We’re in the studio with Carol and Dave Brouillette, who have returned with us with good tidings from Monster Jam! Yes, Monster Jam, the (surprisingly wholesome) spectacle of giant tires, animal shaped vehicles, big jumps, and plenty of dirt tracks and screaming fans.
It’s one-part P.T. Barnum, one-part NASCAR, one-part Vince McMahon, and one-part Hanna Barbera Wacky Races. The good parts, mind you. Not those parts. Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
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We’re back with Kirby Green to talk about her favorite trash TV obsession: 90 Day Fiancé! We look at the show that throws the best and worst elements of romance, desperation, immigration law, and repulsive people, into a television blender and we look at the horrifying and endlessly addictive slurry that pours out of it.
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This month, we’re upturning the rocks of our childhoods and looking at all the bugs and worms, like the uncomfortable fact that serial bully and sexist Rick Berman still has any relationship to Star Trek media anymore, and how growing up sometimes means having our love of franchise media becomes more complicated.
Plus, a quick rundown of the history of professional wrestlers owning (and not owning) the rights to their own names — and that one time that Vince McMahon tried to “recast” a couple of names he owned with new wrestlers.
And why are all the worst people named Rick?
And lots more unhinged leftist rantings! We drop the mask and chat about the evils we’re all complicit in by living under capitalism. You know, because we’re a pop culture podcast!
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This month, we’re continuing our talk with Carol Brouillette, and it may be time to crown Dave Bautista as the greatest professional-wrestler-turned-actor of all time. We look at his choices, roles and performances from Knock at the Cabin to Blade Runner 2049, and compare him to his squared circle contemporaries like Dwayne Johnson and John Cena.
Then we chat about the type of gimmicky overpriced restaurants for the uber-rich that marry pretentiousness to a giant price tag. What separates fine dining from obscene performative consumption that doesn’t taste good, isn’t filling, and costs the same as a month’s rent? Can you even feel like a good person eating something like that?
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This month, we’re continuing our chat with Kayleigh Casterline, and digging into the intersection of sports, video games and capitalist rent-seeking.
The new wrestling game, AEW: Fight Forever, is claiming that it won’t ask you to buy an entirely new game every year, the way that their rival the WWE does (not to mention the NFL, the NBA or MLB). They say they’re going to sell you a game once, and then update it.
What is the promise of this approach? What are the potential pitfalls? What happens to your video game roster when another wrestler does something unspeakable?
Plus, more media has entered the public domain! And we’re one year out from the most famous rodent of them all joining the army of the publicly-owned!
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This month, we’re continuing our talk with Kirby Green, for a chat about reality television and the “Am I the Asshole?” sub-reddit.
So, reality television isn’t real. I mean, duh. Or is it sometimes? And does it actually matter? Aren’t we – like most scripted programs on TV – just agreeing to believe the reality we’re given for the sake of a story?
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We’re back with Dave Brouillette to speak in defense of cinema’s great unsung wet blankets. The long-suffering adults left to pick up the pieces when the reckless hot shot protagonist with a disregard for human life blows up half of downtown or nearly starts World War III while they were saving the day or just looking cool.
Is there an age where your empathy naturally starts to gravitate to these people over the bad boy hero?
We also dig into the complicated emotions of watching popular media with jingoistic or reactionary politics — from Top Gun to 24 to Death Wish — both overt and implicit. Even the stuff we like can be a bit harrowing to watch at times.
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“Blood is rushing into your muscles and that’s what we call The Pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute, and it’s really tight – it’s like somebody blowing air into it, into your muscle. It just blows up, and it feels really different. It feels fantastic.”
This month, we’re hitting the weights and getting a good pump with Dave Brouillette, as we bench press the 1977 bodybuilding docudrama that got Arnold noticed in Hollywood: Pumping Iron!
