Read it and Weep

Three out of four podcasters agree: this is the best book they’ve read on this show. Take a badass female lead, and place her in a futuristic dystopia with equal parts Miss Congeniality and Battle Royale. The result is totally enjoyable. Alex is reserving judgment until the end of the book, but we might be giving out our first favorable review. Hell, commence freezing.

Luckily we have some help to keep this lovefest interesting. Food writer Gabi Moskowitz of BrokeAss Gourmet gives us some helpful pointer on what food to eat in a sadistic reality TV show while on a budget.

We have recipes for the hearts of your enemies, sterilized water pairings to go with with raw bone marrow, and tear-cured rabbit. You won’t want to miss it. (And if you just listen to the episode like you were already planning on doing, you won’t.)

Rounding out the team is Matt Aliabadi, last seen shaking with rage after Sweet Little Lies. His extensive knowledge of Victorian literature and Star Trek: The Next Generation proves to be invaluable.

Do you like robots smashing into each other for 2.5 hours? You’re going to love Transformers 3. Do you like a comprehendible plot, likeable leads, and anything that isn’t robots smashing into each other for 2.5 hours? You’re going hate Transformers 3.

We’re not in None-More-Worse-Territory, but we might be in None-More-WTF-land. (It is a fertile land, one where the Michael Bays roam free without fear of encountering logic.)

Luckily, we have Andrew Johnson of Movie Chatter fame to help shoulder the load.

The movie features the return of Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky, a sweaty, jittery little guy who somehow ditched Megan Fox and got a hotter, blonder, British-er version in Michael Bay’s new pin-up, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. Sam also has a talking robot space car. And a medal from Obama.

We’re supposed to feel sorry for him because he can’t find a job, his talking robot space car is too busy killing terrorist to hang with him, and Patrick Dempsey is cozying up to his new Megan Fox. It doesn’t matter. Their petty relationship bullcrap is put on hold by the Autobots fightings the Decipticons… again. Also Leonard Nimoy is a Transformer now. And Buzz Aldrin is Buzz Aldrin.

There are some fun side characters (Alan Tudyk! John Malkovich! John Turturro!) but at the end of the day, it’s a lot of robots wailing on each other and the third worst part of Indiana Jones 4 running around screaming. You could do worse with your time, but you could do a whole lot better.

The Family Man! National Treasure 2! Season of the Witch!

Welcome to the First Annual Nicolas Cage Film Festival. We are here to celebrate the man who can go from deadpan to rage to maniacal laughter in just under five seconds. We have a lot of love for this fearless actor.

Join us as we go Inside the Actor’s Studio, dissect the many, many works that National Treasure 2 stole from, and critique severely flawed evil plans in Season of the Witch.

Also, RIAW superstar Nick Delehanty returns, and he brought his air guitar. It’s about to get awesome.

And because it bears mentioning, we’ll treat you to a rare behind-the-scenes interview with Jack Thomas, Nicolas Cage’s Official Wig Wrangler.

Hax0red! The podcast has been hacked and replaced with a fan podcast, Hear it and Laugh. Super-fans Aleks Shindig, Andrea Sickles, and Anna Chandler invite self-promoter Stephen Carter on to talk about the first 99 episodes of Read it and Weep and to hear their favorite and least favorite clips from the show.

They also take on the most important question, has Read it and Weep jumped the shark? By doing a clip show without being very popular, surely the ship of podcast has run aground.

Relive favorite moments from Read it and Weep obscurity:

Evermore: in with a whimper, out with a whine. We finally discover that Damen is actually (gasp) an immortal, and sadly, not a Minotaur. He’s also 600 years old and hitting on high school girls. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

In other news, Ezra powers through a record number of compliments, we delve deeply into the mythology of Care Bears, and there’s a drunk eight-week-old kitten.

Skepchick’s Carrie Iwan returns to finish out the book, which apparently is part of a 10-book series. Please, please don’t make us read any more.

