For the first time this season, Paul and Arlo have lost the plot. That’s right, the beloved Gobbledygeek freestyle episode has returned, new and improved for 2024, including such scintillating subjects as: Back pain! Stomach bugs! Car crashes! Country mouse Arlo took a trip to New York City, taking a bite out of the Big Apple for the very first tim…

You’re a better podcaster than us, Michael Holland. That’s right, the City of Angels’ very own boy wonder is back to take Paul and Arlo to film school. The That Was Then classic gracing our screens this time is George Stevens’ 1939 adventure film Gunga Din, starring Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The gang discusses the film’…

Around and around we go, where we’ll stop–only Arlo knows! For this month’s Four-Color Flashback, Gobbledygeek’s enfant terrible has chosen Junji Ito’s 1998-99 horror manga Uzumaki. Will Paul ever forgive him? On hand to find out is The Deli Counter of Justice co-conspirator Eric Sipple, who will be appearing on FCF episodes for infinity. The gang …

Oh, what a tangled web we Weavers! For this month’s Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo trap Eric Sipple in their web once more, this time to discuss Simon Spurrier & Dylan Burnett’s Lovecraftian mob story Weavers. Despite being big fans of Spurrier’s (author of past FCF favorites Six-Gun Gorilla and The Spire), Paul and Arlo aren't quite sure what…

As they say, don’t drink and podcast, but here Paul and Arlo are talking about 2004’s Sideways for another round of That Was Then. Alexander Payne’s acclaimed dramedy follows alcoholic wine connoisseur Miles as he takes his bonehead best buddy Jack on a road trip through Santa Barbara the week before Jack’s due to get hitched. It is the Fox Searchl…

We’re speeding away at breakneck speed with another installment of our That Was Then series. This time Paul and Arlo are witnesses to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a 1974 subway heist thriller that is exactly what it says on the tin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But our boys do struggle to find much to say, choosing to highlight…

For the next installment in our That Was Then series, Paul and Arlo cast their minds back to 1964–a year that predates both of them, though the era’s Beatlemania might as well be Arlo’s spiritual birthplace. This time, they’re popping paisley parasols for Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a sung-through opera told in the style of a Hollywo…

Who ya gonna call? Gobbledygeek! For the first installment of our That Was Then series, taking a look back at movies celebrating anniversaries in 2024, Paul and Arlo take residence at Spook Central for 1984’s Ghostbusters. Turning a frightful 40 this year, Ivan Reitman’s classic comedy began as a high-concept riff on the “slobs v. snobs” template m…

Look, up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the Gobbledygeek season 15 premiere! Breaking from vaguely defined tradition, Paul and Arlo are kicking off the season with a Four-Color Flashback, and their pal Eric Sipple is on hand to help turn the pages. Arlo has chosen to subject Paul and Eric to the classic Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale collab Superm…

You’ll slash your eye out, Kidder! To close out our truncated season, it’s a Twisted Christmas double feature, as Paul and Arlo explore both of Canadian auteur Bob Clark’s yuletide classics: 1974’s proto-slasher Black Christmas and the 1983 staple A Christmas Story. The boys separately find each of these movies to be deeply annoying…but who couldn’…

What is there for a young, mixed-race woman to do in feudal Japan? Reject all traces of her femininity, assume the masculine identity of a ronin, and seek revenge on any of the four white men in the whole country who could potentially be her father. Is Mizu a demonic half-breed, an enlightened warrior, or something else altogether? Created by Micha…

We’re crash-landing back into regular podcasting with the Max original animated series Scavengers Reign. Created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner, the seeds of Scavengers Reign were planted in an Adult Swim short before blossoming into a brilliant sci-fi series teeming with surrealist detours and bits of body horror. Paul and Arlo rave about …

500 episodes! Can you believe it? What incredibly special way will we choose to commemorate this event??? By, well, just having a regular episode discussing Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with our good friend Eric Sipple. At one point this past summer, we weren’t sure another episode was ever going to happen, so this seems like a fitting celeb…

