Archive for Nerd Lunch Podcast

AWESOME-tober-fest 2019: Looking back at the history of the Nerd Lunch Halloween Episodes

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Blog Series, Halloween, holiday, movies, podcast, pop culture with tags , , , , , , on October 15, 2019 by Paxton

Awesometoberfest 2019

I’m going to break with the Fangoria theme here for just a second.

As you may, or may not, know, the Nerd Lunch Podcast is winding down. We only have a few more months before it ends. Today, is the final installment of the Nerd Lunch Halloween Special.  Our Halloween episode has a long and storied tradition, so let’s take a walk down memory lane and see all the previous Nerd Lunch Halloween Specials leading up to today’s final entry.

Click the titles to go listen to the episodes one final time.

Paul Lynde
Nerd Lunch Episode 59: Halloween Specials (2012)
We didn’t do a Halloween special our very first year, 2011. Our themed Halloween episodes started with episode 59 in October 2012. We had Jay and Shawn on to discuss two Halloween specials, the 1976 Paul Lynde Halloween Special and 1986’s The Worst Witch starring Fairuza Balk, Charlotte Rae, Diana Rigg and Tim Curry.

Dead Lunch
The next year, 2013, we did a whole month of Halloween shows. It was called BRUCE-tober and it celebrated the man, the myth, the legend, Bruce Campbell.  This is the only time Jay didn’t join us for a Halloween episode.

Here’s what we did all 4 weeks of BRUCE-tober 2013.
Week 1- 102 – Give that Bruce Campbell Guy Some Work – We all come up with the perfect movie/TV project for Bruce to work on.
Week 2- 103 – Bubba Ho-Tep drill down – We review Bubba Ho-Tep
Week 3- 104 – Nerd Lunch reads Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way – We all read Campbell’s farcical book about Hollywood.
Week 4- 105 – Evil Dead drill down – We watch and review the very first Evil Dead movie.

NL Halloween 2014
Episode 152 – 2014 Halloween Episode
For the 2014 Halloween episode, we were joined by Halloween guest stalwart Jay as well as, for the first time anywhere, Matt from Dinosaur Dracula. This is where their Purple Stuff Podcast got started.  For this episode we talked about Halloween-ized retail products and we even made up a few things of our own. Also, that Halloween, we did an Extra Helping where Jay joined us to review the awesomely bonkers 1978 movie KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.


Episode 202 – 2015 Halloween Episode
For this episode we were again joined by Jay and Matt, this time to talk about two Rankin Bass Halloween specials; 1972’s Jack O’Lantern and 1962’s Mad Monster Party.

NL Halloween 2016
Episode 249 – 2016 Halloween Episode
In 2016 we were joined by Jay and newcomer Will (aka @veggiemacabre on Twitter) to do a spooky version of our franchise topic Movie Menus.  We were each assigned a scary movie and a fast food restaurant and had to come up with a themed menu.

Halloween 2017
Episode 289 – Halloween Horror Show 2017
For the Halloween episode in 2017, Matt and Jay came back to talk all about Elvira’s 1986 MTV Halloween Special.

Halloween 2018
Episode 316 – 2018 Halloween Episode
Last year Jay came back and we were also joined by my good friend Mr Michael May. We did a Sweet 16 of Movie Monsters to determine who is the best Movie Monster out there.


Episode 340 – The Final Halloween Episode
And that leads us to this year. 2019. This will ultimately be the final Nerd Lunch Halloween Special. I’m not going to lie, it’s a bittersweet ending. We are again joined by Jay as well as Robert Zerbe and we are doing a spin off of Movie Menus.  We are all assigned spooky pop culture characters or movies and we have to build a restaurant from the ground up around our assignment.  So we come up with the name, the building, how it’s decorated, how the servers are dressed, any onsite entertainment, and even a few of the menu items.  It’s a lot of fun and I want to eat at all of these places.

And that’s it.  That should be all for the Nerd Lunch Halloween episode.  It’s been a blast doing these every year.  I hope you guys have enjoyed listening.

 



Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

Nerd Lunch Episode 198: Star Wars Episode II Drilldown

Posted in movies, podcast, pop culture, Star Wars with tags , , , on September 29, 2015 by Paxton

Nerd Lunch Podcast

Here we are, only two episodes away from the big Nerd Lunch 200th episode extravaganza. And I’m telling you right now, we literally have no idea what we’re doing for that. Hope it turns out.

Anyway, THIS week on Nerd Lunch, we are joined again by May and Kay to continue our series of Star Wars movie drilldowns. This time, we are looking at the second prequel movie, Attack of the Clones.

atoc_imax

We all discuss our first time watching the movie, we really dig down deep to talk about what we liked about it and then we discuss the plethora of things we didn’t like.  Some of those things may not be the ones you’re expecting.  Come and check it out.  Along with our insightful commentary on the movie you’ll also get lots of audio issues, several of us forget simple words like panel and arena, and CT confesses his seething hatred for 50s diners.  All packed into this week’s episode!

