Leslie Odom Jr. in Raleigh!

Posted on October 23, 2019 by Colleen

On Saturday, October 19, Jay and I saw Leslie Odom Jr. perform in concert at Meymandi Concert Hall in Raleigh, NC. He was great. He opened with one of my favorite songs from Hamilton, “Wait for It,” which surprised me. I thought for sure that we’d have to wait until the end for that song. It kept getting better from there. He sang a variety of songs, including a Nat King Cole song and an audience-singalong of “The Hi De Ho Man.” The other Hamilton songs he sang were “Dear Theodosia” (Jay’s favorite) and “The Room Where It Happened.” He also sang “Without You,” from Rent. All in all, it was a really great show.

Here’s a short (under 2 minutes) video that Jay made that compiles clips of the Hamilton shows he did.

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NCGeocachers’ Fall Fling 2019

Posted on October 21, 2019 by Colleen

Last Saturday, Zachary and I drove to Goldsboro, NC, to attend our first geocaching Fall Fling. Fall Fling is a yearly meetup for geocachers in North Carolina. It’s essentially like the meetup that we host for our podcasting friends every May.  People were there from all over the state. One woman even came down from Virginia.

We had a blast! I met a lot of new people, including people whose geocaches I’ve found all over the Raleigh/Cary area and people that I’ve messaged before looking for hints on where their caches are hidden, haha. Everyone was super nice and welcoming and very patient with Zach, who was feeling very headstrong and independent that day, hahaha. They had giveaways and a “creative cache” exchange. For the kids, they had cornhole and, the big winner for Zach, the opportunity to paint their own ammo can to hide someday. Zach painted two, of course, and was not shy about his very desire to stay at the picnic table areas and paint rather than join the small groups that had broken out to go find geocaches hidden in the park.

Here’s Zach with an adjustable walking stick that he “won” and his two painted amo cans:

I wasn’t going to do the creative cache exchange because I have no idea where or how to hide a geocache, but I also didn’t want to show up empty-handed so I took to Pinterest the night before we went and made ones for me and Zach to exchange. They’re okay. I feel badly for the people who won ours because they were kinda lame compared to some of the ones that I saw being exchanged (it was a blind exchange so you got what you got through luck).

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The Joker Isn’t a Joker After All (Movie Review)

Posted on October 7, 2019 by Colleen

This review contains light-to-medium spoilers. If you want to be completely unspoiled, please come back and read this after you have seen the movie.

Jay and I saw Joker on Saturday. I was a bit hesitant to see it because I had heard that it was dark and my sister had given me the heads up that it was more of a startling portrayal of mental illness than a straight-up villain origin story. Although I didn’t quite know what to expect going into it, that bit of knowledge changed my expectations. I think it gave me a different perspective on the movie overall than I would have had if I had gone in blindly.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this movie. Here’s my tl;dr take:

It’s beautifully shot. The acting is spectacular. I liked the ways that they tie it into the comic book universe. It’s not really as gory as people are making it out to be. All of the John Wick movies are about 100x’s more gory as this movie is. I loved the shot of Arthur in the police car that pays homage to the iconic shot of Heath Ledger’s Joker leaning against the car window in The Dark Knight. I’m a simple movie-goer. I love the sh*t out of Angel Has Fallen this past summer. Even I can appreciate how well-made this movie was.

I think Joker makes people uncomfortable because it’s much more “realistic” than a normal comic-book movie. You leave feeling icky because you know that it’s not really that much of a stretch. The Joker isn’t a campy agent of chaos; he’s a mentally ill individual that the system failed over and over and over again and we have seen that happen in real life over and over and over again.

If you’ve seen all of the Batman movies/TV shows and think of the Joker as some grand villain, then Joker is a buzzkill. The Joker’s backstory in Joker is tragic, but it’s not movie tragic. It’s real-life tragic and that really takes the fun out of the character. When you hear that it’s “dark,” that’s actually code for “could and does happen in real life.” That’s not what you watch a comic book movie for!

Okay, if you’re reading this on my main page, then here’s when you can click to read further. If you’re good based on what I wrote above, then we cool. Check out Jay’s video review of it on Geek. Dad. Life.

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The Lizzo Concert!

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Colleen

On Friday, September 13, Jay and I saw Lizzo perform at the Red Hat Amphitheater in Raleigh, NC. She was awesome! It was such a high-energy show and she is a spectacular performer. The crowd was great, too. It was just a really positive, enjoyable, entertaining experience all around. I would love to see her again if she comes back into town and look forward to new music from her in the future. My only complaint is that it was too short! I think she only performed for 90 minutes. We need more Lizzo! I can’t wait for her catalog to grow.

