Arts & Entertainment with Chris & Randall

A listener recently sent us an email about our PUNK ROCK show, episode 7. We liked the email so much that we spent this episode answering it.

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Okay, so I just watched your punk rock podcast and now I can't find it to leave a message directly on the podcast.

[Please feel free to email or leave a comment on Facebook or Youtube]

The first thing, can I get a link to your podcast so I can save it to my desktop?

[Check out our website, ChrisAndRandall.com]

Second, I really enjoyed listening to your take on punk music and the ideology behind it.

[Thank you!]

I'm not sure that I totally agree with you starting in the late '70s in England as the beginning of punk music. I almost think you need to define what exactly is"punk" before you can truly pick a starting point. For me I define punk in kind of simple terms. One, is that the artist has to have attitude. and yes I understand that is open to interpretation. Two, The music has to be basically anti-establishment or trying to change the status quo. So when I put together a family tree where punk is at the top, and the branchs below it include all sorts of genres of music that one typically would not consider a punk subcategory. More along the lines of the term rock and roll, with subcategories or genres of black metal, hair metal, glam, and many more. So what are some potential other subcategories, reggae is a great example because it's full of attitude and it's a big middle finger to the man. So having said that, I was really intrigued by your looping and grunge music to the punk rock topic, however I totally disagree with calling grunge punk. There may be a lot of attitude as well as a major shift in pop culture, but there's nothing that I'm aware of that's very anti-establishment in grunge music.

Some out of the normal thinking artists that I would include in that punk category would be Iggy and the stooges along with Johnny Cash.

I would have liked to have seen you spend a little more time breaking down punk in the US after the sex pistols in the clash open things up in England

Starting out with the punk movement on the East coast with bad brains, or MC5. Then moving to the southern California punk scene with bad religion, the spent idols, and even Green day. And just for the record, I put the Ramones into new wave and not punk.

Some of my favorite punk bands... Obviously the sex pistols and the clash with the clash being one of my favorite bands of all time.

I'm a huge Bad Religion and Social D fan. But I do listen to a lot of NoFX, Dead Kennedys, Iggy and the stooges, bad brains, dropkick Murphys, rancid, the damned, teenage bottle rockets,

--Bob

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Chris shares his pet peeve about how New York, the city he grew up in, is depicted in movies and TV.

Chris & Randall discuss an opinion Randall developed after watching dozens of Donald Trump rallies. President Donald Trump may be a politician, but he acts exactly like a stand up comedian.

In this episode, Chris & Randall discuss the Punk Rock moment.

Chris & Randall somehow get into a discussion where they try to define Post-Modernism.

Chris & Randall discuss Matthew McConaughey and how to make your own Matthew McConaghey film retrospective.

Randall pitches Chris on a new sub-genre of Sci-fi he's been working on, Bonkers Sci-fi.

From Randall: Bonkers Sci-Fi is simple: It's a sub-genre of science fiction with comedy where the jokes are based on technology, especially technology malfunctioning. Most likely, it satirizes technology to some extent, which is practically unavoidable if you think about it.

I started thinking about this after watching Thor: Ragnarok. I was surprised by its tone and realized its part of some sort of heretofore unnamed sub-genre of science fiction that I really love. So what was this genre? I was sure it went back to at least The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books which I loved reading as a kid.

I don't think it has to be comedy, but there have to be jokes and the jokes have to be based around some sort of technology or maybe just science-fictiony concepts. The best example of this genre may be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

To make this clear, I started a list. I have put it below. It's divided into sctions: Movies, Books, Comics, and titles which I think are questionable. I'm not sure they fit into the genre because I don't remember them well or I haven't read or watched them, rather someone described them to me.

Thanks and let me know what you think.

MOVIES

1960 Little Shop of Horrors

1961 The Absent Minded Professor / Flubber

1968 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

1973 Sleeper 1974 Dark Star

1974 Young Frankenstein

1981 Heavy Metal (certain stories)

1981 Time Bandits

1983 The Man With Two Brains

1984 Electric Dreams

1984 Ghostbusters

1985 Back to the Future

1985 Brazil

1985 Explorers

1985 Weird Science

1986 Alf

1986 Critters

1986 Short Circuit

1986 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

1987 Innerspace

1987 Spaceballs

1988 Earth Girls are Easy

1988 They Live

1989 Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

1989 Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

1989 Quantum Leap

1990 Tremors series

1996 Mars Attacks

1996 Multiplicity

1997 Men in Black

1997 The Fifth Element

1999 Galaxy Quest

2004 Incredibles

2006 Idiocracy

2010 Hot Tub Time Machine

2010 Minions / Despicable Me movies

2012 Safety Not Guaranteed

2013 World's End

2014 Guardians of the Galaxy

2015 Ant Man

2016 Dead Pool

2017 Thor Ragnarok

TV

1948 Marvin the Martian from the Looney Tunes cartoon

1962 The Jetsons

1967 The Trouble with Tribbles Star Trek episode

1978 Mork and Mindy

1981 Greatest American Hero

1985 Small Wonder

1987 Out of this World

1989 Saved by the Bell (all the Screech inventions)

1996 Third Rock from the Sun

1999 Futurama

2017 The Orville BOOKS

1978 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

1984 National Lampoon's Doon

1987 Chess with a Dragon COMICS

1983 D.R. & Quinch

MAYBE

1726 Book: Gulliver's Travels

1956 Movie: Around the World in 80 Days

1963 TV: My Favorite Martian

1964 Movie: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

1965 TV: Flintstones (the great Gazoo)

1965 TV: Lost in Space

1968 Movie: Barbarella

1974 TV: Land of the Lost

1975 TV: Far Out Space Nuts

1975 TV: Power Rangers

1977 Movie/SNL Sketch/animated special: Coneheads

1977 TV: The Muppet Show: Pigs in Space sketch

1978 Movie: Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park

1978 Movie: The Cat From Outer Space

1984 Movie: Gremlins series

1984 Movie: Ice Pirates

1984 Movie: Night of the Comet

1984 Movie: Repo Man

1984 Movie: The Last Starfighter

1988 TV: Red Dwarf

1989 Book: Quozl

1994 TV: Space Ghost Coast to Coast

1996 Movie: Space Truckers

2000 Book Series: Sewer, Gas and Electric

2000 Book: Velveteen series

2001 TV: Invader Zim

2008 Movie: Space Chimps

2009 Movie: Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

2011 Movie: Paul

We talk about science fiction TV shows we're watching or have watched, enjoyed, or whatever. We also go down the IMDB's top twenty or so.

This is a discussion about Hollywood in the 60s and the movies which best depict the era. We discuss The Monkees, Mondo Hollywood, Love and Mercy, Echo from the Canyon, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the Party, SOB.

This is our true first episode but we diverged from the topic about one second in and talked about the Cats movie musical for almost the whole time. If you want to hear an in-depth discussion of the Cats movie, this is for you. We hastily created episode 2 to cover the real topic we originally agreed upon. We also talk about Jesus Christ Superstar, live music recording, Steve Albini, Bauhaus, Woodstock the Movie, the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense, hippies, the Beatles, The Monkees, and Barney's Beanery.