This Thing Rules

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Halloween Costumes Rule! Oct 31, 2024

Going door to door asking for candy from strangers is a pretty strange thing to do, but what if you wore a ridiculous outfit while doing so? Somehow that’s become a totally normal tradition that we do every year. As much fun as the candy and spooky decor is, one of the most fun things about Halloween is getting to dress up as whatever the hell you want to. We take a look back at some of the origins of wearing costumes at Halloween (and sometimes Christmas) and reminisce about some of our fondest fancy dress memories over the years, including but not limited to the Smurfs, Willy Wonka, Punished Snake, Mario, The Joker, a LEGO Minifig and Batman in Khakis.

Intro contains clips from “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo, The Nightmare Before Christmas, It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and the Beavis and Butt-Head episode “Bungholio: Lord of the Harvest.”

Halloween (The Movie Series) Rules! Featuring Ryan Scott Oct 25, 2024

Evil dies tonight! Or, gets discussed at great length. We’re joined by our dear friend Ryan Scott to discuss Halloween, the long-running series of slasher movies based on the even longer-running actual holiday. SPOILER WARNING! You’ve had plenty of time to get up to speed on this 40+ year old movie series, so we’re assuming you’ve watched them all, or don't care if we tell you how the crappy ones end.

Intro contains clips from Halloween (1978) and Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Skeletons Rule! Oct 18, 2024

Let’s face it, without a skeleton, you’d be a puddle of floppy wet stuff. Plus, without skeletons, Halloween decorations would be 90% pumpkin, and that would be stupid as hell. Let’s talk about these terrifying latices of rigid calcium and other stuff we all use to wobble our haggard wet gets across this miserable earth, and also, our favorite instances of skeletal and bone-adjacent characters in pop culture. You probably won’t learn anything about the human body this episode, but you might learn something about human bodies that have posthumously appeared in some classic films.

Intro contains clips from Andrew Gold’s “Spooky Scary Skeletons” (which was recorded in 1996, despite regularly being associated with a 1929 Disney short) Stevie Wonder’s “Skeletons” and an excerpt from Return of the Living Dead, which is an absolute blast of a film and if you haven’t seen it, get on that.

Monster Cereal Rules! Oct 11, 2024

It’s once again that time of year when those breakfast ghouls descend upon the cereal aisle. We’re of course referring to Count Chocula, Franken Berry, Boo Berry and their fairweather cohorts, Frute Brute and Yummy Mummy, as well as their newest addition, Carmella Creeper. We delve into the history of these bizarre breakfast mascots, including their controversies, artistic endeavors, and occasional appearances in major motion pictures.

Intro contains clips of old Monster Cereal commercials. You probably could’ve put that together.

Convenience Stores Rule! Oct 04, 2024

Ding-dong! That’s both the noise you hear when you walk into a convenience store, a brand of packaged baked good that’s probably available within, and the sort of person who’d spend over an hour talking about their love of these establishments that are somewhere between a fast food restaurant and a grocery store. Depending on where you live, you may have another term for a convenience store, like liquor store, corner store, mini mart, bodega, convenience shop, corner shop, carry out, mini-mart, milk bar, cold store, party store, deli, milk bar, dairy, superette, Kiosk, späti, konbini, dépanneur or off-licence. Whatever it’s called, we have a lot to say about these little shops, from their history to their place in pop-culture to our own personal adventures involving them.

Intro contains clips from Beavis & Butt-Head, The Simpsons, Ghost World and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. And also whatever you call the machine that makes a noise when you walk into a 7-Eleven.

Action Figures Rule! Sep 27, 2024

Action figures rule! We’ve been collecting small articulated plastic humanoids for decades, and we’re not quite sure why! We dig into the history of these highly collectible NOT-dolls from their Kung-Fu Grip origins with the original 12-inch G.I. Joe, to Kenner’s 3 ¾” Star Wars line that revolutionized the industry, to our own personal origin stories bashing together Dengars, Dreadnoks, and Deadpools in our backyards as kids… and on our desks as adults.

For more on the history of action figures, you can do a lot worse than The Toys That Made Us on Netflix, and Toy Galaxy on YouTube also has some great deep dives on forgotten playthings. If you want some up-to-date looks at action figures, the fine folks at ToyArk and Preternia hold it down, and if you’d like a glimpse at our combined toy collection at its peak, we gave a little tour of that a long time ago in a workplace far, far away.

Bloody Marys Rule! Sep 20, 2024

Who doesn't want a nice tall glass of salt and hard liquor first thing in the morning? Well, healthy people, probably. Well, what if there was tomato juice and celery too, is that healthy enough for you? The Bloody Mary is an absurd cocktail no matter how you look at it, but it gets even dumber when you start sticking asparagus and strips of bacon and maybe even small hamburgers in it. Yet, that's something people regularly do... in broad daylight no less! Join Brian Altano and Max Scoville as they pour out some bartending lore, cautionary anecdotes and tipsy tricks regarding this gross drunk morning soup. Here's that photo of hungover Max with that princess dog toy.

Intro contains clips from "Buddy" of Adam Sandler's 1993 album "They're All Gonna Laugh At You," the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes animated series, and a way too sexy early 90s Clamato commercial.

Gummi Candy Rules! Sep 13, 2024

Gummi candy rules! But wait, what counts as “gummi?” Gummi bears, sure, but not gum. What about fruit snacks, Swedish Fish, Jelly Babies, and so on? It’s hard to say, but one thing’s for certain: that Haribo bear is suspicious as all hell. Still, we’re willing to let it slide because he makes such yummy little candies. We (“we”) actually did some research for this episode, and we’re happy to report that the origins of our favorite sweets and treats are as weird as we’d hoped.

If you’d like to read the wonky (but not Wonka-y) candy book Max keeps referring to, it’s Sweets: A History of Candy by Tim Richardson. You can also just watch Unwrapped, which is probably more appropriately junk foody in its presentation.

Intro contains clips from commercials for Trolli Sour Brite-Crawlers, Amazin’ Fruit Gummy Bears, Bassett’s Jelly Babies as well as the terrifying mid-credits scene of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and the episode of The Simpsons with the Gummi Venus De Milo and Homer getting accused of sleeping nude in an oxygen tent to get sexual powers.

Alligators Rule! Sep 05, 2024

Alligators rule! And so do crocodiles! Though they’re regularly vilified in popular media, these modern-day dinosaurs (that aaaaactually have been around almost as long) don’t deserve such a bad rep. We were fascinated with these radical reptiles as kids, and as adults, we’ve somehow wound up dealing with them for vaguely work-related reasons on more than one occasion, which just got us even more worked up about the big leathery monsters. Join us as we sing the praises of these prehistoric terrors of Florida, share some tales (and tails) of our own alligator adventures, and spout questionably accurate scientific trivia about them. Bear in mind: we are alligator enthusiasts, not experts. Zippity zound, alligators all around!

If you want to check out the cool stuff actual alligator experts Chris Gillette and Gabbi Nikole are doing, frequently involving alligators, check them out on Instagram @gatorboys_chris and @gabbinikolle. If you don’t believe we went swimming with a real alligator (or how stupid we said our wetsuits looked) you can find that here, and you can see us riding around on a fanboat like an old married couple that rides fanboats, that’s here. If you’d like to see a really stupid video involving a monitor lizard (the underachieving loser cousin of the alligator) we have one of those as well.

Intro contains clips from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Lake Placid, Happy Gilmore and a Gator Golf commercial.

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