Assorted references:

Once in a generation there comes a Twilight knock-off that nearly matches the bland, annoying spirit of the original. Congrats, Evermore. You’re almost as bad as the book you’re ripping off.

Due to a technicality in the Read it and Weep by-laws, Ezra is forced to only compliment this book and swallow his hates. Will he explode under the pressure? Tune in to find out!

Joining the team is Carrie Iwan of Skepchick, bringing her incomparable wit and intelligence to a book that clearly does not deserve it.

Highlights of the episode include:

The director came up with concept for Burlesque after watching a Pussycat Dolls show… because that’s where all great ideas come from.

Christina Aguilera wants to sing, dance, and wear the kind of revealing clothing that just won’t fly at her Iowa waitressing job. She takes a bus to LA, worms her way into Cher’s failing Burlesque club, becomes a star, and we’re treated to the music video for Lady Marmalade on repeat for thirteen times. If this sounds like a good time to you, you deserve everything that you get.

Featured in this episode is the triumphant return of Chris [Last Name Withheld], the triumphant debut of Portland comedian Amy Milshtein, and the triumphant rumbling of a Strippers vs. Burlesquers Rumble.

There are some potshots at Cher, an intriguing discussion of cookies and anatomy, and poorly-done celebrity impressions! Enjoy.

“16 and Pregnant” is a show where 16-year-old girls are pregnant. It’s truly the “Snakes on a Plane” of exploitative reality TV.

Mix in some family drama, a douchebag and/or jerk boyfriend, a laissez-faire approach to birth control, a dawning realization that the fun part of the mother’s life is done forever, and you’ve got a hit show enjoying its third season of solid ratings. It’s like watching MTV’s version of “Precious.“

With Chris [Last Name Withheld] enjoying a much-need vacation in [Location Withheld] so he can [Activity Withheld] with [Names of Astronauts Withheld], we needed some help from Sarah Hatheway, making her first non-Twilight appearance with us. Luckily, there were enough unlikeable teenage guys so that the transition wasn’t too rough.

We also have an Inside the Actor’s Studio for you with an actual actor. Our guest Jacqueline Baxter had the honor of playing an unwittingly pregnant woman on “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant,” another show that’s nothing but truth in advertising.

To round out the guests, we’re joined by our old friend Taylor Johnson, who’s doing a report on podcasts for his Master’s program, making this show the first time anyone’s ever watched “16 and Pregnant” to complete a Master’s degree.

Truancy! Drug use! Nudity kinda! If these things are shocking to you, then prepare to have your mind blown by Skins. If, however, you’ve seen any other movie or TV show about teens ever, including the original UK version of Skins, then prepare to drop your jaw and yawn slightly.

The main characters are either so smug you want to punch them in their acne-free faces, or so poorly defined that you can’t remember whether you hate them or not.

Luckily, we have help from a real live Brit! The sparkling, brilliant, and accented Kyra from FerretBrain.com classes up the podcast with a brilliant discussion of zombie kids getting into all sorts of shenanigans. You won’t want to miss it! Unless of course, your loved ones were recently turned into zombies, in which case this is probably too soon.

We’re also unveiling our latest attempts at internet fame!

First, we have an epic video on the origins of Twilight’s crappiness narrated by Sarah Wendell, famed romance expert. Enjoy.

Second, we’re offering you a chance to have a guest spot on the podcast and go on a date with Chris. You’re welcome.

For 93 episodes, we’ve just given you the funny.  We didn’t really prepare you, loosen you up first, we just got right into the business.  But some of you insisted you wanted to feel loved first.  With that in mind we picked up our first romance novel.  Much to our chagrin, however, it was just uncomfortable sex.

Fortunately, we were prepared.  We had invited famous blogger and author of a book about romance novels, Sarah Wendell.  She used her vast experience writing reviews of romance novels for her site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books to help us penetrate the depths of this novel.  Penetrate it from any angle we felt like.

In case it wasn’t painfully obvious from that last paragraph, this episode is classic Read it and Weep, combining insightful criticism with corny sex puns.  Ew, corny. Yuck.