FH Mini 17 - The Monster Mash

Dan McCoy

[0:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse Mini. We've got a treat for you today. First we'll

[0:09] all introduce our regular selves and then I'll introduce our guests. I'm Dan McCoy.

[0:13] Hey, I'm Stuart Wellington.

Elliott Kalan

[0:15] I'm Elliot Kalin, but I'm not my regular self, Dan, because I was bitten by a radioactive spider

[0:20] earlier in the day and I think my bones are weak as a result, so I'm less than regular.

Dan McCoy

[0:26] Okay. And with us, we have two great comedy legend, comedy writer guests. We've got Mike

[0:37] Reese of The Simpsons, four-time Emmy winner, and Ken Keeler of The Simpsons, also Futurama.

[0:46] Mike asked Ken how many Emmys he had. It turns out he has one more than Mike, so for those

[0:52] keeping score, right now it is Mike, four, Ken, five.

[0:57] The night is young. I still like it.

[0:59] Yeah, you know what? That's great.

[1:01] And I'm not working.

[1:02] You never know.

[1:05] Like, Elliot has a few lying around. He might just motor over, give you one, Mike, just to

[1:10] even the score.

Elliott Kalan

[1:11] It's possible. I mean, you'd have to scratch out my name, but I think that might be worth

[1:15] it just to make this game competitive again.

[1:17] Yeah, exactly.

S3

[1:18] There's the terrible joke I made. I gave one of my Emmys to my mom because I didn't have

[1:24] a birthday present for her. And I planned the moment she dies, I want to go to her house

[1:32] and grab the Emmy back. And we'll be like winning the Emmy for best orphan.

Dan McCoy

[1:38] Oh, God. Well, you know, Corona. You could get lucky.

[1:45] Yeah, you're right, Dan. Good. That's the right way to take that one. It's just...

[1:48] Sure, yeah.

S3

[1:50] Give Mike some hope about that.

[1:53] Yeah.

[1:53] I'd like to say...

Dan McCoy

[1:54] I needed causes of death for my mom to face.

[1:59] We tweeted at each other briefly, but this is the first time I'm seeing Mike face to face

[2:03] and within minutes.

Elliott Kalan

[2:04] Yeah.

[2:06] Dan usually waits until at least the second appearance to wish death upon the mother of

[2:10] a guest.

Dan McCoy

[2:13] I'm sitting thinking how many Emmys I can give my mom.

[2:15] Well, it's a very...

[2:17] Well, one more than Mike.

[2:21] So, it's a very special thing that brings us all together today. This episode will be

[2:30] released on Halloween itself. And of course, there's one Halloween song that towers above

[2:37] the rest.

[2:38] Thriller.

[2:40] Well, that is the only one that comes close. But we're talking, of course, of the Monster

[2:46] Mash. And I tweeted about the Monster Mash recently.

[2:51] As I want to do every year around this time, and sometimes not at this time of the year.

[2:58] And Mike somehow saw this and talked about how much he can love the Monster Mash.

Stuart Wellington

[3:04] Yeah, was it? It was probably one of those content aggregator sites that was putting together

[3:08] the world's worst tweets.

Elliott Kalan

[3:13] He might have had a Google Alert set for writers who are supposed to be working right now.

Dan McCoy

[3:20] Well, anyway, this...

[3:23] Long story short, we're here to talk about the Monster Mash.

[3:26] Of course, by Bobby Boris Pickett, who I wanted to say, I was looking into this.

[3:34] You might be surprised. It is hard to find a complete discography of all of Bobby Boris Pickett's

[3:41] songs online. But he did chase after this particular rainbow many other times in his career.

[3:50] He also wrote Monster's Holiday, Monster Motion, Transylvania Twist, Blood Bank Blues, Me and

[3:58] My Mummy, The Monster Swim, and The Monster Rap. And I think that there are more that I was not

[4:04] able to track down. So he found his groove early.

Elliott Kalan

[4:07] Well, it's hard to know because, as everyone knows, he first came to the public attention

[4:12] when Alan Lomax was walking through the bayous of Louisiana with his tape recorder and found

[4:18] Bobby Boris Pickett singing what... He assumed at first was an old spiritual about the creation

[4:23] of a brought-back-to-life corpse. And it rocketed him to superstardom. So who knows what he recorded

[4:29] on wax cylinders or things like that before that in the small recording studios of the

[4:33] South? Hard to say.

