(doing an a capella version of the two-part guitar harmony in Thin Lizzy’s classic track “The Boys Are Back in Town) Matt’s back from New York. He tells us about walkin’ ova theah and other adventures that you can only have in da Big Apple babay! Cabs! Restaurants! Dimwitted Italians! Man’s blind indifference to fellow man! It’s got it all!!!

"I'm gonna listen to Gershwin and stare at a guy taking a shit!" -Matt Lieb.

Matt goes on to lament having his thunder stolen by some wine moms who really give our dumbest politicians the ol’ what for on Israel. Step aside Matt, make way for Bad Hersbara! Seriously though, listen to the clip of Cory Booker glitching the fuck out when asked if Netanyahu is a war criminal. The Moscato Mommies will be our salvation.

Next up, Bari Weiss did some uhh bullshit or something. I wasn’t really paying attention to her boring ass. Oh, and Matt talks about the time he ate his own poop as a child out of sheer curiosity.

"What if the only reason you don't eat doo doo is because society says it's not polite?" -Matt Lieb.

Finally, via our friends at Defector, we hear the story of one woman’s tragic ostracization from polite society simply for saying and believing shit that has alienated everyone around her. Cancel culture is out of control! Vote Republican 2028: We Will Make People Have To Be Friends With You. That will be one billion dollars.

Peggy Gets Ducked

Stop staring at the sun for long enough to listen to this week’s episode of the podcast with comedian, co-host of the What a Time to be Alive and Lie Cheat and Steal podcasts, Kath Barbadoro joining Matt and Vince to talk about Mad Men season three episode seven, “Seven Twenty Three.”

Everyone wants Don to sign a contract. Connie Hilton, Roger & Burt are all nagging at him like they’re his nagging wife, who is also nagging at him to sign the damn contract! She, of all people, should know that just because he signs a piece of paper, that doesn’t mean he’ll honor it. Look at his marriage license, and then watch how he talks to Sally’s teacher. Paper and ink mean nothing to this slut. 

Also horny, Duck! Duck threatens to give Peggy “a go-around” like she’s never had before. A “go-around.” Had they not figured out how to do dirty talk in the 60s or is Duck just corny as hell? Maybe that was standard issue boudoir conversation, because it works on Peggy. She has sex with Duck. Duck! The guy looks like he fucks to a metronome.

Is Betty autistic? Tell us your thoughts in a five star review on Apple Podcasts. 

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for  The Carpenter, Baku, & Flock of Seagulls.

-Description by Brent Flyberg  

This week, the Matt's are away, so the mice will play--the mice between Vince, Brendan, and our guest, Sean Keane from the Roundball Rock podcast. What do mice love? Cheese, of course! But also talking about movie. Specifically, 'One Battle After Another.' We all get to discuss it thanks to Matt not being around, because, as we all know, Matt hates art.

But before that, we're discussing Sean's trip to Vegas where he accidentally stayed in the UFC hotel and saw Jason Statham, who is very hard to distinguish from the many guys in Vegas who just look like Jason Statham. We're also talking Pete Hegseth's weird pep rally, in which he made the nation's many generals fly home from the Philippines or wherever so they could all hear one of Trump's many podcaster cabinet members call them fat. To all the nation's enemies, let it be known that if you frick around, you will find out how many pushups we can do. We also talk about Donald Trump and his many thoughts about paper, and how good his signature is, and how America is not the hottest nightclub in the world.

We finish things off talking about, you guessed it, One Battle After Another. So have a few small beers and gather all the terrorists, haters, and punk trash in your life to hear us discuss whether PTA's latest is an all-time masterpiece, whether it would've been better if Sean Penn had hung dong, and try to remember when Penns are Sean Penn's actual brothers. Enjoy, and remember, no refunds.

Guy Carried Out of an Advertising Agency

Everyone get in the conference room, the podcast has a new org chart. Producer Brent is at the top, directly beneath him are hosts Matt & Vince, and right below them is this week’s guest, host of Dopey podcast, Dave Manheim, who is here to talk about Mad Men season three episode six, “Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency.”

