Read it and Weep

Die Hard is back and this time, he's waiting at an airport for his wife when the terrorists attack and ruin Christmas eve for everybody. At some point, he might start taking this stuff personally.But while it's always fun to watch Die Hard run around shooting people, part 2 doesn't quite have the fun of the first movie. What it does have is a steam-powered airport and a weird airport troll that are all out to help him win the day.Happy holidays from all of us at Read it and Weep. Enjoy yourself... otherwise Killy will get you.

Dance Moms is the controversial reality show about a mean but effective dance teacher for young girls and the rich women who force their kids to study under her.Controversial because some times she dresses 9-year-olds like Vegas show girls, sometimes she hits people, sometimes people hit her, and lots of times kids cry.We had reality TV expert Colleen Clancy on to talk about the show, though as usual, she diverted our attention to Horders instead.

It's been a while since we've read an entire book about racism and sexual violence. Not long enough, we thought, but our generous sponsors that it'd been too long.Enter Caliphate, the junky science fiction book by Tom Kratman about how great Islamaphobia is. Sadly, this is all too topical right now, though we avoid talking about that and the book, for the most part, focusing instead of two important questions: Will zambonis ever find love and are hotdogs sandwiches?

In the early 2000s, the WB finally answered the question, "What would Superman be like as an annoying teenager?" They gave us Smallville, the overwrought but not entirely un-fun comic book soap opera starring Tom Welling and a variety of colorful rocks.Little baby Superman goes through such troubling events as football tryouts, asking girls out, getting a motorcycle, and talking ACTUALLY SANTA CLAUSE out of suicide. All this makes Tanya very angry, while Ezra only liked it when it was silly. But at least we get both opinions on this Superhost episode.Thanks to Meryl, the Meat Buddy who controls the weather, for sponsoring this as a gift to her friend Alex. Sorry to Friend Alex that we didn't love Smallville it as much as you do.

Alas, all things must come to an end. Even this movie that started a year ago and had a really long intermission. Even the trials and tribulation of Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire, who battled the hunger games, another the hunger games, and then a weird, urban, the hunger games.Yeah, President Snow hasn't seen a problem he didn't think he could hunger games away. But despite having an army of lizard people, drill floors and laser ceilings, and a city block full of hot oil, Katniss wins and everybody is melancholy, and the series is finally over. It would almost be a relief, if we didn't have rumors that Suzanne Collins was working on squeezing a few more dollars out of this one idea.Overall though, morale is high. Hands are raised. We're all pretty happy. Even Alex.

It's a holiday tradition as old as the pilgrims: a turkey having sex with and murdering college students for no reason. The story's been around forever. We just needed a couple kids with a gross-out sense of humor and $3,500 to make a movie about it.Thankskilling is a no-budget horror/comedy that tries to cover up the lack of jokes with some sexual assault. It's not an entirely bad idea, but it's so cluelessly executed that even parts that should be fun just make us face-palm. Like this:

If you thought Stephanie Meyer could just sit back and enjoy the retirement of her shitty characters, you were wrong. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Twilight she's back with... Twilight again! This time the names are different!Life and Death is a gender-swap of Twilight featuring Beau instead of Bella and Edith instead of Edward. And then basically everything is the same because gender just means liking sports or not. Well, the creepy power dynamics are gone but that's mostly just a coincidence. And the ending sucks for Charlie (who is the same for some reason). But it's really just the same book with the fun of coming up with gender-opposite names.But a weird thing happened when at least one of us was reading... listen to find out what.

The Magic School Bus is a gem of an educational show. It's fun, silly, interesting, aggressively multi-racial, and it actually teaches you stuff. It's also absolutely ridiculous.Take a journey with us inside this 90s cartoon, have a great time, and wonder adult things like, "Did their parents sign waivers?" "How will these kids do on standardized tests?" and "Can Mrs. Frizzle teach me how to do my taxes?"

Costumes! What is Ezra Eating! Engineer Scott! It's another Read it and Weep International Live Show! Recorded Sunday, 10/24.

5,000 years before the events of The Mummy, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was The Scorpion King. A half man half scorpionking, a warrior unlike any before him, an anachronistic pile of charming muscle.It's a fine movie, great for son and divorced father to wile away an hour and a half on an alternate Saturday.Today's episode is brought to you by our first ever Meat Market vendor, Nathan Heigert. His graphic novel Shade: The Dying World is up on Kickstarter and you should back it now. It looks great. As a special for RiaW listeners, anybody who pledges $35 or over will get a free sketch in addition to this week's special bookmarks/needlepoint promotion.Find out more about the Meat Market at meatmarket.space.Also, here's a blurry screen-grab of when Ezra's baby showed up dressed as mustard:

When The Rock, a Las Vegas cab driver, picks up two adorable blond alien children THE RACE IS ON. Where? To Witch Mountain. The one with no witches? That one.The Rock is at his best when he's got a heart of gold and something to punch and the combination of Men In Black (but not nice ones) and aliens (murdery ones) gives him that exact opportunity. They race, he wins, it's all good in the hood.We're joined by Xua who's got a new record out, synthesizers + field recordings from his trip to southeast Asia.Question of the week: Who's your favorite billionaire?

The biggest disaster that could ever befall Hollywood is The Rock leaving. The 2nd biggest would be an earthquake that killed everybody.Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson stars in a by-the-book disaster movie. California experiences a huge earthquake, a nerdy scientist predicts it but not in time, and The Rock has to save his family. Sure, he lets tons of people die in the mean time, but he's really into his family.It's not great, and it's certainly not The Rock's most The Rocking movie, but it's got plenty of fun stuff and the CG destruction of many parts of California that kinda deserve it.

We decided to kick off Dwayne "The Rocktober" Johnstober (AKA #TheRocktober) with one of his jungly-er movies. The Rundown, which had the working title "Welcome To The Jungle", is about The Rock punching people. Just like everything else he does.This time The Rock has to punch people in Brazil to bring back painfully unfunny Sean William Scott. He punches people, monkeys, and a brick pillar. Even Christopher Walken can't stop him; that's how powerful our buddy Dwayne is.Happy #TheRocktober, everybody. Stay punchy my friends.

There were two main things people were worried about in the 80s: nuclear war and giant frogs. So it makes perfect sense that a movie would get made about a sex god fighting against mutant frogs created by a nuclear war.Now, of course, it would be totally different. It would be a sex god fighting against mutant frogs created by global warming.But it wouldn't be as much fun. And that's Hell Comes To Frogtown is, it's fun. It's got Rowdy Roddy Piper (rest in rowdiness) and he can't really act but he sure can hang around being a sex god.

What would be really difficult for Ezra to understand for his #EasyMonth episode? How about a science fiction book about a two headed hand-faced horse who takes a giant cat, an emo dude, and the emo dude's sex friend across the universe to a man-made planet thing for no good reason? Yep. That.Ringworld is the incredibly sexist 1970s science fiction book about just such a journey. It's complicated and boring, like Larry Niven had some ideas about space and wanted to describe them for a couple hundred pages but couldn't think of a story to put around those descriptions.Happy honeymoon, Chris and Tanya. We miss you.