Over the past few months I’ve tried to motivate myself to actually doing something with this blog and show, but I haven’t really felt like it. I’ve grown bored, and come to dislike the direction this show was starting to take.

And as a writer and a creative individual that’s something that I can only tolerate for so long.

It became less about delivering content that makes you feel, makes you think. It became more about reporting on what was readily available, rambling into the microphone, and picking on Ben.

Now don’t get me wrong, giving him shit is one of my favorite past-times, however, that can’t be all the show is about as much as Kyle would lead us to believe.

That is why I come to you today to inform you of the death of Banter Over a Cigarette. There will be no more new content, no more new seasons.

I’m going to go ahead and upload the backlog of stuff I’d already recorded, unedited. Think of it as the BOaC unplugged finale.

Of course, the only thing in my backlog is podcaster interviews, and thankfully the editing required on any of that is little to none, so it’s not too big of a deal.

Aside from the backlogs that are posted there will be no more posts on this blog. That doesn’t mean that you should remove this from your podcatcher, or stop watching this with your RSS readers.

Just because I’m ending this show, does not mean that I’m retiring from podcasting.

Once I’ve got the backlog posted I’m going to sit down and think about what I can do differently. I’m going to come up with a new format. Decide where I want to take the new show, what I’ll talk about. Create something completely different. And once I’ve got all of that figured out, I’ll take a step away from the drawing board, and I’ll begin creating new things. And once I’ve got something put together and polished I’ll leave word here on where you can find the new show.

Stay tuned. As they say, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

I’ve been plagued by a series of computer issues on both my laptop and my server. Not only that but just this week my internet connection has become unreliable. In just the past 48 hours, my internet has been up for no more than a half our or so at a time every few hours. I’ve only been connected to the internet four maybe five ties since this started, I’m not sure when it will be fixed seeing as my shitty service provider has basically told me there is nothing they can do to fix it. At least I’m getting a free wireless router out of it.

They keep insisting that my router is the problem, I’ve personally proven that it is not, and the technician they send out to inspect the cable whenever anything goes wrong has also said that there isn’t anything wrong on our end, but they want to send us a replacement router anyway. Which is pretty sweet I think, I paid $60 for that router and they’re going to send me a new one for free.

On top of my own issues Kyle doesn’t have a working microphone. On top of that he’s had no time to record due to some personal issues that he may or may not discuss when the show starts. Once all the problems on my end have been solved I’ll start posing the bonus content that I’ve been promising and we’ll get season four started as soon as I have everything ready. I’ve got a lot planned that I hope will improve the show so it’s going to take some time.

Thank you for staying patient and staying subscribed.

Just wanted to let you all know that I have a whole massive pile of extra audio
content for the hiatus. I’ve got our season finale, and then I have interviews with several podcasters that I’ll post during the coming months. And after I’ve gotten all of those edited Me and some of my friends, cohosts, and a few podcasters might sit down and record some round table discussions or debates of some kind. I’m looking forward to doing that.

That’s all I had to say, keep your eyes posted on this blog and the feed in the coming months while we get ready for season four.

The audio might not be lined up with the video but I blame that on the internet.

Now:

Kyle had his internet cut off don’t know when he’ll be back online. Ben doesn’t take anything seriously so I can’t count on him. And I feel like the show isn’t interesting enough with just myself behind the mic. So, I guess I’ll see you next hear. (Hopefully.)

[Ben will have the show notes up soon]

I may or may not make this whole matter next weeks feature to shed some more light on it if people are still talking about it next week when I record. I agree, it is an important matter, but I won’t give said matter any more coverage if the short attention span of the average internet user and podcast listener has found something else to be concerned about.

I could also use this space to talk about NaNoWriMo, but after the first week I’m sure those of you who aren’t participating are tired of hearing about it. So if you care to see how I’m faring I encourage you to visit my writer blog

I hope you enjoy this weeks show, we’ll see you next week.

0:00 Intro
2:30 Front End Banter
9:00 NaNoWriMo and Brains
15:00 Break: Free Will
17:20 The PodCaster Triple Threat
18:15 One of the Funniest Youtube Videos Ever (according to Ben)
20:10 NVidia chip sets wont support USB 3.0 until 2011
27:35 The Movie Industry is still butt hurt about Piracy
39:40 A Study shows that chronically ill patients are happier if they give up hope
47:00 BorderLands and Other Games
52:10 Fail Of The Week: Blockbuster employee stabs self to skip work
59:00 Maine Says Yes to Pot No to Gay Marriage
1:08:10 Break: London Moon Thing (You’ll have to listen to the promo for this one, I forgot where it came from or what it is)
1:09:15 WTF of the Week: ACTA
1:32:05 Outro
1:36:54 End of Show

Take this promo send it to everyone you know, send it to your favorite podcast. Alternatively if you have your own podcast you’re more than welcome to put this on your show, I’ll play your promo in exchange.

0:00 Intro
5:15 Front End Banter
11:40 Why we havent been doing our jobs
18:25 We are in a parallel universe
23:30 iTtunes LP
32:05 Break 7th Son
35:10 Piracy and the MPAA
39:15 Games Mass Effect 2 Release date
44:50 Fail of the Week cop pulls gun on haunted house worker
48:20 NaNoWriMo with guest speaker Scott Roche
1:15:35 Break V&A Shipping
1:16:45 WTF of the week Starcraft Stabbing
1:30:00 Outro
1:34:55 End of Show

No show this week.

EDIT: Turns out it was just a fried video card. That is a relief, but I wish I’d figured this out before I spent a whole day backing up my files. And when I say, “whole day” I literally mean that. I had about 400GB and some change that I needed to back up.

Any-who, with the problem solved there will be a show posted next week and you’re more than likely to hear me bitch all about it.

0:00 Intro
6:20 Front End Banter
13:45 Break: Erotica a la carte promo
14:55 Apple Tablet
20:25 NSF Porn Problem
25:45 Technology is Scary, It knows who you are.
29:40 2012 Doomsday prophecy, Reality or Imagination
34:20 Film Maker Openly Endorses Piracy
43:40 Gaming Segment
1:19:40 Fail Of The Week: Lily Allen Piracy Fail
1:25:15 Zombies
1:29:00 Zombie Land
1:38:50 Rising
2:00:00 Break: Inner Demons Promo
2:01:15 WTF Of The Week Self-made moyle sees jail time
2:06:10 Outro
2:11:02 End Of Show

[Ben thinks it’s fun to make me look bad. So instead of doing the show notes today he went off to Terre Haute to buy porn. Show notes should be up sometime Tuesday.]

So yes, I made a promise that I was unable to deliver on, but I’m just thankful that I’ve got two great hosts who can pull their own weight for this show so that I get each episode out on time. And as long as the podcast is out on time I’m not concerned about anything else. Hopefully I’ll get ahead of my workload, or I can shirk the archives responsibility off onto one of my cohorts and the archives will be restored sooner rather than later. But I wouldn’t expect to see them back up until mid to late November.

