I Don't Even Own a Television

So Long (And Thanks For All The Fun) Apr 01, 2023

Hi, all. Probably this won't come as a giant surprise, given our erratic schedule and limited output the past couple years, but the time has come to make it offical: We're ending the show. There's no beef, there's no stress, but there is some sadness, and we recorded an episode to announce the end of the show and talk through it a bit.

The goal is to keep the archive available, but the Patreon will be shutting down by the end of April, 2023, so download anything from there that you want to hold on to. It's been a lot of fun making this show for you all, and we encourage you all to ride the crab, keep reading crap, and try to make the world a little better any time you can.

Recommendations:

Start your own fuckin' band!

Music:

The Paris Apartment Sep 04, 2022

No, it's not a new made-up term for a sexual position—as far as we know!—it's the new Lucy Foley joint, The Paris Apartment! It's darker than a wine cellar, twistier than an alley in your favorite arrondissement, but, unfortunately, about as eventful as an afternoon sighing with ennui over a couple of Gauloises and a well-nursed café au lait in a Left Bank café.

Pat your new Karen O. fringe into an appealing dishevelment, make your best face to express that you have the darkest of dark secrets and make sure you've got a skeleton key for all your neighbors' places, because it's time to take a trip into what some people are calling ... la'part-a-ment Parisienne, but what we know to call The Paris Apartment.

Recommendations:

Paul Tremblay, The Pallbearer's Club
Jane Peck, The Verifiers
Diane Duane, The Door into Fire plus The Worst Bestsellers Ep on it!

Mood Music:

"Heads Will Roll" by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Bastille Day" by Rush

Born To Run May 14, 2022

With tramps like these, hoo boy, do things get real and stay there in a hurry as your humble hosts pop their clutches and tell Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon's Born to Run: A Novel of the SERRAted Edge to eat their dust! It's another novel of the urban fantastique, with an Irish pub described as "straight-edge", a couple battle scenes where you can really see the graph paper underneath the characters, and some of the most improbable radio playlists imaginable, and, as a novel of (sigh) the urban fantastique, one of us slides right off it and the other digs his eldritch fangs right into it. But not like that, the other way.

NOTE: This novel, while mostly lighthearted, does traffic in material related to child sexual abuse and exploitation, in way reminiscent of a particularly tawdry episode of SVU.

NOTE 2: Clsn now realizes he missed a good opportunity to pronounce it "elfs" throughout the episode and regrets the error.

Recommendations:

Upright Women Wanted, by Sarah Gailey
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Death Among the Undead, by Masahiro Imamura
Seinfeld Bass Riff Variations

Music:

Gauging The Player Mar 17, 2022

Well, friends, it's surely time to put on your red shoes and dance the blues, this time along with us as we lace 'em up and see The Playmakers Series series of hockey romance novels, in this case Gauging the Player: A One-Night Stand Sorts Romance by G.K. Brady. Believe us, to see the Playmakers Series make a scoring rush, the bright colors of the prose flashing against the milky e-reader screen, is to see a work of art in motion.

As one character's beloved grandmother says, this is "No chickenshit crap, now, you hear?" It's a ton of fun to watch the will-they (again) / won't they (again) after they do, bigtime, and we invite you to drop your gloves, pick up your earbuds, and skate a shift with us as we watch two crazy kids try to escape the penalty box of life—together. It's the only book you'll ever read that nudges the entrance!

Recommendations:

Elden Ring
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

Music:

"Fuck the Pain Away" by Peaches
"So Into You" by Climax Blues Band
"work hard, play hard" by Palace Music

Don't Know Jack Dec 16, 2021

No know Jack? No, know Jack! Jack Reacher, that is, as we for some reason decide to experiment with CBS-grade Reacher-adjacency with Diane Capri's series-starting Don't Know Jack. This is a gaiden, in which the titular Jack is most present in his absence, as a wise-cracking pair of FBI Human Resources Detectives are looking to reconstruct a series of events more or less clearly laid out in a book available at any airport bookstore. NOTE: this is probably not a gaiden, but either way, absolutely do not @ us.

Anyway, if you want to hear some serious airport positivity, this is the episode for you! So grab your earbuds and make sure to leave early for your flight, because by the time this episode is over, you'll be saying "I Know 'Don't Know Jack'!".

Recommendations:

"Nancy" comics by Olivia Jaimes
"My Dark Vanessa" by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Music:

"Happy Jack" by The Who
"jack shit" by Teen Angels
"Atom Jack" by Drive Like Jehu

Hannibal Nov 02, 2021

We're off the dang map here, folks, because we don't know where we are, but we do know that here? there be monsters! Just in time for spooky season, we're taking on one of the giants of the bad-book genre, Hannibal by Thomas Harris.

This book is a big, corrosive bummer, with lots and lots of moments where the words on the page seem to rearrange themselves into concrete poetry of the author's middle finger extended, straight into the reader's face, and even more moments where the narrator is calling you "we" or being very, one might say scrupulously, careful to mention the race of every character (except the white ones) and the attractiveness levels of every lady-type character. Come for the shopping sprees, but STAY for the choppin—you know what, I don't even have the energy to finish this one. It's a direct sequel to Silence of the Lambs. You think you know what you're in for. You don't. That's why...you need us! Take our hands and join us through a whirlwind tour of hog farming and new love.

Recommendations:

"Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade
Werewolf (2016)

Music:

Nöthin' But a Good Time Sep 26, 2021

Homefolks, we came to party, and your eyes were looking at ... Nöthin' but a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the '80s Hard Rock Explosion by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock and it is well and truly time to push the opening acts off the stage and get ready for the *looks down at padded codpiece under spandex trousers* main event, if you know what our book's subjects are talking about AND I THINK THAT YOU DO.

That's right: we're heading to the Sunset Strip of Los Angeles, California, USA, circa 1985, and we're just investigating the plain HECK out of the local flora and fauna. Or at least asking the local flora and fauna to tell us what was on their minds 'way back when. And when it gets boring we set off flash pots and / or whang the switch that makes the drum kit start chugging down a long set of railroad tracks it's attached to—it'll all make sense by the end, we promis, so please! put your lighters in the air and get ready for two hard-rocking slabs of hard-rocking rock, followed by one semi-explicably emotional slice of ballad action, because it's time for us ALL to tease our hairs and enjoy (?) the power and passion of rock and roll, '80s style!

Recommendations:

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Shit, who knows, read a classic or two, IDK, Wuthering Heights and My Antonia both ruled...

Music Pairings:

"Nothin'" by N.O.R.E.
"I Wanna Rock" by Snoop Dogg

The Resident Evil Movie (Free Bonus Episode!) Feb 25, 2021

Since it's been a while, and we're currently slogging through a very long book for the next episode, we decided to give ALL of our listeners a chance to hear the new episode we just released for our patreon donors. It's not about a book. Most of our bonuses episodes aren't, really. But it is a lot of fun! This isn't going to be a common occurrence, but we missed you. And we hope you missed us, so here it is -- We ease back into the podcasting game with the early-aughtsiest slice of cinema we could find, the unexpectedly successful film Resident Evil! But is it merely a box-office success, or is there artistic success there as well? MASH THAT PLAY BUTTON AND FIND OUT, WHY DO YOU NOT?

A movie so early-2000s you expect it to have stories about Woodstock '99, Resident Evil is a serious-faced attempt to honor the, ah, let's call it a "mythos" of the games, with plenty of atmosphere, some not entirely expected pacing, and some brutal moments, some of which it turns out we've seen before. So hitch up your JNCOs and grab some nü-metal off of Limewire, because it's time to see what lies beneath the surface ... of human skin ... of that spooky mansion outside Raccoon City ... and, best of all ... of the business practices of the strangely popular Umbrella Corporation! (if you enjoyed this episode, and would like to hear an extra episode per month about books (rarely) and other media products (more frequently), check us out at http://patreon.com/ideovpod

The Champ of TV Wrestling (Which Way Books #22) Dec 19, 2020

It's time to get what an old boss of Clsn's used to call "choiceful" in these all-too-choice-free times, so we break format a little bit (and break out laughing a lot) with a "Which Way" book, in which we try and mostly fail to become the titular Champ of TV Wrestling.

Do the elegant diversions of a more innocent age hold up in today's bustling, hugger-mugger world of screens and Tik-Tok and whatnot? We invite you and all your friends to choose to find out! Click on in and try your luck with the champs of ... The Champ The Champ of TV Wrestling, that is!

Recommendations:

The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells
Enjoy the things that make you happy!

Music:

"Theme to Greatest American Hero" by Mike Post
"Theme to Rock and Wrestling"
"Freewill" by Rush

River of Teeth Nov 15, 2020

We live in a world that has hippos, and those hippos have to be ridden by people with weapons. Who's gonna do it? You? These people have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for victims of hippos, and you curse the hippo riders. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know. That hippos eat people, but that probably saves lives. And our existence as a podcast, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves time. You don't want the truth, because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want us reading these books, you need us reading these books. We use segments like "High Points, Low Points", "Dramatic Readings", "What Would They Do". We use these segments as the backbone of lives spent reading stuff and talking about it. You use them as a way to kill some time between other activities, or during them. We have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to listeners who rise and grind under the blanket of the very entertainment that we provide, and then questions the manner in which we provide it. We would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, we suggest you hop up on top of your OWN hippopotamus and ride!

Anyway, yeah: what we have here is an (apparently well-regarded!) alternate history answering the question "What if a Western but hippos not horses?" It also asks—and answers!—"What do we need a white boy for, anyway?" so you can probably tell already that it rules, and we definitely had a hell of a lot of fun reading it, so grab your traveling clothes and get ready to get seriously amphibious with us and our hippo pals.

Recommendations:

A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling
Normal People by Sally Rooney

Music:

Atlanta Nights Sep 15, 2020

For SO many reasons, it's time to get out of town, and so we're hitting the road to check out some of those hot Atlanta Nights we've been hearing so much about! Atlanta Nights is a truly bizarre artifact, so strange that it forces us to break our own rules and stretch our own format, as we take a deep dive into the churned-up waters of "bad on purpose" and find ... well, okay. Look. You know that one friend of yours, here, deep into 2020, who still thinks "my pants are suddenly tighter" is still a funny way to describe an erection? (In local podcast terms, we call that one friend "The Clsn".) This book has probably five of those jokes.

Accompany us, won't you, as we step into restaurant after restaurant to indulge our ... appetites—but ONLY after dark, because this is not a daytime affair, friends, no, no, no. This is an affair of ... Atlanta Nights.

Want to check out Atlanta Nights for yourself? You can do it so at HERE. We love you!

Recommendations:

Sun Don't Shine movie
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Pen15 show

Music:

"Oh Atlanta" by Little Feat
"Sex and Dying in High Society" by Japandroids
"Warm Leatherette" by The Normal

Dachshund Through the Snow (The Dogmothers Book 3) Aug 30, 2020

It's a tradition like no other, as our friend Stef Gray joins us to discuss our second consecutive book entitled...Dachshund Through the Snow! This time through, we get substantially increased Dachshund quantities, more flashbacks than is probably reasonable, and an amiable lope of a story of a few women passing through some extremely family-friendly challenges.

Regardless of the challenge, however, we're pretty sure these Dogmothers are down for anything and up to the task!

If your dogs are barking, come on in and take a load off! Pound that download button, because it's time for Greek to meet Irish and this is the episode that will finally let you get your Yia-Yia's out!

Recommendations:

Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Paper Mario
Eating food in Astoria, Queens
Listening to the Dogmother

Music:

"Jingle Bells" by Barking Dogs
"Memories Can't Wait" by Living Color
"Charity, Chastity, Prudence, and Hope" by Hüsker Dü

EDITOR'S NOTE (JWF): Apologies for the audio quality, the late release, and the lack of a letters segment this time around, things got pretty out of sync and difficult and editing this episode became a real trial. So I salvaged what I could.

Dachshund Through the Snow: An Andy Carpenter Mystery Aug 02, 2020

Here on IDEOTV, it's Christmas in ... okay, August, but still it's time for some wintry festivities as we read—and talk about!—Dachshund Through the Snow: An Andy Carpenter Mystery!

It's a murder mystery, a searing portrait of small-down power, corruption, and lies, a thrilling tale of corporate malfeasance, and a legal procedural, but really what it is is a story about a guy who doesn't want to do anything except watch ESPN with his buddies, who similarly want only to watch ESPN. "Dudes rock", in book form!

Grab a shovel and prepare yourself for the ultimate in tension and the premier in punny titles, because like a cake out in the rain or an actor out on loan, our minds are squirming like a toad because it's time for ... Dachshund Through the Snow.

Recommendations:

"Abracadabralifornia" by The Pepper Men (Jon Daly)
You Must be New Here by Ganser

Music:

"By-Tor and the Snow Dog" by Rush
"Child's Christmas in Wales" by John Cale
"Rich Man's World" by Immortal Technique

Damnation Alley Jul 19, 2020

Lighters are clicking and flicking, wheels are rolling, and badasses are extremely American this time around as we climb into our *checks notes* LandMasters and take off across the blasted countryside of ... Damnation Alley.

Tuff-guy posturing meets clouds of suspiciously sweetly scented smoke and maybe a few more descriptions of the sky than you were expecting, and the IDEOTV men have to have ANOTHER on-air strategy session to address WHY do all these books have damn' PLAGUES in them, anyway.

We can't exactly give this book a ringing endorsement, we're not clappers in its audience, but we're not on Team Pull 'Er from the Shelves, either. If you'd like to know more about what we ding Damnation Alley on, press the button and maybe grab your bong!

Recommendations:

Blue Light Yokohama by Nicolás Obregón
"Letterheads" by Sarah Jeong

Music:

The Coven Jul 06, 2020

Oh my goodness, this is gonna be a wild (broomstick) ride, as the all-time oldest friend of the show, Jeb "@mobute" Lund comes back to help us live deliciously and handle the weirdness of The Coven, by second-tier Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt, writing as "David St. John". And, in a way, aren't we all writing as David St. John?

We should note that this is a pulp novel of the early 70s, and, as such, blasts casual slurs, offensive stereotypes, and wide-spectrum ignorance and hostility onto basically every page: We work hard to skirt this garbage, but it's there throughout. If you want to skip this ep, we'll understand, and we certainly suggest you skip this book.

But if you're in a mood for a two-fisted, many-piped Washington lawyer with some controversial opinions about young, handsome senators and, eventually, witchcraft, then fire up some incense, polish your cauldron and iron your hair, because you've just been granted access to ... The Coven.

Recommendations:

L.A. Quartet by James Ellroy
Perry Mason, remake by HBO
L.A. Noir by John Buntin
Jennifer's Body movie
The Hotel of the Three Roses by Augusto De Angelis

Music:

"Witch Hunting Memoirs" by Mountain High
"Witch Hunt" by Rush

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the First: Bad Beginnings Jun 21, 2020

We can hear you already, you're saying "Oh, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, eh, what are you talking about, COLLISION'S LIFE haw haw haw", but the joke's on you, because ... he already knows. He knows. In any case, we picked this because we thought we'd try to keep on keeping things light, but ended up in one of our more contentious episodes, as Clsn kept holding things up and saying "This is a fun bit of mall goth writing for kids!" and J. kept saying "Sure fine whatever but also it's dumb and bad" and ... well ... it's not like J.'s wrong, so.

Anyway, you're laughing at us because we're different, but we're laughing at YOU because you're all the same and you'll be laughing at this EPISODE because it's funny! This one is also a fantastic way to hear our direst schemes for bilking orphans, if that's your thing. NOTE: bilking orphans is NOT our thing. Allegedly. "Allegedy" is a word that here means "even if it turns out we do bilk an orphan or two, we can't be sued because we weren't planning it beforehand". Stay well, everybody, and don't forget to wear all black all summer long. And don't forget to wear your mask, either: we love you and want you to stay well.

Recommendations:

The Young Visiters or, Mr. Salteena's Plan by Daisy Ashford
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

Music:

"The Legionnaire's Lament" by Decembrists
"Communist Daughter" by Neutral Milk Hotel
"Mad World" by Gary Jules

All I Needed to Know I Learned In Kindergarten Jun 07, 2020

Sometimes we need to retreat to the porch with some kind vibes and mostly harmless advice, and that's why this time around, we reached into the past for All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It's a thick slice of I'm okay and you're okay so let's talk about dinosaurs and space with youth pastor slash weed dad Robert Fulghum.

So grab a cold drink and some comfortable clothes, because we're going to go forth and jump in puddles! NOTE TO SELF: Check to see if jumping in puddles is actually fun. Seems kinda cold and wet. Also, Jay would like to see that chicken-fried steak is the best thing to write an essay about.

Recommendations:

"My Quarantine: Cozy Mysteries", by Sarah Manguso
"Contradiction - The All-Video Murder Myserty Adventure" game.

Music:

"I Don't Wanna Grow Up" by Tom Waits
"Kindergarten" by Faith No More

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) May 25, 2020

'E's a (hairy) wizard, is 'arry ... 'arry Dresden, that is, Chicago's only professional wizard and the protagonist of a book entitled Storm Front: Dresden Files Volume 1. On the plus side, a book called Storm Front featuring a dude named "Dresden" somehow manages not to go to objectionable places. On the minus side, this book is such a bland mess that even the climax explicitly having a wizard fight his foes by magically making a broom sweep those foes away, Sorcerer's Apprentice style, actually registers.

Anyway, sub-Moonlighting flirting, a portrayal of lesbian vampires that would embarrass a Cinemax executive, and a narrator in a duster, cowboy boots ... and sweatpants. Yes, this book has "it" "all" for some very particular values of those terms, and it is our absolute pleasure to be able to escort you through the mean streets and magic-scorpion-ridden elevators of Harry Dresden's Chicago, so grab your slicker and get ready for some heavy weather, because what's moving in ... is a Storm Front!

Recommendations:

The Lady Killer by Masako Togawa
It Felt Like Love

Music Thots:

"Magic" by Pilot
"Eye of the Hurricane"
"Miami Memory" by Alex Cameron

Resident Evil Volume II: Caliban Cove May 11, 2020

Because timing is the essence of success and entertainment, we're kicking off our latest huge crossover with Kait & Renata from Worst Bestsellers by taking on Resident Evil Volume II: Caliban Cove, an original novel about ... a horrible virus.

We promise, however, that the episode is a lot of fun even if the book was a little too close to our current moment! Cool hangs with four of your bad-book buds: what more could you ask for?

Oh! You want to ask for more? Okay, how about "sweaty ghosts"? Flight-preparation kibitzing? Subtle grenade foreshadowing that isn't very subtle? This one has everything up to and definitely including probably the most savage Karen-centric action in any book we've ever seen. If you're ready for a classic Resident Evil experience (prowling through an abandoned laboratory waiting for the monsters to show up), and a classic Worst Bestsellers / IDEOTVPod experience (cracking jokes while waiting for the monsters to show up) then this should be an infectious good time!

Recommendations:

Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang
The Magnus Archives podcast
Jewball by Neal Pollack
River of Darkness: The First John Madden Mystery by Renny Airth
Trust Exercise by Susan Choi
The Surprising Return of Old-Ass Satellite High by Satellite High

Music:

Got nothing this time, sorry

The Danger Apr 26, 2020

You've all hit the trifecta, because this episode your long shot has finally come in and we take on our first Dick Francis book, the slightly disappointingly not-horse-dense-enough sorta-thriller The Danger. (Still enough horses in the book that one paragraph in the book runs "Horses. So many horses.")

What should be a cracking good adventure, with exciting locations (Italy! London! the English seaside! where/whatever the heck "Lambourn" is...Washington DC...hmm. Starting to see the problem) and interesting characters (erm) running around and doing fun work (preventing and resolving kidnappings) somehow collapses into a mostly forgettable affair with the occasional pleasant surprise and a whole lot of opportunities for a nice nap. But that's the bad book business for you: sometimes the books just aren't very good. The episode, however, is good cranky fun, with plenty of rosé flowing and the next digression never waiting for the starting gun.

So strap on the feed bag of ... sound, and enjoy the hooves thrumming 'pon the turf as the punters in the stands go mad and the only things flying more gaily than the racing silks are the betting slips being torn up and thrown away, because it's time for the most exciting two gents in podcasts to get into ... The Danger. Stay safe, everybody.

Recommendations:

Night Moves (2013, Kelly Reichardt)
Gravity Falls

Music:

House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge Apr 13, 2020

Money, power, respect: Lenny Dykstra doesn't really have any of those things (allegedly, but he does have a passel of stories about rock star L I V I N and a World Series ring (and a couple felony convictions), and that's pretty much why we sought out the dubious charms of Mr. Dykstra's book House of Nails: A Memoir of Life on the Edge. (We think. We can't really remember, and after reading this, nothing makes sense anymore.)

NOTE: This isn't really a baseball book, at least not the way we talk about it (the bulk of the book itself actually is pitch-by-pitch recountings of baseball games, but even we have our limits), so don't be afraid.

NOTE 2: We hope this episode finds you well! These are tough times for all of us, so please keep your chin up the best you can. NOTE 3: This is our first-ever "social isolation" podcast so please bear with us through the occasionally rough sound quality. We'll get better at this.

Recommendations:

The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz
Emma.
I Love Dick

Music:

The Quebec Connection: The Penetrator #15 Mar 15, 2020

So it's come to this: at long last, we follow up on a long-buried tip and try to get to the bottom of men's adventure's most underwhelming series, The Penetrator # 15: The Quebec Connection. Folks, we got the shaft!

Turns out, this book is less "fun insane romp through zesty prose and reactionary 70s politics" and more "bordering on hate speech" with brief interludes of incredibly detailed bus routes and descriptions of ... driving in Buffalo. Safe to say this book will neither grow on you nor show you anything you particularly want to see, but the episode finds some decent veins to work on.

NOTE: because of Clsn's screw-up, we were NOT able to record with Iain McIntyre this time around, but you should still check out the book he and Andrew Nette edited, Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980.

NOTE 2: We bought our copies used, and got the cover you see above. Apparently, and upsettingly, there are new copies available (Clsn was wrong AGAIN!), which you should absolutely avoid, but which do have a cover that really plays up the Quebec and really plays down anything having to do with the book.

Recommendations:

"Captain Marvel" by Stan Getz
The Films of Kelly Reichardt

Music:

"Radio Ga Ga" by Queen
"John the Fisherman" by Primus
"The Canadian Lumberjack" by Stompin' Tom Connors

Me & Mr. Cigar Mar 02, 2020

Sick as two dogs, your pals take on the most bizarrely and possibly wonderfully gratuitous book to make the papers in a very long while, Gibby "Butthole Surfers vocalist" Haynes' Me & Mr. Cigar. It's a slow, shaggy, rambling tale of a young man getting weird, and we probably forgot to mention this, but: about 30 pages in, that young man gets slipped a large dose of mind-altering drugs, and is under their influence for the remainder of the book.

The kind of book that makes J. ask Clsn off-air, anxiously, "You...you didn't like this book, did you?", and the kind of writing that makes a reader shriek "IT IS ACTUALLY OKAY TO DROP A PERIOD IN THERE EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE", it's safe to say that this does NOT break the streak of books by rock stars that make us resent the fact of our own literacy. So slam a handful of whatever pills you have closest to you* and get ready to hit the road!

