A Degree Absolute!

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KINGS AND DESPERATE MEN Apr 06, 2022

Show notes

A movie for McGoohan die-hards that creator Alexis Kanner the Once-Boxed sued the makers of Die Hard over! Paddy McG and Kanner! Squaring off, with a Montreal radio show as their Thunderdome. A film with all the makings of a taut thriller involving hostages, a building wired with explosives, and McG in fine form: Rolling them Rs! Slamming them consonants! Playing drunk! Almost evincing sexual-adjacent desire! Features more overlapping dialogue than if you played Nashville, A Wedding, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller all at once!

Kings and Desperate Men

Shot 1977; released (sort of) 1981

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

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Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek

Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark

Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark

Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark

Bass by Marcus Newstead

"All-Time High"

Music by John Barry; lyrics by Tim Rice

Performed by Townland, from their fine new album Honey on the Hi-Fi

Special thanks to Linda Holmes, Gene Demby, and Jessica Reedy

THE MOONSHINE WAR Mar 23, 2022

Show notes

Patty McG's first major project after The Prisoner wrapped up in early 1968 was The Moonshine War, for Sex and the Single Girl director (and title-song lyricist!) Richard Quine. Quine did not write this film's remarkably concise and descriptive title song, "The Ballad of Moonshine," leaving that to Hank Williams, Jr. The great crime writer Elmore Leonard adapted the screenplay of The Moonshine War from his own 1969 novel. No one will argue it's on the level of later, adapted-by-other-screenwriters Leonard translations like Get Shorty, Jackie Brown, Out of Sight, or the TV series Justified, but the seeds are here.

Also here: Richard Widmark! A pre-M.A.S.H. Alan Alda! A pre-fame Teri Garr and a pre-billing Tom Skerritt! A pre-The Waltons Will Geer! Lee Hazlewood of Lee Hazlewood Industries as gun thug Dual Metters! Plus the Patty McG bedroom scene you've been dreading.

Here's the condescending and phony behind-the-scenes featurette we discuss on the episode.

The Moonshine War

Screenplay by Elmore Leonard, from his novel

Directed by Richard Quine

Released July 1970

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark Bass by Marcus Newstead

THE THREE LIVES OF THOMASINA with Josh Spiegel Mar 09, 2022

Show notes

Does Mister-not-Doctor Andrew MacDuhui (Paddy McG) hate pets? (He does not, no matter what his low-information neighbors in the fictional Scottish town of Inveronoch think.)

Did Walt Disney hate cats? (Our very special guest Disney expert, Josh Spiegel, makes a compelling case.)

Were animals harmed during the making of this motion picture? (Most certainly, regrettably.)

Our principled stand against pandering to the Internet's insatiable appetite for cat content crumbles as we pad, paw, 'n' claw our merryish way through...

The Three Lives of Thomasina

Written by Robert Westerby, from Paul Gallico's novel Thomasina, the Cat Who Thought She Wa God

Directed by Don Chaffey

Released December 11, 1963

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark Bass by Marcus Newstead

THE SCARECROW OF ROMNEY MARSH with Margaret H. Willison Feb 23, 2022

Show notes

On February 9, 1964, Ed Sullivan introduced a band from Liverpool, England formerly known as The Quarrymen to an estimated 73 million viewers of his primetime CBS variety show. And down the dial on NBC, the anthology series Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color drew an audience of something less than 73 million for the first installment of its three-part The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, an adaptation of Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan's novel Christopher Syn starring our man Patty McG as an 18th century man of the cloth* by day/masked-smuggler-by-night who helps the common people by... paying their taxes, we think? Using the funds he earns from smuggling brandy and tobacco. He also helps them elude the pressgangs who roam the marsh looking for reasonably able-bodied youngish men to abduct into King George III's Royal Navy.

*Specifically, a "fuckable vicar" in the estimation of our generously oversharing special guest Margaret H. "Hula Hoop" Willison, whose effervescent personality really ties the room together. (Dang. That's the wrong Coen Bros. reference.)

