Don Fargo and his new Fabulous Fargos (Ken Timbs and Pat Rose) with host Christopher Love (Bert Prentice) from a 1987 episode of World Organization Wrestling We’re happy to welcome back Al Getz (@AlGetzWrestling) to discuss the latest edition of his Charting the Territories books, this one covering 1971-1973 Gulf Coast Wrestling. We talk about the …

Young Tony Schiavone interviews Ole Anderson on WTBS in 1985. RIP Ole Anderson. We welcome back Beau James (@kingofkingsport) to the show for some wrestling history chat, including looking back at the lives of Ole Anderson and Mike Jones aka Virgil. We discuss Ole’s long career, as wrestling and booker in both Georgia and Charlotte. We talk about h…

L: Peter Wyngarde as Jason King. C: Jason Wyngarde and Jean Grey in Uncanny X-Men 132. R: Jason Wyngarde and Diana Rigg in The Avengers. Imitation and flattery, et cetera. It’s been a while, but we are happy as heck to welcome back writer, journalist and From the Sublime editor Iain Hepburn back to the show for a long chat about some classic Britis…

Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) in disguise. From Amadeus. Continuing our podcasts centering on biopics, we turn our attention to one of the best of the 1980s, Amadeus, directed by Milos Forman and adapted by Peter Schaffer from his play of the same name. It’s a look at the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Tom Hulce), through the lens of his rival, Ant…

Von Erichs vs Freebirds six-man match from 1984 David Von Erich Memorial Parade of Champions. It’s a same day turnaround for this holiday treat, as Justin Jones (@xPrimusPilusx) returns to the podcast to discuss The Iron Claw, the new movie about the Von Erich family, which we saw earlier today. There are plenty of spoilers (for a docudrama), so if…

Godzilla vs The Marvel Universe. From Godzilla 24 by Doug Moench, Herb Trimpe, et al. (c) 2023 Marvel Comics. After seven long years, we’re happy to welcome Zander Cannon (@zandercannon) to the pod to discuss the mad monster party, officially known as Godzilla Minus One. We basically go through the entire film plot point by plot point, so if you ha…

The famous 1974 photo of Exotic Adrian Streeet and his coal mining father. It’s always great to welcome back birthday twin Kevin Day (@kevinhunterday) to the show. First up, once I learned Kevin had been a fan of World of Sport wrestling growing up, I knew that would be the subject of his next appearance. Since he was casual fan watching, he brings…

The Sheik and Princess Salima, also known as Edward and Joyce Farhat. Who better to have on the show to discuss scary wrestlers for Halloween than the man who wrote a book about maybe the scariest of them all, The Sheik (Edward Farhat)? I’m happy to welcome for the first time on the show, author, historian and podcaster Brian R Solomon (@BrianRSolo…

Dust in the Wind. What happened to Michi’s (Kumiko Aso) friend? From Pulse (2001). It’s spooky season, so let’s have a review of famous 2001 J-horror film Pulse aka Kairo [Circuit], written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurasawa. It’s literally a “ghost in the machine” plot, as it appears a group of Japanese students have found out the dead are trying to…

It was a Starfield wedding and the old folks wished them well. I’m excited to welcome back Jason Plays (@jasonplaysNMS) to the show to discuss a variety of topics. First up, Starfield has been out for about a month now and we were both super looking forward to it. How has Jason found the game so far, his likes and dislikes, comparing it to both pas…

A murderers’ row of Whose Line panelists: Josie Lawrence, Paul Merton, Tony Slattery, Mike McShane. First off, get well soon to When It Was Cool head honcho Karl Stern, after his medical incident, as we know say these days. Onto the show, a love letter to one of my all-time favorite shows, the original, British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, …

The Cary Grant of Pigs, Arnold Ziffel. (c) 2023 MGM. We’re happy to welcome Daniel Budnik (@dannyslacks1) to the podcast to discuss an underrated comic great of the 1960s, Green Acres. Daniel wrote “From Beverly Hills to Hooterville,” an episode guide and analysis of the three shows created by Paul Henning in the 1960s: The Beverly Hillbillies, Pet…

