used to, we always stayed in touch. Always there if I needed.

I first met John back in 2002 through a friend. She had told me about him and of course, I knew who he was from his comic work. Needless to say, we rapidly hit it off. Almost immediately started hanging out. We notoriously hit all the Hell's Kitchen spots (I lived there and he liked hanging there) til the wee hours for years. He introduced me to so many people and a bunch of us would hang out all the time. (Looking at you Paul Pope and John Lucas). That was the thing about John. As said, I was one of his best pals. But I know a lot of people were. Lucas and I were reminiscing last night about how he jokingly passed the Cassaday "best friend" mantle on to me when he moved out of NYC. Cass was so loved and admired by everyone. He always wanted me to meet other friends he knew and would tell me all about them. As I know he would tell them about me. He wanted us all to be one big family of friends. 

I started doing the podcast with Joe Gonzalez in 2005 and John was so supportive. He'd come to the anniversary live recordings as either a guest or just to hang and support. My first San Diego Comic Con was that year and he introduced me to big name friends of his and asked if they'd let us interview them. He'd always tell his friends, "Jimmy's got this terrific new podcast. You gotta go on it". We were always together at SDCC over the years. So much so that if we weren't together at the moment, people would promptly ask me "Where's John?" I loved it! For years, we'd either be on the same flight in or try to land at similar times and then a friend would take us straight to In N Out. 

Besides comics, we shared our love for quite a few things. One of them being the movie It's A Wonderful Life. It's my fave film of all time. And John loved it so much as well. We'd talk about it, quote it, reference it, etc. A couple of years ago, he got me an incredible birthday gift. It's one of those old movie lobby cards that were displayed in movie theater lobbies back in the day. And yes, this one was from back in the 1940's when the movie was released! I had it framed and it's been on my wall ever since. Along with an original art piece from his Astonishing X-Men run he gifted me for another birthday years ago. 

So many favorite memories with him. A few random ones: 1). Me, him and Lucas hit a comedy show back in the day and all 3 of us had our long hair and one comedian kept referring to us as the "cast of The Sopranos". 2). Nick Barrucci got us a limo from NYC to Philly to celebrate John's birthday for one weekend. Fun weekend of food/drinks/clubs/etc. 3). One SDCC, he grabbed my flask usually full of whiskey (I had substituted it w/ an amaro) and did a literal spit take onto my white tie. 4). He refused to get a cell phone for a long time and would have people call/text me when we were out. Sometimes a famous friend or 2 and I'd be like "(insert celeb name here) just called me!" I eventually took him to get his first one. 5). He became friends with Nathan Fillion and brought him to my bar one night. I got off early and the 3 of us had A NIGHT of food/drinks til about 8am when we left the after hours pub. 

I have so many memories and so many pictures to share. Perhaps I will start to share them soon. 

Also, he'd love that he's being talked about in the same space as the great James Earl Jones whom we also lost on Monday. Legends both.

I can't say enough about his girlfriend of 10 years Tara. She was a warrior throughout all of this. While I fielded some calls/texts/messages and helped inform people, she was doing it tenfold. So much love to her and John's family. Some of his cousins came down and it was lovely to spend time with them.

An IAWL quote: "All you can take with you is that which you've given away." And John gave away so much love. 

I'm devastated. The grief comes in waves. But I will spread the Cassaday love forever. Happy to share any stories and love seeing all of yours. He was a love virus. An incredibly talented, kind, generous, loving, loyal friend. I will never forget you, Johnny boy. You changed my life for the better. 

[the-rewatch-rewind]

Another new episode! Getting into the home stretch!

Script below the break

Hello and welcome back to The Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies in a 20-year period. Today I will be discussing number 8 on my list: Universal Pictures’ 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey, directed by Gregory La Cava, written by Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch, based on a book by Eric Hatch, and starring William Powell and Carole Lombard.

