Try It, You'll Like It

Joe asked for some chicks who are dicks and we gave him Veronica Mars (from her eponymous movie) and Isabel Spellman (from The Spellman Files)

Joseph delivers a devilish quiz where he gives Randy and Amy the names of two characters and asks them to guess the actor who played both. It's completely unfair!

Episode 31 and we have a guest host! Amy's off galivanting in Europe so we brought in previous guest host Becca Gross. She chose the theme of Hollywood Scandals, giving us a chance to revel in the dirt of Hollywood past. Joe's chosen "The Cat's Meow" as the movie, which is a "semi-true story" about a murder that occurred at a star-studded gathering aboard William Randolph Hearst's yacht in 1924. Randy's picked Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedman. It's a dishy account of one man's sexual adventures, and the others he helped arrange, in the Hollywood of the 40s, 50s, and 60s.

We're discussing the movie "The Blue Gardenia" and the book, "Later, at the Bar"

It's a wordy challenge this time, with movie titles all mixed up. (And with some new movie plots that Hollywood should seriously consider.)

Randy challenged Joe and Amy to find works with nonlinear narratives (think Pulp Fiction, Memento, etc.) Joe subjected us to JCVD and we didn't come close to hating it! Amy had us reading Michael Cunningham's The Hours and we didn't hate it either! Banner week at TIYLI HQ.

Finally, a new episode! Randy's on vacation, so we have the most excellent guest host in this week to chat with us about Shirley's Jackson's "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" and the 1995 movie of Persuasion.

This week we look at alternate histories; Amy chose The Arcanum for the novel and Randy chose Inglorious Basterds for the movie. Also discussed: 6 Feet Under, Bomb Girls, Manhattan, Mad Men, Gods of Gotham and Arthur & George.

It's Randy's turn to bedevil us as he breaks our brains with a quiz involving chapter titles.

It's Mystery Week! We plumb into the shadowy figures and devilish plots behind the 1998 movie Zero Effect and the 1997 novel Garnethill. We also discuss what we've been enjoying and look forward to next time when we'll be talking Alternate History.

For Amy's chosen theme of "The Summer that Everything Changed," Randy and Joe went dude-centric with their choices, entirely by accident. Randy chose Stephen King's novella "The Body," the basis of the movie "Stand by Me." Joe chose David Gordon Green's 2013 film "Prince Avalanche." Intro music by The Motels Exit music by Explosions in the Sky and David Wingo. Explosions in the Sky not only scored the movie, they were the ones who suggested the film to Gordon Green in the first place.

It was the best of quizzes, it was the worst of quizzes. Since it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single podcast in possession of pop culture junkies, must be in want of a good quiz, here's Joe quizzing Amy and Randy about first lines of novels.

This week, Libraries and Librarians! We talk ordering systems, the philosophy of trying to keep everything, how libraries can disappear and of course, how to look fabulous when becoming a librarian in 1990s New York. The movie was 1995's Party Girl and the book was Alberto Manguel's The Library At Night. Also discussed: The Witches Of East End, Obvious Child, The Astronaut Wives Club, From The Earth To The Moon, In The Shadow Of The Moon, Ex Libris, The To-Do List. For the next episode, Amy chose the theme; we'll be talking "The Summer That Changed Everything." We'll be watching 2013's Prince Avalanche (which is streaming on Netflix) and reading Stephen King's "The Body" (which is collected in Different Seasons). Show Notes: Amy refers to high heels for books so that they would be the same height on shelves; that was not Johnson but Samuel Pepys, whose library is still maintained at Magdalene College at Cambridge. I refer to Jorge Luis Borge's at one point and mention a story he wrote abou

Amy tests Randy and Joe on their knowledge of cosmetics. And "adult" literature.

It's an attempt to stay positive as we discuss contrarionism in trying to review and talk about things (especially on the Internet) and in that context we went back to things that we have disliked or found generally terrible in attempts to find something good to say about them. Amy had the book and chose Edith Wharton's 1911 novel Ethan Frome and I chose the 1999 movie The Boondock Saints. We talk snow imagery, horrid amounts of Willem Dafoe scenery chewing and why Ethan Frome in general is not the best choice to assign to high school students. Also discussed: Only Lovers Left Alive, So You Think You Can Dance, The Witches of East End and Under The Skin. Next episode, we talk libraries and librarians! We'll be watching Party Girl and reading Alberto Manguel's The Library At Night.

Weddings! We read the 1932 novel "Cheerful Weather For The Wedding" and watched Rbert Altman's A Wedding. Next week: stuff we have to struggle to find good things to say about it. Joseph chose the movie "Boondock Saints" and Amy chose the novel "Ethan Fromme."

This week we talked life after death! We watched "A Matter of Life and Death" and read "A Dirty Job." Also discussed was the season finale of The Americans, a soap opera called "The Edge of Night," "X-Men: Days of Future Past," "The Fall," "Orange is the New Black" and "Fargo." Intro music: "Every Day A Little Death," by Stephen Sondheim Outro music: "Death & Glory," by The Clash

While Joe takes a well deserved week off, Becca Gross is in for our "Fashion" episode. She picked the book EMMA, while Amy chose the adaptation of same in "Clueless." Intro Music: "Fashion" by David Bowie Exit Music: "Tenderness" by General Public

This week, we welcome our special guest Russ Hanser! He chose the theme of Healing for podcast this week and we had a great discussion after watching the 2009 Australian movie "My Year Without Sex" and we read Ian McEwan's's "Atonement" from 2001. Show Notes: The Jimmy Smits series we were trying to remember may have been Outlaw, but I can't figure out the connection in Amy's head between that and Kings besides both of them being a one-season series. Intro music: "Elegy For Dunkirk," by Dario Marianelli Outro music: "Down Under," by Men At Work

It's fun and games this week as we explore dystopian game show/reality shows from before the year 2000! We watched David Cronberg's 1983 classic Videodrome and we read Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses Don't They from 1935.