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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.

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Announcing I Read Movies microcast all about movie novelizations

Posted in books, movies, podcast, pop culture with tags , , , , , on August 31, 2017 by Paxton

If you’ve read this blog or follow me on Twitter for any length of time you know I’m a fan of movie novelizations. I read them. I collect them. I love finding new ones I never knew existed. If you check back in the Awesome Archives you will find several reviews for many different movie novelizations.

On the Nerd Lunch Podcast, whenever we do genre movie drilldowns, I try to read the novelization for the movie we’re discussing to see if it can add anything.  Specifically, Nerd Lunch did drilldowns on all the Indiana Jones movies and many of the original Trek movies (we are currently waiting to do Star Trek V).  For Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home I did extra helping discussions on both of those movies’ novelizations.

Here are the links:

Star Trek IV novelization drilldown

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade novelization drilldown

In those mini-episodes I talked about the differences between the books and the movies including extra characters, scenes, and story differences. It was a lot of fun and I received a nice response to these solo episodes.  So, since I tend to read novelizations on the semi-regular, I decided to spin these mini-episodes into their own microcast called I Read Movies.

I Read Movies logo

Shout out to CT for creating this amazing looking logo/icon for the show. And another shout out to Shawn Robare for helping me set things up behind the scenes to get this show up and running. Without CT and Shawn’s support I don’t think I could’ve got this venture off the ground. Thanks guys.

Anyway, the two extra helpings above are essentially the prototype for what this microcast will be. It’ll be short, I’ll try to keep it under an hour. Probably even 45min or less. And it won’t have any regular time table. The show is at the mercy of what novelizations I get read. And even then, I won’t do every novelization as not every one is worthy of microcast treatment. But we’ll see. I’ll do as many as I can, even if it’s only a 10 minute episode about why the novelization is not worth a read.

So, to get things started, I already have a few episodes in the can.  The first three episodes of this new show will be a trilogy.  I’ll be doing the original Indiana Jones trilogy.

IRM Raiders

And episode 1, featuring Raiders of the Lost Ark, is LIVE. You can download it from iTunes or listen to it directly right here.

I expect to have Temple of Doom drop in a week or two and I’ll have a special repost of the Nerd Lunch Last Crusade novelization extra helping a week or so after that.  Then, I have a special Halloween episode planned for October.  So things are starting to shake over here in the I Read Movies HDQ.  Stay tuned for some fun shows.

And if there are any novelizations you’d like me to cover, let me know on Twitter.

The debut of new Western podcast Hellbent for Letterbox

Posted in Genres, movies, podcast, pop culture, Western with tags , , , , , , on February 11, 2016 by Paxton

Hell Bent for Letterbox cover art LG

My good friend (and Nerd Lunch Fourth Chair Army officer) Mr Michael May asked me to co-host a podcast with him.  And I must be crazy because I said, “Sure, why not?”  And let me tell you why I said that.  First, Michael is awesome.  We love him on Nerd Lunch, in fact, we just recently finished up several episodes in a row with him (Janu-May-ary).  Second, Michael and I have a similar love for the Western genre.  So, Michael asked if I wanted to start an all-Westerns podcast.  There was no way I could say “no” to that.

So, this podcast is going to watch and review a different Western every month.  We will probably also watch and review certain Western TV shows as well as discuss a few Western books.  But the focus will be mostly movies.  I’m really looking forward to it because I have a few holes in my Western viewing that need to be filled.

Which, for this first episode, Michael and I set the table for the podcast.  We talk about our introduction to the Western genre.  We talk about some of our favorite Western movies, stars and directors.  We talk about what we hope to accomplish with this show and what types of movies and stars we want to “catch up” on.  And, at the very end, Michael reveals what our first movie review will be in our second episode.

So come check out the beginning of Hell Bent for Letterbox.  I don’t know if you can get it on iTunes just yet. but if not, it will be there soon.  Maybe even Stitcher at some point.

Regardless, you can listen to the show right here.

If you’re super excited about subscribing in iTunes and it’s not showing up, here’s the RSS feed you can drop into iTunes to subscribe manually.

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.