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In this episode, we talked about many things. Also, we read emails from Noobchan and Dave in California.  Thanks for listening.

I emailed Mick Aloha this morning to let him know that due to my annual November losing-my-voice problem I wouldn’t be able to record.  Minutes later, I checked my phone to find that Aloha had sent me a message saying he couldn’t record because his wifi was not giving him an IP address.  Coincidence?  Government conspiracy?  You be the judge.

In this episode, we rambled on for about an hour and a half.

Here’s a monstrosity for you lot. This episode falls just short of three hours. The Moon Masters report the election live. You’ll hear us predict the winner before CNN and announce the winner. So, go ahead, download this episode, get in your time machine, and go back and listen to it as the events unfold. Why not? Sure, Joaquin Phoenix is giving up acting, but so are we, so who cares?

In this episode, we talked a lot about bananas. Then, we talked about Boston, patriotism, being proud of or embarrassed by the U.S., the sex offenders TV channel, and the society of fear. We also talked about what Mick Aloha doesn’t want for Christmas. We forgot to read e-mails, so we’ll try to remember next week.

In this episode, we talked about Aloha’s move to Boston and his encounter with a bum, Apoc’s trip to Hawaii, and a few other things. We had a question from HHH as well as feedback and an FU from Mitch.

There is this exclusive interview.

We are happy to announce that The Moon Masters Information in the Form of Audio delivered over the Internet, heretofore known as The Moon Masters Podcast, has won the Moon Masters’ Excellence in Podcasting Award.  We’re honored to have won such a highly esteemed award, and we’ll do our best to live up to this honor that has been bestowed upon us.  So, from now on, when you refer to the Moon Masters, you’ll have to refer to us as “The Award-winning Moon Masters.”  Anything less would just be a lie.

In this episode, we talked about the best albums of the 80’s and 90’s, the shakedown, and something about a bull and a flat rock.

We talked about bad porn movies, moon bucks,  season 3 of the AD show, my top ten list, and publishing If you see a gator… Run.

Enjoy the show.

This is my third time trying to post. Bluehost keeps failing. This is a waste of time.  Eat it, Bluehost.

Speaking of wastes of time, we talked about crap and had content from Kaosu and Sling Blade.

We talk about Dowell being Kim Jong Il. We read some email. We talk for a while. We talk about the greatest Star War character ever, Ziro The Hutt. Now you give us money. I believe that is how it works.

In this episode, we talked about our vacations.  Due to recording constraints we couldn’t play any audio, but we read feedback from Tim, Sake Steve (sorry, don’t know your link, man), Kaosu (he recommended 2 Girls 1 Finger),  Noobchan, and an FU from Kez.  There was also a stump from Kaosu.

Dowell and I are taking our summer vacation. He is in Hong Kong while I will be visiting multiple states in the good ole US of A. See you in a week or two.

We talked about communistic SF, Coinstar, review of Batman Begins, and content from Lord Kaosu and Noobchan.

Thank you for supporting The Moon Masters.

We’re recording early, so there will be no live stream this week.  Thank you for your understanding.

In this episode, we talked about Aloha’s big announcement, hating on the MMD, fantasy football, when we first got on the Internet, and other crap from the 90’s.  Lord K sent in a question about languages.

This was sent in by Tim.  There are definitely some (ok, at least one) spoilers, so read at your own risk.

The Dark Knight Movie review….my take

I’ve got to say I walked in to The Dark Knight Returns with some trepidation.  I had heard that Michael Caine described this film as the greatest movie he’d ever seen.  I don’t know if Caine actually said that, but along with the critical hype leading up to the movie I was both skeptical and prepared to be exhilarated beyond belief by my impending experience.  So after the credits rolled I was fairly dumbfounded.

Not only did I not feel like I had witnessed greatness, I realized I had much more fun watching movies like Snatch, O Brother Where Art Thou? and Charlie’s Angels.  I had witnessed better performances in The Unforgiven, Miller’s Crossing and Narc. I had seen better action in Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Killer and The Hulk.  Not only did I not think this was the best summer movie this year, I didn’t think it was the best Batman movie that’s been made.  And I’ll tell you why.

The movie should have been called The Joker.  It’s a smashing performance by Heath Ledger, I mean, he’s that character and no matter how hard you look you can’t find him behind that make up.  There’s a part of me that thinks Chris Nolan was justified as an artist to recognize something great was happening during his film and to go with it.  The other part of me is furious that the reason we were there, to see Batman and the story, took a major hit.

Batman is an afterthought in this film.  His alter-ego, Bruce Wayne, actually has better dialogue, more face time and more charisma than the hero he pretends to be.  This is an anathema to the character itself.  Not only that, The Batman is held up as a symbol of hope and strength of a better tomorrow.  That’s Superman, that’s not Batman.  Batman fights violence with violence, instills fear, intimidates.  He does so because he saw his parents murdered in front of him but the same stupid random act of violence the Joker reigns all hell with in this movie.

And Batman’s hatred of random acts of violence including murder just isn’t there.  Instead he mopes and worries, talks about quitting.  He’s genius and yet for the entire movie we see him led around by the nose by the Joker, who apparently can set aside his random insanity to think 26 steps ahead for every situation.  In fact, Batman has to invoke the Deus Ex Machina, the ‘cell-phone’ sonar tracking system to find the Joker and stop him.  And please, for those that hate the first Batman movie for the Joker shooting down the Bat Jet with a ‘pop-gun’ let’s talk about the unbelievable suspension of belief you need to have one man monitor cell-phone calls from an entire city the size of Chicago.

