Flying tigers

Here is the logo of the "flying tigers" fromu World War II. According to the nice army veteran volunteer at the palm springs air museum, this logo was designed for the "flying tigers"from by Walt Disney. Cool stuff

Podcast Episode 39

Episode 39: Ben Sisko Does Not Have Time for Your Bullshit

Official site still hourofthunder.podomatic.com and still sexy as hell

We talk more star trek including our favorite captain, favorite villain, favorite alien race, and why Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney) is the fuckin' man.

Since this is episode 39, and the Queen song '39 is about colonizing the stars, here are its lyrics in full for your enjoyment:

In the year of '39 assembled here the volunteers
In the days when the lands were few
Here the ship sailed out into the blue and sunny morn
Sweetest sign ever seen

And the night followed day
And the story tellers say
That the score brave souls inside
For many a lonely day sailed across the milky seas
Ne'er looked back, never feared, never cried

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand
For the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew

Aah, aah, aah, aah

In the year of '39 came a ship in from the blue
The volunteers came home that day
And they bring good news of a world so newly born
Though their hearts so heavily weigh
For the earth is old and grey, little darling we'll away
But my love this cannot be
Oh so many years have gone though I'm older but a year
Your mother's eyes from your eyes cry to me

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
Write your letters in the sand for the day I take your hand
In the land that our grandchildren knew

Don't you hear my call though you're many years away
Don't you hear me calling you
All your letters in the sand cannot heal me like your hand

For my life
Still ahead
Pity me

Some keywords for this episode: Chief Petty Officer Miles O'Brien, Colm Meaney,   Avery Brooks, Captain Sisko,  Rene Auberjonois , Cirroc Lofton, Jake Sisko, Alexander Siddig, Doctor Bashir,  Armin Shimerman, Quark, Nana Visitor, Major Kira, Terry Farrell, Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax, Michael Dorn, Lt. Commander Worf

The San Jose Sharks show the rest of the NHL how it is done.

It is no secret the NHL sucks hard when it comes to advertising. They have had very few good campaigns. Those that work are the ones which actually focus on how cool watching hockey is, such as the "history will be made" ads for the playoffs last year, which I discussed last spring.

But for the most part, the NHL marketers seem to forget that they are trying to get people interested in a sport that is naturally fast and action packed because it is played with ice skates and involves hitting the puck with sticks at a hundred miles an hour. Not to mention the major selling point that it is the only major sport in the US where the refs let the players punch each other.

So instead of making ads with footage of the many exciting elements of game play, or focusing on the players personalities like basketball does, they instead think of gimmicks not related to the players or even to hockey, like the imbecilic "NHL Guardians Project" which combined comic books, something that has been declining in popularity since the 1980's, with hockey, something which has never been popular in the US unless it involved Wayne Gretsky playing for the Kings. 

I can't name any players on the San Jose Sharks besides their captain, Joe Thorton, but that didn't stop me from loving this parody of "The Home Shopping Network" featuring Sharks players making fun of each other. Its over eight minutes long, so you probably won't want to watch the whole thing if you are not a hockey fan, but every second of it is really clever. And the text on the bottom and sides which goes along with each item is as funny as the dialogue.




Long form ads like this do a great job of making existing fans feel like they have more of a vested interest in the team. It really sells the players personalities and makes them seem like the kinda guys you would want to hang out with. This doesn't necessarily translate into wanting to watch them play hockey, but it definitely does a lot more to instill interest in the Sharks and hockey in general than a giant tree that uses sap as a weapon.


via the excellent hockey blog Puck Daddy

Why Isn't Kylie Minogue gyrating in Lingerie the basis for all ads?

Seriously. I can't think of an ad that wouldn't be improved by Kylie Minogue in lingerie. If that Chevy Sonic ad in the previous post had been a minute of Kylie Minogue in a bra and stockings writhing around on top of a Chevy Sonic instead of dropping it out of a plane it would have been the greatest car ad of the year. It still would have told us nothing about the car, but dudes would have bought the car just on the off chance that owning it would cause half naked women to roll around on top of it.

The above ad was also a very effective ad for mechanical bulls covered in couch fabric.


I'm not sure why the creepy old woman was in the ad. Based on the end its seemed like the ad was meant to be shown in movie theaters, so maybe the old woman was just there to make the whole thing slightly less sexy and prevent massive outbreaks of people masturbating openly in movie theaters.

Daily Show adds opening credits to their commercial breaks

I was too busy laughing at this to get a screen capture, but a Chevy Sonic car ad came up during the commercials on dailyshow.com and it showed the title card (with the 7 second count down in the corner and beeps at each second) which ad agencies put in front of their ads. Thanks to this, I momentarily knew the name of the ad agency with created that ad where the drop a Chevy Sonic out of a plane (assumedly the same guys behind the Danny Glover film "Operation Dumbo Drop"), as well as the director and the ad's official title. I don't actually remember any of these details, since It only appeared for seven seconds, and I was too busy laughing uncontrollably at the fact that this title card was playing as part of an ad on a website owned by Viacom, one of the largest media companies in the world,  who should in theory have figured out how to play ads properly by now. If you are watching the Daily Show and something like that comes up be sure to let me know.

This probably doesn't amuse anyone else as much as it amuses me, but that is probably true of most of the stuff I post here.


Here is the ad in question:



It clearly is a very effective ad for a car, since you can barely see the shape or styling of the car with it spinning and all the lens flares, and they never mention any features or its price or how it handles. But if you are planning on buying a car based on its ability to fall out of a plane, boy howdy does Chevy have a car for you.

Holy Shit The Old Spice Guy Mentions Thor!!!

