Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome back to Rocky Talkie. I'm Nicky. I'm John and I'm Aaron. How are you guys? I'm fantastic. Nicky, how are you? How has everybody been? We haven't been. You? How have you been, Nicky? I, have you been, how have you been Meg? The real question is how has Meg been? Oh my God. I'm great. Thanks for asking. All right, good. Uh, these past two weeks were very, uh, very interesting, I think to say the least I did a whole lot of things and a whole lot of nothing. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah, I feel that, yeah, like there's a lot of things that are in the works but nothing has actively been done. I did get to hang out with one of my Twitch friends. Uh, over this past weekend he actually came to the Rocky show with me. We hung out in the city a lot, uh, this past week and it was really fun. Really good time. I love meeting people on the internet I R L and then finally realizing that they aren't, you know, serial killers and it was a good time. Nice. Still got both your kidneys. Yeah. Last I checked at least. All right. How about you, Nicky? You still got your kidneys too. Um, last I checked. Yes. But I also didn't really do anything this week that would signify, losing me. Um, but it's been a pretty, it's been a pretty nice week. I worked at the Trenton punk rock flea market on Sunday and I got to sell stuff and hang out with people and it was really cool. It was so cold though. I forget that like winter exists until it's like 20 degrees and I'm freezing outside in a t-shirt and jeans. Um So I'm not, I'm not a fan of the winter, but I can't complain when I'm at the flea market, but that's really all I did. I didn't do much. I just vended it up. How about you, Aaron? Oh, it has been a crazy two weeks. Um First off, I guess uh I will uh apologize to all of our listeners out there that we didn't get an episode out for you last week. Uh Instead we had a, a fun little video of uh some of us over here at Rocky Talky uh tasting some delicious more marshmallows. Go check that one out. Uh And then uh a big R K O con announcement dropped and uh we covered that one. Uh go buy your tickets, go get them now. Spoilers. That's what that's about. Uh So we were able to knock those out but Meg and I were absolutely crazy busy uh with our caveat show that we're gonna talk about later in the episode. So I won't spoil anything about that there. Uh Most interesting thing we did this week though. Uh We assembled a cabinet, not, not even an IKEA cabinet. It was, it was more difficult than an IKEA cabinet. And uh what's in the cabinet? Aaron Rocky crap. Aren't we supposed to talk about things that aren't Rocky related? I was just talking about the cabinet. No, it's uh so, so up until now we, we moved a couple of months ago and uh so far uh in re gathering up all of the props and like, you know, all of the stuff to make prop bags and all that other crap. It's just been sitting in a corner of our living room. Uh and that's been slowly growing in pile size for way too long. So we finally made the decision. We're gonna buy another piece of furniture that's just for Rocky, of course, as you do. Uh And this is nice. We, we picked up a big uh armour uh kind of thing, had to assemble it which uh you know, I swore to meg would only take an hour and a half or two hours. So five hours later, we finished assembling it. And uh yeah, now all of the Rocky crap uh has, has its own home. Uh in the living room uh in addition to the entire closet in here and the multiple shelves. So we, we just have a lot of rocky stuff, man. It just happens. It just fucking happens to the best of us and the worst. But yeah, no, that's how it went. Uh That was super fun. Uh I got to broadcast the Buffalo show this last weekend. That was fucking fantastic. I'm sure we'll talk about that later as well. Uh But yeah, I uh I did a lot of rocky stuff, did a lot of rocky stuff. Oh And this one's actually fun for the first time in the last two years. I finally got to go into my Real World work office. I know it was super fun. Uh And that's because apparently when you go into your work office, you just all fuck off and go drinking at three o'clock. So that was cool. I am dreading going back to work I R L Yeah. It was actually, it was actually kind of nice. It was cool to see people that I've only talked with on, you know, teams hangouts for the last uh two years and uh talk to everybody that way. But uh you know, it's still work, man. It's still work. Fuck work. Work sucks. I know she left me Rose's boy. The, let me not get us D MC A Yes. Seriously. And with that, let's get started with our first segment. Uh OK. You guys might hear my dogs trimming it in the back, but it's cool. They send their rocky talky love a few weeks ago. You might remember we covered a Galaxy