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The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Star Wars, Rogue One, and the Forever Franchise

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

Just as TV shows don’t really end anymore, the new platonic ideal for a movie series, at least for some fans and/or execs, is one that keeps going indefinitely, with no end designed or in sight. That’s what seems to have happened to the Star Wars series following its 2012 sale to the Walt Disney Company, resulting in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first Star Wars movie without an “episode” designation. Naturally, Rob and Sabrina and Nathaniel and Marisa and Jesse went to see it and naturally we all had some opinions.

Our second Star Wars podcast, then, examines Rogue One and our thoughts on it, along with how it fits into this new mass-media landscape of franchises that just don’t know when to quit. Glory to our thoughts on Rogue One as a prequel, the uncanny valley, our internal squabbling over the status of the various Extended Universes, and our many impromptu pitches for further Star Wars spinoffs, and that’s before we even get to talking about the Fox X-Men movies and the DCEU. It’s all very nerdy and spoilery and you’re gonna love it.

How To Listen

We are now up to SIX (6) different ways to listen to a SportsAlcohol podcast:

Watching the Rio Olympics—Maybe Just Don’t?

Gripes
There are contrarians, there are iconoclasts, and then there is SportsAlcohol.com co-founder Marisa. A contraiclast? Her favorite Springsteen album came out this century, so she is basically a controversy machine.

Also, she is totally not a dude!
Marisa
Gripes

I have watched exactly one night of the Rio Olympics. And, after doing so, I cannot put myself through another. Some of my problems with the Games are with the events themselves, most of them have to do with NBC broadcast, and the two combine to make the whole thing unwatchable for me; call me a curmudgeon, but I’m not the only one who thinks so, since Olympic ratings are down (although that might be because of streaming).

“But Marisa,” you say, “you never watch sports. Obviously there’s no way you’d ever be into the Olympics.” Wrong. I can muster enthusiasm for sports spectating once every couple years, because: 1) Olympic stories are often inspirational, and I’m not made of stone. I like me a good tear-jerking backstory. 2) There is something genuinely thrilling about seeing people at the peak of their athletic prowess being the best at what they do. Even I can appreciate that. 3) I have good memories of watching the Olympics with my family as a kid—together, we’d all ignore sports regularly (except for my Dad who is a Giants fan and would bother us all by hogging the TV during football season) and then get together to get excited about gymnastics or ice-skating. 4) I can certainly get into things we watch together-but-separately and tweet about; if I can do it for Grease Live!, which has source material that I actively hate, I can easily do it for the Olympics.

Basically, I want the Olympics to be like the Oscars. Sure, the broadcast has problems—the same problems every year, which will probably never be fixed—but we can all hold our nose and watch because we can enjoy it together. Yet, while I know some of you are having a good time with this year’s games, this is not like the Oscars. These are the reasons I just can’t have fun with it, not even with a saucy wink.

lher

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