The way she goes

The new season of Trailer Park Boys comes out tomorrow! I am super excited! Gonna get some liquor and cheeseburgers and binge that f***er!

I’ve also been slowly working my way through a rewatch of the entire series over the last four months, and I’ve got to say that I’m really finding a deeper appreciation for the first seven seasons. Maybe it’s just because I’ve never gone back to those episodes, but it sort of feels like I’m watching them all for the first time. There is so much stuff that I’d forgotten about, and even the plot structures of each season are much more varied than I’d thought.

I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I burned through the initial run of the show via DVDs, so as to catch up with my brothers, who had seen it all already. I wanted to get in on the references, you know? Fact of the matter is that despite the insanely low budgets -maybe even because of the low budgets- the original seven seasons are really good. I miss old Julian, who is much more likeable back then than he is at current (at least on the TPB Podcast). The fact that Bubbles was just a secondary character until season three still blows my mind.

Will I go back and watch all the supplementary material as well? I’ll probably give the movies and specials a go, but I’m not sure I feel the need to revisit the live specials. Out of the Park: Europe will likely get passed over, because while it has its moments, it just doesn’t really feel like Trailer Park Boys. And those green-screened parts are just so darned distracting. If I were to start diving into all the extra content on Swearnet/YouTube… well, that’s a lot of material to watch. So who knows!?

2016 Xmas Gift Roundup!

Oh my, has yet another year passed already? Well, I guess three years if you’re just going by the last time I wrote one of these things. Remember how it used to be an annual tradition? Did I write this exact same intro paragraph last time? Ehh, I’ve already recycled the idea and the banner, might as well re-use some of the text as well.

I think that, for the most part, I stopped doing these because I began to feel embarrassed about all of the stuff I get for Xmas. I mean, it’s not like it’s all that excessive (especially with my lack of wife), but it’s easy to look at these articles and think to myself “gee, I sure am spoiled, aren’t I?” Maybe next year will be the year I finally act on my desire to volunteer somewhere and help those less fortunate.

But probably not. That would also require leaving the house, and my incredible selfishness is a defining character trait.

Continue reading 2016 Xmas Gift Roundup!

What the **** is a podcash?

I’ve been listening to the Trailer Park Boys Podcast pretty obsessively over the last couple weeks. Burning through the backlog, in fact, listening to as many as three a day. There are only 20 episodes so far, so I’ll probably be caught up by Xmas.

tpbpodcast

The podcast is usually just the boys sitting around a table, bickering and ripping on each other, occasionally talking about various headlines or random fun facts. A few episodes feature special guests, including but not limited to: Snoop Dogg, Jay Baruchel, and Esa Tikkanen. Also, Randy shows up every once in a while. So far, it’s been pretty darn hilarious.

The first two episodes are a bit slow, both of them leaning heavily on Ricky’s inability to grasp what a podcast is. The joke wears itself out quickly, but things get considerably better by the third episode. By the time they’re doing episodes while on tour in Europe, it goes from ‘great’ to ‘amazing’ and there’s really no longer any competition for the top spot on my Favourite Podcasts list.

One thing that I realized while listening to these, is that the show is at its very best when it’s just Ricky and Bubbles. Julian is a crucial character to the show, and there’s plenty to like about him there, but on the podcast he mostly just complains about how the other two aren’t doing a good enough job. When Ricky and Bubbles are let loose to basically just talk and joke with each other, it’s simply magic. Wonderful listening. I’m not saying that cutting Julian from the show entirely would make it better, but it’s nice to just let the other two go unfiltered once in a while.

I would be remiss to omit that iTunes has ranked the TPB Podcast as one of the best of 2015, so you know that it’s not just me singing its praises. I whole-heartedly recommend checking this one out. You can listen to it on iTunes or Libsyn, and they even film each episode so that you can watch the madness unfold on Swearnet. You’ve gotta be a subscriber to watch it, but hey, you should probably subscribe to Swearnet anyway.