Con panel with Nell Quinn and Barry and Nell happened to mention the upcoming launch of her site. Well, it's only been two weeks and it's here. Thank you now for keeping us on the lookout and of course, we're here to give you a breakdown on her whole site from the merch page to her bio, how to contact her and more. But first off, we implore you to check out the site for yourself. It's tastefully done with a theme of black and white little now photos throughout and every piece of text is just dearly written in only the style that now can she begins a lot of pages with Darlene sweetheart and treasure. Go check it out. You can all look at it at little Nell Campbell dot com. So in her shop, she has over 45 items available for sale including 44 pictures across three different sizes and one pair of knickers for our American listeners. Knickers is British for underoos. They're fun to lose. Mel has portrait and landscape pictures for sale both eight by 10 or 20 by 25 centimeters for foreign listeners. And Holy, wow, are we in luck? Because her shop is absolutely jam packed with cast photos and we're not talking about the cool photos. We all take at cons and special shows. We're talking about pictures from the original set with the original cast. That's right. You can pretty much find pictures of her next to like every cast member. There's the four show gang, there's Nell in the throne, she's resting her leg on. Riff Raff Kinky and Nell and Magenta kneeling for a group photo with all the Transylvanian in front of the tank. And that's really just the ones that stand out. There are a bunch of pictures, there's even the Japanese Rocky poster. So be sure to check it all out. Something might speak to you. God knows Nell's knickers are speaking to me and me. You guys are weird but that's not quite the end of her shop. She also has a guide for sending things in to be signed. That's right. She has a guide and a messaging system for you to send your signing requests to now send your message in list the type of item where you want it signed. What if anything you want added outside of a signature, what color pen you want it in? Send it all in and she'll reply with pricing and shipping instructions and you can get it all for $60 plus shipping. It's pretty cool. We can just send stuff in whenever to be signed. It used to be. You had to go to a con where the cast was going to be present to even have a chance at getting your stuff signed. Then every now and again, Galaxy Con gives us opportunities to send stuff in like that. And well, now it's the future Nell site is just always there. You can get stuff signed whenever. Sounds real nice. Gramps. Ok. Boomer. One more crack like that. And I will garnish your wages. Nicky. You mean you're gonna make me decorate my entrees with the checks you don't pay me if you're not careful. Anyway, for our more dedicated little now fans present, present this dick present Nell also has a page on her site with her complete professional history, including everything that she's done on film on the stage TV, and all of her soundtracks and singles and also a bio read all about her youth where she got her name from how she got her start on the Rocky Horror show and even her starting her nightclub in 1986. She also has a page up for her blog, but as she regrettably writes, she wasn't able to start it up by the time she was forced as she says at gun point to get everything out the door. Similarly, she has a page for her upcoming events and while she's happy that some COVID restrictions are lifting, she doesn't have anything in person in the works yet. Though there are some far off TV, experiences that we can expect in the future on this page while not for sale. She has some cute pictures of her with the French shadow cast. Unfortunately, upon close inspection, we could not find a single Hadrian among them. Rip Shout out to Hadrian though. Citizen of France, naturalized citizen of N Y C R H P S currently residing in Canada. We love you. You silly little baguette who is a little baguette? You are. It's a good little baguette. Lastly, God, lastly, she has a contact me page. Our staff writer, Jacob is currently investigating whether contact attempts forward to Nell directly as the site implies or whether it reaches an assistant of some sort. We'll be sure to let you know, be sure to visit our site. We'd love to give Little Nell a positive welcome to the interwebs with a bunch of internet traffic. You can find the link in our show notes or right here. It's pretty easy. It's at little now Campbell dot com. Not to be confused with W W W dot The little now dot com. The website of Aspen's only five star ski in ski out hotel with luxurious amenities, personalized service, breathtaking mountain views, renowned dining and spacious accommodations. What the fuck don't check them