Episode #6 - "Coffee At The Y" - Show Notes

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Alternate Title: "Angry Hate Time" 

• Tonight's beverage: Cerveza Tecate.
• Photos from the Zombie Apocalypse party which we recapped. 
• The passing of Ray Harryhausen and movies made in Italy and the difference between stop-motion animation and animation in general.
• McHatin having "coffee at the Y" while his girlfriend played a videogame and why Dirk refuses to play games with Hermione.
• The place for videogame deals is Cheap Ass Gamer.
• More next Xbox rumors.
• Music by Kutiman - "I'm New".
• Free Comic Book Day recap and Dirk's encounter with Ernest Dickerson.
• 
  Hard to believe he's 61. Picture in the attic?
  
• Discussion of Limitless. Dirk's review.
• A brief discussion of Iron Man 3 because McHatin really hated it and we can't discuss it without spoilers. Dirk's review. Tune in next week for the real beatdown.
• Discussion of movie theater etiquette.
• Ender's Game prompts a discussion whether you can make a Mozart if you grab them and train them mercilessly.
• Reese Witherspoon wanders in and joins the discussion of movie theater behavior, Skyfall and the bad shape the Bond series is in.
• Reese quizzes the hosts about their opinions of Prometheus and Ted. 
• The surprisingly dark humor of Bob Saget. Really.
• Music by Das Racist - "Rapping 2 U (feat. Lakutis)".
• Dirk finishes up last week's discussion of Orphan Black and praises its star, Tatiana Maslany.
• The perils of getting into shows that then get cancelled plus some quick thoughts on various TV shows.

Episode #5 - "We Control The Horizontal" - Show Notes

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Alternate Titles: "Set Controls For the Heart of the...Whoops!" or "Beer: Making Men Brave Since Forever"

• We were self-engineering the show so if you can hear anything, you're welcome. 
• Tonight's adult beverage: Third Shift beer.
• Our anticipation for Iron Man 3- which we were going to check out after the show - and the controversy about the special Chinese edition kicks things off.
• McHatin's aversion to watching the TV version of Game of Thrones is revisited and we discuss the past couple of episodes. The odd modesty of Gwendoline Christie - who looks like this off and on the clock....
  
  ...steers us into a discussion of the looks of women in Sweden and Italy.
  
• If Game Of Thrones took place entirely on Facebook: Season 3, Episode 5.
• Oh, hey...Iron Man 3 discussion. The demands for a Chinese actor to play the Mandarin leads to a discussion of how superhero movies are cast and a history lesson for how the first Iron Man movie was cast.
•  Music from Cibo Matto and Handsome Boy's Modeling School.
• Proper movie theater etiquette and a comparison of 2nd-run movie houses.
• Mila Kunis being named FHM's Sexiest Woman leads seamlessly to the death of one of the Kriss Kross guys (no, it didn't cause it!) and how he should be buried and a unique burial method McHatin say online.
• Spec Ops: The Line and how games have DLC and tacked-on multi-player leads to a long digression about modern shooter games.
• An interview with a couple putting on a zombie-themed charity event and a sound thrashing of Andrea of the Walking Dead.
• Dirk's lukewarm opinion of G.I. Joe: Retaliation prompts waaaaay too much blather.
• 
• Chris Smith calls in to join the nerdery. (It would've helped if he'd seen what we're talking about.)
• The awesome Pacific Rim trailer...
  
  ...leads into a discussion of Guillermo Del Toro's career and whether Pan's Labyrinth was misleadingly advertised.
• Dirk starts explaining why people should watch Orphan Black but this will have to be finished next week because he managed to steer off the road and never made it back. Sigh...
• TV shows that make mid-season course corrections like this season's Supernatural.
• McHatin's heresy against Star Trek is cause for consternation. 
• The Blu-ray set referenced in the discussion of The Player:
  
  
• The date of Ice Cube's "good day" was determined to be January 20, 1992 according to this.

Episode #4 - "The Gwyneth Paltrow Conundrum" - Show Notes

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Alternate Title: "So This Is What Getting Through The Checklist Sounds Like"

• Tonight's beverages: Simple Times Lager and Redds Apple Ale.
• The loathsome hotness of Gwyneth Paltrow is beaten upon at length. Probably too much length.
• Her Iron Man 3 premiere dress:
  
  
• How Gwennie compares to Angelina Jolie and Faruza Balk crops up.
• The sincerity gap between Anne "Yummy Girl" Hathaway and J.Law and whether Megan Fox has a toe for a thumb. Wait, what?
• Speed round of "Who's hot?" and the benefits of looking like Chris Cornell.
• Music by The Heavy.
• The premise of the upcoming movie The Purge is debated. The trailer:
  
