This Thing Rules

In honor of the holidays (and us being pretty fried because of the holidays, and the entire year that preceded them) this week’s episode is even more laid back and conversational than normal, and we hit record without any specific topic in mind. After some muttering and grumbling about getting older, and also how we were friends with Dash Rendar without realizing it, the conversation turned to what we’ve been listening to this year, music-wise. So, something along the lines of Max and Brian’s Spotify Wrapped: The Radio Drama, but with some of our usual detours and tangents.

For anyone who prefers a more cohesive, less shoegaze-y audio product, don’t worry, This Thing Rules will return to its regularly scheduled programming in 2025. Thanks for bearing with us during these trying and festive holiday times.
Here are the albums, artists and music-adjacent media we mentioned (or alluded to) in chronological order:

Alli Goertz - Peeled back

LL Cool  - The FORCE

Rome Streetz - Hat & garden hold up

Griselda Records (Conway The Machine, Benny The Butcher, Westside Gunn, Daringer)

HEALTH - RAT WARS ULTRA EDITION

Pixel grip - ARENA / Stamina

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross - Challengers [MIXED] by Boys Noize

NIN - Add Violence

NIN - The Fragile

The Sparks Brothers (2021 documentary)

Sparks - No. 1 in Heaven

Sparks - Exotic Creatures of the Deep

Abba - Gold (greatest hits record, but also 33 ⅓ book about said record)

Beastie Boys Book by Ad-Rock and Mike D (book and audiobook)

Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty

Madonna: Like an Icon by Lucy O’Brien (book)

The Prodigy - Fat of the Land (and its album art by JAKe Detonator)

Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire

Rage Against The Machine - Renegades

Beck - Sea Change

Nirvana - Nevermind

Nirvana - In Utero

Nirvana - Unplugged

‘Tis the season! From wholesome feel-good classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” to vaguely off-color classics like “National Lampoon’s Christmas” and “Love, Actually” to flat-out misanthropic filth like “Bad Santa” or “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” there are are a lot of movies about, or at least, involving Christmas. So, let’s talk about some favorites, some less favorite, and some movie franchises set in universes where Christmas doesn’t exist that we’ve somehow forced into our holiday rotation.

Intro includes clips from It’s a Wonderful Life, Bad Santa, Die Hard, A Christmas Story and Angels With Filthy Souls (the fake gangster movie from Home Alone, not to confused with Angels with Dirty Faces, which is an actual film)

In 1996, Star Wars was in a weird spot. The Original Trilogy was a long time ago, and the Prequel Trilogy was still far, far away, but thanks to the rapidly expanding Expanded Universe in the form of books, comics and games, fans had plenty keeping them busy. So, to capitalize on this, and test the waters for interest in a new movie, Lucasfilm did the next best thing to making a movie: making everything BUT a movie, with Shadows of the Empire, a multimedia project that took the form of a novel, a comic series, a Nintendo 64 game, a score, multiple toy lines, scale model kits, and even a pop-up book. Filling in the blanks between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, it was the most coordinated assault Star Wars fans had seen since the Battle of Endor, and it arrived just as we were getting into that galaxy far, far away in a big way. So, let’s look back on why this was so special, what worked, what didn’t, and what’s made its way back into the official canon.

Intro contains clips from Clerks, a Kenner Shadows of the Empire action figure commercial (voiced by Mark Hammil), a promotional video for Shadows of the Empire and an Arakyd Viper Imperial Probe Droid.

This week, we’re joined by our pal Scott Bromley to discuss one of the most beloved fantasy realms ever created by a fast food restaurant’s marketing teams: McDonaldland. Okay, so, maybe the food isn’t healthy, and the play structure is a deathtrap at best, and the Happy Meal toys and packaging are a blight on landfills, but at least Ronald McDonald, Grimace and The Hamburglar are pretty cool, right?

Intro contains clips from various creepy McDonald's commercials. In case it's not abundantly clear, this episode is in no way sponsored, affiliated, endorsed, or approved of by McDonald's in any way shape or form.

This week, we're tackling something that's probably too broad of a subject to fit in one episode, and which is something of a moving target, but which definitely rules. We share some personal anecdotes, as well as various trials, tribulations and existential dilemmas posed by creating another human being. (Sorry if this episode description is a little scatterbrained, while writing it, my kid needed help going to the bathroom, then insisted I let her brush my hair, and then wanted me to look up how to say "high five" in German. Apparently, it's "gib mir fünf," but also not really a thing people do in Germany. -Max)

Intro contains clips from The Empire Strikes Back, Kindergarten Cop and the trailer for Mr. Mom, which hasn't aged very well.

Slime has existed for all of time in some form, probably. The first slime ever was primordial ooze which many believe was made of random earth slop that came together to form life. Slime as a toy was first introduced by Mattel in 1976 and it was literally just a plastic garbage can full of slime for kids over 5 and was labeled as “gooey, drippy, oozey, cold, ‘n clammy” It was mostly made of guar gum and PVA glue. Mattel went on to put all sorts of shit in this stuff, like fake bugs, eyeballs, and other small horrors. Since then, practically every action figure line has incorporated some slime-related playset or feature, and in more recent years, it underwent a surprising renaissance among a whole new demographic, other than disgusting little boys. Let’s wax (and ooze) nostalgic for our favorite gelatinous substance.`

Intro contains clips from a late 70s local news clip, Ghostbusters, Nickelodeon’s You Can’t Do That On Television, “I’m The Slime” by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and commercials for Mattel’s Masters of the Universe Slime Pit playset and Playmates Toys’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Flushinator playset.

Hoo hoo hoo. Okay, so maybe Jabba isn't exactly a role model, or particularly family-friendly, but that slimy piece of worm-ridden filth is one of our favorite parts of Star Wars, both in-universe as a terrifying villain, and behind-the-scenes as a completely absurd achievement in special effects in both practical and CGI forms. We delve into our first exposure to Jabba, reflect on why we love him so much, and share some of the weirder Jabba items from our respective collections of toys and other crap.

Greetings, true believers! Long before the Marvel Universe was the multimedia pop-culture behemoth it is today, it was primarily relegated to the world of paper products: comics, obviously, but also trading cards - which was some of our earliest exposure to countless colorful characters. We revisit some of our favorites, from Fleer Ultra X-Men to Marvel Masterpieces, and dig into some of the history of this collecting phenomenon, as well as the influence it had on us as dorky art kids.
Intro contains clips of The Simpsons, X-Men: The Animated Series and Stan Lee's introduction to the Marvel Action Hour.

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.”

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

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.

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.

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! 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.

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! 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! 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.