ALF Colorforms

Gifts from family can be hit or miss, especially when you’re a kid. I think every person who would be reading this (all, you know, six of you) knows this. For the family members who know you, you can get some awesome presents (my mom, who got me this beloved piece of my childhood for christmas 1989  or my oldest brother got me this beauty for my 10th birthday). Sadly, you can’t always get Capcom’s Darkwing Duck NES game. Sometimes you get ALF Colorforms. 

Colorforms, for the uninitiated, are apparently a “classic toy”. I say “classic” because they’ve been around since 1951 and have won honors, including a place on TIME’s 100 Greatest Toys list. If you’re really uninitiated, or just don’t want to read a Wikipedia article about Colorforms, they come in themes, often licensed ones). In each box, you got a laminated background and a series of vinyl cutout characters, props, and speech bubbles. The vinyl adhered to the laminated cardboard, so you could put your colorforms on the background and then... um... peel them off and stick them back on?

They'll do any license, evidently.

I’ll be honest, I don’t get colorforms. Take that Real Ghostbusters one I linked to. Ray looks like he’s farting. And Ray will always look like he’s farting. He doesn’t move. Which leads to people doing this. Additionally, since the characters were designed to stick to the background, you couldn’t really move them around. I really just don’t get this as a “toy”. Maybe as a kid who drew lots of pictures (ahem...), I preferred drawing characters (I wish I still had any of my approximately googolplex of GB drawings). As an 8 year old, I could not draw a screen-accurate Ray, but I could make him do more than look like he had too many beans for lunch. 

Episode 3- Monster in My Pocket

Our third episode, with more marginally improved sound quality!

Today, we watched the 1992 special "Monster in my Pocket" (we have trouble getting a handle on the title in the episode- it's just that good!) Not only do we discuss the reasons this might not have made it as a series, we also talk about some bizarre interpretations of classic monsters (Dracula hypnotizing through a ring? Woody Allen the mummy? An anthropomorphic pile of feces?), the show's inappropriate use of Jamaican culture, the proper classification of birds, and how we all might mathematicians, er, chaoticians. Also, there's a good chance the room we were in had a gas leak, because none of us seemed to be able to, you know, think good.

Thanks for listening and enjoy!

Download from iTunes (or subscribe, pretty please) or listen right here!

Episode 2- X-men: Pryde of the X-men

We're back with episode 2- now with slightly better audio quality (we're gettig there; give us a break, we're new at this).

For episode 2 we watched the 1987 pilot for a unproduced X-men series "Pryde of the X-men". The conversation includes a LOT about the X-men, what circuits looks like, the sensibility of destroying a planet you want to conquer, the disturbing concept of "Hulking out" with middle-aged women, and the always appropriate discussion of Josef Fritzi. 
Thanks for listening!

Download from iTunes (or subscribe, pretty please) or listen right here!

Episode 1- Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue

The very first Saturday Morning Deathgrip- a podcast where four adults watch and discuss saturday morning cartoons from the 80s and 90s.

Today, we discuss "Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue," the 1990 anti-drug PSA featuring stars of the era's most popular cartoons. Topics include an awful lot on the plot of the show, how poor our Winnie the Pooh impressions are, how much George C Scott sounds like Robert Loggia, the dangers of cerebral spinal fluid leaking out of your nose, the possibility of Smurfs as voyeurs, and the potential horrors of fanfic.

Subscribe, comment and enjoy!

Download from iTunes (or subscribe, pretty please) or listen right here!

Welcome to Saturday Morning Deathgrip

Welcome to Saturday Morning Deathgrip's website of the podcast called "Saturday Morning Deathrgip."

Who are we? Well, at our most basic, we are four people (Sean, Giancarlo, Andrea and Tim). We come from diverse areas (ranging from the northeast of the United States, all the way to the southeast of the United States). We have equally diverse backgrounds (one of us is female- BUT WHICH ONE?*). Inspired by the very podcasts we listen to, we decided to begin a self indulgent journey into entertaining at least ourselves. We all met doing various things on the NYC comedy scene and in some combination have been performing improv and scripted comedy with each other since at least 2009. So when you hear us going off on a tangent about farts, you're hearing the finely honed comedy skills of four adults who are desperate for attention.

*Andrea

"What did we want to talk about?" That was a question that was asked by someone (Tim). We didn't want to pigeon hole the show too much, so we eliminated the really niche ideas like "Baltimore Orioles second basemen in the early 90s"* and "Richard Karn's merit as host of Family Feud"**. 
*Sorry Billy Ripken
**Bandwith would also limit those lengthy discussions. 

Movie podcasts have been done. Bad movie podcasts, which do lend themselves to comedy and such, also have been done (I will pimp the heck out of The Flophouse .) So we settled on something that three of us knew well and one of us did not- saturday morning cartoons from when we were kids. Sean, Tim and Giancarlo (Catholics all) did not attend Hebrew School. Andrea (not a Catholic) did. She missed out on Eek! the Cat. Until now.

So join us on our journey to the saturday mornings of our (Tim, Sean and GC's) youths and Andrea's present.