Show Prep 94

Greetings and Salutations, people! -

Tweet of the Week:
drewlangan
The Egyptians had the internet taken away. Now they're just Gyptians.

Today on VSR – On the eve of the Super Bowl, we’ll break down the Super Bowl matchup scientifically with the Tale of the Tape between Green Bay and Pittsburgh. And by scientifically, I mean we’ll examine some ridiculous stuff and then randomly guess who is going to win. Also, After much research this week, I will unveil Vertically Striped Radio’s choice for the most dominant pro football dynasty of all time, and I hope to be able to call down the thunder on some wankers today. In the second hour, the He-Man Movie Watchers Club will convene to discuss “The Big Lebowski”; you may love the movie or you may hate it, but that’s just, like, your opinion, man!

Give out the phone number - (646) 716-6831 OR 6-HOP-1-MOVE-1

To contact VSR via email:
Email address: radio@verticallystripedsocks.com
Twitter: @socnorb777

Let’s get to the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

Let’s get to the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

HELSINKI (AFP) – A group calling itself the Food Liberation Army has claimed responsibility for "kidnapping" a statue of the McDonald's food chain mascot Ronald McDonald and has threatened to "execute" the figure if their demands are not met.

The group posted a video on YouTube where balaclava-clad "terrorists", holding the clown statue with a bag over its head, demanded that the world's largest food chain answer questions about its corporate responsibility and food production.

"We love burgers, fries and McDonald's, but we can no longer watch in silence as the food we love is being destroyed and brought to shame because of greed and indifference," one of the "terrorists" said, speaking in Finnish.

The man said the statue, which was taken from a Helsinki restaurant on January 31 by two men posing as maintenance personnel, would be executed on Friday, February 11.

"Have a nice day," he signed off.

The Food Liberation Army declined to describe exactly how they would execute an inanimate object, which to me makes it even more menacing! Well played FLA. Well Played.

PORTLAND, Ore. – An official in Portland, Ore., says a house fire that caused $30,000 in damage was apparently started by tenants who were using a hole in the floor as an ashtray.

Portland Fire & Rescue spokesman Paul Cora says, in his words, "That's not careless smoking, that's stupid smoking."

He says the caller who reported the fire Wednesday also hung up on the 911 dispatcher, then refused to talk when the dispatcher tried to call back for more details.

No one was injured. Which is fortunate…I think. Although perhaps a little Darwinistic Natural Selection might not be the worst thing for in this instance.

 

BEIJING (AFP) – China's state broadcaster is facing questions after Internet users spotted that footage in a report on air force manoeuvres in a national newscast was taken from the 1980s Hollywood film "Top Gun".

China Central Television, or CCTV, aired the footage in a January 23 report on a People's Liberation Army Air Force training exercise, showing a plane firing a missile at another.

The second aircraft plane was destroyed in a fiery explosion, and the dramatic footage was shown in between interviews with air force officers.

However, some Internet users recognized the explosion from the dogfight in the final scene of the 1986 film "Top Gun" starring Tom Cruise.

The Wall Street Journal posted a side-by-side video comparison of the CCTV news report and the "Top Gun" scene on its website, showing the two were identical.

A CCTV representative could not comment on the similarities, the Wall Street Journal said.

The "Top Gun" footage was aired a week after China, where copyright infringement is widespread, vowed to step up its fight to protect intellectual property rights by targeting online piracy.

The original report was removed from the CCTV website after news that part of it had been lifted from the movie spread.

The gaffe has delighted many Internet users who often express frustration about having to endure CCTV's propaganda-driven agenda. The only thing that could have made this story better to me is if CCTV was playing Kenny Loggins “Highway to the Danger Zone” in the background without first obtaining the music rights.

I’m Craig, and that is the news… (Play News Music – Clip 03)

Bring on Face and The Whale:
 

Bring on Face:

NFL Trivia question.
Name the two teams who lost the Super Bowl but still won the NFL championship? Colts (Super Bowl 3) and Vikings (Super Bowl 4)

Bring on Whale:

Who you got? Packers or Steelers

 
Tale of the Tape – Super Bowl XLV
(Breakdown of Packers-Steelers nonsense)

Year Established: Advantage Packers

Packers: 1919
Steelers: 1933

Songs: Advantage Packers

Steelers:

The Steelers don’t have an official song but 4 songs would be in the running
-Here we go Steelers
-Steelers Polka – Jimmy Pol
-Renegade – Styx
- Black and Yellow - Wiz Khalifa

Packers:

