Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men

HAWK TALK – Florida Mans

This would usually be a skip week, but the world is still being a jerk, so we made you a bonus, entirely unedited, and almost entirely off-topic episode. This time, we talked about a whole bunch of random topics suggested by you!


Topics, sorta:

  • Good birds
  • Dinosaurs
  • Florida
  • Nostalgic video games
  • Booze
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender
  • Probably some other stuff I’m forgetting

9 comments

  1. So, Tom Magliozzi is sadly no longer with us, having passed away in 2014, a little after the last season of new episodes of Car Talk.

    However, you can see Tom & Ray on a couple of episodes of the PBS science series Nova, which they did (appropriately enough) about cars. Also, their 1999 MIT Commencement address is on YouTube.

    That said, they technically have also *been* cars, because they did a cameo appearance in the Pixar film cars, so you’re both right.

    Also, my window looks out on a bird feeder, but we get fewer birds and more chipmunks.

    As far as friendly Twitter Duels go, I just recommend looking at John Scalzi’s Twitter account for whenever he comedically gets into it with other authors for what is appropriate burrito filling.

    For Adventure games, I’m ecstatic that Visual Novels are becoming a thing in the West now – both in terms of imported visual novels (both with branching paths like Steins;Gate and without like Utawarerumono), and original games like National Park Girls as well.

    As far as older Mac Games go, there is emulation out there for older versions of the Mac OS, which apparently give those older versions the DOSBOX treatment. Presumably you could use those to play Harry the Handsome Executive.

  2. I have no context for what “Car Talk” is/was. Would anyone elaborate please? (I could google it, but where’s the fun in that?)

    I’m very glad you said there would be a visual companion of Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, because otherwise I’d have asked for one!

    Florida sounds like a… challenging place to grow up.

    Triceratops are a very cool dinosaur IMHO, also represented by my favourite original Power Ranger.

    I only recently discovered that the spiky lump on the end of a stegosaurus tail (which isn’t as impressive as an ankylosaurus tail hammer, but is pretty impressive) is now officially called a thagomizer, after a Gary Larson “Far Side” cartoon which coined the term! 🙂

    Apparently that particular design feature had never had a name before, so paleontologists just accepted it and started using it.

    I’m too old to have had home videogames in my childhood (I can recall the first Space Invaders machine arriving in the local community centre though) but I have an inordinant fondness for the various LEGO games from Travellers Tales. Darth Vader explaining to Luke Skywalker that he is his father entirely through mime (and producing baby photos) remains a high point in the franchise! 🙂

    I loved AtLA (not just for the character work, but some of the best worldbuilding I’d ever seen), LoK I’m still working though, after losing some of the thrust I felt it had as Season 2 progressed, but I WILL return to it soon.

  3. @Icon_UK Car Talk was a radio show on National Public Radio where Tom & Ray Maggliozzi would answer questions from listeners on their cars and what needs to be done to fix them. It has a very comedic, self-deprecating tone to it, which made it really fun to listen to.

    Also, if I was training someone on how to do troubleshooting, especially over the phone, I’d *strongly* recommend they listen to Car Talk, because you can learn a lot about what questions Tom & Ray ask and how they ask them in order to get to the root of whatever problem they’re trying to resolve.

    NPR has been putting out “best of” episodes of Car Talk as a podcast after the show ended, and I’d generally say it’s worth listening to – but I’m biased because I’ve grown up listening to the show (it ran for *decades*)

  4. In addition to Avatar, have either of you been watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power? The final season gave me serious feels.

  5. ‘Rise of Skywalker’ left me resolved to watch no more Star Wars, not from a ‘hated it’ perspective, more it leaves me cold. I feel a little foolish it’s taken me so long, I suppose I wanted to enjoy it the way others do. I watched a fair bit of the Clone Wars cartoon and enjoyed the backgrounds, mocking the pretentious ‘quotes’ and Asajj Ventress, who brought the story alive when she turned up. I ended up disliking the Jedi for being incompetent, mind-controlling, slavery tolerating jerks.
    Also re-watching ‘Last Air-Bender’ and loved ‘Korra’ as well. Like Jay, I like the treatment of the villains. There are several that are so close to being heroic, just a little tweak and…
    I’ll echo PH, I’d like to hear your thoughts on She-Ra. In the last season there was a moment where I thought ‘That’s a frostball special’. I firmly believe I cannot have been the only one to think this. Definitely cheers and tears watching the final season.

  6. The rasslin Kaiju Jay mentions is most commonly called Anguirus. over the years his name has been translated in a variety of ways, such as Angiras and Angilas

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