Hate Expectations

I looked under chairs I looked under tables I'm tryin to find the key To fifty million fables They call me the seeker I been searchin low and high -- The Seeker, Pete Townshend Back to young adult lit we go, to 1973's The Dark is Rising, book two of the Susan Cooper series of the same name. As both our birthrights and contractual obligations mandate, we also cover the 2007 David L. Cunningham film based on that book, curiously retitled The Seeker. In this episode, follow us as we fumble around in the dark looking for a cohesive plot, motivated actions, or a rationale for the changes made during the adaptation process. Most of our time is spent like a man pulling a giant ace hair pick through the desert: with limited success. Still, we hope our exploration of the material is at least as informative and entertaining as always (because we like to keep the bar low).    

Fulfilling our moral obligation as podcasters, Hate Expectations have finally entered the mini-episode game with a series we call Love Bites. In all such episodes we will discuss (hopefully) delightful little facts we have researched on the subject of...well, whatever particularly interests us. We hope it interests you, too!

Betty MacDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o. And on this farm she had some laughs, e-i-e-i-o. With a ha-ha here and a...well, you get the idea. Join Nate and Lizzy as they crack into the deliciously funny novel, The Egg and I (1945), and brood about the film adaptation (1947) made from it. In this episode there is yet another catty discussion about actress eyebrows, a special return appearance of the Correcto-matic 3000 machine, and nearly an hour of excessive nudity*. Hold on to your hats, it's time for some hillbilly hilarity! *As far as anyone can tell, anyway. It IS an audio podcast.

Could there be any other subject matter for our episode numbered HE007 than Ian Fleming's own James Bond? We'd give ourselves a license to squeal if that was anything more than a quantum of synchronicity. But truthfully, the topic came to us as a suggestion from our very first guest-hosts, Rich and Z Johnson! Specifically, the four of us spied with our little eyes only the third Bond book written by Fleming (1955) and its overly shaken and stirred movie adaptation (1979), based seemingly on the title alone. Surely, our words are not enough to convey the full spectre of craziness hovering over this flick. We recommend a view to (Richard) Kiel's Jaws in Moonraker as a companion to our latest installment. Note: the sound is a little less golden than normal, as a storm was beating the living daylights out of the beach house in which we recorded this episode. 

Get your towels ready and loosen up your Electronic Sub-Etha Signaling Devices, as you join Hate Expectations' Lizzy and Nate on a journey through the various forms of Douglas Adams's classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Their babblings on the radio series, the book, the tv series, and the movie must surely rank up there with the very finest Vogon poetry. One reviewer has even called it "splendid and worthwhile", though she has since been destroyed. Note: Our apologies to actor Peter Jones, the voice of the book in the radio and tv versions, who we occasionally refer to as Simon Jones, who played Arthur Dent in those serieses. Sometimes even we have a hard time keeping up with all the Joneses.

"This episode's pretty cussin' good!" - Myself   Keeping to the trend of loving the source material and the adaptation made from it, we, the ever more inaccurately named Hate Expectations folks, take you back to childhood favorite Roald Dahl's second tier classic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the Wes Anderson film of the same name. There is a bit more off-key singing and even a misguided attempt at music making, but surely this has to be the last time for such nonsense. Future episodes will stick to our strengths, just as soon as we figure out what those are. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the non-singing portions of this almost mini-episode. Oh, we've added a new feature: the Correcto-matic 3000 machine makes an appearance late in the show, so listen for that.

...Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave play ball?   In this episode Lizzy and Nate touch base with Moneyball, the 2003 book by Michael Lewis and the 2011 hit movie made from it. We take a swing at the non-fiction account of the Oakland A's baseball team, their manager, Billy Beane, and his use of sabermetrics to try to level the playing field with other, richer, teams. Be forewarned, we do some singing in this episode. The distress this will surely cause is hopefully mitigated by the honeyed timbres of our friends Rich and Z, but we doubt it.  

By the clicking of our tongues, some discussion this way comes.   No, we're not tackling the bard just yet, and we probably wouldn't start with the Scottish play if we were.  Rather, it's Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes and the 1983 film adaptation we're talking about.  It's a zippity-doo-dead kind of horror the way Disney used to make.  As always, we dissect the differences, ponder the potential, and spoil the snot out of the plot.  That was your only warning.   A few addenda: Max von Sydow is still alive at the time of publishing, and still old; Kuffs was released in 1992, nine years after this film; and we ultimately verified that the dwarf does pick up the corpse at the end of the movie.

A continuation of the Stardust episode, in which the Hate Expectation crew discusses more of the book and movie plots, eyebrow dye jobs, and the Snuffy Walden award. As before, there be SPOILERS aplenty, and hopefully a bit a good time as well.

In this introductory episode of Hate Expectations, Lizzy and Nate gaze in wonder at the magnifcence of Neil Gaiman's 1999 novel Stardust and its 2007 film adaptation.  The discussion is full of SPOILERS, as all aspects of both media's versions are covered.  So much is discussed, in fact, that it was split in twain for your downloading and listening convenience.