ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE OF THE MOON
This is a completely free pamphlet handed to you on a street corner from a SECRET SOCIETY.
You may be interested to know that we have a new episode of JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN available to you featuring special friend of the court PAUL SCHEER, who is our expert witness on COLD PLUNGING.
YES. The obscure cultural reference was indeed inspired by the always inspired OH NO ROSS AND CARRIE podcast (click HERE to listen/be spoiled).
And YES, I was indeed inspired to listen to that episode by maxfun reddit user SchulzBuster over on the maxfun SUBREDDIT, which is always a good hang. Thanks SchulzB!
Also on the subreddit, cold plunge litigant Thaddeus has delightfully entered the chat HERE. (Also potential spoilers here).
Look: you deserve to be spoiled. You’re wonderful. But if you want to wear the hair shirt and just listen to this really funny episode (semi-literally) cold, go HERE.
This was our 666th episode of Judge John Hodgman. For those of you who complained that there was no demonic content, I have only this to say to you…
To the rest of you, I only say THANK YOU for listening.
If you’re a member of MaxFun, you may know that we are now releasing a monthly MEMBERS MAILBAG episode in the Bonus Content feed.
The first one just dropped. If you haven’t found it already, you can find out how to find it HERE.
You may have heard on social media that I appeared on a different podcast this month called CO-PILOTS. It’s a great podcast in which TV writers Andrew Secunda and Sean Conroy watch and discuss pilot episodes of old TV shows.
We talked about the pilot episode of the 1970s science fiction show SPACE: 1999, and SPOILER: I used some STRONG LANGUAGE re: the sexiness of those jumpsuits.
OK, this letter is getting a little too steamy. Anyway, it’s a great podcast, because pilots are such a strange form of storytelling. They have to be at once a bible—creating a world and very swiftly populating it with humans you have to care about—and at the same time a full and satisfying story that makes you want more.
They are also usually a sales tool, made long before the full series is commissioned. So it’s pretty common for storylines and whole characters to disappear or be recast between the first and the second episodes.
SPACE: 1999 is a particularly weird pilot, as veers wildly between science fiction and horror, is frequently very boring, and most of all doesn’t know where it wants to go.
I mean, it technically does know where its going: it ends with the premise of the whole show, which is that all the SPACE: 1999ians get tossed into space (1999) when an explosion knocks their space ship, which is the WHOLE MOON, out of earth’s orbit.
(Spoiler: 1999 happened and we still have the moon.)
But we know where they really are headed: a slow drift into emptiness and starvation. What a fun show! I’d have a lot of sex too, if I were dying on Moonbase Alpha.
But they manage through plot trickery to get the moon going from planet to planet so they can meet fun aliens and Brian Blessed, and casually forget how the lack of the moon would leave Earth in all kinds of ecological calamity (because tides and such).
Anyway, I can’t just send you SPACE: 1999 pictures all day.
And Speaking of pilots, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another great podcast about pilots, THE DEAD PILOTS SOCIETY, which stages readings of unproduced pilots, including one I wrote called ONLY CHILD.
I know you have heard it before. But that was a very fun reading and I’m proud of it so there’s the link again for you.
No secret message today, as my personal moon is on a long slow road trip south and I have to keep moving. I will tell you more about that in the secret room next time.
For now, though, the tomb is closed.
Hail Satan
I loved that reading of Only Child and I laughed so hard listening to it. Although I did not grow up in an expansive boarding house full of miscellaneous persons, I am an only child and the humor really spoke to me.