Some of you may not think that being unable to make good on the promise of restoring past episodes isn’t that big of a deal, but it is to me. Way back at the beginning of this year I made promises and I made announcements that this show would be back on March ninth. And a combination of procrastination, an actual job, getting stoned, and technical difficulties all combined into a huge snowball effect that made me unable to release the first episodes of the podcast until just now. So having to come back to you again and say, “Hey, remember how I said this was going to happen? Turns out I lied.” disappoints me. I like to keep true to what I say, and if I say I’m going to do something I usually end up doing it. Not that you’d be able to tell that the fact that the first episode of this podcast didn’t hit your feeds until just last month, and that you don’t have the archives up for those of you who actually want to listen to past episodes.

I feel that I’ve rambled on for long enough, there’s your update. If you’re curious about what I’m up to between recording and uploading the shows, check out my writer blog or the contact page for various ways to keep tab on what I’m doing via facebook and twitter.

So unless I have anything else important to announce I’ll see you when the episode posts on Monday. And until then this is Eldon KR signing off saying, “I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.”

Also, November is right around the corner. That means it’s almost time for NaNoWriMo. I’ll be participating in it again this year. You can check out my Writer Blog for any updates regarding NaNo that I make. Enjoy the show and let me know what you think about this weeks episode by leaving some feedback. If you still don’t know how to leave feedback for the show be sure to listen to the outro at the end of the show for that information. I’ll see you next week.

Timeline:

0:00 Intro
2:25 Slap Chop Remix
5:45 Front End Banter
9:00 Gamer DNA
15:05 Break: The GearHeart
16:35 Hugh Laurie Suffers Because of House Role
19:55 Lilly Allen is a hypocrite
23:20 Best Buy Setup Scam
29:15 Walmart Food Bank Problem
32:40 Scribblenauts
42:30 Ben Gets A Facebook Profile
59:00 Break: Weatherchild
59:55 WTF Of The Week: Self Image Issues
1:07:25 Outtro
1:12:20 End Of Show

Timeline:
0:00 Intro
3:15 Front End Banter
4:00 Host recap
18:05 Promo: Down From Ten
20:45 Tetris makes you learn good.
27:15 Monopoly City Streets
34:30 Lets bitch about Blizzard: StarCraft2 No LAN, Battle.net, 2010 delay.
52:15 Heavy Rain
55:20 Splinter Cell Convictions
1:05:05 The FPS Flak Vest
1:07:30 Handheld Gaming Over the Years
1:37:20 Hatgate
1:43:25 Promo FETIDUS
1:48:10 wtf of the week: internet/gaming rehab center opens in seattle.
2:12:50 Outtro
2:17:35 End Of Show

as you probably already know by now my file hosts for the last two seasons took a dive which is what sparked the months of technical difficulties to begin with. And as a result all the episodes from the last two seasons died.

To make a long story short I’ll upload all the past episodes to the new file host and then create another page on the side bar for the archives. This is a project I’ll begin starting next week after the season opener hits the feed and hopefully it will only take a week.

That’s all for now, folks.

I’ve tried everything I can and it’s just not enough and every person I know, and every person I’ve asked online doesn’t seem to know how to help me so I’m giving up. This has been fun. Thanks for listening.

Goodbye.

That’s all for now. And as always I’m Eldon K.R. saying, “I don’t have Cancer, so I’m not stopping.”

For this season I tried to find a new, more reliable, file hosting service. I searched, and looked and googled like there was no tomorrow. And to no avail I was unable to find a suitable host. All of the places I found were either phony sites trying to trick you into submitting your files so that they may dig through them to see if you submitted anything of value.

Or it was basically a file “dead drop” of sorts as an alternative to Rapidshare or megaupload to aid in piracy. Not that I have anything bad to say about piracy. I do it all the time.

Needless to say I was unable to find a new place to host the files for the show and so I had to stick with fileden for my hosting needs.

And fileden stepped up to the plate . . .

And they fucking failed miserably.

Anything that I’ve recorded for the show and uploaded to fileden refuses to play online, therefor it is not going into the RSS feed for the show and not registering in the iTunes podcast directory.

My solution is this:

As I’ve stated earlier my father is building me a server for my birthday. Once it is shipped and I have everything configured to my liking I’ll be able to host all the files for BOaC on my own without any aid from a third party, thus guaranteeing to you, the listeners, that the episodes will always be on-time and in proper working condition for whatever manner you choose to listen to them in.

With that said I’m going to go enjoy the rest of my birthday.

And as always, I’m Eldon K.R. saying that I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.

If I can’t find a solution to my problem by the end of tomorrow the release date of BOaC is going to be pushed back by a month until I can figure it out.

I’ve found a place called File Factory. I’m testing it out right now. Lets hope it works.

After searching the net for something to my liking. I’ve found nothing. So here is my solution. I’m going to be using Fileden to host my files for season three for now.

Thats all for now.

There is a small problem with the feed on iTunes. Only the last two episodes are available. I chalk that up to very shitty service from the free file hosting servers I was using. I’ve recently discovered Mediafire. And as long as the file is not over 100Mb they have no problem. Infinite file space and bandwidth. It seems to be working well so far and I think you should check it out for your own file hosting needs. It is what I’ll be using in the future for any file hosting need I have. Well at least until I have the cash to register a domain and have my own place to upload files there.

So after I re upload all the fun things from season one and two and relink them on the blog so they show up in the feed I can then finally add all the bonus content that was supposed to hit the feed days ago (some of it as far back as a few weeks ago).

I’ve been doing a lot of work in the last few days. I have the intro and outro all recorded for the show and the songs from both of those will hit the feed as bonus content later in the week. I have the guys assembling tomorrow to record the season three promo. And we should be sitting down to record the show on Thursday.

I’m going to have to give props to a personal friend of mine Dolla J. Who just happens to be the new sound technician for Banter Over a Cigarette and any other audio endeavors I may take on. I got everything put together for the season three intro and he went through and spent hours cleaning up every buzz, hum, click, and weird noise so that it sounds super sweet. I’m really proud of this seasons intro. All the preproduction such as the recording and putting together and timing of all the audio was me. And all of the cleaning up and polishing and adjustment of audio levels was all him. He is a fucking surgeon behind the mixer board and I’m glad to have his expert experience. He’s going to be the chief editor and sound technician for any novels I record in the future.

I’m going to be spending the rest of my time online tonight uploading all the files to that file server and then spend tomorrow recording a promo and then going through the blog and relinking all of the stuff that needs to be relinked so that it goes into the feed. I can’t upload the new shit and then go and relink the old stuff because then the new stuff will be buried by the old stuff and the feed will be out of order, so I have to go through and relink all of the old stuff in the exact order that it was posted so it all shows up in the feed in order. Or at least I hope. I’ve got a lot of work that needs to be done before the show can launch and I’m determined to get it all done on time.

