I don’t know how obvious it is, but I’m really excited to be podcasting again.  As some of the long time readers might remember, this site started at a platform for a podcast I was doing on my nostalgia memories, but what I discovered pretty quickly is that I had a difficult time getting across the type of info I wanted without having to basically write the whole thing out as a one man monologue show.  Though I talk to myself all the time, the act of sitting behind the mic to record it by myself feels pretty damn weird.   I’m no Spalding Gray, and I have absolutely no yearning to do stand-up, so finding that comfortable place to podcast from is hard.

At the same time though, I love listening to podcasts, and I really want to give a little back to the community, particularly when I see a niche that needs to be filled.  I really think the Saturday Supercast is going to go a long way in filling that whole, which is a deconstruction of cartoons (as well as some other similar fare, but that’s for later.)  There are a lot of fun shows out there that focus on a particular cartoon franchise, but most don’t stray too far past "OMG" and "It’s so cool when…".  Granted, it’s hard not to, with any interest in a subject, this is typically the first sort of gut reaction, but it’s only part of the equation.  Anyway, I just wanted to say again, that I’m having a lot of fun with the new show and I hope some of you take the time to download an episode or two and can get into it.

As I mentioned on this past post, we released the second half of the G.I. Joe discussion, so I thought I’d spend the rest of the week talking up G.I. Joe.  Though I was weaned on He-Man and Star Wars, G.I. Joe was the main franchise I grew up with.   I collected the toy line throughout most of the 80s, and it was the main cartoon that I ran home from school to watch.  There were a lot of other similar shows, and I’m pretty sure I watched most of them, but they were all second choice to G.I. Joe A Real American Hero.  This first mini series is a great example of what the show had to offer, in particular in the second half.  For this column I’m going to focus on episode 3, the Worms of Death which debuted on September 14th, 1983…

One of the things that G.I. Joe did very well was keeping the action and adventure thrilling in the episodes by ending each act break, and sometimes episodes, with a cliffhanger.  When we left off in the second episode, Snake Eyes had shut himself off in a chamber filled with radioactive crystals to save his teammates.  This episode picks up with a still breathing yet, glowing Snake Eyes plodding on.  Honestly, I have no clue what true radiation exposure might lead to (besides burns, sickness and death), but my guess is it doesn’t involve glowing pink (red if you get the new color corrected DVD set.)  Even so it makes for a great visual, and an interesting tête-