The rich and spoiled Bullock sisters, Irene (Carole Lombard) and Cornelia (Gail Patrick), are participating in a scavenger hunt that requires them to find a “forgotten man,” so they race to a shanty town at a city dump. Cornelia gets there first and approaches a homeless man named Godfrey (William Powell), who finds her rude and condescending and therefore refuses to take her offered $5, instead causing her to fall into an ash pile. Irene is amused by Godfrey’s treatment of her sister/rival, and after a brief conversation, Godfrey is amused enough by Irene to agree to be her forgotten man. Irene is so grateful to him for helping her win the scavenger hunt against Cornelia that she offers him a job as the butler for their wacky family, and he accepts without having any idea what he’s in for.

I remember being introduced to this movie rather early in my foray into old Hollywood back in 2002. I can’t recall my exact first impressions, but I’m pretty sure I had seen it several times and was already kind of obsessed with it before I started keeping track of the movies I watched. Once I started keeping track, I watched My Man Godfrey six times in 2003, three times in 2004, three times in 2005, twice in 2007, once in 2008, twice in 2009, once in 2010, twice in 2011, once in 2013, once in 2014, once in 2017, once in 2018, twice in 2019, twice in 2020, once in 2021, and once in 2022.

The main thing that initially drew me to this movie was its silliness. Based on the movies I’ve talked about on this podcast so far, I think it’s pretty clear that I love to watch a bunch of ridiculous characters having a fun romp, and that’s what a lot of My Man Godfrey is. Angelica, the scatterbrained mother of the Bullock family, played delightfully by Alice Brady, is one of the silliest characters in any movie ever, and when I was a young teen, all she had to do was open her mouth to crack me up. Now I find some of her antics a bit grating, which they are definitely meant to be, but some of her lines do still make me laugh every time, like, “I’m positive I didn’t ride a horse last night because I didn’t have my riding costume on!” and “If you’re going to be rude to my daughter, you might at least take your hat off!” and, in response to Godfrey saying that he sold short to save the family from financial ruin, “I don’t understand, you sold short? You mean, gentlemen’s underwear?” My brother was particularly tickled by that last one as a child, to the point that when we played The Sims together, we created a character named Gentleman’s Underwear after that line.

Angelica is far from the only silly character in this movie, and what I love about the whole ensemble is that each character is entertaining in a different way. Angelica is scatterbrained and doesn’t really care what’s going on, while her husband Alexander (played by Eugene Pallette) has lost track of what’s going on mostly because he’s so fed up with his wife’s ridiculousness. And then there’s Carlo (played by Mischa Auer) who is Angelica’s “protégé,” and I’m still not really sure exactly what that means. I can’t tell if it’s a euphemism, or if she’s like, supposed to be teaching him piano? We definitely see him playing piano, and eating, and impersonating a gorilla, and reading to Angelica, and that seems to be all he does. So unclear what his purpose is, but he is amusing. On the other hand, Molly (played by Jean Dixon, who also played Edward Everett Horton’s wife in Holiday) has the very clear purpose of being the Bullock family’s maid. Her dry, sarcastic wit is amusing in an entirely different way that I love very much. There’s also Tommy Gray (played by Alan Mowbray), a friend of the Bullock family who also happens to recognize Godfrey from their college days. Not wanting to reveal that he came from a wealthy Boston family, Godfrey says that he was Tommy’s valet in college, forcing Tommy to try to invent a story explaining why Godfrey wouldn’t have given him as a reference when the Bullocks hired him. Tommy seems like a relatively normal guy who isn’t particularly bright. Watching him flounder in that scene could have easily become uncomfortable, but they managed to portray it in a way that’s just silly. And his invention of a wife and five children for Godfrey adds to the confusion and tension behind the main romance in the movie.

