Game Grumps Giggling 2025

 

 A compilation of Game Grumps laughing fits of 2025.

Celebrating Star Wars Day, I Guess

Beagle!

The Pale Blue Eye (2022)

 

Reaching the unofficial conclusion of my unofficial run of viewing the films of Robert Duvall, we come to "The Pale Blue Eye." This is the last film Duvall made and his part is a very small one, lasting only a few minutes in screen time.

This is a general trend I've found in the last movies that Duvall made: he truly reached the point where he became "old" - he looks worn down, speaks more softly and is no longer playing major parts.

With that aside, "The Pale Blue Eye" is a murder mystery centered around a military academy in the early 1800s. In fact, there are a series of murders - a possible serial killer - and Augustus Landor (Christian Bale) is brought in to solve the case.

This is not just a well-written mystery movie with twists and turns, the star of the movie is the cinematography. This movie looks great. It isn't quite true to say "every frame could be a painting" but it nears that level. Excellent film, I don't know how popular it is but worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

Willy Wonka Drums

Michael McDonald on Soul Train

For no particular reason, other than that this popped up on my feed and it's smooth, here's Michael McDonald playing "I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near)" on Soul Train.

My impression of Soul Train is that the "performances" were lip-syncs, which would make this post mostly pointless. I think this is the record track, but I'm not totally sure. I got nothin'.

Born Under Punches in the Grocery Store

I'm at the grocery store and they have the store music playing on the loudspeaker - it's not a local radio station, it's clearly just in the store -  and "Born Under Punches" by Talking Heads comes on. I recognize it immediately and I'm somewhat befuddled - is "Born Under Punches" grocery store music?

I'm not complaining - I love the song, I love the album, it was a big influence for Radiohead making "Kid A" - but it just seems like the opposite of the kind of music you'd play at a grocery store.

Decide for yourself above.

Don't you miss it, don't you miss it! Some of you people just about missed it.

Scorch Update for April 2026

Scorch is back... again!

And he's got a new idea... again!

He's going to do a new iteration of PFG-TV... again!

He is both doing great, rockin' and rollin', and also is destitute, down and out. It is a roller-coaster and we truly live in exciting times.

Norm Tribute

The story goes that someone had recorded Norm in 2016 and has now rediscovered the tape. The recording is now set to animation.

Popcorn in Bed - Awakenings

If you haven't seen "Awakenings," go watch it before watching this.

This is one of my favorite films, I think it's Robin Williams' best performance and Robert De Niro's best performance. Fun fact: the nurse love interest is Julie Kavner, who you usually know as Marge Simpson.

Unmasking Satoshi Nakamoto

 If you're curious as to who the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto (the inventor of Bitcoin) is, the New York Times has an article claiming to have identified him here.

They come to the same conclusion that this Youtube series did, except 5 years later.

And just a helpful tip: any time a media site hides something behind a paywall, you can almost always get around it with archive.is.

Radiohead - Worrywort

To me, "Worrywort" belongs in Spring, right when things are really starting to get warm.

The Full GD Fenderson Saga

 Blind Mike has started hate watching GD Fenderson's second stand-up comedy special and it's worth noting that there is a playlist for all the clips of him watching GD Fenderson's first comedy special.

Dubbed "The World's Worst Comedy Special: The GD Fenderson Saga," it can be seen here.

Note that the order of the playlist is unfortunately REVERSE chronological order.

I was waiting for a compilation video - that would have been better, but here we are.

Blind Mike - Very Good Chow

Blind Mike and Craig completely dismantle the new cooking show "Very Good Chow" hosted by Craig.

Take 200 lbs of macho, add 1 fake accent and 1 feminine apron. 

In an aged kitchen, combine with mediocre cooking show format.

Sprinkle in swear words liberally.

Skewer and roast for 50 minutes.

Serve.

An Album for Plants

It's a tale as old as time. In the mid-70's, a man with access to a Moog synthesizer made an album for plants and didn't actually sell it, but rather gave it away with the purchase of plants. But then 40 years later it was rediscovered and released for sale. The above video tells that story, the story of Plantasia.

Here's the link to the album on youtube.

And, man, don't sleep on "Swingin' Spathiphyllums," it's a trip.

The Kill Tony Podcast - Trump and Biden

This episode has 29 million views and the podcast is now on Netflix but for the purposes of this blog, I'll assume you haven't seen it because that's the only way this works.

The Kill Tony Podcast is a type of "America's Got Talent" or "American Idol" for stand-up comedy. A bunch of (very) amateur comedians get pulled from a hat, perform for one minute and then get critiqued by a panel of professionals. Although, unlike those shows, it's more of an exhibition than a competition.

In this episode, the panel includes then-nominees Donald Trump (Shane Gillis) and Joe Biden (Adam Ray). It's excellent.

A History of A Day in the Life

A youtuber, David Hartley, tells the tale of how The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" came to be.

You can see more footage of the night of the orchestral recording in the official music video:

Mick Jagger was there but that's not as interesting as the fact that Mike Nesmith was too (2:34, 3:33). The Monkees were a huge influence on The Beatles.

One thing I've heard that isn't covered is that at the end of the song, while the piano is vibrating, you can hear the air conditioning of the Abbey Road Studios kick in. But that may be a myth, I don't know.

Oye Listen AIDS is a Killer

This PSA aired in my area so often, it's not ingrained in my mind and gets stuck in my head often. This, despite the fact that I don't know 90% of the lyrics and never have.

For whatever it's worth, I think this youtube version is sped up and the proper playback speed is 0.90.