On the 78th anniversary of the Atomic Bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, we look at some of the popular culture around that event. We start by discussing the 1980 song “Enola Gay,” by the 1980s British band Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark (OMD). We look at a brief history of the band, the success of the song both at the time and its historical legac…

An ad for the New York Cosmos that ran in DC Comics in 1977. We are happy to finally have Kieran Maguire (@kieranmaguire) from the Price of Football podcast on the show. Even though he only a few miles up the road in Philadelphia last week, this episode was a Trans-Atlantic recording, done both late night and early morning. While his teaching day j…

The Force of July, from their Who’s Who entry. (C) 2023 DC Comics Every year on American Independence Day, I post a picture of The Force of July on social media, both as cheeky humor, but also to make a small comment about 1980s comics and authoritarianism. This year, instead of that, I decided to do an episode devoted to the short-lived DC Comics …

The Plot looks back at the career of the late, great Alan Arkin, who recently passed away at the age of 89. We talk about his folk music career before getting into acting and then play some clips from a number of our favorite films in which he starred, from “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” to “Grosse Point Blank.” Did you know Ark…

Stanley meets The (well, a) Sandman. From Stanley and His Monster 1. (c) 2023 DC Comics. Inspired by the Sandman re-read that Joe and Todd are doing at Longbox Heroesv (@longboxheroes), we look at a tangentially-related series, the 1993 series Stanley and His Monster, by Phil Foglio. We give a brief history of Stanley’s creation, in the mid 1960s i…

If you come at him, you better not miss. Although we cover sports (and pseudo sports) here, we felt it was better to have our tribute to the late great Jim Brown, who passed away this week, was to analyze a small part of his popular culture career, by looking at some of his most-famous Blaxploitation films. Brown made two films as the Green Beret t…

My second favorite wrestling angle of all time. Eddie Gilbert buries Bill Watts. Amazingly, it’s taken almost eight years of the podcast to discuss officially discuss the Russian Flag Burial angle. It’s my second favorite angle of all-time and I once named a blog after it. I had to get a fellow Mid-South/UWF fan on the show, so I’m happy to welcome…

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones. From the Super Mario Brothers Movie. (c) 2023 Universal. With such a huge week for Nintendo, who else could we get to talk about it but Andre Segers (@andresegers) from GameXplain? Of course, we start with the juggernaut that is the Super Mario Brothers Movie. On the day of recording, it had just passed the $500…

Subliminal Messaging as seen by Reuben Flagg in American Flagg issue 1. (c) Howard Chaykin We take a look at the use of subliminal message in two classic 1980s pieces of science fiction - Howard Chaykin's American Flagg comic from 1983 and the original British pilot for Max Headroom from 1985. We discuss the history of each project, how subliminals…

Just another day in the Euclid Galaxy. No Man’s Sky screenshot. We’re happy to welcome video game streamer Jason Plays (@jasonplaysnms) to discuss, among many topics, our mutual love of No Man’s Sky. We talk about its notorious debut in 2016, rebound in 2018 and how it continues to grow in 2023. We also look about the free update strategy employed …

Kang meets Merlin in Strange Tales 134, July 1965, by Stan Lee and Bob Powell. (c) 2023 Marvel Comics. “The best laid schemes of mice and men…” To tie-in to both Valentine’s Day and the upcoming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania movie, the plan for the podcast was take a look at the wedding of Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne from Avengers 60. But that …

The March 1986 issue of Amazing Heroes, guest edited by Mark Waid. After many years, I’m happy to say we have got Mark Waid (@markwaid) as a guest. And what better subject to discuss, fresh off his new book Dark Crisis - Big Bang, than the concept of continuity and the multiverse. Why has the idea of multiple worlds become so popular in the last de…

The Natural Blonds, Ken Timbs and Pat Rose, with Chris Love (Bert Prentice) from WOW TV. in 1987. It’s been a while, but this is episode number four of the It’s a Family Affair episode of the podcast. We’re very happy to welcome to the show for the first time, and hopefully not the last, veteran wrestler Pat Rose. We go over a good chunk of Pat’s c…

