Juvenalia

Alan and Ellen talk to comedian Damon Blake of Fox and Blake about the mind-bending 1990 anti-drugs cartoon Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue in which The Smurfs, Alvin & The Chipmunks, Alf, Garfield, Winnie The Pooh, Slimer, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Muppet Babies, and Bugs Bunny team up to convince a drug-taking teen to change his ways. It’s powerful stuff.  We cover a lot of ground in this episode including drugs, Michelangelo’s appeal to at-risk kids, Australian prime ministers, single-sex Catholic schooling, The Pioneers, The Fáinne, Tallaght Leisureplex, the debauched secrets of the voices behind your favourite cartoon characters, Disney Cruises, the catchiest anti-drugs song ever, the tragedy of Lorenzo Music, and the effectiveness of the war on drugs. Enjoy and remember that only losers and cool people do drugs.  Juvenalia original artwork by Dee McDonnell Mixed and edited by Alan Bennett

Alan Maguire and Ellen Tannam talk to writer Sarah Maria Griffin about a film that was important to her as a teenager, The Fifth Element.  Questions asked and answered in this episode include: Is The Fifth Element a noir? Who would we cast in a gender-swapped The Fifth Element? Is Ruby Rhod a queer icon? Is Bruce Willis a hot dad? Could The Fifth Element be made today? Is it weird and cool that Ellen and Sarah had never met before this episode but have something very important in common? How did Sarah turn some of the issues with being a Woman Who Likes Sci-Fi on their head while writing her first novel Spare And Found Parts? Is there really any need to watch Breaking Bad or True Detective? How strong are Alan’s keratin levels? Also, Jean Paul Gaultier, Bruce Willis’s Disney Sex Thriller, Zelda, Twin Peaks, home cinemas built by dads, CAPITALISM, and loads more. We had a Very Good Chat as they call it in formal chat circles. That’s the official term for it. I checked.  This is the first episode of