The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh

Teleplay by Robert Westerby, from the novel Christopher Syn by Russell Thorndike and William Buchanan

Directed by James Neilson

Original airdates February 9, 16, and 23, 1964

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark Bass by Marcus Newstead

SILVER STREAK with Ronald Young Jr. Feb 09, 2022

Show notes

Pop some vitamin E before listening, because it's gonna be hug 'n' munch all the way to Chicago! Solvable host Ronald Young, Jr. joins Glen and Chris to examine Silver Streak, ostensibly a hybrid romantic thriller / buddy comedy that gave the world the long-running Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor screen partnership and was a huge hit upon its release in 1976. America's bicentennial anum was a great a year for movies, more despite Silver Streak than because of it, but hey, the movie features a loveably smarmy Columbo-era Patrick McGoohan as the despicable villain. Along with a lot of trite and, by contemporary standards, deeply offensive comedy. Choo choo!

Silver Streak

Written by Colin Higgins

Directed by Arthur Hiller

Released December 8, 1976

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark Bass by Marcus Newstead

BOXING DAY SPECIAL: Let's Talk About Christmas (2019 yulemix) Dec 26, 2021

Show notes

CAUTION: This is not an episode of A Degree Absolute! This is a halldecking aid.

Happy Boxing Day, Degree Absolutionists! With Glen still waging his one-man war on Christmas from the sunny heathen hinterlands of Miami, I, Chris, have made an executive decision to use up our vacant server space this month to re-present my 2019 holiday mixtape, "Let's Talk About Christmas!"

And if you don't want to talk about, hear about, or think about Christmas, fear not! You can skip this non-episode entirely and catch us when regular programming returns in January.

I wrote about my long-running Christmas mixtape project in this 2012 Washington Post essay. 2012! That was like two or three years ago at least.

Cheer Is the Mind-Killer—Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable XVI [Side B] Dec 23, 2021

Show notes

#Yulemix21 ABIDES! In this second half of my XVIth senses-shattering installment in the apparently unkillable Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable series, Chris attempts penance for preempting your regularly-scheduled podcast with my mixtape by roping Glen & Casey in for some festive preamble before we get to the damn tape. Those halls aren't going to deck themselves, merrymakers!

Cheer Is the Mind-Killer—Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable XVI [Side A] Dec 12, 2021

Show notes

This is not an episode of A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! This is a halldecking aid. A DEGREE ABSOLUTE! shall return.

What this is is the sixteenth installment in what has become a venerable holiday tradition that invariably makes me feel unhinged in the final couple of months of each year. Sixteen! They grow up so fast. The Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable compilation series, most installments of which remain available to stream—I wish this had not become a joke—my Soundcloud is now as licensed to drive as any Cory. In the chronology of the EON Productions James Bond film series, it is Licence-d (sic) to Kill.

BRAVEHEART with Alexandra Petri Nov 17, 2021

Show notes

It's primae noctis for your ears because we can put it off no longer: The quintuple-Academy Award-winning a-historical epic Braveheart is the most widely seen and, your hosts agree, best latter-day expression of undiluted Patrick McGooted. The Washington Post's Alexandra Petri returns to discuss her journalist doppelganger, the New York Times' Alexandra Petri, and to share with Glen the virgin Braveheart experience. Freeeeeeeeeeeedommmmmmm!

Given the volume of Star Wars talk that seems to follow (the Post's) Petri around, it's a wonder we forgot to mention that Braveheart was produced by Alan "Laddie" Ladd, Jr., who 20 years earlier had been the guy preventing the board of 20th Century Fox from firing George Lucas off of the weird, expensive kiddie movie he was making and/or shutting the production down.

Braveheart

Written by Randall Wallace

Directed by Mel Gibson

Released May 24, 1995

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark Bass by Marcus Newstead

Our Top Six Twos Nov 03, 2021

Show notes

THERE CAN BE ONLY TWO(s) as Chris & Glen rank their top six on this week's exciting episode! Thanks to @UrbanSpaceMan64 for suggesting the topic.

Write to the Citizens Advice Bureau at adegreeabsolute dot gmail!

Leave us a five-star review with your hottest Prisoner take on Apple Podcasts!

Follow @NotaNumberPod!

Our song: "A Degree Absolute!"

Music and Lyrics by Chris Klimek Arranged by Casey Erin Clark and Jonathan Clark Vocals and Keyboards by Casey Erin Clark Guitar, Percussion, Mixing by Jonathan Clark Bass by Marcus Newstead

"Break Me Gently" written and performed by doves

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