Read it and Weep

In the early 80s but with a heavy 70s hangover, Jim Henson and Home Box Office produced a kids show unlike any other. People live in the garage, Fraggles live in the wall, Doozers live among the Fraggles, and Gorgs outside the rocks. And somehow, they’re all dumb.

Most of us don’t have a big childhood dedication to Fraggle Rock but Amanda has lots to say about the superiority of the British version, and we welcomed first time guest, comedian Phoebe Bottoms, who trained with Jim Henson as a Muppeteer! For real! Here she is posing with actual Fraggles:

Thank you for an epic #TheRocktober and we can’t wait to see you in #Crossovember!

If you don’t like The Rock as a singing, dancing demigod, go fish. Because that’s what we’ve got in this absolutely delightful Disney animated film. And the movie was so much fun we packed our show with FIVE HOSTS and if that isn’t enough, a special guest appearance for Ezra’s son, AKA the reason Ezra has seen this film hundreds of times.

This is easily one of the most fun episodes we’ve ever done. Golly, I love #TheRocktober.

Everybody who reads Jules Verne assumes one thing, that he’s not a brilliant science fiction writer but rather just an adequate journalist. He merely wrote down in excruciating detail a world that exists just off the cost of Palau.

Well, at least that’s what Peeta from Hunger Games and his grandfather Michael Caine assume, which is what leads them to a Mysterious Island along with Peeta’s new stepfather The Rock. But in a highly unbelievable turn, he’s not happy to have The Rock as a stepfather. They go an adventure and discover small elephants and large bees and a bunch of dumb coincidences and also a mutual respect. It’s a deeply boring adventure movie despite a stellar cast, but it’s perfect for our regular segment of Can The Rock Save This Movie?

He can’t, really, but he’s made out of shiny, well shaped teflon because no matter how bad the movie is, I still like him.

Hope you’re having a great The Roctober, ya jabronis!

Listen up you roody poo candy ass. Here’s the truth: brand new co-host Anthony Lopez loves wrestling. While the rest of the team has literally never seen a match. So what else could we do to kick-off #TheRocktober but to learn about our man Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s early career and have Anthony explain wrestling to us.

We watched the WWE documentary The Epij Journey of Dwayne Johnson and it taught us a lot. Plus we watched the entire The Rock vs Hulk Hogan match from WrestleMania X8. It was eye opening. And while he didn’t really convince us that we wanted to be wrestling fans, he certainly helped us appreciate it on a deeper level. And I think it’ll do the same for you.

Happy #TheRocktober, everybody!

We’re strong. Sure, we’re not rap strong or pop punk strong, but we’re strong. But then this movie shook us to our very core.

Nah, that’s not really true. But if Country Strong means putting up with a sloppy plot, lackluster acting, and some of the worst fake guitar playing in movie history, than we are weak. Fortunately we assembled a panel with plenty of musical experience to tackle this dissonant movie. Angela Webber is half of the nerd-folk sensation The Double Clicks and Tess Falcone works for bands like Weezer and Ben Folds (in addition to being Alex’s sister).

A million thank yous to Jess from Newburyport (or Narnia, hard to say) for sponsoring this episode as well as Charusheela the Chemist for becoming a Meat Buddy!

Thanks for a great Sponstember and we’ll see you in Dwayne “The Rocktober” Johnstober.

It’s finally happened! After 407 episodes, we finally reached the point where somebody paid us to read Harry Potter!

It’s part of Sponstember, and Ava the Canadian was generous enough to give us this very delightful gift. We brought on HP super fans Sarah Hatheway and Caitlin Weierhauser (who hosts the HP theories podcast Room of Requirement 237).

Talking about the book on its 20th anniversary is almost overwhelming, but we have a fun sprawling talk about how dangerous the world is, how great Harry Potter World is, and why Marry Poppins is out of this world.

The moderately successful Surf’s Up (2007), part of the wave of CGI penguin movies, didn’t earn a full sequel. But it did well enough to ern a straight-to-video sequel without replacements for the major voice talent and with a new group of… wrestlers? Yep, WWE superstars John Cena, Undertaker, Triple H, and Paige got animated up as a positive crew of surfing penguins as well. It’s weird. And it’s not a good movie, but can returning guest Steven Wilber’s excitement about it win us over? We’ll see when we HANG 5.

Thanks to Molly for sponsoring this episode and exposing us to this weird little film. And welcome Anthony back from his honeymoon!

Happy Sponstember, everybody! For the first time in a year we opened up sponsorships so that you, the loyal listener, could pick what we have to consume and boy you picked some interesting ones. Starting with Paul from New Jersey’s pick of Exit to Eden. It’s the film adaptation of the Anne Rice BDSM novel except in the movie, they added a buddy cop story around the BDSM novel for no apparent reason. But it came out in 1994 (the year of movies) and that makes us like it. Actually, it’s weirdness made us like it to. And the butts.

Thanks to Paul for sponsoring (and being a Meat Buddy and using Aminazon.com for all his online shopping). Thanks also to our newest Meat Buddies Paul from Seattle and Meryl from Columbus.

It’s time to say goodbye to Wet Month, so we decided to mix it up a bit by freezing to make an ice rink… and then putting hot boys on it so everybody else can get wet and stay wet.

Yuri on Ice is a sports anime about two figure skaters who are probably in love. They skate and take baths and skate and generally overreact to everything, because anime. The panel is pretty into it.

Thanks to our newest Meat Buddies Spakto Spackerson and Victoria from Phoenix!

GET WET STAY WET, (but also get warm and stay warm).

It’s Red October season and every vessel in the Russian navy has a tag. That’s because capitalism is the best and like a person with a full sandwich punch card, the United States is about to get a free sub.

The Hunt for Red October is a really good submarine movie with an incredible cast. And we two people with parents who worked on submarines here to talk about it. It’s a rare fully positive episode of the show.

Thanks to our newest Meat Buddies Bridget from Cleveland and Julie Madore!

GET WET STAY WET, unless you’re in very deep water and then stay inside.