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This week’s Frotcast guest: Michael Waldron, co-creator of Chad Powers on Hulu! (Previously: Heels and Loki). Don’t miss the Chad Powers season finale, Tuesday, October 28. Anyway, Michael is dishing the dirt and legitimizing us with his presence this week, telling us all about how an Eli Manning sketch became a TV show that’s actually good, how he got permission to use real college teams in his show about college football, the joys of letting Glen Powell be silly, and why the best writing advice is actually “pretend you’re really stupid.”

The show is great and the interview is too, which is why we’re giving you the interview portion over here on the free feed! For the whole show, with current events and riffing and all, head on over to patreon.com/frotcast and sign up, wouldja??

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Hey! Hi. It’s another episode of the Frotcast, pretty much the same as the last 652 times. Yep. Anyyyywayyyy, what’s in the news???

AI parties are in the news, that’s what! It’s a perfect descriptor because it’s an unnecessary, shoddy, low-effort facsimile of an original idea. The short version is, a group of besties in San Francisco have gotten together to show us that you can’t spell “alienated from your friends and family” without AI. Listen to the whole segment if you want to feel really sad, though.

We then hear the harrowing tales of discrimination and harassment that our poor Cybertruck owners have to endure. We hear from several, none of whom seem to say anything about the truck itself, and instead focus on the reactions it elicits. There’s probably a lesson there but this podcast is about the doo doo, brother. Anyway, it absolutely cements the Cybertruck’s status as America’s Most Divorced Car. You know what they say, being a Cybertruck owner means never having to put the seat down.

Finally, long time Frotfan/first time Frotguest Michael Waldron joins us to discuss his new show, Chad Powers starring Glen Powers. Powell! Glen Powell. He walks us through how he and Powell turned a ten-minute prank sketch into a hit TV show (through a mutual deep and unabiding love of the 1998 action blockbuster Armageddon, of course), the challenges of writing a show based around time travel (For his other show Loki, Chad doesn’t have those kind of powers), and the majestic soaring height of the Manning Brothers. It’s kinda nice because short kings Vince and Michael get to commiserate over having tall colleagues. Must be rough.

Everything’s computer, including Vince’s smart TV, which is working out great for him, so stream Chad Powers now on Hulu.

Before it was a presumed Oscar contender starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, The Smashing Machine was a documentary about MMA pioneer Mark Kerr, directed by John Hyams. Arguably one of the most influential documentaries of the 21st century, I was so obsessed with it that the first time I tracked down John Hyams to pepper him with questions about it was 13 damned years ago. That’s right, before my retrospective about The Smashing Machine documentary was a GQ feature, it was a FilmDrunk Frotcast. I haven’t seen the upcoming scripted A24 version starring The Rock, but knowing that Benny Safdie was at least as obsessed with John Hyams’ documentary with I am, obsessed enough to recreate certain scenes right down to getting the hats and trunks right, makes me think it’s going to be pretty good. Point is, this has no spoilers for The Smashing Machine (2025), because I haven’t seen it yet.

What this is is the most comprehensive behind-the-scenes interview about The Smashing Machine (2002) that I could conduct. Did you know it was originally supposed to be called “The Specimen?” That HBO considered calling it “The Bloody Punch?” That Hyams wrote his own scripted version of it that was once intended as a vehicle for Mark Wahlberg? That in a roundabout way, it would go on to evolve into what became Warrior? All of these things are true, and we know them because John Hyams was cool enough to sit in for an hour-plus interview. A handful of quotes made it into my GQ retrospective (up there with my Freddy Got Fingered oral history in terms of things I’m most proud of having written) but I always intended to post the whole conversation. Feel like I owed it to posterity.

