The Best Stuff In The World

120 Minutes was an alternative music show that aired on MTV on Sunday nights from Midnight to 2am, playing some of the formative acts of the day (The Cure, Depeche Mode, The Smiths), introducing us to exciting new bands, and - particularly in the years before Nirvana hit big with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - acting as an oasis for those of us interested in music that sat slightly outside of the mainstream. I'm joined by Amy Chandler and Terri Harrington to discuss the show but we also talk about the alternative music scene of the time more generally - the bands and shows we loved. We also bring up the Atlanta pop culture convention Dragon Con, which is coming up Labor Day weekend and which all three of us will be at in various capacities. I think this episode is a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Kevin is joined by Shaun Rosado (of Popcycled Baubles) to continue their discussion of Chris Claremont's epic run as writer of The Uncanny X-Men! Picking up where we left off in the previous installment, the two discuss The Asgardian Wars, the Wolverine mini-series with Frank Miller, the arrival of artist Jim Lee, the Brood, Magneto, Kitty's Fairy Tale and, of course, that one weird issue where Colossus dumps Kitty and then gets into a bar brawl with the Juggernaut!It's all the pulse pounding action you could hope for when two middle-aged men get together to chat about funnybooks that came out around 30 years ago!

I'm joined by Shaun Rosado (Popcycled Baubles) to discuss Chris Claremont's seminal run as writer of the Uncanny X-Men comic book from 1975-1991. Claremont did come back a few times after that but we limit our discussion to that initial run and its ancillary titles, which is a good thing because we talked so long that I felt I had to split this episode into two parts rather than stick you all with a two-hour podcast about comic books that came out over 40 years ago. We get into the many reasons why during the episode but I cannot overstate how much I loved these X-Men comics - Claremont excelled at soap opera style storytelling with characters you genuinely cared about. The X-Men were outcasts who were hated and feared by a world they were sworn to protect and I think that a lot of people who felt like outcasts (for whatever reason) at the time found something to connect with in this work.

Bloom County is a newspaper comic strip by Berke Breathed that originally ran from 1980 to 1989. (It returned with new strips in 2015.) The comic and its characters Bill the Cat, Steve Dallas, Opus the Penguin and many others would satirize politics, culture and the comics page itself. Like Peanuts the strip had children with adult vocabularies and personalities who interacted with animals but unlike Peanuts the child characters would regularly interact with adults and the animals would usually talk back. Peanuts also never had a character recite a poem about former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.Joining Kevin to discuss the strip are Michael Brousseau from the skateboard movie podcast Gleaming the Tube and Ann Gav from the Eurovision zine Dudepoints. 79 cents may be too much to pay for banana walrus wafers but this episode of THE BEST STUFF IN THE WORLD is free! Enjoy!

Kevin is joined by filmmaker David Bettencourt and film superfan Bryan Murray to discuss Sam Raimi's 1987 horror/comedy classic Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn!Evil Dead 2, which stars the great Bruce Campbell, is credited with inventing a new film genre - splatstick, which combines physical humor reminiscent of The Three Stooges with the extreme gore that was gaining popularity in the 80s with splatter and slasher films. It's also a monstrously original piece of filmmaking - Raimi's camera is always doing interesting things and it elevates what's ostensibly a cheap exploitation film to arguably one of the greatest films ever made. It's funny, it's scary, it's violent, and, yes, it's groovy.You can find David Bettencourt's films on his YouTube Channel!

G.I. Joe is the code name for America's daring, highly-trained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against Cobra, a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world! It's also a toy line, a cartoon, a series of comic books, and a nostalgic touch point for dudes of a certain age. Kevin is joined by two such dudes: Richard Chicago Borges (of Borges fame) and Gary Mitchel, co-host of the horror podcast A Podcask of Amontillado and co-director of Dragon Con's American Sci-Fi Classics Track, to discuss it all. Well, everything except those terrible movies from the 2000s, which we did talk about but then got edited out for time. Spoiler alert: they aren't very good. Now you know. And knowing is... well, you get the idea.

Kevin is joined by author Jane Duffus to talk all things regarding the Sarah Records label. Jane's new book, These Things Happen: The Sarah Records Story, tells the story of the record label, the bands who released music on it, and the people and culture who were affected by it. Sarah was started in 1987 by Clare Wadd and Matt Haynes in Bristol (United Kingdom) - they put out 100 releases, mostly records but occasionally a release would be a fanzine or (for their 50th release) a board game. The label deliberately ceased operations with a big party, a manifesto, and a final compilation album called There And Back Again Lane. Sarah releases were often maligned in the British music press for being twee or wimpy but their steadfast refusal to bow to the prevailing trends always made them seem all the more punk to me. Jane has a wealth of knowledge and insight about the label from both putting together her book and her own experience as a teenage fan of the label.You can order Jane's book through her website or in the U.S. through Rough Trade.

One of the first and best punk bands, The Ramones recorded their first album in 1976 and they existed as a band for about 20 years after that. Their 70s material is the most beloved, although they continued to tour and put out records until they broke up. It's not an overstatement to say that despite achieving very little commercial success during their time as an active band their influence has resonated through pop culture in a way that musical artsts' have. I'm an enormous fan and I was excited to talk with musicians Ted Rao (The Double Nuthins, The Moneyshots) and Dan Schafer (who occasionally goes by the stage name Dan Vapid, and whose work in bands Screeching Weasel, Sludgeworth, The Riverdales, Noise by Numbers, The Methadones, Dan Vapid and the Cheats and more ranks among the best Ramones-influenced pop-punk ever made) about this absolutely classic American band. Hey ho, let's go!