That’s just about it for now.

It wouldn’t seem to occur to him that I could really use my friends in this time that I’m going though. It never occurred to him that I have nothing going on for me outside of the show and classes right now, and when I come home I have nothing to do and I’m stuck in the house with a woman who’s leaving me and spends a majority of her time in whatever room I’m not in. And with that said, maybe I’d enjoy the company of my friends a little more. And maybe he could come over to watch a movie or play magic or something, without having any actual reason for coming over than to hang out.

I apologize for airing this on the show blog but what can you do? There’s going to be no show notes for our last episode. And this will be the last episode until around February or March. I will put out a bonus episode every now and again just so you know that I haven’t completely vanished.

When I get my new computer up and running whenever my dad sends it to me I’ll record a little something to put up here.

That’s all for now.

Download!

The last episode was successfully recorded and I’m putting it all together now. It won’t have any promos but I’m putting the intro and outro into it now.

I’ll have Ben go over it and do the show notes hopefully tomorrow and it will get posted. It will be the last episode, but I plan on releasing a little extra audio content when I get my new computer set up.

Also, I said that I would have Checking in finished for NaNoWriMo but as I said, a lot of fucked up stuff has been going on with me that took precedence over finisihing the novel and I’m working on it here and there when I have time. With the hiatus I’ll sure have a lot more time to finish working on it. Let’s cross our fingers and hope I can finish it before I bring BOaC back for its third season.

We will be doing one more official episode of Banter Over a Cigarette before season two comes to an end. After which every now and again special episodes will be dropped into the feed. Bonus content of my writing projects, stuff to do with music, and throw backs to season one where I’d just pick a single topic and discuss it at length, and this is something that will be done by hopefully all of the cast members and we will start talk of season three after the beginning of the new year and hopefully be back on the air before March of 2009.

The last episode of Season Two will be recorded sometime next week, and it will be posted the following Monday.

That is all

But speaking of the elections I’ll probably make a mention of it on my blog, Drawing a Blank.

It seems that every time I leave Kyle’s house I return home with a new addiction. The first time it was Rising, then it was Mass Effect, then it was Magic: The Gathering. I thought it was all done there. But no! Then he came over to my house and introduced me to Jager Bombs. If that wasn’t enough the next time I went over to his place he got me hooked on WoW. Then, on Saturday, after all of the Halloween festivities both himself and his wife got me hooked on Doctor Who. So for the whole week I’ve been watching it online. Lets hope that I can leave his home without anymore addictions the next time I go over there.

This episode did not go exactly the way I’d wanted it to. I had a small problem with a lot of my segues. I was planning on heaping everything to do with zombies one right after the other, and then after talking about WoW move on to the other MMO’s and then lead into the single player games. But I guess that it is safe to say that when the dead do start to rise, Ben is thoroughly fucked. And speaking of Ben, if you’re wondering what made him cry out in pain after talking about Little Big Planet, it was me pistol whipping him with my Nerf gun for something that had to be edited out of the audio.

I’m sorry that I’ve been posting late, or not at all, with increasing frequency. I apologize and it is not fair to the listeners. And you’ve all shown me that. In the last 8 days this blog has had no hits what so ever. We lost five listeners from our original thirteen. We gained some back, but lost a few more. Your message has come across and we’re going to try even harder to crack down on our work we do for the show. And it needs to be done seeing as this is the stretch run for the show seeing as around the end of this year season two will come to an end and the show will be on hiatus. We’ll be coming back by February or March so you don’t have to worry. We will only be gone long enough to take a break, heave a collective sigh into the atmosphere, and then get back to work in making the show better. New intros, new music (but probably still from Libertine Leech), new promos. All of that fun stuff. I’m also going to improve Ben’s spelling and technique for show notes. And I’m also hoping to teach Kyle the ropes of audio editing.

Well that is all for now.

We’ll see you next week.

And as always this is Eldon K.R. saying: I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.

I’d like to thank all of our listeners, as well as Libertine Leech for providing the intro music. Special thanks to Spaztastic Sara for the iTunes cover art. And if you like the show you can always leave a comment on the blogs, an iTunes review, sending me an email. And of course I always enjoy getting voice mail from listeners, and that voice mail line is (206)-339-5825.

EDIT: Ben fucked up on the show notes this week so there are none, if something really interests you, use Google. I’ll thoroughly beat Ben, and make sure he learns his lesson.

Download!

You can visit the site directly here.

So what I did was add another co-host. That decision was a long time coming, although I wasn’t necessarily sure who I should add. I had two or three options. This was the one that won out.

The third co-host for BOaC is Kyle, my friend who made his first appearance on the show when he was part of the episode about the events that transpired at the weekend event for Rising. And when he was here it just seemed to work. So here he is as the third co-host. Ben was not able to be here for this one for his own reasons and I do believe it was for the best. Because with this being an introductory episode for Kyle, and then having the ramblings of Ben, the show kept going WAY over every time we tried to record it.

And speaking of that I think this episode was cursed at first. We’d all three get together to record the show and it would just keep crashing after I hit stop, thus losing the ENTIRE thing. This happened twice. At first I was beginning to think that the computer didn’t like Kyle, but it worked fine the third time. Maybe the computer doesn’t like Ben, after all he wasn’t present when the third show was recorded and it worked just fine. No, I kid. I don’t know what caused the crash but we’ll figure it out. Right now I’m just going to write it off as a fluke.

As always
I’m Eldon K.R. saying:
I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.

See you next week.

Time line

0:00 Intro
1:30 Start of Show
2:45 Chronic Masturbation and hard alchohol
3:55 Kyle and Star Trek
5:00 World Of WarCraft
8:50 BMW Makes a Car out of Cloth
9:45 Magic The Gathering
15:55 More Drinking
17:15 Brains = Sex
18:00 WoW 3.0.2 patch notes
23:20 SPORE Expansion
25:45 WTF of the week: The kids across the street
28:30 End Of Show
28:31 Young Junius
29:35 1-18 Migration
32:15 Outro

Download!

For anyone that cares about my personal life, or at least as much of my personal life that I feel comfortable putting on the internet, I’ve created a new blog for posts that are unrelated to the show. It maybe unrelated to the show, snippets from my personal life, or things that don’t make it from my brain to the show, or something I don’t wish to discuss on the show for the sake of my cohosts.

With that said, moving on.

I halfway admit that I’ve been neglecting the show. I had a valid explanation for why I didn’t put a show up when episode then was supposed to air, it’s explained in the post preceding this. As for the second week in a row with a lapse in posting, Everything was recorded and all ready to roll out. I had Ben compile the show notes. And I was going over to Kyle’s house that night, so I brought the portable hard drive with me and I was going to upload the episode and finish off the behind the scenes post production there. But his computer did not want to cooperate with my portable hard drive. That hindered things a bit. There were also many forces in play that prevented me from doing so. One of them will be discussed in the show for next time, and you’ll know it when you hear it. Another is that I was lazy, and everyone on the show was busy and a show didn’t get recorded. Instead of posting one week and going MIA another week I chose to wait until now to post episode ten. Now you are caught up.