S3

[4:36] Ken, do you have the album? Do you have the Bobby Boris Pickett album?

[4:42] Do I? No. Absolutely not.

[4:45] No. Okay.

S5

[4:47] I don't like the Monster Rapids.

S3

[4:51] I have to jump in and just give some history on this, which was in 1981, I think, Ken Keeler

[5:00] was working on a Newsweek parody that Harvard Lampoon was doing. And he wrote this article

[5:05] reporting the sort of the lyrics of the Monster Mash as if it was a breaking news story. And it

[5:16] was, I mean, everybody loved this article and it still reads great. But I think what was so special

[5:22] about it was the idea that the sudden realization, everybody knows this song. Every single, for not

[5:32] only note that's heard it, but it's pretty familiar with all the lyrics and the turns it takes. So I

[5:39] thought that was the great observation. And that's why I insisted Ken be here.

S5

[5:44] I have scratched my head trying to remember what prompted it. I mean, it was the middle of summer.

[5:49] I couldn't have been hearing it on the radio. But I mean, it was one of those things where

[5:53] whatever it was, it came to me in a flash, as they say, the way things catch on. And it just,

[6:00] it wrote itself, as I always say, it took about five minutes and I suppose you could make it better,

[6:04] but it wouldn't really change the essence of it. It's just, that's the Monster Mash.

[6:07] This thing, these things happened. And okay.

Elliott Kalan

[6:12] But it's true. Like the Monster Mash has entered kind of like folklore status the same way that like,

[6:18] I have a six and a half year old son and the other day he goes, Daddy, Daddy, have you heard this song

[6:21] about Jingle Bell's Batman smells? And I was like, yeah, I've heard it. How did you hear it?

[6:26] Like it was, the Monster Mash is like that. Like it's just, it's just lore now. It just,

[6:30] it just refloats around and everybody knows it. I don't know.

[6:33] There's always been a mash.

Stuart Wellington

[6:35] Yeah. Has your son been hanging out on like, like old railroad tracks and with hobos and such?

Elliott Kalan

[6:42] It was him and Alan Lomax just wandering the bayous looking for,

[6:46] looking for traditional American folk nursery rhymes.

[6:48] Does Alan Lomax come up on this podcast a lot?

[6:51] No, I've been looking for an opportunity for years, for years.

Dan McCoy

[6:55] He'll be joining us on Zoom.

[6:57] I do feel like there's a, an arc I went through with the Monster Mash where I was like,

[7:05] I was a kid who, you know, enjoyed it because it was a song about monsters that would play on Halloween.

[7:11] And then I grew older and I'm like, oh, fuck this song. This song is a novelty tune.

[7:15] Like, it's just like this nonsense song that was like a cash in.

[7:20] And then as I've grown older.

[7:21] It's like he doesn't even care about the monsters.

[7:25] But as I've been older, like, I don't know whether it's Stockholm Syndrome or what, but like,

[7:29] what is cheap and about the Monster Mash is what I, has come to love it.

[7:35] Like, the more nakedly it is, this attempt to just do a novelty hit, the more I love it, you know?

[7:42] And I mean, although it did come about kind of organically.

[7:45] Like, he, like, it's my understanding that he just started to do a Boris Karloff impression with his band on stage one night and people loved it.

[7:53] So he's like, I guess this is what I do now.

Elliott Kalan

[7:57] But there's, what you're talking about, Dan, is the arc I go through every time I listen to the song.

[8:01] It first starts and I'm like, oh, here it comes, the Monster Mash.

[8:04] This is going to be fun.

[8:05] And then about two verses in, I'm like, what the fuck is this?

[8:08] Like, it's so, like, it's such a dumb song and it's so totally not in keeping with the spirit of the Universal Monsters.

[8:14] And then by the end of it, I'm like, I've got to admire it.

[8:17] He wrote a whole song about this, Monsters doing a dance.

[8:19] Like, if that's a cheap one.

[8:21] And it is long.

[8:21] It's a long song.

Dan McCoy

[8:21] I played it on the guitar the other day and like.

[8:24] What?

[8:26] Shut the fuck up, Dan McCoy.

Elliott Kalan

[8:28] Dan, you are a parody of yourself in quarantine.

[8:32] That you were playing Monster Mash on guitar in your apartment.

Dan McCoy

[8:34] Well, Audrey really likes to sing.

