Nerd Lunch

Michael, Rob, Evan, and Pax talk about their favorite things that they listened to and read from 2022. And whether they'd be willing to pay the horrible price of teleportation.

Michael, Rob, and Delaney skip ahead to the 32nd Century in their chronological Star Trek trek with Season 3 of Discovery. As the crew tries to locate the remnants of the Federation and acclimate to life in the future, our panel talks about favorite characters, plot threads, and themes of the season.

Michael, Rob, Pax, and David May reboot TV shows based only on brief descriptions of their premises. 

Carlin and Robert Try to Put Right What's Going Wrong with the new Quantum Leap!  Theorizing one can get a few things off his chest, Carlin Trammel leaps into the podcast time stream. His only guide on this journey is Robert Zerbe, a fellow observer of the new Quantum Leap TV series airing on NBC. So both podcasters find themselves watching each episode of the new series and extensively making notes on what can be done to put right what is going on and hoping that Scott Bakula will also leap home!    Be sure to check out the King Thunder Stickers and other King Thunder merchandise!

Michael continues his solo exploration of Fleming's Bond novels with the next-to-last in the series, You Only Live Twice. Following the tragic events of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, M sends Bond to Japan on an impossible diplomatic mission that becomes something much more bizarre and personal.

Michael and Rob and Karen Flieger board the Orient Express to speed up the frequency of their Bond movie discussions this year, starting with Sean Connery's second appearance as Bond in From Russia with Love. The trio talks about the characters, music, quips, clothing, gadgets, and everything else that makes this one of their favorites. 

Michael, Rob, and Pax talk about what they've been watching: TV series like Midnight Club, Andor, Stargirl, Wednesday, Mythic Quest, Willow, Perry Mason, Mare of Easttown, and A-Team “Christmas” episodes. Then there are movies like A Christmas Story Christmas, the Cannonball Run sequel Speed Zone, the Underworld series, The Shop Around the Corner, Ernest Saves Christmas, and a White Christmas live production.  Finally, the loungers are thinking about Christmas movies. Specifically: what makes a Christmas movie, favourite Christmas movie characters, and the future of Christmas movie discussions on After Lunch.

Michael, Rob, and Pax talk about annoying Christmas Songs, Christmas mysteries and ghost stories, Lindsey Stirling music, book forewords and introductions, Mount Westmore, X-Men: Inferno, Batman: Three Jokers, and other things they've been listening to and reading.

Michael and Rob welcome Mike Westfall from the Advent Calendar House podcast to discuss a pair of the oldest adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. From 1910, it's the silent version from Thomas Edison's production company. And then we talk about the 1935 film starring Seymour Hicks. And be sure to check out Mike, Rob, and Michael's Advent Calendar House discussion from earlier this season about the 1971 cartoon that brought back Alastair Sim as the voice of Scrooge.

In a completely original idea - Nerd Lunch definitely did not do this exact same topic on Episode 320 of their show - Michael and Rob welcome Evan Hanson, Paxton Holley, and Michael DiGiovanni to help a few restaurants create special menus inspired by Christmas movies.

This is the final rerun of Tangential Christmas Movie discussions from the old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast and it seems appropriate to close with the poster child for these kind of movies. People love to argue about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, so we wouldn’t dream of spoiling where Jeeg and Michael fall on that topic.

Today we’re wrapping up Week 2 rerunning discussions of Tangential Christmas movies from the Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast. We’re actually not quite done yet, because there’s one more on Monday and it’s a doozy. But first, Jeeg and Michael talk about the Denis Leary vehicle, The Ref, from 1994.  And if you want to hear even more on The Ref on this very feed, check the old Nerd Lunch Extra Helping episode from December 2012 where Jeeg talks about it with Carlin Trammel.

Long before there was ever such a movie as Die Hard, the idea of Tangential Christmas movies was introduced by It’s a Wonderful Life. It gets played at Christmastime and has an important Christmas scene, but is it a Christmas movie? In this rerun from Michael's old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast, he and Carlin Trammel talk about that very question.

We’re still doing reruns about Tangential Christmas movies from the old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast and on this episode Michael talks with Lizzie Twachtman about a Bing Crosby classic. With Fred Astaire and Marjorie Reynolds, it’s 1942’s Holiday Inn.

Continuing our reruns about Tangential Christmas movies from Michael's old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast, this episode welcomes back Siskoid to talk about a movie that he mentioned in our discussion of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. From 1940 and starring the legendary team of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray, it’s Remember the Night.

Kicking off our second week of reruns about Tangential Christmas movies from the old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast with a discussion Michael had with our friend Kay about the 1934 classic whodunnit, The Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loy.

Wrapping up this first week of reruns about Tangential Christmas movies from the old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast, Siskoid introduces Michael to an excellent French film, Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo. If you’ve never seen it, we highly recommend it, but you don’t need to have seen it to enjoy the discussion.

In our next Sleigh Bell Cinema rerun, Michael talks to Shawn Robare about Savage Steve Holland's Better Off Dead... (starring John Cusack, Diane Franklin, and Curtis Armstrong) and how much it actually has to do with Christmas.

In another rerun from the former Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast, Michael talks with Nerd Lunch's Jeeg about the Joe Dante almost-Christmas classic, Gremlins.

This Christmas season is all about Tangential Christmas Movies on After Lunch. After our discussion of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang last episode, we're going to spend the next couple of weeks re-running discussions of other Tangential Christmas Movies from Michael's old Sleigh Bell Cinema podcast. Starting with this one about Shazam! with Michael's son, David May.