The Paunch Stevenson Show two-year anniversary special, part one!
In this episode:
- the current top ten movies at the box office,
- Jack Palance and Ripley’s Believe It or Not!,
- David Hasselhoff starring in an upcoming Anaconda sequel,
- the upcoming movie I Am Legend (2007) starring Will Smith,
- The Omega Man (1971) starring Charlton Heston,
- the upcoming movie Fred Claus (2007) starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti,
- the onslaught of Bee Movie commercials,
- microfiche and microfilm,
- the Belleville Public Library in Belleville, NJ, in the 1990s,
- the Dewey Decimal System,
- horribly outdated computers in school,
- Belleville High School’s CAD class,
- an old pen plotter from the 1970s,
- the uselessness of old computers,
- fanfold printer paper,
- Macintosh vs. PC prices,
- old computer gimmicks (RAM Doubler, Stacker, etc.),
- old internet service providers (Prodigy, Compuserve, etc.),
- and receiving free AOL discs in the mail.
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I forgot to mention that the first adaptation of I Am Legend was 1961 “The Last Man on Earth” starring Vincent Price as an effeminate vampire hunter.
It’s okay. I forgot to mention that the reason for the eerie music at the beginning and the end of the episode was because it was Halloween. People listening to the episode months from now might not realize that.
I am so sick of Bee Movie. True story. On the UNC campus, we had a Bee Movie go-kart driving around all over the grass field, destroying it. Then the driver came out in a bee costume and handed out posters. I hope the movie bombs. I did see The Darjeeling Limited last night. Pretty good, but typical Wes Anderson fare. Some techniques like his slowdown effects are getting a little old.
On the pop culture front, Guitar Hero III:Legends of Rock just came out for all platforms. Some “legends” include Brett Michaels, Slipknot, AFI, White Zombie, and Dragonforce. I think its funny when you hear about people claiming that playing the game is just as difficult as playing a guitar.
I hope Bee Movie flops too, but it’ll probably bring in over $200 million at the box office. Whenever Pixar or DreamWorks release a computer animated family movie, it’s an automatic gold mine.
I was at the Nintendo World store in Manhattan a few nights ago and saw some people playing Guitar Hero III. Some of the “legends” are a bit suspect. Who is Dragonforce?
Regardless, it seems like a fun game, which is great, but it’s nothing like playing a real guitar. I don’t expect it to be. People who compare the two are fools.
I also saw some people playing Super Mario Galaxy. It looks very good. Battalion Wars 2 and MLB Power Pros seem pretty good, too.
Oh crap I used to love “Believe it or Not!” with Jack Palance. I loved especially how after every story he’d inhale deeply after saying “Believe it…” and then exhale all loud after he said “…or Not”. There has to be some YouTube of that somewhere.
This episode was great. I remember having a Tandy TRS-80 crappy Radio Shack computer back in the 80’s. My sister and I didn’t understand that computers sucked back then. The only exposure we had to computers was repeated watchings of the movie Wargames with Matthew Broderick. So we thought any computer could be used to do all sorts of nefarious things. My sister and I were only 8 and 9 years old when one day I typed “ACCESS BANK” onto the screen and although I didn’t even have a modem my sister got scared that I was really hacking into a bank. She kept telling me to stop with tears in her eyes and after I hit enter she went screaming to my mom and I got grounded!
I still don’t really understand computers and I don’t get it when people complain about how hard it is to generate computer models for movie special effects and video games. It seems to me that the reason computers are made is to make things easy, so why is it so hard to do wireframe CGI models? That’s what computers are for. How could it be hard?
Esteban, yeah Jack Palance was the scariest part of the show. I did find some Palance clips I’d like to play next time. Also, CGI can be well done, and in combination with live models, can look great. Example of course is Jurassic Park. I think the problem goes to bad directing. The CGI artists also have no clue what real movie making is. It’s not like taking Stan Winston and putting him in front of a computer.
don’t get me started on horribly outdated computers. at university in the late ‘90s, i spent seven hours – working into the night – writing the just first chapter of a report. i saved as i went along, only for the early ‘90s computer to basically explode and all my work go up in smoke. i’m still haunted by that today.