The big swinging knobs from Putnam, Powell, and Lowe show are shaking things up in the Sterling Cooper office. First, they have a pretty new org chart that commits an act of Roger Sterling erasure, then they prank Lane with a promotion that would move him to Bombay, and and as a coup de grace, a guy named Guy gets his foot mangled by a brand new John Deere lawn mower that someone let Lois drive in the office.

It’s also supposed to be Joan’s last day at the office, but it turns out her handsome doctor husband is not only an r-wordist, he’s also not a great doctor. Not good enough to get the promotion they were counting on to get her out of the workforce. 

Tell us where you belong in the new org chart in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. 

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for Rafael, Gas, The Greek, & Rockabilly.

-Description by Brent Flyberg  

Before it was a presumed Oscar contender starring Dwayne The Rock Johnson, The Smashing Machine was a documentary about MMA pioneer Mark Kerr, directed by John Hyams. Arguably one of the most influential documentaries of the 21st century, I was so obsessed with it that the first time I tracked down John Hyams to pepper him with questions about it was 13 damned years ago. That's right, before my retrospective about The Smashing Machine documentary was a GQ feature, it was a FilmDrunk Frotcast. I haven't seen the upcoming scripted A24 version starring The Rock, but knowing that Benny Safdie was at least as obsessed with John Hyams' documentary with I am, obsessed enough to recreate certain scenes right down to getting the hats and trunks right, makes me think it's going to be pretty good. Point is, this has no spoilers for The Smashing Machine (2025), because I haven't seen it yet.

What this is is the most comprehensive behind-the-scenes interview about The Smashing Machine (2002) that I could conduct. Did you know it was originally supposed to be called "The Specimen?" That HBO considered calling it "The Bloody Punch?" That Hyams wrote his own scripted version of it that was once intended as a vehicle for Mark Wahlberg? That in a roundabout way, it would go on to evolve into what became Warrior? All of these things are true, and we know them because John Hyams was cool enough to sit in for an hour-plus interview. A handful of quotes made it into my GQ retrospective (up there with my Freddy Got Fingered oral history in terms of things I'm most proud of having written) but I always intended to post the whole conversation. Feel like I owed it to posterity.

Funny that Dana White and the UFC are now gung ho on Dwayne Johnson playing Mark Kerr. As Hyams recalls it, Zuffa used to try to scrub every mention of the documentary back when the UFC was still fighting for legitimacy (perhaps understandably so). The original came from a different time, when MMA fighters were far more concerned with convincing the public that they were legitimate athletes and not scary monsters (let alone trying to do rightwing demagoguery or whatever). That's what makes it such an incredible time capsule, and Hyams was more than game to let yours truly Remember Some MMA Guys, specifically from the PRIDE days. Not always successfully, by the way, but that's why editing exists. Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I did, and don't forget to check out some of John's other great movies like Universal Soldier: Regeneration and Sick while you're at it.

Don’s Hot for Teacher

Get the overnight bag, Betty’s in labor. While she goes through the terrifying, awe-inspiring experience of giving birth, you can sit in a special waiting room for dudes and listen to a new episode of your favorite podcast. Producer of the pod, comedian, co-host of the Oh Hell Yeah podcast, AL West Champion Seattle Mariners supporter, episode description writer, and now parody song writer, Brent Flyberg joins Matt & Vince to talk about Mad Men season three episode five, “The Fog.”

You read that right, there’s a new Draper D-story swinging d-word in town. I wrote it, I sang it, I tacked it on at the end of the episode. I learned in the process that singing is hard, especially trying to sing like David Lee Roth. 

Much like this podcast’s second favorite guy named David Roth, Don is hot for Sally’s teacher, but more obviously in this episode, Miss Farrell is hot for Don. She’s calling him at home, talking all breathy with a glass of wine like damn we get it, we know what Jon Hamm looks like too, but get it together, lady. Probably the only thing that stops Don from driving over and taking her to philandertown in that exact moment is his shrieking wife who needs a ride to the hospital to deliver another one of his little snotty kids. At that moment, he likely thought it had never been harder to be a white man in America. 

