Advent Calendar House

🎄 Live from the Turducken Hunger Games comes Part 1 of a Disney Christmas double feature featuring Mickey Mouse and his pals.  🎙️ Drew Crowley and John Dedeke from The Hourchive help me attempt to make sense of time, space, and the Disney fowl food chain as we watch Disney’s 1999 direct to video Christmas special.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Donald Duck’s comically enormous, fanmade family...

🎄 By the power of Grayskull, the only holiday podcast with Battle Damage action is back to be nice, kind, and wonderful to 1985’s He-Man and She-Ra Christmas special, in which Skeletor’s heart grows three sizes.  🎙️ Brandon Medley and Chad Young are here to help me identify everyone at Eternia’s first ever Christmas party. And Brandon’s dog stops by because he heard us talking about the Beast Mon...

🎄 Tonight in the Advent Calendar House, we’re doing the same thing we do every night… watchin’ a bunch of holiday specials!  🎙️ Joey O. and special guest Joey Letson from The Animanicast joins the mission to apply North Pole to Pinky and the Brain’s 1996 Christmas special, probably the closest the lab mouse duo ever got to actually taking over the world.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   This sp...

🎄 Listen in as we gush over a 1977 Muppet Christmas special that probably doesn’t get the attention it deserves.  🎙️ Emily Rowley drops in to marvel at Kermit riding a bicycle, watch a drum roll out a door too many times to count, and rock out to the Riverbottom Nightmare Band. Pa would’ve loved this podcast.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Muppet Wiki has the lowdown of all 5 cuts of this . ...

🎄 Hang on to your creepy mistletoe hat as we hit the Bayside Mall for a 2-part “Saved by the Bell” Christmas special from 1991.  🎙️ Chad Young and Tommy Coombs drop in to watch Zack get way too shook upon learning the latest girl of his dreams is homeless.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Chad’s write-up on “Home for Christmas” from 2013.  That time WWE’s Daniel Bryan got fired for choking out...

🎄 Coming to you from Gotham City, it’s the podcast nobody wanted to see, but everyone will hear.  🎙️ Jay from the Purple Stuff Podcast and Joey O. drop in to spend Christmas with the Joker on a 1992 episode of “Batman: The Animated Series.”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   The crowdsourced origins of Jingle Bells, Batman Smells .  More discussion on “Christmas with the Joker” on Batman: The Ani...

🎄 Part 2 of our Christmas donkey double feature presents a completely different origin story of the donkey who carried Mary to Bethlehem.  🎙️ Lindy Kempe and Brandon Medley return to talk “The Small One,” Don Bluth’s last Disney project, released in front of the 1978 re-release of “Pinocchio.”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   The original book, “ The Small One: A Story for Those Who Like Christ...

🎄 Extend your ears as we revisit a lesser-known Rankin/Bass special from 1977 that unravels a new side quest to the Nativity story.  🎙️ Lindy Kempe and Brandon Medley droop in to salute “Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey,” the first of a Christmas donkey double feature.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Roger Miller performing “ Do Wacka Do ” in 1966 with another guitarist, “Stubbs,” who’s...

🎄 We dug down like dogs to the bottom of the VHS bargain bin and found “Jingle Bell Rap,” an overlooked special from 1991 that had all the potential to become a Christmas classic, but none of the airtime.  🎙️ Chad Young drops in to introduce me to this special from Perennial Pictures, a studio that managed to spend the entire 1990s producing a whole slew of holiday specials I never knew about til...

🎄 Lace up your ice skates for a look at 3 classic holiday commercials starring 3 different iterations of McDonald’s clown in charge: “ Happy Holidays ” (the ice skating one), “ Star Wish ,” and “ Runaway .”  🎙 Joey O. swoops in just in time to convince me not to leave home and run away to McDonaldland, which is honestly tempting.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Grape jelly is good on Sausage M...

🎄 It’s mime time at the Most Magical Place on Earth in 1978’s “Christmas at Walt Disney World.”  🎙️ Drew Crowley and John Dedeke from The Hourchive drop in to watch Shields and Yarnell as the most 1978 couple imaginable, Pablo Cruise and their indifference to help a screaming woman escape from pirates, Phyllis Diller in the world’s poofiest princess dress, the Doritos guy as a wildly off-model Ge...

🎄 Merry Christmas, little Zachary. Enter the void as time, space, and reality blur around the 1979 TV special accompaniment to my favorite Christmas album of all time, “John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together.” 🎙️ Carlin Trammel and Bill Hanstock join the celebration of peace on Earth and good will to men, women, chickens, bears, Dizzy Gillespie, and Missy Piggy.  ****  💬 Topics &...