Gene Autry and “Santa” (Hank Patterson” deliver Xmas presents in The Cowboys and the Indians. What better way to celebrate the holiday season than looking at two very loosely Christmas-themed singing cowboy pictures? First, it’s Roy Rogers and “Trail of Robin Hood.” There are no merry men or archery contests, but we do have a turkey shoot in a stor…

An original 1985 Starrcade VHS tape clam shell. Bought from the pages of PWI. I’m always happy to welcome back Beau James (@kingofkingsport) back to the show. Just in time for Thanksgiving, we’re going to talk about the Grandaddy of them all, Starrcade. Well, the shows that were held on Thanksgiving by Jim Crockett Promotions, from 1983-1987. We’re…

Batman and the Gray Ghost from BTAS episode “Beware the Gray Ghost.” The Plot returns with a tribute to Kevin Conroy, who sadly passed away on November 10, 2022 at the age of 66. In our corner of the popular culture universe, he’s best known for being the voice of Batman (and Bruce Wayne) in the DC Animated Universe starting with Batman the Animate…

The Original Ghostbusters. No, really. Bob Burns, Larry Storch and Forrest Tucker. To wrap up Hallowe’en Month at When It Was Cool, let’s look at some spooky 1970s Saturday morning TV shows. First, the original Ghostbusters from 1975. Spencer (Larry Storch), Tracy the Gorilla (Bob Burns) and Kong (Forrest Tucket) are bumbling detectives fighting va…

Al’s new book. Go buy it. We’re happy to welcome Al Getz (@AlGetzwrestling) back to the show to discuss a variety of topics, but most importantly his new book, Charting the Territories: The 1971-1973 LeRoy McGuirk Oklahoma/Louisiana Wrestling Almanac. We talk about the process of putting the book together from all of Al Getz’s into the 20+ year his…

The Ultraviolet team in their prison vault. Don’t call it a cemetery. The Plot Podcast in Hallowe’en Month at the When It Was Cool Network goes from tongue in cheek to deadly earnest. We’re joined by Odessa Steps Magazine contributor Justin Jones (@xPrimusPilusx) to discuss one of his all-time favorite TV shows, 1998’s Ultraviolet. The British show…

Morpheus meets Hector Hall. (c) 2022 DC Comics. Much like the comic itself, our podcast on the first season of the Sandman TV show is finally here. To do so, we’re happy to welcome back AP reporter Ashraf Khalil (@ashrafkhalil) to talk about it. It’s only fitting since Ash read many of those issues by borrowing them off me or reading them in our do…

Martin Landau as Count Zark in The Man From UNCLE’s “The Bat Cave Affair.” As part of When It Was Cool’s Hallowe’en Month, the pod looks at some of its favorite 1960s spy TV shows and what happens when they run into some creatures. Or do they? First, we have the Man from UNCLE and the second season episode “The Bat Cave Affair.” What is THRUSH’s “O…

Don Fargo, Rip Tyler and Mike Diamond in “Rip’s Corner” from WOW TV. We have our first back to back guest, even though it’s been two months and there were also three episodes of the Plot Podcast since then, but we’ve happy to welcome back Kris P Lettuce (@krisplettuce) from the Armstrong Alley You Tube channel to talk more rediscovered old school w…

A looby card for Shoot the Piano Player. With the recent passing of Jean-Luc Godard, we look at three French New Wave heist films: Shoot the Piano Player, Band of Outsiders and Le Doulos. We start with a very cursory explanation of the French New Wave, Cahiers du Cinema and the influence of Post WWII gangster films, what we would later call film no…

The Inspector and The Matzoriley Brothers, from The Great De Gualle Stone Operation. (C) 2022 MGM. In this episode, we look at what happens when a studio makes a sequel without its creator and without its star and its more successful cartoon analog. In 1968, Mirisch Films decided to make a third Pink Panther without Blake Edwards, Peter Sellers and…

Introducing the team in Secret Six issue 2. (2) 2022 DC Comics. We’re back with a new episode of The Plot and it’s back to the spies, this time in comic book form with two topics for discussion First up is Secret Six, the seven-issue DC Comics from 1968 and 1969. We look at the creation of the book, its fairly obvious inspiration (see Episode 1), t…