Cameras document – or is it dramatize? – the lives of the world’s leading bodybuilders as they prepare to compete for their sport’s top 1975 amateur and professional championships. One is junior high school teacher, Mike Katz, who aspires to the title of Mr. Universe. Another is shy underdog, Lou Ferrigno, who hopes to flex his way to the title of Mr. Olympia. But to do that, he must topple the reigning five-time returning champion, a certain popular and charismatic Austrian, just a couple years away from Hollywood superstardom.
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We continue our remotely-recorded conversation with David Gutiérrez, and grapple with the seedy underside of professional wrestling, and the strange corporate strange-hold that Vince McMahon has on the industry, in the wake of his XFL’s second collapse.
We also talk about the relative quality of children’s media franchises from the point of view of parents. Is refreshes itself much more frequently than stuff aimed at “grown-ups,” but is any of it any good? And what will the art these kids make look like in 20 years?
Hide your clouds, because we’re gonna yell at them!
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In our new Christmas Eve episode, 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.
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We’re back! For this month’s off-topic dive, we look at the tale of two recent franchise spin-offs: Bumblebee and Fantastic Beasts: the Crimes of Grindelwald. Why does the former succeed out of the wreckage of a totally maligned series, while the latter squanders the potential of its predecessor? What do we want out of a spin-off, prequel or sequel to a beloved media property? What separates the wheat from the chaff?
Plus, we ponder the in-universe reality of the WWE in an age where professional wrestling no longer even pretends to be a real sport.
Join us, won’t you?
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In the afterglow of WrestleMania, we rejoin Morgan Lambert to talk about the mixed results of professional wrestlers becoming Hollywood actors, and wonder why it’s so hard for Dwayne Johnson to get a movie project worthy of his charisma.
Plus, we talk about the latest in wrestling scandals, including Hulk Hogan’s bigotry, and the WWE’s continued business relationship with an authoritarian regime that hacked up a dissident journalist.
We talk about the charming culture shock of consuming Japanese media. Their pro wrestling customs, katakana sound effects in manga, quite possibly the greatest soap opera of all time, in the form of a series of Sakeru Gummy commercials.
We chat about the recent expansion of the American public domain and lament our draconian copyright laws.
Oh, and the Wizards of the Harry Potter world are fucking disgusting monsters.
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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!
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“There’s no excuses, Paul. No one has ever, ever paid admission to see an excuse. No one has ever faced a black screen that says: “Well, if we had these set of circumstances, we would’ve shot this scene… so please forgive us and use your imagination.”
In another of our Single Serving Selections, we’re going somewhere that the show has never gone before: non-fiction! It’s time to max out our credit cards and hassle our moms until they agree to play extras in our movie, because we’re being joined by Patrick Johnson for a discussion of the 1999 documentary, American Movie.
Telling the story of an aspiring filmmaker’s quest to create his dream project — by first completing the low budget horror movie that he had abandoned years earlier. Now, he struggles against a lack of funds, the hapless ineptitude of his friends and family, a burgeoning alcoholism, a lack of talent, and his own self-destructive personality to make something great.
But don’t worry. It’s alright, it’s okay, there’s something to live for. Jesus told me so!
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“The guys we’re after are professional runners. They like speed and are guaranteed to go down the hardest possible way, so make sure you’ve got your funderwear on. We find ’em, we take ’em as a team, and we bring ’em back. And above all else, we don’t ever, ever, let them get into cars.”
Mike and Casey grab a couple of Coronas and fire up their NOS canisters, because it’s time to drive really, really fast. Joining us on this caper are screenwriter Matt Goodman and Matthew Amster-Burton of the Spilled Milk podcast.
Our mission, to dive into the adrenaline-pumping Fast and the Furious movie franchise, which has conquered the box office with some of the most over-the-top tributes to fast cars and badassery ever put on film.
We trace the series’ decade long evolution from a heist story about street racers to a globetrotting series of ensemble espionage thrillers that are a tribute to everything awesome and ludicrous.
Previously titled: “Cars Are Fucking Magical”
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