Episode 81 of the Nerd Lunch podcast features the return of one of my favorite guests, Kristin Rielly of Reilly Geek fame. She joins us to discuss replacements for ourselves.
Carlin gives us several social situations and we are supposed to choose a real person, a fictional person or a Muppet to replace us. What Muppets will show up at an office Christmas party? What deceased former Presidents will attend family reunions and/or a 5 year old’s birthday party? And yes, we have to deal with the repercussions of our decisions. Nerd To Dos involve Superman IV, Downton Abbey and selling off comics.
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So, this week’s topic for the League is “pirates”. Unfortunately, I’ve already extolled the virtues of one of my favorite pirate movies of all time, The Pirate Movie, during it’s 30 year anniversary last year. So, I can’t un-pop that cork. My next best option is to talk about Muppet Treasure Island. And more specifically, the soundtrack.
Muppet Treasure Island was released in 1996. It was the second of the Muppet movies, after Muppet Christmas Carol, to be made in partnership with Disney and after Jim Henson’s death. It starred Tim Curry as Long John Silver and Kevin Bishop as Jim Hawkins. The movie, financially, was a success earning a higher gross than the last three movies.
The movie itself is funny and clever. Curry is great as Silver. Bishop is, well, not awesome. His voice is really high, like a 6 year old girl. It’s really sort of annoying. Other than that I enjoy this movie as much as I enjoy Muppet Christmas Carol. In general, I see Muppet Christmas Carol as a better movie but Muppet Treasure Island has the better soundtrack.
Now, let’s take a look at that awesome soundtrack with a bunch of very catchy, totally Muppet-style songs that are all pirate themed.
This exists. And I own it.
Here are some of my favorite songs from the soundtrack.
Shiver My Timbers is the song that plays over the opening credits featuring pirates burying treasure on an island. Treasure Island. It’s very dark and is very chant-like. It’s probably my favorite song, and it’s totally pirate-y.
Cabin Fever is my second favorite song. It features the cast singing about having “cabin fever” while sailing out at sea. It’s absurd and over-the-top and completely bananas. That’s why I love it. It has a distinctly “islands” feel to it with the steel drums. My favorite lyric in the song:
“Cabin fever has grabbed us all aboard,
This once fine vessel has become a floating psycho ward.”
Check yourself. Episode 41 of the Nerd Lunch Podcast is now LIVE. This week we are joined by Andrew Bloom of The Atomic Geeks.
Andrew breezes in on his Atomic Geek motor scooter and subjects CT, Jeeg and Pax to a series of Would You Rather? questions. Will CT kill Kermit the Frog or the Star Trek franchise? Will Jeeg die at the hands of Snuffy the Snuffalupagus or Big Bird? Will Pax erase the existence of the Star Wars prequels from everyone’s memory or just his own? These questions and more await you in episode 41 of the Nerd Lunch podcast.
Episode 37 has gone live. This is the episode that was supposed to air last week. Everyone is back in their respective cities and we are happy to bring back Shawn Robare from Branded in the 80s. This week’s topic? MUPPETS.
More specifically, we are talking about the first three Muppet movies; The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan. We discuss our earliest memories of the Muppets, what nostalgia we have for these movies and we rank which ones are our favorites. We even talk briefly about how we feel about the non-Henson Muppet movies that would come after.
So move yourself right along to iTunes and download this most excellent episode. I promise you, it’s Boffo, Lenny. SOCKO, Lenny!!!
Cavalcade of Awesome 