Podcasta la Vista, Baby! Episode 29 – The Villain

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Mike Gillis

Vile, virile, vivacious, venomous, varied, voluptuous, versatile, venturesome, vibrant, vulgar, vast, vunniest vilm of 1979!

We’re strapping on our seven shot six-shooters and stocking up on barrels of glue and giant boulders with Dave Brouillette of the Hands Free Football podcast to talk about the underwhelming screwball comedy western from the beginning of Arnold’s career: The Villain!

Hapless outlaw “Cactus” Jack Slade is blackmailed by a scheming banker into robbing a cache of money from a business partner’s buxom (and sexually frustrated) daughter, Charming Jones, who is trying to return it to her father. “Cactus” Jack is going to steal every last trick from Wile E. Coyote’s playbook, but he’s got to get through a certain musclebound Handsome Stranger, oblivious to both the robbery attempts — and Charming Jones’ advances!

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Fun Size Episode 77 – A Plague of Ricks [CLIP]

Posted on May 27, 2023 by Mike Gillis

We’re back yet again for another Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

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!

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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We’re Hosting Another Movie Screening to Benefit PNW Starbucks Workers United!

Posted on May 7, 2023 by Mike Gillis

We are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be returning to The Beacon Cinema to sponsor a third theatrical screening to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund! And this time, we’re watching John Carpenter’s angry science fiction send up of free market capitalism in Reagan-era America: They Live!

When: Thursday, June 1st @ 7:30 pm

Where: The Beacon Cinema at 4405 Rainier Ave S., Seattle, WA 98118

Cost: Tickets at $12.50 each, with all admissions for PNW Starbucks Workers United

You can buy tickets now, but seats are limited!

RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS presents …JOHN CARPENTER’S THEY LIVE

With a filmography as diverse as John Carpenter’s, it can be easy to forget just how many our favorite movies he directed in his decades-long career. Seemingly alternating between box office gold with HALLOWEEN and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and commercial bombs that have since been re-evaluated as legitimate genre classics like THE THING and BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, it’s inevitable that a few are going to be overlooked. Such a film is his 1988 pulpy science fiction tirade about media brainwashing and rapacious greed in the waning years of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America: THEY LIVE.

Professional wrestling’s bad boy, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper stars as Nada, a homeless drifter who comes to Los Angeles looking for work and stumbles upon to a pair of sunglasses that pierce the veil of a global conspiracy between a race of aliens who have already enslaved Earth through subliminal advertising and their human ruling class collaborators.

Piper’s often unhinged performance is a revelation. He gifts us some of the greatest ad-libbed one-liners in cinema history and, most famously, a nearly six minute-long fight scene with co-star Keith David where Piper reportedly asked David to actually hit him. You know, to make it look good.

THEY LIVE is like a mash-up of the sensibilities of Roger Corman and Noam Chomsky. This is a deliciously angry movie that isn’t concerned with creating the most thoughtful critique of obscene wealth disparity and corporate propaganda. This movie is pissed off, sometimes incoherently so. And in a world where the crimes of the richest 1% have gone intergalactic, THEY LIVE isn’t satisfied with making speeches. It’s too apoplectic for that. It wants to shoot aliens and blow up satellite dishes and burn this sucker down. Never has this movie never felt more terribly relevant.

This screening is sponsored by the RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! podcast as a benefit for the PACIFIC NORTHWEST STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED labor union, and 100% of the admissions will be donated to their Relief Fund.

Fun Size Episode 76 – Make It Work. [CLIP]

Posted on April 25, 2023 by Mike Gillis

We’re back yet again with a new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re going boldly with Michael Warbington into the deep, inconsistent, and often-confusing world of Star Trek uniform design! Why did Starfleet have the exact same red naval uniform for nearly 70 years before they started to update their uniforms every few years in the 24th Century? Why do they keep designing great uniforms for flashback scenes that we’ll never see again? Why do people keep changing their clothes in Star Trek: The Motion Picture? Why do the crews of the U.S.S. Titan and the U.S.S. Ceritos have completely different uniforms? And don’t get us started on the constantly changing Admiral uniforms.

We’ll need positronic brains to sort this all out!

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 57 – Sorcerer (1977)

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Mike Gillis

WANTED. Four men willing to drive a cargo of death to escape a life in hell.

