Jack Ford

🎄 It’s 2010, and I’m hiding in a closet from a flying shark that ate half my screwdriver.  I’ve finally caught up with the timeline of people who have been requesting that I watch the “Doctor Who” Christmas specials.  🎙 Andre Bennett, Jack Ford from the Total Christmas Podcast, and Anthony Strand from ToughPigs.com join me for a twisted take on “A Christmas Carol” starring Michael Gambon in the Scrooge role and the 11th Doctor as at least 2 ghosts of Christmas.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Andre’s review of this episode from 2011.  Anthony ranks all of Steven Moffat’s “Doctor Who” episodes.  Amy and Rory’s outfits may or may not be but probably are a nod to a similar scene in a 2001 “Only Fools and Horses” Christmas special.  Michael Gambon in “Toys,” as the Ultragorgon on Jim Henson’s “Monster Maker,” and as the Ghost of Christmas Present in 2001’s “Christmas Carol: The Movie.”  Abigail is basically Nora Fries from Batman.  Katherine Jenkins on “Dancing with the Stars.”  Danny Horn (Young Adult Kazran) on Bandcamp.  Greenland sharks could live for hundreds of years.  “Abigail’s Song (Silence Is All You Know)”  ****  📼 Commercials:  Tesco Christmas Advert: “Mrs. Belcher” (2010)  Tinsel Tunes: The Christmas Music Podcast  ****  “Doctor Who” and “A Christmas Carol” © 2010 BBC.  Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 It’s 1988, and the Spirit of Christmas just broke down my bedroom door to say hello.  🎙 Jack Ford from the Total Christmas Podcast joins us for an edition of Scrooge Sunday that turns everyone’s favorite festive tale of redemption on its head and blows it out its enormous, muscular backside as great philanthropist and all-around softy Ebenezer Blackadder learns from watching his ancestors and descendants that it’s good to be bad.  📺 You can watch “Blackadder’s Christmas Carol” on Vimeo.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  Tony Robinson’s “Christmas Wrapping” and the Total Christmas Podcast episode on it.  How have I never heard of humbug candies?  “A Merry Messy Kweznuz.”  A deleted scene.  Miriam Margolyes (Queen Victoria) in “Little Shop of Horrors.”  Jim Broadbent (Prince Albert) as Santa in an Aldi Christmas ad.  “The Last of Scrooge,” and Jack’s review of it.  The cast of “Grange Hill” sings “Just Say No.”  Dennis Lill (Beadle) in “Batman” (1989).  Spitting Image and “The Chicken Song.”  Merry Britsmas on “A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong.”  ****  📼 Commercials:  BBC1 Intro to “Blackadder’s Christmas Carol” (1988)  Barclaycard: “Surveillance” (1995), starring Rowan Atkinson.  Festive Foreign Film Fans.  ****  “Blackadder’s Christmas Carol” © 1988 BBC.  Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.

🎄 It’s 1985, but we’re rocketing into the future, when apparently urgent veterinary care no longer exists.  🎙 Jack Ford from the Total Christmas Podcast joins us for a glimpse into the space-age year of 2062 to find out if 3 robotic ghosts of Christmas can convince Mr. Spacely to change his stingy ways, while the clock is ticking for the Jetsons’ dog, Astro, on his deathbed.  ****  💬 Topics & Tangents:  George Jetson apparently was/will be born at the end of July 2022.  George O’Hanlon (George Jetson) as Joe McDoakes in a series of instructional parody short films from the 1940s and ’50s.  The Jetsons’ “laser tree.”  “Bongo Feet and Zip,” the classic Hanna-Barbara running sound effect, is heard 9 times in this episode.  This episode marks the last appearance speaking appearance of the Jetsons’ pet alien, Orbitty.  Astro’s supposed fever is normal for dogs.  How the Flintstones movie teenage Spacely and his future wife watch changes the theory that both shows take place in the same time period.  The robotic Ghost of Christmas Past, Present (literally a talking wrapped Christmas present), and “Yet to Be.”  I had to look up whether Spacely even had a pet to warrant having a personal veterinarian. Meet Zero.  ****  📼 Commercials:  George Jetson’s Air Pollution PSA, National Clean Air Coalition (1990)  Cool Kids Club, a nostalgia-fueled trip back to the ’80s and ’90s.  ****  “The Jetsons” and “A Jetson Christmas Carol” © 1985 Hanna-Barbara Productions, Inc.  Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.  Find us at adventcalendar.house.