Book Retorts

This week, Danielle brings the 1999 Sarah Michelle Gellar film Simply Irresistible. Amanda is a chef in New York City who owns a failing restaurant because she’s a terrible cook. While at a street framer’s market, Amanda is bullied into buying a basket of crabs and then has a chance encounter with Tom, the manager of the big department store who’s also opening a restaurant in that department store for some reason. It should be noted that these chance encounters, and basket of crabs, is all being orchestrated by Gene O’Reilly, a kinda guardian angel/cupid figure who doesn’t actually matter that much. Anyway, later that day, Tom ends up at Amanda’s restaurant with his girlfriend. Amanda prepares the crabs she bought for Tom, but one escapes and takes up residence in Amanda’s kitchen. Now, there is an assertion by the movie that the crab is magic, Sam has doubts that the crab is special in any way. Anyway, Amanda’s food sends Tom into waves of ecstasy while it causes his girlfriend to dump him. Soon, he and Amanda are dating, or at least hooking up in a magic sugar mist (yes, really), and Tom is so obsessed with Amanda’s food he steals it off of random people in his store. The usual rom-com shenanigans and misunderstandings ensue, but each is filtered through a bizarre and surreal lens of fantasy, and also there’s a crab there that just kinda watches Amanda grow into the chef she was destined to be, and find love along the way? Who cares! Tell us more about that freaking crab!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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Sam finally begins the final part of the the Hyperion Cantos with the 1997 book The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons. It’s finally here! The last book in the absolutely bonkers Hyperion series, and in desperate need of help our intrepid hosts have called in Filip from the Mind Duck Books podcast for much needed moral support. We kick off with Danielle doing a frankly astonishingly good summary of the previous book to catch everyone up. Still, Filip does have a few questions that Sam has no answers for, of course. The book begins with the pope dying and being, inevitably, resurrected in some possibly retconned way where Paul Duré resurrects first but is then murdered by Cardinal Lourdusamy. Regardless, Hoyt is reelected pope and declares a crusade on the Ousters! This greatly upsets the newly reinstated Father Captain de Soya, but he takes command of one of the new Arch Angel warships anyway. Meanwhile, Aenea and Raul are on Earth, it’s been three years, and Aenea’s mentor, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, has just died. Aenea declares the architect camp experiment on the Earth over, and tells the other apprentices that they must return to the Pax and risk death because… Well, she never really says why, but it sure seems important. Then she gives Raul an abbreviated biography of the real Frank Lloyd Wright for yet more inscrutable reasons. After that, she tells Raul he needs to go alone back down the Tethys river in a kayak to find the ship they crashed, and then meet her and A. Bettik later. Raul is unhappy about this, but sets off down the Mississippi anyway to begin his journey. Back in the Pax, not only is the Pax fleet anticipating the return of Aenea, so is the TechnoCore, which has dispatched four what are essentially terminators, including Rhadamanth Nemes, to kill her. The Pax Mercantilus is also looking to nab Aenea so they can engage in some political machinations and replace the Vatican as the ally of the TechnoCore. Does this book need yet more plots now involving complex political schemes? No, but it sure is fun! In conclusion, Sam is super angry we don’t spend more time with the Ousters.

Special thanks to friend of the pod and honorary co-host Filip from Mind Duck Books for joining us on this thrilling journey! You can find Mind Duck Books on Twitter and Instagram, and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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On the final short of our summer break, Sam has a new game for Danielle, that’s a lot like some of our other games (look, there’s only so many ideas we can have). In this game, Sam finds weird entries in popular franchises and has Danielle guess which of the three descriptions is the real deal. This is another game where we might not be very good at it, but Sam does come up with some excellent ideas for The X-Files episodes.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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As our summer break continues, we’re back for another round of Sequel Shenanigans! In this game Danielle and Sam present three possible sequel titles for media franchises they covered and the other person has to guess which is the real sequel title. They’re not very good at the game but they do come up with some great ideas for sequels, so we think it evens out.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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We’re still on our summer break, but we brought back a classic game to see you through this drought! This time, our intrepid hosts need to identify the real one of three possible plot summaries for a book based only on the title and author. Danielle spins some amazing faux summaries while Sam takes a decidedly subtler approach to crafting his deceptions. So play along and see if you can spot the real summary from the fakes as we mount up or another ride in the quizzadle! The books chosen for this quiz were: That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf by Kimberly Lemming, Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley, The White Mountains by John Christopher, I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle, and The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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While Danielle and Sam are on their summer break, they have some very special shorts so as not to leave you destitute. This time we’re back with the Panic! at the Recall game where our beleaguered hosts try their best to summarize the past media they’ve shared in under a minute. How bad are they at this? Not great! It’s a lot of fun, and definitely leads to the conclusion that our hosts should maybe listen to their own podcast on occasion.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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This week the crabs are back as Danielle shares the 1978 Guy N. Smith novel Killer Crabs. We open in Australia where local fisherman Klin is super upset, and maybe a bit racist, about the Japanese poachers stealing his fish. After refusing the siren call of a woman to instead indulge his hatred of the poachers, his concerns are quickly replaced as the fisherman becomes the fished! We’re of course talking about giant killer crabs as big as a small car! Or an elephant! Or two sheep! While no one can agree on the size of these crabs, they all agree that, despite the events of the last book having happened, no one has heard about these before. Luckily, Dr. Cliff Davenport, now a renowned crabspert, is here from Britain to help. Has he brought the amazing poison used to defeat the crabs last time? No, but he has brought humanity’s oldest and greatest weapon: Fire! But before easily dispatching of the crab menace we first need to take a brief detour into an entirely unnecessary but amazing plot about a bank robbery, stolen identity, the world’s most insatiable woman, and Harvey Logan: Game Hunter. While no one can explain how these crabs keep getting around the world’s oceans unnoticed, we are sure of one thing: We’re super delighted that they do so we can read these books!

