Read it and Weep

The 90s were a simpler time. Sure, humans were in the process of doing irreversible damage to the planet, but fortunately Ted Turner gave five dumb kids who could fail to help the earth before calling a super hero to fix everything.

With their powers combined, those weird stereotypes call Captain Planet, a pun-based superhero who could stop even the most one-dimensional bad guy.

Corny as it was, I watched it every Saturday morning. And that’s why I’m the occasional recycler that I am today.

Give the current state of things, the world has a larger-than-usual appetite for shows that make them feel sad. Case in point: The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel about a world where things aren’t great for women but pretty okay for male drivers and baristas.

I sat down with Denver comedy supergroup The Pussy Bros to talk about this sad-making show and how they’d fight back in a world where bonnets aren’t the worst of your problems.

Alex is in Denver for the final ever Crom Fest, and given his love for cheezy civic stereotypes, he decided to make his all star festival panel watch Reefer Madness, the 1936 explotation film designed to scare children away from using marihuana because it’ll turn them into homicidal maniacs.

Alex is not a partaker of marihuana, so his panel included comics with a variety of experience levels from “twice a day” to “twice ever.” It was a fun time!

Thanks to Sexpot Comedy for letting us use their studio space!

When somebody talks about their guilty pleasure, they usually just mean something they like but don’t think is good. A guilty displeasure, on the other hand, usually comes with some actual guilt. Liking Dance Moms makes you quirky. Not liking Nirvana can get you kicked out of a party.

With that, Ezra chose to share his guilty displeasure for cult hit The Big Lebowski. He’s wrong, but very brave.

What are your GDPs? Share ’em in the comments!

We ALSO played ONE CHANGE this week, not with the topic but with our whole show! You lovely listeners suggested small tweaks to the show and we worked as many in as we could. We couldn’t get to all of them so keep sending them in and we’ll keep trying them.

Judge Harry Anderson is a pretty young judge. He’s also sassy and does magic tricks. He’s surrounded by a cast of wacky characters as he passes judgement on the not-at-all sad crimes that pass through his cheap-looking courtroom.

It’s a classic late 80s sitcom and while some love it, some people can’t figure out why others love it. We put together an amazing panel of comedians from LA who were visiting Portland for the Bridgetown Comedy Festival and let them puzzle out the ups and downs of this fabled courtroom.

This topic was selected by our Meat Buddies! Become a Meat Buddy today and let your voice be heard!

This week’s episode was sponsored by The Guns Above, the steam punk feminist blimp war novel by Robyn Bennis! Read an excerpt and buy the book at RobynBennis.com.

No episode of this podcast has taken longer, suffered more setbacks, or caused more frustration than this episode. And none has caused more concerned feedback from fans as its hour approached. That’s because this episode is about scary, scary clowns.

Well, actually it’s not. It’s about an arbitrary space spider who sometimes dresses like a clown and we brought along a real clown, Barnum and Bailey’s Clown College graduate, Rob Torres. Rob talks to us about how the perception of his business has changed and who the real culprit is (hint: not this movie and not ICP).

I think it’s a real good episode, but even if it isn’t, don’t worry. It’ll float. They all float down here.

VROOM VROOM, motherfuckers! It’s time for the 8th installment of the car-racing-turned-superheros movie starring Vin Diesel, The Rock, and a handful of automobiles.

It may not quite reach the peaks of the earlier films, but we had a great time anyway. They fight a submarine, for christ’s sake.

DEEP MONTH continues with one of the deepest holes any film company ever dug for themselves. This motion-capture animated film lost over $100 million, which puts it in the top five losses of all time.

It’s not hard to see why the movie didn’t catch fire. The animation is just awful to look at and that’s backed by a bad title and really awkwardly written film.

To tackle this mess, Alex brought on regular guests Anthony Lopez and Bri Pruett and newcomer Katie Nguyen. That may not sound all that exciting, but the four of them are comedians who make up the Portland standup supergroup Earthquake Hurricane which performs every Wednesday. Check ’em out if you’re ever in the area.

Not many sequels improve on the original as perfectly as Planet Earth II. It’s all the things that made Planet Earth the best nature documentary of all time, but with so many leaps in camera technology that it blows the original out of the water like a shark does to a sea lion.

We talk about our favorite fights, mating rituals, parenting advice, and housekeeping tips we saw, and just generally freak out about how good the show is. It’s weird but nice.

Tale as old as time, right? Well, assuming time started in 1740 when the original French story about a young woman sleeping with a giant goat dog was published. But Disney keeps going back to that well, this time with a live action remake starring single threat Emma Watson as Belle and an offputting CGI goat-dog as The Beast.

In an odd twist, everybody’s expectations reverted to the mean: we all hated or loved it less than we expected.