out. This isn't about them. Next up. We have a little bit of Rocky in high society. Georgetown has had a Rocky horror picture show shadow cast since 2018 and recently Audrey Ludford of the Georgetown independent interviewed this year's director for the show Madeleine Bertie, a senior who previously starred as Janet in 2019 and Columbia in 2018. So we thought, thought we'd do a little piece on that interview and get a glimpse of the Rocky horror vibes at one of the most prestigious schools on the east coast. Starting off like a lot of us, Madeleine has an opinion on why Rocky attracts such a wide variety of people and says Rocky's always been out of the norm variant. You know, it seems to fall between the cracks of opinions and attracts people from every walk of life. It's like either you get it or you don't and everything about your beliefs outside of the sphere doesn't seem to have an impact on that. I thought that was really cool on her directing style for this show this year. She says she wanted to make it more of an ensemble show because as she says, for the main cast, it's a lot of standing in corners and nodding and then Janet faints a lot and Columbia screams, yeah, I feel you on that one. She sees the audience as part of the cast to yelling and flinging things in a way that makes this show weird out of the box and slightly sexual, slightly, just slightly. So in talking about her favorite Rocky tradition that they've kept in their show, Madeleine mentions the virgin sacrifice at the beginning. One of the most fun traditions is the virgin sacrifice at the start very clearly. From the get go before the show even begins, you're either on board or this is not going to be your cup of tea, but it's not hiding. And on the ways in which she's made the Georgetown show break from tradition and be unique. She says, uh, we introduced more than one lips character. Traditionally, it's always a strip scene with one person and we've made it a whole group of people. I think it's so cool to not have just one person filling a room. I think it adds to the experience. Uh Though I, I guess true, Rocky fans might know that having multiple person Trixie is hardly new. It's certainly cool to see it happen uh in a unique way at a different venue as we all know every now and then, Rocky is raked over the coals for being homophobic or unwroken some way and we're often told that the movie is an insult to the gay community because Frank is just a crazed cannibal murderer who sexually assaults those around him and ends up brainwashing two healthy ordinary kids. How could that be good for the gay community? Well, Madeleine has commented on this too in wrestling with whether or not Rocky Horror positively reflects the gay community. She came to the conclusion that unlike other contemporary pieces of queer pop culture, Rocky horror never really tries to represent the gay community at all. She says for me, the reason it has the height that it does isn't the fact that it portrayed characters that had a fluid notion of sexuality, but that they were these characters that had that as a part of their personality and it was never addressed. And there's a song in the show about everything. Like I'm getting horny, let me sing about it. Like I walk into a room and let me make up a song that has absolutely no relevance to anything. And at any point, there could have been a song after Frank and Brad have sex where Brad goes, what am I feeling? I just had sex with a man. Like, how do I feel about this? Is this normal? But they don't, everyone's just like, should we have sex? Yes or no. Unfortunately, no one told Madeleine about one in a while. I mean, she has to know about once in a while. Right. Right. I mean, who, who does Rocky and does, you know, anyway, I sort of agree, but I think her point stands because once in a while is, it's more about Brad feeling like he's losing Janet, right. It's not Brad commenting on like the hot gay sex he just had, which might be outside of his character that happened in like, so what he's not thinking about, he's worried about Janet. I don't know, Aaron a little Sus for him to start singing right after the most prominent gay sex in the movie and have it not at all be about gay sex. But it really isn't. And also it's technically not in the movie, but look, just, just look at the lyrics once in a while. She don't wanna call you speaking on the telephone. So baby don't cry like there's no tomorrow. So wash your face and foam my place. It'll be ok. None of that is about. Oh no. Now I'm gay. It's a, it's Brad afraid for how he sees himself continuing to lose. Janet. I agree with you, Madeleine. So to top off the interview, Madeleine commented on the legacy or lack thereof of the Rocky Horror show at Georgetown and what its place in campus has become saying, I don't actually know if