More news.

Ben is getting the hang of creating show notes. And so that I’m not the only one doing all the work for the show I’m trying to get Kyle into editing the show. That way Kyle is editing all the audio for each show, and Ben is screening each episode while he transcribes the show notes. And I’m left with the other behind the scenes post production. Such as uploading the show to the server, creating the blog posts, doing all the HTML work, and dealing with those pesky ID3 tags, and all the stuff that gets the show from our brains through our mouths, over the internet and through your ears and into your brains.

That is what the rest of this season will be made up of. Me teaching my two cohosts proper production. And I say rest of the season because I can only see another 10 – 15 episodes left in Season Two. Ten to fifteen episodes or until the end of the year, after that we will all take a brief hiatus and come back with a season three with even better production aspects than both seasons put together.

That is all the news I have for you today. I’ll see you tomorrow.

And as always I’m Eldon K.R. saying that I don’t have cancer, So I’m not stopping.

But, I have this entire week off of classes so I’m going to sit down and record some bonus shows in advance for when someone on the BOaC team drops the ball or a program crashes, that way you don’t have to miss a second of our great content.

That’s all for now, and as always, I’m Eldon K.R. saying, “I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.”

See you next week.

Time line
00:00 Intro
01:30 Rolling with Saget performed by Jamie Kennedy
04:30 Start of Show
08:25 iTunes BSOD
11:15 Ben’s computer says fuck you
13:00 Hurricanes
14:20 The Fucked Up Shit in the News
14:55 Choke Trailer
16:50 Grand Theft Auto Saves Lives
18:25 Jack Thompson Gets Disbarred
20:15 Metamor City Podcast and the talented work of Chris Lester
21:15 Prince of Persia
22:50 Eagle Eye and other movies
25:55 Nintendo DS
34:25 Ben’s Big Penis suit
35:10 Eldon needs a smoking jacket
36:25 Ben basks in the glory of knowing something that Eldon doesn’t
36:40 WTF of the week
38:45 Video games improve your brain
40:00 Child’s play Charity
44:55 Things are not the way they used to be
48:10 Disney Stars and Porn
50:00 Kids nowadays are fucked up and stupid
52:05 Anime and other things from japan
54:30 Magic The Gathering
56:20 Book,Movie and Video Game Updates
56:55 Hobbit Porn
59:15 End Of Show
Promos
60:50 Star Wars Code Name Star Keeper
63:10 Antithesus Book 1 Predestination and Other Games of Chance
63:35 Outro
65:12 Show Over

And remember that if you want to leave feedback on the blog, or give an iTunes review. I’d like it a whole bunch. You can send an email to eldonkr@gmail.com, or you can call the voicemail line which is (206) 339-5825.

A big thanks to Libertine Leech for providing the outro music. Thanks to Spaztastic Sara for the iTunes cover art. And the biggest thanks to all of you for listening.

See you next week.

After I got back from the event I found that I had basically no one to talk about it with. So I sat down with Ben and Kyle and we all talked about what Kyle and I did at the weekend event. For all of you weekly listeners, if this isn’t your thing I’m sorry. This is my thing and I will talk about it from time to time. For all of you that are coming over here from the Rising boards. Feel free to keep listening, I’d appreciate it if you subscribed through email or iTunes just so I can keep track of how many listeners I have accurately. This weeks promos are for the Arise Biology Charity, and Buffy Between The Lines. Intro and outro music for season two kindly provided by Libertine Leech. Cover art created by Spaztastic Sara. If you enjoyed this weeks episode please show some love with blog comments, an iTunes review, or even leave a voicemail at (206) 339-5825. Or if all else fails you can always send an email to eldonkr@gmail.com. Thank you for listening, I’ll see you next week. And as always, I’m Eldon K.R. saying, I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.

Download!

I apologize to all of my faithful listeners, the ten of you that are out there, and I issue an apology to all of the folks on the rising boards that have been waiting for this episode after all the talking I did about it last week. It will be up as soon as I finish my papers.

That is all, I’ll see you next week.

Download!

Timeline
00:00 Intro
01:30 Show starts
02:00 Amusement parks and immune systems
07:55 Guitar Praise
14:20 I discuss summer movies that I forgot to review: Zohan, Hancock, Scorpion King 2, Gotham Knight
27:00 My thoughts on Sarah Palin
30:00 Don LaFontaine Died on labor day, The Tribute Video, Don Lafontaine’s IMDB resume
31:30 Our show gets interrupted
32:00 Long life gene had been discovered
35:00 Scientists be crazy post 1, post 2
41:00 WTF of The Week: Chinese man swears to god and gets struck by lightning
43:00 F-missile of the week: The Onion.com
45:05 Johnny Depp rumored to play riddler in next batman film
Promos
47:03 The Astral Audio Experience
48:31 Murder by Design
49:43 Outro
51:49 Shows Over

Music kindly provided by Libertine Leech.

Thanks to Spaztastic Sara for the iTunes cover art.

Biggest thanks to all of you for listening.

If you like the show let me know. You can leave a comment on the blog, a review on iTunes couldn’t hurt either.

And if you’re not afraid of your voice sounding like shit over the phone you can always call the voice mail line and that’s (206) 339-5825. If I get enough voice mail I’ll do a listener appreciation show.

That’s all for now and as always I’m Eldon K.R. saying I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.

Time Line
00:00 Intro
01:30 Show starts
02:00 In regards to classes
04:18 The last time I’ll mention the bonus content
06:50 Cohost on my youtube account
09:00 Music that might make people think you’re gay with Ben
22:00 “Tropic Thunder Controversy” vs “The Ringer”
23:20 Ben has a meltdown
24:15 The war in Georgia
27:00 Steampunk Abney Park Website, Abney Park Myspace
33:00 F-Missiles of the week: Crazy ex girlfriends, Hillbilly Deluxe, and People not knowing what they’re doing
41:16 Michael Jackson
46:09 Thou shalt not have fun
50:43 Swift Enterprises researches alt. fuel sources and the Chevy Volt
54:43 Soulja Boy got hacked
Promos
58:20 The Rookie
59:41 Playing For Keeps
61:01 Outro
63:43 End

Music kindly provided by Libertine Leech.

Thanks to Spaztastic Sara for the iTunes cover art.

Biggest thanks to all of you for listening.

If you like the show let me know. You can leave a comment on the blog, a review on iTunes couldn’t hurt either. And if you’re not afraid of your voice sounding like shit over the phone you can always call the voice mail line and that’s (206) 339-5825.

If I get enough voice mail I’ll do a listener appreciation show.

That’s all for now and as always I’m Eldon K.R. saying I don’t have cancer, so I’m not stopping.