Funny that Dana White and the UFC are now gung ho on Dwayne Johnson playing Mark Kerr–as Hyams recalls it, Zuffa used to try to scrub every mention of the documentary back when the UFC was still fighting for legitimacy (perhaps understandably so). The original came from a different time, when MMA fighters were far more concerned with convincing the public that they were legitimate athletes and not scary monsters (let alone trying to do rightwing demagoguery or whatever). That’s what makes it such an incredible time capsule, and Hyams was more than game to let yours truly Remember Some MMA Guys, specifically from the PRIDE days. Not always successfully, but that’s why editing exists. Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did, and don’t forget to check out some of John’s other great movies like Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Sick while you’re at it.

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Returning champion Billy Corben (The U, Screwball, Cocaine Cowboys) is on this week to discuss his new documentary Men of War, which covers a wide-eyed Canadian idealist’s journey from thinking Full Metal Jacket is a movie about how the military is cool, to the US Special Forces, to ham-fistedly attempting a coup in Venezuela. It’s quite a ride.

Billy generously goes deep on Venezuelan politics to set the stage for how this unlikeliest of coup plotters got himself in that position to begin with. Billy also discusses his interpretation of coup leader Jordan Goudreau as a “post-modern” soldier in that his entire point of reference seems to be old war movies. “I’ll infiltrate with an inflatable boat, suit up theatrically on the beach, attack the island, scalp a guy with a saw blade, then impale Maduro with a steam pipe. Just like Commando!”

Billy has to go because the people running the studio he’s in have turned the lights off like bouncers at last call, so we then segue into this week’s hot topic that surely no one is tired of discussing, the Charlie Kirk shooting. Specifically, why are we still trying to shoehorn people into a left/right spectrum, and where does a guy making jokes about a furry with a boner fit in? Political incoherence is the new manifesto. Also, we are begging just one reporter to ask what “trans ideology” entails and how it can fit on a shell casing.

We wrap up by discussing the Verhoeven-esque scene that emerged from the shooting as  Mormon influencer “Elder TikTok” posted a selfie video from the ensuing moments after the shooting, imploring his audience to like and subscribe to both his Instagram and the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Grim stuff. He also contaminated the crime scene by picking up blood-soaked items, presumably to sell on eBay. Nevermind, this is worse than anything Verhoeven came up with. Smash that like button and sound off in the comments!

Rent Men of War on Prime Video and Apple TV (or wherever Men of War are sold!). Please.

MAD YOURSELF A MAN IS COMING BACK NEXT WEEK! All new episodes will be available on Patreon. A subscription gets you Mad Yourself A Man episodes a week early, and all bonus episodes (read: most!) of the Frotcast. Just like this one, from last week, which we have unlocked as a teaser. Are you teased??? Join the the patreon NOW!

(Would you tease me? I’d tease me. Hard.) 

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We are serving cunt on the Frotcast and we cannot. Even. Stop!

This week we serve up our listeners a cunt named Brian Abrams, a guy who’s seen way more movies than Vince and author of “You Talkin’ to Me?” The Definitive Guide to Iconic Movie Quotes. Brian joins us for the main subject of this week’s episode, Ari Aster’s latest film Eddington. Unfortunately, we drag him into some very stupid topics before we get there. Sorry Brian.

We get down to brass tacks right away- every man has a price, and Matt’s is $20,000. That’s right folks, he’s run plum out of royalty freestyle ideas, so now he has to whore out that sweet, sweet man-ass of his.

Next up, the 46-year-old French guy who got humiliated to death while streaming. That’s right folks, GERARD DEPARDIEU IS DEAD (pause for Kevin Eubanks to stop laughing).

Now throw in Cuomo’s swagless social media, Jordan Peterson’s mold problem, and important news from the President of Space, Kevin Spacey (we beg you, don’t overthink the bits), and you got yourself a B+ of a pod, baby.

Find Brian on his website, Letterboxd, and TikTok.

