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After working in the book business for a decade people are sometimes shocked to hear I wasn't much of a reader growing up. I had my handful of favorite books: Hatchet, Maniac Magee, and Where The Red Fern Grows to name a few. But aside from the classics I really couldn't be bothered to read unless it was forced on me. That didn't stop my parents from buying me books now and then, especially during the Goosebumps craze of the early 90's. I had probably 6-10 different R.L. Stine titles including one unique one called Escape From the Carnival of Horrors. Unique, meaning it wasn't just your standard spooky story...it had a twist. As part of the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" series, it was advertised to have "over 20 different scary endings" and as the reader, you got to choose where you wanted to go next (usually ending in your untimely demise). Admittedly, I never really "finished" Carnival of Horrors. I remember finding the end of a few stories but I can't say I ever completed every scary ending. We can probably b

The internet is full of terrible things. Let's be real here, it can be a horrible place sometimes. But every now and then you can stumble upon something that makes the internet a better place. Something that you didn't know you needed, but now that you've found it you wondered how you went so long without it. This week we're talking about one of those things. Alex and I have over 20 years of theme park experience between the two of us (Yes. Alex accounts for around 18 of those years but the numbers don't lie). And after 20 years in the business it's fair to say we (Alex) have seen and done most everything you could imagine. So when we stumbled upon @FakeThemePark and the hilarious yet painfully accurate satire contained within, it was love at first sight. Created by former Universal Studios tour guide , @FakeThemePark "is a fictional, unnamed park that combines all the best – and all the very worst – of Disneyland, Universal Studios, SeaWorld, and Six Flags. Its Twitter and Facebook accounts contain daily pos

This week is about the little guys. The ones who spent their entire lives training and rising through the ranks of elite tactical outfits only to get destroyed in seconds by a literal god. The ones who have to clean up the messes when the superheroes have finished their business. The ones who don't have cool names, outfits, or superpowers. The ones who spend most of their days standing around guarding a door or playing Galaga on a tiny computer screen. The real heroes. This one is for you, fellas. We also talked about TV seeing as it's in our logo, on our business card, and tagged in every episode. So we figured it would be good to touch on some recent shows with our good pal and longtime friend of the show Mike D. And it was good. Enjoy! -Jr.

It's been a minute since we last talked about anything resembling RPG/tabletop gameplay. So we thought it would be a good idea to absolutely flood you with an hour of RPG/tabletop gameplay featuring two different guests running two different crowdfunding campaigns for their two different, but amazing projects. First up is someone who may sound a as we had the honor of speaking to him a couple of years ago when we learned about the art of hand carved wood pressings. But now Drew Meger is back and he's here to give us the inside info on his new project "" and how he's managed to surpass his goal by over 200% in just a couple of weeks. Following Drew and his High Strangeness Zine is a new friend and designer of his own wildly successful campaign. Tanner Yarrow of Yarro Studios launched his first Kickstarter just a few days ago but has already raised over $200,000 for his and he's showing no sign of slowing down. As of this writing both of these campaigns have just about 2ish weeks left to go so if Drew and Tan

This is one of those episodes that was spawned purely off of a conversation that happened 2 hours prior to recording it. That's how you know it's going to be a good one. While driving home from our pal Brett's art show at Comics N' More this afternoon, Alex and I had some time to reflect on some casual comic shop talk we had participated in. The premise was simple: some people think Cyclops is cool. Other people think Cyclops is not cool. Many valid points and verbal jabs later the joke was made: "Oh, well you're Cyclops apologist anyways." Which got us thinking. What characters within the multiple comic book universes are we apologists for? Also, what the hell does apologist mean? The answers might shock you. Enjoy! -Jr.

, Zach was our guest when the news of "Batfleck" first broke. Three(ish) movies and multiple "Rotten" scores later, the Ben Affleck Batman-era has come to an end. It wasn't all bad. And it definitely wasn't all good. But it happened and now it's time to talk about it. -Jr.

Ok. So I made it to Texas and back without dying which feels like a win. Despite all of the things my brain was telling me in the weeks leading up to the trip, not one of the four planes I had to take off and land in crashed. So it seems everything is coming up Jayare these days. With that out of the way we're back with our regularly scheduled programming. Joining us this week are two incredibly talented women who are currently making their mark in the YouTube world with their amazing makeup tutorial channels. Kae and Lauren aka "" and "" are two artists who regularly work with Alex during the haunt season making people look beautiful and dead. Added bonus? They're also seasoned YouTube creators with dozens of tutorial and transformation videos under their respective belts. Take a peek at their channels and maybe toss a like or two their way if you dig what you see. Maybe even subscribe if you'd want to see more? I'm not quite sure how YouTube works but from what everyone else says at the end of their videos

