Oops All Monsters

IT'S SPOOKY SEASON WITCHES!

Gavin reveals the devilish through-line between ancient Gaelic faeries that punish their prey with deadly spine-whips, colonial America's pumpkin-wielding Hessian, Marvel's flame-faced Ghost Rider, and Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner, the mercenary classic by the death-obsessed-bard Warren Zevon. 

You could try to do it this good, but you'd fail. 

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

Hess brings a heavy-hitter from American classic sci-fi this week, those eerie and illusive outer-space pod-people.  The chillest communal colonialists out of Norcal are on the prowl, so hide your kids, hide your wife, they snatchin' everybody up in here. 

Gavin & Hess intro this super thicc topic by delving into the original 1954 novel by Jack Finney, its themes and significance, and compare and contrast it with the 1956 film directed by George Siegel starring Kevin McCarthy. 

There's also too much discussion of the film "Innerspace", and probably the best Jeffrey Dean Morgan you're going to get this side of Syracuse. 

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

Originating in the twisted mind of EC Comics artist Wally Woods, these gleeful interplanetary colonists began their life on a series of sadomasochistic children's trading cards so vile and deranged the courts had their production stopped in 1962. 

Gavin walks us the unlikely tale of atomic age sci-fi culture, ported into 1990s satire by Tim Burton, which continues to this day in curious comic book mashups. If you've never seen the Burton 90s film, it is more than worth a watch,to see Jack Nicholson vaporized by Martians not once, but twice, and Sarah Jessica Parker play the queen of all vapid, new media shoe fetishists, who gets transformed into a Pierce Brosnan-smooching dog-abomination. 

But just don't forget: 

ACK-ACK-ACK, ACKACK-ACK-ACK!!!

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

Our FIRST cryptid episode! Can you dig it!?

In 1910 William T Cox's FEARSOME CREATURES OF THE LUMBERWOODS was published, a fantasy field guide of the bizarre monsters and aberrations of the mountain west, plains, and beyond. 

Perhaps the most infamous of which is the Slide Rock Bolter, a colossal land-leviathan that swallows unwitting tourists and lumberjacks unlucky enough to cross its path. 

Are you from Colorado and have been eaten by the Slide Rock Bolter? If you get cell service from inside that massive beast, let us know what it's like in there. 

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

Gavin unleashes  MTV's cutest cannibalistic trauma baubles, the impish minions of Mr Gone. They're relentless, they're multitudinous, they're unscrupulous, they are: THE ISZ. 

In the mid-90s illustrator and comic artist Sam Keith scraped together the chance to create a graphic novel of singular personal vision. In THE MAXX he depicted a twisted, grim-dark America populated by nightmarish creatures lurking in every shadow, and sensitive souls trying to navigate deadly villains, as well as the hallucinatory invasions of their own trauma and mental illness. 

Gavin posits his theories as to the ultimate meaning of The Isz, and the complexity of communicating psychological injury through media, as well as juxtaposing the mental anguish of Keith's THE MAXX with David Cronenberg's CRASH, even as Hess describes David Spader as "the guy from Mannequin". 

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

We have a special treat for you, Dear Readers! This is the first in a new set of Special Features we are going to run from time to time to help expand the show and bring in new voices. 

Friend of the show Kevin @thearcadologist joins us to help referee our first MONSTER MASH episode, where we put the monsters that we have been presenting into a bracket (like sports!), and use a rudimentary dice system to determine WHICH IS THE STRONGEST MONSTER OF THEM ALL!!!!

This game is a chopped and screwed version of a system invented by @thecritshow 's  Rev, which I mention in the episode, please check them out if you enjoy Actual Play goodness here: linktr.ee/thecritshow

But make sure you don't sleep on Pixel Lit, where Kevin & Phil discuss the novelizations of your favorite video games, and you can get all that here: 

The PixelLit Podcast! Because the only thing better than playing a video game, is reading about it. Hosts: @bringphilariesling and @thearcadologist

pixellit.info

Hess delivers this kickass, testosterone-fueled, 1980s rooftop sword-fight of a topic, chock full of MTV lightning, pedestrian-running-down, and the most confusing accents this side of Schwarzenegger.  Clancy Brown (Mr Crabs from Spongebob) portrays 1985's most vicious barbarian, the stud from the Russian Steppe, the sonafabitch with the segmented sword, he is: THE KURGAN.  

What else does this episode have? Queen music, Sting wearing a hood ornament bikini, and impressions of Sean Connery as Raoul Duke from Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and MORE SWORDS.  Don't get greedy.

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

Gavin delves deep into the holotapes under West Virginia and mines the unknowable eldritch horror that haunts Bethesda's nightmares. Is it a tree? Is it a squid? Is it going to rise into the sky and pulverize all of Ayn-Randian Philosophy in its terrifying deterministic maw? 

Spoiler Alert...

Yes. Yes it is. 

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

Hess comes in hot with the fire-breathing triple-threat of antiquity, that luminous lady from Lycia; the Chimera!

Our hosts discuss the ancient lineage of this bronze age battle-beast, her symbolism, and then of course David Cronenberg, The Thing, and GIJOE because what show did you think you were listening to anyway? 

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

https://linktr.ee/oopsallmonsters

Hess delivers our first single-topic episode about Masters of the Universe's malicious metal mouthed maniac - TRAP-JAW!

Learn how Trap-Jaw is built ad-hoc from the disparate parts of Ian Fleming's 007 stories, the James Bond villain Jaws, a lost-to-history Mattel Toy line, is recycled into his true form in 1982, mangled in the Filmmation cartoon series, crippled in a graphic novel, and perhaps strangely signifies 21st century humanity's struggles to integrate with technology? Yes? YES!