The Flopcast

Our ten-part celebration of the 80s concludes, just as the 80s did, with 1989. Top 40 radio was ruled by Milli Vanilli, the New Kids, and hair metal. It was a problem. But at least we had telepathic Australian dolphins, thanks to Kornflake's favorite short-lived TV show, Dolphin Cove. Kornflake also has a list of celebrities who showed up for 1989's Circus of the Stars. (Was the cast of Growing Pa...

Kevin and the Mayor of Chickentown are back from Atlanta with a full report on DragonCon, where they joined all the masked and vaccinated nerds for a long silly Labor Day weekend. They had a busy schedule of panels, presentations, and events, and our discussion includes: The Suicide Squad, Smallville, Doctor Who, Pennyworth, DragonCon mead, Saturday Morning Live Roll-a-Panel, Classic Sci-Fi Court,...

Our ten-part celebration of the 80s brings us back to 1987 this week. For most of us, 1987 means Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise... and that's all. But the year had even more to offer, if you poke around enough. So first we take a quick look at the Billboard chart from this week in 1987, and find more questions than answers: Did Diane Warren write every hit song in the 1980s, or just mo...

DragonCon, our very favorite annual gathering of the geeks, was a virtual-only event last year. But this year we're creeping back down to Atlanta and doing it for real! It'll be (mostly) business as usual: five days of nonstop panels, concerts, gaming, costumes, and all manner of nerdy fun. Celebrity guests include actors from Doctor Who, Star Trek, Smallville, Batwoman, Pinky and the Brain, Super...

Our ten-episode salute to the 80s creeps along with a quick look at the pop chart from this week in 1985! Dire Straits were computer-animated movers, Phil Collins was an Ocasek-style housefly, Wham met a weird kid in China, and Casey Kasem was very angry about the Pointer Sisters. Then we flip through a summer 1985 issue of Mad magazine, featuring a movie parody (Witness), a TV parody (Kate & Alli...

Welcome to our TENTH annual summer robot Top 4 1/2 List! (It's an odd tradition, but it's all we have.) This year's theme is... 80s robots. Of course, lots of notable 80s robots have appeared on previous lists, so they're not included this time (sorry, Johnny 5) to make room for some all-new, all-weird entries. We have robots from 80s cartoons, 80s television, 80s movies, 80s commercials, and even...

We're celebrating 1983, which the history books already call "the year of Mr. Roboto, and not much else." But we did notice that a bunch of actors who played comic book characters (Spider-Man, Thor, Superman, Lois, Luthor, Wonder Woman, and more) were born that year. And we run through some our favorite 1983 movies (DC Cab, The Outsiders, Wargames), 1983 comics books (Batman and the Outsiders, Ome...

We're up to 1982 in our series of 80s-themed episodes, and it's time to review another Facts of Life backdoor pilot! This one looks eerily similar to a previous backdoor pilot, as the boys of Stone Academy get another shot at a spinoff series! But this time instead of a school dance, the plot involves a school boxing tournament. (Back in 1982, viewers probably thought they were watching Rocky III....

Our ten-part series about the 1980s continues with a look at all the TV shows that debuted in 1981! Prime time soaps were on the rise (Dynasty, Falcon Crest), the Six Million Dollar Man became the Fall Guy, and Hill Street Blues premiered alongside 600 other (instantly forgotten) detective shows. We had a Brady Bunch spin-off (with Marcia, Jan, and their goofy husbands), a Jeffersons spin-off (Flo...

We're kicking off ten weeks of 80s-themed shows... because when do we ever get to talk about the 80s around here? And this week we're looking at the year 1980. It was the year that brought us Flash Gordon, Caddyshack, Pac-Man, the Rubik's Cube, and a cheater in the Boston Marathon. (Some of us also cheated at the Rubik's Cube...) We also review the Billboard pop chart for this week in 1980, and fi...

With the long-delayed release of Black Widow this week, many humans finally returned to actual movie theaters, where the $14 boxes of Raisinets had been waiting patiently since last year. Meanwhile Kevin and Kornflake are flopping back to 35 years ago, when the only Marvel movie in theaters was... Howard the Duck. We run through a big crazy list of movies from 1986, including some all-time favorit...

Just some miscellaneous silly talk this week, including: Kickball with Kornflake; cursing your enemies with R2D2 ceramics; TV talk (we recommend Girls5eva, Rutherford Falls, We Are Lady Parts, and This Way Up); punk rock with The Linda Lindas; crazy screaming peacocks; fun with a giant book of 80s pop chart stats; fun with Wallace and Gromit on Earth Station One; Happy Birthday to the kid from One...

