In this bonus episode: another collection of outtakes tasteless even by our standards.
In the interests of public safety and social conscience, the audio recording described as “The Rubber Chicken Podisode #2″ carries the following content warnings:
HIMN: Horendous Improvised Musical Number MS: Medium-level Movie Spoilers BoP: Bag of Puppies DAO: Strong Discrimination Against Orphans SNH: Sir Nigel Haversmith CAWE: Conversation About Wine and Ears S-D: Mild Splicey-Dicey sequence that may be unsuitable for small children
This Podisode has been classified with a rating of RU (Reprehensible and Unreleasable). If you believe this rating to be in error, an appeal can be submitted in writing to forums.thatchickensite.com.
Alastair: Once more, TRC alumn and newly baptised podcast initiate Chad McCanna was kind enough to travel back in time to a 2004 poetry night to help pad out this slow, rhyme-deprived month. Ta, love.
The sun. Giver of life. Melter of ice creams. An all-around top-notch ball of incandescent gas. Yet behind that orb of brightness dwells a past of darkness. Of all the alleged scientific “facts”, none satisfactorily explain its motivation. Neither you nor I would choose to burn hundreds of millions of tonnes of hydrogen each second without a good reason. Why would the average star bother?
Why, in the name of Mighty Odin, does the sun shine?
To uncover the truth, we turned to the only power greater than our mighty solar benefactor: celebrities.
Seven Samurai and Pokemon The Movie 2000: The Power of One
When I first saw Akira Kurosawa’s quintessential samurai film, I was expecting a masterpiece of cinema; a heart-wrenching epic; something to make me laugh, cry and cheer all at once. What I wasn’t expecting was a shot-for-shot remake of the second animated Pokemon motion picture.
Remember the episode of the original (western) Power Rangers series where Tommy Oliver, the Green Ranger, lost his powers? Remember how devastated we all were? (And those of you who were too old/sensible to enjoy MMPR in 1995 were no doubt devastated in spirit, even if you thought you were happy at the time.) Remember how mundane the show seemed with only the original five Rangers again? Remember the exciement when Zordon introduced them to the brand new White Ranger and he took his mask off and Kimberly fainted and it turned out to be Tommy? Of course you do. Now, pretend our updates are the Green Ranger. Pretend Lord Zedd has stolen their powers… but only temporarily.
Though it would be downright pretentious to seriously compare our little updates to the excellence of Tommy Oliver, this serves as an apt comparison for the next few weeks. While those of us who regularly update will be busy with end-of-semester study for a couple of weeks, you need not faint, dear Metaphorical Kimberlies – soon we’ll be back, better than ever, and with a baffling talking dagger thing and armour that isn’t quite as cool without the original gold chestplate.
Luckily, Nick Sedillos of Swizzlestuck has zoomed to the rescue (or should I say… Power Rangers: Lightspeed Rescue? No.) with his own audio book version of the critically acknowledged Ultimate FanFiction Central Star Wars story Darth Maul’s Revenge. Nick has done an amazing job at capturing the essence of the story in a whole new medium, complete with incidental music.
Firstly, it’s high time I acknowledged our Star Wars fan readership:
Hello.
If any Rubber Chicken readers…
Actually, if I may digress for a moment (ignoring that this update is essentially one embarassingly large digression – but I digress) we really need a proper name for Rubber Chicken fans. “Achickenados” has a certain awkward charm. If you have any better suggestions, please get in touch.
Now if I’d kindly stop interrupting…
If any of you tentatively-titled achickenados live in Brisbane, Australia, you can find me queuing up for Star Wars Episode III – Revenge of the Sith at the Queen Street Mall Regent Cinemas from late tomorrow afternoon until midnight. I’ll be the bloodied corpse in the gutter, bludgeoned to death by plastic lightsabres, wearing the traditional home-made “Jar Jar Binks Sombrero” costume.
Here it is: The Rubber Chicken’s single greatest accomplishment. A small prank that should have died within minutes, but instead became something far more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
You have no idea how painful it’s been to keep something this big hidden for four months. And not just emotionally – it took six experienced surgeons to remove the damn thing. However, I believe the results are well worth the time, effort, crippling medical expenses and the knowledge that I can never professionally dance the tango again.
Guest review by Andrew Sumner. WARNING: contains more spoilers than a garage of riced-out pimp-rockets.
I have a friend named Dan who works at the Rialto Cineplex in downtown White Rock. Frequently, the entire theatre (all 24 screens, no less) is leased out by corporations who want to cordon it off for some kind of function, or other. Last Friday, I got a frantic call from him saying that I should get down there right away, and that I would not regret it. Little did I know that Dan would be sneaking me into a private showing of Star Wars 3!!!
If there’s one thing you can’t accuse George Lucas of, it’s poor marketing. The merchandising blitz promoting The Phantom Menace was huge – even larger if you happened to be an ant at the time. Even so, certain Star Wars merchandise fell by the wayside, gathering dust faster than anything out of Hoover Labs.
It’s news to me, but apparently not everybody enjoyed the antics of Jar Jar Binks. Why? Maybe the ironic juxtaposition of an unashamedly comedic character in a serious fantasy universe was too much for deeply-invested fans to handle. Maybe he lacked the charismatic mysteriousness of Boba Fett or the sex appeal of Bib Fortuna. Or maybe he was just fucking annoying.
For whatever reason, unwanted Jar Jar merchandise can still be found in bargain bins everywhere. Unwanted, that is, until now.