Read it and Weep

Every novel is an adventure tale when the main character is this stupid.

Percy Jackson, the everyboy hero with the ancient Greek skillset, is back and this time he’s fighting sea monsters. No, not the mother from Honey Boo Boo, real sea monsters. And he’s doing it by not noticing he’s on a quest.

The Boy Wonderhow and his girlfriend go in search of the Golden Fleece, a jacket that can save a magic tree that couldn’t save itself. To find it they have to retrace the steps of the Odysee because that’s the plot creativity Rick Riordan has. The defeat some monsters, the same bad guy from the first book did it, and the end feels like it might not all be over.

In the end, this is a pitiful, predictable book 2 for this weak Harry-Potter-Wannabe series. So obviously there’s a movie version and we’ll watch it next week.

The world waited for a long time for a vampire book series set in the south where vamps live alongside humans and drink synthetic blood. And then the Suzie Stackhouse novels that True Blood is based on came out. Later, Molly Harper wrote this series which is pretty much the same thing.

Jane Jameson is an unemployed Library Sciences major (imagine that!) who gets shot and then turned into a vampire. That’s pretty much where the plot ends, on page 30, and the rest of the book is about her discovering her vampire powers, having sex, and pretty much nothing else. Near the end she has to fight a real estate agent to the death. And then it’s over.

Despite it’s terribly thin plot and well trodden territory, Nice Girls is actually a fun, light read. Jane is funny, the sex is mostly not terrible, and vampires taste like candy which is silly. If we hadn’t read what we’ve read, we’d hate it, but we have so it’s fine.

Big thanks to Joanne for sponsoring this episode!

By now we’ve watched enough of the worst movies of all time that we’re able to identify the keys to success. Eccentric director who have never written or directed anything before self funding a movie is a good start. Also good is having people who don’t speak English very well starring in it and major technical limitations. This movie has all of these plus it uses GIFs as special effects.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror was the brain (and wallet) child of one man, who left a computer job to make a movie tribute to Alfred Hitchock’s The Birdsbut utilizing only the “birds attacking” parts and not any of the skill. The result is a train wreck of movie with awkward dialog, unskilled actors, terrible audio, and much more. Also birds blow up when they attack you, which they are doing because of blah blah blah global warming blah blah.

Birdemic 2 is much less fun, as it was made with full knowledge of the first movie’s cult status. The result is many more bad jokes and much less genuine fun. Bad movie makers take note, we want to laugh at you not with you.

Big thanks to this week’s sponsor Bambi of the podcast Porcelain Lama Theater–“a live-play RPG podcast featuring a diverse number of gaming systems and genres from kids with monsters to future soldiers. We’ve got the dice to do it all.”

There’s been a horrible mistake. Somehow, on this epic day, the 200th epiversary of our podcast, something has gone horribly wrong. Everybody is missing and the backup team has to come in on short notice.

And that’s how we start down the rabbit hole for our most meta episode to date. It’s a wild ride complete with dick pics and the invention of our greatest meme to date, Snarf Snark.

Thanks to everybody who called in with haikus about their favorite moments on the show. And thanks to everybody for listening all these years. We couldn’t do it without you. I mean we could, but it’s more fun this way.

You know how they say if you do something you love as a job it stops being fun? They’re right. I watched two hours of boobs for this podcast and by the end, I was completely bored.

Showgirls is the weirdest assignment we’ve ever gotten. Apparently our sponsor was going to sponsor Fifty Shades Darker but we did it on our own so she chose this. Really? You could have assigned us 20 hours of torture or 2 hours of boobs? How is this a difficult choice?

That’s not to say this was an easy watch. Sure, there were lots of boobs, but the movie was a slog. Especially awful was the COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO THE PLOT gang rape scene near the end. If you’re watching along at home, definitely stop 20 minutes short of the end. You haven’t missed anything.

And feel free to sponsor more movies that are NC-17 for nudity. That would be fine.

The mystery was solved before the book started, the bad guys turn out not to be good, and the plan to destroy the world happens and it’s probably for the best. Well, it’s not entertaining but at least it’s different.

The second half of Inferno contains the usual Dan Brown twist. Everything you thought was wrong and nothing is as it seemed. Except in this case, nothing was as INTERESTING as it seemed. The ending is the most incredible Nerf. None of the danger was real, nobody was trying to kill anybody, and nobody actually died. Surprise, it was all a ruse!

And in the most startling twist, Langdon solves the mystery and… it’s too late. The evil genius won. And the world is better off because of it. What the shit? I mean, it’s not all jolly and good. 1/3 of the earth’s population is sterile. But really, the only way to react is “huh.” So we do. A bunch of times in a row. Enjoy the episode!

Robert Langdon, famous professor of pedantry and mystery solving, is back with another amazing mystery symbol art treasure mystery hunt book. Will he solve the puzzle in time or will he stop, explain something, and then solve the puzzle in time?

But in a totally new and original way to start a book, our hero has already solved the mystery but then he had amnesia and so now needs to solve the mystery again. As he battles against an all-powerful, all-knowing organization to solve the mystery he has to decode symbols, cite obscure books, talk about Dante A LOT.

Will he win? Of course he’ll win! Just make sure you don’t invite him to a party because he is annoying as all hell.

It turns out, no matter how many shades of grey there are, it’s never going to be a colorful story.

As 50 Shades of Darker limped across the finish line, EL James added a couple of little plots to justify writing a third book. A skeezy boss blows up Charlie Tango the helicopter and then lurks in the bushes. But does anybody care? It’s hard to, when so many pages are dedicated to Christian lurking in Bella, er, Anna’s bushes.

Besides those few pages of excitement, 50 Darker is split evenly. 25 shades are them having sex and 25 shades are them arguing about stupid shit. It’s the most dysfunctional relationship since Ronnie & Sammie in the Jersey Shore.

Most importantly, this book has taught us to stick to our guns. If you want us to read the last book, it’ll cost you $1,000.

We swore we wouldn’t read the sequel to 50 Shades of Grey. We swore we wouldn’t. Then you guys pushed and pushed and pushed and we finally gave in. And then we swore. A lot.

There are only a few things we’ve read that are worse than Twilight, but the S&M-filled bit of Twilight fan fiction certainly qualifies. In this second installment, Christian and personalityless-girl get back together. They have sex. And they fight. And then they have sex. And then they fight. Those two things happen for 10 hours of audiobook. Some minor plot things happen either while they’re having sex or while they’re fighting. And then it’s over and nobody is better off.

We take a few minutes to discuss our survival strategies for things that are this bad (it doesn’t help much) and we revisit our love for dinosaurs and things about butts.

There’s nothing more exhilarating than driving a fast car. Well, maybe there is. Making the same movie 6 times and getting paid each time is just as good.

Meet Dom. He’s the leader of a gang of criminals who drive cars quickly and with angst. They can stop any adversary, so long as they battle on the open road and driving quickly and with angst is rewarded.

As luck would have it, an international terrorist has stolen a MacGuffin and plans on driving it around at highway speeds. Sounds like a job for the quick and angsty gang!

The two groups drive cars at or away from each other for 2 hours, Vin Diesel and The Rock act with their deltoids, and everybody is happy in the end. Join us again next year for the same movie with a number 7 in the title.