Tell us what you would name Don and Betty’s third kid in a five five-star review on Apple Podcasts. 

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for The Knife, Pete the Meat, & Guinness.

-Description by Brent Flyberg  

The boys are back in town this week to hang out at Dino’s Bar and Grill and also welcome writer/filmmaker/comedian Yourgo Artistes to discuss his SEO-friendly new documentary, TR(ol)L. 

But first, (Dr Manhattan meme) THE FROTCAST IS STILL TALKING ABOUT CHARLIE KIRK. We keep things mercifully brief in that department, it’s mostly a way for Matt to humblebrag about having seen the Downton Abbey movie, and the carnage Kirk’s death across the Abbey-heads community. Since we’re piggies for the content just like you’re piggies for our slop, we had to keep milking this whole thing. Did you know Candace Owens is Just Asking Questions about visible tunnels and whether or not someone could hypothetically hide in there and hypothetically kill Charlie Kirk without anyone hypothetically noticing despite dozens of cameras hypothetically being trained on him at the moment the shot was fired. Cui bono???

Also, you know we had to talk about the big man DJT’s WWE-style entrance (with goddamn fireworks!) at Kirk’s memorial service. Even though the reeducation camps are gonna be rough, I’ll still miss him when he’s gone. 

We finally get around to discussing our distinguished guest’s new film, about one intrepid group of idiots’ scheme to dethrone the late 90s boy bands from atop Total Request Live and replace them with an early 90s boy band. Will NKOTB Hang Tough, or will N*Sync tear up the charts? Stay tuned!
Check out Yourgos’ website for more on TR(ol)L, and frot on while supplies last.

Living the Jai A-life

Stop trying to make jai alai happen and listen to this week’s episode of the pod with returning guest, Letterboxd lover, and journalist from Semafor, Dave Weigel, joining Matt & Vince for a chat about Mad Men season three episode four, “The Arrangements.”

RIP big Gene. The writers may have forgotten about your dementia, but we’ll never forget you. Not that it’s a competition, but Sally is definitely the most distraught about her grandpa’s passing. He was teaching her so much, from how to drive his car, to inferior Assyrian genes leading to Rome’s downfall.

Pete finds a “fatted calf” to offer to Don in the form of a rich dingus who’s trying to make jai alai America’s next national pastime through the magic of advertising. Don would rather save Burt’s relationship with the rich dingus’s father than carve money out of the kid, so he tries to stop the deal, but Mr. Jai Alai Sr. gives them the all-clear. As you know, America's next national pastime was not jai alai. It was always going to be gun violence.

Sal gets two big opportunities: 1. Direct Patio Cola’s Bye Bye Birdy ripoff ad and 2. Have sex with his wife. He uses anxiety about 1 as an excuse to get out of 2, and he… well, sometimes I look up an episode synopsis on the Mad Men Fandom wiki while writing these, and whoever wrote this one described it perfectly so just read it: “Sal acts out the Bye Bye Birdie takeoff for Kitty, whose cheerful encouragement fades as her husband minces his way through the choreography.” “Minces.” Devastating. 

Who’s your pick to win the Battle Court Jai Alai fall season this year? Tell us in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. 

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for Sancho Panda, Super G, Snake, & The Nurse.

-Description by Brent Flyberg  

Returning champion Billy Corben (The U, Screwball, Cocaine Cowboys) is on this week to discuss his new documentary Men of War, which covers a wide-eyed Canadian idealist’s journey from thinking Full Metal Jacket is a movie about how the military is cool, to the US Special Forces, to ham-fistedly attempting a coup in Venezuela. It’s quite a ride.

Billy generously goes deep on Venezuelan politics to set the stage for how this unlikeliest of coup plotters got himself in that position to begin with. Billy also discusses his interpretation of coup leader Jordan Goudreau as a “post-modern” soldier in that his entire point of reference seems to be old war movies. “I’ll infiltrate with an inflatable boat, suit up theatrically on the beach, attack the island, scalp a guy with a saw blade, then impale Maduro with a steam pipe. Just like Commando!”