(-Description by Brendan)

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Comedian Sean Keane from Roundball Rock podcast guests this week! We open this week talking about Matt getting COVID on his Honeymoon or some dumb crap, but quickly segue into New York’s famous Cuomo brothers, and how losing a primary to Zohran Mamdani has apparently broken their brains. Now they’re mashing all the buttons at once, from “why don’t you condemn Hamas” to “what if rich people benefit from universal social programs?” Following up on last week’s Chris Cuomo-getting-fooled-by-an-AOC-deepfake-and-then-doubling-down incident, we talk about Chris’ equally dim-witted brother Andrew, who is very proud of his father Mario and his grandmother (?) Andrea. Someone had to teach the Cuomo boys to be handsy.

After that we go deep into the truly WILD story of the two crypto guys who (with off-duty NYPD cops working as their bodyguards) who allegedly kidnapped an Italian guy and made him serve as their pledge while they played insane cokehead fratboy games and (allegedly) tortured him to reveal his crypto passwords. My favorite part of the article was when they moved into a giant replica of the White House in rural Kentucky where they would type messages to each other on typewriters and then burn them so no one could steal their secrets. Oh the things one can get into with millions of dollars and 24/7 access to cocaine. Here is what an Apocalypse Hellfire looks like, by the way. Subscribe on Patreon for more content!

PLEASE SIGN UP ON PATREON, EVEN IF IT’S FOR FREE! Posting everything here has become a burden, and if you’re only listening to this feed you probably aren’t getting all of the episodes. Sign up now at Patreon. It’s two podcasts (Pod Yourself and the Frotcast) for the price of one! Patreon dot com slash frotcast!

Did you know Pedro Pascal gropes women to deal with his anxiety? If you were online at all in the past week or two, you might have noticed this narrative going around, or people making memes about it, or sharing supposedly damning video evidence of such a thing. Maybe involving Vanessa Kirby, or possibly Willem Dafoe’s wife. And yet, when did Pedro Pascal ever actually say anything about anxiety? Who was making the accusations? The narrative didn’t quite pass the smell test from the start, and as it turns out, that’s probably because it seems to have been some kind of strange astroturfing campaign.

Kat Tenbarge wrote all about it in Spitfire News this week, and in this bonus podcast, I (Vince, that is) interview her all about the Pedro Pascal campaign, where it started, why it’s happening, and what it tells us about bots, the slop internet, and why it’s easier to manipulate celebrity news for bespoke political ends. In Pascal’s case, it all seems to trace back to his trans sister and some rabid JK Rowling fans (though possibly also Bella Ramsey and The Last of Us).

Of course, the Pedro Pascal smear campaign is only the latest in a line of these odd, fake-grass-roots social media influence campaigns which seem to have no higher goal than to make you think that, say, Blake Lively is kind of a bitch or whatever. It’s only when you dig a little deeper that you discover what seems to be the true motivation, like a messy legal battle between Lively and her former director. Something I actually got drawn into myself when a post of mine appeared to get artificially boosted, possibly as part of a larger influence campaign. Are these mini-viral moments just a way for reputation management firms to justify their paychecks, or is there actually legitimate damage being done?

And did this particular kind of shady reputation management begin with the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial, or does it go back even further? Even before Depp/Heard, why did writing about particular celebrities (Hugh Jackman, Tom Cruise, Kamala Harris) always seem to summon a flood of uncanny-seeming replies?

All this is Kat Tenbarge’s particular beat, and she hangs around for a wide-ranging discussion of celebrity culture and niche smear campaigns.

This one is free for everyone, but patrons get a good two hours of the hottest #content every week.

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Happy Gilmore 2 famously lives at the intersection of sports and movies, and incredibly, so do this week’s guests, David J. Roth and Jeb Lund from It’s Christmastown. They review Hallmark movies on their podcast, but this week they’re taking a break from that to fill in for Matt and Brendan, who are on vacation with their dumb families, to discuss Adam Sandler’s 30-years-later sequel, Happy Gilmore 2–a movie which, as I wrote in my review, feels exactly like a make-a-wish charity special for a terminally-ill 58-year-old. Or as David puts it, feels like a celebrity-packed Super Bowl commercial that just never ends. Those sound like knocks on it, but they kind of aren’t. One of the best things about Happy Gilmore 2 is trying to imagine the strange celebrity encounter Adam Sandler had that produced each cameo.