Friends, I'm dropping part two of our Spider-Man extravaganza a little earlier than usual as I'm due to be on a plane to Texas in about 6 hours. I'd like to think this is a welcome thing as I'm hoping you're all eagerly awaiting the finale of our Spider-Talk, but if you haven't had a chance to finish up part 1 yet, don't worry. This will be here waiting for you once you're ready. As expected, Colin is back with us and the SPOILERS for all things Spider-Man both past and present are pretty heavy this week. We hope you enjoyed our Spider-Themed two-parter as much as we did. Going back and reminiscing about all the old memories and growing up with the wall-crawler was a blast. Plus it gave me a good excuse to dig out this ancient hoodie from my early high school days. I mean, seriously. Check this thing out: No one can say I didn't have amazing taste when I was 16. Anyways, I need to get some sleep so I can have enough energy make it to the airport in a few hours. Enjoy! -Jr.

It's time to talk about Spider-Man. We hope you're ready to listen to us talk about Spider-Man because apparently we had a lot to say. So much that we needed two episodes to contain it all hence the whole "Part 1" thing. Be on the lookout for part 2 later on. We spent the majority of Part 1 discussing the recent, Golden Globe-winning "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" film and it probably goes without saying that this episode contains MAJOR SPOILERS. If you haven't seen it just take our recommendation and see the damn thing; then come back and listen to us. Even if you don't plan on coming back to listen just see the movie. You owe it to yourself. Also, it wouldn't have felt right to have intense, in-depth Spider-Man discussion without Colin in the studio. As long as I've known the man he's been a constant supporter of the web-head and you'd be hard pressed to find someone able to speak as passionately about the character. So yeah, it's time to talk about Spider-Man. Tune in next week for part 2 where the di

This week Alex and I decided it would be fun to welcome our dear listeners into the new year with a nice round of "Wait, that was this year??" because for whatever reason 2018 was just one of those instances where everything felt like it actually happened 3 years ago. And in a break from all the other "Best of" lists that you're probably being flooded with, we took a different approach and discussed the things we finally got around to in 2018. Everyone has those one or five or ten things they've been meaning to do/experience and Alex and I were no exception. Did Alex finally check out that TV show he's had in his queue for the last 4 years? Was I finally able to sit down long enough to watch that 3 hour movie everyone always raves about? Tune in to find out! Anyway, 2018 is over. 2019 is here. Let's have some fun on 52 more episodes, shall we? Enjoy! -Jr.

There might be more here later. Maybe. It depends on how exhausted I am because I'm literally about to run out the door to watch some of the best people I know get married to each other. (Congrats Hannah & Will!) But, we figured since it's the end of the year it would be a good time to put together a fun compilation of our Year 6 b-sides. So that's exactly what Alex did and that's exactly what you're about to listen to. Happy new year, ya'll. Be safe out there. Enjoy! -Jr.

Our last episode before the holiday festivities begin (and probably 2nd to last episode of the year?) featured an artist that we recently started following after a simple Inktober piece popped up on an Instagram feed. A few months and many more amazing art posts later, we had the privilege of talking with the Kentucky-based artist herself: Tressa Bowling. A lifelong artist and designer, Tressa has had work featured in projects like "Kentucky Kaiju", "Cash & Carrie", and her own webcomic "". She's a veteran of the Kentucky/Ohio comic convention scene and currently spends a ton of time engaging with her fans via her . This week Tressa gave us a rundown of her beginnings in the art world, a crash course in running a Patreon, and a lesson in basic United States geography. Check out some of her social media platforms , and and click the links above for some webcomic and Patreon goodness. Enjoy! -Jr.

There's a lot that I want to say about the new Smash Brothers game and most of it is positive and most of it is probably pretty expected. But I'm bad at writing and also I'm leaving for Boston in an hour to go see Ingrid Michaelson sing Christmas songs for a few hours which should prove to be pretty neat. I did manage to get some thoughts out on the new Smash Brothers during the episode, though. So at least there's that. This week we're diving head first into the deep end of the FGC pool as we chat with our resident "Fighting Game Expert" Ken (Yes, that Ken. Of fame). With the Capcom Cup upon us, the new Smash Brothers getting released, and SonicFox winning eSports the player of the year award....we had plenty to discuss. I gotta go, tho. It's time go get hella festive up in Boston. Enjoy! -Jr.