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I really hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I did in putting it together. And I know I’ve been asking for feedback a lot lately, but if you comment on anything this would be it. I would appreciate feedback on this more than anything else in the feed or on the blog. And for those of you reading the show notes of this on iTunes, remember, I do the occasional blog post on the site that won’t show up in your podcatcher. That’s like bonus content all by itself. So make sure that you check the blog every now and again to see my posts that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the show, but in my opinion, is still worth the read.

I’d really like some feedback on this so shoot me an email at eldonkr@gmail.com, leave a comment on the blog or you can always leave me a voicemail. I’ve only gotten one of those. (206)-339-5825.

Also I’ve decided for the sake of bandwidth to move all of my smaller files back onto fileden, I’ve decided to deal with the lack of organization for the sake of 5GB of bandwidth, and leave all the large files on Boxstr. So if you notice any anything woggy with the site in the next couple of days please report it to me with a comment on the post that is giving you problems.

As always I’m Eldon K.R. saying that I don’t have cancer so I’m not stopping.

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If you haven’t been privy to this information yet, let me start thusly:

I filed a FASFA application last month for financial aid for college. I filed it with a digital signature as well so that I wouldn’t have to wait for any paperwork to be processed. They sent me a signature form in the mail anyways. So I signed it and drove to the campus so that they could fax it straight to the main office. Then they hand me a verification form. I didn’t have to fill one of these out last semester but apparently its a “random check”. So I had to fill this out and supply them with a copy of my mothers tax forms. They didn’t want to take them because they were done in pencil. I had to convince them to take it because its all I had to give because my mother filed her taxes online. So then with all of my papers submitted I sit, I wait, I become greatly dissapointed when I go in and check my financial aid status every week.

My classes start tomorrow and the results of my financial aid are still pending. All the paperwork is backed up for me and about 50 other people at this campus and who knows how many more across the state. And this is all because they have their heads so far up their asses that they cant even reach the keyboard to hit the ‘approve’ button.

This problem occurred last semester but I only had to wait two weeks after the start of classes for approval.

If this is a recurring problem you think that they’d be more prepared the next time around. But today what made me realize that none of these people know what the fuck they are doing is the fact that I decided to pick up two more classes online and it took me an hour to add the classes and print out an updated schedule. This is because their Campus Connect service is the most user unfriendly service I’ve ever had to endure.

It makes me want to learn the appropriate code and then redesign the god damned thing for free just so it would be easier to use. They updated it from the version they were using last semester so that it would be more efficient. When in truth the exact opposite thing happenned. Nothing is organized in any sort of helpful fashion, add to that one of the most complicated and confusing class search features known to man. I think that the people who had trouble with the year 2000 election voting forms would find them a cake walk compared to this shit. If you want to add a class online then you need to supply the online form with the CRN number for the class. You find these through the online course catalogue. The thing that I was just bitching about. But no matter what you type into the search feilds you dont get any results whatsoever. Even if you put in the information for the class you want straight from the paper catalogue that doesnt have the damned CRN numbers. And so I walk into the office of the college library and ask the woman at the desk if she can help me and she has no god damned clue as to how the Campus Connect system even works. She’s put in that office and paid to assist the students on how to work the new system and SHE DOES NOT EVEN KNOW HOW TO WORK THE FUCKING THING. On top of that I’m guessing that the women in the main office on this campus are just paid to check their email and do their nails because they don’t offer any sort of help whatsoever. They tell you to go ask this person, or call this number, or fill out this form online. THEY OFFER NO HELP.

So after going trough four different course catalogs to find a CRN number and get the system to understand that I was registering for new classes and not dropping them, an hour goes by. And then I do what I did all last semester to print out a fresh schedule. When I do this I noticed they “revamped” this section too, making it much harder than it used to be I finally get my schedule printed and go home, still knowing not a god damned thing about the status of my financial aid. I wonder what I’m doing wasting my time here. All i want to do is go into a class room four days out of a week and learn shit. But it seems like they are trying their hardest to make this impossible. I’m sick of swimming through this sea of red-tape and bullshit.

And to make things worse I don’t why everyone is crossing wires with online versus paper forms.

And this doesn’t stop at this campus. Oh, its everywhere. If its more convenient for someone to have a paper form, they have it online instead and vice versa. And if a place is insistent on having online forms after these damn things are filled out online they demand to have a paper copy, probably because they don’t know how to view the damn things online but don’t want to go through the trouble of keeping track of paper.

Make it easier on yourself by doing your taxes online and any place that wants a copy of your taxes can’t be bothered to call the IRS themselves or try to acquire it online, they want you to provide them with paper. People want you to do things online because they’re too lazy to push paper but when it comes down to face-time, they’re fucking bereft of ideas when you’re sitting there and they dont have any paper forms to look at. I don’t get any of this bullshit.

The only positive thing about all of this is that it seems that the new technology fee they charge every semester is finally getting put to good use. Last year none of the computers in any class room or any section of the school worked. They either didn’t run office, or they didn’t run the internet browser, some wouldn’t do both. Some didn’t even start up. And my personal favorite, after the spring break they upgrade the computers. When we get back from the break the computers work worse, and when you shut down the computer for the day a big message is thrown up on the shutdown screen that says “You are running an invalid copy of Windows XP please rectify this situation.”, whoever they paid to fix the computers installed hacked copies of Windows on all the computers. Oh yeah, that’s not bad for the credibility of an institution of higher learning at all.

Well this year things have improved because they have upgraded to better computers, with legit copies of Windows as far as I can tell, the printers work, MS Office works, the internet runs just fine. And they’ve finally sprung for wi-fi. The only thing I see that could prove to be a problem is the fact that you have to log in to a computer with your Campus Connect ID. And when it does this it either calls you a liar and says your user does not exist, or it takes you to a full screen version of the Campus Connect system and the ‘esc’, ‘alt’, and ‘ctrl’ keys are disabled so that you can’t minimize it and type your paper. As it stands I’m not taking the chance and I fully intend on taking this laptop to all my classes.

With this rant for the most part complete I feel somewhat better. As always I’m Eldon K.R. saying I don’t have cancer so I’m not stopping.

This was inspired by a comment I left on the blog of an acquaintance of mine and I thought that I would extend that to here and possibly expand upon it.

I want to start by saying that I don’t pay much attention to the Olympics. Its not because I’m anti-communist. Its not because I’m one of those “Free Tibet” people. Its not because I hate sports. I’m not protesting anything. I don’t watch the Olympics that much simply because of the fact that it occurs between 2 and 5 a.m. and I find that the time could be better spent than in front of a television. Such as writing, blogging, working on my show, networking with podcasters, or sleeping. Occasionally I’ll turn it on and watch an event here or there or I’ll watch it with The Girlfriend Lady when she’s getting ready for work when she’s scheduled for first shift, which is usually every day.

There have been a few things I’ve heard “around the water cooler” so to speak. And I chose to take this time to comment on those subjects.