  
• The trailer for Elysium sets off discussion of how District 9 succeeded where Avatar failed at an allegorical storytelling. That trailer:
  
  
• The lack of shiny in sci-fi and trying to figure out where things changed. We've tackled this subject before in this episode of The Dirk & McHatin Show which shows that tangents and digressions have been a feature (not a bug) of our schtick since forever.
• The movie Mimic is quickly reviewed.
• Music by Living Color & RUN-DMC and Mudhoney & Sir Mix-A-Lot.
• McHatin gets his hate on for new SyFy series Defiance which prompts Dirk to rant about how sci-fi needs to stop being Westerns and how the up-front emphasis on cowboys in space wrecked Firefly, contra every other nerd in the world. (They're wrong.)
• A cool zombie-themed charity event happening May 4 is mentioned.
• The closing themes from Portal and Portal 2.
• Rumors and FUD surrounding the next Xbox, the downside of having a mandatory Kinnect, the (Dirk says) myth of some guy having sex while gaming, and the problems of mandatory always-online connection are kicked about.
• A pair of tunes by the Divinyls to mark the passing of the inimitable Christina Amphlett.

Episode #3 - "When You Stare Into The Boobs, The Boobs Stare Back Into You" - Show Notes

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Alternate Title: "Bob Seger: It's What We Drink Around Here."


Setting a record for going off the rails, this is sort of what happened:

• Music from Boston-based bands fills our breaks
• Proof of last week's Morgan Freeman meme is presented.
• Aubrey Plaza's weird crashing of the MTV Movie Awards and whether Sasha Baron Cohen teabagging Eminem was staged or not is discussed in length.
• The major plot flaw from The Perks of Being a Wallflower is hashed about, leading to an exploration of the vast gaps in McHatin's musical knowledge which leads into a deeper rabbit hole.
• Dirk learns something about McHatin. Shock and horror ensues.
• McHatin only recently learned about Bob Seger. Greater shock and horror ensues.
• Music from The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Dropkick Murphys.
• A photo of the "ribbed for her pleasure" bottle containing tonight's beer was posted to Facebook.
• Netflix's foray into original series is discussed on the way toward a discussion of the warning label on the red-band Hemlock Grove trailer.
• "Bob Seger: It's What We Drink Around Here." 
•  The full Hey Kids, Grow a Pair: How Music Blogs Neutered Indie Rock blog item.
• McHatin has serious issues with ICP which we may have to explore more in a future show.
• Music by The Breeders, Belly, and The Pixies.
• Dirk talks about the challenges of writing about music versus movies.
• How crowd-sourcing the investigation of the Boston Marathon bombing (or other crimes) by Reddit users could have very bad consequences.
• Dirk's last day of work and the Kafkaesque weirdness that corporate busy-bodies can cause when they overhear offhand and benign comments.
• The movie trailer for Man of Steel is discussed and McHatin's interpretation is hotly debated. Watch it and see who's correct:
  
  
• The contractual entanglements keeping various Marvel comics characters apart is broached. Why do comic book movies keep retelling the same origin stories?
• The Lone Ranger trailer is slapped around.
• Dirk's shampoo secret revealed.
• Music by Mission of Burma and Billy Squier.
• Apologies for not actually covering what we billboarded.
• Outrage of Sasha Gray's lady landscaping and the weird beliefs of a friend of Dirk's.

Episode #2 - "T*tt*esprinkles" - Show Notes

Download Episode (58MB, Running Time: 2h 2m)

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Alternate Title: "Why Is God Laughing?"

In an attempt to prevent random meandering, we laid out an entire show rundown to keep things focused. Thus the alternative title. Sigh...

Here's what happened instead...

• Gwyneth Paltrow says she smokes only one cigarette per week. We reveal the story behind this claim.
• Dirk discusses the surprises that can be found while cataloging his DVD and Blu-ray collection, specifically a certain porn series. (NSFW language. Duh.) 
• Movies that aren't porn but sound like porn.
• Literal interpretations of song lyrics are addressed.
• We mop up leftover business from last week including the movie Sasha Gray was barely in and the porn star currently in Game of Thrones.
• Why we don't want to be your little secret, but everyone's little secret.
• We discuss Reddit - "The house that Digg built." - and the cautionary tale of what happens to sites that PO their users.
• Anyway.
• Bing is not a verb.
• The poster with over 100 Internet memes illustrated.
• The dangers of singing "Thrift Shop" too much.
• Music from MC Frontalot, Tony Bacala, Professor Elemental.
• McHatin's abandonment of Dirk to see G.I. Joe: Retribution himself.
• Movie trailers discussed: Trance and This Is The End.
• More music from Voyag3r and HafLife.
• HafLife interview and they play the Deep Thoughts Musicians Quiz beginning at 1:18:00
• Susan Lucci went 1-for-21 on her Emmy quest.
• Photos from HafLife's CD Release Party so you can put faces to voices. 
• "Into Your Arms" is by The Lemonheads.

