This week, Aaron is fascinated by abandoned stores and malls and other liminal spaces that transport you to bygone eras! And Dan is not very helpful. We also talk about comics and horses and prisons that get hit by cosmic rays and turn into art galleries.

Happy New Year! We got together on New Year's Day 2023 and discussed the events of 2023 and what they meant to us. Not just the big ones like the alien invasion ending the war in Ukraine or humanity's first moon prison, but also the entertainment and cultural developments that gave us all something to talk about over the virtual water coolers in our bunkers. And isn't that the slogan of 2023?

It's the Like-O-Rama Holiday Special! We talk about holidays I guess and presents and stuff, but mostly Star Wars for some reason. I guess because of Life Day. Also monster trucks and Wade the Duck and making t-shirts and Stephen King and all kinds of stuff. I'm pretty sure we decided to do a holiday special about 12 seconds before we hit record. Oh well, who cares? Hahaha.

This week, Dan is elated and overjoyed to get to talk about French comedy director Jacques Tati! Tati was active mostly in the 50s and 60s and is best known for M. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, and PlayTime. His character M. Hulot was also a direct inspiration for Mr. Bean. Besides being a gifted pantomime, Tati was a brilliant director, crafting scenes that are gorgeous, expertly choreographed, and oh yeah funny.

Imagine one of the most celebrated, evocative, studied paintings in history, one that straddles the cusp between the flat religious metaphors of the Middle Ages and the experiments in dimension, light, and subject matter of the Renaissance. Now imagine two idiots talking about it. Yes, this week, Aaron and Dan are going figure by figure through Heironymous Bosch's immortal triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights", the notorious-slash-amazing painting and its bizarre depiction of animal-men, torture, surrealism, and butts. So many butts. We focus on the Hell panel because it's the craziest and we recommend that you follow along with your own copy and a magnifying glass or, if you don't have a full copy handy, that you download one of the enormous images online such as the biggest one from Wikimedia Commons here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution_2.jpg

This week, Dan loves 100-year-old jazz! King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Fletcher Henderson, Bix Beiderbecke, and a bunch more. We love the manic energy, the fun melodies, and the burgeoning complexity that would evolve into a zillion subgenres in just a few years. ALSO! One band we neglected to mention that’s been active since the 60s is New Orleans’ own Preservation Hall Jazz Band. They are amazing. Dan got to see them around 2004 and fell in love with them! If you get the chance, go see them!!! (Dan found out they played by him 2 hours AFTER they finished - boo hoo cry waaaaaaaa). Finally, we tried to avoid the word "Dixieland" since it evokes white nostalgia for the Jim Crow South, which is gross, but we still said it a couple times because we either had brain farts or were talking about a band with that word in their name. New Orleans jazz or hot jazz are good substitutes.

This week, Aaron suggests we think of what movies would make horrible musicals. We find out just how far the quality can get between a great movie and a hack musical treatment. We also find out that Dan and Aaron can only think of like three melodies. Hooraaaaay!

This week, we talk about ninja weapons! Katanas, sais, bos, throwing stars, and of course about 40% of 80s culture.

This week, Aaron is a fan of electrostatic discharge or ESD. He's worked in labs where ESD is handled as a safety issue and a "don't break all the stuff" issue, so he had to learn a lot about it and it's pretty dang neat! We also talk about sandwiches, coworkers, dads, and whatever other random crap fell into our heads. Yay, science!

This week, Dan is bananas for two 10-minute comedies that have insane worldbuilding. It's Eagleheart, starring Chris Elliott, and On Cinema, starring Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington! We stay on topic and kind of go back to the book report format (sorry), but Dan is so enthusiastic that it's hard to explain how huge these shows are without doing so. They're very silly, very odd, and star deeply unlikeable and incompetent lunatics. You should dedicate the next two months of your life to watching them. Quit your job, abandon your kids, and take a TV into the woods and watch them. Have fun, and Social Services will be in touch.