I didn’t write down our setlist because honestly, I figured I could just find it online. Of course, it’s not online haha. This set list was from a show a few nights after ours. Based on my memory almost a month later and after comparing it with other setlists from the tour, it seems to be fairly close to if not the same set list we had:

  1. Heaven Help Me
  2. Worship
  3. Cuz I Love You
  4. Exactly How I Feel
  5. Scuse Me
  6. Water Me
  7. Jerome
  8. “It’s My Party” / Crybaby
  9. Tempo
  10. Boys
  11. “Jigalow” Game / Like a Girl
  12. Soulmate
  13. Lingerie
  14. Good as Hell
  15. Truth Hurts

Encore:
1. Juice

Here are some videos that I took. Jay took more video (and they’re honestly probably much better quality). I would have uploaded those instead/as well, but he got a new phone the day after we went to the concert and forgot to plug in his old phone after we got home that night, so none of the pictures and videos he took backed up onto his iCloud! Whomp, whomp. Luckily, he had made an Instagram post with a couple of videos so all is not totally lost.

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Geek. Dad. Life. Ep. 1 is Out!

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Colleen

Episode 1 of Jay’s new video blog, Geek. Dad. Life is out! For his premiere episode, Jay goes on a Geek Quest to buy a Tron cocktail arcade game. He drove 17 hours roundtrip to Tennessee on Saturday while Zach, Alex, and I went to visit my family on Long Island (we make a brief appearance in the beginning of the video). If you have a few minutes, please check it out. He’s trying to get to 100 subscribers so he can unlock cool YouTube features, so please subscribe too! Thanks!

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The Broadcast Ep. 4.12 “Squish Squish Bish”

Posted on October 1, 2019 by Colleen

Man, it has been about 10 months since I made a real post on here. This morning, I uploaded some of the pictures and videos that I took at the Lizzo concert a few weeks ago. I promised on The Broadcast that I would make a blog post about the concert and am going to make that happen! Hopefully, I have some time later today to put together the post.

But in the meantime, speaking of The Broadcast, we’re still going strong. In February, we started doing monthly bonus shows for the Jay + Jack Patrons (www.patreon.com/jayandjack). We play clips that had been edited out of the regular shows over the previous month and give commentary to them. I think they’re fun. We also let Patrons watch us record once a month, too.

We’re in season 4 now and have done 147 episodes, which is crazy. On this most recent episode, “Squish Squish Bish,” we hear about Amanda’s trip to the West Coast, Shandy’s war on nylons, and my adventures in hernia surgery. We also learn how long it takes to poop out a LEGO, get a little listener feedback in, and manage to keep the show to 72 minutes. It’s a good time. Check it out if you have an extra 72 minutes this week. 🙂

I had a weird tech glitch just as I was about to export this episode. My computer crashed. I had just saved the file, so I wasn’t panicking. I restarted and reopened GarageBand to find…that the audio file had suddenly changed into the exact same 18-second clip and was repeating over and over again. It was crazy. I was so mad and frustrated, though, that thought I was going to throw something across the room. I had to re-edit the entire episode and finally finished it around midnight. I fell asleep sitting up while it was uploading, haha, and finally posted it when I jolted myself awake at 1 a.m. Whew! I took a little video to try and explain what on Earth I was looking at. If anyone out there has ever had this happen in GarageBand, let me know. I know the audio file in the “media” folder for the episode changed but I have no idea how or what happened. Ah, technology.

Stay tuned for the Lizzo stuff in the next day or so!

Buy our super fun mug: https://teespring.com/team-universe-science#pid=522&cid=101870&sid=front

You can listen to the latest episode below or via jayandjack.com, iTunes, Spreaker, Stitcher, Google Play/Android, etc.

Happy Listening and thanks for listening.

Listen to “The Broadcast Ep. 4.12 “Squish Squish Bish”” on Spreaker.

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Coming Soon: Dad. Geek. Life.

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Colleen

Hello! It’s been a hot minute, but if anyone is still paying attention, there’s an announcement from the Glatfelter household: Jay is doing a vlog! It’s just for fun and he’s got a lot of really fun ideas for it. I’m super excited to see how he chronicles his/our family’s life. Check out the trailer and please subscribe to his YouTube channel. Thanks!

I’m going to have to get off my butt and start updating this blog again. Nothing like a little bit of peer pressure to get the ball rolling, hahaha. Have a great weekend, friends!

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Some The Broadcast Updates

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Colleen

Hello! It’s Monday and since The Broadcast is recording our second annual crossover with The Real Weird Sisters tomorrow night, I figured I would do a little update to plug our most recent episodes and solicit feedback for our crossover.

Ep. 3.25, “Almost Kidnapped” –  Our first episode of 2019! We came back from the holiday break with lots of tales of adventures, including searching through a snow cemetery, driving through torrential downpours, speeding tickets, a failed massage, airplane trouble, and an almost-kidnapping.

