So occasionally one of us will make a joke in-episode where my brain goes “Ding! Fodder for the write up” and then I have time to think on it, flush it out, edit out the dumb bits, or forget my original idea, have it again, and essentially…do the same thing, only faster and more of the dumb bits get left in. Anyway. That happened here and we’re doing the second version of it (hence that lead-in sentence being the lead-in.) So, for those who weren’t there, there was this time in the early-to-mid 2010s, right around the time A) the movie we’re talking about it coming out and B) Nerd/Fandom culture is kinda hitting the apex of where that’s going to go, where we loved combining different fandom IPs on t-shirts and mugs and stuff that we could take digital art and print it on. So think things like R2-D2 and C3PO riding on the Tardis, or it’s the Pink power ranger with that mean girls quote about wearing pink on Wednesdays, or Link and Zelda riding on Pokémon or whatever. So this joke in the episode led me to wonder if there were any Avengers x Arrested Development shirts like this and after about 10 minutes of internet searching, I’m coming up mostly empty, but I cannot shake the feeling they existed at one point. I can picture it in my mind: Tobias a blue Hulk, Iron Man as Gob using the Aztec Tomb with War Machine as his assistant, Black Widow as Maeby asking Cap where he got his “cross necklace” so she can go on a ski trip, Hawkeye driving the stair car while the Maximoffs ride on the back….yeah. The shirt draws itself. Or it would, if it were 2015 and I had any artistic abilities. Oh well. Anyway, we did an episode about Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s a two-parter. This is the first part. Enjoy.

So, in the part 1 write-up, I referenced this speech class I took in the summer in high school. This is probably the closest in my experiences to doing something like a Project Runway or Top Chef-style reality show–where you are expected to pump out creation after creation on long hours with very little time to recoup or really think through the thing you’re making. You’re basically just getting a crash course, then expected to pop out some genius. 

Unsurprisingly, I don’t remember many of the presentations I put together for this class. Except for one. It starts out much like any episode of Project Runway or Top Chef–Heidi or Padma come out to the contestants, say a witty, scripted preamble, then go into the “Challenge” for the day: prepare a dramatic reading, complete with at least one physical prop. Must be at least three minutes in length. You have one day for this challenge. (I do not remember the teacher at all but am willing to bet she was not Heidi Klum or Padma Lakshmi levels of hot–few of us are.) So after sitting through the presentations from whatever nonsense was assigned yesterday, we are released and allowed to go work on what is due tomorrow. 

I hear many people joke about snagging a skull from the science department to do Hamlet, in that sort of desperate way where they’re trying to gauge how this would land, because no other ideas are coming and they’re dying inside. The idea of trying to learn and be able to recite Shakespeare with one evening’s worth of prep did not sound appealing. So like many successful competition-based reality show contestants, I thought about what I knew and how I could fit this challenge to it. Like most moody teens from the early 2000s, I did not know Shakespeare. I did not have Robert Frost or Henry David Thoreau committed to the dome. What did I have embedded in my brain? Song lyrics. The metaphorical lightbulb of genius clicked. I knew what I had to do. And what I had to do was walk over to the nearest Walgreens and buy a puzzle. 

The next day, presentations began, and we saw a fair amount of fumbling through Hamlet and other Romantic poets. Someone recreated the space landing audio with a toy spaceship. It was a lot of uninspired mediocre dishes. It was a ton of napkin-style mini-dresses in the unconventional materials challenge. I started to panic–either I messed this up royal, or I’ve done this better than anyone ever has, and I won’t know until I volunteer to get up there and present. 

I finally get the nerve, go up there, quiet with my unopened puzzle, knowing I only had one shot at this. This was pre 8 Mile coming out, so I couldn’t even mom’s spaghetti to hype myself up. I just had to commit. What was I committing to? Well, ripping apart the box of a puzzle, throwing pieces around the room for a full minute before reciting the lyrics to Dashboard Confessional’s song “This Ruined Puzzle”. I also apparently committed to giving myself a few gnarly cardboard cuts on the stupid box, but…it landed. I got a 100 on the assignment and Padma would’ve definitely named me the winner of the challenge. Heidi gave me immunity for next week’s show, so I’m definitely not getting eliminated. Love that for me. Shout out to Claire from the last writeup, whose feedback included the joke “But not all of the pieces were face down :( ” which is still objectively hilarious, good job Claire. 

What does this have to do with part 2 of our 2024 Musical Wrap-up conversation? You have to embrace who you are and let it drive you. If you are an emo teenage dirtbag, Shakespeare doesn’t got you, Chris Carrabba does. Also, a healthy dash of chaos and Committing to the Bit ™ always helps. And that’s the TLAT way. Enjoy the episode.