*Note: don't do this.

Recommendations:

Master Key by Masako Togawa
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Music:

The Price of Time Feb 16, 2020

Tick, tock, tick ... doot doot doo-doo ... time keeps on ticking ticking ticking ... into the future! And, luckily, in the future, nobody has to read any slightly-above-average Crichton-grade semi-thrillers with one science idea and zero character or plot ideas along the lines of Tim Tigner's The Price of Time.

If you're ready for super-sharp insights about the nature of commodified time in a heavily ruined-by-capitalism world, try the movie In Time, but if you're ready for a frequently okay but very dumb book about What If Rich People But Immortal, try The Price of Time but if you're ready for The Only Podcast That Loves You to take on a Burn Notice-grade narrative that actually includes a sentence like "It hadn't occurred to him that the ex-CIA agent and the triathlete might have teamed up to take down the Immortals", then oh golly have we got an episode for you!

Side note: the insights about the nature of commodified time in a world ruined by capitalism expressed in the film In Time are not in fact super-sharp. Clsn regrets the hyperbole. (All power to the people and ban the fucking bomb.)

Recommendations:

"I don't want to be the strong female lead" by Brit Marling
Sound of My Voice
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shimada
Knives Out with commentary

Music Pairings:

"People Who Died" by Jim Carroll
"Birth School Work Death" by The Godfathers
"Time Is Money (Bastard)" by Swans

Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death Feb 02, 2020

FINALLY a raisin that won't ruin your day, it's an echt cozy mystery by M.C. Beaton, first of a long series, Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death! The first thing to say here is "Yes, this book features a character named Agatha Raisin," and the second is "Yes, this book features a plot in which a person dies after eating a quiche." For other things, however, you'll have to listen to the episode!

Recommendations:

Agatha Raisin (tv series)
Stranger in the Alps by Phoebe Bridgers
Human Hours by Catherine Barnett ("Epistemology" available at the link!)

Music Pairings:

Something from the Nightside Jan 19, 2020

For our milestonest episode yet, big number hundo-fitty, we break significant quantities of new ground by ... first, taking on our first-ever work of urban fantasy, one Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green!

We also waited until Clsn was sick as a dog and incredibly exhausted (Editor's Note: Me too --JWF) and took on a book so deeply unengaging that it had us talking at length about Clsn's new wireless mouse, dongles in general, and more or less everything else under the sun. But that's not important. You know what is important? What's important is that one thing that ISN'T under the sun ... is ... the Nightside.

Anyway, happy 150, everybody! We love you! (Seriously, it really is a cool new mouse.)

Recommendations:

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
"Ted Leo's Life with Rush: Closer to the Heart" by Ted Leo

Music Thoughts:

"On the Dark Side" by Rush
"House of Suffering" by Bad Brains
"Private Eyes" by Hall & Oates

Get in the Van Jan 05, 2020

We finally had to do it, so we skipped a couple showers, got real, real mad at our parents (and, probably, yours) and went out on the road to discover (how much we hated) America, and to do all of that, we had to start with one simple step: We had to Get in the Van. Henry Rollins' van!

It's two men confronting formative influences and finding them ... hoo boy. Everybody's got to come from somewhere, anyway, and if you look back and DON'T think you've grown some, well, that's just a damn' bummer and a shame. As are a lot of the sentiments expressed in this book, a bunch of journal entries from a young man far from home and thoroughly convinced that what the world needs from him is, like, TOTAL AGGRESSION or something (as though the world needs more young white men delivering aggression).

Anyway. The style? is run-ons; the content? is Being Real Mad; the effect? is mostly extremely tiring. However, the episode is lots of fun, so grab your journal and your angst and make sure your safety belt is low and snug across your hips, because it's time to ... get in the van.

Recommendations:

Agatha Christie's Marple
Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat

Music Thoughts:

"Pigs" by Aesop Rock
"Venom Live at City Gardens, New Jersey" by Venom
"Roast Beef's Workout Tape" by Achewood

Handbook for Mortals Dec 22, 2019

Because YOU demanded it (several years ago), and because this is our annual special rule-breaking holiday episode, we finally whip out our wands and make appear an episode about one-time YA teapot tempest Handbook for Mortals! Rock and roll, hair dye, motorcycle rides, dads, moms, tarot, magic, magik, and ... typos, cliches, and what may well be literature's first-ever love octagon.

Probably the worst prose since Eye of Argon, the most all-italics pages since Wild Animus, and the overall harshest toke we've taken in a long, long time.

Recommendations:

Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad
The Future Is Here and Everything Must Be Destroyed by Colette Arrand

Music Thoughts:

"Red Vines" by Aimee Mann
"The Final Countdown" by some kids
"Black Magic Woman" by Santana

Zardoz Dec 08, 2019

A more elegant fiction from a more civilized age is John Boorman and Bill Stair's novelization of John Boorman's film script (for) Zardoz. It's a truly crazypants vision of a post-apocalyptic (and mostly pantsless) future, crafted by a couple men so laser-focused on breasts that you could well call them set adrift on mammary bliss.

NOTE: this was brought to us by the F Plus' inimitable Lemon, who couldn't join us for this recording session because life is a savage wasteland patrolled by brutes, beset by beasts, and plagued by ... plagues. We hope all's well on his end and that his lack won't won't reduce your zest for the episode. So if you're ready to delve within and achieve enlightenment the Zardoz / IDEOTV way, snug up your singlet, prepare yourself for skin-to-skin knowledge transmission (not really), and mash that DOWNLOAD button to access the far-off and mustachioed lands ... of Zardoz (really).

Supplemental hate reading: Gary Shteyngart on Zardoz.

Thanks as always to our new sponsor, American Slide Whistle, Inc.!

The Day Before: A Prequel Novel (Riverdale) Nov 24, 2019

If you ever watched Riverdale and wished that the events of the pilot were explained in greater (?) detail, then you, my friend, are in for a treat in Micol Ostow's The Day Before: A Prequel Novel! Fizzier and frothier than a freshly shaken bottle of Topo Chico, this book lets you spend time with all your favorite Riverdale characters from Archie's gang: Jughead, Veronica, Dilton Doiley ... Archie's dad ... Betty in full Nancy Drew mode ... Also Archie is in this book.

Possibly our most digressive episode ever, we go deep (again) on "Steal My Sunshine" but by the end you and Andrea True will BOTH be calling for "More, more, more!" We guarantee it.

Recommendations:

Play More Pokémon
Be Friends with People in the Party Pit!
The Plot Against Common Sense, by Future of the Left
Sorry, everybody: Clsn is a dummy and lost his notes while recording: what he had MEANT to recommend was the incredible, and incredibly intense, new Azar Swan record The Hissing of a Paper Crane, which will annihilate you and goes surprisingly well with Riverdale and that is NOT a diss. He'll talk about this next ep.

Music Pairings:

"Fourth of July" by Galaxie 500
"Down by the River" by Neil Young and Crazy Horse
"Rich Girl" by Hall & Oates
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something

Career of Evil Nov 10, 2019

Grisly, gory, gruesome, and far, far too long, it's Robert Galbraith's Career of Evil, a five-hundred-page career unto itself, even if it's little more than a footnote to the career of JK Rowling, who we mention for ... some reason. (The reason is that Galbraith is a Rowling pseudonym.)

It's the episode that airs Clsn's eighth-greatest shame, as this is a book with more than one reference to Blue Őyster Cult in literally every single chapter, which he had to be physically restrained from explaining, at some length, in lieu of having anything else to say about this tremendously turgid tome. (Fun roundup of one way to read the connection between the two can be found here if you're so inclined. And tune in next episode to hear us talk, and talk at length, about why Patti Smith gets credited by name when Michael Moorcock and John Shirley (and others!) do not.) (NOTE: we will not be talking about this.)

A real monkey's paw: we wanted to read a thriller with some connetions to music, and, for our sins, we got a sub-Patterson doorstop where every character's regional dialect is carefully presented on the page (and, lamentably, in the audiobook, particularly lamentably when it comes to the Thai runner of a massage parlor) and every single negative stereotype about poverty and mental illness is given a couple of chapters (of BŐC references). Enjoy! because we sure didn't.

Recommendations:

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
Desperately Seeking Susan movie

Music Thoughts:

"Rollin'" by Rush
"Career of Evil" by Blue Őyster Cult
"Stanky Legg" by GS Boyz

Pokémon: Detective Pikachu: Story of the Movie (w/ Gita Jackson) Oct 27, 2019

A story, nay, a tale so big we had to have help to handle it, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu: Story of the Movie is a novelization slash transcript of the recent film, which Kotaku's Gita Jackson (@xoxogossipgita on Twitter) was kind enough to join us to discuss!

Roughly ninety minutes of giggling then ensued.

The book's very first page includes the phrases "secret science lab", "dark minds at work" and "Legendary Pokémon", so you know what you're in for right from the beginning: Pokéaction, and plenty of it. The episode is ... basically the same thing, what's-on-offer-wise. Whether you're the kind of person who's long felt they "have to" "catch all of them" or are more on ol' Chris Collision's level of Pokéknowlege (Pokéfamiliarity?), this is one downloadable that will make you the very best, like no one ever was!

Recommendations:

Dirk Gently TV Show (2010, BBC)
The Outer Worlds video game (Gita Jackson's review of The Outer Worlds is here)
On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger

Music Pairings:

"Basket of Masks" by DTCV
"Dose of Thunder" by The Replacements
"Big Balls" by AC/DC

Killer Crabs Oct 13, 2019

Cue the music and lift your voices in song with us, because it's the mo-st won-der-ful time ... of the year: it's time to get back on the Guy N. Smith train with an absolute banger entitled Killer Crabs.

You know how last time we took on a Smith-crab joint, we thought "Wow, this one has EVERYTHING"? Well, it turns out that that one had a lot less than this one, because this one has everything. Everything is what this one has, at least if by the word "everything" you understand "just a whole LOT of sex and a briefcase-full-of-cash ménage à trois subplot that just screams "late '70s made-for-TV movie" and, of course, extremely invulnerable giant crabs eviscerating humans all over the beach.

Is there any defense against this scuttling menace? Have the crabs developed military tactics? Will any of our major characters have enough sex to say "You know what, that's about enough sex I've had right there"? Friends, allies against the crabs, secret lovers, there's only one viable path to an answer, and that path runs straight through the pages of ... Killer Crabs. Up Guy N. Smith, up the Irons, up IDEOTVPod and up the giant crabs!

Recommendations:

A Human Algorithm by Flynn Coleman
Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

Music:

"Shellburn" by The Spinanes
"Sideways" by Dinosaur Jr.
"Dead Meat on the Beach" by Sonny and the Sunsets

Skillset Magazine Sep 29, 2019

Ever want to hear what we get up to in our extra-special episodes over on Patreon dot com slash IDEOTVPod? Often, it's rad stuff like this, where we go deep into and thickly through a magazine aimed* at ... well, it's complicated, but the magazine is called Skillset and it's about being a hecka T U F F dude one hundred percent of the time. Which, full disclosure, includes an interest in collecting vintage video games, and has way less information about knives than you might expect. :(

If you want to learn about how to fix a blown-out tire, this episode will teach you how NOT to handle the situation. If you want to know more about things you can buy that will make everybody say "WOW WHAT A MAN", then this episode is absolutely for you. So please enjoy this special break from format while you find some ways to expand your ... skillset.

*You'll get that one on the way home.

IMPORTANT: Here's a giant pdf with a bunch of hi-res scans of various pages from this magazine so you can follow along. It's a MULTI-MEDIA EXPERIENCE.

http://www.idontevenownatelevision.com/media/Best%20of%20Skillset.pdf

Music Pairings:

141 — Noble Beginnings: A Jack Noble Thriller (Jack Noble #1) Sep 15, 2019

When you're scouring the shelves for some hot new Jack, sometimes you reach, er, farther, and thus might you happen upon L.T. Ryan's Noble Beginnings: A Jack Noble Thriller (Jack Noble #1). Anyway, that's pretty much what happened to us!

This semi-taut sorta-thrill quasi-ride introduces us to Jack Noble, a man who one-punch breaks jaws at least two separate times and gets caught up in a conspiracy to ... it's not clear. We think the conspiracy is to perpetuate and expand the war in Iraq after 9/11, and a lot of the conspirators seem Ripped From the Headlines (we see you, homage to Paul Wolfowitz!), but, again: it's not super clear. It's probably fine.

If your idea of fun is a taciturn Jack Reacher drinking coffee and punching evil all silent but deadly, this series may tickle your fancy, even if the chatty/sassy Jack Noble gasses on now and again. Squad up and get ready to drive up and down I-95, because it's time for ... beginnings ... noble beginnings.

Recommendations:

"Take the Way Home That Leads Back to Sullivan Street" by Chavisa Woods
A Wind in the Door by Madeleine l'Engle

Music Recs:

Ace Frehley - No Regrets: A Rock N' Roll Memoir Sep 02, 2019

No Regrets by Ace Frehley? More like "No, Regrets"!! For the first time in a LONG time we hop back on the rock bio train, and find that it treats us ... well, this isn't really the first one we'd recommend you read, let's just say that. Basically a guy throwing in his perspective on stuff he expects you to be incredibly familiar with and interested in, long after the shouting has ended and the confetti has all been swept up (and away), this book is an essentially narrative-free pile of anecdotes about fast cars and ... mostly it's just about fast cars, honestly.

So, you know: VROOM! Pop the clutch and tell the world you wanted the best and you GOT ... well, this episode!

Side note: both of us spend a LOT of time shrieking about "cold gin" and "owl ka haul" and at some point Clsn mutters "We'll explain this later", but we never did: what that's about is this legendary collection of Paul Stanley stage banter, commonly known as "People, Let Me Get This Off My Chest".

Side note two: no-one alive knows more about Kiss than Jon Wurster, and everything I (Clsn) personally know about Gene Simmons comes from this call he made to the Best Show some years back. Highly recommended.

Recommendations:

Telling Lies game by Sam Barlow
"The Adults in the Room" by Megan Greenwell

Music Thoughts:

"Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" by Frank Zappa
"Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives" by Aesop Rock

Ricochet Joe Aug 18, 2019

Bouncing off the walls with at least one too many cups of coffee, it's the IDEOTV squad (-ron) chasing after Ricochet Joe! This is a prime blast of classic Dean Koontz, which means it's literally impossible to dislike or have a bad time with.

We hope you'll enjoy our dogged efforts hereby unleashed! So fix your collar and keep your eye open for evil grandmothers, chambers of commerce, and Corvettes.

Recommendations:

"Solidarity and the Labor of Writing" by Toni Morrison
"The Work You Do, the Person You Are" by Toni Morrison
A Goddamn Impossible Way of Life by The Paranoid Style
They Live
Frankenstein's Monster's Monster, Frankenstein

Music Recs:

"Little Joe" by Soundgarden
"Don't Turn Your Back" by Blue Őyster Cult
"Ordinary Average Guy" by Joe Walsh

The Rubber Band (A Nero Wolfe Mystery) Aug 04, 2019

Coming at you faster than a stretchy missile off of a young boy's outstretched finger(s), it's Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe's The Rubber Band! What is it? Why, it's a classic mystery of the old school, with armchair detection aplenty, two-fisted shoe-leather gumshoeing (?), gals, dames, dudes, orchids, bankers, and crime cases no cop could ever crack!

There's also no shortage of sizeist and sexist horseshit, straight out of the 30s and glued onto the page, so it's not all fun and games. But where else are you going to get a narrator who drinks maybe six glasses of milk and eats a dish of lamb kidneys and green peppers? Probably nowhere. Or anyway, possibly nowhere else.

No magnifying glasses needed for this caper, but we warn you: this plot MAY require a flow chart (or two). You need not fear, though, because we promise that we'll be able to hold it all together—with the help of The Rubber Band, anyway!

Recommendations:

"Proust's Madeleine, But for People Who Grew Up With a Single Dad" by the great Mara Wilson
Alita: Battle Angel
American Truck Simulator (game)

Music Recs:

"Stretchin' Out (In a Rubber Band)" by Bootsy Collins
"I Wanna Be a Cowboy" by Boys Don't Cry
"Friggin in the Riggin" by Sex Pistols

Doc Savage: The Sinister Shadow Jul 21, 2019

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows! And so does Doc Savage. This is just one of the things that makes the two of them rivals, tentative opponents, uneasy collaborators, and, the reader continuously hopes, cautious lovers in Doc Savage: The Sinister Shadow!

(Alas, this may be an "all-new WILD" adventure, but it's not quite wild enough for that last development, so calm down.) This is a super-enjoyable team-up in the old style, as our two favorite pulp heroes team up to take off a very thoroughly self-branded villain who's been blackmailing criminals (uhh, Season 3 Jessica Jones?) but makes a mistake and makes it a big one when he runs afoul of New York honestly, basically just Manhattan and occasionally upstate or parts of New Jersey's most two-fisted and twin-.45'd (Doc & Shadow, respectively) bad-punishers.

Anyway, this one was a lot of fun, so set your hearts and minds on a course for adventure and settle down with ... Doc Savage: The Sinister Shadow!

Side note: these lil' toys are incredible.

Recommendations:

Stranger Things Season 3
America by Garrett Bradley

Music Recs:

"Dark Shadows" by EMA
"No Face" by Savages
"Together Again (live)" by Linda Thompson & Richard Thompson

Duel to the Death Jul 07, 2019

Picked out and up at a literal airport bookstore, it's the greatest fight we've ever had: J.A. Jance's Duel to the Death: An Ali Reynolds Mystery. Will this supposed thriller bring the techno-chills, delivering A.I.-derived Bitcoin by Bluetooth? Or will we spend most of our time at the DMV?

(Sorry for the short notes this time around: time pressure!)

Recommendations:

"World Without Men: The Wisdom and Weirdness of Feminist Utopian Novels" by Lyta Gold
"Love Poem to Oakland" by Leila Mottley

Music Recs:

"Pure Energy" by Information Society
"http://mmouse.albndy.coolio.myass.dot.com" by Donuts N' Glory
"Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford

The Notbeook Jun 23, 2019

One journal you won't want to take a bullet for, it's Nicholas Sparks' rain-drenched kayak epic The Notebook! The gothic tale of a war veteran alone in his ancient house, yearning for the rekindling of a long-gone love affair, crossed with an empowering journey of a young woman fighting to make her own choices and investigate her artistic talents ... would have been better than what we read, probably.

Big themes, big feelings, big-time sincerity and a bigger commitment to sex scenes than we were expecting, all packed into a most slim form factor, so is this one gonna force us to replace "Ride the Crab!" with "Jot THAT Down in Your Notebook"? There's only one way to find out, and that way is to mash that download button

NOTE: Clsn badly misquoted the great Mara Wilson during this episode, for which he apologizes. What she really said was 'way funnier than what he remembered.

Recommendations:

The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant comrade Kim Jong Un by Anna Fifield
Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall by Elizabeth Drew

Music Recs:

The Wurms of Blearmouth Jun 13, 2019

Swords? More than a couple. Sorcery? Some, but not so much that you'd get upset about it. Sandals? Probably not, but we can't swear that weren't any in ... The Wurms of Blearmouth.

Probably the highest quantity (and quality!) of funny voices in any episode ever, and DEFINITELY the longest list of purportedly funny names we've ever endured (and subsequently shared with you). Anyway, this is evidently what passes for high fantasy with comic elements and it doesn't even have a map at the front so there's absolutely nothing right with this brief document except that it got J. all fired up and inspired an episode that will deffo tickle your fancy!

Brush the road dust from your fanciest cloak, tuck away your coin purse, and keep a weather eye out for brigands, for we set out this day 'pon the teeming mountain path that will lead us (all) to the village where dwell the golems, sheriffs, lizard cats, walking dead and ... uh ... also the wurms. Of Blearmouth.

Recommendations:

Deadwood finale
Fleabag season 2

Music Recs:

"Brave Sir Robin" by Monty Python
"The Wizard" by Black Sabbath
"I'm Dead" by Würm

Plotting for Murder (Cozy Mystery Bookshop Series Book 1) May 26, 2019

Just in time for J.W.'s birthday, we crack the spine on Tamra Baumann's Plotting for Murder. Full disclosure: this breaks a few of our rules, in that we (a) mainly focus on bad books and (2) rarely read anything that wasn't published by a major house, but sometimes we just want to read something we know we're going to enjoy, and this was one of those times. So hop in the car with us and take a trip down south—45 minutes south of San Francisco, that is!—and browse the groaning shelves of a mystery-themed bookstore that serves up hot, flavored coffee, fresh, flaky croissants, and, if you're a member of its book club, the occasional MURDER.

The heroine? Plucky. Coffee drinker (bigtime). Puppy recipient! The sheriff: hunky; devoted to the heroine; willing to use her to accomplish extra-legal surveillance; possibly going to run for mayor down the road (check back!). Her mom: big heart, a little flaky. Her best friend? Does a lot of dating. The murder victim? Did a little TOO MUCH dating, possibly! But let's not uncover the mystery too quickly, eh?

NOTE: J. would like everybody to know he thought he was a little less "vocally enthusiastic" than usual, but that's only because he had been helping our pals over to the F Plus help raise SEVENTEEN THOUSAND FRIGGING DOLLARS for abortion rights all night before we recorded. Clsn would like everybody to know he feels really bad for not mentioning one of the best things about this book, which is that it has an expansive, enjoyable sense of family, with adult children coming to respect their parents in new ways and inviting people into new networks of care, and he doesn't even have an excuse, he just forget to bring it up.

Recommendations:

Killing Eve TV series
Destroyer movie (Karyn Kusama, director)

Music Recs:

"Murder" by Monster Magnet
"Admiral of the Sea" by Nova Mob
"Mystery" by Wipers

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy May 12, 2019

This episode, we ask you all to take us down to Raccoon City, where the herbs are green and the ammo's scanty -- Take. Us. Home. We sneak into a supposedly disused mansion to investigate a branded spinoff and read Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy, by S.D. Perry, a (completely rad) novelization of the first Resident Evil video game. If you haven't had the pleasure, or if you've only seen one or five of the recent movies, never fear, for we're part of a crack task force and we'd never leave one of our own behind.

Check your pockets, and keep your eyes peeled for shiny things -- and always, always, watch out for snakes! Because this book has E V E R Y T H I N G: zombie mutants of several different kinds; traps; puzzles; betrayal; blackmail; claws; indoor sharks and skinless dogs; unattended boiler rooms; switches Barry definitely shouldn't have touched; full bladders needing attention. Leave your flashlights behind for some reason and come with us to hydroplane into fame, and see if we can find any safety, living under ... the Umbrella ella ella (Corporation).

Extra Special Bonus "Paradise City" Lyrics Rewritten to Be About Raccoon City: I'm just a hell beast tearing up all the street Got a long tongue, looking for some faces to eat

Sorry, kind of ran out of steam at that point.