it's been around long enough to build a legacy yet. Right now, I think it's starting to have a reputation and I hope that in years to come, it will build on that reputation to have a legacy and, but it's got enough of a sort of secret hype that people understand. This is not something that you can explain very easily, but if you commit to it and you just commit to that being your evening, it's a really fun ride. I think it's a side of the Georgetown community that we don't display a lot just because we're a Jesuit University. It's odd to have such a public display of people who don't quite fit the norm to be presented. And Madeleine, that's all Rocky Horror is a public display of people who don't quite fit the norm. You hit it right on the mark and we hope you and your cast had an absolutely Bonkers show these past few weeks and we wish Georgetown a great show next year to top off global news. This week we have something a little weird, I guess. Yeah. So we originally saw this come through on the news site a couple weeks ago, but it was just too out there to even like mention. But now it's been a few weeks and we're still seeing it pop up on various social media groups. So we figured why the fuck not guys guys before we say it, we should make it a guessing game because like it'll be such a surprise. All right. So recently a very professional business at the top of their field has been writing a weekly story on business safety with the characters and plot of Rocky Horror used to illustrate their point. Has it been a T D bank telling us how Frank and Riffs make sure to file their business taxes appropriately? Or perhaps B Amazon telling us how Eddie knows what happens when you try to start a union. It's written all over his face. Ouch, topical and lastly C LINKED in writing about how Janet's insistence to use data governance is hampering the work of new hired Tim make your guesses now and drum roll, please. It's C That's right. Everyone for the last few weeks. Linkedin has been putting out a series of articles titled the Rocky Data Horror Show where the data is not what it seems a story about how to properly implement data governance. Janet who works as the head of I T at the magical Wish factory tries to implement data governance, hiring Tim to oversee it. As you can see, the article is about data governance, whatever that is, we thought it was kind of Wacky linkedin was using the Rocky Horror show to make this one. So we wanted to share and perhaps any of you I nerds out there might get a kick out of it. Looking at you, Aaron, you know, data governance is actually a really interesting field and you would be surprised to know that let's not bore the nice people with all your nerd stuff. Let's do a dramatic reading. Instead straight from this weird ass article. Data shouldn't be a wild and untamed thing, but sometimes it is just that wild and untamed. And unfortunately for our friend Tim, he's about to find out just how wild and untamed data can be. As this is the Rocky Data Horror show where the data is not what it seems. The problem here. Janet Tim explains is that when stakeholders believe data governance is I T led, it could be really hard to get them to buy into what you're trying to achieve. The key to data governance. Success is getting stakeholders to take ownership of their data and take the lead in data governance initiatives. You've been left with data governance because they're confusing the infrastructure with the data. True data governments will only really happen once we get the business to take ownership of the data. Good fucking luck getting that to happen. So how do we get them to take ownership of their data? Then I've been trying for months, but no one seems to be listening. That's why you're here. Now, Tim replied, Janet, well, that's the first step. Actually, I am still new here. So I am an impartial expert and can act as a catalyst for change. I will facilitate the discussions at senior level between the various parts of the business and this will help the business to understand the benefits and increase their desire to take ownership of the initiative. Wouldn't it just be easier if we divided it up between us? I don't think anyone is going to listen. Said Janet quite simply no, said Tim. Tim knows from experience that successful data governance needs a consistent message. Everyone needs to understand why and what the organization is trying to achieve. But he did agree that just one person couldn't do data governance for the whole of the company. And see Jesus Christ guys, I would fucking kill everyone in this castle as always, the link will be in our show notes. If you want to laugh Aaron's potential rant on data governance will not Rocky is supposed to help me escape work. I literally feel like I had this conversation not two weeks ago. Anyway, there