One of them being the gentleman who was competing in tae kwon do. He got angry and kicked a referee in the head. And another gentleman who was participating in wrestling, he got mad, threw his medal to the ground and walked away.

What could possibly compel you to behave in such a manner? It’s absolutely disgusting. It should be an honor just to participate in the Olympics. And because you get mad or something doesn’t go your way or you don’t get the medal you want you choose to represent your country in that manner? I find it revolting.

But this is just my opinion. I’d like to know what you think. Leave a comment on this post. Or if you send a voice mail to (206)-339-5825 telling me what you think about this then your thoughts will be featured in next weeks show.

That’s all for now, and as always, I’m Eldon K. Roth saying I don’t have cancer so I’m not stopping.

That’s all for me. This is Eldon K. R. saying that I don’t have cancer so I’m not stopping.

Time line
00:00 Intro
01:30 Show starts
02:00 Chasing The Ben
04:00 We discuss urban legends
05:15 Senior Pranks and how I essentially ran the “Mafia” of my military school
12:50 What I don’t like about AIM
14:50 The Olympics
17:35 Sequels
30:20 WTF of the week: Parents let kid drop out of school to focus on professional Guitar Hero
32:05 Beating your kids and getting into trouble in high school
47:25 Father nails kids xbox to a tree
50:00 My ring tone for the when the co host calls
53:00 F-Missiles of the week Boxstr.com and VGCats.com and financial aid
01:08 The scary things you can stumble across on The Discovery Channel
01:05 About the bonus content
01:06 Signing off
Promos
01:06 Number 1 With a Bullet
01:07 Black Shadow
01:08 Outro
01:10 End

To contact me send an email to eldonkr@gmail.com or send me a voicemail telling me what you think 206-339-5825. And of course comments on the blog and iTunes reviews are always welcome.

Music kindly provided by Libertine Leech
Big thanks to Spaztastic Sara for the cover art
Average sized thanks to K7.net for the voicemail line
Biggest thanks to you for listening

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Timeline
0:00 Intro
01:30 Sorry for the delays
03:05 Whats been going on in my life
04:35 Double Trouble: This is the year of the podcaster
06:40 Introducing my co-host
07:53 I think Nintendo has been slipping
18:00 WTF of the week: NYC gamer kills cab driver because of GTAIV
23:30 I fire off some F Missiles at Fox News, CNN, Jack Thompson, and that other dumb bitch who’s name I can’t remember
26:10 I should have been a weather man
29:00 Chasing The Bard
33:00 Morevi Remastered
34:54 The Metamor City Podcast
37:20 Murder at Avedon Hill
39:30 Underworld is underrated
42:30 Prince of Persia Sands of Time being made into a movie
50:30 More on the technical difficulties
52:30 Bonus Content – Novel Reading
Promos
54:37 Morevi Remastered
56:00 Chasing The Bard
57:20 Outro

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That and there is company over today and though I could probably stay in here all day long and computer away, I’ll just bet you that the second I pull out the mic and start recording somebody will come barging in.

I know I told you last time when I said the computer was being sent away that if this was late I’d give you some very cool extra stuff. Well I will have this episode posted by tomorrow. And I will have some extra content later in the week. No later than Wednesday or Thursday.

I figured out the problems with my iTunes and everything else. Apparently none of you have even been able to listen to the episodes I’ve been submitting. They just buffer, forever and ever. And that’s why they don’t go to iTunes. They don’t play. And finally it was P.G. Holyfield who points this out to me. So it turns out that Boxstr.com the website I use to store all my show content is hoarding all of my uploads like a greedy, greedy Jew hoards a pile of pennies. You click play and it buffers to no end, you try to download the episode and it tells you no. Hell it does the same thing to me, it won’t let me view the damn things. AND I CREATED IT!!

Long story short I am very fucking pissed off at this. So if anyone knows how to fix this, or knows of an even better free site. Feel free to let me know.

Here’s the show.

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This officially is the worst episode I’ve ever put together, recorded and produced. Ever. I’ve had plenty of technical difficulties and other kinds of trouble but I still feel that I could have done better with this episode. I really do. I’m not trying to cop out of this, I barely even want to accept my own apology and the excuses I gave. I promise you listeners that episode three will be better, I promise. I would like to than Spaztastic Sara for the designing of the iTunes cover art. Music kindly provided by Libertine Leech http://www.myspace.com/libertineleech.

See you next week.

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Podcasters likeTee Morris, Pip Ballantine, Chris Lester, Seth Harwood, and last but most certainly not least the Future Dark Overlord himself Scott Sigler have been people that I’ve talked about on a regular basis to anyone who would listen when the subject of podcasting came up.

When April rolled around I sent emails to everyone I knew about Scott Sigler’s hardcover release of Infected. And I would even tell my friends, professors, and people that I didn’t even know about it if I didn’t have their email address. Once when in a bookstore applying for a job I convinced my friend to buy “Infected”, (later he ended up not getting it due to a lack of funds, but at least I was able to talk him into it.) and in the process talked one of the employees up about podcasting. The ones that I listen to that she might like, where she could find them, the ones that had books in her store. And she was convinced that I was the kind of person who knew what I was talking about and that I should in fact work in that store. Lets just hope that I get a call back.

I’ve also converted a few people I know to the world of podcasting, including my good friend and former driver, as well as two of my professors from last semester. So today I’m here to give you an earful on how you can help me cause trouble. And not just any trouble. . .

Double Trouble.

That’s right, what all started off as “Billi’s Crazy Eights”, Tee Morris’ marketing plan for the release of his newest Billibub Baddings novel on 08.08.08 and a coordinated Amazon Rush on that date.

Amazon Rush for those of you not in the know, is a tactic utilized by podcasters to get all of their fans to go to Amazon.com and purchase the book on that date in a mad dash to rocket their book to the top of its respective sale charts on Amazon Books. A tactic like this has proven very successful for podcasters like Scot Sigler, Seth Harwood and Matthew Wayne Selznick and his book.. Because talented podcasters have a large fan base they always have hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are willing to do this. Because you give something away for free if someone loves it, they are going to want to own a tangible copy of that thing that has been given away for free and that’s why this marketing strategy always works.

But why is it being called Double Trouble if I already said it was going to be called Billi’s Crazy Eights you ask? Well because August 8 of 2008 just so happens to be Pip’s birthday, and rather than Tee and Pip constantly ribbing each other on twitter, (well ok, ribbing each other more than usual on twitter) they decided to join forces and release

Billibub Baddings and the Case of The Pitchers Pendant

and

Digital Magic

on the same day, at the same time, as part of the same Amazon Rush. To my knowledge a strategy of this magnitude has not been pulled in the podosphere so it is sure to be EPIC!

You would think that this would be enough of a task for these two amazing podcasters but no, they are further compounding on the fact that if you give something your fans love away for free, they will surely buy a tangible copy of it later, they are releasing both of their novels in .PDF form for free. Absolutely and 100% free of charge for anyone that clicks on the download link.