[8:37] We can't go to karaoke, obviously, because, like, that would murder everyone right now.

[8:42] So, we were, I was just playing guitar.

[8:44] We were singing songs.

[8:44] And I was like, I got to sing the Monster Mash.

[8:46] And I get to, like, I get done with verse three.

[8:50] And I'm like, surely this song is over.

[8:52] And then there's a lot more to this.

S5

[8:53] I have to take exception to this.

[8:55] I never thought it was stupid.

[8:58] I mean, I never thought it was brilliant.

[9:00] But I thought when Bobby Boris Pickett wrote it,

[9:04] he sort of knew what it was that was appealing about it.

[9:06] I don't feel like people are, when people, for example, like your tweets.

[9:11] I don't, to me, those don't read as making fun of it.

[9:14] It's, yeah, that, if you, if you showed them Bobby Boris Pickett,

[9:17] yeah, that's about right.

S3

[9:19] I'm going to go deeper, which is, because I've been,

[9:22] because I have nothing else to do.

[9:24] I've been thinking about the Monster Mash for about a month.

[9:28] Nothing.

[9:28] We'd be doing a 15-minute podcast.

[9:32] And I'm not being facetious when I say,

[9:35] I think it may be the greatest song in the history of songs.

[9:40] And part of that is, like, I'm old enough.

[9:43] We had the single when it came out.

[9:45] I was three, but we had it playing in the house.

[9:49] And I've never gotten tired of it.

[9:51] And we have, we, every Halloween, we break out this dancing Frankenstein that plays the Monster Mash.

[9:58] And I still, I enjoy the song every single time.

[10:02] And I can't listen to the Beatles anymore.

[10:05] 200 plus songs.

[10:07] I'm sick of every one of them.

[10:10] Monster Mash still does it for me.

Dan McCoy

[10:14] Well, when I say it's stupid, I say it with great affection.

[10:17] Because some of my favorite things are very, very stupid.

[10:21] But I love the, I mean, it tells a whole story.

[10:26] But I don't know.

[10:29] This may be controversial, but I don't think this story holds together.

Elliott Kalan

[10:32] I will say it's more coherent than the later Universal Monster movies,

[10:36] where they're just throwing all the monsters into a house together to see what happens.

[10:40] You know, like, at least it tells a better story than that.

[10:43] But here's the main issue I have with it.

[10:45] And this is going to sound possibly pedantic.

[10:49] Is that he's doing a Boris Karloff impression for Dr. Frankenstein, essentially.

[10:54] Boris Karloff, I often play Dr. Frankenstein.

[10:56] He should be doing a Colin Clive impression.

[11:00] Well, there you have it, Boris Fickett.

[11:02] I threw down the gauntlet.

[11:03] What do you say to that?

[11:06] You got him.

[11:07] I got him.

[11:08] Boom.

[11:08] Consider this myth busted.

S3

[11:11] One thing I noticed, too, about the story of the song is,

[11:15] and this is why I think it's so rich, is you don't expect it.

[11:19] It's actually Dracula's story.

Elliott Kalan

[11:23] He has the change of heart in it.

[11:25] Yeah, he's the one who learned something.

S3

[11:28] It's sort of like the last version of A Star is Born.

[11:32] He had his Transylvania quest, supplanted by the monster mash.

[11:36] He's bitter, but it has a happy ending.

[11:39] Now he's playing with the band.

[11:41] That is the arc of the song.

Dan McCoy

[11:44] Well, I like that the narrator reassures you, too.

[11:47] Like, in case you were worried that Dracula bears a grudge, he says,

[11:51] now everything's cool, Drax are part of the band.

[11:54] And you're like, okay, good.

[11:55] The minor conflict that arose.

Elliott Kalan

[11:57] That pinpoint's something I love about Halloween and the way these monsters have become such an accepted part of, like, culture and kid culture.

[12:05] He's literally talking about there's a specific bedroom where vampires eat people.

[12:09] And there's all these ghouls.

[12:11] But the problem of it is Dracula's not happy about this song.

[12:14] Don't worry.

[12:15] They made up.

Dan McCoy

[12:16] Like, the fact that they're all going to leave and murder people is not an issue.

[12:20] It's totally okay.

[12:22] Well, also, I mean, like, do these monsters...

[12:26] I guess the Universal Horror movies have proven that these monsters do just hang out together.

