Gobbledygeek

He wasn't going to get away that easy. Just in time for his biennial torture session, Chance Mazzia has been roped into another episode of Gobbledygeek . Since his last go-round, Chance has become a high school teacher, thereby automatically becoming a more productive member of society than either Paul or Arlo. Chance tells us about the esports team he coaches at school, Paul and Arlo share a rare...

They'll tear you a new puppet hole, bitch! The worlds of Charles Band and Don Mancini collide in a pre-Gobbledyween Geek Challenge . Paul sends Arlo a psychic alert letting him know to watch 1989's Puppet Master , the first of producer Band's direct-to-VHS Full Moon Features and the source of approximately one trillion sequels. In turn, Arlo goes meta and has a doll voiced by him call Paul while t...

2020 may be an absolute shitshow, but thanks to Disney+, we can all be in the living room where it happens: the filmed performance of Hamilton , recorded in 2016 with the original Broadway cast, is now available to stream. Paul and Arlo may have talked about Hamilton , oh, once or twice or 18 times since its debut five years ago, but luckily über-fan Sarah Kosheff is on hand to help them find new...

A deadly virus rages across the world. The U.S. is in shambles. Despite the imminent threat, humans have started to turn on one another. And in other news, this week Paul and Arlo are talking about Naughty Dog's highly anticipated zombie apocalypse sequel The Last of Us Part II . Joining them for a discussion of this brutal, beautiful game is none other than Alex Jonestown Massacre guitarist Kenn...

The beauty of Gobbledygeek freestyle episodes is that Paul and Arlo will hop on the microphone and start yammering about something or other, then next thing you know, bam, it's been a tight 45 on the Child's Play franchise. Killer doll movies, killer German time travel shows (what up, Dark ), killer longings for idealized video stores of yesteryear, killer viruses--this episode's got it all. It wi...

The world is, yet again, a much different place than when we last recorded an episode of Gobbledygeek . In the month since the police killing of George Floyd, there have been a wave of protests worldwide and renewed conversations about what role police have in society, if any at all. We--Paul and Arlo--are not sure we should be part of this conversation. After postponing recording for many reasons...

Ah, youth. A time of joy and comfort, of excitement and adventure. Also pain and fear and anxiety and awkwardness and all that fun stuff. Spinning out of their recent conversation with senior British correspondent Wesley Mead, Paul and Arlo talk about nostalgia (Greek for "pain from an old wound," according to Don Draper). They regale the listener with tales of their misbegotten youths, from chron...

Rule, Wezzo! Wezzo, rule the podcast! Gobbledygeek 's senior British correspondent, Wesley "Wezzo" Mead, returns after a truly mind-boggling 22-month gap to fill us in on how exactly the UK is falling apart. Boris Johnson is handling the COVID-19 pandemic very poorly, especially for someone who nearly died from the virus--but still not as poorly as Galactic Emperor Trump, with his Space Forces and...

Another week, another reckoning with the apocalypse. As the country gears up to reopen, Paul and Arlo discuss how their home states of Alabama and Ohio are handling things. They are not optimistic! Crowds packed close, restaurants teeming with teens, maskless mugs--these things, and more, contribute to our hosts' reluctance to get this society back on the road. After they're done ruminating on our...

When you're a geek, you're a geek til ya die, from the stupid reviews to the heaviest sighs. And so, tonight, tonight, the geeks are out tonight--we're talkin' finger-snappin', toe-tappin' street gangs, daddy-o! Out of seemingly nowhere, Arlo pressures Paul into watching Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins' 1961 adaptation of the 1957 Broadway show West Side Story by Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim,...

We're all responding to quarantine (semi- or otherwise) in different ways. Paul seems to be practicing some sort of immersion therapy, living out the post-apocalypse in games like The Last of Us and shows like The Leftovers . Arlo, meanwhile, reaches for the comfort of old reliable favorites like the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie or the modern classic sketch comedy series Key and Peele...

Once upon a time, three idiots did a podcast. Their names were Paul Smith, Arlo "AJ" Wiley, and Joseph "Will Penley" Lewis. And no, we're not talking about Gobbledygeek episode 400--we're talking about the very first episode, recorded a full decade ago. This painful, awkward reminder of where it all began has been lost to time and/or the BlogTalkRadio servers for at least a few years now. Now, it...

A global pandemic. Britain leaving the European Union. Donald Trump being elected president. FX canceling Terriers after one goddamn season. It has been, without question, the dumbest decade. Add to that list the strange, mystifying endurance of Gobbledygeek . A podcast hosted by two straight cis white male idiots, ostensibly devoted to the discussion of "popular culture," and listened to by only...

