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So this week we got to interview Parry Gripp, he of awesome-internet-song and underrated-rock-band fame.  Hopefully I didn’t make toooo much of an ass of myself, but the fact that we managed to do an interview that wasn’t just 20 minutes of girlish squeals has to be considered a success.  INTERVIEW STARTS AT THE 47-MINUTE MARK. We talked death in the late 90s, the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate, and lots of other fun stuff.  One interesting note was the genesis of “The Girl at the Video Game Store,” the song G4 eventually used for Attack of the Show and made a video for starring Olivia Munn (which he’d recorded on his own before G4 came along).

“I was trying to buy a Nintendo Wii, and I was working on this record for Hallmark, of kids’ music.  And my system was to work late into the evening, and then wake up in the morning and take the things that I’d recorded, go to Starbucks, buy a cup of coffee, and listen to what I’d made the night before.  Then I’d walk to the video store right when they opened and see if they had a Wii.  And it was probably a couple weeks before I got one. So I’d go in there, and there was this girl who worked there.  And I’m kind of older, but I know if I was younger, I would’ve been kind of fixated on her, because that’s just the kind of nerd I was in high school.  So every day for a couple weeks I’d go in there, and I’d ask if the Wii was in yet, and the girl would be like, ‘You know, you could just call.’”

I should also include a link to Horrible Movie Night, which I think I was supposed to ask about but didn’t.  In all seriousness, it sounds pretty cool if you live in the LA area.  Besides Parry, we brought Lindy West back to talk Sucker Punch.   Listen, share, enjoy.

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Jimmy Kimmel Live has reportedly hired Heidi the Cross-Eyed Opossum* to predict this year’s Oscar winners, leading to this delightful BBC Article:

A cross-eyed, overweight opossum has won an unlikely starring role in coverage of this year’s Oscars.

Okay, I like where this is going, tell me more…

Heidi is an opossum who became a German media sensation and now has a global following, with 300,000 Facebook fans. Details of her contract are confidential but it seems she will be predicting the award winners. Producers of the show may be hoping she can emulate the success of another German celebrity creature, Paul the Octopus.

I knew Paul the Octopus.  I worked with Paul the Octopus.  You, madame, are no Paul the Octopus.  Still, it’s undeniable that furry animals with disabilities are both hilarious and heartwarming (see also: the fainting kitties, Charley the Retarded Cat).  Sometimes I think if scientists could just teach special needs kids to grow fur, it’d be much easier to find special ed teachers.

He won global fame during last year’s football World Cup, correctly predicting the outcome of all seven German games plus the Spain-Netherlands final.

Somehow I doubt a fat opossum that can’t see will be a worthy replacement for an able-bodied cephalopod that was clearly a warlock. But if it’s between a disabled marsupial and the people who nominated The Blind Side last year, I’ll take the marsupial.  Maybe Heidi can even be the first to point out that The King’s Speech was boring and predictable.  Opossums are notoriously unswayed by fancy acting.

For the record: Hyrax riding a tortoise > fat, cross-eyed opossum

*Quick science note here: it seems “possum” refers to marsupials native to Australia, New Guinea, and Suluwesi, while “opossum” refers to Western Hemisphere marsupials.  Since Opossum sounds kind of stupid to say, I guess we have to accept that in certain cases, we’re actually saying ‘possum, not possum. Now, if someone could just add the Godd*mn G that belongs on the end of “orangutan”, we’d be set.