The Flopcast

It's the conclusion of our FlopFight tournament of Saturday Night Live characters! We have miscellaneous freaks and weirdos competing from 50 years of SNL history. Will it be Wayne and Garth vs. Hans and Franz? Canteen Boy vs. Gap Girls? So many possibilities. But only one shall survive, and they shall look marvelous. The Flopcast website! The ESO Network! The Flopcast on Facebook! The Flopcast on...

Let's celebrate 50 years of Saturday Night Live with a big silly tournament of SNL characters. Church Lady vs. Target Lady? Festrunk Brothers vs. Sweeney Sisters? Gilly vs. Gumby? So many weird possibilities, but only one shall survive and advance to next week's final round. Anything can happen, it will be ridiculous and stupid, and we promise not to provide you with any deep thoughts. The Flopcas...

We're looking back at the comic book scene of forty years ago, and we've brought in a special guest to help: ESO Network Director (and longtime comic book fan) Mike Faber. The big story of 1985 was Crisis on Infinite Earths, but we cover much more, including: The New Teen Titans, Justice League Detroit, the trial of the Flash, Elvira's House of Mystery, Secret Wars II, Heroes for Hope, the silline...

Just a few quick subjects this week: We recommend the improv comedy of Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation's Jean-Ralphio!), we look at some Saturday Night Live-related comic books (including when Spider-Man met Belushi), and we take it to the streets. Not because we're Doobie Brothers, but because we're angry. The Flopcast website! The ESO Network! The Flopcast on Facebook! The Flopcast on Instagr...

If you grew up in or around the bizarro state of Rhode Island, you might remember the Warwick Musical Theatre. For decades, this tent-style venue (with a rotating circular stage in the middle) hosted concerts, comedy, musicals, and even wrestling. (Guess how many times Liberace performed there. No, you're low. Guess again.) And back in the 80s, this is where some of us first saw Weird Al, the Monk...

Continuing our look back at 1975 (which was just about fifty years ago, according to most historians), let's see what was on television. Specifically we're looking at the prime time schedule for March 30, 1975, which just happened to be Easter night. So the three networks offered a mix of special programming (The Ten Commandments, The Wizard of Oz, and a horrifying holiday Waltons rerun) and typic...

It's a simple enough show this week, kids. We're just looking at a bunch of movies from half a century ago. 1975 was a game-changing year in film. Early 70s trends like blaxploitation and dystopian sci-fi were about to be swept aside, as a certain giant Spielbergian shark ushered in the blockbuster era. But meanwhile, the year still offered some genuine classics (Dog Day Afternoon, One Flew Over t...

As the title suggests, we have illnesses, we have injuries, and we have a quick little listener feedback episode. Including: Blip magazine, Pac-Man high scores, Activision patches, Dig Dug songs, Donkey Kong comics, Mardi Gras chickens, Sewer Sam, An Hour With Bob, Positronic Hypersonic, Sci Fi Journal, Luke Ski's Animation & Stuff Podcast, the Yummy Awards, and pizza pies for Pi Day. Enjoy, as we...

We're just diving into the bizarre world of Rhode Island cable access television of the 80s and 90s. And our special returning guest is Kevin Cafferty! Kevin was there, and remembers it all. If you were anywhere near the Ocean State back in the day, you never knew what you'd find on local cable TV, but you knew it would freak you out. Including: awkward talk shows, befuddling children's shows, ult...

We always enjoy perusing the annual list of nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because it makes everybody angry. And this year we have a special guest: Michael Gordon, host of the Dragon Con Report , Earth Station Who , and BatChums podcasts! (Clearly Mike isn't podcasting enough. So glad we could help with that.) The nominees include 70s rock (Bad Company), 80s pop (our girl Cyndi!), 90...

In 1983, Marvel Comics launched a magazine about video games. This was not a comic book; it was a magazine. (Okay, it was a tiny comic book-sized magazine. Happy now?) It lasted just seven issues, utterly failing to make a blip, even though it was in fact called Blip. So today we're flipping through the first issue of Blip, trying to make sense of it all. On the cover is actor Matthew Laborteaux (...

Recently we braved the lawless wilderness of New Hampshire to see a show called "Piano Men and Women," celebrating the music of Billy Joel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Carole King, and more. (We were there because our old pal Mike is the guitarist in this show. Mike has come a LONG way since Sponge Awareness...) So now we're throwing all those classic pop stars into a silly FlopFight tournament of...

Longtime Flopcast listeners (those poor souls) know that every 100 episodes, we celebrate V66, Boston's own music video TV channel of the mid-80s. This time, however, we have a special guest: Eric Green, director of the V66 documentary, Life on the V ! And because this is episode 666, we're looking at the heavy metal and hard rock bands and videos of the V66 era. It was a time when catchy melodies...