Billy has to go because the people running the studio he’s in have turned the lights off like bouncers at last call, so we then segue into this week’s hot topic that surely no one is tired of discussing, the Charlie Kirk shooting. Specifically, why are we still trying to shoehorn people into a left/right spectrum, and where does a guy making jokes about a furry with a boner fit in? Political incoherence is the new manifesto. Also, we are begging just one reporter to ask what “trans ideology” entails and how it can fit on a shell casing. 

We wrap up by discussing the Verhoeven-esque scene that emerged from the shooting as  Mormon influencer “Elder TikTok” posted a selfie video from the ensuing moments after the shooting, imploring his audience to like and subscribe to both his Instagram and the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Grim stuff. He also contaminated the crime scene by picking up blood-soaked items, presumably to sell on eBay. Nevermind, this is worse than anything Verhoeven came up with. Smash that like button and sound off in the comments!

Rent Men of War on Prime Video and Apple TV (or wherever Men of War are sold!). Please.

Roger’s Old Kentucky Racism

Put that shoe polish away and listen to the latest episode with comedian and author of First Time, Long Time, Amy Silverberg, joining Matt & Vince to talk about Mad Men season three episode three, “My Old Kentucky Home.”

If you’re watching the show along with the podcast, you may have noticed there’s a new disclaimer before this episode about blackface, and how it’s bad, and you should not do it, and we agree! However, none of the various media with blackface in the 50s and 60s had such a disclaimer, so Roger likely had no idea that it was problematic to throw a derby party with his child bride so that he could show everyone how good he is at singing in blackface. He also would have rolled his eyes so hard if you said something he did was “problematic.” If Roger were alive today, he would accuse this podcast of being infected by the woke mind virus. 

Back at the office, Peggy and the gang are getting blazed on the sweet cheba, leading to inspiration for the Bacardi campaign, proving sometimes drugs are good. If you’re keeping score at home: black face = bad, drugs = good (sometimes).

Tell us your experience with a lingering drug dealer in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts. 

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for Rosie the Riveter, Swamp Thing, Pizza Pie, & Hunger Games.

-Description by Brent Flyberg  

Matt is gone this week, but as Matt would say, “What’s in the news…” Gotta be something… Right?

Meanwhile, returning champion Laremy Legel joins us this week to discuss Spike Lee’s new joynt, Highest 2 Lowest. Don’t worry if you can’t remember the name, it’s extremely conspicuously dropped at the end.

But first, we have important stuff to talk about, like the AI podcast network that aims to release 3000 AI-generated episodes per week. Smarter people than Some argue it’s a scam in order to take advantage of programmatic ad sales, which basically means fake podcasts playing to fake listeners, generating real money. Others, however, say listening to an AI podcast is a legitimate usage of your precious time on earth. So who can say, really?

Next up, Jerry Seinfeld is back, this time at Duke with some spicy Israel takes. We, Frotcast LLC, will leave it to other, shittier podcasts like Pod Save America, The Daily, and Bad Hasbara to discuss the merits of his arguments, whereas Our position is “more like Dook”. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

We all watched Highest 2 Lowest and come to the consensus that it’s real bad. Thank you for your attention to this other matter!

Love Among the Goons

If you don’t like what’s being said, put on this week’s episode of the podcast. We have host of the Finding My Audience podcast and comedian Allen Strickland Williams, whose album, Ran Through, is available now, joining Matt & Vince to talk about Mad Men season three episode two, “Love Among the Ruins.”

Limey Lane is settling into his new life in New York by taking his wife out to dinner with Don & Betty, but the Mrs. is still acclimating. She has some complaints about the bugs and the Africans. Have you noticed that these white people in the 60’s say a lot racist stuff? 

At the office, Paul pisses everyone off by taking the Madison Square Garden account to task for tearing down Beaux-Arts masterpiece Pennsylvania Station. Like, okay Paul, where do you expect Jermey Lin to drop 38 on Kobe and induce a national case of Linsanity?