[Story Time Jingle] So back in the elusive year of 2004, when Kanye, Tyra Banks, and Joanne Kathleen Rowling were vying for position as voices of our generation, I exploited a loophole in my high school’s graduation requirements for personal lasting gain. They required every human child (and every non-human child pretending to be a human child, let’s be real, we’ve all seen Men In Black) to complete a required Speech class, in which you had to write, research, and perform several written pieces of different styles throughout a semester. To me, a shy, anxiety-ridden introvert who had already failed multiple presentations in her academic career due to panic attack, this sounded like Hell on Earth. However, enter the loophole. You had the option to take classes in summer school. Three weeks, eight hours a day…this was also Hell on Earth, but…abbreviated. I weighed the options with my teenage brain and the answer seemed clear: Shorter = better. To summer school we went. This class went on to have a lasting impact on my life. I learned that when you are presenting, hardly anyone is actually listening to you because they are living in their own little worlds. This brought me great comfort. I learned that telling a story verbally versus written does require slightly different skill sets, which is why I still feel like you’re losing a certain something in audiobooks, but that’s another spiel for another episode blurb. I learned that humor can absolutely be used to get you out of a momentary jam (a lesson reaffirmed by the Simpsons episode “Bart Gets Famous”, go watch it, get learnt.) I went on to take another required public speaking class in college and ace it, even at one point having the professor try to convince me to change my major to a public relations/marketing one. Honestly…probably a good idea in hindsight. Past me took an L not doing that. Anyway. [Ending Story Time Jingle] You might be asking yourself “This is all well and good Burgs, but what does this have to do with a podcast episode you recorded almost 20 years later?” And I would respond with “Almost nothing except during one of my friend’s speeches, she taught people how to heel-toe march properly as a way to not spill a very full beverage while walking and it’s a thing I do to this very day and was a thing I did to get my coffee over to my computer to write this. Shout out to Claire; my area rug remains mostly pristine and coffee-free. So in closing, you learn unexpected things in unexpected spaces, much like in Part One of our 2024 Music Wrap-Up. Enjoy. :)

(To the tune of “Bad Boyfriend” by Garbage)

I've got a fever, come check it and see

My anger’s burning and rolling in me

We may not last but there’s no fun till it ends

C'mon, baby, you’re a bad president

I wanna hear you take all of the blame

I wanna see you burn up in flames

Send you to jail so I can cheer with my friends

C'mon, baby, you’re a bad president

So foul, shitty, you suck, can’t you see

But watch out Tool-belt, we’ll sting like a bee

We know some tricks that’ll bring your reign to an end

C'mon, baby, you’re a bad president

My fever's rising, you ran outta luck

Say what, sugar? Your VP fucked what?

Let’s lock you up for one hundred and ten

C'mon, baby, you’re a bad president

It's wild the way you exploit us

It's wild the way you persecute us

It's wild the way you sell short us

Wrapped your heart up with hate from the start

You've got the women waiting in line

You’re not asking them to use their own minds

Let them control their bodies, at least now and then

They’ve got something special for a bad president

If you can't rule them justly, step down, don’t pretend

Oh, they’ve saved something special for the very end

If you can't rule them justly, step down, don’t pretend

C'mon, baby, you’re my bad president

Oh, c'mon, baby, you’re my bad president

The episode write up for “Part Twos” is always harder than Part One because there is a part of me that just wants to go “Hey, the one from before? It’s the wrap up of that one. Listen to it because who wants to leave a thing unfinished?” but that feels lazy and I never know how low-effort I can get with these before Adrian frowns at me and thinks, “I waited around for her to do this? Bruh, I could also have done this in ten minutes not like I also can’t string words together” and…yeah, Mind’s Eye Adrian is right. I also thought about just copy/pasting in a recipe for goulash and calling it a day there too. Which is also a bit low effort, but funny, which is the goal: teh jokez. But for serious: We talk about Fast Five some more. The Rock is really sweaty. Like distractingly sweaty. Like I’m concerned for his health levels of sweaty in it. We do some character analysis. There’s more things to add to our Not How Physics Do Counter. There’s the drama of which host makes the Simpsons reference first. This episode has all the good TLAT things that you crave [and] a joke about goulash. This could be our shawarma bit. We could Make Goulash Great Again. (It’s been great this whole time, don’t get it twisted.) Anyway. Um. Mind’s Eye Adrian, I’m sorry this write up is weird, I did try. Here’s a link to a recipe for traditional Hungarian goulash I will haunt you if you put macaroni noodles in it: https://www.recipetineats.com/hungarian-goulash-recipe/.

