Podcasta la Vista, Baby! Episode 28 – Terminator: Dark Fate

Choose Your Fate.

This month, we’re joined by Carol Brouillette of the Hands Free Football podcast, and returning (one last time?) to the franchise that made Arnold Schwarzenegger the king of Hollywood in the legacy sequel, Terminator: Dark Fate!

Twenty years after the events of Terminator 2, a young woman living in Mexico City finds herself targeted by two time travelers from an entirely new post-apocalyptic future. One is Grace, a cybernetically-enhanced soldier from the human resistance with orders to protect her, and the other is a new model of Terminator programmed to… you know. But help is soon found in the form of an older Sarah Connor, who saw her son John murdered soon after she prevented SkyNet’s creation, and from the very familiar-looking T-800 Terminator who killed John and spent the last two decades developing a conscience.

Fun Size Episode 72 – Highway to Heaven, Except He Breaks Peoples’ Fingers [CLIP]

We’re back with a second Fun Size episode this month, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This time, we’re talking about our undying love for the Denzel Washington Equalizer movies, and how they can be a strangely bloody salve for our woes in these trying times.

We dive into the often-morally iffy world of middle-aged action revenge fantasies, and what the targets of those films’ righteous violence says about the people who make them. What separates a justified cathartic experience from right-wing reactionary paranoia?

Plus, we explore the messy, contradictory, and morally confused Black Adam, and try to figure out who the hell that movie wants us to root for.

Also: come out to our special movie screening on December 8th in Seattle and support the PNW Starbucks Workers United labor union relief fund!

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 66 – The Word for That Is “Extortion”

We continue our chat with Michael Warbington and dig into a rich vein we usually leave unmined: video games.

With different levels of skill, engagement and knowledge, we look at the experience of gaming in 2022, the intersection of art and commerce, the prevalence of in-game microtransactions, getting mercilessly griefed by racist swearing twelve year-olds, and a game’s replayability. What do we want out of the gaming experience?

Episode 52 – Django (1966)

He killed for gold… He killed for his woman… He killed for himself!

After a month off, we’re back! And this time, we’re dragging a coffin through the desert with the Camp Director and President of Camp Quest NorthWest, Michael Warbington, and diving into the notoriously violent 1966 spaghetti western by director Sergio Corbucci, Django!

When a mysterious gunslinger named Django drags a coffin into a tiny border town caught in the middle of a bloody war between Mexican paramilitary bandits and a Klan of hooded racist Southerners, he sets off a bloody chain of death, vengeance, robbery, and even more death. But is Django here to save this town, or will he just bury it under corpses in his quest for revenge?

Episode 46 – Wonder Twins by Mark Russell and Stephen Byrne

“Wonder Twin powers — Activate!”

This month, we’re balancing teen angst and superheroics with returning guest Paul Hix of Waiting for Doom – the Doom Patrol Podcast to gush over over the hilarious satirical DC Comics maxi-series: Wonder Twins!

Exiled to Earth from the utopian planet Exxor, super-powered teens Zan and Jayna must now juggle high school with their after-school internship with the heroic Justice League! But they must also grapple with strange new Earth concepts like crippling debt, shocking inequality and mass incarceration; and they begin wondering if beating up costumed criminals and throwing them in jail is really making the world a better place…

Join our official RvtM Discord server!

Fun Size Episode 51 – Existential Dread and Animal Puns

It’s a Captain Picard Day miracle!

After a five-month hiatus, we’re back….ish. We’re broadcasting remotely with KTQA Radio‘s Sam Mulvey and trying to shake some of the cobwebs out.

Casey meets a wild Keanu and we wonder ponder again the magical unicorn nature of his celebrity namesake. And on the opposite end of the moral spectrum, we predict the inevitable airlock assassination of future space-despot Elon Musk.

We try to unpack media Copaganda, our changing relationship with police-centric media and lament how a lot of the progress made in this year’s uprisings against police violence have slowly rolled back.

Sam fills us in on the radio station he’s been building, and we talk about all the media we’ve been watching and reading from our protective bunkers, trapped in a world we never made.

Also! We have a Discord server now! Join us!

Black Lives Matter

On May 25th, a 46 year-old black man named George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. The cop, Derek Chauvin, choked Floyd against the pavement with his knee for over eight minutes until he died. In full view of cell phone cameras. While other officers looked on and did nothing.

