Tag Archives: sports

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

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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!

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Podcasta la Vista, Baby! Episode 26 – Pumping Iron

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“Blood is rushing into your muscles and that’s what we call The Pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute, and it’s really tight – it’s like somebody blowing air into it, into your muscle. It just blows up, and it feels really different. It feels fantastic.”

This month, we’re hitting the weights and getting a good pump with Dave Brouillette, as we bench press the 1977 bodybuilding docudrama that got Arnold noticed in Hollywood: Pumping Iron!

Cameras document – or is it dramatize? – the lives of the world’s leading bodybuilders as they prepare to compete for their sport’s top 1975 amateur and professional championships. One is junior high school teacher, Mike Katz, who aspires to the title of Mr. Universe. Another is shy underdog, Lou Ferrigno, who hopes to flex his way to the title of Mr. Olympia. But to do that, he must topple the reigning five-time returning champion, a certain popular and charismatic Austrian, just a couple years away from Hollywood superstardom.

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Fun Size Episode 49 – Tales of the Quarantine Titans

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We continue our remotely-recorded conversation with David Gutiérrez, and grapple with the seedy underside of professional wrestling, and the strange corporate strange-hold that Vince McMahon has on the industry, in the wake of his XFL’s second collapse.

We also talk about the relative quality of children’s media franchises from the point of view of parents. Is refreshes itself much more frequently than stuff aimed at “grown-ups,” but is any of it any good? And what will the art these kids make look like in 20 years?

Hide your clouds, because we’re gonna yell at them!

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Fun Size Episode 27 – Not My Luke Skywalker!

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Who truly owns a piece of art, a character or a media franchise? The artist, or the audience? We sit down with Sean Duncan to seek the answer to that and many other questions.

We (finally) talk about Star Wars: the Last Jedi and the tug-of-war between fans who want the familiar comfort of wish fulfillment and fan service, and those who want to see the series take some serious risks, even if it alienates some of the fans.

We look at how the real world and the context of our own experiences color and supplement the way we receive and interpret art. Plus, is it time to retire the old ways of counting audience figures, when there are so many ways to watch, read, and play these days? Uh, yes.

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Mike Makes an Appearance on the Hands Free Football Podcast!

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Even though he knows next to nothing about sports, our good friends Dave and Carol Brouillette have invited Mike to join them on their Hands Free Football podcast!

Mike mostly asks questions about the game, and test the limits of the hosts’ Seattle Sounders fandom with weird hypotheticals. And finally, we talk about a 1981 soccer movie starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine and Pele…where they do battle with Nazis.

Really?

Check it out!