Recommendations:

Resident Evil 7 game
High Life movie (Claire Denis, director)

Music Recs:

"I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement" by The Ramones
"Zombie" by The Cranberries
"Umbrella" by Rihanna

Friday the 13th: Mother's Day Apr 28, 2019

Just in time for Mother's Day, or maybe early for Halloween, it's just flat-out time to get extremely spooky, so we're bringing you the PG-est horror out there, slithering like a fat white worm and jutting upsettingly from a long-dug grave, Eric Morse's epoch-defining Friday the 13th: Mother's Day.

Grab your backpack and get ready for a road trip with all your most stereotypical high school pals: the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, and the criminal, but keep your eyes open and your running (-away) shoes laced up, because THIS Mother's Day, Camp Crystal Lake is being plagued by more than just the Voorhees family. Canoe even believe it!? there's more than one killer on the loose!

Recommendations:

"To Keep a Sluttish House" by Katie Prout
"Ghost in the Cloud" by Meghan O'Gieblyn
"Glenn Danzig Gets Knocked the Fuck Out" by Some Beefy Dude Danny Marianino

Music Recs:

"Bring Me the Head" by Operators
"Let's Go Down to the Woods" by Screaming Blue Messiahs
"Blow Ya Mind" by Nicki Minaj

Coma Apr 14, 2019

A book that will leave you sleepy, but a podcast episode that will leave you ... in stitches, it's Robin Cook's quasi-classic Coma, a medical thriller more frightening than anything except a hospital bill.

A thick slice of 70s anxiety, where women in the workplace crash up against the commodification of, uh, organ "donations" and the frustrations of laws presuming to encroach upon the sure natural rights of innovators to innovate, this little tome is yet another data point illustrating Clsn's thesis that It Is Never Not the Seventies. There's even a hacking scene! And probably the best last line we have ever seen a protagonist have in one of our books—and if you want to hear about those two things, keep an eye on our public Patreon feed, because we didn't talk about them on the main episode, but there may well be some extras coming down the pike for you, absolutely free.

Laughter is the best medicine, so no matter how you're feeling, you owe it to your future to just wail on that DOWNLOAD button and get healthy the old-fashioned way: by laughing at Coma.

Recommendations:

The After Party by Jana Prikryl
Sekiro game

Music:

"Home Surgery" by Trotsky Icepick
"Styles" by Casual
"Love in an Elevator" by Aerosmith

An Important Announcement (LIVE SHOW 04/11/2019) Apr 06, 2019

Just poppin' in your feed with an advertisement for our extremely free live show that is happening, here in San Francisco, in just a matter of days.

Tickets are free, but you do need to reserve them in advance. Here's a link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/betabrand-podcast-theatre-i-dont-even-own-a-television-tickets-59068469382

And for those of you who can't make it, please enjoy this incredibly smooth west coast g-funk beat in the background. Okay, later!

Witch & Wizard Mar 31, 2019

It's the greatest crossover of all time—again!!—as the delightful Kait & Renata from Worst Bestsellers repay our James Patterson guest spot with one of their own, joining us for James Patterson & Gabrielle Charbonnet's Witch & Wizard. Yes, it's dude magic and lady magic together again for the very first time, in a Frankensteined-up teen-centered dystopia slash ... record scratch noise Holocaust metaphor? And the blandest title ever committed to print, with a prophecy naming the brother-and-sister team who will save the world after second-tier Disney semi-hit The Rescuers?

Look, we're just as confused as you are, and we do this all the time. Anyway, this is a book (probably?) for modern-day teens (we think?) that includes an incredibly up-to-date reference to (racist caricature) Ming the Merciless on like page two, so it's safe to say that it's real James Patterson hours around here, folks. Anyways, Renata & Kait are great, this book is definitely not, and this episode is more fun than anybody can have without an heirloom drumstick and a leather-bound book.

Recommendations:

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Gravity Falls on Hulu
Into the Spider-Verse
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Music:

"Everything Is Not What It Seems (Wizard of the Waverly Soundtrack)" by Selena Gomez
"Your Body Is a Wonderland" by John Mayer
"Kids in America ('93)" by Lawnmower Deth (or the De la Deth mix)

Pirate Latitudes Mar 17, 2019

Is that a parrot on your shoulder or are you just glad to see ... Pirate Latitudes, a supposed novel supposedly found in Michael Crichton's files, complete and entire, after his death?

Slow-moving nautical action, a slow-motion rock-climbing heist with a basically super-powered team of what are over and over again described as not pirates, some of the most boring witchcraft scenes ever written, and probably the worst sex scenes we've ever read: whoever was responsible for these pages should probably be forced to walk the plank. But since we're all about the booty here at IDEOTVPod, we hoisted the sails, made fast our lines, tucked our shiny-ass cutlasses into our finest sashes and set sail for fresh latitudes. Sassy latitudes. Pirate latitudes.

Recommendations:

Six Months, Three Days, and Five Others by Charlie Jane Anders
The Seven and One-Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Music:

"I was born on a pirate ship (holdyourtongue)" by Dillinger 4
"Golden Years" by David Bowie
"Frigging in the Rigging" by the Sex Pistols

The Way to Dusty Death Mar 03, 2019

Helmet, jumpsuit, maybe a catheter: these are the things we needed to hop behind the wheel of Alistair MacLean's The Way to Dusty Death, and it's at the very least possible that they are the things you'll need to have in place before you pop your clutch and try to slip behind the fastest cats on the track (that's us) as they (we) set track records, lap after lap.

The big bells are ringing and the tight pants are clinging, because this tale of speedy intrigue on and around the tracks of Formula 1 Grand Prix racing is probably the 70s-est artifact that ever slid through Europe's hotels. A few pit stops may be in order, so that you don't get too tired. Anyway, if you're like Racer X Johnny Racecar Harlow's accelerator, then you're ready for this episode, because you're ready to get ... floored.

Recommendations:

Moe Bowstern of the Fisher Poets Gathering
Watching Columbo
The Trauma Floor by Casey Newton, photos by Jessica Chou
"Which One of My Garbage Sons Are You?" on Clickhole

Music:

"Jesus Built My Hotrod" by Ministry
"Racer-X" by Big Black

Dog On It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery Feb 17, 2019

Throw us a bone, here, people, and don't unleash a pack of "IDEOTVPod has gone to the dogs" jokes, just because we've finally managed to collar a couple copies of Spencer Quinn's entirely endearing, even fetching novel Dog On It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery.

You'd have to be one sick puppy to be mean about this good-natured book about a moderately hard-boiled desert detective and his loyal pooch, who serves as our narrator, and trust us: if you come to say bad stuff about Spencer Quinn, you're barking up the wrong tree and will definitely end up in our doghouse.

Recommendations:

Russian Doll, Netflix
Stick It
"Lost in the Woods with James Brown's Ghost" by Thomas Lake

Music:

"Baby Ice Dog" by Blue Őyster Cult
"Get at Me Dog" by DMX
"Talking to the Dog" by Obits

When Thief Meets Thief Feb 03, 2019

What is the sound of a skull batting again and again at the hardest wall any coconut failed to crack? Why, it's the sound of your pals reading Harry Stephen Keeler's When Thief Meets Thief!

This legendary underground author works through his obsessions (skulls, coincidences) and takes us through a long tour of his racial attitudes—and one of those two things is, depending on your patience levels, fun/acceptable. The other is a firehose of awful. (This book comes with a content warning for racist slurs and attitudes, self-harm, and one very cartoonish act of violence against an animal, very little of which is discussed in the episode.) But, whether or not you can get past the difficult to digest subject matter, you can always confront the difficult to parse timeline, or just wallow in the difficult to understand prose. This one, it's safe to say, isn't like anything you've read before.

Extra bonus illustrations! If you want to see what it looks like when one tries to summarize the entire plot of a Keeler book, read this effort by William Poundstone. NOTE: it's like 2,500 words long. If you want to see what a Keeler-style "webwork" diagram looks like, feast your eyes! (Also from William Poundstone.)

Recommendations:

Wandersong game
L'Avenir / Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)

Music:

"Skulls" by the Misfits
"Thieves" by Ministry
"Joker and the Thief" by Wolfmother
IDEOTVPod Songs of Nudity and (Then) Carnality

Swine Not? -- A Novel Pig Tale Jan 20, 2019

It's real original yacht rock time over here, folks: Belly up to the groaning board and get ready to pig out, because the buffet we've got ready for you, courtesy of Jimmy Buffett, is called Swine Not! Buffett hams it up as our eyes glaze over, and the porcine puns have, lamentably, just begun.

It's a deeply inoffensive text, but Clsn spends the entire time peevish and grumpy, so that's fun, and we completely forgot to mention during the episode that there's a very, very real possibility that, in the world of Swine Not, Noah's Ark was a real thing. (It's true! Page 34!) If that's not enough, J. springs the biggest surprise the show has ever seen! If you're pining for some portions of porky plotting, hungry for some ungulates, or just in a mood to hear a LOT about a young boy's soccer season(s),adjust your chef's hat and get ready for a book that's nothing but ... truffle.

BONUS TEXT-ONLY SHOW SEGMENT! Imagine you're hearing the song "Rippin' It Off" right now. Uh, okay, what is this book-like object about some pig trying to find its way in New York City, ah, shall we say, reminiscent of? Yup, that's right: we've got a little bit of Charlotte's Web, a tiny bit of Babe: Pig in the City, and just enough of both to make us wish we were encountering those. And not, and I repeat, NOT, this.

Recommendations:

The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran
"How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation" by Anne Helen Peterson
"Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts" by Linda Tirado

Music:

"Pigs" by Aesop Rock
"Burn Pigs Burn" by Pitchfork
"Pigs in Zen" by Jane's Addiction
ACTUAL CLOSING TUNE: "Idiot Control" from MST3k

Slow Bullets Jan 06, 2019

In the far-flung future, faster-than-light "skipships" carry soldiers in "hibo capsules" and our hero "Scur" needs to save what human knowledge she can in everybody's titular ... Slow Bullets, and even if you're not already overloaded on made-up words and silly names, you'd be forgiven for muttering "hooo booooy" when you get to the part where Scur is on a spaceship and is puzzled and excited by the existence of a public address system.

It's the kind of science fiction where nobody has wireless, so most of the action consists of people carrying tablets and thumb drives around, the kind where religion gets a pretty savage sneering-at (so take THAT, belief systems!), soldiers cuss a lot (a LOT), and one quiet IT man can save the entire day, if only he can get people to listen to him.

All this spurs and stirs what might be our most digressive episode yet. There's much, much more than the usual amount of cape and cape-adjacent talk, and the moment where Clsn inexplicably can't remember the name of Peter Schilling is sure to have a central place in this year's Poddies podcast award show. Also! the long-awaited return of talking about Do Robots Do the Nasty (yes) and How.

Recommendations:

"Born to Die" by Lana del Rey
Sleep No More by P.D. James
"Spending Eternity in a Japanese Convenience Store" by Forests

Music:

Slow Bullets Jan 06, 2019

In the far-flung future, faster-than-light "skipships" carry soldiers in "hibo capsules" and our hero "Scur" needs to save what human knowledge she can in everybody's titular ... Slow Bullets, and even if you're not already overloaded on made-up words and silly names, you'd be forgiven for muttering "hooo booooy" when you get to the part where Scur is on a spaceship and is puzzled and excited by the existence of a public address system.

It's the kind of science fiction where nobody has wireless, so most of the action consists of people carrying tablets and thumb drives around, the kind where religion gets a pretty savage sneering-at (so take THAT, belief systems!), soldiers cuss a lot (a LOT), and one quiet IT man can save the entire day, if only he can get people to listen to him.

All this spurs and stirs what might be our most digressive episode yet. There's much, much more than the usual amount of cape and cape-adjacent talk, and the moment where Clsn inexplicably can't remember the name of Peter Schilling is sure to have a central place in this year's Poddies podcast award show. Also! the long-awaited return of talking about Do Robots Do the Nasty (yes) and How.

Recommendations:

"Born to Die" by Lana del Rey
Sleep No More by P.D. James
"Spending Eternity in a Japanese Convenience Store" by Forests

Music:

Pet Sematary Dec 23, 2018

For this holiday season, we've got a gift for you! It's a box with a cat in it—but you will never know if kitty lives and breathes or not, because this time around, we're schlepping up the hills and through the pages to get to Stephen King's mammoth Pet Sematary.

Semi-appealingly dickish young doctor Louis Creed takes us on a tour of Stephen King's Carnival of American Anxieties! Is my cat less of a man if I get him fixed? Am I? Is it okay if I like my son more than my daughter? Everybody cheats on their spouse, right? Can I just run away from my family? Is my cat super creepy all of a sudden? If I try to climb that fence, am I going to fall on a spike and ruin my balls? Should I tap ancient magic to create abominations in the face of all-conquering death?

It's all very relatable. Maybe. In any case, it's Stephen King, it's slow-building, and it's extremely, extremely gory. So grab your favorite shovel and get ready to bury what you can't let go, because it's long past time for us to take a trip through the works of our Maine man...

Recommendations:

Detective Pikachu (Nintendo 3ds)
The Girls, by Emma Cline

Recommended Music:

"Chesterfield Kings", by Jawbreaker
"Diamonds and Rust", by Judas Priest
"Here Comes the Gravediggaz" by The Gravediggaz

Nights in Rodanthe Dec 09, 2018

Long nights, impossible odds, keeping your eye to the keyhole, that's what it's like to spend your nights within Nights at Rodanthe. Our first encounter with the redoubtable Nicholas Sparks has our home fires burning bright, with our tightest, least-digressive episode ever!*

An oft-told tale, this, in which a nice woman snaps her daughter out of a funk by telling her of her semi-tragic and fully doomed love story of years gone by. Hurricanes, estrangement, bad food, illicit, even forbidden, wine, these jam-packed Nights you won't soon forget. Probably. Anyway, this one's got more than just breakfast in bed, if you know what we're saying.

Head to the lighthouse and get ready to give us a hand with the storm shutters, but forgive us if you end up thinking that strong winds aren't the only thing that blows around here, because it's time to shake off your daze and enter the pulsing, dryer-sheet scented night...Nights of Rodanthe, that is.

Also! Bonus grumpiness and us coming as close as we ever will do to handling an often-requested book that we wouldn't check out with your library card. Also also! J. references Clsn's jam; Clsn possibly nearly completes the Plot in 60 Seconds challenge; food saftey and cooler packing is discussed at longer length than you'd expect.

*Note: Not guaranteed.** **Note: Not even particularly likely.

The Czar of Fear (A Doc Savage Adventure) Nov 25, 2018

Feel a glory in so rolling on the human heart a stone entitled The Czar of Fear* as IDEOTVPod lives out a long-term dream and finally hops on the running board with the Man of Bronze himself, Doc Savage, as he and his Good Friends in Adventure go forth to right the wrongs of ... predatory capitalism. (Seriously.) (Evidently not every win ol' Doc racked up was a win of the perduring variety.)

When an industrial town upstate goes on strike to protest slashed wages by factory owners, and strikebreakers are driven mad by unseen means, when the radio programming you know, love, and depend upon, is broken in on by malevolent bells, when your city is overrun by masked men doling out intimidation and murder to the tolling of those bells, only one man, with five helpers, can save the day, widely escaping significant peril and narrowly escaping marriage, and that man, of course, was the dry run for The Rock (although he is described as looking more like John Cena, come to think of it), and that man is Doc Savage. Millionaire, surgeon, inventor, firecracker enthusiast, and not exactly a philanthropist, but somebody willing to make you a payday loan at a reasonable rate, Doc is a dude with a lot going on, and also this book has a lot going on. As Clsn stumbles through a story he can't really reconstruct, and as our own "Doc" Friedman lays out the principles undergirding that story, it may seem like "a lot" has become "jeez, too much", but if you're ready to soak in a tale where "'Judborn Tugg!' donged the Green Bell." isn't even one of the top ten sentences, then perhaps you're ready to infiltrate the Green Bells and confront the Green Bell, a sinister force who never needs to be asked to clap.

SPECIAL THANKS to Richard Fakelastname, who sent us a squall of these for our, and, we hope, your pleasure!

*No, it's not about Lee Ving.

The Maze Runner Nov 11, 2018

Just in time for Thanksgiving, a heartwarming tale of fleet-footed deliverers of Native American corn, it's The Maize Runne—I'm being told that that's incorrect, and what we actually read was derivative semi-hit The Maze Runner, which doesn't really have anything to do with Thanksgiving. But we are thankful we only had to read it once. Also, it is pretty corny. And filled with turkeys.

Stuffed to the brim with moments like "what Thomas felt was an inevitable barf," and "despite the terrible crappyness of it all, Chuck smiled," this one's a veritable cornucopia of...uh...well, there's a lot of maze running, anyway. Well, a fair amount. More maze running than most books, that's for sure.

You'll need your running shoes, and your best underpants for a day of fast moving, and your graph paper (for mapping), so if you dare, and if you're swift enough, head for the Griever Hole and see if you can keep up with ... The Maze Runner.

NOTE: From now moving forward, we will be using bespoke little pieces of music of our own creation for our segment breaks instead of popular (and unpopular) tunes from other artists. There are many reasons for this, but most of them revolve around copyright law, and a general feeling of skeeziness about using other peoples' work without explicit permission to do so. Don't worry, though, we'll still provide a "suggested soundtrack" for you to listen to while you do absolutely anything but read this book.

Recommendations:

Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter
Marissa Brostoff, "Missing Time"

Suggested Music:

"Wicked" by Korn
"Run Like Hell" by Pink Floyd
"Maybe I'm Amazed" by Paul McCartney & Wings

Vampire$ Oct 26, 2018

John Steakley's Vampire$ stakes out territory we have seen before, but nobody would dare bite this book's remarkable style. Pitting vampires against the Catholic church might have been done before, but never with belt buckles quite this big, nor blues guitar quite so searing!

We're heading to Texas, to clean out vampire nests one hometown at a time, and if we have to dress like dang-ol' crusaders to do it, then that's what we're by gxd gonna do. Polish up your skull ring(s) and get ready for some segments we haven't done in a WHILE, because it's time to confront the ancient evil most prevalent in smalltown Texas: guys in leather pants.

NOTE: we did miss a couple things, so before you run out to your local bookstore to camp out in front of its doors to demand your own copy of Vampire$, you should know that this paperback does feature: a deeply misogynistic "joke" about a sex worker; the phrase "outgunned and terrified police" working in a predominantly black neighborhood; and the following passage: "What women needed. What women craved. What they had to have. Release. Abandon. Wantonness. Penetration."

Not balancing this out, but still worth mentioning: there is an explicit moment where a character advocates no-platforming the vampire menace, which is pretty funny; there's also one of the first documentations of trolling we've ever seen, involving one character yelling at another "Hey! Tell me about your dick.". Definitely didn't see that one coming. Anyway, it's all a rich tapestry.

Recommendations:

Hereditary movie
Mandy movie

Music:

"Fearless Vampire Killers" by Bad Brains
"Possum Kingdom" by Toadies
"Love Bites" by Def Leppard

IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas Oct 14, 2018

It had to happen eventually: The world turns, the back issues pile up, and the opinions, the opinions just have to find release, and no place has more opinions per page than the oeuvre of Mr. Chuck Klosterman, as evidenced by the fairly representative collection hilariously named after a Led Zeppelin album, IV.

From the magazine rack to the record store, this Chuck Tract drops truth bombs you probably aren't ready to handle, so it's a good thing we're here with you to dilute the intensity of a middle-aged white guy strenuously telling you "That thing you already like? it's good, and you're good for liking it already." So dig out your Ratt tapes, dust off your remote, and get ready for a long, long episode discussing the living embodiment of the Onion article about the guy at the bar who's a little too into Stevie Ray Vaughn. If you're the kind of person who says "pop culture takes? HELL YEAH HOOK THAT SHIT TO MY VEINS", then this IV might just be for you.

NOTE: F Plus Live 7 (!) approacheth! Get you there!

NOTE TWO: We mention a couple of Scharpling & Wurster bits that probably encapsulate Klosty better than he does. Here are a few: Rock, Rot, & Rule (on absurd Record Store Dudepinions) (for which also see: The Music Scholar); Pudge (on endless fearful, trembling hedging, available maybe only on the Box Set); and Terrence from Billyburg (on an early sort of irony damage and inability to develop new interests after the age of majority, available here at May 27, 2013).

EDITOR'S NOTE [JWF]: While editing this show, I googled the lyrics to The Smiths' "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" and discovered that neither "perhaps" NOR "maybe" are used in the song -- the actual is "but that joke isn't funny anymore." So, now that I've written this, I can safely assume that if you write in to correct us about this tiny piece of music trivia, you are not reading the show notes and that you are also probably Chuck Klosterman.

Recommendations:

Read Like the Wind email list, by Molly Young
"Merostomata" by Merostomata

Music:

"You Talk Too Much" by Run-D.M.C.
"Get in the Ring" by Guns N' Roses
"There's Nothing Wrong with Hating Rock Critics" by of Montreal

Spy Killer Sep 30, 2018

It's time...for us to take on one of the pale male faces surely adorning everyone's Bad Book Rushmore, but for complicated reasons we explain at no little length, we enjoy or anyway endure one of L. Ron Hubbard's lesser-known book-like objects, a...collection of described events entitled Spy Killer.

No matter how bad you think this thing is going to be, it's worse than you can easily imagine. It features a main character who actually snaps back at his captor "I'm laughing out loud," because being captured by the spy he is supposed to kill is actually funny to him, he can't believe you thought this would upset him. This 1936 action (?) / adventure (?) is jam-packed with racist descriptions of non-white characters, MANY scenes of our rugged, uh, protagonist, being captured and locked in rooms, and a scene that's supposed to be happy denouement description but that includes the words "brutal kiss". On the plus side, it also includes things we somehow didn't even get to, like "The man was riddled." (Yes, with a full stop. No, not riddled with anything, like every other time you've ever seen the word "riddled".) "Even a decanter couldn't be trusted."

Short story shorter: this old Hubbard? It's a real mother.

Recommendations:

The Outsider, by Stephen King (NOTE FROM JW: I was very wrong about the lack of supernatural stuff here, it just takes a while to kick in. Don't @ me.)
The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner

Music:

"One Night in Bangkok" from "Chess"
"Scenario" by Tribe Called Quest
"The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World" by Sammy Davis Jr.

Make Me Sep 16, 2018

It took a while, but the world finally made us go back to Lee Child, so here we are: Make Me. Yes, down these manicured streets a man must go who is not himself manicured, who is neither wearing cologne nor designer clothes. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man (pauses, sips coffee, explains joke).

So it's another long walk with Jack Reacher, full of long descriptions of diners, short rants about leg room on airplanes, and a whole lot of bottomless cups of coffee. Oh, and bone-splintering acts of violence. Lots and lots of those. Mostly those, actually. Not a whole lot of anything else that I can remember, actually. But I'm certain that for a certain kind of reader, it's just a non-stop ride of thrills and chills. For us, it's an occasion for bellyaching. So all aboard the IDEOTV Train -- next stop, fun!

CONTENT WARNING: This book's plot revolves around self-harm and suicide and people's plans to take their own lives, and includes some descriptions of torture. The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline phone number is: 1-800-273-8255.

