The Flopcast

After a three year break, we're getting back to The Backs of Life! (As requested by absolutely no one! You're welcome!) Back in 2021, we started reviewing all the "backdoor pilot" episodes of classic 80s sitcom The Facts of Life. Now as we finally revive this very important project, we've brought in a special guest reviewer: friend of the Flopcast, Sci-Fi Explosion mastermind, and certified Factol...

It's another goofy random little show this week, including: Kornflake finds an Oompa Loompa at the Chocolate Expo; Kevin finds a rock star at the disco; the secret language of chickens is revealed; we're less than excited about Popcorn Day; and it's almost time to revive our Facts of Life review project, the Backs of Life. Just as Tootie prophesized. The Flopcast website! The ESO Network! The Flop...

It's a surprisingly disco-themed episode, because Kevin, Kornflake, the Mayor of Chickentown, and Ed from Sponge Awareness Foundation all met in the middle of New Hampshire for a spectacular ABBA tribute show. We were there because our old pal (and occasional SAF guitarist) Mike was onstage in the band, delivering killer guitar solos like you never heard back in the disco era. We followed the show...

Ready for more vocabulary lessons with the Justice League of America? We're diving back into The Super Dictionary, a 1978 book that attempted to mix learning with superheroes, and succeeded in being completely bizarre. This time we'll look at entries involving: walrus baseball with Aquaman, cleaning an invisible jet with Wonder Woman, nap time with the Man of Steel, people crashing when they try t...

National Whatever Day involves dancing like a cuckoo; our 2024 health and fitness plan is mostly lo mein-based; the Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning shows of the 1970s are now streaming (great news for Bay City Rollers fans like us); we somehow connect the Krofft shows to The Love Boat, the Snow Miser, and Chewbacca's creepy dad Itchy; and we finally share our New Year's Resolutions. Spoiler:...

Kornflake returns to join Kevin and The Mayor of Chickentown as we finish our look back at those we lost in 2023. Our coverage of the second half of the year includes: sitcom favorites (Chrissy from Three's Company, Bull from Night Court, Kraus from Benson, Chandler from Friends), cartoon favorites (the voices behind Harley Quinn, Solomon Grundy, and some School House Rock classics), musicians (me...

Time to look back on those we lost (from pop culture and beyond) in 2023. This week we're covering the first half of the year, and our list includes people from movies (Raquel Welch, Treat Williams, Alan Arkin), television (Adam Rich, Cindy Williams, Richard Belzer), music (Burt Bacharach, Harry Belafonte, Tina Turner), comics (Al Jaffee, Lee Moder, John Romita Sr.), wrestling (Leaping Lanny Poffo...

It's a typical holiday episode, in that we're discussing Julia Child, Pop Rocks, and Newsies. But there are some vaguely holiday-themed subjects too, including Kornflake's newfound candy cane addiction, Kevin's recent guest appearance on Gleaming the Tube (discussing old Christmas specials!), and a round or two of the Figgy Pudding Pages. We're keeping it super-short this week and passing the savi...

Special guest Blasted Bill joins us for a Very Flopcast Christmas! And we're putting Bill to work on an extra festive Top 4 1/2 List of... Santas! Bill and Kornflake share their favorite Santas from movies, television, ski slopes, bar crawls, and maybe even Canada. (Let's hope at least one of them picked a Santa from a Rankin/Bass cartoon, or Kevin will freak out like the Burgermeister.) Also: Bil...

Every year dozens of ridiculous identical made-for-TV holiday movies are forced upon the people. And every year we try to fix these movies by making them weirder. We've selected a few of this year's new releases (from the usual suspects like Hallmark and Lifetime), most of which star Lacey Chabert as a big city lawyer who finds true love after returning to her quaint home town to save her great-au...

Break time is over, and the FlopFight resumes! Ed (from the Sponge Awareness Foundation) is back to help us wrap up our tournament of game show hosts (and associated game show weirdos). The players are drawn at random, and the competitions are drawn at random, so anything could happen. Will Bob Barker face Richard Dawson in a Spam-juggling competition? Drew Carey vs. Paul Lynde at Electronic Battl...

Our game show-themed FlopFight concludes next week, but first, let's take a quick intermission! Go hit the lobby and grab some unreasonably priced Junior Mints! And for your entertainment while we're waiting for the carnage to resume, this week we have: Cider Monday (a holiday for bizarre apple people); Kornflake's latest (and most ridiculous) lobster trap tree visit; Letters to Cleo and Gigolo Au...

Kornflake is back! And Ed, the other half of the Sponge Awareness Foundation, is back too! Because Ed thought we should have a game show-themed FlopFight, and it's not like we had anything better to do! So here we go with another ridiculous tournament, and this time the players are the hosts of classic game shows like Jeopardy and Tic Tac Dough, as well as related game show characters. (Could a Pr...