The American Ninja from Texas Championship Wrestling. We’re happy to welcome for the first time to the show, Kris P Lettuce (@krisplettuce), the man behind the Armstrong Alley You Tube channel. We discussed the treasure trove of found footage he has been posting on his channel featuring independent wrestling from the 1980s., 1990s and 2000s. First …

The Great American Bash issue from Pro Wrestling Illustrated. We’re happy to welcome back Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) for another marathon pod. The main focus of the episode is the first Great American Bash in July 1985. We go over the show match-by-match, what was going on for each person at the time going into the show and where things were goi…

He loves only gold. Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) in The Lavender Hill Mob. The Plot returns with a look at one of the greatest heist comedies in film history, 1951’s The Lavender Hill Mob., starting Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway. We discuss the film’s plot, how a mild-mannered bank clerk masterminds a robbery of an armored car full of gold. W…

What happens when a safecracker breaks his hands? Willy (Peter Lupus) and Terry (Wally Cox) from the Mission: Impossible pilot episode. We’re happy to debut a new podcast series in conjuction with the When It Was Cool network with the first episode of The Plot. What’s that, you ask? It’s going to be an examination of the spy/heist genre. It will lo…

The Injustice Society, from History of the DC Universe. Pencils by George Perez, inks by Karl Kesel. (c) 2021 DC Comics. We’re happy to welcome Karl Kesel (@karlkesel) back for his annual visit to discuss the latest Impossible Jones kickstarter. At the time of recording, there were two days left in the Impossible Jones / Polecat Kickstarter, which …

Before he was Handsome Jimmy or the Boogie Woogie Man, he was Big John Vallen. We have a very special show and a very special guest today. It’s our first on-location recording and it’s a big one. While going through Southwestern Virginia, I was able to stop and have a conversation with the legendary Hall of Famer, the Boogie Woogie Man, Handsome Ji…

Good Night, Funny Man. RIP Gilbert Gottfried. It was a bittersweet podcast to do, reliving the life and career of the great Gilbert Gottfried with Longbox Heroes’ co-host Joe Sposto (@joesposto). Most of our memories revolve around Gilbert’s 122 appearances on the Howard Stern show. We discuss our history of hearing Gilbert on the show and many of …

Moon Knight 24 cover by Bill Sinkiewicz. (c) 2022 Marvel. We’re happy tp welcome back Karl Stern (@WIWCool) from When It Was Cool to talk comics, comics TV, popular culture and classic wrestling. We start the show talking about the first episode of the new Moon Knight show on Disney+. If you want to avoid spoilers, skip ahead to around the 15:00 ma…

A 1912 T202 Hassan Triple Folder tobacco card featuring Hughie Jennings and Ty Cobb. We’re happy to finally have filmmaker, journalist and author Greg Klein (@JYDbook) on the pod for a chat his new book, his old book and more.. To start, we discuss Greg’s new book, The Paper Tigers, a fictional account of a real-life incident in baseball history. A…

Sean Lock, Jimmy Carr and Jon Richardson play Carrot in a Box on 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. We’re very happy to welcome back writer, comedian and podcaster Kevin Day (@kevinhunterday) back to the show to talk comedy, football and more. The reason we wanted to have Kevin back on the show was to discuss the British panel show on TV, following t…

Ric Flair vs Ted DiBiase, 1985 Mid-South TV. Thanks to Dick Murdoch, one of the best angles in wrestling history. It’s also one of the 100 Greatest Bloody Matches in Way of the Blade by Phil Schneider We’re joined on the podcast by Phil Schneider (@philschneider) from DVDVR and Segunda Caida to discuss his new book, Way of the Blade: 100 of the gre…

Chillin’ with Andre in the Roost. I don’t think he has an iced latte. We’re happy to welcome back Andre Segers (@andresegers) from GameXplain, depsite Nintendo doing one of their famous stealth drops a few hours before our scheduled recording time. We talk about that announcement, an update for Mario Karl Live, as well as some of the other games An…

Impossible Jones and Holly Daze. (c) Karl Kesel and David Hahn. I’m happy to welcome @karlkesel back to the show to talk about his newest Kickstarter project, Impossible Jones & Captain Lightning Team Up. With less than a week to go, Karl talks to us about the new project, the recently shipped Impossible Jones & Holly Daze Team Up, the creations of…