In the Draper household, a new roommate moves in when the family decides Betty’s dad can’t be trusted to take care of himself if he’s buying sandwiches for women who have left him. If the figurative lemon is witnessing a loved one's mind slowly decay, the lemonade is… an extra sandwich up for grabs?

Is it still considered gooning if you bust more than once? Let us know in a five-star review on  Apple Podcasts. 

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for Selleck, IKEA, & Goon.

-Description by Brent Flyberg  

Rejoice, piggies, it's new Frot day! Sean Keane from Roundball Rock is in the Frot seat this week to talk about (Borat Voice) BARI WEISS! Because this born snitch/hall monitor has ridden her pathological dearth of original thought straight to the top of CBS News, who just bought the Free Press for $200 million or something. Forget studying, kids, just find the nearest rich person and shamelessly kiss their ass.

After that, we catch up with Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert who has written a banger of a new essay for The Cut ("the publication exclusively by and for people with personality disorders" -Brendan), which is actually an excerpt from her new book about how she latched onto a terminally ill friend and maybe got her back into heavy drug use and maybe ruined her life? Wild scene, but we stan any essayist who overshares.

Meanwhile, we're trying to figure out just what the hell must've happened during Rudy Giuliani's recent car accident for the cover story about it to be this confusing and bad. Did something really gross and strange go down, or does everyone involved just have the storytelling skills of Abe Simpson.

Finally, Matt and I watched 28 Years Later (or more accurately, I saw it months ago and Matt just got around to seeing it), and we try to tell what the hell it's about (spoilers included, but this is only the last 25 min of the pod). That ends with us trying to figure out the ending, which in turn leads us into a discussion of Jimmy Savile. I thought he was just a child molester, but apparently he was way worse! Uh... sleep tight!

Sound the Gay Alarm, MYAM is Back

Please don’t cut our dicks off and boil them in hog fat for taking a break between seasons. MYAM is back with Dave Schilling, author of Horror’s New Wave: 15 Years of Blumhouse, to help Matt and Vince kick off season three with episode one, “Out of Town.”

The Sterling Cooper offices are experiencing a British Invasion of their own after being purchased by Putnam, Powell, & Lowe. Meet Burt Peterson, head of accounts. Now forget him. He’s fired. The new head of accounts? Much to his delight, Pete Campbell. Much to Pete’s chagrin, Ken Cosgrove is also named head of accounts. Two blue-blooded waspy boys being asked to share? What is this, some kind of budget polo summer camp?

On a business trip to Baltimore to meet with London Fog, the hotel the fire alarm goes off the second a bellboy reaches into Sal’s pants, implying either God is punishing him, or hotels in the 60’s had gay alarms. In the ensuing evacuation, Don learns Sal’s big secret. He is chill about it, but you can tell he thinks it’s icky. 

Are you a virgin if you’re a closeted gay man who has only had sex with women? Tell us your thoughts in a five-star review on  Apple Podcasts. 

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want. Sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier to hear Vince give you a shout out on the show, like this week's shoutouts for Creamy, Cadbury Eggs, & The Boxer.

-Description by Brent Flyberg  

Comedian Sean Keane from Roundball Rock podcast guests this week! We open this week talking about Matt getting COVID on his Honeymoon or some dumb crap, but quickly segue into New York's famous Cuomo brothers, and how losing a primary to Zohran Mamdani has apparently broken their brains. Now they're mashing all the buttons at once, from "why don't you condemn Hamas" to "what if rich people benefit from universal social programs?" Following up on last week's Chris Cuomo-getting-fooled-by-an-AOC-deepfake-and-then-doubling-down incident, we talk about Chris' equally dim-witted brother Andrew, who is very proud of his father Mario and his grandmother (?) Andrea. Someone had to teach the Cuomo boys to be handsy.

After that we go deep into the truly WILD story of the two crypto guys who (with off-duty NYPD cops working as their bodyguards) who allegedly kidnapped an Italian guy and made him serve as their pledge while they played insane cokehead fratboy games and (allegedly) tortured him to reveal his crypto passwords. My favorite part of the article was when they moved into a giant replica of the White House in rural Kentucky where they would type messages to each other on typewriters and then burn them so no one could steal their secrets. Oh the things one can get into with millions of dollars and 24/7 access to cocaine. Here is what an Apocalypse Hellfire looks like, by the way. Subscribe on Patreon for more content!