Without that cell phone camera, George Floyd’s story would have ended there. Not only was Chauvin not fired immediately, it was only after nationwide protests in nearly every major city — protests that police have uniformly and predictably escalated into brazen violence — that he and other officers were finally charged with Floyd’s murder.

And through all of this, the police have done everything in their power to deflect blame, avoid accountability, and provoke an already tense situation into a violent one. So far, we have seen police:

We wish it ended there.This is just over the past nine days.

Policing is utterly broken and is entrenched in an oppressive and racist system that has rarely gotten more than a finger-wagging and empty moralizing from politicians in either political party. George Floyd’s murder is part of a pattern of racially targeted abuse and murder that goes back over a century. The cops act with brutal impunity because they know they will not be held accountable. They do it again, and again, and again. And it needs to stop NOW.

Radio vs. the Martians! stands unequivocally with the protestors who are putting their bodies and freedom at risk in the heart of a global pandemic to counter the racist murder of George Floyd, and all of the murders and assaults that preceded it. We reject the police violence that transcends this one killing, and call for the entire institution to be rebuilt. The police unions to be busted down, their leadership fired and prosecuted for their part in the escalating violence and assault on protestors. They need to be made fully accountable to the communities they operate in.

We also have no time for the hand-waving and pearl clutching of those who have more anger for a burned police station or a looted store than they do for the dehumanizing and unrepentant racist violence against human beings. Stuff can be replaced. Human lives cannot. If you want to scold someone about violence, tell it to the cops.

As director James Cameron once said when he explained why he made the villainous T-1000 an L.A. police officer in Terminator 2:

Cops think of all non-cops as less than they are — stupid, weak, and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn to protect and desensitize themselves in order to do that job.

To that end, our show is making a $500.00 donation to the Freedom Fund of Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County. This will be used to bail out those arrested during the protests in Seattle. The cash bail system is an inhumane way for the police to keep people who have not been convicted of a crime locked up if they don’t have the economic privilege to afford their own freedom.

We ask that you make a donation of your own, to this or another organization fighting for racial justice. Take a screenshot of your donation confirmation, post it to social media, and then link to it in the comment below.

Stay safe. Take care of each other. And fuck the police.

Fun Size Episode 48 – The New Quarantine Titans

As time bends and brains melts in the heart of the “Quar,” we’re joined by longtime friend of the show and writer for Emmys.com, David Gutiérrez… and things get weird.

We get into everything from circumcising our children to wanna-be movie theater comedians. We try to understand the confusing relationship of rockstar film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and try to figure out when Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford stopped trying to be good at their jobs.

Finally, we try to retroactively fix the Rambo franchise (and action/revenge films in general) into something a bit less racist and burdened with conservative “white guy baggage.”

Hex & Violence Episode 4 – The Latest in Pickling Technology

“That’s Jonah Hex, his own damn self. He’s killed more men than Hell has souls.”

After a long absence, we return with our fourth episode! This time, Mike and Casey claw our way through Jonah Hex’s 1993 Vertigo makeover as a weird western horror character in the five issue mini-series Jonah Hex: Two Gun Mojo by writer Joe R. Lansdale and artist Timothy Truman!

After being falsely accused of murdering a fellow bounty hunter, Jonah Hex runs afoul of short-tempered townsfolk, embittered Apache raiders, and Doc “Cross” Williams, a murderous snake oil salesman, grave robber, and conjurer who raises the bodies of the dead and bends them to his will — including the corpse of famed Western folk hero, “Wild” Bill Hickok!

JONAH HEX CONFIRMED KILL COUNT: 65 (+24 this episode)

Black Ops Episode 18 – An Inspiring Racist [CLIP]

In our new Christmas Eve episode, exclusive to our Patreon supporters, we get both deadly serious and a little bit frivolous.

First, we glance at a brief history of famous pieces of shit who’ve done awful things –  from Michael Jackson and Bill Cosby, to Harvey Weinstein and George Zimmerman – and the people who refuse to believe their accusers.

Then, we delve into what the James Bond franchise loosely calls “series continuity.” We explore the popular fan theory that “Bond” is just a codename and that the different actors who played 007 are different people altogether.

Plus, we think Dave Bautista is really, really great.

