Advent Calendar House - TV Holiday & Christmas Specials

🎃 Put out the oars and surrender yourself to the mercy of the rivers of time as they take us back to Garfield’s terrifying 1985 Halloween special.

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🎙 Guests:

Jeff Somogyi (@sommerjam, Talkin’ Chopp).

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💬 Topics & Tangents:

1. Jim Davis wanted ‘Garfield’s Halloween Adventure’ to ‘at least scare 4-year-olds’ (The A.V. Club, 2014).

2. Samples of the comic book adaptation, Garfield in Disguise, from Rotten Ink and Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks, including even creepier drawings of the old man and pirate ghosts.

3. The first appearance of Binky the Clown!

4. Jon’s head going through the bottom of a falling jack-o’-lantern could have killed him at worst and concussed him at best.

5. How many kids in the history of trick-or-treating got suckered into getting double the candy for their siblings?

6. The time a raccoon broke into Jeff’s attic and left a hornet’s nest inside a Nativity scene shepherd.

7. Speaking of attics, the Pink Panther advertising Owens Corning fiberglass insulation.

8. The Roy Ogle of the very random passing reference “Roy Ogle’s roots” was a plant breeder at Clemson University. They’re sweet potatoes.

9. The black cat pajamas may be a callback to the killer panther from 1984’s Garfield in the Rough, another good special to put on if you want to give your kids nightmares.

10. If ghosts are real, as this special establishes, was the ghost of Jon’s grandfather watching all the Christmas festivities in that special?

11. C. Lindsay Workman, the voice of the old man, and also Garfield’s grandfather in Garfield on the Town, and God in Garfield: His 9 Lives.

12. The “double burn” glowing effect used on the ghosts reminds us of the Night on Bald Mountain sequence of Fantasia.

13. We had to ask: Did Garfield an Odie really survive the night, or is everything thereafter really Garfield Minus Garfield?

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:

McDonald’s Halloween Pumpkin Pails!

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“Garfield’s Halloween Adventure” ©1985 United Feature Syndicate, Inc./Anderson Digital.
Closing Music: Witch’s Night Out, by Razoreater, written by Peter Rochon.

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

The Advent Calendar House is on the web at adventcalendar.house, on Twitter @adventcalhouse, and part of the Christmas Podcast Network.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🐰 It’s 2004, and a stuffed toy rabbit voluntold me to clean his house.

The Advent Calendar House celebrates both Easter in July and Scrooge Sunday with a trip to the Hundred Acre Wood as Rabbit does double duty as both the Easter Bunny and Scrooge, all while Christopher Robin is somewhere else entirely.

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🎙 Guests:

Sammy Hain (Sammy’s Easter Tails)

Matt Spaulding (North Pole Radio, Two Broke Geeks)

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💬 Topics & Tangents:

1. Watch “Springtime with Roo” on Disney+.

2. Ads from the 2004 DVD, plus a video of some dude walking through the menu screen.

3. Why do Christopher Robin’s toys have American accents?

4. John Fiedler (Piglet) in “The Golden Girls” and “12 Angry Men.”

5. “Christmas in the Stars,” the Star Wars Christmas album.

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📼 Commercial Break:

Sears Video Game Arcade Christmas Sale (1983)

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“Winnie the Pooh” and “Springtime with Roo” © 2004 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

Tune in as we unearth a 1994 cash-grab video starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles — or at least some version of them — a special so low-quality, it happens in a sewer.

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🎙 Guests:

Shawn Robare (Branded in the ’80s, Cult Film Club, @ShawnRobare).

Jonathan Zelenak (@TheSewerDen).

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💬 Topics & Tangents:

1. About the Sewer Den, Jonathan’s massive TMNT collection, and his blog post about We Wish You a Turtle Christmas.

2. Of course we touch on the Turtles’ Coming Out of Their Shells Tour.

3. The Turtles’ smiles look like they’re from Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun music video.

4. Cash-grab video releases like this anime version of The Little Mermaid from 1975, which had a not-at-all-coincidental resurgence around 1990.