[12:31] I mean, I don't know if I'd say hang out together.

Elliott Kalan

[12:32] They run into each other sometimes.

[12:34] They're in the same business.

Dan McCoy

[12:35] Yeah, they meet each other, as the titles say.

[12:38] But, like, the Monster Mash is this clarion call.

[12:40] Like, as soon as the Monster Mash starts happening, which immediately they know to call it a mash for some reason.

[12:45] I don't know what that is.

[12:46] But they come swooping in.

[12:49] Like, oh, a party's happening.

[12:51] A monster party specifically.

[12:52] Even though, for you, the living, this mash is meant to.

[12:56] Is it something out about that?

[12:57] Is a mash like a style of dancing?

S5

[12:59] Yes, the mash is...

[13:00] Remember the mash potato?

[13:02] No, you wouldn't remember the mash potato.

[13:04] There were a series of mash potato dances.

[13:06] And the Monster Mash was another mash in that style.

[13:09] In the same way that the Swiss family Robinson...

[13:11] They're not named Robinson.

[13:13] It's because it's another novel in the style of Robinson Crusoe.

[13:16] The mash is a genre.

[13:19] As we can tell by how many other mashes there have been.

Elliott Kalan

[13:24] Well, there's the show mash.

[13:26] There's the movie mash.

[13:27] All part of the same lineage, I guess.

Dan McCoy

[13:29] Master mash.

[13:30] You know, that makes the monster swim make a lot more sense to me.

[13:35] Because suddenly I'm like, oh, yeah.

[13:37] The swim is a type of dance.

[13:39] Whereas, having never heard the monster swim, I'm just imagining, you know, you go to a public pool.

[13:45] And they're like, okay, kids out of the pool.

[13:47] It's monster swim time.

[13:49] You know, like, that was what...

[13:50] Yeah, and then the girl man gets in.

[13:51] Sure.

[13:51] And then all the kids wait around the edge of the pool.

[13:54] And they're all mad that they can't swim.

Elliott Kalan

[13:57] They're mad that the bride is swimming super slowly.

[14:01] Just really rubbing it in that she gets the pool all to herself.

[14:05] I do...

[14:05] Dan, you mentioned that...

[14:07] It mentions how this song is for you, the living, as well.

[14:09] I like that because it's like a little touch of Abraham Lincoln gets into the song.

S5

[14:13] And yes, I had just noticed that as I've been thinking about it over the past couple weeks.

[14:17] It's...

[14:17] And you've been...

[14:18] You made me look at all the lyrics.

[14:20] It's pretty elegantly written.

[14:22] I mean, that dialogue is...

S3

[14:24] The rhyme scheme is perfect.

[14:26] There's no forced or fake rhymes in the whole thing.

Dan McCoy

[14:31] Well, I...

[14:32] I will object only to highlight what is actually my favorite part of the song, because I believe it to be the most awkward part of the song.

[14:41] Which is, I guess...

[14:42] Don't say it.

[14:43] I guess it's the bridge, because it is different from everything else in the song.

[14:46] You would call it the bridge, where it's...

[14:50] The zombies were having fun.

[14:52] The party had just begun.

[14:54] The guests included Wolfman, Dracula, and his son.

[14:58] And I love it, because...

[15:00] Like, it does feel like in the middle of his song, he gave up for a little bit before he got a second wind.

[15:07] Like, right in the middle of the song, he's just gonna be like, uh, okay, well, who was on the guest list?

[15:11] I'll explain that.

[15:12] And then now, back to the...

[15:14] Back to the rocking part of the song.

Elliott Kalan

[15:16] Look, there's a lot of monsters.

[15:17] You can't have lyrics for all of them, you know?

[15:19] You just gotta, at some point, just list names, you know?

[15:23] Metaluna Mutant was there.

[15:25] Also, probably King Kong.

[15:29] Maybe the characters from The Black Cat.

[15:31] Were they monsters?

[15:32] Let's just continue with the song.

[15:34] See, there's a rhyme for you, too, Dan.

[15:36] There, great.

S3

[15:37] Someone observed when we...

[15:40] Part of why I love this song, you can just keep unpacking it.

[15:44] And someone mentioned that Dracula wakes up from his coffin in the middle of the party, which makes you think...

[15:51] She said, so he came to the party with his coffin.

[15:56] And it makes you think, oh, fuck, Dracula's gonna stay all night long.