*editorial note* – Mike gets the name wrong. It’s Jimmy Saville, not Jeremy.

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Fun Size Episode 39 – How Could We Forget Odo?

In the aftermath of our Deep Space Nine panel, we rejoin Michael Warbington and Siskoid to talk a little about the stuff we wish we had gotten a chance to mention.

We talk holographic club owner, Vic Fontaine. Is he the greatest creation of artificial intelligence in the Trek universe, topping even Data? How did the show tackle thorny topics like racism? And has the show been excluded from the recent wave of 1990s nostalgia?

Plus, we look ahead with a pair of Trek fans at the fact that both Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Picard are going somewhere that excites us: The future. Well, their future.

Black Ops Episode 14 – More Stuff in the Basement [CLIP]

In our new episode, exclusive to our Patreon supporters, there’s some more stuff to clean out the basement.

Casey loves science fiction, but has grown tired of the ubiquity of sci-fi that treats dystopia, calamity and apocalypse as inevitability.  What happened to looking for positive alternatives and aspirational worlds in our genre media?

Is it a symptom of our inability to imagine that we can overcome the things that make the modern world a scary place, and instead just imagine futures where our problems are exactly the same, or  just amplified?

To unlock this episode in its entirety — and many episodes more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

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Episode 37 – WrestleMania XIX

Dare to Dream.

We’re back! And in our first double-sized Single Serving Selection of the new year, we’re diving our way back into the world of sleeper holds and suplexes with the program director for RadioTacoma 101.9, Morgan Lambert!  This month, we’re grappling with pro wrestling’s premier pay-per-view event, broadcasted live from Seattle, Washington on March 30, 2003: WWE’s Wrestlemania XIX!

Chris Jericho vs. Shawn Michaels! The Rock vs. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin! Hulk Hogan vs. Vince McMahon!  Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle! Limp Bizkit vs. Music! The Miller Cat Fight Girls vs. Social Progress! This wrestling event has everything great and terrible about sports entertainment.

From thrilling feats of charisma and athleticism, to problematic and embarrassing displays of exploitation, WrestleMania has you covered!

PATREON EXCLUSIVE: Black Ops Episode 8 – This Is Not Funny, You’re Not Funny, and I Don’t like You

In our newest episode, exclusive to our Patreon supporters, we talk more with Patrick Johnson about video game violence and how it does — and mostly doesn’t — apply to real life.

We take a long hard look at the trainwreck that is the filmography of Adam Sandler, why his movies are so ugly and stupid, and struggle to say something nice about him. We explore the wide pendulum swing of the quality of Netflix’s original programming. And finally we dig into their poorly realized original film, Bright and wonder what could have been.

To hear this episode — and many more! — just support us on Patreon with at least one measly dollar a month!

Join us!

Hex & Violence Episode 3 – Shades of Gray

“Ah can’t do it anymore, Jeb! Ah can’t go on killin’ yankees when they’s fightin’ tuh give th’ black folks their freedom, an’ we’s fightin’ to preserve a world whut’s prob’ly better off dead an’ done with!”

In our third episode, Mike and Casey we dive into possibly the most controversial and politically relevant aspect of Jonah Hex’s character: his Confederate uniform and his time fighting in the Civil War.

First, we dig into an issue of classic Hex in 1975’s Weird Western Tales #29. In a story by Michael Fleisher and artist Noly Panaligan. In “The Breakout at Fort Charlotte,” wounded after a duel with an angry young man, Hex remembers his time fighting in the Confederate Army and the decisions that lead him to ultimately deserting it. After surrendering to a cruel Union officer, he finds himself framed for collaborating in a massacre of prisoners.

Then we dig into 2008’s Jonah Hex (vol.2) #36 by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Rafa Garres, titled, “Seven Graves Six Feet Deep.” Why did Jonah Hex continue to wear his Confederate grays for decades after the war ended? Framed by the writing of a historian who grapples with the controversial historical figure of Jonah Hex and that very question, Hex rides home from the war in 1866 in a gray uniform being the only clothing he owns. After a misunderstanding ends in the death of a freed slave woman, Jonah finds himself rescued by a violent racist mob who mistake his uniform for him sharing their loathsome views and goals.

JONAH HEX CONFIRMED KILL COUNT: 41 (+9 this episode)