Download this episode from iTunes, Stitcher or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online right here.

Nerd Lunch Episode 194: Star Wars The Phantom Menace Drilldown

Posted in nostalgia, podcast, pop culture, Star Wars with tags , , , , on September 1, 2015 by Paxton

Nerd Lunch Podcast

This week on Nerd Lunch we welcome back our Star Wars expert panelists Michael May and Geek Kay in order to begin discussing the Star Wars prequels. And we are starting, appropriately so, with The Phantom Menace.

phantom-laserdisc-poster2

We talk a bit about the lead up to Episode I, the first trailer in November 1998, Star Wars Celebration I in Denver in May 1999 as well as our thoughts watching the movie for the first time. We then go all over the place talking about things we liked and didn’t like with this movie. There’s some of each, folks, this isn’t just a hate fest on the movie.  Download this episode and join the discussion!

Download this episode from iTunes, Stitcher or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online right here.

5 Classic cartoons that were ruined by the addition of a child character

Posted in cartoons, pop culture, TV shows with tags , , , , on August 25, 2015 by Paxton

This week on Nerd Lunch, episode 193, we are talking about things we think have gotten a bad rap. We discuss things like The Spice Girls, Star Trek Enterprise, the Keanu Reeves Constantine movie and the Robert Patrick character from X-Files.  We are joined by William Bruce West and Kirk Howle for a pretty good discussion.

During the fourth chair carryover question, we all discuss lists that we’d like to write. I mentioned that I had written a list about cartoons that I had sitting in my drafts for YEARS (it was originally written in 2012) that I wanted to get posted.  This is that list.

I love cartoons, but there was a rash of poor decisions by studios in the 80s wherein they added baby or child characters to their shows.  Here are five cartoons that were ruined by that practice.

scrappy
Scooby-Doo (Scrappy) – Scrappy-Doo is the poster child for bad “youth” characters. He’s so universally hated that in the recent (and AWESOME) 2012 Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc series from Cartoon Network Scrappy shows up stuffed in an exhibit at the Mystery Museum featuring Scooby villains from the past. The Mystery gang promises each other that they’d never talk about it again. Bravo.  As we’ll see, Scrappy turned out, unfortunately, to be very popular and would create a trend in cartoons to add baby or child characters to popular cartoon shows.

fangpuss
Fangface (Baby Fang)I LOVED FANGFACE. Anytime you could get a cartoon featuring classic monsters, I was ALL IN (Drak Pack, Gravedale High, Teen Wolf, etc, etc).  However, in season 2, based on the apparent “success” of Scrappy-Doo, Fangface gets a baby nephew that is also a werewolf despite not making any sense based on the opening narration that states only one werewolf is born EVERY 400 YEARS.

babyplas2
The Plastic Man and Baby Plas Super Hour (Baby Plas) – The Ruby Spears Plastic Man cartoon is GREAT. I loved it. However, during the second season, Plas is saddled with Baby Plas. Usually these children are nephews, but Baby Plas was actually the result of Plastic Man and Penny marrying.  And then he was the cause of me hating the show.

capt caveman and son
Captain Caveman (and Son) – Again I LOVE CAPT CAVEMAN.  My son loves Capt Caveman who appeared on an episode of that aforementioned 2012 Scooby Doo Mystery Inc show.  Like Plastic Man, Capt Caveman was given a son in the mid 80s when he appeared in segments of the much younger kid focused TV show, The Flintstone Kids.  This particular entry may be the worst after Scrappy.  I mean, Baby Plas is pretty awful, but Cavey Jr was a disaster.

godzooky
Godzilla (Godzooky) – This is the only entry in the list where the child character actually started out on the show from the very beginning.  Godzooky is so bad that he even ruins the awesome Godzilla cartoon intro as soon as he shows up.

Nerd Lunch Episode 184: Down the Rabbit Hole

Posted in Genres, martial arts, movies, music, podcast, pop culture with tags , , , , , on June 23, 2015 by Paxton

Nerd Lunch Podcast

This week on the Nerd Lunch Podcast CT and I are joined by Timly Barger from timlybarger.com and Jeff Somogyi of sommerjam.com.

This week we are taking one of those trips through the Wikipedia rabbit hole.

Down the Rabbit Hole

You know those trips, you go out to Wikipedia to look up something and next thing you know, 20 minutes later, you’re 50 pages away from where you started.  So, we have two of us pick random topics and we see if we can somehow navigate our way from the 1991 movie Karate Cop all the way over to the 1981 Rush classic, Tom Sawyer.  We make several stops along the way.  Come join us on this Internet-y trip!

Download this episode from iTunes, Stitcher or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online right here.