I tend to marathon random TV shows while I do my actual work, and lately it's been "Mythbusters". The science is pretty awesome-tastic, and of course they use any excuse to drag stuff out to the bomb range and let their retired FBI guy play with C4. But, as I was telling people in the Awkward Army meetup not long ago, the people-reading thing is a superpower that cannot be turned off, so I wind up watching the crew about as much as I wind up watching the cannon.
Adam is obviously not really as twitterpated as he likes to look on camera, or he would be not just dead, but really ignominiously dead, several times a season. I'm guessing he's pretty enthusiastic about working in Hollywood; he's mentioned doing kit-bashing at ILM before the show, and every time there's an opportunity to pretend to be an action movie stunt man, he practically dislocates his shoulder, waving his hand in the air and yelling 'ooh! ooh! ME!' He must give his wife regular heart attacks.
[Excellent example of how checking for wedding rings can give false negatives a lot, incidentally, but not often false positives. Adam wears his -- he has to very pointedly take it off a few times, on-camera, to do things like jam his hand into a kettle of molten lead -- and Jamie doesn't. If you know someone is married, and they don't wear their ring, then there's a pretty good chance that they do some sort of work that a plain metal band would interfere with. Common ones are musician (depending on what instrument they play), medical personnel (doctor, nurse, EMT, veterinarian), chemist (gold is surprisingly reactive), electricians and other construction workers, and of course, engineers and mechanics.]
Jamie's fun. Reticent people leak just as much as loud people, they just don't feel the need to broadcast it audibly across the entire face of the Earth. There's some sort of rumor that runs around from time to time that the two hosts don't like each other much off-camera -- bollocks. They've been out drinking together. Jamie intentionally gets sloshed for three different myth tests, and the first two times Adam tries to tell the camera exactly what kind of drunk he is before he even remotely gets there. You don't know that about someone, or think it's that hilarious, unless you've already seen it in action.
Jamie's also known for standing by silently with his hands jammed in his pockets while Adam does something obstinately, ostentatiously stupid, like the time he decided to test his ninja water-walking shoes by throwing himself repeatedly into the swimming pool. Admittedly, M5 is his shop, and if Adam died there it would make rather a mess, but that's not actually why he does it. He's trying to make sure that the only thing Adam injures is what's left of his dignity. He's not just their primary safety guy because he's patient and meticulous, although that does help. When they decided to test a myth about whether you could torture someone by strapping them down and letting bamboo shoots grow through their chest cavity, Adam managed to totally intellectually uncouple the story from the result and was grade-school-boy levels of ecstatic that they got a 12' bamboo shoot straight through their ballistic gel dummy. Jamie was visibly rattled through the whole thing. Vaporizing cement trucks, yes, great fun -- but he's very squicky about actual people getting hurt.
Adam is obviously not really as twitterpated as he likes to look on camera, or he would be not just dead, but really ignominiously dead, several times a season. I'm guessing he's pretty enthusiastic about working in Hollywood; he's mentioned doing kit-bashing at ILM before the show, and every time there's an opportunity to pretend to be an action movie stunt man, he practically dislocates his shoulder, waving his hand in the air and yelling 'ooh! ooh! ME!' He must give his wife regular heart attacks.
[Excellent example of how checking for wedding rings can give false negatives a lot, incidentally, but not often false positives. Adam wears his -- he has to very pointedly take it off a few times, on-camera, to do things like jam his hand into a kettle of molten lead -- and Jamie doesn't. If you know someone is married, and they don't wear their ring, then there's a pretty good chance that they do some sort of work that a plain metal band would interfere with. Common ones are musician (depending on what instrument they play), medical personnel (doctor, nurse, EMT, veterinarian), chemist (gold is surprisingly reactive), electricians and other construction workers, and of course, engineers and mechanics.]
Jamie's fun. Reticent people leak just as much as loud people, they just don't feel the need to broadcast it audibly across the entire face of the Earth. There's some sort of rumor that runs around from time to time that the two hosts don't like each other much off-camera -- bollocks. They've been out drinking together. Jamie intentionally gets sloshed for three different myth tests, and the first two times Adam tries to tell the camera exactly what kind of drunk he is before he even remotely gets there. You don't know that about someone, or think it's that hilarious, unless you've already seen it in action.
Jamie's also known for standing by silently with his hands jammed in his pockets while Adam does something obstinately, ostentatiously stupid, like the time he decided to test his ninja water-walking shoes by throwing himself repeatedly into the swimming pool. Admittedly, M5 is his shop, and if Adam died there it would make rather a mess, but that's not actually why he does it. He's trying to make sure that the only thing Adam injures is what's left of his dignity. He's not just their primary safety guy because he's patient and meticulous, although that does help. When they decided to test a myth about whether you could torture someone by strapping them down and letting bamboo shoots grow through their chest cavity, Adam managed to totally intellectually uncouple the story from the result and was grade-school-boy levels of ecstatic that they got a 12' bamboo shoot straight through their ballistic gel dummy. Jamie was visibly rattled through the whole thing. Vaporizing cement trucks, yes, great fun -- but he's very squicky about actual people getting hurt.
Oh god I am still horrified by that episode. And also going "Oh my god bamboo is so cool." And also horrified.
ReplyDelete(But bamboo is so cool.)