It's the quick fill-in episode to end all quick fill-in episodes! With Kornflake still unavailable (busy at a lobster-and-British-comedy convention, we assume), there's nobody left in the studio except Kevin and a few stray rubber chickens. So we just have a bunch of podcast recommendations for you, because somebody out there must have more going on than us. There are the other fine shows of the E...

For our big milestone 600th episode, we're doing... well, not much of anything. It's just Kevin and the Mayor of Chickentown goofing around while we await the triumphant return of Kornflake. Topics include: A correction from last week's show about mall sticker girls! (Oh yes, we heard from the mall sticker girls... they were most displeased...) Weird stuff you could order from the ads in Action Co...

Let's go to the mall! But one specific mall that isn't there anymore! (Well, it's sort of still there, but not really.) We're joined by Gleaming the Tube's Kevin Cafferty to look back on the Lincoln Mall in Lincoln, Rhode Island (frighteningly close to Woonsocket). It wasn't the biggest mall, it wasn't the best mall, but it was our mall. And our Lincoln Mall memories include: Waldenbooks, our prim...

It's Halloween season, so we have another terrifying Flopcast for you, starting with some follow-up from last week's Monster Cereals Taste Test. We received a LOT of feedback (from BOTH of our listeners) on Carmella Creeper, since we were wondering if Carmella is indeed the first female cereal mascot. (This somehow leads to our learning way too much about Wheaties. Sorry.) We also just discovered...

Longtime listeners may vaguely recall our legendary Monster Cereals Taste Test, which happened ten years ago this month! And now it's time to do it again, because there's a new monster cereal in town. Frankenberry, Count Chocula, and Boo Berry have been joined by Carmella Creeper! Carmella is a zombie, a DJ, and a girl! (Finally!) And apparently she is Frankenberry's long lost cousin! (Weird!) So...

Hang onto your milk money, because we're celebrating National School Lunch Week with a Kornflake Cafeteria Quiz. (Would she eat a Tater Tot? We're still not sure...) Then it's time to dive into another issue of Dynamite, the magazine for weird kids of the 70s and 80s. And we're looking at a Dynamite from 1978 that was provided by our pal Chris from Sci-Fi Explosion! Alfred E. Neuman is on the cove...

With our Dragon Con coverage finally out of the way (more or less), it's time to focus on what really matters: National Microwave Oven Day. Get ready to party, kids. We also have concert reviews on a couple of music legends: Bruce Springsteen (who never made a music video with dancing turkeys) and Peter Gabriel (who totally did). Plus: Yetis, ALF lunch boxes, and Chickens in the News! Did ancient...

Okay, let's wrap up our coverage of Dragon Con 2023! (Because come on, if this recap goes on much longer, we'll have to include Dragon Con 2024...) Kevin and the Mayor of Chickentown (reporting from Maine in the middle of a hurricane) are here to run through every crazy thing that happened over the last two days of the convention. Including: Bionic fun with Lindsay Wagner and Lee Majors, the Battl...

Our Dragon Con recap continues, and this time we're just covering Saturday. While everyone else in Atlanta was out on the street for the big Dragon Con parade, Kevin was hiding in the American Sci-Fi Classics Track room for the ESO Network's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Super Friends. (Were any Wonder Twin powers activated? Perhaps...) The Mayor of Chickentown (our resident Barbie ex...

We have apparently survived Dragon Con 2023, and it's gonna take THREE episodes to review everything that happened at our favorite annual gathering of 70,000 nerds and/or geeks. This week we're just covering Wednesday through Friday, including: The amazing costumes of Brandon the Shapeshifter, the muscovy ducks of Piedmont Park, the Dragon Con Newbie Walking Tours, Kate from Strange Animals Podcas...

It's Dragon Con week! Alas, Kornflake cannot join us at Dragon Con, but let's just pretend that she can! Kevin has prepared a hypothetical weekend of silly events for Kornflake, based on the actual Dragon Con schedule. Including: robot battles, coloring books and coffee, burlesque, the old Krofft theme park, a tea party for puppets, and more. Plus: It's National Star Trek Day! (Hey, maybe we can j...

It's time for Dragon Con, so round up all your local weirdos and stick them on a bus to Atlanta! Kevin and the Mayor of Chickentown will be there, and we're sharing our whole schedule with you. Come see the Mayor talk about Rocky Horror, Schmigadoon, and Barbie! (Did you know our Mayor is a Barbie expert? There's a lot going on here. It's not just chickens.) Meanwhile Kevin's nonstop schedule of s...