S5

[16:03] The detail that I've been thinking about a lot is that the coffin bangers, or baggers, I'm not quite sure which, probably coffin baggers, were about to arrive with their vocal group, the Crypt Kicker Five.

[16:15] Now, the song is credited to Bobby Borse Pickett and the Crypt Kickers.

[16:21] What happened to the coffin baggers?

[16:22] How did they lose their credit?

[16:23] I mean, they're apparently the musicians, moreover, because the Crypt Kickers are vocalists.

[16:28] I don't know.

[16:29] Somebody got screwed out of some royalties.

[16:31] Oh, my God.

S3

[16:33] Yeah, yeah.

[16:34] And it's Crypt Kickers...

[16:36] Through the looking glass.

[16:37] It's Crypt Kickers a pun on Shit Kickers.

[16:39] That just suddenly hit me.

[16:42] Because what is that otherwise?

Stuart Wellington

[16:45] I can only assume, yeah.

[16:46] I mean...

[16:47] It's gotta be.

[16:48] It's one of those jokes, like, when they did the poster for the Smurfs movie, and they're like, Smurf happens.

[16:52] Don't even bring it up.

[16:53] And you're like...

[16:54] Don't even bring it up.

[16:54] That only makes sense, because you know it means shit.

Elliott Kalan

[16:58] Not a fan of those.

[16:59] Not a fan of the kids' movie taglines that...

[17:02] Where you need to know swear words to understand them.

[17:05] Yeah, there's a...

[17:07] I guess...

[17:07] It's interesting.

[17:09] You rarely hear a song that documents the credits that the songwriters then try to hide.

[17:15] Like, there's not a lot of those.

[17:16] It seems like a bad strategy, yeah.

S5

[17:18] It's like, hey, guess who you're listening to?

[17:20] But, you know, it's a secret.

S3

[17:24] This is probably why he just had one head.

[17:30] And this is something else I had to write to Ken about, because he's a mathematician, which was...

[17:36] The Monster Mash is a dance, but it's also a song.

[17:39] They say the band was playing the Monster Mash.

[17:41] But the song, The Monster Mash, is about the song, The Monster Mash.

[17:46] It tells you the creation of the song, and goes to the end, saying it's the hit of the land.

[17:54] So somehow the song knows that the song will be a hit.

[17:58] And I thought it's...

Dan McCoy

[18:00] I found it more confusing than Tenet.

[18:03] I just...

[18:04] I mean, I can only assume that, yeah, we do...

[18:07] I think this has been observed before, but the Monster Mash song is not about...

[18:14] We do not hear the song, The Monster Mash, within The Monster Mash.

[18:19] The Monster Mash, as we know it in this universe, is a song about another song called The Monster Mash.

Elliott Kalan

[18:25] Unless it is this song, and they added on a lyric at the...

[18:28] They added on a new verse, like a celebratory verse, to kind of...

[18:32] Or a boastful verse, I don't know.

[18:34] But you're right, it does raise the question of whether there is another Monster Mash out there,

[18:38] and whether it may even now still be lyrically in that castle, forcing people to rock out to this dance that,

[18:45] as far as I know, nobody knows how to do.

[18:47] Like, a lot of those dance songs would explain how to do the dances, right?

[18:50] Uh-huh.

[18:50] Like, later on, like the Time Warp song in Rock Air Pictures, like, explains how you do the Time Warp.

[18:56] But I don't know how to...

[18:57] I mean, The Monster Mash is some kind of mashed potato dance, but I don't know what you do that makes it monstery, you know?

Dan McCoy

[19:02] It is my understanding that it is like the mashed potato, but you hold your arms out in a sort of a Frankenstein's monster, traditional, stereotypical motion.

Stuart Wellington

[19:14] Dan, you're really missing your calling as, like, a bar mitzvah, like, MC character, like Hype Man,

[19:20] like, gets everybody on the dance floor to dance.

[19:22] And you explain the dances for people.

Elliott Kalan

[19:24] I mean, The Monster Mash is not a huge bar mitzvah song.

[19:27] Really?

[19:27] Like, that's...

[19:28] Well...

[19:29] I mean, maybe it is at Transylvanian bar mitzvahs, I don't know.

Dan McCoy

[19:33] I mean, I don't know if you want to reveal this, Elliot, but, I mean, we're talking about big life party events,

[19:39] and there's a very important connection that you, personal connection, you have to The Monster Mash.

