MASH is the book that inspired the movie that inspired the show M*A*S*H, which is set in an active war zone but doesn't have a ton to say about war. If you wanted to read about the exploits of a bunch of meatball surgeon wiseacres, though, it is not completely without its charms.
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Ho-na-na-na Hey-ey! It's time to talk about the 1995 film adaptation of the series, directed by Melanie Mayron and written by Dalene Young. We mostly enjoyed it, though we have to acknowledge how hard it is to squeeze full plots for each BSC member into one 94-minute movie. Also, what is the deal with Kristy's dad? Why is he so stinky?
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Before everyone's favorite heroes in a half-shell wore brightly colored bandanas and ate pizza for every meal, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were black-and-white underground vigilantes. Eastman and Laird drew on a variety of influences to create something that starts with the energy of self-serious parody before transitioning into the violent yet goofy comic series that would ultimately launch a goofy (but still sort of violent) cartoon empire. This collection contains the first 8 published issues from 1984-85, which includes a Raphael one-shot that introduces hockey stick enthusiast Casey Jones. Cowabunga!
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This week we've commissioned all thirteen of our clones to record thirteen other versions of this podcast, because we're just such busy guys that we can't do them all ourselves. So are you listening to us, or the clones? And if you're listening to clones, which ones??
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I don't care if Monday's blue, Tuesday's grey and - wait, Morrie's here. Tuesday's not so bad after all! Mitch Albom's breakthrough account of his meetings with the late Morrie Schwartz includes some moving lessons about how facing death head-on can help you lead life to the fullest. It also includes some observations by Albom that really threw Craig for a loop.
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This week's book examines the Asian-American experience through the age-old phenomenon of Hollywood typecasting. And there's an intentionally porous line that separates this book's "reality" from the rest of it, which kind-of-sort-of takes place inside of a formulaic police procedural.
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We jump way ahead in the sequence of the series (but not in the lives of our sitters, who remain stubbornly trapped in the Eighth Grade Time Loop), well into the books' ghostwritten era. This week we meet Abby, an acerbic new member of the Club, and we also meet ghostwriter Nola Thacker, who wrote over a dozen main-series BSC books during the original run.
This episodes posted first for Patreon supporters in 2025! If you want to hear the rest of our longreads ahead of time (and a bunch of other stuff besides), visit Patreon.com/overduepod.
Here's the full Sit Me Baby One More Time reading list:
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Paul Beatty took the Booker Prize in 2015 with this satirical novel about a grieving man’s attempts to put his small town back on the map. The book lampoons the notion of a post-racial America, touching the fourth rail of "political correctness" with outlandish scenes of segregation and slavery. It's a real high-wire act of a premise that he mostly pulls off??
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Ilya Rozanov. Shane Hollander. Two of hockey's greatest young goal scorers are also trying to score...with each other?? Reid's breakthrough hockey romance has become a true pop culture phenomenon, so we figured it was time to lace up the skates and see what the puck is going on with this most heated of rivalries. Happy belated Valentine's Day!
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Usually when robots gain sentience in fiction, they rise up and slay or otherwise subjugate their human creators, but this week's book dares to imagine what might happen if they stood up, looked around, said "thanks but no thanks," and left. It also ponders the meaning of existence, just for good measure.
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