Tag Archives: fun size

Fun Size Episode 77 – A Plague of Ricks [CLIP]

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We’re back yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re upturning the rocks of our childhoods and looking at all the bugs and worms, like the uncomfortable fact that serial bully and sexist Rick Berman still has any relationship to Star Trek media anymore, and how growing up sometimes means having our love of franchise media becomes more complicated.

Plus, a quick rundown of the history of professional wrestlers owning (and not owning) the rights to their own names — and that one time that Vince McMahon tried to “recast” a couple of names he owned with new wrestlers.

And why are all the worst people named Rick?

And lots more unhinged leftist rantings! We drop the mask and chat about the evils we’re all complicit in by living under capitalism. You know, because we’re a pop culture podcast!

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 76 – Make It Work. [CLIP]

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We’re back yet again with a new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re going boldly into the deep, inconsistent, and often-confusing world of Star Trek uniform design! Why did Starfleet have the exact same red naval uniform for nearly 70 years before they started to update their uniforms every few years in the 24th Century? Why do they keep designing great uniforms for flashback scenes that we’ll never see again? Why do people keep changing their clothes in Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Why do the crews of the U.S.S. Titan and the U.S.S. Ceritos have completely different uniforms? And don’t get us started on the constantly changing Admiral uniforms.

We’ll need positronic brains to sort this all out!

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 75 – Literal Toilet Money [CLIP]

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We’re back yet again with our 75th Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re continuing our talk with Carol Brouillette, and it may be time to crown Dave Bautista as the greatest professional-wrestler-turned-actor of all time. We look at his choices, roles and performances from Knock at the Cabin to Blade Runner 2049, and compare him to his squared circle contemporaries like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena.

Then we chat about the type of gimmicky overpriced restaurants for the uber-rich that marry pretentiousness to a giant price tag. What separates fine dining from obscene performative consumption that doesn’t taste good, isn’t filling, and costs the same as a month’s rent? Can you even feel like a good person eating something like that?

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 74 – That’s How You Get an Independence Day! [CLIP]

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We’re back with yet another new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re continuing our chat with Chelsea Rustad, and we’re looking at billionaire narcissists getting booed, and the ethics of hidden camera comedy shows.

Where is the line when it comes to comedy based on a person not knowing they’re on television? What if they know they’re on TV, but think they’re on a “serious” reality show, instead of a spoof? Who is the butt of the joke, and when does it go from funny to mean-spirited?

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 73 – But, She Has a New Hat! [CLIP]

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We’re back with another new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re continuing our chat with Kayleigh Casterline, and digging into the intersection of sports, video games and capitalist rent-seeking.

The new wrestling game, AEW: Fight Forever, is claiming that it won’t ask you to buy an entirely new game every year, the way that their rival the WWE does (not to mention the NFL, the NBA or MLB). They say they’re going to sell you a game once, and then update it.

What is the promise of this approach? What are the potential pitfalls? What happens to your video game roster when another wrestler does something unspeakable?

Plus, more media has entered the public domain! And we’re one year out from the most famous rodent of them all joining the army of the publicly-owned!

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 72 – Highway to Heaven, Except He Breaks Peoples’ Fingers [CLIP]

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We’re back with a second Fun Size episode this month, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This time, we’re talking about our undying love for the Denzel Washington Equalizer movies, and how they can be a strangely bloody salve for our woes in these trying times.

We dive into the often-morally iffy world of middle-aged action revenge fantasies, and what the targets of those films’ righteous violence says about the people who make them. What separates a justified cathartic experience from right-wing reactionary paranoia?

Plus, we explore the messy, contradictory, and morally confused Black Adam, and try to figure out who the hell that movie wants us to root for.

Also: come out to our special movie screening on December 8th in Seattle and support the PNW Starbucks Workers United labor union relief fund!

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 71 – That’s Capitalism, Baby! [CLIP]

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We’re back with another new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re chatting about the wonder of the public domain and open source software, and how it helps make our show possible and helps create community — and how capitalism puts up walls and exploits them to seek rent.

We talk a bit about how the world’s richest douchebag tech bro finally gave us the nudge to get our show off of Twitter, just in time to watch him burn it to the ground. A billionaire narcissist and the internet’s favorite hellscape: those crazy kids deserve each other!

Who ever said that capitalism was a meritocracy? Spoiler: it’s billionaires.

Also: come out to our special movie screening on December 8th in Seattle and support the PNW Starbucks Workers United labor union relief fund!

P.S. – Mike doesn’t actually smoke. He wanted to be clear about that.

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 70 – Selling Diet Pills on Instagram [CLIP]

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We’re back in the studio with a new Fun Size episode, now a monthly exclusive for our Patreon supporters! This month, we’re continuing our talk with Kirby Green, for a chat about reality television and the “Am I the Asshole?” sub-reddit.

So, reality television isn’t real. I mean, duh. Or is it sometimes? And does it actually matter? Aren’t we – like most scripted programs on TV – just agreeing to believe the reality we’re given for the sake of a story?