[19:43] Well, yeah, sure.

Elliott Kalan

[19:44] Well, I danced to The Monster Mash at my wedding.

[19:45] Yeah, that goes with my saying.

[19:47] Sure, that's scientific fact.

[19:48] That's the big twist ending to this podcast.

[19:51] It was not the first dance song.

[19:53] No?

[19:53] What was that?

[19:54] The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?

[19:55] I did a lot for it.

[19:57] Yeah.

[19:58] Stop.

[20:00] There was a...

[20:01] MacArthur's Park, yeah.

[20:03] Yeah, we danced to MacArthur Park.

[20:06] The...

[20:07] It was...

[20:08] I mean, originally, our first dance was I Only Advise for You, not the Shabop Shabop version of it,

[20:13] closer to the version from the movie Dames.

[20:15] But then the...

[20:17] I believe it was a former co-worker of mine, James Jimmy Don, who requested that The Monster Mash be played by the DJ.

[20:25] And I was delighted at that choice until two verses in, where I was like, I'm still dancing to a song about monsters.

[20:31] Like, okay.

[20:32] Like, what?

[20:33] And then by the end of it, I was like, you know what?

[20:35] I like that I danced to a monster song at my wedding.

[20:38] So, again, I went through that whole personal emotional rollercoaster that comes with The Monster Mash.

[20:48] Dan, do you think we'll ever see a resurgence in monster novelty pop songs again?

Dan McCoy

[20:54] Ugh, I hope so.

[20:55] You know?

[20:56] Like, I feel like the last...

[20:58] Like, the closest we got was when, uh...

[21:01] Unexpectedly, like, two bars of werewolf bar mitzvah took the country by storm, and they're like,

[21:07] we gotta put out a longer version of this.

[21:10] And so there's a fuller version of werewolf bar mitzvah you can find, but, uh...

Stuart Wellington

[21:13] Do you think if Universal's Dark Universe had gotten to make more movies, if they would have played, like, a soft, slow, acoustic version of the Monster Mash over one of the trailers?

Elliott Kalan

[21:26] Oh, it would be, like, Trent Reznor's version of the Monster Mash over, like, just, like, you know, ambiguous shots of monsters.

[21:32] Well, the song, if I'm remembering correctly, came out around the time that there was a resurgence in monster stuff,

[21:39] because the Universal movies were being re-released to theaters and also packaged for television broadcast.

[21:45] So it was like, suddenly, monsters were big again.

[21:48] And so I wonder if maybe, just maybe, there's some beautiful day in the future when we can stop worrying about the world around us

[21:55] and start worrying again that someone's gonna bring a dead body back to life and it's gonna throw a girl in a lake

[22:00] or, uh, like a Dracula's gonna walk around and have both a daughter and a son.

[22:05] The daughter isn't mentioned in the song, but he has a movie where she has one.

[22:09] Um, I don't know, maybe that's too beautiful a world to hope for, but it's what I'm working towards

[22:13] with my new, uh, political activity pack group.

[22:18] Uh, it's called...

[22:19] Wait, they're referring to Dracula's son?

Stuart Wellington

[22:21] I thought they were referring to the Wolfman's son and Dracula was there, too.

[22:26] Dracula and his son.

[22:28] You think he's a wolfman?

S5

[22:32] That's just insane!

[22:33] Don't forget everything I was just saying.

Elliott Kalan

[22:35] Stuart, we gotta deal with this.

[22:36] We gotta deal with this.

Dan McCoy

[22:37] Stuart, this...

[22:38] What's the...

[22:39] What's the...

[22:39] What's the lyric again?

[22:41] The guests included Wolfman, Dracula, and his son.

[22:45] So you think it's modifying Wolfman's son?

Elliott Kalan

[22:47] They went back to the front of the sentence.

[22:48] So here's another suggestion about how that might work.

[22:51] It's...

[22:52] At some point, Dracula turned into a werewolf, and it's...

[22:54] The list included Wolfman, parentheses, Dracula, and his son.

[23:01] It's possible.

[23:02] It's possible.

[23:03] Prove me wrong, Stuart.

[23:05] I mean, I can't.

[23:06] I don't have the lyric sheet in front of me.

Dan McCoy

[23:08] Much like we release a damned soul by driving a stake through their heart, I feel like we need to release our guests from this horrible monster purgatory we've put them into.