Ep. 3.26, “I Forking Love It” – We discuss the new Gilette ad, a weekend without the Internet, a cranky former neighbor, Amanda’s injured mouse-clicking finger, and more. A listener email inspires a discussion about sexism, both overt and implicit.

Ep. 3.27, “A Corn Maze for Your Ears” – I share Alex’s latest milestone, Shandy tells us about a life-changing purchase, and Amanda’s cat is having a midlife crisis. We also talk eggs, how you like your bacon, the Oscars, awkward things that we don’t talk about, and more.

Finally, here is a link to our last crossover episode with The Real Weird Sisters, Ep. 2.30, “I’m with Heriscus: The Real Weird Crossover.” We had a ton of fun with Alice and Martha discussing things like wizard birth control, the real use for the Room of Requirement, feminism in the Harry Potter universe, and of course, the gazillion Marry/F/Kill choices sent in from listeners, haha. We are so excited to get to chat with them again. Please send us any feedback to TheBroadcasters3@gmail.com or 331-BROADS3 (331-276-2373) and make sure you check out The Real Weird Sisters’ podcast if you haven’t already!

You can listen to The Broadcast via jayandjack.com, iTunes, Spotify, Spreaker, Stitcher, Google Play/Android, etc.

Happy Listening and thanks for listening.

Listen to “The Broadcast Ep. 3.27 “A Corn Maze for Your Ears”” on Spreaker.

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The Broadcast Ep. 3.19 “There’s a Wikipedia Page for That”

Posted on November 16, 2018 by Colleen

The Broads are back for episode 109, which is also the same number as the number of Trump scandals we’ve had since our last episode on Election Day. We discuss the midterm results, Amanda’s trip to Raleigh, Shandy’s smoky weekend, favorite Thanksgiving foods, and make an incredible discovery about Wikipedia pages that they are probably literally the last people in the world to not have known. This episode was brought to you by cinnamon raise bagels.

Buy our super fun mug: https://teespring.com/team-universe-science#pid=522&cid=101870&sid=front

You can listen to the latest episode below or via jayandjack.com, iTunes, Spreaker, Stitcher, Google Play/Android, etc.

Happy Listening and thanks for listening.

Listen to “The Broadcast Ep. 3.19 “There’s a Wikipedia Page for That”” on Spreaker.

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Double Dare Live!

Posted on November 5, 2018 by Colleen

Last Tuesday, Jay, Zach, Alex, and I joined our friends Elena, Chad, and Katie at the Double Dare Live tour. It was so awesome! Jay and I watched the new season of Double Dare and the old seasons of Family Double Dare with Zach over the summer, so we jumped at the opportunity to see it when the show toured in our area.

Marc freaking Summers was there! And he kept coming into the audience so at one point, he was like 5 feet away from us. It was SO COOL.

Here’s how it went down. For the first 45 minutes, they took volunteers from the audience to do the different challenges on stage. Sometimes it was paired up kids against grown-ups, sometimes it was a grown-up and a kid, sometimes it was kids against kids, other times grown-ups against grown-ups. Every single adult there was super enthusiastic and answered their own version of “Hell yeah!” when asked if they had been a fan of the show as a kid. It was like Millennials go to Nickelodeon heaven.

Marc getting contestants from the audience.

Marc getting contestants from the audience.

There was a 15-minute intermission after the challenges were done. When the show resumed, they had families compete to widdle it down to a final two that then competed a la the actual game show. That part was especially a blast. They did questions, physical challenges, and the winners got to do the obstacle course! We were so envious of the woman who got to pick the nose to find the flag. Jay and I have watched so much Double Date that we have strategies and plans if we ever get to be on it!

Family Double Dare competition.

I hope this is still around 10 years from now so we can compete with the boys. It really was just a super fun night. Even Alex, who desperately wanted to go to sleep because he has a pretty strict 7 p.m. bedtime (and the show started at 7 p.m.), was well-behaved because there was enough stimulation around him to keep him interested in between yawns and snuggles. Jay and Zach had a great time, too. They left the obstacle course up after the show was finished and they went up to the edge of the stage and got to touch the nose!

Double Dare live gets a big thumbs up from us. If it ever comes to your area, definitely check it out. The only downside is that it is somewhat pricey ($50/ticket). I would not recommend doing the VIP tickets. Jay has a friend who did that and said that they really weren’t that worth the extra money.  Finally, a big shout out to their customer service department. We bought 3 t-shirts and I washed them when I got home. I followed the instructions and did tumble dry low and the logo on Jay’s got a bit melted on the inside. They replaced it for me without any trouble at all, to which I was grateful, as the shirts were also a bit expensive ($25/shirt).  Thanks, DD customer service!

Posted in Adventure, Good times, NC Adventures | Tagged , , | 1 Comment