Recommendations:

"The Glass Essay", by Anne Carson
"What Was It Like to Be a Nintendo Game Play Counselor?", by Annie Zaleski

Music:

"Wild Mountain Nation" by Blitzen Trapper
"Travellin' Man" by DJ Honda (feat. Mos Def)
"Train Song" from MST3K

Daughter of the Blood Sep 02, 2018

You wanted the best, you've got the best, because we're joined byHow2Wrestling's tremendous Jo Graham to discuss sexy pirate outfits, smart, sad horses, and love quadrangles, because that's what we've got when we've got Anne "Quinoa" Bishop's Daughter of the Blood.

Light S&M, sexy vampires, sexier vampires, sexier still demons, and, at the center of it all, a girl who ages from 7 to 12, so it's safe to say that very strong content warnings apply.

Recommendations:

"re:memeber" -- Ólafur Arnalds
Marie Antoinette
Do Men Enter Bathtubs on Hands and Knees So Their Balls Hit the Water Last?
The Wizard's First Rule, Terry Goodkind

Music:

"This Corrosion" by The Sisters of Mercy
"Ride the Wind" by Poison
"Hot Blooded" by Foreigner

Who Moved My Cheese? Aug 19, 2018

We're not trapped in a maze with you, Who Moved My Cheese?—you're trapped in here with us! After some more or less satisfying mysteries, we're returning to the self-help / motivational genre, with 1998's mystifyingly world-conquering clip art for the soul extravaganza, supposedly based on a story previously immensely successful business-book writer Spencer Johnson used to tell people. The story? Sort of a blend of Hellraiser and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, in which limited beings of uncertain creation are subjected to torment and deprivation at unknown hands.

It's horrifying, for sure. It also gets a little hairy—and maybe even...a little bit...cheesy. Bait the trap and bate your breath, because it's time to learn how to win the rat race. As an Extra Special Bonus In Celebration of Summer, we have a brand-new theme song, as demanded by our many, many fans who are also huge fans of Mungo Jerry. So hoot on that jug with the ONLY podcast that loves you, and you'll never get cheesed off.

Recommendations:

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, book and movie
"'It Feels Like a Derangement': Menopause, Depression, & Me", by Rose George

Music:

"Protect Ya Neck" by Wu-Tang Clan
"Mice Race" by Rudimentary Peni
"Cats, Mice" by Big Business

The Otter of Death: A Gunn Zoo Mystery (No. 5) Aug 08, 2018

The book so nice, we had to record it (the episode) twice, straight out the Pacific Ocean and packing both nearly a million strands of hair per square inch AND a cell phone telephone, it's The Otter of Death!

Our new direction, where we talk All Lighthearted Mystery All The Time, encounters serious challenges, including technical difficulties, a plot neither of us can quite follow, and a massive heap of animal facts. If you really want to be able to school somebody on the difference(s) betweens puffers and penguins, this may be the book for you! (NOTE: you will almost certainly be asked to leave the store after said schooling.) But if you want to take a ride through a lightly fictionalized version of Santa Cruz, located slightly annoyingly near the actual Santa Cruz, for some reason, and try to get to the bottom of just exactly who could have murdered the guy everybody hated, while not interrupting the dog-walking schedule, then come with us! Any otter choice...would be madness.

Recommendations:

The Word Is Murder: A Novel, by Anthony Horowitz
The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

Music:

"America We Stand as One" by Dennis Madalone
"Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes
"You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette

The Otter of Death: A Gunn Zoo Mystery (No. 5) Aug 08, 2018

The book so nice, we had to record it (the episode) twice, straight out the Pacific Ocean and packing both nearly a million strands of hair per square inch AND a cell phone telephone, it's The Otter of Death!

Our new direction, where we talk All Lighthearted Mystery All The Time, encounters serious challenges, including technical difficulties, a plot neither of us can quite follow, and a massive heap of animal facts. If you really want to be able to school somebody on the difference(s) betweens puffers and penguins, this may be the book for you! (NOTE: you will almost certainly be asked to leave the store after said schooling.) But if you want to take a ride through a lightly fictionalized version of Santa Cruz, located slightly annoyingly near the actual Santa Cruz, for some reason, and try to get to the bottom of just exactly who could have murdered the guy everybody hated, while not interrupting the dog-walking schedule, then come with us! Any otter choice...would be madness.

Recommendations:

The Word Is Murder: A Novel, by Anthony Horowitz
The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

Music:

"America We Stand as One" by Dennis Madalone
"Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes
"You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette

The Otter of Death: A Gunn Zoo Mystery (No. 5) Aug 08, 2018

The book so nice, we had to record it (the episode) twice, straight out the Pacific Ocean and packing both nearly a million strands of hair per square inch AND a cell phone telephone, it's The Otter of Death!

Our new direction, where we talk All Lighthearted Mystery All The Time, encounters serious challenges, including technical difficulties, a plot neither of us can quite follow, and a massive heap of animal facts. If you really want to be able to school somebody on the difference(s) betweens puffers and penguins, this may be the book for you! (NOTE: you will almost certainly be asked to leave the store after said schooling.) But if you want to take a ride through a lightly fictionalized version of Santa Cruz, located slightly annoyingly near the actual Santa Cruz, for some reason, and try to get to the bottom of just exactly who could have murdered the guy everybody hated, while not interrupting the dog-walking schedule, then come with us! Any otter choice...would be madness.

Recommendations:

The Word Is Murder: A Novel, by Anthony Horowitz
The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey
The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

Music:

"America We Stand as One" by Dennis Madalone
"Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" by Rupert Holmes
"You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette

Murdered by Wine: A Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery (No. 13) Jul 22, 2018

It's not Death by Chocolate, it's Murdered by Wine: A Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery! Folks, we took a look at our recent offerings: presidents, borders, sharks, spies, Dungeons and Dragons...lobsters...and we realized one thing hard and fast and deep and true: it was getting pretty dude-centric around here, so it was time for COZY MYSTERY MONTH! And you know what Cozy Mystery Month means. It's time to drink precisely one glass of wine and poke around and maybe help solve a murder.

So come along with our plucky, level-headed hero, as she active-listens and asks all the right questions to get strangers to open up to her, pounding out notes on her iPhone so she doesn't miss any details! Take some side trips so her husband can golf! And make sure you try every good restaurant in town, because you never know what kind of clue will turn up...or what kind of recipe inspiration you might get! The weather is fine, the Bed and Breakfast is waiting, and there's a mystery to solve, people, so let's get a good night's sleep, eat a light breakfast, and get to the bottom of just who was Murdered by Wine—and why—and we better do it soon, because Mike has an early-morning tee time and Kelly just confirmed our reservation for dinner, and it's a little bit on the early side, oh and we have to make sure we call Julia to check in on the kids' fever, oh and I should do a little shopping, it would be so nice if we could bring back a little something from our trip an—.

Recommendations:

Murdered by Wine: A Cedar Bay Cozy Mystery (No.13), by Dianne Harman
The Dublin Trilogy, by Caimh McDonnell

Music:

"Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-Oh-Dee" by Jerry Lee Lewis
"Madman (1992 Remix)" by Ugly Kid Joe
"At Home He's a Tourist" by Gang of Four

The Way of the Shadow Wolves Jul 08, 2018

The country's in dire straits indeed, even when not listening to Dire Straits, and it's clear that only two men are literarily capable of breaking down the situation and empowering the masses with knowledge bullets to fell their foes, and those men are ... second-or-maybe-third-tier action protag dude Steven Segal and his pal (?) Tom Morrissey, who wasn't in any movies with DMX.

For this roughest of rides, only one man could show up and help us through the deep thickets of paranoid dog-whistling about a version of the Deep State (sic) that lurks just beyond every border, and also in our nation's capital, and also in TV stations and we could go on like this for some time, but luckily (?) Messers. Segal and Morrissey have gone ahead and gone on like that for us, and that man? Why, it's Jeb Lund!

Somehow, we make it through a couple hundred pages of magnificently clunky prose, pseudo-positive stereotypes bashing against horrifyingly offensive ones, head shots, manly banter that's torture to read, snake-heavy torture scenes, and more glancingly mentioned right-wing conspiracy theories than was probably healthy. But it's all fun, we promise. So if you're ready to step into the shadows and enter a state that's most deep, please: join us.

Keep in touch with Jeb's work here, and listen to his rad podcast, which just may soon feature a guest spot from some fellas you know, here!

Recommendations:

Tad Friend, "Jumpers"
Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
Judith Shulevitz, "Forgotten Feminisms" series at the New York Review of Books
Inspector Morse: Endeavour, BBC

Music:

"Work the Angles" by Dilated Peoples
"Apache Rose Peacock" by Red Hot Chili Peppers
"Cherry Coke" by Karate

The President Is Missing Jun 24, 2018

"The president is missing," you say? "Christ, I wish!" Sorry, that's not what this book is about, though. This episode drops the bucket down into the ever-reliable well of James Patterson and when we pull it back up we find that it's also got a few viscous droplets of ol' Bill Clinton mixed in. In The President Is Missing, we encounter a red-blooded, two-fisted kind of President of the United States, the kind of rugged leader who isn't afraid to...call terrorist leaders on the phone...or...go to a baseball game in disguise to meet with a possible source of information, the kind of guy with exactly two friends: a movie star who doesn't need anybody's help to resolve sexual harassment issues, and a venture capitalist who got rich on tech companies he brags about not understanding.

Look, we're not going to pretend this one makes a whole lot of sense. But hey, at least when this president drones on and on, it doesn't end up costing anybody their lives. If you're ready for a president who writes poems to square off against bad guys who thought of everything, but one thing they forgot: the United States has helicopters and knows how to use them, then you just might be ready for ... The President Is Missing.

Recommendations:

"Feminize Your Canon" Column at the Paris Review: Olivia Manning by Emma Garman
"Song for Sasha Banks" by the Mountain Goats

Music:

"Funky President (People it's Bad)" by James Brown
"Adrenaline!" by The Roots
Theme from "Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja"

Palo Alto Jun 10, 2018

We continue our trip around the world by following Amsterdam with a jaunt to Palo Alto, or anyway James Franco's grimdark version of Palo Alto. If you're still thrilled every time somebody says "Hi kids! Do you like violence?" this book may contain the pages you've been waiting for. If Sammy Hagar singing "you're like rock candy, baby—hot, sweet, and sticky" is how you like your descriptions of the act of physical love, this book may deserve a place on your shelf. Or, maybe, if you just have a serious thing for the products of creative writing programs, Palo Alto may satisfy. Otherwise, come along if you care—come along if you dare—take a ride to the land inside of Silicon Valley.

NOTE: this book contains serious quantities of objectionable content, including teen sex, not all of it consensual, violence, and racism and other forms of bigotry. Also, the author has been accused of inappropriate and exploitative sexual behavior, which we were not aware of at recording time: we apologize for not being aware of this. Had we known, we would have likely been much more critical of the book's content, or maybe not have discussed the book at all.

Recommendations:

Embassytown, China Mieville
Exile in the Outer Ring, EMA

Music:

"Less Than Nothing" by I Hate Myself
"Suburban Home" by The Descendents
"What's Up Doc? (Can We Rock)" by Shaquille O'Neal ft. The Fu-Schnickens

Nick Carter, Killmaster: Amsterdam May 27, 2018

Who's the guy who made the Cold War ... cool? Why, the American James Bond, Nick Carter, of course! And it doesn't get much cooler than Nick Carter, Killmaster: Amsterdam, a plot-light traipse through some of the more scenic parts of the Netherlands—and not a few excursions through some rather gratuitously described nether regions.Actually, it does get much cooler than Nick Carter, Killmaster: Amsterdam. What it doesn't get is much more tepid or forgettable. But when a vacation isn't going well, it's time to make your own fun! So we do, ranging from Gorilla Biscuits to Gorilla Unit and trying to gin up some suspense of some kind in a book that drops foreshadowing hints like this: "Nick noted that she kept the big flat artist's case with her, as she had on the plane, where she even carried it to the powder room. Its contents might prove interesting, or they might just be ad proofs and sketches of jewelry settings; it was not worth a move on his part—yet." Riveting, riveting stuff. Please feel free to mention everything that isn't worth a move on Nick Carter's part yet.

If you want to read more about Nick Carter, that's seriously weird. But we can recommend the Glorious Trash blog on that front. So. If you're ready for a trip, put on your red light, grab your wooden shoes and prepare to plant tulips right on ... Nick Carter.

Recommendations:

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
"I could have fancied her" by Angela Carter

Music:

"Uniform" by Faberyayo
"Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers
"Amsterdam Squeeze" by The Bonobo Project

12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos May 13, 2018

The latest entry in the ever-popular "Actually, Focusing Exclusively on Yourself Is the Best Thing for Everybody" sweepstakes is Jordan Peterson's lengthy tome 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which doesn't promise to unlock the life-changing magic of tidying up, but does tell you what to do if you have snakes in your closet. (Not a joke. Actual quote. If you have snakes in your closet, maybe take a quick look at the tidying up one before you take on dosing rules to medicate against chaos...)

Come along as we pull our pants up—as doth the mighty lobster scuttling—and investigate this all-conquering best-seller and YouTube sensation. Disney movies, a lot of anxieties about infidelity, not nearly enough about dragons, and the most inexplicable references to Cain and Abel since Aerosmith's "Lord of the Thighs". J.'s mad, Clsn's taking some extremely long walks, and Peterson is flexing on chumps in the comments and welcoming them to his straw man slaughterhouse. So keep your head and arms inside the car at all times, sit up straight and OH MY GOD ARE YOU CHEWING GUM WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU SPIT THAT OUT RIGHT NOW MISTER.

Note 1: Yes, the cold open is actually from the book. No, we don't know why it sounds like the first draft of the theme song from Friends.

Note 2: Yes, this is a self-help book. No, we didn't apply our usual rule for judging a self-help book: is this more helpful or less helpful than Ice-T's twitter account. Is this book more helpful than Ice-T's twitter account? LOL FOH

Recommendations:

Prime Suspect
"See America First", Ellen Willis
The Rider

Music:

"First Failure" by Gorilla Biscuits
"Father Figure" by George Michael
"Nothing Can Stop Me" by Heavens to Betsy

Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror Apr 28, 2018

Watery but not quite grave, it's Steve Alten's Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror that we're sinking our rows of nine-inch teeth into this time around. Giant prehistoric sharks known as megalodons butt themselves into ships throughout, making them, we guess, megs of ram, and oh boy do our heroes have a hard drive escaping these mighty predators.

It's a classic monster story, with all the trimmings: sad hero, back-stabbing friends—and enemies!—things going wrong one after the other, and terrible threats gaining a taste for the best blood of all, human blood! In the finest tradition, it includes the phrase "gouts of gore" and more jawsplaining than anyone could have expected. Grab your spyglass and prepare to shout "Hark! It's a shark!" This shark week, it's time ... for the brine.

Recommendations:

Mucca Pazza
Trouble Every Day
Raw
How we found out about the book: this Deadspin article

Music:

"Baseball" by Michael Franks
"Moby Dick" by Led Zeppelin
"My Name is Jonas" by Weezer

Mazes And Monsters Apr 15, 2018

Straight out of 1979, with a cool glass of white wine and an extremely wide collar, comes Rona Jaffe's disturbingly fictionalized account of a disturbing apocryphal tale, Mazes and Monsters.

What promises to be a stirring exploration of the dangers of role-playing games quickly pivots into a fairly detailed account of ... divorce being hard. With a morality derived from TV for children and a sense of mental illness that would leave an X-Men comic shaking its head and muttering "Jeez, that ain't how that works", Mazes and Monsters brings the disappointment from some unusual angles. Even though it's extremely short, it's worth noting that we never talk about some parts of it, like the fact that after a while, they stop playing Dungeons and Dragons in a dorm room and start acting it all out in some nearby steam tunnels, because those parts literally don't matter. Finally, if you want to get up to speed on the book without having to read it, knowing that we strongly recommend you do not read it, you can do so by reading a Chick Tract (but please don't give them any money).

NOTE FROM J TO EX-BOY SCOUTS: Yes, I know it's actually called a "Totin' Chit" and not a "Woodsman's Chit". I was very tired. Please forgive me.

Recommendations:

Shirley Jackson, FSG CLassics: The Lottery + Stories
Joan Didion, South and West
Frederic Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent

Music:

"The Game (HHH Theme)" by Mötorhead
"Maps" by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Renaissance Lute" - John Dowland

103 - The Bible Code Mar 30, 2018

There's a few ways to get ready for The Bible Code, a giant hit from a bygone era that finally—finally!—solves the ancient puzzle: what if there were a conspiracy theory that was all Easter eggs but also absolutely no fun at all? Set the controls for the late 90s, just before the end of the world, and set your expectations to nodding politely while the crazy man tells you about the letters he wrote to a wide variety of world leaders.

Get ready to turn into Han Solo, because when this one is over, you will absolutely never want anybody to tell you the odds ever again. But you'll still have a good time exploring the book that turns the Old Testament into the BOLD Testament! Trust us, this is one episode you won't want to pass over.

Recommendations:

Chris Leo, Feathers Like Leather
Emily Wilson interview at the Chicago Review of Books

Music:

"Channel Zero" by Canibus
"End of All Things" by Nomeansno
"Nuclear War" by Sun Ra and his Arkestra

102 — The Angel Experiment: Maximum Ride (Book 1) Mar 18, 2018

For Part One of our Big Podcast Crossover Event, we bring in Kait and Renata from the Worst Bestsellers podcast to help us out with a bestseller that is, in fact, Just The Worst: James Patterson's The Angel Experiment: Maximum Ride.

It's supposed to be something like The X-Men crossed with Twilight with hints of Frankenstein and family drama, but it ends up much more like 1982's non-blockbuster film Six Pack with moderately less Kenny Rogers slash stock car racing and significantly less charm. Luckily, the Cheersome Foursome helping you come to terms with this eventful yet plotless morass deliver more charm than you can probably handle! If you're ready for six urchins, countless henchmen and somewhere between zero and one parents, you just might be ready to go on this wild slow minimum ... Maximum Ride.

Recommendations:

S. E. Hinton
Judy Blume, Superfudge
Hercule Poirot stories first published in Sketch, by Agatha Christie
Ghost Quartet, Dave Malloy
Animorphs
Runaways, Brian K. Vaughn & Rainbow Rowell

Music:

"Fly Like an Eagle" by The Steve Miller Band
"Call Me Mother" by Rupaul
"Scatman" by Scatman John

The Slow Regard of Silent Things Mar 03, 2018

Our first episode to be scored entirely by harp, harpsichord, and ocarina, it's the oft-requested short side story The Slow Regard of Silent Things, a book that would describe itself as "twee as twee" and that features a character who "smiles" twice, "grins" every third paragraph, and once sweeps a staircase...up. It's a fun read, like hanging out with a friendly goth who's happy to share their cloves and lots of handy tips about getting red wine stains out of velvet cloaks.

Snatch up your gathersack, because this episode is brimming with amiable whimsy that you won't want to leave behind, make sure you've got your best copy of The Crow soundtrack with you, and prepare yourself for ... a quick glance at noisemakers? No, silly! It's time for a rhyme that's quiet as a mime with a twist of lime: it's time ... for The Slow Regard of Silent Things.

Recommendations:

Line Hollis, "Line On Sierra"
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Music:

Joanna Newsom, "monkey & bear"
Clutch, "the soapmakers"
Radiohead, "Everything in Its Right Place"
A YouTube Genius, "Seinfeld/Bizkit Mashup"

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Feb 18, 2018

It's episode one hundred (!) so we knew we had to go big, and it certainly doesn't get much bigger than six hundred pages of New York Times best-seller (nor do podcast episodes get much longer than this one). As the saying goes, "If the tome's got girth, IDEOTVPod brings the mirth!"

PowerBooks, rooms that are locked (until they aren't), repetition, google searches, a dodgy translation of a likely unedited text, repetition, sex-positive male feminism, superpowers based on not-great understandings of people on the spectrum -- we know, we know, it's hard to believe six hundred short pages could contain all of this, but...these pages contain those things. Also other things. Some good things (probably) and a tall mess of bad ones. Slap a little sunscreen on your tattoos, watch out for snipers when you go jogging, and try really hard to avoid offending any vengeful hackers.

Recommendations:

Kurt Wallander mysteries, Henning Mankell
"To Be, Or Not to Be", Masha Gessen
"An Off Pursuit", Joan Murray

Music:

"Seek 2.0" by Information Society
"Computer Love" by Zapp & Roger
"Kill Your Television" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin
"Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul & Mary

The Naturalist Feb 04, 2018

Enjoy or anyway endure the bucolic splendor of Andrew Mayne's ... The Naturalist. Crisp, clean Montana air. Stars so clear and sharp they perforate your frontal lobes. The faintest tang of pine needles, the subtle rustle of a deer in a stand of trees, a tow-truck driver dressed as a bear strapping claws on to kill people ... Wait. Come again?

If you're ready to get your science on, then tuck your everyday carry into your lumbar satchel and get ready for the woods -- they're bloody, dark, and deep, and there are killers to catch before you sleep.

Recommendations:

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Jean Merrill, Pushcart War

Music:

"Raging River of Fear" by Captain Beyond
"I Wanna Be a Bear" by The Descendents
"Night Moves" by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band

Cybernarc Jan 21, 2018

If the Six Million Dollar Man partnered with a Navy SEAL in a CIA / DEA / Etc. partnership to go around the world assaulting drug-cartel compounds, the results might be a little (a LOT) like ... Robert Cain's Cybernarc. Enticed? Other comparisons await you deep in the bowels caverns of this episode! HINT: if it involves a robot with a human face, we probably talk about it this time around. Our first friend-submitted book in a WHILE, so, uh, Jeremy Fakelastname from Portland ... thanks? for bringing the blood and thunder.

This one is fairly bonkers, as a whole lot of well-described violence butts up against ... not a lot else, if we're being totally honest. Lots of lists of guns, lots of paranoia about the drug epidemic corroding our cities and corrupting our government, lots of meetings with elderly white men talking tough at one another, taking no guff, and preparing to get rough.

If you think you're ready, if you think you can handle it, then get to the chopper and experience the white-knuckle thrills of a narc, except ... cyber.

BONUS BEST LINE WE DIDN'T GET TO IN THE EPISODE*: "Christ, man!" ejaculated the general. "You've created some kind of ... robot hacker!"

*From memory.

Recommendations:

Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters
Anne Carson, Short Talks

Music:

"White Lines" by Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel
"Casey Jones" by The Grateful Dead
"Ballad of the Green Beret" by Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler

Watchers Jan 07, 2018

What, what exactly is Dean Koontz' novel Watchers? A touching love story between ex-Navy-SEAL (and realtor) and hyperintelligent Golden Retriever? A thrilling adventure where an ordinary man (who was in Delta Force) gets caught between the military industrial complex and organized crime -- oh, and a ravenous murdering hellbeast? A sumptuous coming-of-age tale where a sheltered, abused young woman flowers into her full power and beauty? A lengthy catalog of one man's interests, from yardwork to proper roadtrip routing to home furnishing to optimal tunage for tender lovemaking? Well, you're in luck, because Dean Koontz' Watchers is in fact all of these things and more!

