Hate Expectations

Lizzy invokes one of her birthday wishes this year to whisk the Hate Expectations team off to a hidden corner of the south pacific, where a magical island of humans and dinosaurs live and work together in near perfect harmony. Yes, we dust off James Gurney's coffee table classic, Dinotopia (1992), and then unearth a dvd copy of the Hallmark mini-series from a decade later. Despite the book contain...

Representing a slight departure from reality, this episode of Hate Expectations finds Nate and Lizzy taking a long hard listen to The Who's rock opera, Tommy, looking deeply into the Ken Russell movie of the same name (1975), and speaking freely about the sensations it inspires in them. They are joined by their friend, Matt Anderson, on a quest to divine meaning where there is mostly only a series...

It's Christmas time in the City of Angeles. And while decent listeners sleep the sleep of the righteous, the Hate Expectations crew prowls for merry noir, not knowing that James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential is coming to punch them in the gut. Another Christmas episode*. Another not-overly sentimental property to discuss. Ellroy called his novel (1990) a book "for the whole family, if the name of you...

Let's just say this up front -- the book, The Warriors (1965) by Sol Yurick, is a realistic take on New York city gangs and their activities. Consequently, in our discussion of it and the 1979 movie of the same name directed by Walter Hill, we cover a lot of potential trigger warnings, use a lot of adult language, and touch on some less than pleasant topics. However, we still manage to have a bit...

In a very special episode of Hate Expectations, we reveal that one one of the two of us is actually an android. However, technology has come so far since the time of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968, Philip K. Dick) that it's impossible to distinguish us from real humans now. The only consequence for the show is that we can finally reveal the answer to the titular question. (Yes they do,...

We're watching the detectives. Technically, we were reading Erich Kästner's Emil and the Detectives (Emil und die Detektive, 1929) and watching some of the five films they shot based on the extremely popular German book. Despite being on the case on and off for months, we at Hate Expectations somehow let a few facts slip past our absurdly large magnifying glasses, which may have caused a bit of co...

The "Empire Strikes Back" of Hate Expectations's Ready Player One episodes, this half contains ever more of cultural reference popouts and just as many SPOILERS, as well as the truly outrageous Snuffy Walden awards. Join our heroes as they continue their bogus journey through Ernest Cline's novel and Steven Spielberg's movie, navigating the mazes and monsters contained in the OASIS. Enjoy the show...

You want pop culture references? We've got all the references you can handle right here, in this potentially timely episode of Hate Expectations. Nate, Lizzy, and special guest Chris Lemon immerse themselves in the world of Ready Player One. The 2011 novel, by Ernest Cline, was adapted for 2018's cinema by former Wunderkind Steven Spielberg, and we're here to report back from front of the theater....

In an earlier episode ( HE006 ), Hate Expectations discovered that time is an illusion, and lunchtime doubly so. That concept is taken to the outer limits in Ted Chiang's award winning sci-fi novella, The Story of Your Life (1998). Listen in to this recording of Lizzy and Nate as they get down verbally with their friend and returning guest host, Siobhan Beeman. The three intrepid explorers try to...

Did you know that action classic Die Hard (1988, dir. John McTiernan) was based on a novel? We at Hate Expectations were overjoyed when we first learned about Nothing Lasts Forever (1979, Roderick Thorp), because it meant that we could cover the adaptation for our first Christmas episode. And that's exactly what we've done! We even ganged up with our friend and previous guest host, Rich Johnson, t...

In honor of this most wonderful time of the year (it's still Halloween somewhere, right?), the Hate Expectations team sinks its teeth into the anime classic, Vampire Hunter D. We drank in the English translation (2005) of the Hideyuki Kikuchi novel (1983), were hypnotized into a restless trance by the animated movie adaptation (dir. Toyoo Ashida, 1985), and finally fought through the whole ramblin...

Alan Turing is one of the principle reasons you're able to read this sentence on a computer right now. He is also a major reason the sentence is in English instead of German or Japanese. He's a fascinating character with an fascinating life cut way too short. So when our friend and guest host, Siobhan Beeman, suggested we hash out the Turing biography (Alan Turing: The Enigma, Andrew Hodges, 1983)...