Today we welcome a very special guest, formerly TV’s Andy Levy, currently Andy Levy of As the World Churns. You may remember him from such cable news shows as “The Scenario Annex” and “Fisticuffs!”. We start our movie podcast by discussing Andy’s hockey team, the New York Islanders. That’s right, we get into the nitty gritty of hockey strategy and deliver some “hard-hitting” (hockey pun) analysis. JK, we talk about the time they changed the uniforms to look like the Gorton’s Fisherman.

Next, we dive into the rich text which is Chris Cuomo falling for truly one of the shittiest deepfakes we’ve ever encountered, which naturally segues into a discussion of the Types Of Guy (gender neutral) who love to deploy the “How can you [engage in literally any other activity besides my pet cause] when [my pet cause]?” mad lib for people with severe lead and/or internet poisoning. As Cuomo sweatily doubles down, we are able to draw only one conclusion, that he is having a severe stroke. If you are near Chris Cuomo and are reading this, please close the tab and dial 911!

Finally, we all watched the Balloon Boy Netflix doc, aka Trainwreck: Balloon Boy. Actually, not all of us. But Brendan has seen enough of these that he knows the broad strokes (shots of computer screens googling things, local newscasts gradually layering on top of each other until they all say the name of the subject, recreated text message exchanges and social media posts, etc). Spoiler zone: the family that [ALLEGEDLY -ed.] used their young child for a cynical media hoax might be kinda shady!

Find Andy Levy anywhere you get information online, honestly whatever you creeps are up to when you’re not listening to us is none of our business.

Did you know Pedro Pascal gropes women to deal with his anxiety? If you were online at all in the past week or two, you might have noticed this narrative going around, or people making memes about it, or sharing supposedly damning video evidence of such a thing. Maybe involving Vanessa Kirby, or possibly Willem Dafoe's wife. And yet, when did Pedro Pascal ever actually say anything about anxiety? Who was making the accusations? The narrative didn't quite pass the smell test from the start, and as it turns out, that's probably because it seems to have been some kind of strange astroturfing campaign.

Kat Tenbarge wrote all about it in Spitfire News this week, and in this bonus podcast, I (Vince, that is) interview her all about the Pedro Pascal campaign, where it started, why it's happening, and what it tells us about bots, the slop internet, and why it's easier to manipulate celebrity news for bespoke political ends. In Pascal's case, it all seems to trace back to his trans sister and some rabid JK Rowling fans (though possibly also Bella Ramsey and The Last of Us).

Of course, the Pedro Pascal smear campaign is only the latest in a line of these odd, fake-grass-roots social media influence campaigns which seem to have no higher goal than to make you think that, say, Blake Lively is kind of a bitch or whatever. It's only when you dig a little deeper that you discover what seems to be the true motivation, like a messy legal battle between Lively and her former director. Something I actually got drawn into myself when a post of mine appeared to get artificially boosted, possibly as part of a larger influence campaign. Are these mini-viral moments just a way for reputation management firms to justify their paychecks, or is there actually legitimate damage being done?

And did this particular kind of shady reputation management begin with the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial, or does it go back even further? Even before Depp/Heard, why did writing about particular celebrities (Hugh Jackman, Tom Cruise, Kamala Harris) always seem to summon a flood of uncanny-seeming replies?

All this is Kat Tenbarge's particular beat, and she hangs around for a wide-ranging discussion of celebrity culture and niche smear campaigns.

This one is free for everyone, but patrons get a good two hours of the hottest #content every week.