If you’ve listened to previous episodes of this podcast and have an especially keen memory, you may recall that Gregory La Cava also directed Stage Door, which was number 31 on my list and came out the year after My Man Godfrey. I’m not sure how much say he had in the casting of both of those movies, but I enjoy that there are several people who appeared in both, such as character actors Franklin Pangborn and Grady Sutton, neither of whom was credited in My Man Godfrey but both of whom make memorable appearances. The most notable cast member the two movies have in common is Gail Patrick, who was Ginger Rogers’s main rival besides Katharine Hepburn in Stage Door and Cornelia Bullock in My Man Godfrey. In both of these, as in most of her movies, Patrick’s character is rather unpleasant, but Cornelia is a bit more complex than that, and she fascinates me. She’s bitter and spoiled and mean to her sister and can’t decide if she wants to seduce Godfrey or hurt him or both. After Godfrey tells her what he thinks of her, she tries to frame him for robbery by hiding her pearl necklace under his mattress, but he manages to find it and hide it better before the police search his room. Cornelia is so insistent that it must be under the mattress that the police get suspicious and ask why she’s so sure of that, to which she responds with the amazing and thoroughly unconvincing line, “I read that that’s where people put things when they steal them!” Shockingly, even after all of this, the story actually redeems Cornelia somewhat. Godfrey is able to save the family financially by pawning her necklace, and after he reveals this he tells her that he, too, was once a spoiled child, and that she has the potential to be a good person if she so chooses. Cornelia is visibly moved by his words, and while we unfortunately never see her again after that scene, I like to believe that she takes them to heart and stops being so awful going forward.

But as much as I love all the supporting characters, I don’t think I’d have watched this movie nearly as many times if not for the leads. William Powell brings just the right combination of sophistication and jadedness to the role of Godfrey, making it easy to believe that he was once a rich man but lost everything he had to a woman he loved who betrayed him. It’s beautiful to watch him rediscover his own purpose and humanity in response to the Bullocks’ kindness and choose to focus on the positive aspects of their quirks. When William Powell was offered the role of Godfrey, he agreed to take it only if Carole Lombard would play Irene, knowing that she would be perfect, and he was completely correct. Lombard absolutely kills it as Irene, flawlessly combining the dramatic naïveté of an overgrown toddler with a genuine desire to be a good and mature person. And the way Powell and Lombard play off each other is utterly delightful. Their first conversation sets up their dynamic beautifully – he’s rather amused by her, but she takes everything he says extremely seriously. Like when she asks him, “Why do you live in a place like this when there are so many nice places?” and he responds, “It’s because my real estate agent felt that the altitude would be very good for my asthma,” she doesn’t seem to know that he’s joking, and says, “Oh my uncle has asthma!” And he just rolls with it and replies, “No! Well, now there’s a coincidence!” This is already funny as written, but their delivery and facial expressions make it so much funnier. Then probably my favorite part of the movie is when Irene is sulking and trying to get Godfrey to notice her, but she mostly just comes across as ridiculous, and Cornelia is heckling her mercilessly. Godfrey is trying to act uninterested, but it’s clear from a few of his glances in her direction that he really does want to give her the attention she craves. It’s readily apparent from all of their scenes that they both thoroughly understood the assignment and knew how to play off each other. Powell and Lombard had worked together twice before and had even been briefly married to each other from 1931 to 1933. Despite the fact that things didn’t work out between them romantically in real life, they remained good friends, and seem to have only used their history to bring out the best performance in each other here. It is kind of funny that Godfrey keeps telling Irene that she’s way too young for him because it’s like, “You clearly didn’t think she was too young when you married her five years ago!” Mostly, though, it just makes me really happy as someone who has no interest in pursuing romantic relationships to know that it was Powell and Lombard’s post-divorce friendship that led to possibly the best movie that either of them ever made. It’s so encouraging to see the evidence that sometimes the relationship between two people can actually get better when they stop trying to make it romantic.