🎄 In 1987, the California Raisins missed their bus, then made a sleigh out of garbage and flew it into space.  🎙️ The Advent Calendar House welcomes Erin Evans , Joey O. , and Emily Rowley to join in the raisiny reindeer games that make up Will Vinton’s “Claymation Christmas Celebration,” the greatest holiday special out of all holiday specials hosted by clay dinosaurs.  ****  💬 Topics & Tan...

🎄 Let’s have a good, old-fashioned Christmas down on the farm in 1987’s “A Garfield Christmas Special,” featuring the voices of Squiggy and Ursula .  🎙️ The Advent Calendar House welcomes Jeff Somogyi as we contemplate lasagna as a Christmas food, go long on the dinner prayer, and wonder how Binky, “The Clown Who Saved Christmas,” saved Christmas.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Joey O. interv...

🎄 From the author of “The Wizard of Oz” comes one of the craziest Santa origin stories ever.  🎙️ Brandon Medley and Paxton Holley stop by to witness Rankin/Bass go off the rails in its last-ever stop motion animated Christmas special, 1985’s “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, based on the 1902 book by L. Frank Baum, which explains a lot.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   Santa Claus’s grow...

🕎 Hanukkah is here, so here’s a 1995 special starring sock puppets hanging out with Mr. Miyagi, the dad from Growing Pains, and the mayor of Gotham City.  🎙️ Sarah Shay returns to the Advent Calendar House to reintroduce me to “Lamb Chop’s Special Chanukah,” which miraculously brings together Pat Morita, Alan Thicke, and Lloyd Bochner as both dinner guests and computer-generated, one-dimensional...

🎄🐭 It’s the one with the mouse. Turn back the clock till it goes kerplunk — or kerplooey — to make some time for Rankin/Bass’s 1974 retelling of ’Twas the Night Before Christmas from the perspective of the mouse and his know-it-all nerdy son.  🎙️ Joey O. is in the Advent Calendar House to do what’s necessary, ’cause even a miracle needs a hand.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   The worst thing...

💫 Get ready to blast off for space church as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Star Wars Holiday Special!  🎙️ Lizzie Twacthman joins our exploration of the farthest point from the bright center of our favorite galaxy far, far away.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   “ Some folks are in space for the benefit of nobody ” (SB Nation, 2015)  Our disappointment that Chewbacca’s family didn’t sh...

🎄 It’s time once again to count down to Christmas Eve, starting with 3 versions of Dr. Seuss’s classic Christmas tale from 1966 , 2000 , and 2018 .  🎙️ Michael DiGiovanni and Michael May drop by as all 3 Mikes compare and contrast 3 very different Grinches.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   “ The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. ,” Dr. Seuss’s first — and last — feature film screenplay.  DiGio discovers...

🎄 It’s time to dust off the cobwebs and get the Advent Calendar House ready for Season 2, featuring a new episode every day from December 1 through Christmas Eve, 2018.  In between commercial teasers for all 24 episodes coming in Season 2 (though not necessarily in order) the members of the all-new Christmas Podcast Network share stories of Christmas music traditions:  ****  🎙 Guests:   Brian Ear...

🎃 The Advent Calendar House presents a dazzling display of magical mischief.  🎙️ Chad Young creeps in to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Witch’s Night Out,” an often remembered, then forgotten, then re-remembered Halloween classic from 1978.  📺 You can watch “Witch’s Night Out” on Tubi .  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   WitchsNightOut.com , the official website.  Anytown Series, a plan...

🎆 We’re back for a surprise summertime episode on the 1986 animated movie, “ The Adventures of the American Rabbit .”  🎙️ Chad Young from the Horror Movie BBQ joins our cross-country adventure through a star-spangled box-office bomb from Fred Wolf Films and Toei Animation, starring the voices of Donatello, Garfield, Baby Piggy, and King Triton.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   The late Stewart...

🐰 We’re back! This surprise springtime episode covers the 1976 Rankin/Bass special, “ The First Easter Rabbit ,” which despite its name and main theme, still relies heavily on Christmas.  🎙️ Brandon Medley hops by to discuss this special’s very obvious and very uncredited connection to “ The Velveteen Rabbit ,” Easter Valley’s odd location next door to the North Pole, and Rankin/Bass’s habit of g...

🎄 In our Christmas Eve season finale, the Advent Calendar House is haunted by 3 spirited guests  — Sue London , Jonathan MacFarlane , and Joey O. — as we each draft our own casts of “A Christmas Carol” from a pool of characters from Christmas past.  ****  🎩 “A Christmas Carol” versions mentioned, in chronological order:  1951: Scrooge (starring Alastair Sim).  1954: Shower of Stars’ A Christmas...

🎄 Joey O. returns to the Advent Calendar House bearing the gift of his favorite regional holiday commercial. Join us as we spend 17 times the length of a 30-second lottery commercial talking about the spot that had a whole commonwealth singing “Five Cash Fives!”  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:   The original Pennsylvania Lottery Christmas Commercial from 1992.  The updated commercial from 2012,...