Yes, IDEOTVPOD has finally gone ... to the dogs! We take this puppy out for a walk around the block, and if you want to see if it's hard to clean up after it, you'll have to mash that DOWNLOAD button and unleash us!

Recommendations:

Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
The Book of Men by Dorianne Laux

Music:

"Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell
"longing / love" by George Winston
"Talking to the Dog" by the Obits

Hollywood Wives Dec 23, 2017

You wanted the best, you got the best, in the form of the trashiest trash novel we have seen yet, Jackie Collins' Hollywood Wives. Hard sex? Check. Sprawling set of (unlikeable) characters? Check. Spaghetti-like plot that's somehow simultaneously insultingly simple and somewhat difficult to keep track of? Check! And then we get to the third chapter and things really pop off.

The first book we've read that includes a villain sneering an actual playground taunt ("that's for me to know and you to find out" is an actual line of dialogue in this one, people)+ takes us new places in real sleaze and ushers in a new, tawdry age of the podcast, a leopard-print age, an age where NaNoWriMo-level music references somehow don't keep a novel from selling millions of copies, but, regrettably, also an age where every person is an ethnic stereotype and nobody is at all pleasant to be around.

+But, we hope, not the last.

We hope you think this one is worth the wait. We sure think it's worth it's weight in gold -- Golden GLOBES that is!

Recommendations:

"Cat Person" by Kristen Roupenian
"Priest Daddy" by Tricia Lockwood
"Magpie Murders" by Anthony Horowitz

Music:

"Still in Hollywood" by Concrete Blonde
"Passion" by Rod Stewart
"Los Angeles" by Frank Black

Flashback #2 — Necroscope Dec 10, 2017

Long-dead voices returning from the grave to tell you all about what they think. No, it's not just a description of this flashback to the first episode future permanent co-host Clsn ever showed up on, it's also the plot of Brian Lumley's Necroscope!

Please enjoy this first flight of the Legendary Lions of the Library, the Beach-Read Barbarians, the Trashy-Book Twins, the Hosts Who Hold the Three Rs to be Reading, Writing, and Reaming*, you know them, you love them, you may not have heard this one, so hop on and hold on (loosely) because it's time to get in the van with the skulls on the side and take a wild ride through a spy story in which the spooks are a little more literal than you might be used to.

NOTE: we're sorry for the rerun, but we have had three unexpected glitches in very short order. The next episode is going to be extremely good, so please bear with us.

*The fourth R is Re-Animating.

Recommendations:

Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

Music:

"Graveyard Chamber" by Gravediggaz
"Night of the Vampire" by Roky Erickson

Love Monkey Nov 26, 2017

What do you call a rom-com that isn't funny and ends with the main character alone? Love Monkey by Kyle Smith is at least one of the possible answers to that question. We're joined by the terrific Maura Johnston to talk about living, loving, and working in New York's media scene in 2001, as presented in a book that starts off with Chuck Norris facts and goes downhill from there. As the proctologist said to his dehydrated client, "This is some dark shit, son."

(Joke quality definitely intended to indicate book quality.)

Remember that one line from Heathers, "now that football season is over, these guys have nothing to offer except date rape and AIDS jokes"? This book was written by those guys. So get ready for a book that literally only could have been worse if it were Kevin Smith's instead of Kyle Smith's -- get ready for ... Love Monkey.

The Boz: Confessions of a Modern Anti-Hero Nov 12, 2017

The nights lengthen, the days grow colder, and our allotted days slough away -- but, on the plus side, we welcome the world's best sportswriter, David J. Roth, to endure the 252 pages of book-like object The Boz, Confessions of a Modern Anti-Hero, attributed to (or perhaps simply blamed on) Brian "The Boz" Bosworth and Rick Reilly. It's time to ask yourself: "Do you like football?" Well, we're talking about it either way.

What's this book like? It's like sitting next to a guy telling you -- lengthily -- about each of his conquering moments as a high school athlete while a sherry-drunk golf dad lazily jumps in to punch up the stories with rejected pitches to Mad Magazine's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions". The episode, however, is like bathing your ears and very soul with three friends making fun of a guy telling you lengthily about each of his conquering moments as a high school athlete while a sherry-drunk golf dad lazily jumps in to punch up the stories with rejected pitches to Mad Magazine's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions".

Recommendations:

Ball Four, Jim Bouton
Slow Getting Up, Nate Jackson
"Preaching to the Choir" by Rebecca Solnit

Music:

"Space" by Galt MacDermot
"Lester Hayes" by Maroons
"Smooth Operator" by Sade

Slugs Oct 29, 2017

Things get savage in the garden as we enjoy one of the best versions yet of the MORE OR LESS INNOCUOUS FAUNA ARE COMING FOR YOU genre with Shaun Hutson's Slugs. A nasty bit of work that runs the gamut from gory to incredibly gross, Slugs answers the eternal question "What if you gave a huge Iron Maiden fan three weeks to write a horror novel?"—and answers it well! Let us enjoy this slimy slide together! Trail along behind us, because if you weren't afraid of slugs before, you soon will be. This is one episode that will have you searching for that lost shaker of salt... so you can waste your way through the blood-soaked Gastropodville of...Slugs.

Recommendations:

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Elizabeth Drew, Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall
Supplemental recommendation: Slugdge

Music:

"Slug Line" by John Hiatt
"Tend My Garden" by James Gang
"The Chapter For Transforming Into A Slug" by Slugdge

Myth Conceptions Oct 15, 2017

Grab your Dio tape and tug your jerkin into place, because it's time to get extremely barbaric with Robert Aspirin's sword and farcery romp Myth Conceptions -- and, best of all, we're joined by Dan Boeckner, of Wolf Parade, Operators, and others! Eat your heart out as we rock through a book that has more dad-joke density than an episode of Car Talk.

If you're ready for for a sub-epic quest full of military bluster and sexual fluster, then gird your loins, say goodbye to your loved ones back home, and join our party (we could use a healer). But be warned, stranger: 'tis a wild, wicked road we walk, and those who set out 'pon it never come back the same as when first they trod the path of puns, myth, and mirth. Indeed, most come back a little mirth for wear after sojourning in the land where the pun never sets. But if you're strong enough for it, and don't mind mything out when the going gets tough, then this may be the series for you.

Recommendations:

David Nichol, Volk
Monte Cook, Numenera
Roger Zelazny, Nine Princes in Amber
Coins and Scrolls Blog

Music:

"The Magician" by Return to Forever
"Tumbling Dice" by The Rolling Stones
"Brave Sir Robin" by Monty Python

Jonathan Livingston Seagull Oct 01, 2017

Take your broken wing(s) and learn to fly again, not with Mr. Mister but with Mr. Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Mr. Richard Bach, in close formation with your friends Messrs. Friedman J.W. and Collsion Chris. This episode is certain to crack you up, as we scramble to lay out the metaphysical scheme Bach hatches for us—and, best of all, you won't have to shell anything out for our yolks!

For longime listeners who have been waiting for us to go Full Weed Dad, this should satisfy your darkest fantasies (assuming your darkest fantasies are lit by blacklight and prominently feature wizards holding bongs). If you're a new listener, no, we're not always this happy and positive. But yes—we do always love you this much.

Recommendations:

Zadie Smith, On 'Crash'
China Mieville, October

Music:

"Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister
"Above my Butts" by Gang Starr
"Lesbian Seagull" by Engelbert Humperdinck

A Shot of Whiskey and a Kiss You'll Regret in the Morning Sep 17, 2017

Collin Yost's A Shot of Whiskey and a Kiss You'll Regret in the Morning is the book that made Marianne Moore write "I, too, dislike it" about poetry; it's the book that made the rock-and-roll clown from Metalocalypse say "man, this guy talks about cocaine a lot; it's by a writer who undoubtedly has made a number of bartenders mutter "Ah, Christ, not this guy again..." Our first foray into poetry finds us foundering but unflustered.

Choke down another shot and plan out your excuses why you can't hang out with him later—because he's gonna expect you to, guaranteed—but just know that if you read this book, you're definitely going to regret it in the morning.

Recommendations:

"Tacoma" (a game by Fullbright)
"Autobiography of Red" by Anne Carson / Norton Anthology

Music:

"Green Corn" by NOFX
"Saturday Night" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin
"Panama" by Van Halen

A Million Little Pieces Sep 04, 2017

By a writer who thinks he's hot shit (but is actually just a cold turkey), it's A Million Little Pieces, James Frey's fake memoir slash terrible novel. Lauren Parker drops by to help us get through what may be the worst book we've ever read, full of Man Pain, capitalized Nouns, and long passages about the universal passion of the most boring Americans, boxing.

Thrill to a baffled, hostile trio trying to come to terms with high-school level poetry like "I realize why dawn is called mourning." Enjoy a spirited argument about whether Frey's prose reads more like Evanescence, nü-metal, or youth crew—and if these references don't click for you don't worry: everything comes together by the end. Once we're done, you'll want to buy a copy of the book so you can follow James Frey around shouting his writing at him.

Recommendations:

Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen
Best Seat in the House, Justin Roberts
"The Rise of the Valkyries", Seyward Darby

Music:

"Positive Hardcore" by Good Clean Fun
"All Lies" by NoMeansNo
"Mistadobalina" by Del The Funky Homosapien

Blaster Master (Worlds of Power #1) Aug 18, 2017

Worlds of Power No. 1: Blaster Master: a strange artifact, here, not as clumsy or random as fanfic, an elegant read from a more civilized age. Yes, what we have here is a novelization ... of a video game ... meant for children. But, due to one host's long-standing relationship with the work, we break our normal rules, and craft for you an episode that's chockablock with crackerjack infotainment, including a decided enthusiasm gap between your hosts, a rich vein of fun factage*, and even—yes—a brand-new game with its very own song! Significant blasting; much mastery: that's what you're in for.

So slip into your power suit and check the charge on your laser pistol, because it's time for Baby's First Body Horror. It's time ... for Blaster Master!

*Fun fact: this series of books was listed as by "F.X. Nine" because, depending on who** you believe, the series creator wanted kids to stumble over them when they were looking on the shelves for either Nintendo or Nine Inch Nails, neither of which we recommend you look for.

**whom***

***whomstdve

Recommendations:

Helen McDonald, H Is for Hawk
Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son

Music:

"Elephant Riders" by Clutch
"Standstill" by Gorilla Biscuits
"Hot One" by Shudder to Think

TekLab (TekWar Series Book 3) Aug 07, 2017

Because sometimes there's a man, we won't say a hero, but what is a hero, anyway, who can take skycabs down the mean streets without himself becoming mean, because sometimes we need a hero, are holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night, but we don't need another hero, it's time for William Shatner's TekLab!

Like a cuddly Mike Hammer, or a Mack Bolan who wages a lonely war against evil but still remembers to call his girlfriend at the end of the day, TekLab protagonist Jake Cardigan is just the thing to slip into if you're looking for something comfy. Action! is the name of the game here, but not so much action that you'll get upset or anything. Intrigue! abounds, but is mostly reserved to "Hey, remember when we used to be enemies?" conversations, so don't feel like you have to take notes or pay all that much attention. Wisecracks! are everywhere, but they're not exactly zingers, so relax: you are more than welcome to join this battle of wits even if you're essentially unarmed. It's an enjoyable, easy read, and we hope you'll enjoy loping along with us.

NOTE: Yes, we know Shatner said some stupid things on Twitter recently; No, we don't particularly care. He didn't even write the book, people, and if you really need to take your political cues from an elderly Canadian, might we suggest Margaret Atwood or somebody?

Recommendations:

TekWar!

Music:

"Back to the Grill" by MC Serch
"Pure Energy" by Information Society
"Don't Sweat the Technique" by Erik B. and Rakim

Rush Revere and the American Revolution Jul 23, 2017

From the mind of Rush Limbaugh and four of his closest corporate lackeys comes Rush Revere and the American Revolution, a book in his "Time Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans" series; from across the pond, Kefin Mahon joins us to learn some American history from a book best described as "What if Ms. Frizzle was incompetent and evil?"...

Sneezing, hungry, time-travelling horses, troubled teens in war zones, meat pies with the Continental Congress, custom t-shirts and a history teacher with a disturbing fashion sense: this book has it all! Well, except for a plot, a decent editor, or a discernible reason for existing. But in the end, the real history was the friends we made along the way, wasn't it?

Anyway, enjoy this episode, where a charming Irishman learns about the American Revolution with a couple of revolting Americans and we all endure a book that makes an episode of Carmen Sandiego look seriously sophisticated.

Recommendations:

26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss, Kij Johnson
John Adams, HBO Series
Day of the Tentacle
Johnny Tremain, Esther Forbes

Music:

"Bloody Revolution" by Warlock Pinchers
"Horses in my Dreams" by PJ Harvey
"Rush, Rush" by Paula Abdul

You've Been Warned Jul 09, 2017

Answering the question "Wha happens when you try to write a taut horror-thriller but forget to finish it and just publish your initial collection of scenes and scenarios instead?" it's ... You Were Warned, a couple hundred pages of hard and fast incompetence from the minds of James "The Franchise Maker" Patterson and Howard Roughan, "The Freshmaker."

WARNING: this book makes zero sense. WARNING: it's impossible to explain the cliche-per-page rate here. WARNING: it says right on the cover not to look. It's good advice.

Anyway, this is our first experiment with the works of James Patterson, and, without saying too much ... this is now a James Patterson-cast. So please join us as we ignore the warnings and plunge ahead into an unadulterated world of positively portrayed adultery, laughing girlfriends snarking on scarfing sushi, visions of dead dads and pulsing body bags, and trucks named Bob. Sound good? No? Well, anyway, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.

Recommendations:

The works of Patricia Highsmith
The Chrome Library Extension
Netflix's "GLOW"

Music:

"Girl, We Made a Promise" by Sunday Shoes
"Photograph" by Def Leppard
"Warning" by Notoroious BIG

I, the Jury Jun 25, 2017

From we, the podcasters, for you, the listeners, I, the Jury, by Mickey Spillane. Did You Know: Bad books actually have been around for more than 50 years!? This episode, we we dive into the past and journey to the source of a LOT of the kind of books with narrator/protagonists who take great pride in the thickness of their wrists.

Nasty, brutish, and short, this is a book with all the narrative momentum and coherence of a game of Clue, but with all the cruelty and harsh language of a game of Monopoly. It makes for a zesty, pesto-like episode, as your hosts respond to Mike Hammer's rough brand of street justice with their own inimitable blend of wit, talking shit, and spit (-ting hot fire!). Make some coffee and pull off your clip-on tie, because it's time to get judgey with the case of ... I, the Jury.

Recommendations:

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song

Music:

"Streets of San Francisco" by Henry Mancini
"Flipside" by Freeway
"Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel

Traveler #5: Road War Jun 13, 2017

Call shotgun, but only if you've got one, because it's time for IDEOTVPOD to hit the open, post-apocalyptic road with our latest men's adventure trip, D. B. Drumm's Traveler #5: Road War. We're under assault from every angle, with buffets of hot first draft prose, torrents of serious horror violence, and dollops of good politics (amongst sprinkles of bad).

So pop the clutch and tell the world to eat your dust, because we're grabbing John Shirley and blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated hot rod with a book that has everything short of the protagonist finding somebody's keys tucked into the sun visor of their vehicle. Come for the seriously fun pulp satire, but STAY for your hosts talking trash about everything under the sun (and mixing in a couple-three impressions that may (or may not) surprise you). ALSO: this episode has the debut of a great new feature that we're sure to remember to do going forward, a moment where we dedicate the episode to somebody!

Further reading: long, good interview with John Shirley; incredible resource about pulp fiction.

Recommendations:

The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin
Meek's Crossing, Kelly Reichardt
Schismatrix, Bruce Sterling

Music:

"Transmaniacon MC" by Blue Oyster Cult
"Highway Star" by Deep Purple
"A Rose for Emily" by The Zombies

God's Debris: A Thought Experiment May 29, 2017

If you cross a plague of locusts with a parade of nonsense, what do you get? The answer does not lie in Scott "Dilbert Guy"'s bizarre tract God's Debris. Nevertheless, we were delighted to welcome back our resident religious scholar Lauren O'Neal to try to get some meaning out of a work that truly seems intended to make you think... Unfortunately, mostly what it makes you think is "geez, is this book dumb".

Laughs abound as we sit down next to strangers on the bus and get an earful about the nature of time, the essence of probability, the "women be different than men" problem, and the Deliveryman's Code. No, it's not a season of Futurama; it's infinitely worse than that. (Even the last couple seasons. Yes, this book longish pamphlet is that bad.)

Recommendations:

Finding God in the Waves, Mike
What's Happening with Me, Libby Watson
The Leaky Crucible Foundry
Winged Victory for the Sullen

Music:

"Know It All" by Lagwagon
"Tight Like That" by Clutch
"Blow Your Mind" by Ohana Bam

I'm With the Band May 15, 2017

For Mothers' Day, the mother of all hanging-out-with-the-band books, I'm with the Band, brought to us by star of page, screen, and earbud, Mara Wilson! It's the book that ties together pretty much every trashy rock book we've done. Ties into a big, skeevy bundle, suitable for the landfill, incinerator, or truck stop book shelf.

Lizard kings, heavy metal wizards, iron butterflies, this one's got it all! Including crabs. :(

Grab your all-access pass for fun, and hop on board the rock and roll train, bound for ... somewhere in California, I guess? The '70s? Backstage? Anyways, whereever we're going, you won't need ... robes. Get comfortable, because it's about to get pretty ... intimate. Turn the incense up to 10, set lights to "seduction" and crank the tunes loud enough to cover the sounds of furry boning. And then listen to this podcast!

Recommendations:

Almost Famous
You Must Remember This
Play It As It Lays
Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys Viv Albertine

Music:

"Against the Seventies" by Mike Watt
"This Ain't the Summer of Love" by Blue Oyster Cult
"Valley Girl" by Frank Zappa

Valley of the Dolls Apr 30, 2017

Valley of the Dolls spins a tale as old as time: three young women meet, attain world-spanning prominence and fame as, respectively, the world's greatest singer/actress, the prettiest model alive, and a, ah, "European art movie" star, then develop various addictions (including cruelty, attention, and good old-fashioned pills and booze), with various, mostly very sad, outcomes. There was no way we could have handled this one solo, and we were incredibly lucky to have the legendary Maura (@maura) Johnston join us to try to make sense of this hot mess.

Like the movie says: fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night! But a grand one, very grand, with axes to grind, and scores to settle, and unflattering portraits of our friends to paint! Pop a 'doll and get ready to experience the ultimate high, as The Only Podcast That Loves You hops in the candy-pink convertible (with a dog painted on every door), picks up Our Pal Maura, and heads for ... the Valley of the Dolls.

Recommendations:

The One-Eyed Man, Ron Currie
Girls on Film, Julie Burchill
Borne, Jeff Vandermeer

Music:

"Purple Pills" by D12
"Adult Books" by X
"Feelgood Hit of the Summer" by Queens of the Stone Age

[FLASHBACK #1] Those Who Trespass Apr 20, 2017

We don't normally do this, but given current events, we figured there'd be no better time to dig back through the archives and re-release a classic episode, Bill O'Reilly's batshit thriller "Those Who Tresspass", with special guest Jeb Lund.

Please, join us in 2014; a time before Collision, before segments and fun little jingles. Listen to me Jeb crack each other up talking about what may be one of the most widely distributed pieces of self-insert fan fiction ever created.

And also, fuck Bill O'Reilly now and forever.

(Don't worry, new episode will still be coming out in two weeks as usual, this is just a supplemental bonus.)

Widow's Walk Apr 17, 2017

This episode, we're hitching a ride on up to Boston to tag along with a sassy, tough-guy grandpa private eye, as he attempts to get to the bottom of a mystery involving real estate fraud, a dead gay banker, the dead gay banker's young widow, her boyfriend, a lot of ancillary characters that don't make any sense unless you've read the other 30-odd books in the series, and a lot of looking at women's butts. Alternate title for this episode: Death Comes for Dadventure. Widow's Walk, by Robert B. Parker.

NOTE: this is an older episode from the secret vaults, so please excuse any awkwardness. Life intervened this week, and made it impossible to record a shiny new episode.

Recommendations:

Girl in a Band, Kim Gordon
Burning Fight, Brian Peterson

Music:

"Alpha Centauri", At the Drive-In
"Telephone", TTC
"MMMbop", Hanson
"Roundball Rock", John Tesh

ICP: Behind The Paint (Pt. 2 of 2) Apr 04, 2017

In the second leg of our ICP saga, our grease-painted patron points us past the platinum peaks and into the valleys of his following, less successful, records, and walks up to the precipice of admitting "I started smoking weed and found god" but in the end sticks with "we had this all planned out from the beginning and never changed anything about ourselves." Along the way, he describes both putting on weight and losing weight in the most off-putting ways possible, has a few extremely boring feuds with nü-metal musicians and burns some bridges in pro wrestling, and describes it all in the vaguest ways possible. Then the book just sort of ... stops, and we're all very relieved and grateful.

MASSIVE THANKS TO our truly wonderful pals Bill (@sundownmotel) Hanstock and Lemon of the F Plus Podcast for running in, guesting hard, and bringing the ICP heat!

Note from J. W.: Sorry this is late. Editing this episode almost drove me, quite literally, to a nervous breakdown. I'm going through some other shit right now, of course, but the sudden realization that I have now spent more than three hours of my life critically discussing a book about clown rappers was hitting me pretty hard. I'm better now. And this episode rules. So enjoy it. Enjoy it EXTRA hard with the knowledge that it almost cost me my sanity.

Recommendations:

Three-Headed Shark Attack, Netflix
Six Feet Deep / Niggamortis by The Gravediggaz
What We Eat When We Eat Alone, Deborah Madison

Music:

"S.O.S." by Abba (the Bill Hanstock theme)
WCW Monday Nitro Theme
"Something For You" by David Rolfe
"Rock Lobster" by The B-52's

ICP: Behind The Paint (Pt. 1 of 2) Mar 19, 2017

It had to happen, and it had to happen in exactly this way: I Don't Even Own a Television meets the juggalos, as we sit down with with a clown and read Violent J.'s Behind the Paint. Be forewarned, this one goes places we rarely go; and be advised, this is our first ever two-part episode!

Here in part one, IDEOTV prepares an ICP primer. We enjoy endure wallow in the band's early days, ranging all the way from suburban Detroit to slightly different parts of suburban Detroit, described with all the deft language you'd expect (or maybe demand) from the "musicians" responsible for "songs" like "I Stuck Her with My Wang" and "Beverly Kills 50187". Grab a well-chilled two-liter bottle of store-brand soda and prepare to return to a time when you still thought flipping somebody off counted as a revolutionary act.