5. Writer Tish Rabe also produced Big Bird in China and 3-2-1 Contact, created The Cat in the Hat Learning Library after Dr. Seuss’s death, and has written over 160 children’s books.

6. Y’all want to watch 43 minutes of the Ninja Turtles on Oprah?

7. That time a warehouse that housed the Rock-afire Explosion actually exploded.

8. The resurgence of Rollerblades is right around the corner.

9. The only pizza place willing to appear in this special is Sbarro, which has come a long way since the Fat Boys’ All You Can Eat.

10. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Cookbook is a real book you should own.

11. The cheapest gifts we’ve ever gotten our parents from our elementary school Christmas bazaar.

12. Fun game: Sneak the Wrap Rap on a playlist in the middle of New Kids on the Block’s Christmas album and see if anyone notices.

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“We Wish You a Turtle Christmas” © 1994 Christopher Films, Inc. / Mirage Studios.

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎃 It’s spooky time as we wheel our paraphernalia wagon back to 1977 for a Grinch Night we’ll never forget.

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🎙 Guests:

James Riley (@yourbuddyspooky).

Ethan (The Hungry Reader, A Special Presentation or ALF Will Not Be Seen Tonight, @TeeAitchAre).

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💬 Topics & Tangents:

1. Halloween is Grinch Night on the Dr. Seuss Wiki.

2. The worst, non-candy Halloween treats.

3. Carlton, Your Doorman.

4. This special’s music was by Sesame Street composer Joe Raposo.

5. Hans Conried (The Grinch) was also the titular character in Dr. Seuss’s The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.

6. I badly describe the plot of Midnight Madness.

7. The Hakken-Kraks in Oh, the Places You’ll Go.

8. Is the Grinch’s magic only active on Grinch Night?

9. The Euphemism, and other words I thought Dr. Seuss made up.

10. An ode to the Whos' videophone.

11. Dr. Seuss Goes to War, and other creators of great works doing terrible things.

12. Bogleech’s gallery of the Grinch’s monsters, and our personal favorites.

13. The Vug under the Rug, the Jibboo, and the Birthday Bird.

14. Danse macabre.

15. Is this a prequel? And where does The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat fit?

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:

Franken Berry and Monster Cereals, 1986, preserved by Dinosaur Dracula.

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🎤 And Now, These Messages:

Holly Jolly X’masu.

“Halloween is Grinch Night” © 1977 DePatie–Freleng Enterprises.

Say hi on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.

🎃 It’s the 13th of July, so it’s time for the Advent Calendar House to unearth one of our favorite Halloween haunts, 1979’s The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t, starring an exceptionally great Judd Hirsch as Count Dracula.

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🎙 Guest:

Tom Coombs (TPIF: Thank Pod It’s Funny, @ClassicTomedy).

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💬 Topics & Tangents:

1. This was renamed for its VHS release as The Night Dracula Saved the World, except no, he doesn’t.

2. Lyndhurst Mansion plays the role of both Dracula’s castle and the Witch’s castle. It’s located in New York state, not far from Sleepy Hollow.

3. The opening music, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, was never in a Dracula movie. Its first uses in sound film were in 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and 1934’s The Black Cat, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

4. My association of the music to Dracula probably stems from its use on Castle Dracula, a haunted boat ride on the Wildwood, New Jersey boardwalk that burned down in 2002.

5. Jack Riley (Warren the Werewolf) was also the voice of Stu Pickles on Rugrats, and did a bunch of Country Crock spread commercials.

6. Judd Hirsch as Dracula exaggeratedly disco dancing in a white Saturday Night Fever jumpsuit is the greatest way to end anything ever.

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:

McDonald’s Scared Silly Halloween commercial, starring Ronald McDonald and the Chicken McNuggets, circa 1986.

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“The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t” © 1979 Concepts Unlimited.

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.

Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.