Fast Karate for the Gentlemen

Can I just take this moment as an aside to say that TV Tropes is like the shitty Wikipedia? Like, you can spend an equivalent amount of time lost in TV Tropes as you would in Wikipedia, essentially black out drunk on the internet, but where with Wikipedia there is a slight chance you might be edified, with TV Tropes, no such thing exists. You'll, in fact, push useful information out of your brain learning some of these absurdly long definitions they have for things.

—Dave. Episode 432: DRAGONS. IN 'NAM.

Two paragons of manliness, fresh from the destruction of the dino menace, decided to record a podcast about video games and terrible anime. In the end, however, they just ended up recording a podcast about food. What, they were hungry.

Welcome to Dave and Joel's Fast Karate for the Gentlemen, a podcast for your fist. Whereas most podcasts attempt some level of serious, on-topic discussion, Dave and Joel routinely go off topic, rambling on about 1980s action movies, Lord of the Rings, Twenty Four, food or otherwise unrelated content. The podcast simply begins with them talking, and ends arbitrarily with a related clip of music and a stinger. In between those two points are hilarious, unedited rambling conversations between two friends. Beware of a general NSFW status and no Spoiler warnings.

The podcast has been running constantly since 2005, making it one of the older podcasts still running that aren't done by professionals. Dave and Joel frequently team up with Atomic Trivia War 9000, Greatest Movie Ever, GeekNights and Anime World Order.

Tropes used in Fast Karate for the Gentlemen include:
  • Alice and Bob: Whenever the guys need a hypothetical Japanese guy responsible for whatever horrors they have witnessed, it is always Tanaka. "Dammit, Tanaka!" This name isn't used for all hypothetical Japanese guys; it's always used to refer only to incompetent or twisted executives, animators and programmers, or background characters who die in amusing ways.
  • Author Appeal: Food, particularly hoagies. Also, whenever a woman with short hair shows up, Dave makes a note of it.
  • Conversational Troping
  • Food Porn: If they aren't currently talking about 24, video games, or anime, they're talking about food in scrumptious detail.
  • Guest Host: On occasions where Joel is off on African safaris or getting married again, Dave sometimes gets somebody else to fill in.
    • Similarly, both Dave and Joel sometimes act as Guest Hosts to other podcasts.
  • Harem Genre: They dislike these shows and their related tropes, particularly when they come from an H-game series. Unfortunately, it's hard for them to get worked up about them anymore after seeing shows like Kanon and (particularly) He Is My Master.

Dave: Never has mankind experienced such pain except for those unlucky few that have watched He Is My Master!

  • Heterosexual Life Partners
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode is named after the funniest thing one of them said that episode[1]. On their site, they list an alternate title for each episode, usually the second funniest thing one of them said. Some episodes have more than one alternate title, such as #277.
  • Left Fielder: Constantly. Dave and Joel switch back and forth between topics without warning, particularly when the scheduled topic is boring.
  • Left It In: A running joke. Dave has stated that finds the concept of editing "abhorrent."

Erin: When it comes to totally non-edited podcasts, Dave and Joel's is really great, 'cause when I listen to it I assume they edit it except for long segments where they say, "We're going to cut this out later," and they never do.

Dave: And it's funny every time!
—Otakon 2007, 16:27
  • Let's Play: Dave has been posting clips and streaming videos of himself and others[2] playing games for over a year now. He also has the ongoing saga of Super King Awesome, his character from Morrowind and Skyrim.
  • The Nicknamer: Both of them. They usually cannot be bothered to remember the names of characters on bad shows, so they refer to those characters with interesting and inconsistent nicknames.
    • They got particularly good at it during their running reviews of Twenty Four, which featured the President of Not-Iran, Agent Junior Babykins, the First First Gentleman, Track-Suit Terrorist, and Secret Traitor Agent Starbuck. Many other characters were only referred to by their actor's name, such as Freddie Prinze Jr.
  • NSFW: Language and content. As Dave put it for episode #134: "I Have To Stop Saying ‘Vagina’ Into A Microphone".
  • Otaku: Not the guys themselves, but they have a character stand-in, Cogswell Pepperbox, representing every pretentious otaku douchebag who would defend the works they slag.
  • Praising Shows You Don't Watch: Early on in the podcast's run there was a series of incidents where Dave and Joel would praise the game that they were currently playing and encourage listeners to check it out, only to state in the next episode that upon further review the game is crap. This came to be known as the Fast Karate Flip. Thankfully, Flips are much less common these days.
  • Rant Comedy: Dave's specialty. Joel is usually much more concise and snarky.
  • Running Gag: They find the idea of babies doing unusual things endlessly entertaining. See: Hanabi, "Surely You Have No Use For A Baby", "Shut Up Baby I Just Got Shot" and "This Baby's Chompin' at the Bit!"
  • Schedule Slip: The number of episodes per year being released has been in decline in recent years, but the average length of a new episode is almost twice as long as a given older one. In addition, non-Fast Karate site activity has been increasing in the form of guest appearances on other podcasts, live streams of video games, and Jumping Through Boss Doors episodes.
  • Seinfeldian Conversation: There's a reason that the "This Show Is About" descriptions on the website often have nothing to do with the scheduled topic.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Joel and Dave respectively; Joel often serves as a moderating influence to Dave's rants. However, it's a rather subtle case, as the two express very similar opinions and worldviews.
  • So Bad It's Good: Their favourite anime tend toward this, a fact they openly acknowledge.
  • The Stinger: Most every episode has music related to topics discussed during the show (often not the scheduled topic). There's also often clips of technical difficulties, recording interruptions, segments where only one person has stopped recording for the episode, or other random audio clips.
  • Stealth Pun: Hanabi is the Japanese word for "fireworks."
  • Stylistic Suck: The guys once teamed up with a bunch of other podcasters to produce a Giant Robot audio short, Atomic Warrior: Valiant Demin. It was pretty much everything you'd expect it to be.
  • Spoiler: While there's generally spoiler warnings on the episode pages on the website, most listeners don't visit the website. Be advised that there are rarely in-episode warnings.
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Hoagies. Dave also has a particular love of ice cream sandwiches.
  • Useful Notes: Philadelphia: Both Dave and Joel hail from Philadelphia, which colours both their slang and their favourite foods.
  1. ↑ Unless Dave was feeling lazy and named it after the first good joke in the episode
  2. ↑ Generally his fiance, Graziella, but sometimes with Joel
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