In this episode, Liz and Heather talk about their favorite childhood commercials then and now.
ANNOUNCEMENT – Our next book for the Book Club is Dark Disciple by Christie Golden. This is one of the new Star Wars (canon) books, but is just an awesome book, even if you have never read a Star Wars book. Check it out, as it will be released in a few weeks.
And back to our regularly scheduled commercials! Heading back to the 1980s, when we were barely born (ahem), the commercials were incredibly memorable. To this day, we can remember the songs and jingles even more than the actual products. Some of our favorites are:
Commercials Now: Not near as cool, since most of us have DVRs, Netflix, Hulu, and things that we use to avoid commercials all together. Branding and marketing is genius. No one looks for a “copy machine,’ they look for a Xerox. In Texas, a Coke could mean any variety of soda.
How do you get our attention in three seconds before we can fast forward through the ad? And now, our old people commercials are looking a lot less old than we remember them looking, thereby making us feel old. And Super Bowl commercials? Forget it. We can watch the Puppy Bowl instead and catch the commercials worth watching tomorrow on YouTube.
Recommendations:
Bitch of the Week: People talking to Heather in the morning. Stop talking to us before we have had our morning coffee or pink drink or whatever. Heather is smart enough to use the Do Not Disturb function on her phone. “Good morning” before coffee is a lie.
Random Tweets – “According to all maxi-pad commercials, all women are full of windshield wiper fluid.”
Announcement – We now have an open and active Zazzle store to sell our Nerdy Bitches Podcast merchandise! Thanks to our own Nerdy Bitch Heather and our friend Ofelia for the awesome designs! Here is Liz showing off our logo t-shirt:
Check out all of the NERDY BITCHES PODCAST store options! Make sure you turn your content filter OFF so that you can actually see more than the kid shirts. But, we also have a kid-friendly line.
See you next time!
It's Book Club day! In this episode, Liz and Heather discuss Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Obviously, this episode will be full of spoilers, so make sure you have read the book or, even better, listened to the audiobook narrated by Wil Weaton!
Summary (From the Publisher)
It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.
Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.
And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them.
For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.
And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.
Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.
A world at stake ... A quest for the ultimate prize ... Are you ready? (From the publisher.).
Note: Both Heather and Liz listened to the audio book.
The nostalgia factor on this book for anyone who grew up in the 1980s is absolutely off the charts. The references to pop culture are so great, you could split a lip. The real world in this book is not that great, so pretty much the entire planet lives and works inside a virtual reality platform called The Oasis. The story picks up after the death of Halliday, the creator of the Oasis with a contest that would lead someone to become the sole heir to his fortune and become the ruler of the Oasis.
Egg hunters = Gunters (Liz hates this word) around the world have been looking, with zero success for years, until Wade finds the first key. Then, all of the sudden, the game is back on and Wade is now being actively perused by everyone on the planet, but especially by the evil Sorrento and his league of professional gunters (the Sixers), who are willing to commit very real murder in order to take control of The Oasis.
This is a long episode, so settle in with your favorite boozylicious cocktail and listen to us talk about this awesome book.
(FYI - Ernest Cline, as of this podcast, is 43 years old, so he is 4 years older than Nerdy Bitch Liz.)
Recommendations
Bitch of the week - STOP BODY SHAMING PEOPLE! Especially pregnant people! Not cool, dude. And thigh gap is stupid. Just stop shaming people all over. Fat, thin, short, tall, pregnant, whatever - just keep your trap shut!
Next Book Club - Dark Disciple by Christie Golden - This is one of the new canon books in the Star Wars Saga. We will be joined by some other awesome nerdy bitches in studio to discuss this book. Read and learn about the character Asajj Ventress and what she gets done.
This episode is 2015 Movies Part 2; Liz and Heather talk about the remaining movies from September to December this year.
September
October
November
December
Bitch of the Week – Why must we remake everything?? Jem? Point Break? Please stop.
Recap – the movies were awesome this year! Unless they weren’t.
Recommendations
Real Bitch of the Week – iPhone photographers – you are NOT a professional photographer. Just because you have a nice camera or a high quality phone camera does not mean you can replace the professional who WAS actually hired to shoot the wedding. Get out of the way. If you WANT to do it, learn to do it and do it! Just stop making life harder for those of us who have already done that.
Announcement: We DO now have our very own Nerdy Bitches store! Go check it out atzazzle.com/nerdybitchespodcast – Please note to see the good stuff, you MUST have the site’s content filter turned to OFF. Apparently, the word “bitches” is seen as “offensive” to some. This is also a good place to note that we have heard this and have created a mostly-appropriate line of Nerdy Bitches wear for infants and children that probably won’t get them thrown out of daycare. Mostly.