FIRST THING'S FIRST: Paul obliquely confesses a past sin during this episode, it's kind of a super tense moment, but Arlo has cleared off-mic that it was not a criminal act! So...do with that what you will! Elsewhere, the world is fucking ending, so you might as well watch The End of the Fucking World . Paul and Arlo muse on the collapse of civilization, discuss proper social distancing etiquette,...

We start with frozen dairy dessert. We end with a world on the brink of madness. Between that gulf lies...nothing, everything. Paul chides Arlo for becoming obsessed with Black Hammer . The boys laugh about getting the @Gobbledygeek Twitter handle back. Good stuff. You like that, right? Well, guess what? Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have coronavirus, the NBA has suspended the season, all travel from...

Don't you just hate it when you're a superhero who saves the world and then gets zapped to a shitty little farm town in another dimension that you literally cannot leave? In Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston's Dark Horse series Black Hammer , Abraham Slam, Golden Gail, Barbalien, Talky-Walky, Colonel Weird, and Madame Dragonfly sure do. For this month's Four-Color Flashback , Paul and Arlo discuss the...

No one, especially not Alan Moore, ever really wanted a Watchmen sequel. Which is exactly why handing the reins to Damon Lindelof, who has a history of disorienting and upsetting expectations, is a stroke of genius. Last year's HBO series, spearheaded by Lindelof, is a bold, startling continuation of Moore and Dave Gibbons' graphic novel masterpiece--so of course, after talking about the book, Pau...

After a year of pointedly discussing no superhero stories, Paul and Arlo revive Four-Color Flashback for a new decade with the big kahuna of all superhero stories: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 1986-87 maxi-series Watchmen . Aided by emotional sherpa Greg Sahadachny, once and future host of The Debatable Podcast , the boys openly admit there is no new light to shed on perhaps the most analyzed comi...

The geeks speak! Gobbledygeek has been resurrected via cloning or Force magic or some shit, and to kick off season 11, Broken Magic author and The Deli Counter of Justice co-creator Eric Sipple has lightspeed-skipped on over to discuss Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker . After adoring The Last Jedi , the gang approached this supposed final film in the Skywalker Saga with heavy amounts...

'Twas the season 10 finale of Gobbledygeek , when all through the podcast, Zombies were shuffling, Scottish dancers aghast. John McPhail's Anna and the Apocalypse was the topic du jour, In hopes that Paul and Arlo would discuss the songs, the jokes, and maybe some more. The movie does not foster too much discussion, alas; While instead, talking about Christmas plans and getting high, our hosts hav...

It took Brás de Oliva Domingos so long to find out, and he found out. What, if anything, he found out is the central question of Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's 2010 Vertigo series Daytripper , subject of our final Four-Color Flashback for 2019. You see, Brás writes obituaries for a São Paulo newspaper--and at the end of most chapters in this book, he dies. Twin writers/artists Moon and Bá pave the wa...

The Cloud burst, and for forty days and forty nights, all of our secrets rained down. In the not terribly distant future world of Brian K. Vaughan, Marcos Martin, and Muntsa Vicente's 2013-15 series The Private Eye , the Internet is a distant memory and anonymity is now the foundation of American society. Of course, our hero is an amoral paparazzo-slash-private investigator whose job is to dig up...

Ever have a job so shitty, it haunts you years (or even decades) down the line? Paul and Arlo have, and it's called Gobbledygeek ! Hey-o! In all seriousness (?), Paul recounts a traumatic experience at Shakey's Pizza and Arlo is filled with regret over his time at the right-wing call center InfoCision. Cue flashbacks to high school football teams ravenous for wings and evil televangelists separati...

Our favorite thing is Gobbledyween, so to close out this year's frightening festivities, Paul and Arlo are breaking from the norm to discuss Emil Ferris' 2017 graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters . Joining them for this first Gobbledyween/Four-Color Flashback crossover is their The Deli Counter of Justice collaborator Eric Sipple. The gang marvels at Ferris' stunning art (all done in ballpo...

Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme: the rich have always sucked off the poor, and podcasting icon Greg Sahadachny has always joined Gobbledyween for the most ridiculous and outrageous pick of the season. This time, Paul and Arlo have chosen to torment Greg with Brian Yuzna's 1989 satire Society , which is a dumb teen sex comedy until--well, until it isn't. The gang discusses the film's subt...