And Mike remembers The Joe Schmo Show, an accidentally wholesome faux-reality show from the ugliest decade (the aughts) on the douchiest network (Spike TV). Producers decide to play a prank on a real guy on a fake reality show, only to have to haphazardly change their mean-spirited plans when their subject turns out to be a lovably kind doofus.

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 69 – Two Degrees From Luke Skywalker [CLIP]

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We’re back with a new Fun Size podcast, now a monthly exclusive for our Patreon supporters! This month, we’re back with Sam Mulvey to get nerdier than we have for a while.

Mike takes the rough draft of his new “Bechdel Test”-esque thought experiment about media worldbuilding for a spin and tries to punch holes in it.  Are our large shared universe worlds really as large and expansive as they appear to be, or is that just an illusion to hide something much smaller and more insular?

And in probably more depth and exhaustive detail than necessary, Mike talks about his love and fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien and his Middle-earth legendarium, and Sam gets the opportunity to talk more about Frank Herbert’s Dune than he’s ever done before on the show.

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 68 – Nobody Gives a Fuck About Rutherford B. Hayes

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We’re continuing our chat with Joe Preti, for a deep dive into the topics that really matter.

We perhaps spend too much time, dissecting the many pathological lies and shitty behavior of 90s action star Steven Seagal, and we explore the two qualities a person can have in combination that can precipitate a downfall (or at least make you wish that it had). We explore the new Elvis Presley biopic, and the fleeting myth of cultural immortality. Do some things and people just deserve to be forgotten? And do only the truly worst people in the world achieve true notoriety? And isn’t being totally forgotten in a way… kind of liberating?

And we share a special announcement about the future of Fun Size episodes!

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Fun Size Episode 67 – When Did I Become an Old Man?

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We’re back with Dave Brouillette to speak in defense of cinema’s great unsung wet blankets. The long-suffering adults left to pick up the pieces when the reckless hot shot protagonist with a disregard for human life blows up half of downtown or nearly starts World War III while they were saving the day or just looking cool.

Is there an age where your empathy naturally starts to gravitate to these people over the bad boy hero?

We also dig into the complicated emotions of watching popular media with jingoistic or reactionary politics — from Top Gun to 24 to Death Wish — both overt and implicit. Even the stuff we like can be a bit harrowing to watch at times.

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Fun Size Episode 66 – The Word for That Is “Extortion”

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We continue our chat with Michael Warbington and dig into a rich vein we usually leave unmined: video games.

With different levels of skill, engagement and knowledge, we look at the experience of gaming in 2022, the intersection of art and commerce, the prevalence of in-game microtransactions, getting mercilessly griefed by racist swearing twelve year-olds, and a game’s replayability. What do we want out of the gaming experience?

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Fun Size Episode 65 – From Sublime to Disgusting (And Everything in Between)

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We’re back with Kirby Green and talking about the strange and surprising wholesomeness of Jackass Forever, the history of “caught-on-video” media, and the opportunistic moral panics they often inspire.

While we talk about how a franchise famous for dangerous stunts and painful assaults on the testicles has become one of the few things in America that we can all agree on, and how it might just be a model for body positivity. And we look at its far more morally reprehensible and shamelessly exploitative media ancestors like Faces of Death, Bumfights, Girls Gone Wild, COPS, and whatever weird VHS tapes that scary kid from middle school with the shuriken in his pocket was bragging about watching.

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Fun Size Episode 64 – A Real Lesson in Imagined Power

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We’re back in the studio with Patrick Johnson for one of our weirdest conversations yet. First, what are the consequences of having a perfect memory? On our emotions, our morality, or our sanity? What does it mean to forget, is it for the best that our memories are imperfect?

And when Star Trek‘s Data finally achieves a range of emotional responses, would he suddenly be bombarded with a tidal wave of backlogged emotional responses to old memories? Is a perfect memory a curse? Is it possible to forgive when the wrongs done to you will be forever remembered with perfect recall?

Then, we talk about cops. Both the people and the reality show. And how our deeply ingrained perceptions of policing are shaped far more by fictional media depictions than even our own often tense and uncomfortable encounters with real life law enforcement. And what about shows like Dog the Bounty Hunter, and other situations where people simply assume an air of authority with the implied threat of violence?

We recommend: Running from COPS podcast.

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Fun Size Episode 63 – I Want Willem Dafoe in Every Movie

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Has the world gone mad? Well, yes. But we’re also looking back on 2021 as a remarkably great year at the movies! We’re still talking to Tobiah Panshin for an uncharacteristically positive and optimistic discussion about the current state of cinema. For real!

We briefly touch on: The Last Duel, Titane, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Licorice Pizza, The French Dispatch, Dune, C’mon C’mon, Spencer, Malignant, The Suicide Squad, The Twentieth Century, and The Matrix Resurrections.

Plus, would it be so bad if the world we lived in was just a computer program?

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