Updating some podcasts that I’ve listened to since I last posted Podcast Reviews.
DIGGNATION
176. Sexy Couch Hologram
Sitting on Kevin’s “sexy couch” in SF. Examining polls. Kevin and Alex talk politics. Barack Obama just got elected. Kevin’s family is all Republicans. He’s the “black sheep.” CA gets a bullet train, from SF to SD. YAY! Kevin talks about taking the Chunnel bullet train. Alex is not into it. Kevin talks about being underwater for half an hour, but is more worried about the BART in SF, which also goes underwater. Alex is claustrophobic. They talked about the early days of the Internet. Being network admins on Novell. Searching for porn on FTP. “Computers aren’t special anymore,” Alex. Whether or not fixing computers is, as Kevin says, “an old person thing.” They want to build robots. Heidi Klum doing an ad for Guitar Hero. It would be better if she actually knew the words. CNN uses a hologram for its political reporting for the election. Kevin just got “Memento.” Some girl pours beer on her breasts to get her nipples hard. Ain’t it great to be a podcaster?
 177. Multiview Diggnation Remix!
Kevin gets glasses. When is the proper time to hit back if a girl’s hitting you. Kevin jokes about snipping off a girl’s nipple. Kevin saw a lot of fights in Vegas. Tyson Foods’ use of antibiotics in chicken. Finding money in a wall in a house. Kevin advises people to keep money that they find, don’t tell anyone. :-0 The “nutsac mode” on your camera. Kevin and Alex are officially geeks. Kevin: “I think spammers are worse than a drug dealer.” Kevin recommends a documentary about the font Helvetica. How to really enjoy cacao nibs. The art of crossbows.
View the remixed version at: www.revision3.com/remix
 178. TikiNation
They are at Alex’s house in LA, and Kevin rips into Alex about “losing his manhood” because his fiancee has placed potpourri there. People from TikiBar are here. Dr. Tiki smiles perfectly for the camera, when the Diggnation boys think he’s going to the bathroom. About having a good chair for your ass when you’re a gamer. A woman gets scammed for $400,000 from one of those email chain letters. Alex likes the Mountain themes in Gmail. Dr. Tiki starts manning the camera. (And he’s good.) Alex’s dog is really cute. So’s Lala, whom Dr. Tiki just panned to. Kevin and Alex both love Golden Girls. They talk about guys who “idolize Ron Jeremy.” Kevin thinks he’s “nasty.” Hanna Montana’s “gummy cocks.” “Midget kick boxing.” “LetMeGoogleThatForYou.” Dot com. First ever: “Technical Difficulties.” Glen is not there today… *sigh* Cool on location sponsors. Kevin and Glen are driving back to San Francisco from LA. Great segment. “Why do I wanna fuck that cat? It better be a girl cat.” –Alex How does one ask a girl out? Men and women have very different opinions. “Do you wanna play Oui?” “All of a sudden, it’s like… zip…” Then, a dream about monkeys crawling over someone. “How could you have that relationship? They’d throw poo at you.” –Alex
 179. Hangovers
Brought to you by “Uno Equis. When Dos Equis is a little too much beer.” Alex and his dog are both hungover. Kevin is, but less so. PC magazine shutting down its print edition. Which magazines Kevin and Alex read. Wired is very popular. They give a secret Twitter account and say they wanna do an episode about their favorite Twitter accounts. Alex’s dog is passed out next to him. They talk about the car company bailouts. Kevin wants cool tech in his car that updates automatically via Bluetooth. They have to leave early because, you know, Alex needs to throw up.
