The Flopcast

For our Halloween episode, we're revisiting a favorite subject: the cheapo department store Halloween costumes produced for decades by the Ben Cooper company. Kids loved slipping into their uncomfortable plastic masks and weird vinyl smocks for an evening of begging the neighbors for Twix bars. We look at superhero costumes (including some odd ones like Web Woman), Krofft costumes (you could be a...

We're back from a quick visit to Albany, New York, where Kevin ran a half marathon (finishing in 309th place, probably not qualifying for the Olympics) and learned the shocking truth about Alice from The Brady Bunch. Now here in Chickentown, we're looking at an odd 1959 comic book called Weather-Bird. It stars a chicken and a goat, and the whole thing is a promotional gimmick to sell children's sh...

It's no secret that we're rather obsessed with the 80s around here, so this week we're chatting with author Debby Meltzer Quick. Debby's first novel (the first of several!) is May I Have Your Attention Please , a mid-80s high school romance set in Eastboro, Massachusetts. Kevin and Debby discuss the novel itself, how much pop culture nostalgia to include in a story, how to draw from one's own life...

We didn't make any big plans for our big 700th episode, because that would have required effort, which is frowned upon around here. Instead we have a hastily assembled pile of random stuff, just for you. Including: Our ongoing cluelessness about Buc-ee's! An update on our favorite Bugaloo from Dragon Con! The 700th biggest song of the 1980s (according to our Ranking the 80s book)! The 700th bigges...

Our Dragon Con review finally concludes, just in time for us to get ready for next year's Dragon Con. We're looking at the last two days of the convention, including: Muppet talk with Muppet performers/designers Bill Barretta, Kevin Clash, Bonnie Erickson, and Dave Goelz! Actual trick-or-treating in the American Sci-Fi Classics Track room at Halloween Con! The science of Severance (it seems like a...

Our coverage of Dragon Con (Atlanta's massive Labor Day weekend nerd convention) continues! Thrill to every single weird thing we did on Friday and Saturday! Including: The Geek Girls Run! The Muppet Mayhem tournament! The return of the Music Video Book Club (during which Carly Simon hooked up with Sico the Robot)! Fantastic Four cartoons with Chris from Sci-Fi Explosion! The return of Classic Sci...

Here we go with the first of three (yikes, let's hope it's just three) episodes reviewing everything we did at Dragon Con, the ultimate gathering of geeks over Labor Day weekend in Atlanta. Including: A visit to the Center for Puppetry Arts, where we found members of Emmet Otter's Jug Band and the Riverbottom Nightmare Band! Turtles and Muscovy ducks at Piedmont Park! All our weird friends from th...

It's the shocking conclusion of our second Saturday Night Live character FlopFight tournament, and Dragon Con American Sci-Fi Classics Track co-director Joe Crowe is still here providing expert commentary. Our competitors may include a pair of insecure bodybuilders, a simple caveman, a lady with a less-than-positive attitude, and perhaps even the devil himself. It all leads to a showdown with last...

A few months back, to celebrate Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary, we did a whole FlopFight tournament of SNL characters. But since so many classic characters didn't get to play, we thought we'd just do it again. And since this is Dragon Con weekend, we thought we'd bring in a special guest: Dragon Con American Sci-Fi Classics Track co-director Joe Crowe! Joe will help us sort through this ne...

We're just days away from Dragon Con, Atlanta's massive annual gathering of the geeks! And the full schedule of all eight zillion Dragon Con events has been released. So this week, after a quick guest update (Simon Pegg is in! Tom Wilson is out!), we're looking at our individual schedules, so you'll know how to find us or (more likely) avoid us. Including: The Dragon Con walking tours; the Geek Gi...

Our Dragon Con coverage officially begins, and it might never end! Dragon Con is our favorite nerd event of the year, it's almost here, and this week we're looking through the guest list. Among those tentatively scheduled to appear are stars from Back to the Future, Daredevil, Buck Rogers, Star Trek, The Magicians... and even some actual Muppet performers. Also appearing will be many fine writers,...

With a free week before we start like eight months of nonstop Dragon Con coverage, Kevin and the Mayor are trying something new: We're recording the show from outside Chickentown Studios, in the great and filthy outdoors. Hopefully this will provide a more festive summertime atmosphere, until the mosquitoes and bats and angry villagers show up. So with nothing better to do until a search party arr...