You have to believe Gobbledygeek is magic. Or at the very least, that Paul and Arlo will revel in cinematic magic on the latest Geek Challenge. Robert Greenwald's infamous 1980 flop Xanadu is paired with David Lynch's acclaimed 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive for a fantastical discussion of filmic fantasy. The boys argue that Xanadu should not be…

In brightest day, in blackest night, no listener shall escape the Four-Color Flashback’s might! In an unusual turn of events, Paul has selected a DC book–but, of course, it’s an unusual one. Published under DC’s Young Animal imprint, curated by My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, Far Sector is a Green Lantern murder mystery written by N.K. Jemisin (i…

Are you feeling “Homesick”? Are you all “Tangled Up in Blue”? Dogged by a “Simple Twist of Fate” or, perhaps, sippin’ on gin and “Orange Juice”? Then boy, do we have the Geek Challenge for you! Dipping their toes in musical waters for the first time in a while, our boys are listening to one of each other’s favorite albums. Paul has challenged Arlo …

For this month’s Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo tackle a blindspot from one of their favorite writers. Gene Luen Yang, author of Gobbledyfaves like American Born Chinese and Avatar: The Last Airbender, tells the brutal story of the Boxer Rebellion in Boxers & Saints. The graphic novel duology delves into complex subjects like faith, spirituali…

Love can spread like a fungus throughout the soul, eradicating any shred of self-control. For a thorough depiction of that sentiment, we turn to HBO’s The Last of Us, a TV adaptation of the blockbuster video game series. Joining Paul and Arlo to talk everything mushroom are authors and pop culture enthusiasts Dale and Ensley Guffey, stopping by the…

You remind me of the pod…the pod with the geeks. Paul and Arlo fall down the rabbit hole of another Geek Challenge, this time pitting Jim Henson’s 1986 cult classic Labyrinth against Jan Švankmajer’s 1988 headtrip Alice. Henson’s film finds Jennifer Connelly dancing with David Bowie and a variety of Muppets as she attempts to rescue her baby brothe…

Time to rise, roar, and revolt as Paul and Arlo engage in some extreme piggybacking with S.S. Rajamouli’s RRR. This alt-history epic is the rare Indian film to make a splash in the Western world, and our boys approach it as only two ignorant white guys can: with almost no knowledge of Indian culture or film! Nevertheless, they are in love with the …

Got a hankerin’ for god meat? Well, pull out your giant lightsaber knife and feast on a new Four-Color Flashback! For the first FCF of 2023, Paul and Arlo set out at warp speed to seek enlightenment with Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo’s We Only Find Them When They’re Dead. The BOOM! Studios series, whose 15-issue run wrapped in December, is set hundred…

We’re back, baby! After a longer than expected hiatus, Gobbledygeek has returned for season 14. That’s right, we’re up to 14 seasons of Paul and Arlo babbling on about any manner of nonsense–which they continue to do in this freestyle season premiere. 2023 has come in like a lion and is likely to go out like one, so we find our boys licking their w…

Is that a tree branch on your face, or are you just lying to me? An extra-long Gobbledygeek season finale takes root with a discussion of Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson’s new stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio. Paul and Arlo discuss the numerous ways del Toro has made Carlo Collodi’s immortal tale his own, chiefly by making it a study of mo…

Hang your stockings by the chimney, roast some chestnuts on that open fire, and prepare yourself for a very special Twisted Christmas installment. Our annual yuletide derangement has morphed into a Geek Challenge, featuring two obviously similar films: Paul has challenged Arlo to Michael Curtiz’s holly jolly classic White Christmas (1954), and in t…

Now that rock star biopics have peaked with Elvis, what else can the genre do but get Weird? Dare to be stupid with Paul, Arlo, and Alex Jonestown Massacre guitarist Kenn Edwards as they discuss Weird: The Al Yankovic story. Everyone’s favorite accordionist parodies Oscar bait bologna to tell a fact-free version of his own life story, starring obvi…