Recommendations:

"Heads and Straights" by Lucy Wadham
"Occultation" by Laird Barron

Music:

"Here Come the Gravediggaz" by Gravediggaz
"Malpractice" by Redman
"Tru Master" by Pete Rock w/ Inspectah Deck

Monday Night Jihad Mar 07, 2017

You're guaranteed to get a kick out of retired pro football placekicker Jason Elam (and his ghostwriter special writing pal Steve Yohn)'s taut Riley Covington thriller Monday Night Jihad! Well, unless things like grade-7 sexuality and Steve-Bannon-grade Islamophobia somehow impede your enjoyment of pulp literature.

Anyway, come with us and meet the team that stands between us and those who would ruin our football games! No, not medical professionals: the terrible terrorists who lurk among us ... on our football teams. This will make some kind of sense eventually. We hope.

Recommendations:

1Q84, Haruki Murakami
Remains of the Day, Christa Wolf

Music:

"Madden 2002 Theme" by Pharoahe Monch
"Official" by Pharoahe Monch
"Lyricists Lounge Freestyle" by Pharoahe Monch

The First Inaugural Bad Book Party (Live) Feb 20, 2017

Bit of a change of format this time around, as we bring you our second live event, and our first Bad Book Party! From audience-provided oddities to the long-awaited appearance of probably the most-requested book in the show's history, this is an action- and guest-packed hour or two you won't want to miss.

Thanks to everybody who came out, thanks to Casey for helping us surge past a few technical difficulties, thanks to Andrew at Green Apple Books on the Park for getting the event ball rolling, thanks to Green Apple Books on the Park for being gracious, flexible hosts (with super-shouts to Colin), and thanks to all our amazing guests:

Eugenia from the Muni Diaries
Lauren and Niko from Sunday School Dropouts
Lauren Parker
Lemon from the F Plus

Recommendations: We recommend that you come to our next live show!

Music: Various production cues from "Ren & Stimpy"

No One Here Gets Out Alive Feb 07, 2017

Prepare to grapple with the gods* as we're joined by comics writer and major dude Christopher (@xtop) Sebela to discuss the sleaziest rock bio we have ever seen, the legendary No One Here Gets Out Alive, by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman. From dong-flashing to Dazig, this conversation has it all!

*Second-division** **At best

Whether you think Jim Morrison was a modern-day Dionysus or just the original fat man in the bathtub (with the blues), this is a show you're guaranteed to enjoy! (NOTE: guarantee not valid if you think Jim Morrison was good or important.)

Also! Mark your calendars, because I Don't Even Own a Television and friends are throwing a Bad Book Party at Green Apple Books on the Park in San Francisco! This free event will be at 7:30, Saturday, February 11, 2017, and it's going to be more fun than not going to it, that's for sure. Come out! Join us! EVERYONE will MAKE IT OUT ... ALIVE!

Recommendations:

Dave Davies, Kink, An Autobiography
Nick Kent, The Dark Stuff
Steve Jackson's Sorcery!
Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog

Music:

"Shut The Door" by Fugazi
"Arsehole" by Snuff
"The Thing That Only Eats Hippies" by Dead Milkmen

Timeline Jan 22, 2017

Years ago, at a cheap theater, a bunch of us went to see the inexplicable remake of H.G. Wells' classic, The Time Machine. About an hour in, my pal leaned over to me and stage whispered, "I wish I had a time machine!" and I missed about the next 10 minutes of the movie because I was crying / wheezing out of laughing so hard. Anyway, if you had a time machine, you'd probably want to use it to go back and prevent Michael Crichton's Timeline from existing, because hoo boy is this one a by-the-numbers cash-grab. Most of the clunkiest dialogue we've ever read, a plot that more or less forgets to happen, and more authorial lectures about the badness and madness of academia than you'd expect—or want to sit through.

Anyway, please join us for a trip through Michael Crichton's One Single Idea, in this little medieval-flavored mashup of Jurassic Park and WestWord, a striking dish we're calling ... Timeline.

Also! Mark your calendars, because I Don't Even Own a Television and friends are throwing a Bad Book Party at Green Apple Books on the Park! This free event will be at 7:30, Saturday, February 11, 2017, and it's going to be more fun than not going to it, that's for sure. Come out! Join us! You'll have the TIME of your LINE!

(Note from J. -- Yes, his name is just Jai Courtney, not Jai Courtney Smith. I have no idea why I said that. This will make sense later... in a future timeline.)

Recommendations:

Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada, Wrestle Kingdom 11
Moonlight, Barry Jenkins

Music:

"If I Could Turn Back Time" by Cher
"Backwards Traveller" by Wings
"Definitive" by Company Flow

Outlaw of Gor Jan 08, 2017

With a kind of ... lugubrious inexorability, rough-hewn, thick-thewed hosts J. W. Friedman and C. Collision thrust themselves into the rugged world of John Norman's Gor, where the tawdry pages of Outlaw of Gor await us and our stern attentions.

A true legend in the universe of bad books, the Gor series avidly answers the question "what if Edgar Rice Burroughs but with the racist bullshit cranked to eleven and a huge amount of really badly handled bondage and domination fantasies interspersed with heavy, heavy quantities of bad philosophy?" It's basically the perfect book for us, is what we're saying. If only it weren't so plotless and dull...

Also! We would like to announce our next live show! We're hosting a Bad Book Party at San Francisco's Green Apple Books on the Park, Saturday, February 11, at 7:30 p.m. It's totally free, is gonna have a bunch of rad guests (Niko from Sunday School Dropouts, Lauren Parker, Lemon from The F Plus -- and that's just the ones we're announcing now!), and is going to be the most fun you can have in the month of February.

Saturday, February 11, 7:30 p.m. Green Apple Books on the Park 1231 9th Avenue, SF CA 94122

Recommendations:

Ursula le Guin
Search Party

Music:

"Whip It" by Devo
"I Can't Dance" by Genesis
"Sex Dwarf" by Soft Cell

Ender's Game Dec 26, 2016

Our holiday tradition rolls on as we encounter yet another massive science-fiction hit, as we, with help of shadow producer Casey Occhialini get all up on Orson Scott Card's Hugo and Nebula winner Ender's Game. Ender's Game is about a young boy and a sociopath — but I repeat myself — who fears his brother, is in love with his sister, and enjoys provoking young boys into confronting him and then murdering them. Also he enjoys video games! Which turns out to be important and good, because playing video games is just like leading people into battle. Which he also does.

Anyway, we enjoy the fast fun and frantic action of this inexplicably well-regarded tale of children screaming fart-related insults at each other while occasionally pausing to wonder "Wait. What the hell is going on here?" and trying hard to avoid wading (too) deep into the world of Ender's Game's politics. Anyway, change into your sleep uniform and join us in the Battle Room, where the answer to everything is to remember, because reasons, "The enemy's goal ... is down." (Oh High Commander is this book ever dumb.)

Recommendations:

Creating the Innocent Killer, John Kessel

Music:

"E.T. Boogie" by Extra T's
"War is Our Destiny" by St. Vitus
"X-Ray Vision" by Clutch
"War" by Edwin Starr

Five Nights At Freddy's: The Silver Eyes Dec 12, 2016

Your dynamic duo, J. W. Friedman and Chris Collision, take on the terrible twosome of Scott Cawthorn and Kira Breed-Wrisley in Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes. You'll need to hop into the Mystery Machine and load up on Scooby Snacks to solve the mystery of what the hell is going on in this novel of PG-13 horror, non-existent intrigue, and multiple trips to a diner to hang out. But what Cawthorn and Breed-Wrisley don't understand is that ... we're not locked in a pizza place / arcade featuring terrifying animatronic beasts with iron grins and red (red, not silver) eyes ... the terrifying animatronic beasts with iron grins and red (red, not silver) eyes ... are locked in here with US. (SPOILER: what's going on in this novel of PG-13 horror, non-existent intrigue, and multiple trips to the diner to hang out is, mostly, a thesaurus-humping answer to the eternal question: "What if Frankenstein, but stupid?"...)

Also! We announce the winners of the NaNoWriMo Bad Writing Contest! We reference interviews! We look at pictures of dogs on air! J. trolls Clsn by recommending something! Plus all the gamified hijinx you expect — and deserve! It's a pre-holiday present that we hope you'll enjoy.

Recommendations:

Neal Stephenson, Seveneves
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

Music:

"Freddy's Dead" by Fishbone
"Fred's Mood" by Milt Jackson
"Mr. Roboto" by Styx

The Girl on the Train Nov 28, 2016

Ah, the rhythmic clickety-clack of rail travel, the chuggety comforts of trains, the suburban father's hobby! At least that's what we assumed we were going to experience when we took on the recent publishing sensation, Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train.

However, what we discovered was a real Rashomon, a real jigsaw puzzle of multiple perspectives and realities, a real, real set of girls, but gone, daddy, real, real gone. Okay, that wasn't true. This was NOT a book about ladies who ought to be described with any hipster talk; that was a misleading lie and we apologize. Anyway, this semi-successful account of man's inhumanity to women and the toxic effects thereof turns out to be good fodder for us to get off track, even if the book is freighted with stuff that got us steamed (as though it had been engineered for us). We conducted ourselves well, we think, and were stoked to take on this boiler.

Grab your tickets, keep an eye on your luggage, and enjoy the ride. (Honestly, that's good advice for life, not just for listening to this episode.) All aboard!

Recommendations:

Lost Signals
Seriously anything, Patricia Highsmith

Music:

"Train in Vain" by The Clash
"Jump Around" by House of Pain
"Locomotive Breath" by Jethro Tull
"Tootsie Roll" by 69 Boyz

NANOWRIMO Special Bonus Episode Nov 21, 2016

We asked for it and you gave it to us, one fairly brutal paragraph at a time, and now here it is: your friends J. and Clsn reading more than 30 (!) entries for our First Ever National Novel Writing Month contest! No notes could do this one justice, so just slip into your favorite podcast-listening mask and don't forget that you've got that bowl of soup in the microwave, because it is time to hear what the minds of the IDEOTVPOD Community can come up with when asked to write bad paragraphs. This time, we're all winners!

Clockwork Angels Nov 14, 2016

The time has come, and it won't stand still: after a couple years, we finally go for the big money, put Rush into the limelight, and turn the camera eye to Clockwork Angels by Neil Peart and Kevin J. Anderson. Our first novelization of a concept album -- yes, you read that right -- this fly by night book-like object had us losing it. (Literarily, it's not exactly a high water mark. In fact, each time, it required substantial freewill to turn the page. Even if you're in the mood for something like this book, most of this book isn't working, man. If only we'd had some distant early warning that would have prevented us from making memories about this stupid thing.) Our grand designs to leverage our lifetimes of Rush fandom (one of many of our open secrets) to go on a witch hunt at Rush's expense end up revealing many lessons, and some tears.

Anyway, please enjoy this podcast that we made for you, no strings attached: it's something for nothing. Also please enjoy the two thousand, one hundred twelve hidden Rush references we packed in beneath, between and behind every available cranny and nook. In the end, it's our mission to inspire all of you to force ten of your friends to listen to this episode. But do it gently, with kid gloves, and don't rush things; observe life's mystic rhythms and subdivisions, and remember that getting smarter isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.

Recommendations:

Blood Red Turns Dollar Green, Paul O'Brien
Certain Women

Music:

"Rush" by Big Audio Dynamite
"Roll the Bones" by Rush
"Meat Grinder" by Madlib
"Rush, Rush" by Paula Abdul

Tori Amos: Piece by Piece Oct 30, 2016

This Halloween, put down your flying broom and pick up the pieces -- Piece by Piece, by Tori Amos and Ann K. Powers! With special guest and Tori Amos expert Lauren Parker, J. and Clsn take a magic carpet ride through a wonderful patchwork tapestry cauldron, bubbling with diversity, myths, magic, big business, the sacred feminine, Robert Plant, the circus, hair metal, football (which is what they call soccer in England, it turns out), and a whole heaping pile of goddesses.

Not your usual rock book, and definitely not the book version of a making-of DVD extra for a long-forgotten album, except exactly, precisely that, Piece by Piece just might rock you -- to sleep! Come: tune your piano; tend your moistest garden; and tour the seething volcano of Piece by Piece with us.

Recommendations:

Love Is a Mixtape, Rob Sheffield
Emma Ruth Rundle, Marked for Death
Violet is the Color of Your Energy, Nadia Bulkin

Music:

"My Piano Horror", a Youtube Video of a Piano Recital
"Lush Life" by Stan Getz (with elements of "The Guys Get Shirts")
"Witchy Woman" by The Eagels
"White Girls" by The Mighty Casey

The Rats Oct 17, 2016

Stowing away in your earbuds, gnawing at your stores, and leaping from your dark corners at your tender ears, it's James Herbert's The Rats! A verminous return to the kind of bad book that's always the best: the kind where, every couple pages, somebody nearly has sex and absolutely gets eaten by giant rats.

If you ever wanted a book about mutant rats invading the slums of London, then The Rats is for you — and if you didn't, what are you doing listening to IDEOTVPOD, anyway? It's time. Grab your flashlight, pull on your heaviest gloves, and come with J. and Clsn on an exploration of two hundred of the rat-infestedest pages anyone has ever seen. It's time for ... The Rats.

Recommendations:

Rebecca Solnit, Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas
Helen DeWitt, Lightning Rods

Music:

"Rats in the Cellar" by Aerosmith
"Rats" by Clutch
"Hot Rails to Hell" by Blue Oyster Cult
"Rat Bait" by The Swimming Pool Q's

Forever Pucked Oct 04, 2016

As voted on by our supporters on the IDEOTVPOD Patreon, this episode we're strapping on our pads and skating around the tough issues posed by Forever Pucked, by Helena Hunting. Ice-cool customer Rachel Millman fleshes out our team as she and J. and Collision try to score on this ribald tale of work, marriage, family, violence, hockey, and raunch. A lot of raunch. More raunch than we've ever confronted (or, in some cases, enjoyed) before.

Yes, this is a novel of romance — hockey romance — with a comedic bent. So, as the nights grow longer harder and the days trend colder, it's time for us all to cozy up to our best, longest, largest hockey sticks and start slapping ... shots.

Extra thanks to great friend of the show A. A. Freeman for bringing this raucous ride to our attention, and it's probably worth noting that this particular episode brings more than a soupçon of naughty from the first second, so, uh ... headphones? Headphones.

Recommendations:

Slap Shot
Atlanta
The Goon

Music:

"You Sexy Thing" by Hot Chocolate
"Pony" by Ginuwine
"Detroit" by Rancid
"My Game" by Hanson Brothers

Level 26: Dark Origins Sep 19, 2016

What lurks beneath the bottom of the barrel? Well, we checked. Turns out that beneath the barrel's bottom slithers Anthony Zuiker's Level 26: Dark Origins. This episode, we're sneaking into the villain's dungeon, conveniently located in 2009, when it, apparently, seemed like a good idea to let the guy who made up CSI get together with his buddies and make this exceptionally book-like object, supplemented with zero-budget video clips, high-school-notebook-level drawings, and an attitude towards sex and violence best described as HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWFUL WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE.

Episode highlights include: A PATENTED DIGRESSION! Clsn failing repeatedly to learn how to pronounce "Zuiker"! A book that includes the description "sick son of a bitch"! Book highlights include: when civilization collapses (next Tuesday), you can probably cook a pigeon over it, if you can catch a pigeon. And start a fire. You know what? Nevermind. Eat a potato instead; much easier to catch than a pigeon.

NOTE: this book is truly bad, and contains a lot of material about violence, including sexual violence. If you are sensitive to material like this, you may want to avoid this episode. (We certainly wish we'd avoided this book.)

Recommendations:

Shia Lebeouf in Interview Magazine
The White Album, Joan Didion

Music:

"New Level" by A$AP Ferg
"Cut Self Not" by Faraquet
"Cheesecake Truck" by King Missile
Theme from "Law & Order"

Dragons of Autumn Twilight: Dragonlance Chronicles Vol. 1 Sep 05, 2016

As foretold in ancient scrolls, Clsn and J. fulfill the grim prophecies and embark on a quest most dire: get somehow through the dullest book we've seen in ages: Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragons of Autumn Twilight: DragonLance Chronicles Volume One.

Like listening to somebody misexplain the plot of a movie you've already seen, while pretending the plot is something they made up, getting through this book is a tall dang order, but we made it. And so will you. Brush up on your magic words and get ready to laugh at a book that purports to Chronicle DragonLances, but that actually contains somewhere south of a half-dozen dragons and literally zero actual lances. Grip tightly your ocarina and prepare to raise your voice in the songs of your people (particularly if your people, like our people, are partial to Pony). The roads are dusty, and your leathern saddle is no doubt cracked, but a few ales and some spicèd potatoes will soon have you ready for adventure with your friends.

Our party awaits! Come with us and we guarantee one thing: you're em fail your saving throw against having fun!

Recommendations:

"The Door Into Fire" by Diane Duane
"Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan" by Jake Adelstein

Music:

"Roll the Dice" by PAC DIV
"Rumpshaker" by WRECKX-N-EFFECT
"Timorous Me" by Ted Leo & the Pharmacists
"Scenario" by A Tribe Called Quest

The Da Vinci Code (w/ Lauren O'Neal and Niko Bakulich) Aug 22, 2016

Renowned author Dan Brown's renowned book The Da Vinci Code provides a renowned topic for renowned podcasters J. W. Friedman and Chris Collision, along with renowned guests Lauren O'Neal and Niko (from renowned podcast Sunday School Dropouts. An extremely popular book yields an extremely long episode, with enough jokes to make anyone enough of a believer to found a secret society devoted to hiding the truth about the show ... or maybe to hiding the truth about the show while pointing out that actually all of popular culture is about the show. It's all a little confused. Anyway, if your Grail is L A F F S, then this episode is for you!

Note: This is an extra-long episode because J. is not feeling well enough to edit it down to a shorter length. But it's very good and you will enjoy every minute, we promise.

Extra credit reading: Geoffrey Pullum's legendary eviscerations of Dan Brown's prose style.

Recommendations:

National Treasure
Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Complete Stories, Flannery O'Connor

Music:

"The Rose" by Mudhoney
"Les Invisibles" by Blue Oyster Cult
"Catholic Dress" by Dahli Seed
"Holy Grail" by Jay Z

Seven Deadly Sins: Settling the Argument Between Born Bad and Damaged Good Aug 08, 2016

Prepare yourselves for true depravity, because this time around, we're taking on Corey Taylor, vocalist of Slipknot and Stone Sour, and his book Seven Deadly Sins. Two men alone could never take on such a large number (to say nothing of the seven newly proposed sins or the main one he admits he forgot to add), so J. and Collision welcome back juicy guest Lemon!

We laugh, grimace, yell, and learn as Corey Taylor spools out a deeply failed attempt to be a stand-up comedian (inexplicably in written form) as he attempts to answer the question "What does Corey Taylor think about things" and actually just answers "What would happen if a Hot Topic got hit by magic lightning and turned into a really talkative guy on the bus".

Episode highlights include the most successful Plot in 60 Seconds of all time, J. and Collision slowly succumbing to Bud Lite Lime-A-Rita poisoning, and the amazing contortions required to find high points in this book. Episode lowlights include the prose and ideas of Corey Taylor, a man who would very much like you to know that he has Had Sex. A lot of times, and in all of the ways.

NOTE: if you believe you have heard a word mispronounced on this show, please take it up with your podcatching software, as we have checked and we assure you that everything is correct on our end.

Recommendations:

The Boy Looked at Johnny, Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons
Our Noise, John Cook
Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad

Music:

"They Come in Gold" by Shabazz Palaces
"Mandy" by Barry Manilow
"You Deserve It" by Future
"Whistle While You Work"

War Against the Mafia: The Executioner, Book 1 (Mack Bolan) Jul 24, 2016

If you like your sex scenes extremely long and your gunplay extremely every single chapter, then you just may be the target audience for Against the Mafia: The Executioner, Book 1, the legendary piece of action-trash that introduced Mack Bolan to an extremely unsuspecting world.

From chapters like "A Master's Stroke" and "God-Damn Iron-Man Bolan" (not kidding) to "The Goof", "Forecast: Warmer Tonight and Tomorrow", and "Execution Hill", J. and Collision dance madly backwards through the raging river of fear that powered the writing of this book, a terrified look at a completely unrecognizable 1969 America, a cringing fantasy of one tall-ass man with lots of long-ass long guns (and knives) standing up for families and righteousness and shooting people who get in your way and banging one whole lot of ladies.

New segments! Bizarre word choices! Some of the mannest manning any book ever manned! Philosophy lectures! Incredibly angry diary entires! EXPLOSIONS AND FUCK YOUR HELICOPTERS! If you ever caught yourself wishing "I wish somebody had written Scruples, but for dudes", step right up.

We do need to mention explicitly: this book is a very aggressive ode to a sniper; it also contains a lot of bizarre speculations about sex work. If that sounds like something you'd have a hard time with (at this point in history, or just at all), we definitely understand and understand if you want to give this episode a pass.

Recommendations:

Rosa Lyster, The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard of Slavoj Žižek
Jensen Karp, Kanye West Owes Me $300: And Other True Stories from a White Rapper Who Almost Made It Big

Music:

"Violent School" by Dead Milkmen
"Mayor" by Pharoahe Monch
"Sexecutioner" by GWAR
"No Way Back" by Adonis

Sass Girls X (w/ K Thor Jensen) Jul 11, 2016

In the quest for the weirdest and worst artifacts available, J. and Collision welcome K. Thor Jensen to the show to discuss Sass Girls X, by Imari Imarea. You're gonna need a safe, well-padded environment for this, because this book's ridiculous levels are matched only by its levels of terribleness. A failed attempt at bringing the energy and conventions of anime to the page, Sass Girls X is more or less what you'd get if an internet forum came to life and instantly got a bad fever.

This book is an incredible rarity, which is why we're breaking some of our rules to bring it to you. You have NOT read anything like it, and it's unlikely you would ever would have had the ... pleasure of this book's prose, so get ready. Get ready to taste an unholy mix of obscure sexual fetish(es), videogame obsessiveness, slapstick humor, "fuck it" plotting, and more appropriations than Earnest Cline could pull off after an espresso enema. And get ready to update your list of things that have made you say "holy shit", because this is DEFINITELY going on it.

Recommendations:

The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
The Shaggs' Own Thing, The Shaggs

Music:

All music this episode is from the CD "SGX", which comes with this book.

Big Apple Takedown (w/ Kefin Mahon) Jun 27, 2016

Big fun in this big episode about Big Apple Takedown! Your hosts and exceptional guest Kefin Mahon get in the ring to take on a brief story by Rudy Josephs that reads like the world's least creative marketing executive using some extremely branded action figures slash dolls to reenact a half-remembered and very boring episode of your second-favorite TV show. Taste the thrills that only come with a book whose entire reason to exist is to remind you of things you like! Hear the confused joy of J. and Kefin as they endure the important question "Hey, are the 'characters' in this book actually the ones that are supposed to be there?"! Smell the the baffled despair in Collision's voice as he explores "who the pants are the dolls this 'writer' is playing with, anyways?"!

We may not know why this book exists, but we do know that if it's gonna go ahead and exist, we need to bag on it—hard. And that's exactly what we do. Because that's the I Don't Even Own a Television Pledge. That's what we bring to you, and that's what this dumb book earns. So slip into your tights and get ready to wrangle with a champion-level pile of garbage. NOTE: win or lose, you're gonna need a belt (of strong brown liquor) to deal with this one.

