Hot Streak/Cold Streak

[Mason]

The Muppets are having a cold streak.

There. I said it.

*sniff*

Sad but true. Ever since...well, you know. The unavoidable change in leadership. Went from charming to corny right quick.


Hot Streak: Hows about AST Poll perennial Paul F. Tompkins? Did someone say this already? Several years ago there was some buzz around his name, but unless you lived in LA and went to Largo, you'd just know him as that guy from Mr. Show. Then boom! He's on fire. Since then the man can do no wrong. (I hesitate to write that. When people start saying "can do no wrong", you know you're in for a fall).

Cold Streak: Quark XPress (page layout program). The industry standard in printing, graphic design and publishing since the late 80's. Somehow it clung onto its position forever, despite the program staying horribly outdated with each new version. Despite being a buggy and unintuitive piece o' crap software that often corrupts files. Finally Adobe InDesign has established itself as proper alternative, so Quark's streak looks to have ended. Goodbye Quark, I never loved you. I merely tolerated you.

[argyle]

Pee Wee Herman was on an incredible hot streak from first movie through his self-love bust.  Then cold.
THEN he got a little warm again, when he hosted You Don't Know Jack for about five minutes.  Hot to Freezing to Warmed Over to Cold.

[yesno]

Cold Streak:  7 Second Delay

[Matt]

Hot: John Cazale: Godfather, pts I-II, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter. A spotless resume.

I had thought of this one also. The man only did five films in his life, but he made 'em count.

[gravy boat]

From a commercial success standpoint, John Travolta.  White hot with Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Welcome Back Kotter then mostly duds, reaching the lows of three (!) Looks Who's Talking movies.  Resurrected in Pulp Fiction, more success with Get Shorty, some other minor hits then backs to dudsville.  Battlefield Earth was a memorable disaster.

[John Junk 2.0]

Frozen Streak: Lady Talk.

[todd]

Cold Streak:  7 Second Delay

Never listened to the show, but was thinking about trolling through the archives - can you explain?

[masterofsparks]

Cold Streak:  7 Second Delay

Never listened to the show, but was thinking about trolling through the archives - can you explain?

You should definitely dig through the archives. The last several shows, with a couple of exceptions, have kinda flopped, though there are people in the audience whose favorite shows are the ones where the concept totally derails.

7SD is not as caller-driven as The Best Show, so I find that enjoy the podcast or listening on the archives just as much as listening live.

[John Junk 2.0]

I still listen to 7SD, but I don't know if the word "enjoy" really applies to any of them.

[yesno]

Never listened to the show, but was thinking about trolling through the archives - can you explain?

There's some great ones in there.  The game where Andy gets people to say "no" is one of the funniest things ever.  And overall, Andy is one of the most naturally funny people I've ever heard on the radio.

It's just that a lot of the recent shows don't really work.

[senorcorazon]

It's just that a lot of the recent shows don't really work.

Isn't that kind of the point? I find it one of the funniest things around, but it's definitely a SLOOOOOW burn. The one where they just repeated what was on the radio had me bored for 20 minutes and then dying of laughter.

[octopus volcano]

Twin Peaks was a hot streak which devolved into a cold streak.  Real cold.  It started to sputter after revealing Laura Palmer's killer, I guess it didn't really have anywhere to go after that.  I recently watched these again with someone who was too young to have seen them when they originally aired, she wanted to skip to the end of the series not long after the big reveal.  Which is what I did back in the day.  Even though I have the DVDs I've still never seen a good part of the second half of season 2.  It appears to really suck.  The finale is good though.

[Steve in North Hollywood]

Hot: John Cazale: Godfather, pts I-II, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, The Deer Hunter. A spotless resume.

I had thought of this one also. The man only did five films in his life, but he made 'em count.

You could almost say the same for JT Walsh.  But instead of only showing up in 5 films and making them all count, he showed up in damn near EVERY FILM for 15 years, making his one career count.  It's a shame he shuffled loose just when he was on the verge of becoming a household name.  But, here we are, ten years later, and Hollywood still hasn't replaced him.  Nobody plays "unassumingly creepy-as-hell" like JT Walsh did.

[Jouster]

Twin Peaks was a hot streak which devolved into a cold streak.  Real cold.  It started to sputter after revealing Laura Palmer's killer, I guess it didn't really have anywhere to go after that.  I recently watched these again with someone who was too young to have seen them when they originally aired, she wanted to skip to the end of the series not long after the big reveal.  Which is what I did back in the day.  Even though I have the DVDs I've still never seen a good part of the second half of season 2.  It appears to really suck.  The finale is good though.

The second season is kind of remarkable - from hot streak to cold streak back to hot streak at the end (or as close as you get to a hot streak when you're recovering from a cold streak like that).  There's no other show that squandered its potential as badly as Twin Peaks did, but it was still so rich that most of it remained interesting.  Even the plotlines that turned out to be so awful were interesting initially (except for James and the femme fatale, which had no redeeming qualities that I can remember).  Despite what people try to say, neither John from Cincinnati nor Carnivale came close to capturing that initial magic (in my opinion) - oh, well.

[Sarah]

I agree, Jouster.  But don't you think this is true in part because when it first aired Twin Peaks was absolutely, utterly, completely (insert additional hyperbolic synonym here) unlike anything anyone had ever seen on television?