Aho, podcast listeners! To celebrate Native American Heritage Month, Paul and Arlo check in on the latest season of Reservation Dogs, possibly the best show on TV. It would be hard to top Rez Dog’s freshman year, a revelatory season filled with joy, pain, and a whole bunch of shitasses. Yet that’s exactly what Sterlin Harjo and his collaborators ha…

Listen to Gobbledygeek and live forever. This week, in a stealth continuation of this year’s Gobbledyween, Paul and Arlo head on down to New Orleans for Neil Jordan’s 1994 adaptation of Anne Rice’s classic Interview with the Vampire. Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, and Antonio Banderas are the most beautiful men anyone could have cast as immortals in the mi…

We all get lost, every now and then. Most of us don’t get quite as lost as the three film students at the center of The Blair Witch Project, a massive hit in 1999 whose reputation among the average moviegoer has also taken a massive hit. If you ask Arlo, though, it’s one of the greatest horror films ever made–and he tells Paul exactly why, as they …

Leaves are on the ground, blood is on the screen–it’s time for a (very late) Gobbledyween! Gobbledygeek’s annual horror-thon returns for an abbreviated run, kicking things off with Mike Flanagan’s 2021 Netflix miniseries Midnight Mass. What at first seems like a riff on ‘Salem’s Lot–a vampire ingratiates himself into a tiny coastal community–become…

For his third film, Jordan Peele looks to the skies–and what he finds doesn’t want to be seen. This week, Paul and Arlo say yup to Nope, Peele’s celebration and evisceration of spectacle. The boys discuss the widening of Peele’s horizons in the summer blockbuster mode; how the film reveres Spielberg while offering a pointed rebuttal to Jaws; Daniel…

Sing, sing a song; sing of oblivion, it’s 36 issues long! For this month’s first (?) Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo are harmonizing about Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici’s 2018-22 Image series Oblivion Song. It’s an alien invasion saga that questions the very concepts of “alien” and “invasion,” regarding its human and Kuthaal characters w…

No, this isn’t a dream (or even a nightmare): The Sandman, the iconic Vertigo comic book series created by Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, and Mike Dringenberg, has finally been adapted for television. Paul, Arlo, and The Deli Counter of Justice co-creator Eric Sipple are all huge fans of the comics, and they use their familiarity with the Dreaming to dive…

From Tupelo to Memphis, from Hollywood to Vegas, Elvis Presley conquered America–and now, telling his story, an Australian filmmaker has conquered the biopic. The operatic, maximalist, subtlety-eschewing Baz Luhrmann returns to the screen with Elvis, delivering the glitzy, excessive tribute this mythical/kitsch-ical icon deserves. Paul and Arlo sha…

For another freestyle, Paul and Arlo are getting weird. As in “Weird Al” Yankovic, whom Arlo recently saw with their good buddy Kenn Edwards. Arlo recounts the concert moment he’d been waiting for all his life, then Paul discusses the joys and frustrations of the first-ever virtual Slayage conference. Plus, brief ruminations on Nope, Thor: Love and…

Listener, we would have words with thee! As the Odinson and the Mighty Thor swing their hammers onto the big screen in Thor: Love and Thunder, Paul and Arlo revisit some of the film’s influences for this month’s Four-Color Flashback. The boys dig deep into the early part of Jason Aaron’s run on the golden-haired Avenger, with Thor: God of Thunder #…

Paul and Arlo are going slightly mad. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the MCU’s latest trip through the titular multiverse, fracturing and reshaping reality to meet the franchise’s corporate needs. If that sounds a little unenthused, well, what can we say? The boys didn’t love this one. Paul, ever the optimist, discusses why the MCU’…

For this month’s Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo roll the Die to discuss Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ dark tale of a group of one-time RPG nerds getting sucked into the world of the game. Gillen has described the book as “goth Jumanji,” and there’s some truth to that–these characters feel everything, hard. Luckily, so do we, and so does sp…

In a multiverse without limitations…you have chosen to listen to Gobbledygeek. Let that sink in. While you do, you’ll also get to hear Paul and Arlo’s latest Geek Challenge! Arlo sort-of challenges Paul to The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once, the year’s big breakout movie, starring Michelle Yeoh as infinite versions of herself; and Paul …