are currently two parts of this ongoing Rocky horror data series. So be sure to stay tuned for more updates about the horrors of data or something. I, I don't know, man. Well, that's it for global news. But next up who is ready to shop? Shopping is like my number one favorite activity. Fucking same. I'm doing it literally right now. That explains a lot. First up in community news, we've got a couple of fan projects to share with you all. Our first one comes from Hann at handsome devil puppets. Handsome devil puppets is a small business run by Hahn and founded in early 2017 that makes gorgeous and extremely creepy bespoke. Marionette puppets. Hahn describes her craft with the blurb. Puppets are infinite. Puppets are honest what you say, say what you do, they do, they look like us but stranger, they are us but innocent. They are both cosmic and primitive. We want to believe in their magic. I spent most of my life screaming into an abyss of faces and never truly felt heard until those screams were screamed by a puppet. So I decided to invent the world to scream with me. The handsome devils are each hand sculpted piece by piece and decorated in everything from remnant to the bottom of granny's jewelry box to bones from a field in my hometown. My name is Han and I love puppets so damned much. It is my greatest honor, my purest joy to share them with you and just looking at these puppets, you can absolutely tell that they were handcrafted with lots of love and dedication on her social media. Han allows followers to see all the faces of our puppets creation and they are all meticulously. It down to the very last detail. Han's puppets are made out of a lightweight polymer or paper clay. Their wigs are all human hair and most of the fabric that is used in their clothing is antique vintage or taken from the clothing that holds like some sort of sentimental value to Han herself. The same goes for accessories. Each piece of jewelry included in a puppet's wardrobe is taken from her own family's jewelry box. If that's not dedication, I don't know what it is. Hans got a few listings on her site, although her creations tend to sell out incredibly fast. They can range from anything from tiny palm sized animals like Frank and Louie. Two conjoined puppies who share a face to a large Mothman Marinette with big red eyes and scraggly fur. She also creates character puppets based on some of her favorite horror movies. Right now. There's a listing for a Sam puppet from trick or treat. I'm sure you can all see where we're going with this earlier this month. Handsome Devil's puppet made an announcement on their facebook storefront. The post contained a photo of three gorgeous and incredibly creepy puppets. Franken Furter Riffraff and Magenta. The caption reads, I was going to wait till tomorrow when Magenta had her hands and my hands weren't so tired and post a nice video of these three, but I truly cannot contain how thrilled I am to see them. I've never been one to be proud of myself. Oh, they're so nice. Oh, these ones, these are puppets. Yeah, they're marionettes. They look like dolls, Hann, you should be proud. These puppets are total works of art. Frank is dressed in his iridescent sweet tea corset and pearls. Magenta is in her partially unbuttoned maids dress and RFF is in a dingy stained white vest. All all three have tons of detail in their faces including the creepiest hollow gray eyes. These puppets are the absolute perfect gift for the creepy rocky lover in your life. As you've probably clocked, the set isn't quite complete. Magenta still needs her hands and it sounds like there's still some touch up work that might need to happen on all three of them. So if you're interested in purchasing one of these handsome devil creations, be sure to stay tuned to their social media to be notified when they become available for purchase online. These do not stay available for very long. So if you want one, make sure to keep an eye out for that post and order fast, we don't know how much these are going to run you yet or if they'll even be on sale to the public. But puppets at this shop can run anywhere from 100 and $75 to $500 or more. So, be prepared to spend some Frank Jack up money if you're shopping for that whole set, if you'd like to check out these babies, and we highly recommend you do links to the Handsome Devil storefront as well as the shop's Facebook page will be linked in our show notes next up on our holiday shopping list. Have you ever wished that an action figure of your favorite movie character existed? But you also kind of know there isn't much of a market for that specific figure. Valli toys and tapes is a collection of custom V H S tapes and action figures made by one person trying to create cool stuff. He wishes already existed. The shop sells custom playable V H S tapes