To be fair, I don't think he meant the "Thor's Hour of Thunder Podcast" but any mention for Thor by winner of "Strictly Commercial's best product spokesman of the 21st Century Award"* is pretty cool.



Footnote(s):
* An award with a rich history which I just made up and and am giving out right now.  

Podcast Episode 38

Thor's 38: Commander Riker's sexy beard edition

go to the official website to download or subscribe via iTunes or the RSS feed

Star Trek special with Thor, Balder, Hiemdale, and new god Njord.

Special guest interview with Kerry Kastin about The Blowout Theatre Company at 50 minutes into the hour.

http://www.blowouttheatre.com/

We talk: Patrick Stewart, Deep Space Nine, Data, Sherlock Holmes, Star wars, Blowout Theatre, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, William Shatner, Bones McCoy, Gordie LeForge, Seven of Nine, Spock.

This is not the Batman footage playing in front of Mission Impossible 4

But its funny as fuck. And you don't have to pay 20 dollars to watch it, and when it finishes your not stuck in a movie theater watching an impish Scientologist smirk his way through CGIed action scenes.

Why isn't Steve Buscemi in Batman? Actually why isn't Steve Buscemi in every movie?

via Warming Glow

That's a nice quote

I've haven't been big into organized religion for a long while but this quote seems to have a good idea

I would probably be more effective at remembering actual important things if my brain didn't dedicate so much of its storage capacity to old ad jingles

Dave Barry once called this useless pop culture filling up one's brain, "Brian Sludge" and said he know longer can remember the names of any of he co-workers but knows every second of the brill cream ads from the 50's

This awesomness is self explanatory

This food truck's outfit is slick as hell

I don't know how well you can tell this from my shitty photo, but this food truck in Philadelphia has had the whole side decorated with a tile mosaic.

I don't know what this thing even sells but next time I see it I am buying some just to honor its awesome tile-vertising on the side. 

Actual government issued street sign in philly

Corrected accurately, and presumably by the actual Philly parking authority,  with stickers and duct tape.

I am switching to this bank

Savings advice from sesame street characters?

Holy shit that is awesome!

I write a twitter from the perspective of a llama now

I thought you would want to know this.

read it here:

 https://twitter.com/#!/aRealLlama

Podcast Episode 37

Thor's 37: Elmo and Beyond the Infinite

as always are swanky official site is over at  Hour of Thunder

We discuss more Muppets, Loki's meeting in person with the actual Elmo and his friend Kevin Clash.

This is an episode where we are all in the same room for a change. The folks sitting the room are: Frayja, Baldr, Loki, and of course your humble narrator, Thor.

Heil could not join us for this episode because she had to get down to business and defeat the huns.

NOTE: I, Thor said, "Bert" instead of "Bird" to talk about this Johnny Cash on muppet's sketch.

Its Big Bird that appears in the sketch, though you wouldn't know it from this podcast because I said "Bert" cause I'm bad at things. This causes much confusing at about 10 minutes into the podcasts.

Other than that this podcast makes sense. Well, as much sense as we normally make.

These words come out of our mouths: Valhalla, In person, getting punched in the face, The Muppets, Jason Segal, Kermit, Elmo, Kevin Clash, Jim Henson, 80's Robot, GPS, New Coke, Polar Bear Coke Cans, Crystal Pepsi, Coca-cola, Arctic, charity, polar bears, The eagles, Hotel California, Drinking Game, The Muppets Drinking Game, Everclear, Tequila, Sam Adams, Beer, Podcasters, Occupy Octopi, hourofthunder ( at ) gmail com, https://twitter.com/#!/aRealLlama, Siri, iPhone 4S, Well Tequila, Tabasco Sauce, Gnos Cold Praire Fire, The Philsophers stone. joan beaz, Judy Collins, Johnny Cash, Robert Deniro, Big Bird, Sesame Street, The Future, Fred Rogers, Mister Rodgers, Aloysius Snuffleupagus, Mr Snuffleupagus, The Baldr's Recommendations Song at 15 minutes into the podcast, porn, IFC, "Being Elmo", Clifford, Purple Jamaican Muppet, Captain Kangaroo, Take money out of your parent's wallet, Captain Kangaroo Scandal, Snopes.com, Snopes, Scotty, Star Trek, La petite mort, Tom Hardy, Dark Knight Rises, Bane, Thomas Hardy, La petite mort, raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways, Apple, macintosh, Doctor Who, david tennant, Orgy, Rene Russo, knitted panda hat, Old Spice Guy, Tickle Me Elmo, Grover, Grover as the old spice guy, the monster your man could smell like, Elmo's World, Mr. Noodle, isaiah mustafa, Nice Shoes, Wanna fuck?, Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, Silvio Berlusconi, hookers, General Grievous, "I'm the goddamned pope", roberto benigni, Jason Statham, Hogan, Episode 26 of podcast, Jason Statham fucking, The Stath, What muppet are you the most like, Favorite Muppet

You can follow Thor pretending to be a Llama on twitter if you are so inclined.

In conclusion:
Drink Everclear and LIVE FOREVER!!!!!

BONUS Strictly Commercials ONLY words and videos:

The Johnny Cash sketch we talked about isn't available for embed, so here are two other times Johnny Cash Showed up and kicked ass on Seasame Street because Johnny Cash is the man. I liked the movie Walk The Line, particularly for the part where they tour with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis (whoever place Lewis has the best monologue of the 2000's when he talks about why they are all going to hell while he drives to the next gig.)

That said, I wish walk the line had focused a bit more on what made Johnny Cash awesome, instead of as many of the parts were he was being a dick and drugged out of his mind.

What I'm saying is, Like all movies, that movie needed more muppets.