Travelers of the night, welcome to Paul and Arlo’s latest MCUTV discussion. They join hands once again with Hollywood wonder boy Michael Holland, and together they summon Moon Knight. Oscar Isaac joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Marc Spector, the human avatar of Egyptian god Khonshu, and…well, is he Marc Spector? Is he Steven Grant? Or is he …

It’s a freestyle episode, boys and girls! You know what that means: the Dragon’s Milk is flowing, the tangents are plentiful, and Paul and Arlo just can’t get enough Dick’s. Now, now, get your mind out of the gutter–we’re talking Dick’s, the iconic Seattle burger chain. In addition to chowing down on their favorite regional burgers (Arlo shouts out…

Sit back and say ‘Aaaahhhh!’ For this month’s Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo take a trip to the dentist with Raina Telgemeier’s 2010 autobiographic novel Smile. Raina looks back on how her orthodontic woes served as a marker for her adolescence, from the loss of her two front teeth in 6th grade circa 1989 through finally ditching those braces …

Riddle me this, riddle me that…who's afraid of Matt Reeves' The Bat(man)? Not Paul and Arlo, that's for sure, at least not with Project Batman vet Kenn Edwards at their side. There's a lot of ground to cover, beginning with: Did we need the 897th Batman movie? Of course not, but since we're here, the gang discusses Robert Pattinson's turn as the Ca…

And you run, you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking…well, before it sets, Paul and Arlo have a few MCU movies they need to discuss. Due to that pesky pandemic, we’ve gotten behind on the Marvel Cinematic Universe here at Gobbledygeek, but fear not! In this special, super-sized episode, Paul and Arlo discuss three mighty Marvel movies: S…

What happens when a child is born who will invent immortality? According to Ram V and Felipe Andrade's The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, Death is fired from her job, is cast into a mortal body, and attempts to find and murder this child. Oh, she also dies a lot. On this month's Four-Color Flashback, Paul & Arlo discuss the book's unique approach to I…

It's Ladies' Night on Gobbledygeek! By which we mean we've got a Geek Challenge featuring Richard Donner's 1985 medieval fantasy epic Ladyhawke and Greta Gerwig's 2017 millennial coming-of-age tale Lady Bird. What do these two films have in common? They're both about transformation, of course! In Lady Bird, Saoirse Ronan transforms into a young wom…

For Paul and Arlo, existential crises and comic books often go hand-in-hand. Such is the case for this week’s freestyle, wherein Paul’s rumination on the erosion of his teenage self-confidence leads into a discussion of superhero mags. Paul tells Goblin punks to fuck off as he rocks out to Cody Ziglar and Justin Mason’s Spider-Punk, goes undercover…

Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! Paul and Arlo set sail for a discussion of David Jenkins’ pirate rom-com Our Flag Means Death. The new HBO Max series, a very loose telling of the history between Stede “The Gentleman Pirate” Bonnet and Edward “Blackbeard” Teach, begins as a silly romp very much in the vein of executive producer/star Taika Waititi…

Sometimes a gorilla is just a gorilla. Sometimes, though, that gorilla–righteously bearing arms though he may be–is a gateway to a story about the power and fluidity of narrative. For this month’s Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo go ape for Si Spurrier and Jeff Stokely’s Six-Gun Gorilla, a sci-fi Western published by BOOM! Studios in 2013. The b…

Somethin’s comin’, somethin’ good: this week, Paul and Arlo pirouette through a discussion of Steven Spielberg’s new take on West Side Story, nominated for Best Picture at this year’s Oscars. Is it a spoiler to say they love it? The boys discuss how Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s changes enrich the text, why choreographer Justin Peck’s b…

Why use old code to mirror something new? Writer/producer Tilly Bridges is back to continue last week’s discussion of The Matrix series. This time, she joins Paul and Arlo to chat about 2003’s anime anthology The Animatrix, which fits surprisingly well into the series’ trans allegory; and, for the bulk of this episode, The Matrix Resurrections. Lan…