Happy Gilmore 2 famously lives at the intersection of sports and movies, and incredibly, so do this week's guests, David J. Roth and Jeb Lund from It's Christmastown. They review Hallmark movies on their podcast, but this week they're taking a break from that to fill in for Matt and Brendan, who are on vacation with their dumb families, to discuss Adam Sandler's 30-years-later sequel, Happy Gilmore 2--a movie which, as I wrote in my review, feels exactly like a make-a-wish charity special for a terminally-ill 58-year-old. Or as David puts it, feels like a celebrity-packed Super Bowl commercial that just never ends. Those sound like knocks on it, but they kind of aren't. One of the best things about Happy Gilmore 2 is trying to imagine the strange celebrity encounter Adam Sandler had that produced each cameo.

That takes up most of the latter part of the pod, but before that, we discuss the way tech CEOs have ruined the design of most things, which naturally brings us to Elon Musk's new Tesla diner, where you can wait two hours in line to order "Epic Bacon" for $12, all while being glared at by the people who live nearby whose lives Elon has ruined. Then we digress into the Trump/Epstein scandal, and how, even if this probably won't result on Trump's supporters turning on him, it is weirdly gratifying to watch him be constantly on the defensive and clearly realize that he can't just riff his way out of this one. Fun times!

Email us at frotcast@gmail.com, leave us a voice message at 415-275-0030.

Welcome to a particularly elegiac (look it up) episode of the Frotcast, with this week’s guest James Fritz. First we discuss the untimely death of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who unfortunately drowned in Costa Rica this past week. Next, we discuss the untimely death of Hulk Hogan, who suffered a heart attack the day we recorded. Finally, we discuss the untimely (in the other direction) death of Ozzy Osbourne, who has pretty much been on borrowed time since the early 80s and made it way farther than anyone realistically expected.

Vince and Brendan discover that apparently the Hulkster was a huge piece of shit. Sorry we’re not a wrestling podcast, I guess everyone else knew this intimately. We have a good time remembering his many outrageous lies, including his groundbreaking work in hustlebro culture by manipulating time and space to the tune of an extra 35 days in a year. You hear that Gary Vee? You ain’t got shit on The Hulkster, brotherrr!!! Other highlights include Brooke Hogan defying the laws of autotune, union-busting (not a wresting move), and the time he fucked his friend’s wife, said a racial slur, complained about diarrhea, then destroyed Gawker, in that order.

Vince, Matt and James all saw Superman, and it was fine. Unless you’re one of the insane people we talked about last week. We talk about how “fine” is pretty much the ceiling for superhero movies these days, and what a feat it would be to create one that any of us can remember within a few days of watching it. Vince desires a return of ugly people to the pictures.
Please buy James Fritz’s new comedy album, Old Man Yells At Crowd, he really needs the money.

Welcome to a Vince-free podcast, Matt and Brendan have been saving up all their jokes for just such an occasion. Comedian Grant Gordon joins us to discuss woke Superman and an absolutely psychotic Hasbara response, a city councilman with a true poster’s heart, and Goldfinger (the band, not the movie…whaddaya think this is a movie podcast or something??).

But first! After years of campaigning on releasing the Epstein Files, Donald Trump is backing Pam Bondi in saying that there’s nothing to see here and we should all just move on. In true Trump fashion, he’s doing it in a way (rage-posting on Truth Social) that is only going to draw more attention and ask more questions about why he’s so upset. If there were ever a time to envision ol’ Donny not wriggling his way out of this one, this could be it. According to our fearless leader, the files don’t exist, and also do exist but are fake and were written by Obama and Biden and Rosie O’Donnell or something. A real Schrodinger’s CP stash.

We save the Superman talk for when Vince gets back, but Matt couldn’t resist reading a unabomber manifesto-level screed about how the new Superman movie is antisemitic and calling for the complete elimination of the state of Israel. Others said it was cool when the alien in underwear used his laser beam eyes, so reviews have been mixed to say the least.

Finally, we listen to the greatest hits of Eric Mays, a former Flint city councilman and one of the world’s great IRL trolls. If nothing else, this should brighten your day and give you the chance to hit your partner with a NO IM NOT PLAYIN ON MY PHONE IM TAKIN CARE OF BUSINESS the next time they hassle you for playing Wordle during Real Housewives.

Find Grant on Instagram at @gograntgordon