However, it took me a while to see things that way, because in the movie itself, Godfrey and Irene do end up together romantically. Once I learned that the actors were divorced in real life, my first thought was more, “Wow, amazing that they could still pretend to be in love after falling out of love.” In more recent rewatches, I’ve come to realize that the romance in the movie is very weird – which, to be fair, is quite usual for screwball comedies – but I think as an obliviously aromantic teenager it greatly informed what I thought romance was. Irene meets a nice man who helps her win a game against her awful sister and decides to be in love with him, so all she has to do is convince him that he’s also in love with her. Not understanding that romantic attraction was a thing that I was not experiencing, teenaged me thought that was how that worked: you just pick somebody and decide you have a crush on them, and if the other person has also picked you to be their crush, romance is born. Right? Apparently not. Anyway, in more recent rewatches, when it gets to the part where Godfrey tells Irene, “You’re grateful to me because I helped you to beat Cornelia. And I’m grateful to you because you helped me to beat life. But that doesn’t mean that we have to fall in love,” I’m like, “Correct! It doesn’t mean that! You don’t have to fall in love!” But the movie implies that Godfrey is suppressing his feelings for Irene because of the previous bad relationship that led to his homelessness, and it expects us to all be on board with the way Irene follows him after he quits and basically forces him to marry her. The older I get, the more this ending bothers me. I realize that it’s meant to be part of the screwball silliness of it all, and that it was inevitable for a movie like this to make the male and female lead end up together, but it’s like, can we maybe make sure that Godfrey is on board with that first? I can very much see their marriage going the same way as that of the actors who played them, with Irene and Godfrey ultimately concluding that they’re better suited as friends than lovers. But again, as a young person watching this movie, I thought their relationship was beautiful. Soon after I first got really into My Man Godfrey, my friend had a Build-A-Bear birthday party, and I named my bear Godfrey. I can’t remember who I was talking to or how this came up, but I remember making the declaration that if I was still single at 40, I would marry that Godfrey bear. So if you’re listening to this, consider yourself invited to our wedding in seven years. It probably won’t be much weirder than Irene and Godfrey’s wedding at the end of this movie.

There is another element to My Man Godfrey besides its silliness and unconvincing romance that makes it particularly fascinating. While most 1930s screwball comedies seem to be intended to help audiences temporarily forget about the hardships of the Great Depression, My Man Godfrey uses the Depression as a big part of the plot. The rich are portrayed as frivolous and ridiculous, while the homeless “forgotten men” are portrayed as resilient and noble. Godfrey reveals to Tommy that after having his heart broken, he intended to drown himself in the river, but seeing people living at the dump next to the river, determined to survive despite their circumstances, made him change his mind. The hard times even impact the well-to-do, with Alexander Bullock nearly losing everything in bad investments. At first it seems odd that Godfrey would use the money from Cornelia’s necklace merely to help the rich snobs, but then it’s revealed that in addition to that, he converted the dump he used to live in to a nightclub, creating jobs, and affordable housing. And all of that was possible because the jobless men convinced Godfrey to keep living, then Irene was nice enough to employ Godfrey as a butler, and Cornelia was bitter enough to try to frame him for robbery. I assume that doing something like that would not have been nearly as easy as the movie makes it look, but I appreciate that instead of leaning into the pure escapism of so many films from that era, My Man Godfrey says, “Yes, times are hard, but don’t give up hope. Things can improve unexpectedly at any time. And small kindnesses can add up to make a very big difference.” And that message continues to resonate 87 years later. So while this is mostly a very silly comedy, its genuine moments showing the importance of human connection help keep it from descending into complete and utter chaos like some other screwball comedies I could name.

