sportsalcohol.com podcast

Sometimes you just record a podcast episode out of pure indie-rock geekery. Founding editors Rob, Marisa, and Jesse are nuts for the U.K. indie rock act Los Campesinos! so on the occasion of their new album Sick Scenes and their recent North American tour, we got together, along with relative newbie Sara, saw their show in Brooklyn, and had a wide-ranging conversation about the band, our favorite songs, our baseless speculation about their personal lives, and if indie rock circa 2008 really was so special. Indie rock fangirls and fanboys everywhere may relate.

A few of SportsAlcohol.com's founding editors are longtime Saturday Night Live viewers and fans, so we like to occasionally get together and check in with how the show is doing. SNL is getting record ratings this season, with special guest stars like Alec Baldwin doing his Donald Trump impression and Melissa McCarthy dropping by to play Sean Spicer. We discuss those sketches and more: what this means for a larger-than-average core cast, how Weekend Update is faring in the Funny News landscape, how this year's group of hosts has measured up, and what sketches we feel have been overlooked in all of the political hubbub. This conversation, recorded immediately following the most recent, Baldwin-hosted episode, is a must-listen for any SNL fan.

With this year's more diverse Oscars trying to make up ground lost by the #OscarsSoWhite debacles of previous years, and issues of representation getting more attention than ever (especially in Trump's America), your friends at SportsAlcohol.com decided to sit down and have a conversation about representation and identification issues in popular culture. Marisa, Sara, Jon, Jesse, and Nathaniel talk about media that's spoken to us for those reasons, try to differentiate between representation and identification, and talk about all manner of movies and TV shows, past and present, including Hidden Figures, Moana, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight, and many more. It's one of our longest and widest-ranging conversations, but we think it's well worth listening to!

Just in time for Oscar season, the core movie crew at SportsAlcohol.com -- Marisa, Jesse, Nathaniel, and Sara -- get together and talk about our group list of the best movies of the year, an eclectic group of critics' favorites, awards honorees, and weirder choices. We chat about what we loved, what we didn't get, what our outliers were, and how these 20 great movies relate to each other.

So do movie series just go on forever now? After watching the new Star Wars spinoff Rogue One, Rob, Sabrina, Marisa, Jesse, and Nathaniel got together to discuss the franchise, the new movie, and whether keeping stories going forever and ever is a sustainable model. Also listen up for a barrage of Star Wars spinoff pitches.

We can all agree that 2016 was a garbage year, but did any albums, songs, or musicians manage to save it for us? Rob, Sara, Marisa, and Jesse got together to figure out whether Beyonce, Radiohead, or the return of A Tribe Called Quest, among others, could salvage 2016 via songs.

In conjunction with our list of the Top 20 Best Disney Songs, we assembled a group of Disney fans to talk about our favorites, least favorites, oversights, and pet peeves from decades of Disney musical output.

If you're anything like us, this year has been a hard one for living in the moment. That's why we've spent a number of podcast episodes reliving moments of the past, both in our own lives and in the culture. Today, Marisa leads Jesse, Rob, and Sabrina down a guided trip of a representative cross-section of Billboard Magazine's top songs of 1996. It was a simpler time, one when we were all in high school and Bob Dole was the worst thing that could happen to us. Some topics covered: 

Every band is someone's favorite
Getting into a band you don't like before they make it big
Sheryl Crow dishing dirt on the seedy underbelly of the music industry
Rob and Jesse's AP English class
Mickey Rooney's worst role is good argument for a 1984-style regime 
Friends (both the tv show and the concept of a close bond with others)

Be sure to check out SportsAlcohol.com for some videos related to this episode.  

Everyone has experienced disappointment with a movie, album, TV show, book, or perhaps lavish stage musical that they were wildly anticipating. Luckily, Marisa, Sara, Nathaniel, and Jesse are here to talk through some of our own lifetime disappointments in the wake of a deeply disappointing 2016.

With Halloween fast approaching, SportsAlcohol.com decided to follow up our episode discussing movies that make us cry with an episode where we discuss movies that scare us -- whether they're classic horror movies, intense thrillers, or just childhood favorites that also caused childhood traumas. Nathaniel, Marisa, Jesse, Rob, Sara, and Rayme weigh in on a wide variety of experiences that involved being scared in the dark (or at home with all the lights on).