KEVIN POLLAK’S CHAT SHOWÂ
27, part 2. Paul F. Tompkins Kevin gives Guy Kawasaki some shit at BlogWorld, apparently. Kevin loves the Blogess. About his beginnings in comedy. Another guy wearing black. Sigh. I hate the now “Oprah, Paris or Demi” game. Horrible, all these interruptions from the crew. About watching TV shows on DVD. TWO STARS
THE NERDIST
8. Jim Gaffigan. The Nerdist crew is talking a lot in this one. How doing TV doesn’t sell a ticket (to a comedy show) anymore. The Encyclopedia Britannica of comedy. How Gaffigan writes with his wife. I’m biased by the fact that Jim Gaffigan bores the crap outta me, so sorry, I’m zoning out now. TWO STARS
 9. Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park. Chris breaks out the Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. Upping the ante on the OK Go video. How much cooler it would’ve been to be a rock star in the 70s. Do we have to do everything? Having a bowling father vs. a rocket scientist father. Is it essential to have a marketing background to be in a band? Mike was really late joining Twitter. Comparing blogs. How MSM (and band management) doesn’t understand YouTube. Warner Brothers deleted 5MILLION views on YouTube. Which can’t be gotten back. Mike “needs a little bit of privacy” (regarding Twitter). Chris: “We’ve become a culture of aggregators.” Linkin Park has its own social network. Whether it’s better to have millions of half-baked fans or 10,000 really passionate ones. Chris: “Apple is like the hot cheerleader who won’t fuck you, but you’ll carry her books anyway.” Chris would join Linkin Park if he could play melodica. Dealing with Pandora and the music genome thing. Holding onto fans when the band changes direction. The story of Smashing Pumpkins. “I’ve been on TV a decade longer” (than Joel McHale). They talk about productivity and the “4-Hour Work Week.” They talk about how they maintain their schedules (iCal and Evernote). How labels hide the way they take money from artists. Mike explains Kickstarter. Chris’ band called Sniper. musicforrelief.org for a free download. THREE STARS
10. LIVEÂ Blech. Don’t review live shows. Wait, there is this. Chris: “Vegas to me is a lot like a stripper pole. From far away, it looks all shiny. When you get up close, it smells like poop and sadness.” Gotta get this down. RE: Abercromie & Fitch’s new look. “You really expect to see people doing rails of coke off the folding tables, while vampires are feeding on Asian schoolgirls, while the ghost of Oscar Wilde is blowing the ghost of Andy Warhol, on the back of a unicorn with a dick for a horn, shooting rainbows onto a Project: Runway marathon.” Brilliant.
THIS WEEK IN PHOTO
001. Live from MacWorld
All of the panelists introduce themselves. About how beautiful Africa is. Alex’s Africa project. Photography “is a storytelling medium.” “Make sure when you take a photograph, that you tell a story.” “Is there a story I want to tell? Is there a memory I want to protect?” “When you have a special moment, never let it go. Follow it through to the very end, and then let it go.” “There are very few of those magic, special moments.” Alex Lindsay talks about being at LucasFilm. “Buy a lot of film, take a lot of photos.” “An amateur photographer takes A snapshot. A professional photographer takes 20.” EDFAT. Entire, Details, Focal Length, Angle and Time. An establishing shot or two. Let’s go to details. Then I’ll vary all those shots with different focal lengths. And boy, you’ve got a different story. “I’ll also play with fast and slow shutter speeds.” “It’s like a dance.” If you shoot 14 frames and you have 14 to choose from… “Look at the stuff that’s most visually rich, and concentrate on that.” “Eventually, you find yourself in a photographic place that you couldn’t have predicted.” “Once you get those diamond images, it gives you a goal to work harder.”
 002. The Future of DSLRs
Alex Lindsay in studio with Scott Bourne and Alex’s brother. A discussion of the new SLRs. “We’re getting to a point where we’re almost plateauing. What do the next generation of cameras need to have?” Regarding which camera to buy. “Any camera you spend $400-500.. is gonna do things that the top-of-the-line Nikkon couldn’t do 20 years ago.” “All megapixels are not created equal.” A discussion of bokeh, a Japanese word. “The soft background, the out-of-focus areas, produced by a camera lens.” “It’ll all sort of blur so that you can’t see really anything.” “It gets very complicated… it’s not perfect circles.” LensBaby. Whether it’s better to do it “in camera” or in Photoshop. “We’re gonna see the end of CF cards.” “We will see bigger cards, and bigger brighter viewfinders.” “…and all this stuff will just continue to get cheaper and cheaper…” “The CCD is pretty much dead. I think in the future, we’ll see more C-Moss sensors.” Nikkon vs. Canon. Being able to make a lot of photo corrections in iPhoto.
