Culture Dumps

LA Gear was an active wear brand started in the 1980’s that focused mostly on sneakers. What started as a women’s accessory company quickly became one of the most recognizable brands of its time. But how did a company that at one point was said to be the best performing company listed on the stock market become all but forgotten? In this episode we will break down what happened to LA Gear, run int...

Parks welcomes back Matt Davis from the Y2K episode and his own ATL Podcast. Matt discusses his time learning and utilizing Pick Up Artist and Speed Seduction techniques.

Faces of Death, the 1978 film that showed audiences scene of gore, animal death, plane crashes, corpses and ritual sacrifice. This movie was hugely successful and created many copycat type videos. We explore the human’s dark fascination with the grotesque. We also cover Rotten.com , Banned from Television, Porsche Girl, ISIS Beheading videos… lots of fun death for your Halloween weeken...

This week we were lucky enough to get Academy Award nominated filmmaker Eddie Schmidt to chat with us. Eddie’s body of work is vast and awesome. We discuss several of the documentaries he produced and directed as well as his time as a writer for the very dumpable show  Blind Date . He also gives Ryan a brief history lesson on the middle finger and tells us what it is like to lo...

The rise and fall of Hervé Villechaize. Hervé goes to Hollywood. Hervé makes it big; appearing in a James Bond movie. Hervé keeps drinking like a man 3 times his size. Hervé’s enormous appetite for woman cannot be satisfied. Hervé strikes gold with the TV show Fantasy Island. Hervé gets fully loaded and blows all his money.

Hervé Villechaize was everywhere in the mid 70s. He is most famous for his role as Nick Nack in a James Bond film and as Tattoo in the hit TV show Fantasy Island. Villechaize was born with dwarfism and as an adult stood to be just under four feet. Relentlessly bullied as a child, Hervé was driven to achieve success. Part 1 finds him as the darling of the Paris art scene, as well as the transition...

It is our 80th episode (proper) so we decided to kick it off with a bang! A “SHE BANG” that is! Ryan sits down with the legendary William Hung to discuss his rise to fame, his adjustment to normal life, and his love of gambling. Truly inspirational. 

This is from the brilliant mind of Ryan. This book is classic of modern American literature. Ryan hates it. Parks loved it as moody teenager, as did millions others. This falls into a category of influential works that really get away from its creator. Author JD Salinger became increasingly reclusive after Catcher’s success. Mark David Chapman had a copy of the book in his possession when he...

This week Ryan is joined by Mike Connelly of Noisextra to discuss the now defunct pro-wrestling giant, WCW. WCW was a powerhouse that dominated the Monday night wars of the mid 1990’s. That was until the inclusion of actor David Arquette. Both the company and Arquette suffered due to what is considered to be the most controversial win in this history of the business. Even if you are not a fan of w...

Join Our Patreon!!! https://www.patreon.com/culturedumps Woodstock 99 just turned 23 years old! To celebrate the event, Parks created a special megamix of his favorite Woodstock 99 moments. WDUMP is a special Patreon exclusive show made by Culture Dumps. But since we are in a festive mood, we are going to share this episode with the public! If you enjoy this type of bonus content, please please pl...

This week on Culture Dumps we explore one of the most popular documentaries of all time, “Super Size Me.” Was Morgan Spurlock just blowing off steam or did his experiment truly influence the fast food market? Ryan is joined by Eric D of MethSyndicate once again to dive deeply into the genre defining film. Also, the Filet of Fish is bomb and Spurlock is kind of a creep.

Olean is the brand name of the fat substitute Olestra. The product would add no fat or extra calories to food products, without losing any of the taste! The miracle oil took off in the mid 90s, during a wave of other “low fat” and “fat free” products. Most notable was the Wow! chips brand during this time. However, just as Olean fever started to take off, a very undesirable...