As others have referenced how this movie is so much better than the Keeton/Nicholson Batman movie, I like to say this.  That movie let Batman be the story.  Nicholson let Keeton do his thing with the character.  Ledger might as well of kicked Christian Bale in the nuts before each scene as he provided no room for anyone but himself in what ever scene he was in.  The original Batman movie had a coherent story that didn’t throw a series of events together bridged by one morality play after another.  Jesus, I don’t read a Batman comic or see a Batman movie to contemplate Kafka or Guantanemo Bay.  I go to see him frighten the shit out of bullies, criminals and psychopaths.  So after The Dark Knight Returns I guess The Watchmen can just stay on home.

I created a Moon Masters chat room that is a free for all. You can find it over at www.mickaloha.com/chat. You can input your name without a password. If it becomes a smashing success or more likely infiltrated by bots, I will make people sign up for it. In the interim, feel free to join in when we record live around 7:30 PM PDT. We will take questions from the room.

Did you know I have a fast upload speed? I also saved money by stopping twice as opposed to once when flying home to KY.

Evil King Macrocranios sent in some late content and Dowell and I gave him advice. We also had content from Lord Kaosu. We also congratulated K-Ko on her photos. We talked for a while. And that is about it. Enjoy.

In this episode, we discussed our new podcast awards.  Please send suggestions for categories if you have any.  We’ve already decided to have the category Best Podcast By Two Guys From Kentucky, One Who Lives In Palo Alto and One In Osaka.  The beginning of this episode was slow, but it picked up to crappy speed by the end.  Thanks to everyone who listened live.

Thanks to Diresu, Noobchan, Lord Kaosu, and Jordan for sending in content. Thanks for listening.

In this episode, Mick Aloha talked about his trip to the hospital and how you can all donate so he can get better. We had stumps from Jake and content from Bob, “Jake Slingblade”, Lord Kaosu, Dave, and SlingBlade.  We had this picture from Jordan:

And Dave sent in these videos: one about North Korea and one called Toxic: Garbage Island.

Also, Eeeper sent in the longest e-mail we’ve ever seen.  Instead of reading the whole thing, the entire text is posted below.  Thanks for listening.

OK so I’m finished with episode 116 and I’m going to correct Micky on some points. First of all, Ireland did not break away from Britain in the 1800’s but in fact it was 1914 and the passing of the Home Rule Act of 1914 which gave limited autonomy to both Ulster, which made up Northern Ireland, and Leinster (Lens-ter), Connacht (pronounced Con-knock-et) and Munster, which made up Southern Ireland, and kept matters of defense and so on to Britain. However two unforeseen events stalled the Act coming into being: World War I and the Irish War Of Independence. With the war on, Britain was in no mood to start carving up the Empire so to speak and the war of Independence made Britain extremely angry at these ungrateful Irish complaining about freedom when British lads were dying for them in the trenches of Europe. It didn’t seem to click with British politicians that we here in Ireland didn’t ask them to fight for us. If they had we might have helped them. As it was the National Volunteers(home guard) split into two: one group called themselves  The National Volunteers and fought in the Great War and the other called themselves the Irish Volunteers and wanted no part of Britain’s war.

But I’m getting off topic. The Irish Republican Army was borne out of the ashes of the War of Independence as the Irish Volunteers which had been infiltrated by elements of the Irish Republican Brotherhood(think the IRA only smaller scale) who wanted to use the equivalent of the National Guard to wage war on the British occupational forces stationed in Ireland around the turn of the last century. The Easter Rising failed miserably but started the seeds of the  War of Independence. To help I’ve copied the Wiki article section on the IRA that deals with the various incarnations of the IRA:

• The original IRA (in later years, known as the “Old” IRA), recognised by the First Dáil as the legitimate army of the Irish Republic in April 1921. Split into pro-Treaty forces (the National Army, also known as the Government forces or the regulars) and anti-Treaty forces (the Republicans, irregulars or Executive forces) after the Treaty.
• The Irish Republican Army (1922-1969) - the anti-treaty IRA which fought and lost the civil war and which thereafter refused to recognise either the Irish Free State or Northern Ireland, deeming them both to be creations of British imperialism. It existed in one form or another for over 40 years before splitting in 1969.
• The Official IRA (OIRA), the remainder of the IRA after the 1969 split with the Provisionals; led by Cathal Goulding and primarily Marxist in its political orientation. It is now inactive in the military sense, while its political wing, Official Sinn Fein, became the Workers Party of Ireland.
• The Provisional IRA (PIRA), which broke from the OIRA in 1969 over the latter’s failing to protect nationalist communities in Northern Ireland. Though strongly opposed to the OIRA’s Marxism, it also has a left-wing orientation and increasing political activity. Since the decline of the OIRA, the term ‘IRA’ is now used exclusively to denote this particular group.
• The Continuity IRA (CIRA), broke from the PIRA in 1986 because the latter ended its policy on abstentionism (thus recognising the authority of the Republic of Ireland).
• The ‘Real’ IRA (RIRA), a 1997 breakaway from the PIRA consisting of members opposed to the