If you've just been waiting all summer long for The Flopcast's annual robot-themed Top 4 1/2 List... well, first, what's wrong with you? Go to the beach or something. But also... here it is! Our theme this year is "recycled robots." Sometimes a robot would be designed for some movie or TV show, and then later repurposed for some other movie or TV show. Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot is the pri...

We're packing all our summer concert reports into one big show! First it's Aimee Mann in New Hampshire with her regular opener (and no stranger to the nerd world) Jonathan Coulton. (As longtime Aimee fans, we're still a little grumpy about missing the recent 'Til Tuesday reunion show...) Then we have two shows from the same exhausting weekend! First up is "Weird Al" Yankovic, who brought his Bigge...

After ten long silly weeks, we've arrived at the end of our 1980s-themed episodes. And 1989 was a huge year at the movies, so we thought we'd play one more round of our Movie Recasting Movie Character Movie Game. That means we're pulling characters from randomly-selected 1989 movies, and then inserting them into other movies. This usually results in much weirder movies. (Speaking of weird, a certa...

We're using our 1988 episode to finally wrap up our Backs of Life series, in which we review every backdoor pilot episode of classic 80s sitcom The Facts of Life. And this final two-part backdoor pilot from April 1988 is actually the end of the whole show! (Farewell, Tootie...) We start with a fleeting glimpse of the regular cast (which by this point also includes Australian moppet Pippa), but soo...

1987 was a transitional year in comic books. DC successfully relaunched Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Justice League in their new post-Crisis universe. Marvel started a new universe too, which they called, uh, "New Universe." Also at Marvel, Spider-Man got married, an event so big that an actual wedding ceremony was held at a baseball stadium. Meanwhile, Alan Moore wrapped up his brilliant ru...

Returning to the Flopcast after a full decade away, it's our old pal (and comedy musician, podcaster, animator, storyboard artist, and voice actor) the great Luke Ski! Luke came up with the subject for this week's Top 4 1/2 List, and it's a long one: The Top 4 1/2 Songs Made For A Movie Where The Title Of The Song Is Also The Title Of The Movie And The Lyrics Of The Chorus Of The Song! Got that? A...

It's the 40th anniversary of Live Aid, and we have a guy who was there. Our friend Rich Wilhelm takes us on a deep dive through his long day at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia for the biggest charity concert in history. Including: General admission tickets at the shocking price of thirty-five dollars! Rich's mom carefully recording the whole show on VHS! The unknown kid who talked his way into opening...

The Mayor finally gets a week off, because we have a special guest. Judy is one of Kevin's running buddies, and she teaches us all about ultramarathon running! (Have you ever run 100 miles in a day? Judy has. Don't you feel completely exhausted just reading that?) Then for some 1980s talk (which does happen occasionally around here), we explore the world of 80s fashion. Hopefully you still have yo...

Flopcast episode 683! As our 1980s-themed episodes roll along, we return to the weird movie game we played a few weeks ago. But this time we're looking at the movies of 1983. So we're yanking characters from randomly-selected movies, shoving them into different movies, and seeing what happens. Our participants are characters from Return of the Jedi, National Lampoon's Vacation, Superman III, Flash...

It's another 80s-themed episode, and we're up to 1982. And to keep this one short and silly, we're just looking at the albums we bought from that year. It's a mix of goofy mainstream pop (Hall & Oates, Air Supply, REO Speedwagon), some slightly cooler stuff (Elvis Costello, Devo, Midnight Oil), and one very special record from Buckner and Garcia. Because this was the year we all had Pac-Man Fever....

It's a simple plan this week: We're just looking at what was on television in late May of 1981. Including: A bizarre Happy Days musical, a horrifying Waltons episode, Mork in a bubble, skydiving Hulk, something called "Women Who Rate a 10," Bo Duke with amnesia, Daisy Duke on Enos, Batman on Fantasy Island, a Muppet on a medical drama, a dead parrot at Mel's Diner, and way too many variety shows (...

As we kick off ten weeks of 80s-themed episodes, we're returning to a goofy little game we invented a couple of years ago. The idea is to pluck characters from randomly selected movies from the year 1980, insert them into other movies, and discuss the ramifications. Potential movies include Flash Gordon, Caddyshack, Popeye, Xanadu, The Empire Strikes Back, and many more. So grab a hideously overpr...

It's the 13th anniversary of the Flopcast! We started this nonsense way back in 2012 (as court-ordered community service, but let's not get into that), and here we are today, as dizzy and confused as ever. And to celebrate, we're doing... not much of anything. Kevin and the Mayor just wander through a few quick little subjects, including: Running a half marathon in Maine; running a 5K in the rain;...