Planet Hollywood was part of a trend of themed restaurants that really had a peak in the 90s. Patrons could enjoy the feeling of eating on a movie set, while also admiring Hollywood memorabilia on display. With several A-list endorsements, the restaurant quickly became a huge success. The problem was, they took it too far too quick. That, and the food was terrible. On this episode we examine how t...

Crikey Mate! We explore one of the most sincere and life loving dumps yet. Steve Irwin loved animals, the planet, his job and his family. Truly and influential entertainer that brought the wild outback into our living rooms. Gone too soon, we remember the legacy of the Crocodile Hunter.

Parks is joined by his two friends (Leeza and Hayley) who were both competitive figure skaters. This bonus episode is a fascinating deep dive into the intensely competitive world of figure skating. Leeza and Hayley also shared how the Tonya Harding incident affected the skating community. They also dish on some pretty wild stories from their skating days. A couple bombshell revelations!!! Listen f...

We reach the inevitable conclusion on the Tonya Harding saga. The Nancy Kerrigan attack is what most people know Tonya for. We trace the steps to this infamous event, from her abusive relationship with Jeff Gillooly to his crew of wannabe criminal goons. Tonya really did get mixed up with the wrong crowd here. We delve into Nancy Kerrigan and cultural aftermath of the attack. Plus we cover what To...

Tonya Harding is a renowned and accomplished figure skater and a two-time Olympian for her achievements on the ice. She was the first American skater to successfully land a triple Axel in competition. However, she is known primarily for her connection to the infamous 1994 attack on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. This attack was one of the biggest sporting controversies in the 90s. In part 1, we exa...

To celebrate Ryan and Parks’s reunion they chose the 2005 classic buddy film, Brokeback Mountain. A movie about two cowboys just doing cowboy stuff, the real dump was the huge cultural reaction to the movie. The term “Brokeback” became a meme within itself. Yee haw.

In this episode we welcome Parks back and cover the most successful magicians of all time. Siegfried and Roy came from less than humble backgrounds and dominated the Las Vegas entertainment scene. Performing a total of over 30,000 shows during their career, the duo brought a level of showmanship to magic that the world had never before seen. Oh! And one of them almost got eaten by a damn tiger.

This special episode covers a wide array of the worst and best moments in the history of award shows. Ryan sits down with Adam Papagan to discuss their ill-fated live event “The Award Awards” and the moments they feel are the absolute best award shows have to offer. 

Thomas Kinkade, aka the “Painter of Light” was the most successful commercial artist of his time. At the peak of his popularity it was estimated that one in 20 American homes owned a Kinkade print or product. His whimsical portraits of cottages, lighthouses, Christmas imagery, and overall kitschy shit raked in millions upon millions of dollars, but, underneath the veil of wholesomeness, existed so...

Bo Derek’s appearance in the 1979 film “10” made her an instant star. Running down the beach in a bikini with her hair in braids, the scene was parodied many times and turn Derek in an 80s sex symbol. Her screen time in the movie is relatively short, yet the resulting celebrity status was huge. She starred in a series of 80s movies, directed by her then husband John Derek. These...

This is a double header episode. We bring back our friend Adam Papagan to discuss his career as a tour guide and founder of Cool LA Tours and we also seize the opportunity to test his vast knowledge of the most publicized trial of all time, the OJ Simpson Trial. Ryan and Adam take you step by step through the OJ case in true dumps style.

The term “frivolous lawsuit” gets thrown around quite a bit, however, the number one go-to example of a frivolous lawsuit was not frivolous at all. In 1992 a 79-year-old woman spilt some of her McDonald’s coffee onto her lap causing third degree burns of six percent of her body. The media completely flubbed the story and painted the woman as a shady grifter who was attempting to scam the Golden Ar...

Heroin Chic is the term used for the rise of nihilistic, drug influenced pop culture in the early 1990’s. While most of the trend was gravely misunderstood, there were some long lasting negative effects that are worth reviewing in our special dump way. Music, film, and fashion are all involved. PLUS we will hear first hand from our return guest Dinah Rankin (aka @beautifulsupermodelgenius) a...