And perhaps it was that touch of seriousness that led this mostly silly comedy to six Oscar nominations: Gregory La Cava for Best Director, Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind for Best Adapted Screenplay, William Powell for Best Actor, Carole Lombard for Best Actress, Mischa Auer for Best Supporting Actor, and Alice Brady for Best Supporting Actress. This made My Man Godfrey the first movie to be nominated in all four acting categories, which isn’t saying much because that was also the first year that the Oscars had four acting categories, but it remains the only film to this day to be nominated in all four acting categories without being nominated for Best Picture. And it was the only movie to be nominated in those six categories without winning anything until American Hustle, 77 years later. Of all the people nominated for Oscars for My Man Godfrey, only Alice Brady would ever win one, for In Old Chicago the following year. The director and one of the writers would each be nominated once more, also the following year, for Stage Door. William Powell had been nominated once before, for 1934’s The Thin Man, and would be nominated again for 1947’s Life With Father. But this was the only nomination for both Mischa Auer and Carole Lombard. Lombard in particular really wanted an Oscar and moved on to dramatic roles for a few years hoping that would help, but it didn’t. So she briefly returned to comedy before her career and life were tragically cut short by a plane crash in 1942, when she was only 33 years old. So, my age. I feel like, had Carole Lombard lived longer and continued to make more films in a similar vein, she probably would have made it into more than one of my top 40. The more I rewatch My Man Godfrey, the more impressed I become with her performance. This is one of the few old movies that actually has a blooper reel available, and that shows just how different her normal speech and facial expressions and mannerisms were from Irene’s. I have watched and enjoyed several of Lombard’s other films, but a lot of them are a bit too silly even for me, and I really wish she could have been in more of the still fun and kooky but not-quite-as-screwball-as-the-‘30s comedies that were just starting to become popular around the time of her death. But at least we get to see her in My Man Godfrey. Thank you, William Powell.

My Man Godfrey was remade in 1957, and I watched that version one time in 2003, reacted with, Ew, they ruined it,and have never rewatched it. Maybe I will someday, just to see if it’s as bad as I remember it. No offense to that cast – there was no possible way to reach the standard set by the original. Sometimes remakes are great, but sometimes the original was already perfect and shouldn’t be messed with, and in my opinion, My Man Godfrey absolutely falls into the latter category. So what I’m saying is, if this podcast has made you want to watch this movie, make sure you get the 1936 version.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies. Next week I will be joined by not one but two very special guests, to discuss the longer of the two movies I watched 30 times, which is going to be very fun, so stay tuned for that. As always, I will leave you with a quote from that next movie: “Wait up! Wait for me! Not you, I don’t even know you!”

[panelshowsource]

anon!!!!! it’s a really unique cast, one of the most random and unique we’ve ever had, maybe? when it comes to random hodge-podges of people, i’d vote series 8, 12, and 15? maybe? so it’s hard to say just how i feel about them because these groups can take the longest to sort out their dynamics

taskmaster has this funny way of making you dislike(?) someone you thought you liked or come around to people you thought you didn’t care for. john kearns on catsdown back in the day used to make me want to rip my flesh off — now, because of taskmaster, i will always see him as paddington bear and no one can take that away from me. A SWEETIEPIE. i know many people walked away from s8 liking lou a little less and walked away from s13 liking judi a little more. despite at least a few great routines and his obvious wit, ivo graham’s 90s-hugh-grant-but-bitey/cynical-instead-of-bumblingly-charming schtick has never been up my alley. i am really curious if this series will make me come around to him, because i do think he’s let his guard down a lot more in this environment than the more cutthroat comedy environments — and i like him more for it thus far :) he’s really putting the effort in, too! hahaha

frankie is for old gen panel show fans and old gen panel show fans only!!! i love him sm, he’s the wittiest and his giggles are iconic, and i died of cuteness hearing his kids participated in beating the shit out of him during one of the tasks. i already really enjoy his dynamic with alex; alex has his awkward beats and frankie meets them with his own calm and wit really well. i don’t know if a lot of people have realised this over the years, but there’s a shyness to frankie that i hope doesn’t end up depriving us of frankie content throughout the series. as confident as he can be in his comedy and his opinions, (these days, at least) he doesn’t cut people off, showboat, hog spotlight, etc. so i am nervous he won’t get ample screentime like some of the more hot mess figures like ivo and jenny. AND JENNY IS SO DELIGHTFUL LMAO you’re right the older, quirky ladies who don’t take the show too seriously are hit and miss for a lot of viewers, but i hope with jenny’s enthusiasm that she’ll be on people’s good sides. taskmaster is, at its core, silly. jenny is silly. match made in heaven!