(p.s. "Shimmering Warlock" is J.'s weird wrestling-related rap project so all the bumper music in this episode is made by him and available for free streaming at soundcloud and http://shimmeringwarlock.com)

Recommendations:

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
Have a Nice Day, Mick Foley
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

Music:

"Wrestling Still Rules" by Satellite High
"Work the Angles" by Shimmering Warlock
"Machka Udrya" by Shimmering Warlock
"Too Flamboyant" by Shimmering Warlock

Money, Pizza, Respect Jun 13, 2016

Money. Pizza. Respect. Two of these things are probably okay, but all of them will leave a bad taste in your mouth when they come from a "book" by Joshua "The Fat Jew Joke Thief" Ostrovsky. And we sincerely hope that Joshua got none of those things in exchange for cobbling together this somewhat book-like object for whatever hard-to-imagine audience he might once have had.

Yes, this episode, J. and Collision are delving deep into 2014's most second-tier memes, from "saying 'someone drinks rosé' is funny" all the way to "saying 'beef jerky' is funny". Except these memes are packaged with way more offensive epithets, racist commentary, and lazy page-occupying filler than you'd expect. Enjoy J.'s most vibrant anger yet! Snicker at Collision's least convincing high points segment ever! But most of all, sigh at the society that has made a talent-free joke thief like Ostrovsky very nearly successful.

NOTE: we expect that Joshua will respond to this the only way he knows how: by stealing somebody else's ideas. So, when he launches his own podcast about bad books, probably called "I Don't Read I Only Own a Television", with segments like "Dramatic Passage", "What Would They Choose?", and "What Is the Best?", please help us denounce this twerp's thieving ways.

Recommendations:

The films of Amy Heckerling.
Bee Season, Myla Goldberg

Music:

"Shoop" by Salt-N-Pepa
"No Scrubs" by TLC
"Crazy B*tch" by Buckcherry
"Refusing to be a Man" by Propagandhi

Armor May 30, 2016

Wow, what is there to say about John Steakley's Armor? Strap on your favorite defense mechanisms and join J. and Collision as they try to answer this difficult question about a novel that dares to answer the less difficult question "what if Starship Troopers were incredibly stupid and repetitive?". Yes, we take on Armor, the book that should have been called A Constant Reminder of Better Books: The Book. As a read, Armor is a terrible slog that looks you square in the eye and shows you atrocities while growling "war...is heck" before bafflingly pivoting to whimsical wisecracking and brief interludes of rough sex. This read was not the smoothest ride, is what we're saying.Anyway, lots of fun this time around, as we reminisce, we rant, we rave, we riff, we just in general rue the day we read this wretched collection of strenuously brutal action scenes and quarter-baked philosophical musings. Yes, this is one of those books where, when you're struggling to say something nice, you end up saying "there was this literally one joke? that I didn't hate?". Enjoy the proceedings as we wrestle with a book that's not just mediocre ... it's very mediocre. Protective plating and safety eyewear recommended!

NOTE: our first post-Patreon episode, this one features excellent new microphones! Unfortunately, due to the unforeseen obstacles of life, there was some construction going on outside, so there may be a little extra buzzing and banging in the background, over which we had zero control and for which we have all the apologies.

Recommendations:

Bible Adventures, Gabe Durham
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark

Music:

"Turnstile" by Hot Water Music
"War Pigs" as performed by Cake
"Wargasm" by L7
"Ants in My Pants" by James Brown

List of the Lost May 16, 2016

LISTENER ADVISORY: it is okay to like the Smiths, who were good; it is defensible to like Morrissey, because there's no accounting for tastes; but if you like this book, there is something seriously wrong with your Literature Appreciation Module. This episode, we're taking on an oft-anticipated "novel" by former Smiths frontman and one-time cultural icon Morrissey. It's a slim volume of overwritten truisms and underedited sentences going under the pointless title List of the Lost. Buckle in, friends, because this might be, sentence by sentence, the worst-written book J. and Collision have endured.

Thrill to: more singing than normal! Be amazed by: Collision's vast, weighty knowledge of hip-hop! Slog through: a book whose only reason for existing seems to be that ol' Mozzer isn't convinced you've heard quite enough about animal rights, sexual repression, and the dismal, deleterious effects of ... television news. Collision apologizes for his limpest approach to Plot in 60 yet. J. gets deep into personal, political, and pre-post-hardcore history. We all have a really good laugh at how Morrissey seems to think heterosexual sex acts work.

Also! We are extremely pleased to announce a way for our friends to help us keep this show rocking hard and mocking bad books: we now have a Patreon, and anything you can do to help us out will be much appreciated! No worries: the show is free and it always will be, but there's loads of cool extras available, so if you like the show and want to help us do it faster, harder, better, hit up the page and see what you can do. Thank you all, and we love you!

Recommendations:

Music:

"This Charming Man" by Braid
"Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want" by Deftones
"There Is a Light" by Ghost Mouse
"Girlfriend in a Coma" by El Mariachi Monterey

Hammer of the Gods May 02, 2016

Say what you will about Led Zeppelin and the average rock bio, but this particular rock bio is (a) about Led Zeppelin and (b) full of hot air. Join us as we talk about the granddaddy of all trashy rock books, Stephen Davis' Hammer of the Gods, a bizarre work of fanfic about a mid-tier white blues band and their delightful cast of characters: bassist John Paul Jones, who I don't think we mention one time; brassy penis-having shrieker Robert Plant; drug-addled sex wizard and guitar player Jimmy Page; and "Bonzo", a drummer. It's a book that proves it's hard to soar with the eagles when you're hanging out with complete turkeys, but it manages to crash and burn anyway.

Actually, I quit cocaine this morning," this book doesn't begin. Sadly. But the line is in the book, if that's your sort of thing! So pull yourself into your tightest pants and your flounciest man-blouse, no matter what you'd normally wear, and settle in for a book devoted to the proposition that, somehow, people should have paid more attention to Led Zeppelin. Seriously.

NOTE: the most notorious element of this book is a story about this band and their abuse of women; for your mental health and ours, we do not discuss it in this episode. We're aware of the story, and how horrible it is (even if it was completely fabricated), and didn't feel like airing it. Thanks!

Special bonus show notes!

Hi! Normally Collision writes the episode descriptions, but he's out of town, and I'm up late on the computer, so it's me, ya boy, J. W. Friedman!

Anyway, on this one, we talk about the book "Hammer of the Gods - The Led Zeppelin Saga", which is a very bad rock biography about the band Led Zeppelin, most of which appears to be completely untrue and relatively offensive.

We also talk a lot about Led Zeppelin and I am definitely not making any friends with this one.

Recommendations:

Blood, Sugar, Sex, Dickheads, Julie Farman
Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons, John Carter

Music:

"Come With Me" by Puffy Daddy
"I Hate Led Zeppelin" by Screeching Weasel
"No One Like You" by Scorpions
Theme from "Bonanza"

If They Only Knew Apr 13, 2016

Spring is sproinging, and that means it's time for your favorite topic and ours: baseball! Scratch that: metaphysics! Written by a baseball player! In this episode, J. and Collision take the field with standout former catcher Darren "Dutch" Daulton and his mega-tome If They Only Knew to learn how to tune our vibrational frequencies to jump! jump! and ASCEND to new dimensions and tiers of consciousness, like the rainbows in the dark we all are. (This book is the first inaugural winner of the IDEOTVPOD Ronnie James Dio Prize for Lyrical Total Coherence.)

A great episode for anybody who wants to know about manifesting in the 4th dimension multi-dimensional universe, warfare in the spiritual realm, their pineal gland, or the human light body — also known as the Mer-Ka-Ba. Prepare to be turbo enlightened; pierce the veil; enjoy a lot of references to movies. (If you want to get a little high and crank up the Music From Hearts of Space, that would probably be a good idea.) We also cover the correct way to say "dudes sex macarena", if that's the kind of thing you're interested in. Play ball!

Recommendations:

S.C.U.M. Manifesto, Valerie Solanas
The Invitation (Movie)

Music:

"Lapsed Catholics" by Future of the Left
"Age of Aquarius" by Killdozer & Alice Donut
"Third Eye" by Big K.R.I.T.
"Friendly Game of Baseball" by Main Source

New Game +: The Geek's Guide to Love, Sex, & Dating Mar 31, 2016

For the show's big, blooming second anniversary, we're getting super-seductive with Harris O'Malley's most book-like object yet, New Game+: The Geek's Guide to Love, Sex, & Dating, with special guest Rachel Millman! Once again we confront a self-help book that falls on the wrong side of the Ice-T Twitter Account Quality Line (ICTTAQL, for short). Seriously: save a couple bucks and just follow Ice: he's got 'way better insights than any guy calling himself "Doctor" "Nerdlove".

In this episode, we — and you — have to deal with advice like "spray vodka on your couch to kill the smells" and "send texts like this to ratchet up the sexual tension: 'Hold on, you just gave me an interesting mental image... Okay, back now.'" That will definitely help your couch and suggest to someone that you're not a fifteen-year-old virgin. This is an episode that is guaranteed to thrill and delight in equal measure, or anyway to teach you what the saddest of our nation's dweebs are trying to do to get laid. Enjoy!

Recommendations:

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, Carrie Brownstein
I Love Dick, Chris Kraus
Great & Secret Show, Clive Barker

Music:

"Sour Grapes" by The Descendents
"L.G.B.N.A.F." by Ice-T

Night of the Crabs Mar 16, 2016

Wilder than Wild Animus. Weirder than Necroscope. Wronger than Scruples. Surging it comes in from the sea off the coast of Wales, so J. and Collision must wade into ... Night of the Crabs! This is not a drill, people, this is a book by Guy N. Smith and it's definitely the best bad book we've gotten our hands on, and there is something (giant crabs invade Wales) here (tons of sex) for everyone (plot holes you could ride a giant crab through)! (Prose you will legit not believe.) (Death scenes all over the place.)

Recommended a long time ago, this book goes sideways almost instantly, and even though your hosts claw away at it, cracking wise as best they can, the whole thing is guaranteed to steam you — or leave you shell-shocked.

Ride the crab.

Recommendations:

City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer
Clothes Clothes Clothes, Music Music Music, Boys Boys Boys, Viv Albertine

Music:

"Godzilla" by Blue Őyster Cult
"Rock Lobster" by B-52s
"Convoy" by C.W. McCall
"Crab Rappers" by Nonchalant

The Force Awakens (Live) Mar 02, 2016

Feel a great disturbance in the force, as though a huge number of voices cried out "this book bites!" and were not silenced, ever. This episode, IDEOTV makes the jump to hyperspace with our first live show! It features singalongs, audience readings, and all the hilarity and hate that come with a hastily-produced tie-in cash-grab like Alan Dean Foster's Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Enjoy J. and Collision and a crowd of literally dozens as they rule the galaxy* and rue the day they decided to read this tepid mess.

So hit DOWNLOAD on the ONLY podcast episode that is GUARANTEED to beam you up! – by putting a big, beaming smile on your face, of course! Polish your droid and keep one hand on your blaster as we join the "characters" in this book in asking, plaintively, "What's going to happen next?"

*Or at least the great Stage Werx Theatre in beautiful San Francisco.

Recommendations:

Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, James Tiptree, Jr.
The Secret History of Las Vegas, Chris Abani

Music:

"Also Spoke Zarathustra", Richard Strauss
"Star Wars Disco", Peter Hamilton Orchestra

Scruples Feb 16, 2016

Webster's Dictionary defines Scruples as "HOLY CRAP THIS BOOK IS INSANE." The Wikipedia entry for "trashy book" says "Scruples; see also: Webster's Dictionary." This legendary Judith Krantz book, suggested by Contest Winner Sarah Nolastname, tells a long, raunchy tale of incredibly rich people solving non-problems and having anatomically described sex.

If you ever wondered what it would be like to live in an Eagles song for roughly 600 pages, this is the book for you. If you remember Dynasty or Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous fondly, but always wished they had more hardcore descriptions of sex acts, then this is the book for you. If you really loathe gay people and wish books never included black people, then this is the book for you. And if you like a hell of a good time, then this is definitely the episode for you!

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Zippermouth, Laurie Weeks
"You Must Remember This"

MUSIC:

"The Tight Pants Song", Saturday Night Live
"My Number One Lover", Esquivel
"La La La", Deep Throat Soundtrack
"Whachadooin?", N.A.S.A.

The Hardcore Truth (w/ Bill Hanstock) Feb 03, 2016

With special guest Bill Hanstock, J. and Collision pull on their boots and step inside the squared circle to wrestle with pro-wrestling lifer "Hardcore" Bob Holly's memoir, The Hardcore Truth. Holly was known for not pulling his punches in the ring, and he definitely brings the same approach to these pages. Even if you don't care about pro wrestling, this one is a good journey to take, a book about a young man who discovers that all the machinery making modern television isn't so open-hearted, it's coldly charted. He wanted to believe in the freedom of wrestling, but glittering prizes and endless compromises shattered his illusions of integrity.

Also! We announce our Contest Winner in a thrilling crossover between our Letters and Dramatic Reading segments!

SPECIAL NOTES:We have a live show taping coming up! February 21, 2016, 2:00 p.m., at Stage Werx Theater, 446 Valencia St., San Francisco, California, a block away from the 16th St. BART station! Be there! It's just ten bucks!

Tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets!

Recommendations:

Anne Carson, "We've Only Just Begun"
Chris Jericho, A Lion's Tale
Galaxy Quest
Go to Wrestlemania

Music:

A Wide Assortment of Professional Wrestling Entrance Themes

Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah Jan 19, 2016

Get your wings, along with J. and Collision, as the author of definitive 70s artifact Jonathan Livingston Seagull struggles to follow up his mega-hit with...this. In this thin volume, Richard Bach teaches us all that the best thing about flying is that it lets you look down on everyone. Bach proves that he's hella hardcore, as he teaches us to Rise Above (Black Flag style) while At the Movies like Bad Brains! This book is for everyone who ever wanted to feel good about themselves for no particular reason, and this episode is for everyone who met somebody like that and was all like...dude...seriously...take it down a notch.

SPECIAL NOTES:

* Buy a t-shirt!* We have a live show taping coming up! February 21, 2016, 3:00 p.m., at Stage Werx Theater, 446 Valencia St., San Francisco, California, a block away from the 16th St. BART station! Be there!

Recommendations:

Omega the Unknown, Steve Gerber and Mary Skrenes
Wolf in White Van, John Darnielle

Music:

"Paper Planes" by MIA
"Fly" by Sugar Ray
"Fly to the Angels" by Slaughter
"The Biplane Evermore" by The Irish Rovers

The 50th Law (w/ Centa Schumacher) Jan 06, 2016

Friends! Enter the new year like we'd enter the dragon: terrified, trembling, tipsy (a little) and accompanied by 50 Cent! Lose your fears and embrace loathing everyone around you because they are all out to get you. Enjoy getting yelled at and buried under a never-ending tumble of unsourced historical anecdotes, for such is the way of Robert Greene and The 50th Law.

Recommendations:

Decline of Western Civilization Part Two: The Metal Years
The Desire Map, Danielle La Porte
The concept of Neti Pots™
"Sandkings", George R. R. Martin
Electric Boogaloo

Music:

"Money, Power, Respect" - The LOX
"Tell Me When to Go" - E-40
"Oh Boy" - Cam'ron feat. Juelz Santana
"Fuck You (Remix)" - 50 Cent & Cee-Lo Green

Snow Crash Dec 22, 2015

Happy holidays! Fresh from our wonderful listeners voting us into the AV Club’s Top 10 Podcasts, IDEOTVPOD scrapes the bottom of the barrel — no, the part actually touching the ground, where it’s gross and grubby and slimy — and gives the people what they want: Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. Extra-special music, live-and-in-person dialogue trees, and a dramatic reading from J. that makes this dumb book sound about eleven times as good as it is. Hop on your plank, strap on your samurai swords, and get ready to hear a lot about how great hackers are from one extremely notable hack, Neal Stephenson Recommendations:

Pontypool
“Men Explain Lolita to Me”, Rebecca Solnit
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer

Music:

“Liquid Swords” by GZA
“What About Me?” by Jim Johnston
“Pizza Boy USA” by Lou Monte
“Close Your Mouth (It’s Christmastime)” by The Free Design

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon Dec 09, 2015

Sometimes you want to go where every pun will cause you pain -- so grab your wallet, stoke your thirst, and join J. and Collision in Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, where every man gets his chance to be heard, every pun gets its chance to get aired, and several women step up to help a man laugh, love, live, and learn just a little bit about himself and his feelings. Come to Callahan's for the booze, but stay for what some listeners are calling the greatest musical segment in podcast history.

Recommendations:

Moxyland, Lauren Beukes
American Gods, Neil Gaiman

Music:

"Drink!" by They Might Be Giants
Unearthed recording of Bobbi Joy
"the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot
"Joy and Pain" by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock

The Alchemist Nov 25, 2015

Some years back, Paulo Coelho transmuted bad advice and a child's sense of story into a massive bestseller. And today, Collision and J. magically transform a terrible book into a good podcast as they tackle...The Alchemist! If you liked Wild Animus, but were all like "Hey, this would be great if we could some more sheep in the mix!" then this may be the book for you. Topics addressed this time around include t-shirts, voiceover technique, anime as an adult, project management, and men who leave. Extraordinarily special run-in at the very end by Centa Schumacher, as the voice of reason!

Recommendations:

Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit
Workshop of the Telescopes, Blue Öyster Cult
Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Music:

"Hold You Down", The Alchemist
"Positive Hardcore Band", Good Clean Fun
"Dopesmoker", Sleep
Some Teens' School Project About The Alchemist That I Found On Youtube

Casino Royale (w/ Lauren Parker) Nov 10, 2015

This episode, join J. and Collision and special guest Lauren Parker as we roll the dice -- and lose -- with Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, Casino Royale. We return to the thrilling days of the Cold War, when Great Britain stood alone against the Soviet menace, and the only way to way to stem the tide of communism was to send middle-aged men on gambling junkets. Cars will be chased. The patriarchy will be defended. And oh how preferences will be explained! From pre-mission massages to rock-ribbed misogyny to sexual sadism and gay panic, this episode's got it all, because this book's got it all, and none of it is good. Recommendations Cocaine Blues, Kerry Greenwood "From Sleep", Max Richter Battleborn, Claire Vaye Watkins Music Oh Bondage, Up Yours! -- X-Ray Spex Word is Bond -- Brand Nubian Azz Everywhere -- Big Freedia Thunderball -- Johnny Cash

Condominium Oct 27, 2015

There's a single question that has driven most of the great books in history: "What would happen if young, unpleasant people acquired property?" That's the question at the heart of this book, a searing indictment of MFA graduates everywhere. Come for interesting, well-drawn characters like the magical elf-woman who can't use a coffee maker, check voicemail, or use a dimmer switch on a light, but STAY for comforting mentions of bands you remember and some of 2005's sickest burns. It's a thin premise for a mediocre mumblecore movie, and an even thinner excuse for a 160-page book. Join us in...the Condominium.

Recommendations:Godspeed, Lynn BreedloveChronic City, Jonathan Lethem

Music:"Suburb Party" by The Majesticons"New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down" by LCD Soundsystem"Campus" by Vampire Weekend"Deception" by Blackalicious

Kitchen Confidential Oct 14, 2015

In this episode, the fish truly don't fry in the kitchen, and the beans don't burn on the grill. It's a sizzler this time around, as J. and Collision read Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, the memoir that dares to combine dirty dishes with Motley Crüe's The Dirt. Sit down with Extremely Cool Guy Anthony Bourdain as he explains to you -- over and over again -- how extremely and ultimately cool he is. Plus a recap of the IDEOTVPOD team's trip to beautiful Minneapolis to hang out with The F Plus and way, way more puns than normal. Apologies if that's not to your taste!

Recommendations: Bill Buford, Heat Mary Karr, The Worm-Farmer's Lament Songs: "It's Me" by Action Bronson "Feed Me More" by Jim Johnston "I Like Food" by The Descendents "Dine Alone" by Quicksand

Shadow Moon (w/ Tricia Ellis) Sep 30, 2015

What happens when Star Wars creator/destroyer George Lucas hires X-Men writer Chris Claremont to make a trilogy in the style of Lord of the Rings? An incomprehensible, sodden mess, as it turns out. A gritty reimagineering of slash sequel to a schlocky, shticky, slapsticky non-hit children's movie called Willow, Shadow Moon nearly brings J., Collision, and special guest Tricia Ellis to their knees in this rollicking, pain-filled episode. Grab your favorite Renaissance Faire outfit, crank the ocarina to eleven, and join us, won't you?

NOTE: Our guest this week had some unfortunate audio issues with her recording and we had to get a bit creative with editing. Please forgive the occasional crackle and the lack of dramatic reading. Thanks!

Recommendations:Station Eleven, Emily St. John MandelMankind: Have a Nice Day, Mick FoleyA Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula Le Guin

Music:"Whip My Hair" by Willow Smith"Holy Diver" by Dio"Weed Brownies" by Wiz Khalifa"Far, Far Away" by Ultimate Fakebook

Flowers In the Attic (w/ Centa Schumacher & Amanda Brand) Sep 16, 2015

Today J. and Collision are getting high -- attic high! With mondo-special guests Centa and Amanda, the IDEOTV team tackles the oft-requested quasi-gothic super-creepy best-seller and rite of passage Flowers in the Attic. This one really goes there, people, so if whipped children and brothers licking sisters' nipples isn't your thing, you might want to sit this one out. But hey, you wanted the best, you asked for the best, and you got the best!

Multiple guests means slightly shaky sound, but we don't think you'll want to miss this one. Lock yourself in a room with your closest family members and turn this episode up loud enough to rattle the attic.

Music:"Blue Flowers" by Dr. Octagon"Trailer Park" by Bracket"Intact" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin"Ain't No Sunshine" by Bill Withers

Recommendations:The BabadookThe Story of the Lost Child, Elena FerranteThe High Window, Raymond ChandlerNine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny

DOOM: Knee-Deep in the Dead (w/ Poncho Martinez) Sep 01, 2015

Hey, kids! Do you like playing Video Games? Do you like watching other people play video games? Do you like people telling you about playing video games? Do you like people telling you the story of a video game as though the story had happened to them, omitting no detail, not even one, for 250 pages? No? Then you really wouldn't like this book, a shoddy pile of words called DOOM: Knee-Deep in the Dead. J. and Collision welcome back popular/delightful guest Poncho Martinez and get at least hip-deep in dreck.

Recommendations:My Enemy, My Ally & The Romulan Way, Diane Duane14, Peter ClinesThe Library at Mount Char, Scott Hawkins

Music:A bunch of stuff from the DOOM original soundtrack

Airport Aug 19, 2015

Recommended by major dude and friend of the show Tom Keiser, it's time for J and Collision to endure the long lines and longer speeches of... Airport, Arthur Hailey's 1968 ode to MEN and their DECISIONS and their FEELINGS.