It's time for another Top 4 1/2 List, and it's a dumb one! The subject is "Ace." We're just listing characters (from cartoons, movies, TV, etc.) named Ace. And we probably missed your favorite Ace, so let us know! (Unless your favorite is Ace the Bat-Hound. We assure you, we did not forget Ace the Bat-Hound.) The MarsCon 2025 Comedy Music Track and Fund Raiser Album! And our regular links... The F...

Normally we save our "Too Many Comics" reviews for the ESO Network's Patreon supporters. But this one is for everybody, as Kevin and the Mayor flip through the oldest comic book we have here at the studio. And oh yes, it features a chicken. Published by Quality Comics way back in 1946, it's Egbert #4. In the lead story, Egbert the chicken and his fox buddy The Count enter a pie-eating contest. Try...

As we enter the horrifying year of 2025, we thought we'd roll back half a century and look at the music of 1975. We're perusing Billboard's Top 100 song list for the year, and as you'd expect, it's a weird list. The hippie acts were winding down, disco was ramping up, easy listening schlock was at its zenith, and everybody -- literally everybody -- was kung fu fighting. It was probably also not a...

If your New Year's Resolution was to strengthen your vocabulary with the help of some DC Comics superheroes, we've got you covered. Yes, we're turning back to The Super Dictionary, that bizarre book of words and definitions for the kids of 1978. Our latest batch of Super Dictionary entries features: Supergirl catching flies, Wonder Woman staggering about in a fog, Black Canary vs. a giant owl, Kry...

We're wrapping up our annual two-part memorial show, covering people we lost in the second half of 2024 from TV (Linda Lavin, John Amos, Bob Newhart), movies (Teri Garr, Shelley Duvall, James Earl Jones), music (Quincy Jones, John Mayall, Kris Kristofferson), and more. (Richard Simmons, Dr. Ruth, Famous Amos, the "You've got mail!" guy... our list has a lot of range.) The egg nog is flowing freely...

In Part 1 of our two-part memorial show, we look back on people from pop culture (and beyond) who died in the first half of 2024. It's a long list, so it's a long show. Including: People from movies (Cindy Morgan, Carl Weathers, Louis Gossett Jr., Dabney Coleman, Donald Sutherland), comedy (Richard Lewis, Joe Flaherty, Martin Mull), television (Joyce Randolph, Kevin Brophy, David Soul), music (Mel...

Welcome to the Flopcast holiday variety spectacular, in which we sip egg nog and nothing happens. But we do pack quite a few festive subjects into this quick little show, including: Weird 1970s Christmas cartoons! (The Fourth King is an obscure one we'd never seen before. And our favorite, A Cosmic Christmas, is now available from RiffTrax!) A Joan Osborne concert! The Air Supply Christmas album!...

Spinning out of last week's review of The Year Without a Santa Claus, this week we're looking at another classic Rankin/Bass Christmas cartoon that debuted fifty years ago: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas! It's set in the bizarre little town of Junctionville, where humans and mice coexist in a way we can't quite figure out. There we meet a humble clockmaker, a nerdy mouse, a clueless wacky mayor,...

The Mayor of Chickentown is here to help us celebrate the 50th anniversary of a Rankin/Bass animated classic, The Year Without a Santa Claus. It's best remembered for Snow Miser and Heat Miser, of course, but we're here to break down the whole thing. We discuss the goofy plot, the goofier characters, the actors behind those characters, the book that inspired the cartoon, the live action remake, th...

It's the holiday season, which means it's the holiday movie season, which means it's time for us to get to work. Because if you tune your TV to the Hallmark channel (or Lifetime, or Netflix, or anywhere else), you'll be assaulted by dozens of ridiculous new romantic holiday movies. A parade of big city girls will be returning to their quaint home towns to save their families' struggling mistletoe...

As usual, we ring in the stupid holidays with a Letters to Cleo concert report, because our favorite 90s Boston band always comes home for Thanksgiving. (Letters to Cleo once performed on Parks and Recreation, and weirdly, just down the street from the concert, we spotted an actual citizen of Pawnee, Indiana. It was either Jerry, Garry, Larry, or Barry.) Then, as we approach the 100th anniversary...

Even as we stagger toward a horrifying future, The Flopcast is here with more silly things for you, because we're gonna get through this together. And this week we're celebrating Danny DeVito's 80th birthday (just as we celebrated his 70th birthday about a decade ago), we have a Chickens in the News story about an actual robot chicken... and then we just turn the whole show over to the robots. If...