Gobbledygeek

You're a better podcaster than us, Michael Holland. That's right, the City of Angels' very own boy wonder is back to take Paul and Arlo to film school. The That Was Then classic gracing our screens this time is George Stevens' 1939 adventure film Gunga Din , starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The gang discusses the film's connection to William Goldman, the subject of t...

Around and around we go, where we'll stop–only Arlo knows! For this month's Four-Color Flashback , Gobbledygeek's enfant terrible has chosen Junji Ito's 1998-99 horror manga Uzumaki . Will Paul ever forgive him? On hand to find out is The Deli Counter of Justice co-conspirator Eric Sipple, who will be appearing on FCF episodes for infinity. The gang discusses Ito's beautifully grotesque imagery, t...

Oh, what a tangled web we Weavers! For this month's Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo trap Eric Sipple in their web once more, this time to discuss Simon Spurrier & Dylan Burnett's Lovecraftian mob story Weavers. Despite being big fans of Spurrier's (author of past FCF favorites Six-Gun Gorilla and The Spire), Paul and Arlo aren't quite sure what to make of this one, while Eric has some thoughts...

As they say, don't drink and podcast, but here Paul and Arlo are talking about 2004's Sideways for another round of That Was Then . Alexander Payne's acclaimed dramedy follows alcoholic wine connoisseur Miles as he takes his bonehead best buddy Jack on a road trip through Santa Barbara the week before Jack's due to get hitched. It is the Fox Searchlight movie, and the boys discuss what that means,...

We're speeding away at breakneck speed with another installment of our That Was Then series. This time Paul and Arlo are witnesses to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a 1974 subway heist thriller that is exactly what it says on the tin. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But our boys do struggle to find much to say, choosing to highlight David Shire's jazz-funk score and Owen Roizman's...

For the next installment in our That Was Then series, Paul and Arlo cast their minds back to 1964–a year that predates both of them, though the era's Beatlemania might as well be Arlo's spiritual birthplace. This time, they're popping paisley parasols for Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a sung-through opera told in the style of a Hollywood musical with some of the most stunning colors y...

Who ya gonna call? Gobbledygeek ! For the first installment of our That Was Then series, taking a look back at movies celebrating anniversaries in 2024, Paul and Arlo take residence at Spook Central for 1984's Ghostbusters . Turning a frightful 40 this year, Ivan Reitman's classic comedy began as a high-concept riff on the "slobs v. snobs" template made popular by Animal House before becoming an i...

Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the Gobbledygeek season 15 premiere! Breaking from vaguely defined tradition, Paul and Arlo are kicking off the season with a Four-Color Flashback, and their pal Eric Sipple is on hand to help turn the pages. Arlo has chosen to subject Paul and Eric to the classic Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale collab Superman for All Seasons, which may prove a tough sell t...

You'll slash your eye out, Kidder! To close out our truncated season, it's a  Twisted Christmas double feature, as Paul and Arlo explore both of Canadian auteur Bob Clark's yuletide classics: 1974's proto-slasher Black Christmas and the 1983 staple A Christmas Story . The boys separately find each of these movies to be deeply annoying…but who couldn't stand which one?! Just kidding, Paul's not tha...

What is there for a young, mixed-race woman to do in feudal Japan? Reject all traces of her femininity, assume the masculine identity of a ronin, and seek revenge on any of the four white men in the whole country who could potentially be her father. Is Mizu a demonic half-breed, an enlightened warrior, or something else altogether? Created by Michael Green and Amber Noizumi, Blue Eye Samurai chart...

We're crash-landing back into regular podcasting with the Max original animated series Scavengers Reign. Created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner, the seeds of Scavengers Reign were planted in an Adult Swim short before blossoming into a brilliant sci-fi series teeming with surrealist detours and bits of body horror. Paul and Arlo rave about the show's Cronenberg-meets-Miyazaki vibe, laud th...

500 episodes! Can you believe it? What incredibly special way will we choose to commemorate this event??? By, well, just having a regular episode discussing Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with our good friend Eric Sipple. At one point this past summer, we weren't sure another episode was ever going to happen, so this seems like a fitting celebration. The boys rave about Across the Spider-Vers...

You have to believe Gobbledygeek is magic. Or at the very least, that Paul and Arlo will revel in cinematic magic on the latest Geek Challenge . Robert Greenwald's infamous 1980 flop Xanadu is paired with David Lynch's acclaimed 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive for a fantastical discussion of filmic fantasy. The boys argue that Xanadu should not be seen as a failure, interpret Mulholland Drive 's...

