The Best Stuff In The World

For this episode we’re exploring one of the most iconic and enduring games of all time: Dungeons & Dragons!For 50 years, D&D has captivated players with its mix of imagination, strategy, and storytelling. When the game’s at its best it can function as this really fun way to do collaborative storytelling - it can seem life and death while also providing a lot of fodder for dumb jokes with your friends. It’s honestly the best game of all the games - I’d been hoping to do an episode about it since this podcast launched (hence it being referenced in the theme song my friend Mike Brousseau put together) and I was excited to be joined by my pal Gary Mitchel, who co-directs the American Sci-Fi Classics Track at Dragon Con and co-hosts the great horror podcast A PODCASK OF AMONTILLADO and writer James Palmer to talk all things D&D. Let’s roll for initiative and get into it!Gary is the co-host of the horror podcast A PODCASK OF AMONTILLADO!You can find James Palmer's books at https://www.jamespalmerbooks.net/

 We're discussing one of the most influential films ever made—the 1920 silent horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.Directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, Caligari is a film that not only redefined the horror genre but also helped lay the groundwork for German Expressionism in cinema. It’s got twisted abstract sets, eerie visuals, and one of the first horrifying twist endings in cinema. It’s a deeply unsettling film, especially when you factor in that it was made over 100 years ago.The plot of Caligari is that the sinister Dr. Caligari sets up a carnival sideshow attraction with a deadly secret - his sleepwalking accomplice Cesare, who carries out his murderous bidding. The film is widely considered to be the first full-length horror movie ever made and I was delighted to unpack it with two of the smartest people I know - artist Emma McDonnell and filmmaker and writer Guy Benoit. We discuss the film, the career of Conrad Veidt, German Expressionism, transformation scenes, and so much more. It's a wide-ranging discussion and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much I enjoyed engaging in it.Emma McDonnell's artwork can be found at https://ekmcdonnell.com/

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. We are talking THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW with special guest Greg Bell! Rocky Horror was originally a U.K. stage show that fused what was going on in the glam rock scene with old science fiction b-movies. The show was written by Richard O’Brien and was enough of a stage success that it was then adapted into what’s probably the most successful cult movie of all time - midnight showings have been running somewhere every weekend since the late 70s and there’s a robust fan culture around the whole thing. "Shadowcasts" dress up like the characters and act out the movie in front of the screen while the audience shouts out what’s become an evolving dialogue with the film in the form of callbacks. There are props and dancing and and people running around in their underwear and dirty jokes and it's a whole lot of fun.Greg discusses his long tenure in the fan culture, what has changed about the experience over the years, and where he sees things going as Rocky prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary as a film. Naturally, it wouldn't be an episode about Rocky Horror without several shout-outs to our mutual friend Arthur Levesque,too. So get your squirt guns and your toast and your cell phone flashlights (lighters aren't allowed anymore) as we head over to the Frankenstein place. It's just a jump to the left.

We're joined by Cash the Composer to talk about their new immersive/interactive musical Fantasmagoriana! What’s Fantasmagoriana about? In the summer of 1816, at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron, his personal physician John Polidori, his friend Percy Shelley, Shelley's fiancée Mary Godwin, their infant son William, and Godwin's stepsister Claire Clairmont, gather together on holiday. After a drunken night of exchanging ghost stories, Lord Byron challenges his contemporaries to write their own. And indeed, throughout a flurry of love and betrayal, sleepless nights and near death experiences, duels and an unending storm, every person in attendance walks away with their own ghost. Some, a great story, the likes of the Vampyre and Frankenstein. Others, the untimely deaths of their loved ones, or the specter of their own end.We discuss the show, the inspirations behind it, accessibility issues in immersive theater, Sondheim and - naturally - whether or not Mary Shelley would have liked Rocky Horror.You can get tickets to Fantasmagoriana at Cash's website: https://cashcomposer.dudaone.com/fantasmagoriana

Doctor Who first aired on November 23, 1963, making its debut on BBC One. Initially conceived as a children’s show with educational elements, it quickly evolved into a groundbreaking science fiction series that captivated audiences of all ages. The story revolves around the Doctor, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey, who travels through time and space in the TARDIS, a time machine that looks like a British police box on the outside but is much larger on the inside.Over the years, the Doctor has been portrayed by a variety of actors, thanks to the unique ability of Time Lords to regenerate into new forms. This concept has allowed the show to reinvent itself while maintaining a core sense of continuity. The series was originally canceled in 1989 but it never really went away - there were books and a tv movie in the 1990s and then the show returned in 2005. It had always had a cult following in the US but the new series really seemed to strike a chord in the fandom. I liked the show as a kid and think the 2005 revival is a lot of fun, too, and I was excited to talk to two of the biggest Doctor Who enthusiasts I know for this episode, writer and musician Andre Salles and the Mayor of Chickentwon herself, Felicity Kusinitz from The Flopcast!You can find Andre's music at andresalles.bandcamp.comYou can find Andre's music blog at tm3am.comFelicity is affiliated with great podcast The Flopcast!

We're talking with Carly Dwyer and Tristan Reynolds from Intramersive Productions about their upcoming show DAEMONOLOGIE, SIGNALS AND SIRENGS!Daemonologie is an interactive, open-world theater anthology that explores the intersections of gender, social change, and the supernatural. The series encourages audiences to engage with the events around them, and the audience determines the ending, so no two shows are the same. I saw their first Daemonologie show, Oakham, in 2017 at the Pioneer Village in Salem and Carly, Tristan and I discuss that show and the subsequent shows in the cycle, which take place in different periods of American history and usually have the conceit that supernatural occurrences are real. Daemonologie: Signals & Sirens will take place at The House of the Seven Gables in Salem, MA from October 24–28 and November 1–2 at 7:30 PM. The show is set in 1952 and asks the question, "When something calls to you from the darkest depths, how will you answer?".  I haven’t seen the new show yet but I’m excited to see what they’ve what cooking.You can purchase tickets to the show here: Daemonologie Signals & Sirens

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.