You need to know, though: this ain't the summer of love. Also, you can pack your bags and you can leave tonight, but this book ain't exactly your ticket to paradise, people. Grab a tiny bottle of dad's medicine, find your most comfortable pair of travelling shoes, and join us where the departures meet the arrivals.

Recommendations: The Skies Belong to Us, Brendan I. Koerner The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith Music: "LA Internatonal Airport" by Susan Raye "Broken Wings" by Mister Mister "Fear of Flying" by Teenage Fanclub "Jean Claude Bland Dan In A Steel Cage Match With Mean Steve Segal For The Title Of Crowned King Of Hilfiger Apparel: WWF Style" by Spazz

Slash Aug 05, 2015

This episode will rock you to your foundations, as J. and Collision tune up the band and take a hot shot of Slash's memoir Slash. That's right, the guitar player from Guns & Roses wrote a book (sorta) and we read it (bigtime). Rarely has a book about sex, drugs, and rock & roll been so mundane! Rarely have so many anecdotes been contradicted so quickly! Join us as we hold up this book and say "this thing is not good" a lot. Maybe it's a little sloppy, but that's just good rock & roll, right?

NOTE: J. would like to apologize for his obvious drunkenness. This is what happens when you read a book about Slash.

Recommendations:Frank Zappa, the Real Frank Zappa BookJoan Didion, the White Album

Music:"Sex and Drugs and Rock N' Roll", Ian Drury and the Blockheads"The Majesty of Rock", Spinal Tap"Home of the Brave", Spiritualized"Party Like a Rock Star", Shop Boyz

Armada Jul 20, 2015

Saddle up! J and Collision run roughshod over Ernest Cline's new reference deployment device, Armada. Is Cline a one-trick pony, or is this book a dead horse, beaten? The answer is inside! Plus, some extra-good letters, a seriously exciting announcement, and our most appropriate recommendations yet!

Recommendations:Jeff Vandermeer, The Southern Reach TrilogyHelen DeWitt, The Last Samurai

Music:"Aces High" - Iron Maiden"Stand Still" - Gorilla Biscuits"Games" - Hüsker Dü"Space" - Galt MacDermot

Candy Girl (w/ Lemon) Jul 09, 2015

Collision and J welcome tart-tongued guest Lemon from the F Plus to lay bare the non-magic and total lack of mystery of Diablo Cody's valentine to herself, "Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper". Take a peek behind the curtain and behold a book in which everybody talks exactly like... Diablo Cody. Lotta laffs this time around, and some of the worst prose and opinions we've seen yet. Recommendations: "Please Kill Me" and "The Other Hollywood" by Legs McNeil "Girl In a Band" by Kim Gordon "Playing the Whore" by Melissa Gira Grant Music: "Scorpio's Dance" by Shocking Blue "Skyway" by the Replacements "Tip Drill" by Nelly (feat. St Lunatics)

Killing Floor (A Jack Reacher Novel) Jun 25, 2015

A lot of old-school fun this time around, as Chris and J discuss Lee Child's strangely tame thriller/exploration of male fantasy "Killing Floor". Chris drinks way too much delicious Bicycle coffee (roasted in Oakland! Delivered by bicycle!) and gets super-squirrelly. J ponders a minor rebrand for IDEOTVPOD. New segments get new songs and there is much rejoicing.

Recommendations: Firesign Theatre ‎http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sCzgdF_WjOg Patricia Highsmith Music: "Oh No" -- Mos Def, Nate Dogg & Pharoahe Monch "Reach the Beach" -- The Fixx "Put the Lime in the Coconut" -- Baja Men "Spy" -- They Might Be Giants

The Curse of Jezebel (w/ Centa Schumacher) Jun 11, 2015

They can't all be winners, and Frank G. Slaughter's "The Curse of Jezebel" definitely proves that axiom. Join us and semi-regular guest Centa Schumacher as we discuss a book that can probably be best described as "biblical fan-fiction". Really boring biblical fan-fiction.

Music:"Up All Night" -- Slaughter"Here Come the Rome Plows" -- Drive Like Jehu"The Israelites" -- Desmond Dekker

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance May 22, 2015

Well then. Here's a book that probably blew your dad's mind back in the day. Sorry about your dad's mind, really and truly. Join our unnamed narrator and a cast of characters including our unnamed narrator's secret personality, his son, and a bunch of people who don't really matter, as they travel across the country and have very trite thoughts about the nature of reason. Whee!

Recommendations:"Fury Road""The Dead Mountaineer's Inn" -- Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

Music:"Just the Two of Us" -- Will Smith"Hippy Dippy Do" -- Rocket From the Crypt"Wild Mountain Nation" -- Blizten Trapper"Powdered Water Too" -- Eyedea & Abilities

Wild Animus (w/ Tim Faust) Apr 22, 2015

That's wild stuff, man. Wild. In this episode, we discuss Rich Shapero's "Wild Animus" with guest Tim Faust. Jay is convinced that this is the worst book he's read for this show. That is saying a lot. Steel yourselves.

SO MANY CAVEATS: sorry about the audio weirdness, it's still a very listenable show, but there are a lot of obvious growing pains in this episode when it comes to "how to mic three people." next time will be better. also the dog is noisy as hell but nobody ever seems to mind that so whatever.

Music:"Black Betty (Ram Jam)" - Steely Dan"Hungry Like the Wolf" - Reel Big Fish"The Choice is Yours" - Black Sheep

Pines Apr 01, 2015

HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT! For once, I Don't Even Own a Television makes good on repeated promises of "big changes" as we introduce former guest Chris Collision in his new role as all-the-time co-host. In this episode, Chris and J. kick the tires a bit and discuss Blake Crouch's "Pines", an amazingly tepid twist-based thriller that's about to be an amazingly cancelled television series.

There are some minor audio glitches in the beginning of the episode that get sorted out towards the end, your patience is appreciated.

Music: "20th Century Fox Theme" by Alfred Newman, "Mob Goes Wild" by Clutch, "Wayward Pines" by J. W. Friedman

Paranoia (w/ Bill Hanstock) Mar 13, 2015

This week's book is some sweet brogrammin' intrigue, a spy story geared towards the hip high-tech youth of America, circa 2004. Screenwriter and sports columnist Bill Hanstock joins me as we follow the incognito adventures of mobile technology stalwart Adam Cassidy. Will he infiltrate a company and liberate their secrets? Will he learn to love Ani DiFranco? Will he see some butts? Find out with us.

Music: "Roc-a-fella Billionaires" by Freeway, "Be Thankful for What You've Got" by William De Vaughn, "The Destroyer" by The Kinks

Treacherous Love (w/ Mara Wilson) Feb 25, 2015

This time, the book in question is Beatrice Sparks' "Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager". Following in the tradition of Sparks' most well-known work, "Go Ask Alice", this is a fake diary by a teenager who never existed. In it, we follow the escapades of Jennie as she discovers marijuana, visits Yellowstone Park, and is seduced by a creepy teacher named J.J. who talks like a self-help manual.

Joining me this week is returning guest Mara Wilson, who can be found at http://www.marawilsonwritesstuff.com

Bumper Music:"Don't Stand So Close to Me" -- The Police"Young Girl" -- Gary Puckett & The Union Gap"When I Kissed the Teacher" -- ABBA

On The Brink (w/ Jeb Lund & Rocky Swift) Feb 04, 2015

A rip-roaring return to form after a month-and-a-half hiatus. This episode, I'm getting down to business and discussing Ben Stein's finanical thriller "On The Brink" with returning guest Jeb Lund and first-timer Rocky Swift. We dissect the politics and amazingly weird writing of America's favorite Boring Teacher From the Movies, and struggle to understand why anybody would write a 'suspense' novel about creeping inflation. Things even get a little educational. But then we talk about dicks.

NOTE: Jeb wanted to apologize for fucking up the OPEC Crisis and Postal Strike chronology during the Nixon Administration. It probably doesn't matter, because Ben Stein has all this stuff happen at once, but you don't need to write in with corrections. He knows he's wrong, and he's sorry.

Bumper Music: "Frankenstein" by Edgar Winters, "itzsoweezee" by De La Soul, "The Million Dollar Man Theme" by Jimmy Hart & JJ Maguire

The Actuator: Fractured Earth (w/ Alexander Hinman) Dec 09, 2014

In this episode, I'm joined by Alexander Hinman to discuss "The Actuator: Fractured Earth". "The Actuator" is a new video ga-- er-- book series about a group of "machine monks" who wield the power to shape reality to their liking using a machine called "The Actuator" except they're all weird nerds that the government kidnapped so all their fantasy worlds are dragons and steampunk shit. The protagonists travel through many leve-- er-- locales, in search of magical keys -- er -- no, wait, they actually DO look for magical keys. The book is a clusterfuck. Please enjoy the show.

Book: "The Actuator: Fractured Earth" by James Wymore and Aiden James

Bumper Songs: "Jump" by Kriss Kross, "Fantasy" by Aldo Nova, "My Girlfriend's a Robot" by the Hanson Brothers

Scar Tissue (w/ Ben Firke) Nov 26, 2014

Today I'm joined by playwright and fellow music-obsessive Ben Firke and we discuss "Scar Tissue", the autobiography of Red Hot Chili Peppers' Anthony Keidis. We shed some light on our respective pasts with the group, talk about the book, and crack each other up a lot with impressions. This is a good one.

"Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" w/ Centa Schumacher Nov 08, 2014

In this episode, all pretense of structure is abandoned when Centa and I discuss "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche", a guide to American manliness by Bruce Feirstein. And YES, I know it was Bobby Riggs and not Jon MacEnroe, I messed up, yeesh.

Bumper Music: "Now You're a Man" by DVDA, "The Anvil Chorus", "Be a Man" by "Macho Man" Randy Savage (pbuh)

The Eye of Argon (w/ K Thor Jensen) Oct 21, 2014

Writer and cartoonist K Thor Jensen joins me this week as we discuss the triumphant tale of the barbarian *ahem* Grignr as he invokes the god *ahem* Mrifk in his fight against the evil forces of *ahem* Agafnd and also some kind of gemstone that turns into a giant slime or blob or something like that. "The Eye of Argon" is notorious within fantasy and sci-fi fandom circles, and with good reason. If you're already familiar with this story, you know what to expect. If you aren't, HOLY CRAP DROP WHAT YOU'RE DOING RIGHT THIS INSTANT AND FIND IT. This book/story/novella is friggin bonkers and worth every second it takes to read.

There are some audio issues at points in this recording but I know you will all deal with it because you are troopers.

Bumper music: "He-Man" theme song, "Desert Rain" by Iced Earth

Necroscope (w/ Chris Collision) Sep 10, 2014

"Vampirism, Necromancy, Supernatural Mayhem... and Screaming Bloody Terror." Um... yep. That's what's in this book all right. Join Chris Collision and myself as we rip the guts out of this novel and dance around with them in an autopsy room.

Note: This is the first episode with a new microphone so there are some small audio issues but you will deal with them because you literally have no choice.

Music: "Graveyard Chamber" by Gravediggaz, "Night of the Vampire" by Roky Erickson

Voodoo Child (w/ Eugene Violet) Sep 03, 2014

"Voodoo Child" is a graphic novel created by Nicolas Cage and his son Weston. It's about a biracial superhero crusading against cajun demons and a government conspiracy in post-Katrina New Orleans. It's also completely ridiculous and almost impossible to follow. Please join us as we discuss snake-hair, sexy accordionists, and richard branson's sex life.

PS -- Segment One has some small audio issues but they resolve themselves quickly so hang in there, lil shavers!

Bumper music: "Voodoo Lady" by Ween, "Voodoo" by King Diamond

Super Sad True Love Story (w/ Poncho Martinez) Aug 28, 2014

Wow, this is a creepy book by a creepy man. There's not much else to say about it. Please enjoy as Poncho Martinez and I deconstruct "Nabokov for man-children."

A Spell For Chameleon (w/ Jesse Dangerously) Aug 15, 2014

Content Warning: This book is filled with some of the most atrocious sexual ethics you will ever encounter and it needed to be discussed. So there are some sensitive issues addressed on this week's show. Please be aware.

Piers Anthony wrote "A Spell For Chameleon" as a book for adults, and was told by his publisher that it would be released as a YA novel unless he 'dressed it up' and made it more mature. The result is a book filled with busty centaurs, awkwardly employed vocabulary words, and really bad puns. It's also morally bankrupt and is probably responsible for ruining the minds of many teenagers nationwide. Listen, if you dare, as I'm joined by Official Rap Legend Jesse Dangerously to dissect this shining example of bad bad BAD fantasy.

Bumper Music: "The Trees" by Rush, "Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club

Covert Conception (w/ Mara Wilson) Aug 08, 2014

Secret eugenics programs? Harley mechanics? Babies, babies, babies? Sounds like a Harlequin Intrigue book to me.

Join myself and internet storyteller of note Mara Wilson as we recount our descent into the fictional world of "Covert Conception", a book where top-secret genetic research firms use date-rape drugs to trick people into doing it and making 'superior babies'. Yes, it's as weird as it sounds.

Topics include: Romance novel bingo, puritanical upbringings, and sex dreams about Ricky Gervais.

Bumper music: "Flying High Again" by Ozzy Osbourne, "Bad Boys" by Steel Pulse

"Stranger in a Strange Land" w/ Adam Marler Aug 01, 2014

OH NO. I'M TACKLING A SACRED COW. i will gladly admit that talking about this book was my idea b/c i found it really off-putting in so many ways. after researching, i found out that this book is actually held in high regard by lots of people. guess what? those people are WRONG. it's really awful.

join myself and internet ne're-do-well Adam Marler (twitter's @Dr_Cop) as we talk about "rocket ships", sexy secreataries, and Robert Heinlein's crazy sex life. i promise you will walk away with a new respect for anybody who could stand to be around Mr. Heinlein for more than an hour at a time.

"Chariots of the Gods" w/ Centa Schumacher Jul 24, 2014

Hope you guys like "Drunk History" cuz that's what we accidentally made this week. Join Centa Schumacher and I as we have an obviously intoxicated late-night discussion about a piece of completely bonkers pseudo-history called "Chariots of the Gods" and wind up just sort of rambling about history and the X-Files for an hour due to the influence of alcoholic beverages and marital bliss.

We debut a new segment called "Plot in 60 Seconds" and get down to the nitty gritty about ancient Egypt, aryan space aliens, and incorrect biblical references.

Bumper Music: "ATLients" by Outkast, "Space Oddity" by David Bowie

"Those Who Trespass" with Jeb Lund Jul 16, 2014

This is a long one. It's a long one about a mystery novel written by Bill O'Reilly. And it guest-stars Jeb Lund. If you thought Jeb and I would be able to talk about a Bill O'Reilly novel for anything less than an hour, you are friggin' crazy. Topics include: Serial Revenge Murder, Loofa/Falafels, Sade, and the absolute wrong way to perform oral sex.

Also I forgot to give Jeb time to plug stuff so please follow him on twitter: @Mobute

WARNING THIS ONE GETS PRETTY EXPLICIT YA'LL.

Bumper music: "Sister Sanctified" by Stanley Turrentine and Milt Jackson, "I'm Just a Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock, and the man himself, Bill O'Reilly.

"Dude, You're Gonna Be a Dad" (w/ Klopfenpop) Jul 09, 2014

Join us as internet music impressario, funny man, and expecting father Klopfenpop joins ME to talk about a really bad book about advice for people in his situation. This was written by a very confusing man who appears to exist in a middle ground between 1978 and 2014 and floats between them interchangably.

Please chill with us as we discuss the huge problems with invoking a sarcastic tone in a book that is designed to be a guide to pregnancy, and how it takes a special type of guy to write a book about having a baby that mostly revolves around men feeling bad.

Oh yeah, there are jokes too. Promise.

Bumper music: "Satisfaction" by Devo, "Had a Dad" by Jane's Addiction, "Baby Steps" by Shubzilla and Klopfenpop

"Left Behind" w/ Leeman Kessler Jul 02, 2014

Hoo boy. HOO BOY. In this episode, I team up with Leeman Kessler, creator and host of "Ask Lovecraft" and Actual Practicing Christian™ to talk about "Left Behind" and how friggin ridiculous it is. This episode is long! But you will learn things! Prepare to laugh and pray for your immortal soul.

Ready Player One (w/ Mike Sacco) Jun 09, 2014

HOLY SHIT. People like this book. SMART people like this book. The New York Times liked this book. The problem is that this book is a piece of crap that basically functions as a checklist of nostalgia items from the 1980's.

Join game designer Mike Sacco and I as we yuk it up over the text of this reference-packed slog through a future world that seems like it was conceptualized in 1985. Highlights include: Aerosmith's "Revolution X" video game, misidentifying this author as the guitarist of Wilco, and probably way too much on-mic laughter.

P.S. Did I mention that this book is BAAAAAAD? Cuz it is.

Bumper Music: "Video Games" by Lana Del Rey, "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia, and "Before Baywatch" by Donuts N' Glory

Veeck -- As In Wreck (w/ TIm Harrison) Jun 07, 2014

WARNING: BASEBALL NERD EDITION

I recommended that we mock "Veeck - As In Wreck" solely after reading the first chapter, which is quite disturbing and has to do with exploitation of little people. However, it turns out that Bill Veeck was a pretty rad dude for a crazy man. However, his autobiography sucks.

I will warn you in advance, this is an episode for baseball nerds and people who just really like to hear me get things wrong and be corrected. If you are not interested in either thing, you might not dig this one so much. But that's cuz you're a dork.

Anyway, stay tuned next week as we get back into genre fiction and other nerd-friendly topics, okay? And now please bear with us as Tim and I engage in a long discussion about a game we love where 40-year old steroid freaks hit a tiny ball with a big wooden stick.

Bumper Music: "Bye Bye Baby" SF Giants Fight Song. "Baseball" by Kenny Franks, "One Man, Five Tools" by Puig Destoyer

Backwards Masking Unmasked (w/ David Thorpe) May 28, 2014

Join myself and noted internet humorist and music critic David Thorpe as we examine the shadowy world of backwards messages hidden inside the darkest metal records of the 70's and 80's, including the collected works of Hall & Oates and The Captain and Tenille.

This book was written by a man who is quite possibly mentally ill in a very legitimate sense and details an immense satanic conspiracy throughout the world of rock. It is ostensibly a book about the technique of backmasking; but quickly digresses into chapter after chapter of nonsense, much like this podcast.

But please enjoy our in-depth discussions of Lone-Gunmen Glasses, Ron Henley, and why Robin Gibb is the most evil man in rock and roll.

Let Me Tell You Something (w/ Amanda Brand) May 14, 2014

RECORDED IN FRONT OF A LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE THAT INCLUDES ONE BULLDOG

unofficially brought to you by a crappy malt beverage with a surprisingly high ABV

highlights include: buying your son a rolex (on his terms), a surprisingly lucid take on bad pizza and mafia affiliations, and also a huge amount of "Al B. Sure" j0kes that flew over the head of everybody in attendance. this episode unofficially brought to you by the godawful beverage known as the bud light mango-rita

LIVE AUDIENCE: Centa, Shane, and Heston the Bulldog.

Bumper music: "Losing Out (f/ Royce Da 5'9") by Black Milk, "Tell Me Somethin Goof by Chaka Khan and Rufus, and "Can't Tell Me Nothin'" by Kanye Wesr

Michelle Remembers (w/ Poncho Martinez) May 06, 2014

Welp. You've either heard of it or you haven't. Either way, this is the supposed "true story" of a five-year old girl who was abducted by a Satanic cult and only managed to remember after years and years of therapy with a moderately creepy psychiatrist who she co-authored this book with and then married immedately after publication.

I can't emphasize enough that this book is filled with "disturbing shit" but in the samd way that a Tool video is. It's not 'scary', it's just gross. Fair warning: this podcast is pretty gross too.

If your parents never let you watch witchcraft movies or play dungeons & dragons, this book is definitely part of the reason why.

Bumper music: "Underlord" by Into Another, "Devil Woman" by Cliff Richard, and "The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton" by Mountain Goats

A Princess of Mars (w/ Centa Schumacher) Apr 30, 2014

Remember that Barsoom is just one letter away from Barroom. I dunno why but you should remember that.

In this episode, fabulous photographer and free-thinker and wife-of-host (who is also her own person) Centa Schumacher (@spacevalkyrie) sits down to discuss "A Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs. This book is actually far more well-regarded than I thought, which makes this a bit controversial, I suppose. But I LIVE for that shit yall. *sunglasses down*

This is quite possibly the first episode where we have a serious difference of opinion about the quality of the book but luckily we are married and don't kill each other.

Highlights include: Rupaul chat, a long segment about our weird deformed dog, and me ranting and raving about racism a ton.

The Rules According to JWOWW (w/ Rachel Millman) Apr 23, 2014

Tanning Lotion? Smushing? Weird sections about underage drinking that feel bizzarely personal?Join me and Rachel Millman as we delve way too far into the void that is the mind of Jenna "JWOWW" Farley and her affected Italian brand.

WARNING: SERIOUS PERSONAL BRANDING INSIDE

Bumper Music: "That's Amore" by Dean Martin, "Birds" by ALL, "Like Whoa" by Black Rob

Motley Crue: The Dirt (w/ Jackson O'Brien) Apr 16, 2014

In Motley Crue: The Dirt - Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band, a bunch of idiots talk about being dumb except pretend that it's really important. Luckily, Jackson O'Brien is here to join me as we dissect the intricacies of the Motley House, degenerative spinal disease, and (of course) Tommy Lee's penis.

This episode is long. That's because talking about Motley Crue is easy and fun. The hardest thing to do, of course, was to find bumper music that wasn't actually by Motley Crue.

Please enjoy stories of epic debauchery, in-fighting, and sexxx with three x's. Also enjoy the plosive 'p' and 'b' sounds coming from my microphone cuz I need a windscreen now too.

Bumper music: Some kid playing "Kickstart my Heart" from YouTube, Some other kid playing "Dr. Feelgood" from YouTube except singing really weird too, and "Above the Clouds" by Gangstarr

Anthem (with Dave Stattler) Apr 09, 2014

In episode number two, I probably already bite off more than I can chew as I invite Dave Stattler, aka Twitter's @glopdemon on-board to rant and rave about Ayn Rand's "Anthem".

As predictably as possible, a conversation about Ayn Rand turns into ranting and raving, but with many side trips to the lands of laser light shows and Rush concerts.

Bumper music: "Anthem" -- Rush, "Ruff Ryders Anthem" -- DMX, "Blow Ya Mind" -- Nicki Minaj

Pregnesia (with Jeb Lund) Mar 28, 2014

In our inaugural episode, Jay is joined by Gawker columnist Jeb Lund for a discussion of the Harlequin Suspense novel "Pregnesia", which centers around pregnancy, amnesia, and an ex-Navy SEAL who looks and speaks like WCW superstar "Raven".

Highlights include: Maternity jeans, The Bluesman Name Generator, and the World's Most Aggressive Coffee-Shop Reading Techniques.

Bumper music: "Pregnant" -- R. Kelly, "Having My Baby" -- Alan Alda, "She Got Me Pregnant" -- Sparks

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