You Don't Understand Podcast

Hiatus be damned! It's episode 40! Tom is joined by YDU co-founder Eric Ruelle and YDU all-star Erika Price as he finally gets them to play one of his all-time favorite video games, Hatoful Boyfriend. Hatoful Boyfriend is a Japanese dating sim where you play a human high school girl and attempt to romance your sexy teen classmates, all of whom are, of course, birds. It is also so, so, so much more than that, with characters, worldbuilding, pacing, and writing so good it beggars belief. Anybirdie with a taste for the unique and unusual will find a treasure in Hatoful Boyfriend, but what did Eric and Erika think? Listen and find out, friends!

Guest KT Hawbaker, writer and host of A Fairy Home Companion, introduces one of her favorite movies, Muriel's Wedding, to Tom and returning champion Chris Rife. This movie has a massive number of Abba songs, gloriously garish 80s fashion, delightful Australian accents, hilarious jokes, brutal diagnoses, life-destroying lies, emotional abuse, and suicide. To say the least, it is a unique and fascinating movie. Will Tom and Chris see it the same way KT did growing up in Iowa? Check it out and see, buds!

We spiral into horror with Junji Ito's classic horror comic Uzumaki. Tom loves this grotesque masterwork of dread and decay, in which a town is ravaged by an unkillable monster, specifically spirals. Like, the shape. Like a swirly line. That's the monster. It's scary, I swear! But will guests Josh Zagoren and returning champ Erika Price see the same delicious horror in Uzumaki that Tom does? Listen and find out my buds!

Mike Haverty brings the deranged children's movie Robot in the Family to Tom and guest Joe Anderson, a film featuring a robot named Golddigger who is less interested in finding gold than he is at assaulting people and saying "daddy." Mike found this movie in a thrift store and it changed his life. Will Tom and Joe feel the same way? Check it out and see!

Also, if you want to see the movie itself, it's on Mike's YouTube channel right here: https://youtu.be/RwOhdPsZA74

Do you like the Rock? You have a heart, so yes. YDU co-founder Eric Ruelle returns to introduce Tom to The Rundown, the Rock's first non-scorpion-based starring role. Eric holds this as one of the top films of his childhood, but will it stand the test of time? Check it out as we analyze Christopher Walken's tooth fairy metaphor and pitch a spinoff TV series, The Runner Down. I hope you enjoy it!

We're yammering about anime again because all podcasters are incurable nerds! Tom tricked friends of the show Gwynn Fulcher and erica dreisbach into watching Kill La Kill, a one-season anime about high school, fascism, nudity, sentient alien clothing, friendship, and murdering people with scissors. It is a POLARIZING PIECE OF WORK TO SAY THE LEAST, with exceptional writing for well-rounded women characters on one hand, and absurdly revealing magic battle armor on the other. Is it feminist? Is it sexist trash? IS IT BOTH? Tom was extremely hyped to hear erica and Gwynn weigh in and now YOU CAN TOO! This is a very fun one, check it out!

P.S.: You can see erica's lavishly illustrated notes here, and I highly recommend you take a look: http://tinyurl.com/YDUKLK

You Don't Understand is back, and we're ready to slither into an enormous coat and solve a mystery while appearing to be extremely ill! Guest Stephen Winchell introduced Tom and returning champion Adam Goron to his favorite mystery show, the legendary Columbo! Will Tom and Adam find the same joy in Peter Falk's bumbling detective that Stephen does? Like, obviously yes, Columbo is DELIGHTFUL! Join us on a journey of bomb-sniffing goats, loose breakfast eggs, Leonard Nimoy, and so much more.

It's nearly two more hours about Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Rare is the show that demands this much yammering, but JJBA is one. This time Tom, Joe Anderson, and Cresten St. Clair tackle parts 3 and 4 of Jojos, which completely throw out the rules and tone of the preceding parts and introduce fighting robot brain ghosts. Also there is a character who is an extremely sexy and talented and acclaimed manga artist whose inclusion in the story definitely isn't some kinda wish fulfillment on JJBA creator Hirohiko Araki's part. OH MAN! Jojos fucking owns! LISTEN, FRIENDS!

We got Joestars this week on You Don't Understand! Cresten St. Clair and Joe Anderson cursed Tom by plunging him into the weird, wild world of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, an anime series about beefy boys, sunlight breathing, vampires, classic rock, posing, martial arts, posing, and of course, posing. In PART ONE of our frankly criminally long discussion of Jojo's, we cover the first two arcs of the show: Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency, starring the enormous British gentleman Jonathan Joestar and his enormous prankster grandson Joseph Joestar. Guys, holy shit, a show doesn't put "bizarre" in its name for fuckin' laffs. It's real. Check it out!

Journey into the pastel-colored world of twiggy goth witches with this week's episode of You Don't Understand! Erika Price stumbled onto the singular 2016 film The Love Witch and knew they had to share it with as many people as possible, and Tom & Gwynn Fulcher were happy to be first in line. The Love Witch is an arch, ridiculous comedy but also super tragic feminist tale of the destructive power of the patriarchy, but also the protagonist pees in a jar?! IT'S A TRIP! Listen as Tom marvels at the head-shapes of all the male actors, Gwynn bemoans how heavily kneeling features in pagan covens, and Erika channels a faded-as-hell 60s English professor. CHECK IT!

Official film site: http://thelovewitch.oscilloscope.net/

See Tom, Erika, and Gwynn in The Skewer Best of 2016 book, for sale here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/harrison-dreisbach/the-skewer-best-of-2016/paperback/product-23109896.html