This month, we’re going on a jungle suicide mission with Camp Director and President of Camp Quest NorthWest, Michael Warbington, and plunging into the gritty, globetrotting William Friedkin classic about desperate men looking for a way out of purgatory: 1977’s Sorcerer!

Four men exiled in a corrupt South American country, hiding from their pasts and unable to afford the bribes necessary to escape their fates, are given an opportunity to get out. An American getaway driver, a Palestinian militant, a disgraced French investment banker, and a Mexican hitman must drive two trucks across 218 miles of narrow mountain roads and dense jungle, to deliver a cargo of dangerously unstable dynamite to put out a raging oil fire. But if the rotten bridges, armed bandits, and leaking nitroglycerine don’t kill them, growing mistrust and despair just might.

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Fun Size Episode 75 – Literal Toilet Money [CLIP]

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Mike Gillis

We’re back yet again with our 75th Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

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?

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

Posted on March 19, 2023 by Mike Gillis

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.

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We’re Hosting Another Movie Screening to Benefit PNW Starbucks Workers United!

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Mike Gillis

We are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be returning to The Beacon Cinema to sponsor another theatrical screening to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund! And this time, we’re watching one of Arnold’s finest. The one, the only, the increasingly frighteningly plausible science fiction action dystopia: The Running Man.

When: Thursday, March 23rd @ 7:30 pm

Where: The Beacon Cinema at 4405 Rainier Ave S., Seattle, WA 98118

Cost: Tickets at $12.50 each, with all admissions for PNW Starbucks Workers United

You can buy tickets now, but seats are limited!

RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS presents …THE RUNNING MAN

If you have never seen this seminal piece of 80’s sci-fi action absurdity, you’re our next Runner.

Directed by Paul Michael Glaser (yes, that’s Detective Starsky), who would later gift all of humanity with KAZAAM, THE RUNNING MAN‘s B-movie, primed-for-video-rental-shelves aesthetic is smashed together with God-Emperor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s A-list charisma.

Arnold plays falsely-convicted war criminal Ben Richards, whose punishment consists of “voluntary” participation on America’s Most Popular Game Show™ THE RUNNING MAN. Can he survive being hunted by increasingly cartoonish “Stalkers,” celebrity killers who rip and tear for top ratings? Will there be a parade of satisfyingly bombastic kills? Will Arnold deliver the best comebacks ever written (penned by Die Hard scribe Stephen E. DeSouza)? You bet your sweet ass!

A cast of recognizable 80s regulars accompany Arnold, including Maria Conchita Alonso, Yaphet Kotto, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, Mick Fleetwood and Dweezil Zappa, to name a few. And we would be remiss if we didn’t include Family Feud host Richard Dawson, as the delightfully malevolent Damon Killian.

Although based on one of Stephen King’s early novels (under the pseudonym Richard Bachman), very little of the original material survives, instead being supplanted by a glorious pastiche of 80s action, sci-fi and pop culture tropes. Sautéed in TOP GUN and BEVERLY HILLS COP composer Harold Faltermeyer’s delicious synthwave score, this film is a treat for the senses.

This screening is sponsored by the RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! podcast as a benefit for the PACIFIC NORTHWEST STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED labor union, and 100% of the admissions will be donated to their Relief Fund.

Fun Size Episode 74 – That’s How You Get an Independence Day! [CLIP]

Posted on February 25, 2023 by Mike Gillis

We’re back with yet another new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re continuing our chat with Chelsea Rustad, and we’re looking at billionaire narcissists getting booed, and the ethics of hidden camera comedy shows.

Where is the line when it comes to comedy based on a person not knowing they’re on television? What if they know they’re on TV, but think they’re on a “serious” reality show, instead of a spoof? Who is the butt of the joke, and when does it go from funny to mean-spirited?

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 56 – Vengeance (2022)

Posted on February 16, 2023 by Mike Gillis

Find the story before it finds you.

This month, we’re joined by Chelsea Rustad chair of the Puget Sound Socialist Party and the author of Inherited Secrets: Memoir of America’s Groundbreaking Genetic Witness to draw thematic connections between seemingly disparate elements and using that to get to the bottom of B.J. Novak’s directorial debut, Vengeance!