Our 2018 convention gauntlet has come to an end and through all the ups and downs I'd have to say we had a pretty great year of cons. While we may have missed out on one or two of our usual shows, we did get a chance to check out in their place. In the past it was almost always NYCC that put the metaphorical bow on our convention schedule but the last two years has seen the new PAX Unplugged show take over that responsibility and I think it's doing a spectacular job so far. was packed with stories of my wife and me making our way to an unknown city with the intent of attending as many panels and seeing as many games as possible only to become mildly obsessed with the Omegathon and the local Reading Terminal Market. Long story short: It was different and amazing. This year my wife bestowed the honor of "dealing with Jr at a convention" over to our great pal Colin as we made our way back down to the city where they greased up the light poles that one time. Much fun was had. Many games were played (about 100%

I'm heading out to Philly in about 9 hours for PAX Unplugged so I apologize in advance for the brevity of this post. I'll spare you the usual fanfare and fluff and get right down to business: We actually followed up on a promise this week and we're very proud of ourselves. Back in June we had the pleasure of speaking with cosplayer Raymond Ramos and after getting to maybe half of the topics we actually wanted to talk about it, was quickly decided we needed to talk to this man again sometime. Today is that sometime. The man known as "Cosplay Ray" was generous enough to give us even more of his valuable time so we could talk his ear off about cosplay, conventions, rising above criticism and tons more. If you missed out on his first appearance be sure to check that out . Enjoy! -Jr.

In the 6 years we've been doing this we've had some missed connections. Sometimes a guest just doesn't pan out or maybe we couldn't get the timing quite right and eventually the idea falls apart. It happens. It's a part of the game (you know, that podcast game that apparently exists or something). At the end of the day these episodes aren't gonna make themselves so we just have to move on. This week we thought it would be neat to kind of "revisit" some of those connections that never actually happened. I mean they were things we wanted to show you anyway...so why not talk about them, right? Sounds fun. Also I spent a good amount of time complaining about a small, not-required subquest of a nearly perfect videogame. And that's always a good time. Enjoy! -Jr.

Our dear friend Ryan Vella is back in action this week and, this might shock you, we're talking about video games. Specifically video games played at the competitive level. You know, that level that we could only dream of achieving no matter how hard we play yet it seems like it just comes naturally to these 18-23 year olds? That's the one. For those looking for some deep dives on the current Fortnite meta and the insane success Epic Games has been having....you've come to the wrong place. I think between the 3 of us we have a grand total of maybe 10 games of Fortnite under our belts so it's probably better if we stay away from that one. We have, however, played some Overwatch. And Vella has played some League. So we're going to talk about those games instead and attempt to sound like we know what we're talking about. Business as usual. Enjoy! -Jr.

This week we have artist Marc Lapierre in the studio and we're pretty excited about it for a few reasons: First, Marc is a rad artist and Alex and I never tire of talking with rad artists. Probably has something to do with the whole "we wish we could do what you can do" thing. Also they tend to be great people in general. Second: Marc is the artist of the webcomic "The SuperFogeys" and along with writer Brock Heasley they've managed to put out 700+ comics over the years. Now, it appears, it is time to start collecting these comics in the form of a book. Enter: The Kickstarter.  With just a few days left the 'Fogeys crew has smashed their goal and are now working on unlocking those sweet stretch goals. You can check out the campaign and if you like what you see you can also check out Marc's Instagram page . We hope you dig this week's episode. Huge thanks to Marc for sacrificing his crisp New England Saturday and spending the afternoon with us and hopefully we'll be able to chat with him again soon! Enjoy! -J

Will and Jon are both guests this week and I can't think of a better way to close out the spooky season than to have two of the spookiest people I know on for a chat. Seeing as it's currently Halloween we tried to cram as much spooky content into one episode as possible. I think we did a pretty decent job since the next hour or so of your life is about to be consumed by terrifying ghost stories, childhood Halloween memories, and more random facts about "Devil's Night" than you ever cared to learn about. Huge shout-out to all the guests who came on over the last month and made time to talk to a couple of dummies who like scary things. We hope you're able to finally get some rest now that the season has come to an end. Plus, all the Halloween stuff goes on sale tomorrow, right? Gotta rest up for them deals. Happy Halloween, ya'll. Enjoy! -Jr.

Brett is arguably one of the most talented people we know. The guy can draw, dance, beatbox, and sing. He's an accomplished martial artist, he's done stunts in both film and live action shows. He can act, he can model, and at the end of the day he's one of the best friends you could ask for. He also knows a shocking amount of information about the mysterious "Mothman". Apparently, it's more than just a movie from 2002 that you watched with your friend 15 years ago that you still don't fully understand to this day. Apparently, it's a lot more than that. And seeing as we're coming to the end of our spooky month of madness we saw it as the perfect excuse to stick a microphone in Brett's face for the ten-millionth time. I'm almost positive he didn't mind. Anyway, Brett is back this week. And he's teaching us about the extremely spooky legend of The Mothman. Enjoy! -Jr.