The Occasionalists Podcast

Best Of (?) Month: Embrace The Reboot 3-30-2018

We are wrapping up our Best Of (?) Month with an oldie but a topic we love talking about, good or bad, Embrace The Reboot!
As the title would suggest, we give up criticising Hollywood for not having any original ideas and instead, join in on the remaking, rebooting, prequeling, sequeling and adapting fun the major studios are having without us.
Let's do it! Again!

Best Of (?) Month: 1997 - The Lost Year In Music 11-28-2018

Best Of (?) Month rolls along with our deep dive into one of the strangest years in our pop culture lifetimes, 1997.
In particular, we look at music and how the post-grunge, pre-modern pop era was a complete, jumbled mess that the music companies and consumers alike could not fully figure out.
Bland yet unforgettable earworms, the best year ever(!?) for movie soundtracks, the mainstreaming of hip hop and the women briefly taking over the alt rock scene.
There's a lot to work through here, join us!
 

Best Of (?) Month: The Villains Part 1 2-25-2020

This week's episode was one of the handful we did before the coronavirus pandemic forced the US into a nationwide lockdown. And guess what!? WE PREDICTED EVERYTHING!
Just kidding, in fact, we don't make mention of the pandemic at all. Which was refreshing since all of our episodes for awhile after would be tainted with talk of the ongoing outbreak.
In this episode we focus on the bad guys of film, television and literature. The Villains! 
We get into what makes villains so compelling, how to deploy them in a story and we give a breakdown of classic villain archetypes and introduce a few that are newer to the entertainment world.
Give it a listen and SAY GOODNIGHT TO THE BAD GUY!

Best Of (?) Month: RoboCop 7-30-2018

Welcome to July everyone! Like most people out there, The Occasionalists also like to get out and enjoy their summer vacation. To that end, we are taking the month of July off but we are not leaving you high and dry. No sir!
Every week this month we will be dialing up the way back machine to give everyone a second look at some of our favorite episodes. We reintroduce each episode, give a little detail on what was going on with us at that point in time, and lay out a few other things we noticed or perhaps had forgotten prior to the relisten.
First up, from July 30th 2018, our Cinema Dissection on Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi action classic RoboCop.
And a quick message from Clarence Boddicker: Bitches, enjoy.

The Occasionalists Book Club Month: A Red & Blue Character Deep Dive

Our final episode for our book club month is here and this time we turn our focus to the main (and really only) characters of This Is How You Lose The Time War, Red and Blue themselves.
We dissect their motivations, places in their respective factions, their relationship to one another and so much more. We also answer a few speculative questions about each character that were never totally filled in and ask a few of our own.
We then wrap up with something we love to do on this podcast: we pitch our own adaptations of the book!
Chemma handles the movie and Pags is all over the tv series.
 

The Occasionalists Book Club Month: This Is How You Lose The Time War

Did you know that we here at The Occasionalists can read? Surprise! We can!
We like reading so much we are dedicating two robust episodes to the fabulous sci-fi romance novella from 2019, This Is How You Lose The Time War.  
An epistolary novel by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose The Time War tells the story of two time-traveling assassins attempting to win an unending war and falling in love over the centuries via hidden messages. 
That summary does this book no justice but hopefully our episode will.
Follow us upthread, will you?

The Lost Tapes Vol. 2: Music Appreciation Redux

Part two of our lost music discussion is now live. 
We round out this conversation by delving into movie soundtracks and scores, our favorite musical subgenres and of course...we make a badass lifting playlist.
Press play, suckas!

The Lost Tapes Vol. 1: Music Appreciation Redux

Way back in April, we recorded two episodes showing our appreciation for pop culture that we really liked. The first episode was on Raised By Wolves (RIP) and it went over very well. We even got some dap from some of the stars of the show.
The second episode was a deep exploration of music and parts of the music industry. Because of unforeseen technical difficulties, the recording was fucked. A two hour plus discussion went down the drain.
So we are back with another crack at our music episode, appropriately titled, Music Appreciation Redux. This time, we managed to not fuck anything up and got a tremendous two-part episode out of the discussion. 
Appreciation April rolls on into June!