Episode #1 - "Well, It Was A Good Night. Nobody Died." - Show Notes

Alternate Episode Title: "Say Anyway. Better Yet, Don't."

Anyway...  

Our maiden voyage did better than the Titanic's, but that's a rather low bar to clear, now isn't it?

Anyway...  

The death of legendary film critic Roger Ebert set the tone for the discussion as we touched upon his influence, his varied life beyond criticism and the movies he really hated including The Brown Bunny which set off a wild digression about porn.

Anyway...  
 
The April Fools Day video run by YouTube that claimed they'd be shutting down for 10 years to judge and select a winning video leads to the highlight reel moment of the show at the 29:00 mark and the ensuing two minutes.

Anyway...

The odd lack of Southern actors and the overwhelming amount of foreigners playing Southerners on shows like True Blood and The Walking Dead came up which lead to this picture illustrating why McHatin thought proved Anna Paquin was really skinny:


Yeah. Anyway...  

Movies discussed: Red Dawn (2012), Killer Joe, John Dies at the End.

Anyway...
 
Music played:





So anyway...

Finally, Detroit chanteuse Audra Kubat dropped by to talk about her upcoming album she's recording, sing a couple of new songs, and plays the Deep Thoughts Musicians Quiz game.

The Culture Vultures Lexicon

Over time, many shows have stock references emerge which may be familiar callbacks to regular listeners, but head-scratchers for newcomers. To help you not get too lost when hanging with the Culture Vultures, here's a handy dandy guide to frequently repeated phrases. If there's anything you're still confused about, drop us a line and we'll add it.

Hermione - Pseudonym for Dirk's girlfriend. The meowing Otto frequently does when she's mentioned refers to Dirk's "confession" that Hermione was actually his neighbor's cat whom he stole.

Bob "I'm Gonna Kill Somebody" Koski - The "third most-Cultural Vulture"; designated backup co-host and all around cool frood. He saw Straight Outta Compton and we've decided he is now a gangsta pimp.

SWINN (She Who Is Not Named) - Our term for actress Jennifer Lawrence, whom we no longer speak of after her dethroning and exile as THE Official Girlfriend of the Culture Vultures for becoming another angry Hollyweird celebrity.

Official Girlfriend of the Culture Vultures - A woman whose unique blend of beauty, talent and most importantly, fun public persona makes her someone we'd love to hang out with. There is a top slot ("THE Official...") and standard Girlfriends.

As of June 18, 2019: THE OGotCV is Krysten Ritter; Emma Stone is also a OGotCV.

Former OGotCV: Taylor Swift (July 2017-June 2019)

Dirk Inversion Test - Thought experiment where you test the validity of a politically correct premise by inverting the thesis and seeing whether it sounds ridiculous or would be offensive. (e.g. If a minority Oscars voter proclaimed they would only vote for other minorities in order to reduce acclaim for eligible white candidates, imagine a white voter saying they wouldn't vote for minorities and not getting torched for their racism.)

Otto's Hanger/Superbuddy Clubhouse - Otto's basement - don't call it a "man cave!" - where we've produced the show since episode #45 after ceasing live broadcasts from the RRX studio.

Beautiful Mind Wall (BMW) - Referring to how Dirk sees money saved and thus spendable elsewhere due to his Bargain Ninja® skills; taken from the movie of the same name.

Fortress of Dirkitude - Dirk's ridiculously large collection of physical DVDs and Blu-rays from Otto remarking that he had so many he could build an addition to his home. (Update 2/22/18): The Fortress is currently non-existant pending Dirk's getting a new home.)

McHatin - The original co-host of Culture Vultures for 20 of the first 21 episodes. His departure has been explained variously as alluding to possible CIA actions to overthrow governments and that he's distributing Bibles in El Salvador.  (Which is Spanish for The Salvador.)

Reese Witherspoon/Diamanda Galas/etc. - Pseudonyms for WhiteDogg (real name!), owner of Raw Radio X who engineered the first four shows and has occasionally appeared in early episodes.


#GamerGate - The consumers revolt against corruption in the videogame and mainstream press which has been falsely characterized as a hate movement by the media. Several episodes have had substantial segments covering this and can be found here.

OTTO'S DRINK RECIPES:
* Autopilot - Jim Beam + Diet Mountain Dew
* Royal Ballslap - Crown Royal + Angry Orchard
* Manic Pixie - Crown Royal Regal Apple + cranberry apple juice
* Angry Autopilot - Jim Beam + Diet Pepsi w/Lime
* Undercover Operative - Crown Royal + Diet Pepsi w/Lime