of modern works like in the Heights, Bo Burnham's inside or adult swim Tik Tok compilations. Just to name a few. The slave cases are works of art made to look like they come straight out of the early nineties and perfect for any nostalgia prone chay collecting millennial cough, cough, cough, Aaron. I don't know whether I feel seen or called out. Yes, these tapes can be purchased blank or with actual media on them. So the thing on the tape doesn't even have to match what's on the box. So if you've ever wanted to keep your V H S porn stash and a bright orange Nickelodeon Rugrats back in diapers tape. Here's your opportunity. Vals also produces custom action figures from film and TV. The site now has listings for the Simpsons Radioactive man and the dancing pumpkin head man from Spooky Scary Skeletons. Each action figure is completely handmade cast painted and paired with a unique custom box art that's also designed and printed by Shard. Currently, Shard has a line of Rocky themed merchandise up for sale. Three painstakingly created and painted action figures. The first one featuring takeover Riff in his quilted gold space suit. The second featuring our favorite pizza delivery boy, Eddie and the third is a truly nightmare inducing. Don't dream it be it action figure. This one is a mashup of Franken Furter and Pennywise the clown, a killer space alien in the clown Corset and heals whose horrific phase will pop into your brain when you close your eyes for years to come. Tim Curry really does play a lot of killer aliens, huh? It is such a shame when actors get typecast. Although I really can't imagine anyone else doing as good of a job if you're in the market for even more Tim Curry character. Mashup. Merch Valla also offers a retro, don't dream it eat it lunchbox which features the box art from the action figure printed into a nineties style thermos lunchbox perfect for transporting meatloaf. Get it because they, they meatloaf in the movies. Ha ha. We get it and last but certainly not least Valli has got a custom Rocky V H s up for sale. The description on the back of the box reads as follows a completely unofficial and fanmade release of Rocky horror references. Rip-offs and parodies starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon Meatloaf, the Count Kent Brockman, Emma Watson Fez, a very young Fergie and Drew Carey, associate producer, your mom, executive producer, your dad, directed by Michael Bay. The most well known midnight feature in the world has been featured plenty in media over the years. Be it a quick reference, a subtle nod or a blatant parody, entire episodes of shows have been dedicated to this classic tape. Don't worry, there's no glee scenes on this tape. The Rocky Horror Picture show has arguably one of the most stable and consistent followings of any film that is in a space opera or a boy wizard story. It has had screenings continue across the world every weekend for decades with no signs of stopping any time soon. So as a piece of pop culture iconography, it has naturally been referenced and parodied by everyone from the Simpsons to the Muppets Tophus and verb and countless other memorable and forgettable shows and movies. If you're holding this tape and you're reading this description, I'm probably preaching to the choir and you're one of the many Rocky Horror fans out there. When watching this tape, you'll probably see plenty of clips, you know, and have shared with friends before. But hopefully there's a few gems you've never seen before. Kudos to you for picking up a piece of physical media and spending some time with it. I do hope you enjoy it and this tape fits snugly with your other tapes. This box art is based on the 15th anniversary release of Rocky Horror. So hopefully you own that and can put this next to it, man. So this is a youtube compilation on V H S. That's wild. Welcome to the nineties Nikki. It's Bodacious. We handed around youtube compilations on pieces of plastic with very, very fancy box art. If you're interested in shopping for retro flavored Rocky Merch. A playable V H S will run you 22 50 or roughly 1, 1/30 of a frank jacket. The lunch box is priced at a cool one 75th of a frank jacket or $40. And action figures are priced at $70 each or one 42nd of a frank jacket. I actually own a couple of uh pieces by beard uh uh Doctor Scott piece that he did a while back. It's absolutely fucking amazing. Uh I'm I'm eyeballing these uh this, this Riff Raff and this Eddie, I haven't bought them for myself yet. If only there was a holiday coming up where people would buy me things next up. We've got a couple of projects we've been working on over the past few weeks that we'd like to recap for our listeners. The first one was the Francis Bacon Experiments virtual holiday show that aired on Saturday, December 11th. And, uh, I streamed it