That takes up most of the latter part of the pod, but before that, we discuss the way tech CEOs have ruined the design of most things, which naturally brings us to Elon Musk’s new Tesla diner, where you can wait two hours in line to order “Epic Bacon” for $12, all while being glared at by the people who live nearby whose lives Elon has ruined. Then we digress into the Trump/Epstein scandal, and how, even if this probably won’t result on Trump’s supporters turning on him, it is weirdly gratifying to watch him be constantly on the defensive and clearly realize that he can’t just riff his way out of this one. Fun times!

Email us at [email protected], leave us a voice message at 415-275-0030.

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This week we welcome comedienne Jessica Sele to the show to discuss bidet usage. But first, we kick things off talking about steamy hot cat sex. We bring up dogs briefly as well, but let’s face it, we know what our audience wants to hear about.

Speaking of which, we all watched Trainwreck: Poop Cruise which kinda felt like it was made for us but unfortunately (predictably, tbh) was a paint-by-numbers streaming doc. Props for minimizing usage of “typing things into a google search bar” shots, though. There’s a number of great stories to be told about it, but they focus on a small number of people and gloss over some major parts, such as, why anyone thought it was a good idea to make drinks free. There is a book’s worth of sociological insights to be gleaned from the poop cruise earning its name because everyone interviewed talks about refusing to poop in a bag, which of course exacerbates the issue and degrades the quality of life for everyone on board, but you aren’t going to hear about it on this podcast. I mean, come on.

Lastly, we dive into the New York Times’ hit piece on Zohran’s college application, which was only uncovered due to a hack of applicant data at Columbia, and provided to them by a “race science academic”. We asked Dave Weigel how exactly the ratfucking of Zohran would occur, but none of us had this on the bingo card. At least we still have Wordle.

You can find Jessica on Instagram and Twitter. Buy her album.

-Description by Brendan.

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This week we are pausing the Mad Men talk and rewinding to back when this was a Sopranos podcast. We have a special episode all about the life of actor James Gandolfini, where we talk to Jason Bailey who just released an amazing biography called Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend.

It’s a joy of an episode. A true throwback. And we will return with more Mad Men next week!

-Matt Lieb (who is now 40)

PLEASE SIGN UP ON PATREON, EVEN IF IT’S FOR FREE! Posting everything here has become a burden, and if you’re only listening to this feed you probably aren’t getting all of the episodes. Patreon dot com slash frotcast! Sign up at Patreon to listen to this and future episodes.

White smoke is billowing from the Frotquarter chimney this week (which is encased in a giant rubber butt) to indicate that a new Pope has been crowned. He’s crowning! Yes, it’s an American Pope, from Chicago. But luckily for you, all of the deep dish, Malort, and Superfans jokes were mostly exhausted by the time we started recording. Instead we discuss the phenomenon of all these mid-life Catholic converts in the conservative movement now bitching about the “woke” Pope. Shut up and take it, losers! You’re the ones who willingly submitted to Papal rule!

In addition to that, we’re discussing the latest “ins and outs” of the infamous “Delco Pooper.” Did you know she’s also an OnlyFans feet model? Good for her. Of the car-pooping incident, she famously claimed “it was a clean poop. I didn’t even need to wipe.”

Ma’am. We’ve seen clean poops. We aspire to clean poops. Our phones are filled with pictures of beautiful clean poops. That was not a clean poop and you need to re-wipe yourself right now.

Finally, we round things off with the topic to which we devote the majority of the show, Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s rightfully successful original epic about juke joints, twin gangsters, Delta Blues, Jim Crow, vampires, and cunnilingus. It was fantastic and there should be more movies like it.