And since I am committed in helping Pip and Tee to cause Double Trouble, I am providing the download link for both novels here on my blog.

Don’t say Billi don’t take care of his own.

and don’t say that The Dark Goddess doesn’t provide for her court.

Join Tee, Pip, Puck, Billi, myself, and scores of others supportive of this cause at Amazon.com on 08.08.08.

Here is the official promo:

Timeline

00:00 Intro

01:30 Introduction

10:35 The Japanese love steroids

14:10 Nerds with way too much time on their hands

15:38 The most epic job ever

17:50 In regards to the circulating “Gas out” emails

20:32 100 goals in 100 weeks

22:57 Your daily does of what-the-fuckery man gets sentenced to 42 years for faking a heart attack in court

25:55 Global Warming causes kidney stones

33:53 Max Payne is PG-13

36:12 Thank you to

–Tee Morris for helping me with skype

–Spaztastic Sara for designing my cover art

–Podcast Junky for answering my iTunes questions

–Pip Ballantine

and

–Chris Lester for helping me with my mic troubles

39:37 BOaC Promos

40:00 That’s all folks

40:24 Promo for The Billibub Baddings Podcast

42:55 Promo for Murder at Avedon Hill

45:33 Outro

[audiohttp://www.fileden.com/files/2008/8/25/2066213/BOaC%20S2%20Ep1%20A%20second%20introduction.mp3]
Download!

BOaC Promo 1

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Use my voice promo

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I decided to change the title of this post in hopes that it will keep this post from showing up on a web search for anything not related to the show.

Today The Girlfriend Lady and I received a package from Kool, the company that makes menthol cigarettes, and we don’t even smoke Kool’s. Inside the package was some coupons and one of the strangest free items I’ve yet to receive from the tobacco industry. What I recieved was this:

Xeos Micro Speakers. Now I’ve received a few things from tobacco companies over the last couple of years. Lighters, ash trays, cigarette cases, coupons, the usual stuff. But I’ve never recieved speakers. They work surprisingly well for micro speakers. They provide really good sound when plugged into my iPod. The sound quality from my laptop is ok. The speakers that come standard with the Laptop are better simply because the speakers I was sent dont have a bass control so the sound quality is a bit off when being used as computer speakers. But if I didnt have any speakers at all and needed external speakers, I’d use these before buying a set. The package came with three AAA batteries and all the necessary cables. and its all conveniently packaged inside the speakers, a button expands the speakers creating what the box calls an “acoustic chamber”, and within these chambers on the left and right speaker are slide-out compartments, one for the batteries, and one to hold the cables.

These are some very good speakers, I’ll put good use to them. I can’t say that I dont appreciate the free swag. But is it really necessary for the tobacco industry to send consumers, even when they dont consume their particular product, free speakers? Or any of the stuff they send as gifts for that matter?

When I was younger I remember my father saving the bottom of his Marlboro packs and trading them in for duffel bags, jackets, inflatable rafts, and whatever else Marlboro offered in their catalogue. And even up to a few years ago it was still an option. Even Camel had an online casino that you could use to redeem the “C-Notes” Included with every pack. I collected these as I smoked Camel at the time. I had one hell of a collection, saving them in a coffee can until I turned 21 so that I could send them in for my own duffel bag or inflatable raft.

But I began to notice that Camel stopped packaging their smokes with “C-Notes”, and Marlboro ceased to produce their packs with the “Marlboro Miles” stamp that you could tear off and save. I sadly discoverd that it was, for better lack of a word, outlawed to provide this service so as to not encourage non-smokers, and possibly children from smoking just so they could redeem their proofs of purchase for their own inflatable raft.

Is it right for the lawmakers to do that? To say that you can’t have your own bartering system with your consumers. Was it another ploy to get people to stop smoking, similar to the constant increase to the “sin tax”?

Who knows, I’m not necessarily posting to debate that decision. I want to know what your opinion is. Was it wrong for this practice of trading in collected portions of cigarette packs and trading them in for novelty items and ash trays with your brands logo stamped on it? How do you feel about it now that in lieu of the bartering system, companies now give items away for free with coupons as promotional items?

I picked that movie poster for this review because ever since I saw the big cardboard display of that poster at the theatre I go to I’ve wanted to see this movie. Its very inspiring in a sense. I’m also a sucker for anything Batman related. Ever since I was a small child my two favorite super heroes were always Batman and Darkwing Duck. It used to be that I couldn’t wait for three o’clock to roll around or to get off the school bus and rush into the living room to watch “Batman: The Animated Series”. I got to have little thirty minute adventures every day after school. As a child I had almost every single Batman toy, and every Darkwing Duck toy that there was to have.

The Girlfriend Lady, myself, and a friend of ours left my home at six PM to go and get tickets and even then we had to wait in line. I had my fingers crossed becasue one of the three theatres showing the movie was already sold out. We then stuck around Metropolis in Plainfeild for another six hours just to make sure we didn’t miss a thing. We drove around for a while seeing as everything in the mall closed around nine. We got back to the theatre at ten-thirty and hung around outside for about a half hour, and then tried to get into the theatre at eleven. All three theatres showing “The Dark Knight” were full, with the exception of two seats next to me. The places was filling up early. And it was then that I knew this was going to be great, because all these people who filled the seats weren’t going to wait around all night for a midnight showing for something that was gong to flop. But then again there was hype for months before this movie even got a TV spot, and even the most diligent fan could only find a vague picture of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker online. But hype can be a good thing for a movie, even months before its released, that is if its a good movie.

When I was trying to get into the theatre when  I realize that I’m not the only one excited about this premiere, now granted that I didn’t dress up there were plenty of people who did, I just so happened to snap a picture of two such gentlemen. The fact that people are actually doing this shows that the creators are doing the right thing, people who believe in a franchise, or their favorite comic book character, so much that they’re willing to dress up for the premiere event. That takes balls, I wouldn’t do something like that simply because I’d be too concerned of making a fool out of myself. But that’s saying something about you. It’s saying, “I believe in this film and what it has to say.”, “I believe in these actors and the people who made this movie.”. Just like I’m saying, “I believe in Harvey Dent”

I want to start off by saying I really like the direction that those behind this film are taking with the entire Batman universe. I like how Gotham and its villains, and even its hero are a lot darker, and grittier than previously depicted. Its more like they’re going for realism, instead of being all cartoonish. Because I know I’m not the only one who thought that a Bat suit with nipples and a purple faced Two-Face was a train wreck of an idea. I like the fact that the end of “Batman Begins” set you up for the plot of “The Dark Knight” and was excited to see a remake of the original Batman movie, but was even more surprised to find that it wasn’t a remake, but a retelling. I really enjoyed the beginning of the movie of how it appeared that a bunch of The Jokers hired goons are doing a bank heist and they’re talking amongst themselves while doing their respective tasks for the heist, “I don’t know anything about this guy that hired us.” One guy says to the other, “I hear he wears clown makeup.” he says back. I was slightly surprised at how the heist ended. I won’t ruin it here for you because its just far too early for spoilers. In a few weeks maybe, but not after the midnight showing.