The player characters at Hate Expectations both lesbian the movie Scott Pilgrim vs the World. So it was an easy choice to make the book/movie combo the next one up in their podcast. Game as Lizzy and Nate were to take on the boss challenge this presented, they must now console themselves with putting a few bits they missed during recording on this platform: Scott Pilgrim was inspired by the song o...

Team Hate Expectations lives up to their name again, as Lizzy, Nate, and special guest, Jeff Emery, weigh in on Vision Quest, the Terry Davis novel (1979) and the Harold Becker film (1985) adapted from it. In this episode our lunatic crew chases the story all over the mat, trying to grapple with a book that eschews conflict for verisimilitude, and with a movie that scores no points in reversing th...

The Hate Expectations regulars, Lizzy and Nate, along with out-of-this-world special guest Jonathan Franklin, dig into America's past's potential future by watching and reading The Man Who Fell to Earth, the Walter Tevis sci-fi novel (1963), and the Nicolas Roeg directed David Bowie vehicle (1976). Much is made of how the filmmakers attempt something strange and curious, but ultimately alienate th...

Come to Oceania, where palm trees sway in the tropical breeze and the sun gently carresses the sea. Our hero, a young British colonial officer, takes his new wife to the farflung post of the Gilbert and Ellice islands, where he documents the culture clash with both the native islanders and the more experienced British officers. His memoir, A Pattern of Islands (1952), is a loving tribute to the pe...

Your humble narrators, Lizzy and Nate, are back with another Love Bite mini-sode. Well, honestly, it's more of a macro-mini in this case. (There's a lot to get through, folks!) Listen in as we pontificate on a couple of subjects that really toyed with our imaginations and frankly just spoke to us. Join us, won't you?

I looked under chairs I looked under tables I'm tryin to find the key To fifty million fables They call me the seeker I been searchin low and high -- The Seeker, Pete Townshend Back to young adult lit we go, to 1973's The Dark is Rising, book two of the Susan Cooper series of the same name. As both our birthrights and contractual obligations mandate, we also cover the 2007 David L. Cunningham film...

Fulfilling our moral obligation as podcasters, Hate Expectations have finally entered the mini-episode game with a series we call Love Bites. In all such episodes we will discuss (hopefully) delightful little facts we have researched on the subject of...well, whatever particularly interests us. We hope it interests you, too!

Betty MacDonald had a farm, e-i-e-i-o. And on this farm she had some laughs, e-i-e-i-o. With a ha-ha here and a...well, you get the idea. Join Nate and Lizzy as they crack into the deliciously funny novel, The Egg and I (1945), and brood about the film adaptation (1947) made from it. In this episode there is yet another catty discussion about actress eyebrows, a special return appearance of the Co...

Could there be any other subject matter for our episode numbered HE007 than Ian Fleming's own James Bond? We'd give ourselves a license to squeal if that was anything more than a quantum of synchronicity. But truthfully, the topic came to us as a suggestion from our very first guest-hosts, Rich and Z Johnson! Specifically, the four of us spied with our little eyes only the third Bond book written...

Get your towels ready and loosen up your Electronic Sub-Etha Signaling Devices, as you join Hate Expectations' Lizzy and Nate on a journey through the various forms of Douglas Adams's classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Their babblings on the radio series, the book, the tv series, and the movie must surely rank up there with the very finest Vogon poetry. One reviewer has even called it...

"This episode's pretty cussin' good!" - Myself   Keeping to the trend of loving the source material and the adaptation made from it, we, the ever more inaccurately named Hate Expectations folks, take you back to childhood favorite Roald Dahl's second tier classic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the Wes Anderson film of the same name. There is a bit more off-key singing and even a misguided attempt at musi...

...Oh, say does that star spangled banner yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave play ball?   In this episode Lizzy and Nate touch base with Moneyball, the 2003 book by Michael Lewis and the 2011 hit movie made from it. We take a swing at the non-fiction account of the Oakland A's baseball team, their manager, Billy Beane, and his use of sabermetrics to try to level the playi...

By the clicking of our tongues, some discussion this way comes.   No, we're not tackling the bard just yet, and we probably wouldn't start with the Scottish play if we were.  Rather, it's Ray Bradbury's 1962 novel Something Wicked This Way Comes and the 1983 film adaptation we're talking about.  It's a zippity-doo-dead kind of horror the way Disney used to make.  As always, we dissect the differen...