over on R H BS live dot com. Nikki. I know you tuned into it and I know quite a few of our listeners probably did too. Oh my God. I absolutely watched this one. It's been a minute since I've tuned into a virtual Rocky broadcast. And, oh man, this was the one to return to screen for. It was so much fun. First of all, this kind of made me miss like mid COVID Rocky broadcasts on Zoom. Like, obviously, I'm so thankful that we're back in our theater and we can perform, but like, oh my God, it's just so fun and so cute. And the whole thing was just so like, well put together and so adorable. They're tricky. First of all, I need to just like, take 20 minutes to talk about her because that was just everything for me. Like the Trixie was phenomenal. Uh And I was just from there, I was hooked. I was mesmerized and the rest of it was just really cute. They played recordings of a live show that they did and then they cut to a holiday themed version of it and it was just really fun. They had all the costumes down. So adorably, Gretchen came in as Riff Raff for there's a light which had me like, oh my God. Like I, I audibly guessed I didn't expect her to be there. So I was so excited for that and it was just a really good time. I really enjoyed it and I can't wait to see what they do next. I was playing Frank at a New York City show but I heard you all blowing up our group chat. So it was like I was there. Oh man, this is, this was fucking amazing. I'm, I'm so happy I got the opportunity to broadcast this for Buffalo. Um Yeah, so much work, so much work there. Ryan edited in over 100 and 25 different clips on top of the film. Uh That was all custom stuff that they had, they had recorded all kinds of holiday themed cheer. There was, there was some awesome Christmas references and Hanukkah references, all, all, all kinds of stuff in there. Um They made some great use of some props. They absolutely slayed it on that one and let me see what I did there. Um No, I, I, I was blown away by the, the effort and just the sheer production value that was put into this. It looked fantastic. Uh Every single one of their performers just knocked it out of the park and, and also holy crap. I did not realize how much Buffalo has put into like, their regular live shows. Right. Because there's, this was a live show recording with a bunch of, you know, Tik Tok style pop ups on top of it. And holy crap. Did you know, they, they have a castle painting that they put in front of their transducer that apparently Ali did, uh, like, it's a full picture of the castle that they have up there. That's super cool. They have all of the props that you would think they would have and all the ones that you wouldn't think they would have. Riff's got his little window. Like they have a starship honeycomb thing for Rocky to hold on to it. It just, they got the signs to pop up for dammit and Janet and like just everything you could possibly imagine they have crammed into their live show and it is fucking spectacular to see. So, like, absolutely baller work all in all. I had an absolutely fabulous time getting to work with the Francis Bacon Experiment. We all love how much their cast has been blowing up within the community over the past couple of years. Every time we see their work showcased, it's absolutely stellar and yeah, I cannot wait to see even more in the future. Go check them out all over social media. R H BS Buffalo. You guys know the drill next up, Aaron and I want to suck our own dicks here for a minute and talk about the project that ate up our whole weekend last weekend and was basically the reason that we missed an episode last week for the first time ever. Our Rocky Horror interactive show that took place on December 4th at the caveat N Y C and oh boy, this was, this was fucking incredible. This was something I never thought that I would ever see, let alone be a part of. So, yeah, I was super excited that we got to do this. So think of the Rocky Horror interactive show as like a middle ground between the Rocky Horror picture show, shadow cast and then the Rocky Horror stage show, we technically were doing the shadow cast. We had the movie playing, we had the actors in front of the movie acting out the movie, yada yada yada. However, when it came to the songs, we actually provided live vocals over the movie. So we had one rehearsal that I missed. Yeah, it was um it was crazy. It was a crazy rehearsal where we uh where we basically were trying to see how everybody was gonna handle doing live vocals. We have so much fucking talent on the New York cast. It is beyond ridiculous. And I don't just mean shadow casting talent. I mean, these are, these are all theater people with bona fide credentials for like they can sing, they can dance, they are genuine triple threats. So we knew that we were pretty well covered on