The movie was a little hard to follow at first, but it could have been that I wasn’t hearing all of the dialogue over laughter from a packed house. I think that after the heist the movie took off a little slow. I did enjoy this new portrayal of The Joker. It doesn’t follow the comic book at all as far as his origins are concerned. He didn’t fall into a vat of chemicals and become transformed. The permanent smile on his face is from scars of unknown origin (he tells two different stories of how he got them) and he just wears clown makeup and dyes his hair green for kicks. He doesn’t have a grudge against Batman just like every villain from the comic book did. He just wants to kill The Batman for fun, just because he can. Personally I think that makes for an even creepier and twisted character and he’s played quite well. The movie headed in a different direction than I thought it would. It wasn’t about Batman and The Joker so much as it was about the fall of Gotham City’s golden boy Harvey Dent. With some crafty trans-continental kidnapping from Batman, Harvey Dent is able to single handedly convict half of Gotham City’s criminals over night.

This however made him a target to the mobsters left on the street, and everyone else who was being paid off by the mafia, and with their pockets that much lighter, it made for some pretty pissed off crooked cops. And after Harvey Dent’s accident, anybody who’s seen the cartoon or read the comics knows what I mean, he becomes a completely different person. Angry at Batman and Gordon for saving him instead of Ms. Dawes. Angry at The Joker and all the crooked Gotham cops that had their hands in her death. He becomes conflicted, and as absolute power corrupts absolutely he takes the law he swore to uphold into his own hands for his revenge. And you can see his descent into madness as the duality of his character is well displayed on his face due to some very talented CGI work. And as he made his own luck as the district attorney of Gotham he leaves the fate of his victims to chance with his double sided coin of justice.

I found certain parts of the movie predictable, well not so much predictable as that I’m quite skilled at catching on early to plots of films. But it did take somewhat of a different direction than I’d expected. I assumed that the movie would end shortly after the death of Rachel Dawes and the disfigurement of Harvey Dent and leave what happened for the next installment. But it played all out, its almost like two movies at once, and the ending was very good. And it just goes to show that even the most upstanding citizen can be made just as sinister as The Joker after just a few horrible turns of events. Everyone believed in Harvey Dent, but in the end Harvey Dent didn’t believe in himself.

This movie was three hours long. Its perfect for all the die hard Batman fans, but if you’re not then it would be better if you waited for the DVD so that you could press pause every now and again for a bathroom break. Some parts of the movie were predictable, and there were some very good action sequences as well as quite a few funny parts of the film. Come on, it stars The Joker there’s bound to be plenty of laughs.

I give this movie an 8.5.5. I give it an 8 simply because its not a 10 unless you’re a hardcore Batman fan like I am. An explanation of how my ratings work is quite simple, I rate it with three categories: what I thought of the movie, what you should do if you go see it, and what you should do when it comes out on DVD in that order. (I’m sorry the following images are of horrible quality but all I have to work with now is MS Paint, I will try to improve the quality of these images in the future.)

You can stop reading this review at this point or you can continue on to read my opinions on the trailers that were shown before the movie.

The Trailers shown before “The Dark Knight”

Tropic Thunder

This looks like it will be the one of the great action comedies of this Summer. Starring Jack Black and Ben Stiller you know that you’ll be in for some good laughs. All though I imagine with all the hype that its getting that this moment it will fall short of expectations simply because it is, after all, an action comedy. The action will be great, but judging by the actors starring in it some of the comedy lines will either be forced, cheesy, or flat out awkward. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see until it comes out.

The Spirit

I don’t know much about this film. This is the first time  I’ve heard about it. Its not set to come out until Christmas of this year but it looks like it will be a great action flick, its based on a graphic novel and it seems that Frank Miller got his hands on it while it was being made into a film, I’m not entirely sure if its his graphic novel seeing as this is the first time I’ve heard of it. But it looks like it will be great. The cinematography looks like it will be done in the same style as that of Sin City so I’m waiting on baited breath.

The Watchmen

Another graphic novel turned movie. From what I’ve heard there has been a lot of hype and very little information about this one. But as far as I can tell it looks like a great film, and if you’re a fan of the comic you’re in for a treat on this one.

Bolt

Its a Disney CGI movie about a dog that plays a super dog on a TV show who tries to rescue the girl who plays his owner from what he thinks is Danger because he thinks that what happens on his show is really happening. It looks good as far as a kid movie goes and I’d pay money to so see it. But we’ll see what happens when it comes out. I mean its sure to be better than the movie Disney is making about those damn Chihuahua’s.

Terminator Salvation

Or at least I think that’s the title. This one wont be coming out until Summer 2009. That’s right, another Terminator movie. My first thought was, “Another one, really?” I thought that three was enough seeing as every action movie goes for the trilogy. But as the trailer went on it looked decent. Lets hope its a good movie and not just Hollywood trying to squeeze more money out of a seemingly retired one trick pony.

The Mummy: Tomb of The Dragon Emperor

The third Mummy movie, because like I said every good action movie goes for the trilogy. And it looks like it will be a great movie. I enjoyed Brendan Frasier’s work in both Mummy movies and have my fingers crossed for this one to be good too. Because in my experience most third installments of action films usually fall short. Lets hope this one comes together good and they’re not using Jet Li as a gimmick like they used The Rock in Mummy 2.

As it turns out. I think it may just be my ear buds fucking with me. I can only hear it on the ear buds. So give it a listen with and without head phones, is this normal, am I losing my mind? Whats going on here?

So where is BOaC Season 1? And why a Season 2?

You can find Season 1 of Banter Over a Cigarette on my personal blog. The reason there is a Season 2 is because I recently got a new computer. And in the midst of moving files from the old machine to the new one I had some data loss. The loss being all of my material for Season 1. Rather than muck through old episodes in an attempt to recover what was lost I figured I might as well reformat and debut Season 2 on a new blog. I was looking for an excuse to do so anyway.

How can I listen to Banter Over a Cigarette?

You can come to my blog and listen to each new episode after it airs, or you can subscribe to it on iTunes, or the RSS feed. At least you will be able to after I figure out how all of that net magic works.

Will BOaC be on iTunes?

It is technically a podcast, so I sure hope so. Lets hope I can figure it out.

When will the first episode air?

I’m aiming for Monday, July 21st, lets hope that goes according to plan.

How often will an episode be released?

I’m hoping to release it every Monday after the 21st but we’ll see, I might release two in a week if I choose to, I might change the weekly release date to be more convenient for me. We will just have to see.

Well thats all for right now, lets hope I can live up to this tall order. Keep your eyes on this blog for more information, teasers, promos, and other fancy stuff. If all goes according to plan I’ll have the first episode released on the 21st, see you then.