Matthew Wrather hosts with Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Jordan Stokes to overthink their own new year’s resolutions, the best things of the decade so far, Guy Ritche’s Sherlock Holmes, Scooby Doo, the biblical origins of bromance, and Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air.
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Thanks for taking the time to do another amazing podcast. I’ve been working my way backwards with this (Episode 65) and the These F***ing Teenagers podcast. I am consistently thoroughly awed by your brilliance. I can’t really respond to anything specific in this podcast except to say that I’m not a fan of Phaedo or The Symposium probably due to my status as a first year NYU student taking required courses.
On Bromance in the Bible.
Actually, my New Year’s resolution is to read The Bible in a year, so far I’m on track. Therefore I read the Adam and Eve story a couple days ago and had the same thought when Adam bitches to God about how Eve ate the apple and FORCED him to eat it too.
God: Have you eaten the fruit I commanded you not to eat?
Adam: Yes… but it was the WOMAN you gave me who brought me the fruit, and I ate it.” [emphasis added.]
Then God punishes Eve with painful childbirth for all of us and “though your desire will be for your husband, he will be your master.” I’m not a big fan of that line. Not at all. First example of God putting bros before hoes.
All God does to Adam is curse the ground and make him have to work for food and tell him he’s going to die and turn into dust. “All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day. Then you will return to the ground from which you came. For you were made from dust, and to dust you shall return.” :-P
Side note: No evidence that God is man or woman, “So God created people in his own image; God patterned them after himself, male and female he created them.” Thus ends the bromance between God and Adam… maybe God is bi? Am I going to be struck by lightning?
All quotes were from the NLT.
There was actually a spinoff of Scooby Doo entitled The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo where the gang dealt with actual ghosts. They were joined by some kid named Flim Flam and Vincent Van Ghoul, who was either voiced by Vincent Price or was voiced with the intention to sound like Vincent Price.
Also, based on what I saw of the Scooby Doo movies they were more in the vein of the Stiller/Wilson Starsky and Hutch movie, playing to pure camp and nostalgia more than anything.
In response to HBomb…
I had to read Genesis a few months ago so it’s still relatively fresh in my mind. It IS an unequal balance when doling out punishments to Adam and Eve and the serpent. I think it connects less to bromance and more to the clear distinction between the roles/perceived spheres for men and women. I think if you look up the etymology, there is some connection between man and dust. The Bible also makes it clear that ADAM is God’s creation (at least the second time it is mentioned, not counting the whole God created man and woman…then God created man…and Eve from Adam’s rib…but that’s another discussion). Eve’s punishment cements her subservience which is already hinted at with her creation.
Then there’s some craziness with Lilith that I got from The History Channel which my professor told me I should disregard as a wackadoodle alternate religion.
I personally don’t get the “created in his own image” part. Looking at Genesis in relation to the rest of the Bible which is admittedly rather difficult to meld together as a consistent piece of literature, the conception of God seems more related to the primeval gods of Greek mythology and lack a corporeal form, instead of the image we have from Michelangelo decorating the Sistine Chapel.
any chance of an Overthinking It most-anticipated pop-cult releases/events of 2010? What are you looking forward to overthinking?
One of my favorite instances of scientific/supernatural collision is in Tim Burton’s version of Sleepy Hollow, wherein Ichabod Crane, even after accepting the existence of the Headless Horseman, still works through the situation with organization and rationality rather than simply abandoning his scientific worldview and giving in the madness of the unknowable, Lovecraft-style. Way he figures it, anything that actually exists must obey *some* laws, and on that outlook turns the resolution to the plot. Very Dirk Gently.
On another topic, does anyone happen to know where podcasts 48-57 might be found? The archives have stopped at page 3 for a couple of weeks now.
I didn’t think that “Sherlock Holmes” had very much suspense to it, because I knew that it was in the Scooby Doo genre of mysteries: “It looks supernatural, but behind it all is SCIENCE!” The only suspense was in finding out the scientific explanation. But the movie was definitely entertaining to watch. Except for Rachel McAdams. Her acting was just terrible through the whole thing.
@stabbim — The archives did indeed stop around episode 58. This happened when we added the second podcast, and had to start differentiating them with separate categories in the podcast feed. Sorry about that—I’ve fixed it now. You can now go back to episode one (not that I’m recommending you do; it took us a little while to find our podcast legs).
Oh, if anyone was curious about that bromancing ritual I mentioned, here’s the wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelphopoiesis
I was wrong about a bunch of the details, but I got the core of it right.
100th podcast: Karaoke showdown.
@Wrather: Thanks for the update. I had been power-loading the pods since early December, but neglected to download the archive all at once, so my retro OTI experience stopped dead at “Skynet VIP Suite.” And we couldn’t have that. On the upside, the temporary drought led me to TFT, which I’ve also been digging despite never having watched a single episode of either Glee ro Gossip Girl.
Well, you asked if anyone recently had lost their job… I was just informed that my position is being eliminated at the end of the academic year. However, I didn’t have a suave George Clooney type brought in to tell me. Just my boss and a vice president.
It’s really scary, though. This being Michigan, the odds of finding a job in my field are basically zero, and I’ll be lucky if I can even find an opening at Starbucks.
On an unrelated note, another great example of the rationality / real ghosts collision is the short lived TV series from the eighties “Probe.” With a concept by Isaac Asimov, imagine the X-files, but instead of the character (Muldauer) who sees the paranormal explanation always being right, it’s the rationalist character who always turns out to be right.
I guess that makes it a live action Scooby Doo.
I actually listened to an excellent sermon this morning on the Adam/Eve/Serpent story entitled “Dealing with Disorder: The Origin of Relational Problems.” I took notes. Occasionally that happens.
The Pastor actually pointed out how it was ADAM that disobeyed God first, as Adam ate the apple Eve gave him, no questions asked, whereas Eve questioned the Serpent and the Serpent had to convince her that she really is not disobeying God.
Meanwhile, where is Adam? Eve is his wife and the only other human being in existence and Adam doesn’t stand up to Eve when the servant tempts her? Seriously, and this is getting off track, but why the heck does God tell Eve that part of her punishment is that she has to obey her husband when her husband doesn’t even show up to help her when the Serpent “attacks” her in his evil plan to ruin God’s creation? Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Boo.
Then the Pastor brought up that Adam only had two friends in the world” God and Eve, and he throws both of them under the bus when he blames Eve for giving him the apple and then blames God for making Eve. Seriously? What gives. Eve owned up to what she did when God asked her about it. Early proof that women rock.
The moral of the story was that sin doesn’t come from outside forces like the Serpent handing Eve the apple, but that sin comes from inside oneself, when Adam threw God and Eve under the proverbial bus. So it’s up to us to realize that about ourselves and work on it. I thought the Pastor brought up some interesting points.