City of Bones is undoubtedly better than Twilight, and it’s better than Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In fact, it’s way better than those two series. But when you set the goal posts that low, it’s entirely possible for something to just lumber over them. And lumber this book does; it’s clunky and boring, with complicated exposition and simple characters.  Its actual dramatic moments are overshadowed by its high school drama and love triangle.  Also, one of the characters turns into a rat and instantly becomes more believable.

How do you deal with a book so unimpressive?  The way we see it, you can either make it way better or way worse.  That’s why we invented the game “Get Me Out Of Purgatory.”  It’s like “One Change” meets “Race to the Bottom.”  We also brainstorm on other fantasy series that we’ll probably have to read when they inevitably get published.

This week’s show is also a battle of the titans, as we are joined by rival podcaster Dan McCoy.  He’s the producer of The Flop House, a remarkably similar podcast that might have copied ours, except that they came before us. Dan also has an animated web series, 9 AM Meeting, which is awesome.

You know what’s sadder than one 26-year-old guy watching the new Justin Bieber movie alone?  Four of them doing it in different parts of the country at the same time.  I know you thought your life could never get this bad.  Well, NEVER SAY NEVER!

Never Say Never is a movie about triumph over adversity.  Like the way Justin Bieber dealt with not being discovered until he was almost 14.  And then having to go a whole year between signing a record deal and making a bazillion dollars.  Will he finish off this crazy rollercoaster of a year by playing to a sold out crowd in Madison Square Garden? Or will a mild sore throat cause him to ultimately… wait a few weeks before playing to a sold out crowd in Madison Square Garden?  You’ll have to watch to find out.

Love is a many splendored thing.  Sadly, Gary Chapman doesn’t like any of those splendors.  His view of  love has been shaped by more than 20 years as a marriage counselor to old Christian couples who got married very young and don’t have anything in common.  He solves all these couples’ problems using an easy two-step process:

I know it sounds simple, but as we prove, Gary Chapman only counsels extremely simple people.  But the book is also pretty sad.  In Chapman’s opinion, women have no physical desire for sex, but they love doing dishes.  All men want is sex, and they hate talking to their spouses.  These things are probably true, but it’s pretty hard to listen to.

Gigli (rhymes with really. As in “Really? Who approved this?”) is summarized on IMDB this way:

How could something like this possibly be bad?  Well, for starters, Al Pacino is in the movie for 5 minutes and Ben Affleck is in all of the minutes.  That’s a poor casting decision.  Other than that, the movie is just a mess.  The plot is as confused as the female lead’s sexual orientation.  The dialog is muddy, and the score manages to contrast with the mood the entire time.  All in all, it’s a perfect movie for us to watch.

It seems like only yesterday our cute little guidos and guidettes were getting drunk and punching/humping each other in Miami.  Oh, how things have changed.  Now, they’re back in Jersey and they’re really gonna live it up.  And so are we.  We try to gather everything we’ve learned about life in a game we call How To _____ At The Jersey Shore.  

How do I start a fight with Deena?  Laugh.  

How do I apologize to my boyfriend? Pizza.

How do I get it in with Vinnie?  Don’t even try.  He’s too big.

All that and more on this fantastic episode of Read it and Weep.

Every so often a book comes along that’s so moving, we can’t help but get involved. We didn’t know going in that The 4-Hour Body was destined to be that book, but it was. Rather than just reviewing it, we’re trying on some of the recomendations for a full month. You can follow our progress at Body By Bullishit.com.

In addition to challenging ourselves, we also took a long, hard look at the world Timothy Ferriss has created, especially focusing on why he’s not dateable.

For our first ever live show we tackled three great Keanu Reeves movies.  This is the unedited recording of the night’s festivities.  Special thanks to Pat and everybody at ComedySportz Portland for the hospitality.

The first half of this book was mostly boring and dumb, but in the second part, L. Ron decides to go full-on gross. No joke, Dianetics is almost entirely about abortion. It’s messed up.

We do our best to fight through Hubbard’s disgusting imagination by… totally giving in to it. We introduce our new breakout character The Incautious Vulva and our new national pastime Zygote Boxing.

Dianetics is bullshit. Summary completed. Oh, you want more than that?  Okay. In this episode we take on L. Ron Hubbard’s work of idiotology. We use his fake discovery, “engrams,” to make each other do silly things. We invite L. Ron on the show to defend his book in The Writers’ Room. And now, a limerick.

———————

There once was a man named L. Ron

Who hated psychology a ton

If you read his religion

You could only imagine

What kind of drugs he was on!

A freak of nature, another freak of nature, and a bald child with severe depression.

Rudolph, Frosty, and Life’s Punching Bag, Charlie Brown, are here to teach us what Christmas is really all about. Sure, there’s presents and the magic of Christmas snow, but in the world of ‘60s animation, Christmas is about:

Our guest, Dru, is still hilarious. Here’s his website of awesome.

Happy iPod day, everyone. Hope it’s a good one.