New Yorker writer Ben Manalowitz finds himself in West Texas after a late night phone call from Ty Shaw, the brother of a girl he used to hook up with. Ty’s sister Abilene has died of a drug overdose, but he is convinced she was murdered. And mistakenly believing that Ben and Abilene had a serious relationship, he wants Ben to help him avenge her death. Seeing this as a huge opportunity to build his career with a big true crime public radio podcast, Ben agrees to investigate. Ben smugly imagines a story about how tragedy and regret propel people in believing conspiracy theories to avoid accepting hard truths. But as he starts to dig, he begins to question: what if Abilene really was murdered?

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Fun Size Episode 73 – But, She Has a New Hat! [CLIP]

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Mike Gillis

We’re back with another new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

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!

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 55 – The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Mike Gillis

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

This month, we’re riddling in the dark and escaping the goblin caves with Kayleigh Casterline and revisiting J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic 1937 fantasy book that introduced readers to the world of Middle-earth, The Hobbit!

Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys peace and quiet comfort, and never does anything unexpected to make the neighbors talk. So nobody is more surprised than him when he finds himself railroaded by the wizard Gandalf into accompanying a band of exiled dwarves on a quest reclaim their kingdom and treasure from a fire-breathing dragon! Now thrust into a wider world full of goblins, wood elves, secret doors, giant spiders and magic rings, the homebody Bilbo finds in himself a dormant courage and resourcefulness than he could have never imagined.

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

Posted on November 26, 2022 by Mike Gillis

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!

Join us!

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Fun Size Episode 71 – That’s Capitalism, Baby! [CLIP]

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Mike Gillis

We’re back with another new Fun Size episode, exclusive for our Patreon supporters!

This month, we’re chatting about the wonder of the public domain and open source software, and how it helps make our show possible and helps create community — and how capitalism puts up walls and exploits them to seek rent.

We talk a bit about how the world’s richest douchebag tech bro finally gave us the nudge to get our show off of Twitter, just in time to watch him burn it to the ground. A billionaire narcissist and the internet’s favorite hellscape: those crazy kids deserve each other!

Who ever said that capitalism was a meritocracy? Spoiler: it’s billionaires.

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

P.S. – Mike doesn’t actually smoke. He wanted to be clear about that.

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

Join us!

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We’re Hosting a Movie Screening to Benefit PNW Starbucks Workers United!

Posted on October 27, 2022 by Mike Gillis

This December, we are proud to announce that Radio vs. the Martians! is going to be sponsoring a theatrical screening of the craziest, bloodiest martial arts film of all time, Riki-Oh: the Story of Ricky, to benefit the Pacific Northwest Starbucks Workers United relief fund.

When: Thursday, December 8th @ 7:30 pm

Where: The Beacon Cinema at 4405 Rainier Ave S., Seattle, WA 98118

Cost: Tickets at $12.50 each, with all admissions for PNW Starbucks Workers United

You can buy tickets now, but seats are limited!

RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! PRESENTS…. RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY!

You’d be hard pressed to find a movie as strange, bloody, absurd, or thrilling to watch as RIKI-OH: THE STORY OF RICKY, but this 1991 Hong Kong martial arts splatterfest is truly something special.

Directed by Shaw Brothers veteran cinematographer Lam Ngai Kai and headlined by a then-18 year old Fan Siu-wong as kung fu Hercules and flautist, Ricky Ho, this crowd-pleasing cult film really tests the limits of good taste and how many ways one can creatively destroy a human dummy on film.

In the far future year of 2001, all prisons have been privatized into for-profit businesses (can you even imagine?). The latest inmate is the eponymous Ricky, convicted of manslaughter for avenging his girlfriend’s murder with his inexplicable superhuman strength and mastery of Qigong.

What follows is structured much like a video game, as Ricky battles a super-powered menagerie of increasingly bizarre and gimmicky convicts deputized by the prison’s evil Warden and his hook-handed Assistant Warden (played with a cartoonish glee by Siu-wong’s own father, Fan Mei-sheng), whose glass eye bafflingly doubles as a mint dispenser. Just go with it.

As Ricky is elevated to an almost Christ-like champion of the facility’s abused and oppressed prisoners, he literally destroys his opponents with his bare hands, impressive fight choreography and some charmingly hilarious special effects.

This screening is sponsored by the RADIO VS. THE MARTIANS! podcast as a benefit for the PACIFIC NORTHWEST STARBUCKS WORKERS UNITED labor union, and 100% of the admissions will be donated to their Relief Fund.