I’ve got Covid, so my brain is just one big foggy abyss that I’m trying to wrangle myself through. Because foggy abyss, I’ve mostly just had on things in the background that I’ve seen too many times–old cartoons like Spongebob. So I just finished watching the Pizza Delivery episode and I can’t help thinking about a Fast & Furious take on that. Brian has too many feelings and crashes the one vehicle they have. They’re forced to walk until Dom magically finds a Dodge Charger branded rock. Tej and Roman work on a map back to civilization based on where they’ve seen moss on rocks. Leo and Santos argue about lyrics for the new Krusty Krab Pizza jingle they’ll need for marketing. Gisele teasing Han about munching on all their coral. I’m just saying. It could be a thing. Anyway. This episode is about Fast Five. It’s the first part of two. Hope you enjoy it. Get the vaccine and such. Love y’all.

In the town where he was born

Lived a Salarian who sailed to space

And he told us of his life

In the land of spaceships

So he sailed up past the Sun

'Til we found …electricity?

And we crashed beneath the waves

In our Adjacent Galaxy

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

And our friends were all aboard

Many more of them lived next door

And the Reapers began to play

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

Full speed ahead, Kallo Jath, full speed ahead!

Full speed it is, Pathfinder!

Deploy the pod, deploy the pod!

Aye-aye, sir, aye-aye!

Screw you, Peebee!

As we live a life of ease (a life of ease)

Everyone of us (everyone of us) has all we need (no more Peebee)

Sky of blue (sky of blue) and sea of green (sea of green)

In our Adjacent (in our Adjacent) Galaxy (Galaxy, ah-ha)

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

We all moved to an adjacent galaxy

Adjacent Galaxy, Adjacent Galaxy

When I suggested to Adrian that we should once again turn our shared suffering into Capital-C Content and talk about Mass Effect: Andromeda, we had the normal boring calendar convos that come with any adult trying to interface with another adult in Late Stage Capitalism. We scheduled a record time like normal. Didn’t expect it to go for almost five hours. Boy, were our faces tired after we were done. (Get it? Like the meme?) This line bothers me, rough facial animations aside because this is not a thing. It’s not a colloquialism. It’s a weird line that I don’t understand. In a dialogue-heavy video game like this, where tens of thousands of lines, not every line is a winner for sure, but I just keep thinking about it. Is it supposed to be exhausted rambling? A bad joke, referencing something Ryder says earlier in the conversation? A metaphor for masking or maybe professionalism? Does it matter what I think? Maybe it’s a good line and brainface is tired. Maybe now the five hour record time makes a bit more sense. There’s just a lot here to unpack. So. Enjoy the first part of our face-tiring journey.

Hi! Hello! So originally I was gonna write a version of the song from “We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story” but like…the vast majority of you don’t know that song or probably that movie. John Goodman sings. It’s a whole thing. But the kids today have their Dreamworks and their Disneys and before Dreamworks was riding high on money made from Shrek memes and people paying to not see that Will Smith fish face ever again, those animators worked for Amblin Entertainment making, among other things, this absolutely wild animated movie about dinosaurs and museums and bluebirds and a guy (spoilers) being EATEN ALIVE BY CROWS IN A CHILDREN’S MOVIE. The kids in the movie are wild–one is this little tough guy who sounds like an extra in the “Bing Bong” tiktok (I’ll link it below) and the other kid is just Daisy Buchanan voiced by Lisa Simpson (no, it’s the same voice actor and I just spend the entire movie waiting for her to start screaming at Bing Bong to quit it). Julia Child voices a scientist named Dr. Bleeb (I don’t know why but this last name sends literal shivers down my spine) and Jay Leno voices an alien and John Goodman as a dinosaur keeps doing this impression of a scientist who is voiced by Walter Cronkite and it’s all like…very well done but totally unhinged? Not to mention the plot of this thing which is Gwen Stefani levels of bananas and the more I talk about this more this might actually be an episode, so...forget that you read this because I might reuse these jokes. Anyway, “We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story” is a cinematic masterpiece and this episode is also a masterpiece and a celebration of two dinosaurs coming back from the dead to…um…go to the Museum of Natural History. (So sue me, the metaphor isn’t 1:1.)

It’s End-Of-Year playlist tiiiiiiime! I almost just sent this, but I feel like Adrian might be mad. So. Let’s empty my brain,shall we? Right now it’s just Stardew Valley and “Yule Shoot Your Eye Out”, so…let’s do a Stardew 12 days of Christmas. I got this: For the Feast of the Winter Star, my true love sent to me / Twelve marriage candidates / Eleven potluck soup ingredients / Ten triple espressos consumed / Nine moonlight jellies / Eight friendship hearts / Seven spicy eels while mining / Six hidden colored eggs / Five ancient fruit seeds / Four singing mermaids / Three blue chickens / Two dino eggs / And a golden pumpkin for spirit’s eve