Oye! Listen! AIDS is a killer!

Watching Every Episode of MST3K

Somewhere around 2000-2003 (college) I resolved to watch every episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." It was the heyday of file-sharing, in those days, and such a thing was just, at that precise moment, theoretically possible. Big, special shout-out to eDonkey and eMule. "Possible" but not necessarily easy.

To illustrate the effort of watching every MST3K episode, I used to say that it was harder than watching every episode of "The Simpsons" (or basically pick any long running series you want). The reasoning is simple: there were (at that time) about 200 episodes of MST3K and each one was about 1.5 hours long, so that's about 300 hours of viewage. Compared to "The Simpsons", I'll even include all the episodes made since then, the math is: 805 episodes, at 0.3 hours each episode that's about 250 hours of viewage. Note: it's a pretty good metric for comparison because download effort and file availability are generally proportional to the length of material. This metric, of course, doesn't take into account how bad "The Simpsons" has become, though.

Given the disorganized nature of file-sharing, I created a spreadsheet to act as the source of truth, each episode listed, each had a "watched" or "not watched" status. I even added percentage calculation and a countdown to 0 because I had a lot of time on my hands and it seemed cool. But on that spreadsheet there were always 4 blank spots: 4 "lost" episodes that did not exist publicly in any form.

After 1 or 2 years (perhaps more, it was a long time ago), I finished the goal - I had watched every available episode and, by that time, I simply made peace with the idea that there were 4 episodes that just did not exist.

Then, in 2008 the "Pilot Episode" ("The Green Slime") (not really an episode) was shown at a convention and bootlegged on Youtube. Check. Down to 3.

Then, in 2016 two more "lost" episodes ("Invaders From The Deep" and "Revenge of the Mysterions from Mars") were found by the MST3K Producers in their archives and were released to backers of the 11th Season Kickstarter. Check and check.

That left ONE unreleased, "lost" episode.... One episode that no fan has turned up. One episode that even the creators of MST3K confirmed they had no access to.... What are the chances that someone somewhere taped it, kept the tape, held on to it for 38 years and never told anyone?

A few days ago, arthurputie on Reddit posted that his cousin had bought a load of old VHS's at a garage sale in the Minneapolis area and that one of them was labeled with the episode name ("Star Force: Fugitive Alien II"). Arthurputie confirmed it to actually be the lost episode and it has now been uploaded it to Youtube. 

Lost no more.

This is not posted as a recommendation. If you are not a MST3K fan, avoid the early episodes at all costs. If you are a MST3K fan, still avoid this at all costs. This is only posted for Completionists like me with a 25 year old score to settle. That, and it's also a fascinating archeological discovery.

So here's the final word. I have now watched all the episodes of MST3K, it is still difficult and the spreadsheet has not been updated to 0 because it was lost in a hard drive crash 10 years ago. Oh, and new episodes are in the works.

Wild Horses (2015)

 

"Wild Horses" sucks, Craig.

Continuing my exploration of Robert Duvall movies and I cannot be definitive here - I haven't watched them all, nor will I - but I may have hit upon the worst movie Robert Duvall ever made.

With such a legendary actor in such a lousy movie, what scapegoat can I blame for this outrage?

Written By: Robert Duvall

Directed By: Robert Duvall

Starring: Robert Duvall.

DANG IT.

"Wild Horses" stars Robert Duvall, James Franco and Josh Hartnett (remember Josh Hartnett?). Three fine actors, and yet none of these people plays the protagonist of the movie. The protagonist of this movie is, apparently, played by one of the worst actors in the history of film. I say "one of the worst" but cannot say that she is "the worst" for I have seen Rod in "Birdemic" ....but she's clearly one of the worst. The main plot is a crime investigation of sorts - Luciana Pedraza is an Argentinian playing a Native American cop with no emotion and a Texan accent; she is paired with a cop partner (not worth looking up) who is coincidentally played by another insanely awful actor. Whenever there are scenes of these two people interacting, it's incredible, it's like staring into infinity mirror of emotionlessness.

How did this happen? How does the best American actor of his generation not weed out terrible actors when casting his own movie? Well, I can only explain the terrible lead - the terrible lead is played by his real-life wife, a woman 41 years younger than himself.

Bad acting from main characters is huge in this movie but isn't the entire problem. There's also bad acting from the minor characters - and in pivotal scenes. Very pivotal and very emotional and very terrible scenes. But also, the cinematography of this movie varies between on-par-with-Walker-Texas-Ranger and dreadful. There are moments with bad sound. These moments could have easily been fixed in ADR but weren't, somehow, for some reason. The editing is weird and awkward. The pacing is weird. The movie is lifeless and not believable - it's simply boring. At many points, this movie doesn't even feel like a movie. 

If you've ever wondered what would happen if you dropped a great actor into a terrible movie, here's your experiment. I would like to say that Robert Duvall transcends his surroundings but I can't say that. This movie is so empty and unconvincing it even makes Robert Duvall's acting seem questionable.

I looked on youtube for a scene or compilation of the bad acting in "Wild Horses" to share for demonstration, but I see nothing. That seems strange. Maybe, as bad movies go, this flew below the popular radar.

A New Commodore 64 is Out

 The Commodore 64 is an important part of computer history as well as the best selling computer model of all-time. It's now being re-released for sale.

Actually, it was re-released a year ago but I only found out today so I'm passing the info along.

The new version has USB and WI-FI.

The Commodore 64 was a huge part of a lot of people's childhoods, though I don't know that I ever came across one, personally. Strange how that works.