[23:22] Because I promised them to not spend too much time talking about this stuff.

[23:27] But I want to thank...

Elliott Kalan

[23:29] You knew why make promises you can't keep, Dan.

[23:32] You're the fool with that one.

S3

[23:33] The podcast is still not as long as the song itself.

[23:37] That's true, yeah.

S5

[23:38] Also, Mike and I are going to continue to talk about the monster mesh after this is over, so...

Dan McCoy

[23:42] I mean, we can do it.

[23:44] I just...

[23:45] Here's my cheat sheet.

[23:46] I got so much more to talk about.

[23:48] Oh, do you have more?

[23:49] Oh, yeah.

[23:49] Tell us.

[23:50] Tell us.

[23:50] I was worried.

[23:51] I'll just mention...

[23:51] You've got more.

[23:52] Tell us.

S3

[23:52] This might be a good wrap-up, but it's sort of a happy ending, which is...

[23:56] A friend of mine writes the comic strip, Zitz.

[24:00] And I don't mean to brag, but he wrote it.

[24:04] And he made enough money off of Zitz that he was able to buy a Malibu beach house on the beach.

[24:12] And the house on his left was owned by Paul Fusco, the man who operated and created the Alf puppet.

[24:21] And the guy on his right was Bobby Borgers Pickett.

[24:26] So that has got to be the funnest block in Malibu.

Elliott Kalan

[24:31] That's like what my idea as a child of what it would be like to be like a famous Hollywood entertainer would be, where it's like, I'm going to live next door to Alf.

[24:40] I'm going to live next door to Bobby Borgers Pickett.

[24:42] This is going to be amazing.

[24:45] What did he say?

[24:46] Did he say...

[24:47] What did...

[24:47] Was he a good neighbor?

[24:48] Did he tell you anything about him, or...?

S3

[24:50] He said they would party all night.

[24:53] Wow.

[24:54] Wow.

[24:55] A bunch of monsters would come to the house.

[24:58] Oh, yeah.

[24:59] It was an autobiographical song.

[25:01] It's an autobiographical song.

Dan McCoy

[25:02] To get a jolt from his electrodes.

Elliott Kalan

[25:03] You get up at...

[25:05] The doorbell rings at night, and you get up, and there's a mummy at the door, and you're like, next door.

[25:09] Next door.

[25:09] Not this house.

S3

[25:11] He's really like Lou Reed.

[25:13] He just writes about the people he knows.

[25:16] Yeah.

Elliott Kalan

[25:19] That's...

[25:20] Oh, now I want to see...

[25:21] Now I want to see the movie about Bobby Borgers Pickett, where he's like, no one's writing songs about us, man.

[25:26] And he's sitting in a bar with, like, Frankenstein and Dracula.

Dan McCoy

[25:32] Okay, well...

[25:33] I'm out.

[25:34] Thank you so much for being with us, Mike and Ken.

[25:38] I don't know if you have anything to plug.

[25:41] For whatever worth we have as a mouthpiece for that, please do it.

Elliott Kalan

[25:49] We might be finally able to help them get the word out about The Simpsons.

[25:52] Mm-hmm.

[25:53] Yeah.

S5

[25:55] Wolfman, Dracula, and his son?

Elliott Kalan

[25:57] No, I won't sully this with a plug.

[26:00] I got nothing to plug.

S3

[26:02] The son, by the way...

[26:04] What's the last thought?

[26:05] The son in the song comes off like Eric Trump, where he's just sort of...

[26:11] He's got nothing to do.

[26:13] He comes to a party with his dad.

[26:16] There's no other mention of him.

[26:18] He doesn't do anything.

[26:19] Does he have his own party?

[26:20] To clarify.

Dan McCoy

[26:21] Dracula's like, I couldn't find a babysitter this late.

Stuart Wellington

[26:26] Now, Dan, were you doing a Wolfman impression or a Dracula impression?

Dan McCoy

[26:30] Yeah, that was the Wolfman.

[26:33] Okay, well, on that note, to all of our listeners and to everyone in the world,

[26:39] Happy Halloween!

[26:43] Everyone's rolling their eyes and cut.

S3

[26:52] Maximumfun.org

[26:54] Comedy and culture.

S6

[26:56] Artist owned.

[26:57] Audience supported.

FH Mini 17 - The Monster Mash

Transcript

In this episode

Description