Hate Expectations

At a break in the Sasquatch board gaming festival, Hate Expectations took advantage of their inconceivable friend, Dug Steen, being in town to record an episode on William Goldman's novel The Princess Bride (1973) and the highly quotable classic movie Rob Reiner made from it (1987). The three grab a vine and dive head first into the beloved story and its familiar characters, breathing new life into it like some inconceivable bellows shoved in its pie-hole. They even discuss Goldman's missing bonus chapter and the inconceivable sequel, Buttercup's Baby. Finally, they do as you didn't know you wished and round out the whole episode with a brand new feature. Come, and love it as we have loved it.

In a very special episode of Hate Expectations, Lizzy learns the hard way that rock music is Satan's gateway to your heart, while Nate find's the school bully's unwanted attention is just a cry for help. No, wait. It isn't that kind of a special episode. It's a birthday episode! We finally get to the mic with our long awaited episode about Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief (1998) and its movie adaptation, the movie Adaptation. (2002, dir Spike Jonze). While the book is a delightful meandering read, the movie is more about the kind of hell that adapting a delightful meandering book for motion pictures can be. Nate then struggled to find a way to end the summary of the podcast about one of his favorite movies. In a self-aware and self-indulgent manner, he finally wrote the sentence "Nate then struggled to find a way to end the summary of the podcast about one of his favorite movies." Then he thought how weird it was to do that.

Rich and Z return to the podcast, bringing a curious Homer pick with them. Joel and Ethan Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000) technically does give a "based on" credit to the ancient greek poem, The Odyssey, which qualifies it for discussion on the show. Not to spoil the journey, but it turns out you have to squint mighty hard most times to see the connections between the two stories. And squint we do! (Mostly from laughing.) We also discover that reading ancient literature actually is more fun than a burning stick in a Cyclops's eye. Who knew?

As avowed rat lovers, it was inevitable that Lizzy and Nate would eventually discuss the beloved Newbery Medal winner, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert C. O'Brien, 1971), and its Don Bluth animated adaptation, The Secret of NIMH (1982). But in a surprise twist of fate, it turned out that frequent guest host, Siobhan Beeman, was the one to bring this classic out and turn the Hate Expectations eye on it. To keep things lively and difficult to edit, we also had two large and noisesome guest dogs bumping around the set and occasionally growling at passing squirrels. But even they couldn't prevent us from gnawing on every tasty morsel in this legend from our collective childhoods. In fact, the only thing that could put a damper on our enjoyment of the story turned out to be...well, you'll have to listen to find out.

Three people, intentionally sequestered in the woods of the Pacific Northwest: Lizzy, Nate, and special returning guest Jane Hutchins. At first they thought they were imagining things; haunting visions of insanity, terror, and death. A distant voice sighed out a premonition: "REDRUM". The television flicked to life, showing the huddled trio even more spectral sights and grisly imagery. Except the new images were kind of different from the original ones in their heads. The three gave in to a driving compulsion to come together to hammer out those differences. Luckily, their discussion of Stephen King's novel, The Shining, and the Stanley Kubrick movie of the same name, was captured by sensitive audio vibration detection units. We can now present the entire ghoulish session here for your morbid delight. With that...heeeeeere's Hate Expectations!

Lizzy invokes one of her birthday wishes this year to whisk the Hate Expectations team off to a hidden corner of the south pacific, where a magical island of humans and dinosaurs live and work together in near perfect harmony. Yes, we dust off James Gurney's coffee table classic, Dinotopia (1992), and then unearth a dvd copy of the Hallmark mini-series from a decade later. Despite the book containing only the barest bones of a story, the HE team finds plenty in it to examine. Then things really get dirty as they dig deep into the adaptation, a relic from the Crapassic era of cgi. Ping pong, Talking Heads, and a blooper reel; this episode has it all!

Representing a slight departure from reality, this episode of Hate Expectations finds Nate and Lizzy taking a long hard listen to The Who's rock opera, Tommy, looking deeply into the Ken Russell movie of the same name (1975), and speaking freely about the sensations it inspires in them. They are joined by their friend, Matt Anderson, on a quest to divine meaning where there is mostly only a series of loosely connected themes about a deaf, dumb, and blind pinball wizard. Lizzy wants to amend the record and point out that the Tommy dvd came out in 2004, not the much too early 1994 she said. Nate wants to append the record to point out that the "and leap up on the rostrum" line from Sally Simpson is one of the most clumsy lyrics ever sung, only made worse by the rough attempted rhyme with "and Tommy gave a lesson".

It's Christmas time in the City of Angeles. And while decent listeners sleep the sleep of the righteous, the Hate Expectations crew prowls for merry noir, not knowing that James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential is coming to punch them in the gut. Another Christmas episode*. Another not-overly sentimental property to discuss. Ellroy called his novel (1990) a book "for the whole family, if the name of your family is The Manson Family"**. The movie adaptation (1997, dir. Curtis Hanson) is friendlier, but still quite dark and labyrinthine, as Hollywood movies go. Listen in as we talk about the big man in charge (of Los Angeles) and his scheme to spread his white powder and run a ring of ho-ho-hoes. Racism, murder, corruption, cover-ups: it's exactly the kind of treat the Lizzy, Nate, and their friend and guest host, Siobhan, love to sink their teeth into, even if only to rip it to bits. You heard it here first -- off the record, on the QT, and very hush hush. *The episode may contain trace elements of nuts. It is most definitely chock full o' SPOILERS. **Seems he said this same quote about a lot of his works, but it's still accurate.

Let's just say this up front -- the book, The Warriors (1965) by Sol Yurick, is a realistic take on New York city gangs and their activities. Consequently, in our discussion of it and the 1979 movie of the same name directed by Walter Hill, we cover a lot of potential trigger warnings, use a lot of adult language, and touch on some less than pleasant topics. However, we still manage to have a bit of fun. And by the time we get to the movie portion of the show the mood lightens considerably. Through it all we continue our trend of butchering pronunciations; in this case the culprits are a couple of words that proved to be Greek to us. We also find a few ways to bind The Lord of the Rings to The Warriors. There's also more eyebrow talk, to the surprise of no regular listeners. And throughout, a lot of interesting tidbits culled from our tens of minutes of research. Come out and play (the episode)! *Special thank you to youtuber Amazinge12345 for having the answer to the much debated question of what happened to Cleon's character in the movie.

In a very special episode of Hate Expectations, we reveal that one one of the two of us is actually an android. However, technology has come so far since the time of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968, Philip K. Dick) that it's impossible to distinguish us from real humans now. The only consequence for the show is that we can finally reveal the answer to the titular question. (Yes they do, but they don't remember it the next morning.) Neither our robot insight, our viewing of the movie (1982, dir. Ridley Scott), nor the vast expertise of our guest host, Jane Hutchins, helps us to settle the more perplexing question, "What the hell is a Blade Runner, anyway?" Set your mood organs to 042 (a strong desire to listen to a fun podcast) and join us as we explore this depressing dystopia.