Huge shout-out to friend Filip of the Mind Duck Books podcast for helping us find these amazing books. You can find Mind Duck Books on Twitter and Instagram, and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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This week it’s Sam’s turn to share a Disney Channel original movie with the 1999 movie Smart House. Ben Cooper is your average 13-year-old kid completely distraught at the loss of his mother and so desperate to keep his family from changing further that he sabotages his dad’s attempts at dating. You know, healthy stuff. Ben isn’t only a severely troubled kid, he’s also a computer nerd and spends all his free time entering online contests, the most recent of which is to win a smart house. Ben, of course, wins, and this smart house his family moves into is amazing and can do pretty much anything including using its terrible tentacle arms to harass the local paper boy. It was apparently entirely built and programmed by one woman, Sara, working for a company that does…something, though nothing related to this house it seems since they basically give it away and never look back. At first, Pat, the house’s AI, is amazing, making smoothies and cleaning up messes, but when she starts to glitch Ben’s dad calls Sara in, and uses that as an excuse to date her. Ben is not having this and decides to reprogram Pat to be all the mother they could ever need (yikes!) and, setting aside how a child could reprogram this technological marvel, Ben clearly needs immediate therapy, as is common for most of the characters in our media. Things, predictably, go haywire from there, and then we are left to wonder if Ben’s family can survive Pat’s intense mothering, and if Ben will ever address his deep grief and trauma over the loss of his mother. But as this is a Disney movie, instead of therapy we get the delightful 90s pastiche that warms our hearts, including Ben and his friends performing a choreographed boy band dance. Even better, there’s a rat named Butler here to help!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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It’s finally time for the finale of the Thai drama Ready, Set, Love (เกมชนคนโสด)! When we last left off, our group of contestants had decided it was time to create a revolution by exposing the TV show as rigged. Why the populace would suddenly rise up against the government because a realty show wasn’t entirely real is not explained. Anyway, their first step is to try and make Chanel win the next game. Considering the whole thing is supposed to be rigged for Chanel, the fact that they feel the need to make Chanel win anyway really speaks to how poorly the powers that be are rigging the game. Anyway, Sam has major issues with the next game as a concept, but regardless, Chanel wins and the the conspiracy group manages to get a secret recording of her mother admitting to rigging the games. However, Jenny busts the conspiracy wide open, somehow, and makes them all return to the game except Valentine, who she has arrested. Valentine escapes and magically manages to find her way into the facility where all the mothers who had been unwilling to give up their sons are being imprisoned. As she flees with the footage of the facility she’s shot off a bridge and falls into a river. Meanwhile, Day’s sister May is taken by the government to a hospital and magically cured of her disease. Chanel’s mother explains to Day that this was done, and that she better get in line and play the game right, although since May was already cured, she really has no leverage. Day does not pick up on that fact. As the final game nears, can our group find a way to be with the ones they love? (Hint: Not if they’re Bovy) Will they escape this repressive regime? Will Sam finally a get a game in the show he actually likes? Find out all that and more in this thrilling conclusion!

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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This week Sam brings Danielle the 2003 direct to VHS film Inspector Gadget 2. If you fondly recall the original 1999 film starring Matthew Broderick, or even the Inspector Gadget cartoon, then you’re leagues ahead of Sam and Danielle who only have the vaguest notion of what happened in that first film. Will that stop them from speculating wildly using only the sequel as reference? Absolutely not! So it’s time for a new film and and a new Gadget played by French Stewart. He’s apparently made Riverton so crime free after locking up Claw that he’s bored out of his mind and arresting anyone for the most minor infractions. Things don’t stay tranquil for long as Claw escapes from prison and prepares for a major heist: Steal all the gold from the Federal Reserve Bank which has recently relocated to Riverton for…reasons. But to complete this first heist, he needs to complete three smaller heists to steal materials to make a super-weapon. Sam hates this plan. Meanwhile, Gadget is eager to go after Claw, but is taken off the case by the chief who hates him because he’s constantly glitching and, even though the police made him, they refuse to fix his glitches since he’s just a “prototype”; just amazingly cruel. Anyway, he’s replaced with the fully robotic (and unnecessarily sexy) Gadget 2. While Gadget accepts this, his niece Penny (parents’ status: unknown) pushes him to investigate anyway. Meanwhile, despite Claw stating that he had all his assets seized when he was arrested, he manages to put together some amazingly complex bowling-pin themed gizmos to accomplish his heists. Why is he suddenly a bowling-pin themed villain? That’s an extremely good question! So join us to see if Claw will succeed in his insane plan, if Gadget will redeem himself, and especially if Gadget will find a way to either have sex with the new Gadget or accidentally inspire her to start the robot apocalypse.

Theme: Earning Happiness by John Bartmann.

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