mae and kiell... i don’t have strong opinions about mae. a lot of people like them because they’re very pleasant. i know they’re polite, kind, and explore narratives in their writing that are sensitive and engaging to many, but i wouldn’t say they make for spectacular tv in the context of taskmaster. pleasant. not hysterical, but pleasant. will probably win the series? is it too early to say? (i wonder if a more hyper-on-average cast would help them either open up more or have a more stand-out dynamic/character in comparison?) kiell on the other hand? hm... on the most recent episode of the taskmaster podcast, ed and kiell talk a lot about how kiell is genuinely frustrated or angry with the tasks, the surprises, the inconsistent scoring — and that’s already evident, especially by episode 3. ed suggests it’s his character for the season, but ed and kiell discuss how it’s real and kiell really couldn’t help it showing as the series progressed. this is something that i don’t like and don’t think is funny and don’t wanna see on the show. throwing a fake tantrum, arguing with greg because it’s funny take him by surprise with a random bout of impertinence or give him an opportunity to hilarious retort as the egotistical taskmaster character, jokingly(!!!) calling alex out for his trickery, and so on is funny. though it’s not necessary for a good watch, i do looove when contestants can walk the line between comedy and genuine competitiveness: joe wilkinson did this sooo well if you revisit s2, throwing certain tasks for fun while trying fucking hard and demanding his flowers for other tasks; ed gamble, kerry godliman, and bridget christie are more examples of people who knew where to draw the line in excessively arguing, nitpicking, whining, fuming, sulking — but were still able to deliver enough of that that it was hilarious when their efforts were squandered by alex or greg threw down the hammer. i know it’s a fine line for those who try to walk it! i’m worried kiell is gonna be too butthurt and too sulky to the point that i’m distracted. you have to be able to laugh everything off in the end. speaking for myself, when contestants like james acaster and iain stirling took their butthurt and sulkiness too far, it was hard for me to watch, so part of me is already distracted by the fear of being distracted by this type of attitude. ig that’s all to say i’m not very excited by kiell rn (having never seen him before; no, i haven’t watched ghosts), and i’m a but frustrated the taskmaster podcast made me somehow less excited than i was before, but i hope he hits a funnier stride next ep ...

it’s not that deep these are just my initial impressions after 3 episodes LOL it’s cute so far!

i hope you enjoy jenny!! jenny was such a cute pick for this show, i love when taskmaster thinks a bit outside of the box when considering who can compete and comes up with fun people like her

i know! god, i swear there was once he said he wouldn’t do taskmaster or wasn’t that interested in it, same as david mitchell... if my memory serves correct? ...! that gives me hope david might one day change his mind heh... but then, i’m not sure what victoria would have told him about the experience to sway him one way or another HAHA

can you imagine if frankie and miles had been on the same season 🥲

anyways, a win for old school panel show fans! any other older school comedians or personalities you’d like to see? not to be basic but we need jimmy carr

omg good choice anon! it was fun always seeing them do cool stuff~

personally — and i apologise now to all of the james acaster, phil wang, and rhod gilbert team fans — i most prefer seeing the duos/combos who have crazy good friendship harmony and simply love shooting the shit together. for me, that’s mark watson & nish kumar, jessica knappett & kerry godliman, and david baddiel & jo brand (and maybe bridget christie, judi love &sophie duker)? obviously so many teams have so many great moments, but why did all of these teams feel like real besties?? i remember jo going to the bathroom during a task and david not giving a shit LMAO

also, shoutout to al murray, dave gorman, and paul chowdhry for just being the most random team of people ever 

i’m gonna listen to it tomorrow anon!! if you have a favourite episode pls lmk ♡