When It Was Cool Dark

Our next installment in our 100 darkest moments in pop culture history involves the story of NFL player Aaron Hernandez. Hernandez was an elite level football player whose off the field exploits landed him in prison and later dead. Despite being one of the best players on his National Championship winning team in college, the coach didn't want him back for his senior season so he entered the NFL draft where many teams wouldn't touch him. The Patriots finally did but a few murders later they regretted that decision.

Free speech. Censorship. Right thinking. Moral Policing. All of these terms are hot button topics to various political and social groups. The more that things change, the more they stay the same, because in 1954 a holier than thou psychiatrist took on the comic book industry with his infamous book Seduction of the Innocent. No matter what segment of pop culture they are after, be it video games, TV shows, or books, the morality police are dangerous to free thinking but it's a double-edged sword. 

Join The Desert Rat this week for the show that disappeared! Could it be that aliens stole away half of the script for fear of being exposed? Could it be the work of some black budget deep state cabal? Could it be that The Rat forgot to hit "save" at some point in the unfolding events? These are the things that keep me up at night... Today's Perps include John Lear, Bob Lazar, Rodger Lier, and Whitley Strieber.

Continuing our 100 darkest moments in pop culture series we take a look back at the video game crash of 1983. It was a moment in time where sub-par games were being produced in mass as a cash grab during a home video game boom. Juan Nunez wrote a tremendous article about this crash (and the one that preceded it) for When It Was Cool and this is that story.

Article 1 - Telstar and the Forgotten Video Game crash 

Article 2 - The Video Game Crash of 1983 

Our series of 100 of the darkest moments in pop culture history continues with an entry you might not expect. In the late 1990s-early 2000, filesharing services like Napster and Limewire were all the rage. People justified stealing music by pointing out the hypocrisy and lavish indulgences of the big music companies. But caught in the crossfire were the artists and the music industry changed, and not necessarily for the better. Today we look at how the rise of Napster and filesharing both paved the way for streaming and podcasting but almost killed the music business at the same time.

By Patreon request The Desert Rat descends down into the world of the paranormal. This is a complex web, entangled as any cultural order ever devised. For many years it stood out on the fringes of polite society, but over the last decade or so it has come into the focus of popular culture. There is no earthly way to tackle the subject in an hour or even a week, therefore we will start an open file...maybe there's a pun intended. Like any other investigation, first we need to round up the usual suspects. This podcast will discuss three of them, and The Rat is starting old school. Every tree has a root, and if you can comprehend the origins, then you can get a better grasp of what's really going on. Let's shine a light into the darkness and find out what we can see. Click on over to WIWC and sign up for their Patreon services. Retro pop culture being remembered and recorded one podcast at a time. Five bucks gets you access to almost 2000 podcasts already with more being added almost every day. Half a decade strong, and gathering speed- But if you hurry, there is probably still time to be considered one of the founding members. And while you are at Patreon, sign up and boost my tag team partner Eric Darcy's podcast as well, and get leveled uncut versions of the wrestling with the dawg podcast, sometimes weeks before they are heard on the WIWC site proper, plus some neat extras.

We continue our series on the 100 Darkest Moments in Pop Culture by examining the death of action movies star and maybe the world's most influential martial artist- Bruce Lee. The name Bruce Lee stirs up almost mythological images. One of the most skilled martial artists ever, Bruce Lee was even more than that. He was an action movie star making an impact, a philosopher, an author, and at the young age of 32 mysteriously died just as his biggest movie was released.

We continue our series on 100 of the darkest moments in pop culture history and this week's show is a little different. We take a look at the profound impact the AIDS epidemic had on pop culture in the 1980s into the 1990s. Numerous important pop culture figures like Freddie Mercury, Rock Hudson, Anthony Perkins, Arthur Ashe, Tom Fogerty, Eazy E, and others, died from causes liked to AIDS and HIV. How different might music, TV, movies, sports, and more have been if the AIDS crisis had not struck?

The DragonKing stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The name of this beast was The Thrash Metal Show Podcast and with his usual exhaustively slow podcast release productivity finally managed, not only to record a new show, but also to go to concert as well. Thrash Metal Show presents a review of thrash metal legends Overkill in concert. Enjoy... you never know when you'll get another one.