I loved that by the end Scott was making up excuses to not have three awful people come over to his house to watch YouTube, kill his dog, and take nude pics of the widow Kulap.

For the Howl folks, the two live CBB eps from SXSW are total gems. Loved the mix of new and old characters, especially the return of Jessica McKenna's It's Your Boy Troy and the debut of Seth Morris as the guy in charge of Keeping Austin Weird. Between this and his recent studio appearance, John Hodgman is making a…

It's a cliche to suggest CBB character crossovers, but I'd be on board with Willie Mapleton, Big Chunky Bubbles and this new Jordan Black character ganging up to irritate Scott for an episode.

I'm not a great fan of Jamie Denbo in general, but her Anne Frank was something special. That episode wound up being genuinely moving in a way I never expected.

Hey, it's that guy from the Hollywood Handbook theme song!

My wife is a government-employed environmental scientist and my kid goes to public school. High fives all around!

I've always counted myself lucky that my kid never went through a Caillou phase, but every time I see the show get trashed (which happens a lot - people haaaaaate Caillou), I recall my friend telling me that it was the only show that connected with his special needs son when he was going through tough times as a…

I've long since given up on the pipe dream of making a living as an arts writer in the 21st Century, but at least I'm able to console myself with getting occasional, meager paychecks from various arts institutions for writing about their projects. For a lot of years now it's been the only thing in my professional life…

I haven't brought myself to check out the You Made it Weird appearance, but I listened to that Analyze Phish when it came out and remember being pretty amazed at how raw it turned out to be.

I've been re-listening to a lot of old Harris podcasts, and there's a joke about him dying in virtually every one. It's the type of thing that wouldn't even register as a running bit if he hadn't died, but in hindsight it plays as really spooky.

I like Paul Rust, but few podcast people make me giddier than Gillian Jacobs. She's just about the gamest gal in the game.

I feel kind of the same about the intrusive nature of the project, but for me the actual hunt is secondary to the fascinating biography of Richard Simmons that keeps unfolding. I look at Taberski's quest as something of a framing device for a pretty great character sketch of a weird and hugely sympathetic…

I took a long road trip with a friend this week and we traded off podcasts along the way, me evangelizing for comedy and he for true crime. I don't think either of us won the other over but after a couple of episodes of Sword and Scale, I can say I have some issues with a host who plays unedited audio of teenagers…

I'm not kidding even a little when I say the 1-800-I-FEEL-OK hotline was a massively formative influence on my youthful appreciation for absurdist humor. The summer of '93 was all about Conan O'Brien, The Dead Milkmen, They Might Be Giants, and OK Soda for me. It wasn't even effective marketing in my case, since the…

The Chinese restaurant up the street from me got shut down a few years ago after smashing the city health inspector's record for most violations recorded in a single visit. It sat empty for a long time and every time I passed it I hoped like heck that something cool would move in, somewhere I could stroll to for…

Nameless Replacement 2020!

Mainlined the Seth Morris Radio Project. Holy hell, that's some pitch-perfect spoofery. Granted, terrestrial radio may not be the most sacred of cows, but pretty sublime listening nonetheless .

"Shoot for the magic trunk!"

My first thought also. There are probably a lot of scenarios where I would think less of a band who faked their involvement in a real-life domestic homicide and rode the wave of publicity just to make a snide point about the overly sensationalized news media, but this is not one of those scenarios.

There are a couple of very McCartney-esque bass lines on that first album, and some of the vocals sound a bit like George Harrison, but yeah, it would require quite a stretch. I love the heck out of that album regardless, though. It has two songs about making friends with aliens, one about the building of the first…