Things get weird in this episode. It’s like the constant double-recording has finally got to us. It gets very strange. But we’re professional, so we won’t let it mess up the podcast. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Why are gamers so useless? –Craig
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This episode was cracking me up. And I was listening while driving so I was glad it was a short trip and then I could sit in the drive way and crack up without worrying about being distracted.
For one thing, I find the whole idea that an anarchist is attracted to people in uniform kind of amusing. I mean I kind understand why, given the narrative explanation, that’s just not the narrative I associate with uniforms. I think the narrative that I usually find attractive probably has to do more with people who don’t fit in or who are anti-authoritarian in some way.
Female college professor uniform – When I was interviewing for jobs, I was told a specific kind of thing to wear, and what not to wear. Not sure if this is the Professor uniform really, but it used to be the hoping-to-get-her-foot-in-the door uniform. And that was a nice dress with small print and without a low neckline. Specifically told not to wear pants (too aggressive), a suit or single color dress (too business), and not too big a print (too ditzy), and of course no low neck-line or short skirt (too sexy). I think guys were told not to wear suits, but to wear a sports jacket, shirt and tie, and jeans or khakis.
Oh and back to the start of the show – I had never heard of any of those creatures except for bigfoot. Is the Native American one related to the Windigo? My uncle gave me a short story about the Windigo to read when I was 11 and it scared the bejesus out of me.
As I understand it, the windigo belongs to Algonquin tradition, where the underwater panther is a separate entity. The spelling “windigo” is supposed to represent the Ojibwe version of the creature in particular, and the Ojibwe name for the underwater panther is mishibijiw, I think.
I should clarify, many versions of the underwater panther don’t bear much resemblance at all to Mothman or to the Van Meter Visitor, or, for that matter, to each other. I just like finding ways to stitch varied stories together, especially where the stories do actually present compelling similarities.
Oh I forgot the M*A*S*H conversation. I had an enormous crush on Hawkeye Pierce when I was a teenager. Which might actually contradict the whole “person-in-uniform” thing except he was wearing a bathrobe at least half the time.
I prefer BJ to Trapper. There’s something about the way Trapper related to women that rubbed me the wrong way.
Hawkeye was 100% everything I wanted to be.
Younger me liked Trapper better, because he was first, and I didn’t like the change. Which I now realize is weird because I always preferred Colonel Potter.
As a grown up, I now see BJ as one of the most interesting and nuanced characters in the show.
Oh, and I was a kid, so I WANTED to be Hawkeye, but I knew that I was definitely Radar.
Tony hit the nail on the head – when I sent that in my group were being very flakey with players repeatedly cancelling only an hour or two before the session. As both the GM and somebody for whom gaming is my main hobby it’s extremely frustrating that the other members of the group feel like it’s optional to show up or even tell me that they’re not going to. The most frustrating bit is that I game with colleagues so I’m literally sat at the other end of the office from them, see them during the day and yet repeatedly didn’t let me know they couldn’t make it until the last minute.
I find that obsessive scheduling and emails forced them to let me know. Your own mental illness may vary. 🙂
(This is a comment from Beth, regarding a couple other comments on this episode. For some reason, it is not letting her post, so she emailed it to us.)
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I tired to post this to the episode “Sexual Tension” and got rejected ~5x on both Chrome and IE
Beth Westlake
to me
3 days agoDetails
Jas – interesting you describe that as the college professor uniform, particularly in the interview stage. As a grad student, I attended several presentations from prospective faculty, and I wondered why they chose to wear that. It wasn’t offensive, it just seemed that it could be more professional. Were interviewing grad students too poor to buy a suit? Wait, I’m a grad student and I own a suit…a couple actually. Hmm. I never realized that someone was telling the interviewees to wear that.
Go Nats!
I agree, Hawkeye was pretty great, and yes, he was wearing a bathrobe about 1/3 of the time. He was wearing scrubs a lot, and seemed to have casual Friday (Hawaiian shirt with combat boots) quite often. When I see Alan Alda in things now, I think his character always should have served in the Army; particularly his role as Republican Presidential Candidate Arnold Vinick in The West Wing.
I agree with Jas, I like BJ better than Trapper because of how they relate to women. BJ seemed pretty devoted to his wife, despite the occasional look at various women who came into the episodes. It felt real in a way I hope most soldiers away at war actually behave.
For a long time I liked Radar quite a bit and it still makes me tear up that on his way home and got to meet BJ’s wife and kid and the kid thought Radar was her daddy (along with how sad that made Honeycut). More than anywhere else, I’ve found Iowans are proud to claim Radar as one of their own. Apart from Klinger being from Toledo, Winchester being from Boston, and Henry being from Bloomington, IL, can you even name where any other character is from? Maybe Toledo and Bloomington are pretty excited about their MASH characters, but no Illinoisan I knew while I lived there was quite so jazzed about Henry as Iowans are about Radar. Frank was kind of a weasel and it was hard to see what Major Houlihan saw in him. I found Winchester a much more interesting character and seemingly the intellectual equal of Honeycut and Hawkeye, making their conflicts more “fair” than Frank where it felt like picking on their little brother.