Nerd! Episode 4: A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)
Dre and Jeff talk the perfect nostalgic Christmas special.
Episode four of Nerd! is out! Check out patreon.comjeffmay if you want regular feeds for the show and more. You can also subscribe wherever podcasts are found, but you may have to wait a little longer and miss bonus episodes and features (we’ll be releasing a He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special in a week for Patreon subscribers!)
You can also find Jeff at the Unpopular Opinion Network, where he is the co-host of “Unpopular Opinion” and “You Don’t Even Like Sports.” He is also at the Gamfully Unemployed Network, where he is the co-host of “Tom and Jeff Watch Batman” and a periodic guest host. Finally, find him on social media as @heytherejeffro (Twitter and Instagram).
You can find versions of this on YouTube. Sadly it’s not available on traditional media in its full form.
Some time-stamped notes and links:
5:50 - The week of November 28th had a lot of musical chairs.
Jeff May was NOT on his regular Unpopular Opinion show BUT was on
Creature Feature with Katin Goldin (Subject Goofball Animals)
Gamefully Unemployed’s We Just Watched with David Bell (Subject: The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special) … I sense a theme.
Tom Reimann was NOT on his regular We Just Watched show but was on
10:00 - Jeff notes that Muppet Family Christmas aired next to “The Toy,” a made-for-TV movie that is suspiciously like Toy Story.
19:35 - A common internet game is - “Take a live-action movie and replace all the characters but one with Muppets. (think Muppet Christmas Carol), but a fun inverse? Take a Muppet movie and replace one Muppet with a human. I want Muppet Family Christmas with Jeff May in the role of Fozzy.
23:50 - Did you know the Muppets’ Swedish Chef had a cereal?
37:21 - Nerd! Throwback, much like Mega Man’s box art wasn’t for kids but could go on an adult Jeff’s wall, Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal weren’t kids’ movies, but those kids as adults loved them.
51:00 - Jeff has an amazing thesis on an incredibly poignant scene on inclusivity in the middle of this otherwise silly special.
54:40 - “The Heck You Say” delivery from Kermit gets me every time!
57:15 - Milton Berle vs. Statler and Waldorf is an all-time get from the Muppet Show.
1:04:35 - I sponsor a podcast called Old Smith / New Smith on the Gamfully Unemployed Network on the works of Kevin Smith and note a possible connection between the Fraggles song “Pass it On” relating to a pebble passed along 37 times to a vulgar recurring set of jokes in Clerks.
1:08:00 - Amazing Secret Galaxy episode on Fraggle Rock, which just dropped in time for someone doing last-second research on Fraggle Rock before this podcast …
1:21:35 - In a past life, Jeff May was a mommy blogger, who … interviewed a Muppet??
1:25:38 - Past life Jeff also interviewed George Perez.
1:37:25 - If you’re looking for another 3 hours of Jim Henson history/etc., Defunctland has a good docu-series on him.
1:52:00 - I stream every other week with my friend Landon at twitch.tv/rixtergt. I did in fact beat Metroid on stream (just over an hour, sadly), and also finally beat Mike Tyson on the same stream. Yay!
See ya soon!