-Official Song – Go! You Packers! Go! (by Eric Karll)
• First played by the Lumberjack Band in 1931.
• At one point it was owned by Lawrence Welk who recorded a version of the song.
-Roll out the barrel
-Go Pack Go! – Done at the Stadium
-Green and Yellow – Lil Wayne

Fan Merchandise: Edge to the Steelers

Packers: Cheesehead
Steelers: Terrible Towel

Games in team history that can be remembered by a single title: Even

Packers: The Ice Bowl
Steelers: The Immaculate Reception

Singing Parrot Fans: Slight edge to Packers
Packers: (Clips: 71 to 74)
-Parrot has to be a bit confused: Favre?
-Touchdown – Green Bay Packers
-Sam loves the Pack
-Dusty the Cockatoo

Steelers: (Clips: 75 to 79)
Sweetie the Cockateil – Here we go Steelers
African Grey – Here we go to the Super Bowl
Kona the Macaw – Owner sounds a little douche
African Grey – The owner sounds like a sweet old lady that is a little too into both parrots and the Steelers
Chara – African Grey thinks her name is “Here we go Steelers” – Owner almost sounds angry

Overall: Packers – My prediction 28-13





In reference to the brouhaha made about the Seahawks getting in with a losing record:
1982 – Due to the strike, they had a weird playoff bracket this year. They took the top 8 teams from each conference, disregarding divisions. Then they did a straight tournament style bracket where every team had to win 4 games to win the Super Bowl. 2 teams with losing records made the playoffs (4-5 Detroit Lions and 4-5 Cleveland Browns)


 

Pose “Most dominant pro football team?” question to Whale and Face.

Announce the Most Dominant Dynasty – Cleveland Browns
Founded in 1946, they were the premier team in the AAFC (All-America Football Conference) where their largest rival and biggest competition was the San Francisco 49ers. The Browns and the 49ers are the only teams still in existence from the AAFC, but the league was a major rival to the NFL during the late 40’s. The AAFC owners had more money than the NFL’s owners, the AAFC was founded by Arch Ward, the sports editor at the Chicago Tribune, and therefore the AAFC received a large amount of media coverage.

The Browns were immediately so popular in the city of Cleveland that before they had even played a game, they chased the Cleveland Rams to Los Angeles, despite the fact that the Rams had just won the NFL title in 1945.

Their record in the AAFC was 52-4-3 including a perfect 15-0 in 1948, and they won all four league titles in the history of the AAFC before moving to the NFL in a league merger between the NFL and AAFC in which the NFL absorbed the Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts (not the team that is now Indianapolis, this version of the Colts folded soon after joining the NFL. The merger was so significant that for a few months (from December 9th,1949 to March 1950) the NFL because known as The National-American Football League.

The merger could be seen as a victory for the NFL over the upstart AAFC, however, during the period when both were operating, the AAFC actually garnered a larger amount of college talent than the NFL and the AAFC also had better average attendance. The two leagues battling each other through the late 40’s had actually financially hurt each other to the point that both leagues were in danger of folding, which was a major reason that a merger agreement was finally reached.

The NFL had long refused to acknowledge the existence of the AAFC, as the Browns had challenged the NFL champion to an interleague championship after each of their four AAFC titles. The NFL, not wanting to grant legitimacy to the AAFC had declined. So the first regular season game the Browns ever played in the NFL was a pretty big deal. It was a huge deal, because it was held against the NFL champion Eagles to open the season. The press billed the game as “The World Series of Pro Football” and it was played in Philadelphia in front of more than 71,000 fans, which was one of the largest pro football crowds in history to that point and more spectators than what showed up to Super Bowl I. They even awarded a Most Valuable Player award for the game, which was unheard of for a regular season game. The Browns won 35-10.

The Browns would continue their run of success in the NFL, winning the championship the first year they played in the NFL. The reason I declare them to be the most dominant team ever is that they went to their championship game every year for the first 10 years of their existence, the won 7 of those titles and compiled a gaudy 114-20-4 record for a decade winning percentage of .826. And all of this was before Jim Brown ever even donned a uniform.



Week in Wankery:

-Temperatures with a minus sign in front of them.
-People that wear shorts in the winter time.
-The Pro Bowl
-Westboro Baptist Terror Cell
-Snow days when there was no snow for over 24 hours. Just cold weather.
-People without diabetes discussing diabetes.

-Jonah Keri - Mention Jonah Keri will be appearing on a future edition of the show.