Kevin and Kornflake are enjoying the new comic book-based Netflix show Sweet Tooth (we like hybrids), and we have an entire "sweet"-themed Top 4 1/2 List just for you. Our list includes cheap Halloween candy (of course), as well as a Sweet sitcom star, a cartoon dog, 90s music, a giant Muppet, and lots more silly sweet stuff. Your dentist will hate this episode. (Except for the part about Air Supp...

For the first time in a billion years, we have actual live human guests at Chickentown Studios! (Remember talking to people not on Zoom? Yeah, it's weird.) Brittany and Martha are here, from our sister podcast But First, Let's Talk Nerdy! We're celebrating their first year of podcasting by recalling some of the silliest moments in But First, Let's Talk Nerdy history. Including: The Coast Guard vs....

Yes, we're still examining every "backdoor pilot" episode of The Facts of Life, and we've arrived at "Jo's Cousin," which features, you know, Jo's cousin. She's 14-year-old aspiring mechanic Terry, played by the star of Kornflake's beloved Anne of Green Gables! We also meet Terry's angry father (you know him from Soap and Battlestar Galactica), her goofy brothers (including the star of Meatballs P...

We'd been meaning to do a roller-skating-themed show for years, and it's finally here, in convenient Top 4 1/2 List format! We're listing our favorite roller-skating scenes and characters from movies and TV of the last half century. Plenty of skating humans, of course, but also some goofy Hanna Barbera skating birds, and one big weird wildebeest who is absolutely a zoo animal on wheels. And if you...

As a follow-up to our recent look at the Boston music scene of the 80s, let's move on to the 90s! And let's also move slightly south, to Rhode Island! (State motto: We're tiny, but we're also quite odd.) Another special guest is here too: filmmaker (It's a Bash!), podcaster (Gleaming the Tube), and longtime friend of the Flopcast Kevin Cafferty! Kevin and Kevin (this is gonna get confusing) both s...

If you were a 70s/80s kid who wanted to know what was really going on, you ordered Dynamite magazine through your school book club. Today we're flipping through the December 1979 issue of Dynamite, with Steve Martin on the cover. And hey, Steve's first (and come on, best) movie The Jerk premiered that same month! Which 70s celebrity did Steve enjoy playing horseshoes with? The answer will shock yo...

Happy Anniversary to us! (If you can hear Barney Rubble singing, our work is done.) We've been Flopcasting for nine long silly years, and we're celebrating with a special guest: Earth Station One co-host (and Tiki Zombie writer/publisher) Mike Gordon! Mike is from Massachusetts just like us, so we discuss growing up around the Boston music scene. Including: Boston radio (the Top 40 of Kiss 108 vs....

Our ongoing analysis of every "backdoor pilot" episode of The Facts of Life continues, and we're creeping back to March 1982. "Pac-Man Fever" was on the radio, Porky's ruled the box office, and our Facts of Life girls met the boys at Stone Academy. The plan was to launch a spinoff series set at this military school. That didn't happen, of course, despite a strong cast of young actors from 70s/80s...

Time for some bike talk, because spring is here, and we've taken to the mean streets of Chickentown on our shiny new bikes, like Kevin Bacon in Quicksilver and Nicole Kidman in BMX Bandits. We're not quite as accessorized as Pee Wee Herman, but hopefully we'll find some goofy license plates in our next box of Honey Comb cereal. Also: Our first vaccination appointments somehow involved turkeys and...

Time to wrap up our latest exciting and stupid FlopFight tournament! Only one member of the Love Boat cast shall survive! Your classic Love Boat crew is here, of course, including Isaac the bartender, Julie the cruise director, and Gopher the... whatever it is that Gopher does. A few lesser known characters get to play too, including stars from Happy Days, Spenser: For Hire, and, uh, Blame It on R...

Come aboard, we're expecting you for a Love Boat edition of our ridiculous tournament, the FlopFight! And we're joined by a special guest who knows a thing or two about ridiculous tournaments: DragonCon American Sci-Fi Classics Track Director Joe Crowe! With Joe on board, we'll figure out which Pacific Princess crew member will survive to celebrate on the Aloha deck with a 1970s cocktail from Isaa...

It's another "66" episode, which always reminds us of V66, Boston's late great 1980s music video channel. (You've all seen the documentary Life on the V, right? RIGHT?) This time we decided to party like it's 1985 and watch a bunch of music videos from the V66 era. If you want to jump on YouTube and watch along with us, VJ Kornflake's playlist is: "Obsession" by Animotion, "Invincible" by Pat Bena...

For no good reason, the name "Johnny" is the subject of our latest Top 4 1/2 List. (Has it been a slow week around here? What do you think?) We have characters named Johnny from movies, TV, songs, and even more goofy DC comic books. There might even be a robot on the list, since Ally Sheedy assures us that Johnny 5 is very much alive. Plus: Dueling Johnny songs from Chuck Berry and Men at Work, du...