WTF with Marc Maron
118. Maz Jobrani Maron contemplates “normalcy.” Contemplating “hoarding” vs. “being nostalgic.” He’s “done with the hoarding.” He’s digging “Breaking Bad.” Being on “fart lockdown.” Guys on TV eating themselves into a stupor on reality TV. “I’m happy to help people masturbate.” The distinction between Persian and Iranian. All about the shah. Zorastrian or Muslim? The perception of Iran compared to the reality of it. “The Axis of Evil” comics. THREE STARS
119. Adam McKay FOUR STARS
 120. LIVE in Austin I hate the live shows. So there was this. One guy who was miffed that Marc didn’t remember him. One chick who makes bad jokes about her cat, who died. Fun. One stupid comic. Then a cruel comic. Then another one, talks about his parents. Marc calls this “the deepest (live show)” he’s ever encountered. (Scary.) “I like to drink.” Museum jokes. ONE STAR
121. Ken Jeong Ken talks about being a doctor as well as a comedian, the making of Hangover, and how he still has his medical license, in case this comedy thing doesn’t work out. THREE STARS
122. Jessi Klein Jessi worked at Comedy Central back in its early days and has really enlightening things to say about that, and about temping in NYC. THREE STARS
123. The Creation Museum Marc is skeptical about these creationists and this museum they’ve created to honor their beliefs. But once he smuggles a microphone in, he’s amazed at the nice package they put together. Almost has him convinced. THREE STARS
124. Paul Scheer  Marc has visited Detroit and actually liked it. Marc talks about air travel and harassing a Virgin America rep on Twitter to get a better seat. Marc and Paul discuss the wonders of TV Guide back in the day. Marc was once a clue in a TV Guide crossword puzzle. On how programming a VCR foreshadowed TiVos and DVRs. “Celebrities can only hang out with celebrities. So you find them in weird groupings sometimes.” About doing a bar mitzvah in someone’s house. About meeting Aziz Ansari and Human Giant. About working at MTV and dealing with censors. Big dad fights. Leaving an abusive relationship. Surviving divorce. THREE STARS
125. LIVE Charles Fleischer et al I hate live shows. Blech. This one’s dreadful. Burn immediately. ZERO STARS
126. A.D. Miles/Bobby Tisdale Marc talks about his gratitude on Thanksgiving. How if he didn’t create this podcast, he didn’t know what he was going to do with his life. How he’s dreading participating in the family Thanksgiving thing. How AD Miles knew Marc. How he got the job at Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. They talk about the Fallon show, and how he seems like he’s enjoying himself. How one never sleeps. The jokes Jimmy won’t do. How working in late night teaches you to not linger agonizing over jokes forever. How he met Zach Galifinakis. “I guess I’ve always been a ham or whatever.” THREE STARS
127. Aziz Ansari Marc recaps his fun at Thanksgiving. That’s what Thanksgiving’s for: “to say in your mind, ‘I’m not going to be like that.'” Aziz is allergic to cats. The craft services truck on Parks and Rec. He has a phone addiction. Marc talks about Aziz’s Indian background, and why he doesn’t use it in his comedy. Aziz is a master of the whole Google affiliate scene. Being on Rolling Stone’s Hot List. Passing out fliers for comedy shows. “Everyone passing you hates you.” The club HA, and how it took advantage of comics. “Do you want to stand in the worst part of New York, and have people hate you for a couple hours?” How working on new material puts you at the same spot as anyone else (open mics in LA). THREE STARS
128. Mike Schmidt Mike has problems parking. Marc thinks he could do half an hour on that. Mike wants advice. Marc tells him to get a director. Mike sees his peers getting much more success than he has. The “Disappointing the Fans” tour. “I’ve been on that for fucking twenty years,” Mike Schmidt. They talk about his one-man show. The wondrous Lily Von Schtupp is his producer. Maron: “I know that people relate to my neurosis.” Schmidt: “The people who listen to me root for me.” They talk about podcasting. A Quentin Tarantino burlesque. About weighing 500 lbs. and scaling back. About how with food addictions, you can’t just give up eating. Mike’s family history. Maron: “Is there a race going on?” “We get comfortable in even the worst of our patterns.” Being attacked by a possum. Fighting zombies. Who would I fuck at the bank? “Everyone’s sucking cock and getting work done.” In Chicago. Mike goes after a group of people who keep talking at a show. Marc talks about doing the “Jerusalem Syndrome.” Maron: “I gotta go to therapy.” Schmidt: “I just finished mine.” TWO AND A HALF STARS
129. Janeane Garafolo Marc talks about lighting some twisted Hanukkah candles. Janeane gets lost getting to Marc’s house. They discuss Air America. Marc: “People have pigeonholed you because of the politics, and I got that too.” Janeane: “…being pigeonholed, it does affect your career… A lot of times females who are vocal, suddenly find themselves less able to work.…. People of color and women are not afforded the same latitude and leeway of their behavior in the workplace as white males are.” “It’s not an agenda. This is our lives.” Talk about the Tea Party, and how speaking about it kept her from jobs. Janeane: “The right wingers don’t ultimately win, otherwise we’d still own slaves and I wouldn’t be voting.” Marc: “You have a certain amount of hope that good will prevail.” Janeane: “Time marches on. It just happens. We have a black president.” J: “There will always be… small groups of people who will wield a tremendous amount of power, and do a lot of damage.” Janeane mentions Matt Taibi, Rachel Maddow, people online doing their thing. “They are citizens first. They are serving the citizens. They don’t serve their corporate masters. Their consciousness as humans overrides their workplace environment.” Marc: “I don’t think people know anymore what objective reporting is.” J: “I don’t need the news to be entertaining.” M: “Well, people do.” J: “I don’t take things at face value…. I’m going down swinging. I refuse to be bullied by a system.” M: “Let’s talk about the pursuit of happiness.” M: “Do you have any regrets?” J: “It’s much better to live in your truth than to worry about a stupid job on TV.” Janeane seems to pin her lack of work now on Air America. M: “It certainly means you have personal priorities that transcend a lot of bullshit.” FOUR STARS