-PayPal hackers – Bad enough you tried to steal 147 dollars from me, but to change my language preference to French?




 
He-Man Movie Watchers Club:
The Big Lebowski

The IMDB one-sentence recap:
"Dude" Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it.

The IMDB one-paragraph recap:
When "The Dude" Lebowski is mistaken for a millionaire Lebowski, two thugs urinate on his rug to coerce him into paying a debt he knows nothing about. While attempting to gain recompense for the ruined rug from his wealthy counterpart, he accepts a one-time job with high pay-off. He enlists the help of his bowling buddy, Walter, a gun-toting Jewish-convert with anger issues. Deception leads to more trouble, and it soon seems that everyone from porn empire tycoons to nihilists want something from The Dude.


Jeff Bridges Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski
John Goodman Walter Sobchak
Julianne Moore Maude Lebowski
Steve Buscemi Theodore Donald ‘Donny’ Kerabatsos
David Huddleston Jeffrey Lebowski – The Big Lebowski
Philip Seymour Hoffman Brandt
Tara Reid Bunny Lebowski
Philip Moon Woo – Treehorn Thug – The Chinaman
Mark Pellegrino Blond Treehorn Thug
Peter Stormare Nihilist #1, Uli Kunkel, Karl Hungus
Flea Nihilist #2, Kiefer
Torsten Voges Nihilist #3, Franz
Jimmie Dale Gilmore Smokey
John Turturro Jesus Quintana
Sam Elliott The Stranger
Harry Bugin Arthur Digby Sellers
Jesse Flanagan Little Larry Sellers
Irene Olga Lopez Pilar
Ben Gazzara Jackie Treehorn
Jon Polito Da Fino
Aimee Mann Nihilist Woman, Franz’ Girlfriend

Real Life models for The Dude and Walter
The Dude is mostly inspired by Jeff Dowd, a man the Coen brothers met while they were trying to find distribution for the feature film, Blood Simple.[6] Dowd had been a member of the Seattle Seven, liked to drink White Russians, and was known as "The Dude." The Dude was also partly based on a friend of the Coen brothers, Peter Exline (now a member of the faculty at USC's School of Cinematic Arts), a Vietnam War veteran who reportedly lived in a dump of an apartment and was proud of a little rug that "tied the room together." Exline knew Barry Sonnenfeld from New York University and Sonnenfeld introduced Exline to the Coen brothers while they were trying to raise money for Blood Simple. Exline became friends with the Coens and, in 1989, told them all kinds of stories from his own life, including ones about his actor-writer friend Lewis Abernathy (one of the inspirations for Walter), a fellow Vietnam vet who later became a private investigator and helped him track down and confront a high school kid who stole his car. As in the film, Exline's car was impounded by the Los Angeles Police Department and Abernathy found an 8th grader's homework under the passenger seat. Exline also belonged to an amateur softball league but the Coens changed it to bowling in the movie because "it's a very social sport where you can sit around and drink and smoke while engaging in inane conversation," Ethan said in an interview.


Vertically Striped Music Recommendation:
Bruce Cockburn – “Wondering Where the Lions Are”

Lil Wayne – Green and Yellow

Shalom and Good Evening to you all!



 

 
Extras:

Googling myself:
1. Dodge Dealership:
Craig Dodge in Gastonia, North Carolina (704) 864-7786
2. CraigDodge.com (NOT ME) – Post about squirrel eating
3. Deputy Craig Dodge – Nebraska Police officer shot in the line of duty in 1987
4. Craig Dodge on Linked In:
1. Portland, Oregon – Architecture and Planning
2. Boston, Mass - Medical Devices
3. Reading, UK – IT (Account Manager at McAfee)
4. Price Edward Island, Canada – Video Game Composer/Sound Designer
5. Me
5. Me on Facebook
6. Me on Twitter
7. Police Officer shot
8. Dude teaching English in Taiwan
9. Craig “Dodge” Lile – Indie Music promoter
10. Real Estate listing on “Craig Dodge” road in Lincoln, NE. (Probably named after the cop shot in the line of duty)


Are you uncomfortable entering Wal-Mart? We have a greeter at my local Wal-Mart who makes me super deluxe uncomfortable when I walk in.

Toilet Paper: Crumple or Fold?

What would be the scariest animal if it turned into a vampire?
Vampire Walrus
Band Name of the Week: Vampire Walrus

Wells Fargo has an odd business plan: Just got my free iPod Shuffle, and I’ve on two separate occasions gotten 50 bucks from them just for opening a checking account.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? – Egregious omission.