In brightest day, in blackest night, no listener shall escape the Four-Color Flashback 's might! In an unusual turn of events, Paul has selected a DC book–but, of course, it's an unusual one. Published under DC's Young Animal imprint, curated by My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way, Far Sector is a Green Lantern murder mystery written by N.K. Jemisin (in her first comics work) with art by Jamal Campbe...

Are you feeling "Homesick"? Are you all "Tangled Up in Blue"? Dogged by a "Simple Twist of Fate" or, perhaps, sippin' on gin and "Orange Juice"? Then boy, do we have the Geek Challenge for you! Dipping their toes in musical waters for the first time in a while, our boys are listening to one of each other's favorite albums. Paul has challenged Arlo to Noah Kahan's 2022 singer-songwriter album Stick...

For this month's Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo tackle a blindspot from one of their favorite writers. Gene Luen Yang, author of Gobbledyfaves like American Born Chinese and Avatar: The Last Airbender, tells the brutal story of the Boxer Rebellion in Boxers & Saints. The graphic novel duology delves into complex subjects like faith, spirituality, nationalism, and fascism; we cover 'em all, ho...

Love can spread like a fungus throughout the soul, eradicating any shred of self-control. For a thorough depiction of that sentiment, we turn to HBO's The Last of Us, a TV adaptation of the blockbuster video game series. Joining Paul and Arlo to talk everything mushroom are authors and pop culture enthusiasts Dale and Ensley Guffey, stopping by the show for their first visit in years. The gang dis...

You remind me of the pod…the pod with the geeks. Paul and Arlo fall down the rabbit hole of another Geek Challenge, this time pitting Jim Henson's 1986 cult classic Labyrinth against Jan Švankmajer's 1988 headtrip Alice. Henson's film finds Jennifer Connelly dancing with David Bowie and a variety of Muppets as she attempts to rescue her baby brother, while Švankmajer's finds Kristýna Kohoutová ass...

Time to rise, roar, and revolt as Paul and Arlo engage in some extreme piggybacking with S.S. Rajamouli's RRR. This alt-history epic is the rare Indian film to make a splash in the Western world, and our boys approach it as only two ignorant white guys can: with almost no knowledge of Indian culture or film! Nevertheless, they are in love with the movie, which reimagines Indian revolutionary figur...

Got a hankerin' for god meat? Well, pull out your giant lightsaber knife and feast on a new Four-Color Flashback ! For the first FCF of 2023, Paul and Arlo set out at warp speed to seek enlightenment with Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo's We Only Find Them When They're Dead . The BOOM! Studios series, whose 15-issue run wrapped in December, is set hundreds of years from now, when the primary industry i...

We're back, baby! After a longer than expected hiatus, Gobbledygeek has returned for season 14. That's right, we're up to 14 seasons of Paul and Arlo babbling on about any manner of nonsense–which they continue to do in this freestyle season premiere. 2023 has come in like a lion and is likely to go out like one, so we find our boys licking their wounds, recounting the real-life horrors that delay...

Is that a tree branch on your face, or are you just lying to me? An extra-long Gobbledygeek season finale takes root with a discussion of Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson's new stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio . Paul and Arlo discuss the numerous ways del Toro has made Carlo Collodi's immortal tale his own, chiefly by making it a study of mortality–oh, and fascism too. The boys rave about...

Hang your stockings by the chimney, roast some chestnuts on that open fire, and prepare yourself for a very special Twisted Christmas installment. Our annual yuletide derangement has morphed into a Geek Challenge , featuring two obviously similar films: Paul has challenged Arlo to Michael Curtiz's holly jolly classic White Christmas (1954), and in turn Arlo has thrust upon Paul Stanley Kubrick's f...

Now that rock star biopics have peaked with Elvis , what else can the genre do but get Weird ? Dare to be stupid with Paul, Arlo, and Alex Jonestown Massacre guitarist Kenn Edwards as they discuss Weird: The Al Yankovic story. Everyone's favorite accordionist parodies Oscar bait bologna to tell a fact-free version of his own life story, starring obvious choice Daniel Radcliffe. The gang recounts t...

Aho, podcast listeners! To celebrate Native American Heritage Month, Paul and Arlo check in on the latest season of Reservation Dogs , possibly the best show on TV. It would be hard to top Rez Dog 's freshman year, a revelatory season filled with joy, pain, and a whole bunch of shitasses. Yet that's exactly what Sterlin Harjo and his collaborators have done, deepening the themes of loss and commun...