a lot of, just like they've been part of the New York cast and shadow casting, the movie for, you know, the better part of a decade for a good number of them. Uh, but that's not the same as handing a mic to somebody and saying all right now, that role that, you know exactly what he does on screen. I'm taking away one of your arms. You got to sing the whole time, So don't run around and be out of breath. And also you're gonna be in a venue you've never been in before. So good luck figuring out how you're doing, blocking on the fly. So we did have one rehearsal. We rented out a uh space in Brooklyn that we'd uh used for a previous thing. Uh And we were able to go there one night, we had about a five hour rehearsal where we ran through the entire fucking movie. Um It went incredibly well. Uh Our criminologist William, who I gotta say is one of the rock stars of this whole thing. He played uh live guitar for the entire show. So not only did we have live vocals for almost every single song, we had a live guitarist backing the whole thing. And this guy, absolute fucking Savant, like, amazing, amazing musician. And he, he came into rehearsal and he was like, nah, nah, we can skip all the crim stuff we, we don't need, I don't want to bore you guys with it. It's fine. It's fine. We can just skip it and he's the kind of guy where, like, you just hear him say that and you're like, oh, yeah. No, that's fine. No, no, no, he can just show up and, like, you know, do whatever he wants to like when on the day, like, he'll be fine, he'll, he'll knock it out of the park. Yeah. Will, is an absolute genius. Will if you're listening to this, which we know you're not good job, buddy. And like, so we, we were able to knock out most of the blocking with that. Like we set up the, the little black box that we were rehearsing in kind of to match the venue. Um The venue is a lot of cabaret tables and uh you know, like, so it's, it's kind of a, a closer atmosphere where we were able to do a lot of audience participation, like running around uh in the tables throughout the whole thing. So we're able to set that up. But unfortunately, um some people John were not able to make that rehearsal. So we had to scramble the day of to do a second smaller kind of rundown uh just in, in my apartment right before the show and it worked, didn't it, it, it definitely fucking worked. Yeah. And to top it off, you know, Aaron was talking about playing Riff, but actually Aaron stepped in because the person who was originally supposed to play. Riff ended up getting sick. So, Aaron, naturally, because he's a pushover and will do anything that we want him to. That's right. I had to sub in and also the night before the show hour, Dr Franken Furter lost his voice and couldn't sing anyway. It all worked out perfectly fine. And uh it, it was a fantastic fucking performance and we were supposed to have like a half hour in the space before we let in the audience. We only had like 20 minutes. Honestly, it felt less than that because the show before us, of course, Murphy's law ran late, but it all turned out really well. It was great. We had a sold out audience. They were all totally into it. We had these little like lights on each desk, they were called like consent candles. And if they were on that meant that we were allowed to fuck with them and you know, engage with them and stuff like that, the majority of them had them on. It was a great, amazing, incredible show. It was super interactive. The second that we opened those doors, all of us were immediately in character. When we were out on stage, there was very little breaking the character unless the the scene called for it. We were in the audiences engaging with them, talking with them, leading them to their seeds, selling them prop bags, yada yada got a super interactive, super engaging. Basically everybody at some point felt like they were a part of the show. I think that the live vocals went over really well. Audience really loved it. There were some microphone hiccups like, you know, somebody in the booth not turning on the right microphone at the right time, but like it's live theater. What do you expect live theater that we didn't actually get the practice live with an actual sound person and an actual lighting person. So like, I'm gonna take what I can get and who would have known if you've never seen the stage show before? You might not know it. But turns out once in a while is like the stand up banger of the whole fucking show. Like John did once in a while as Columbia singing it about Eddie and oh my God, it fucking works like it worked so well. The audience went absolutely ape shit when you finished singing once in a while. It was so good, man. Thanks. Uh I think what really sold it is that nobody expected the song to be in it. Half the people in the room didn't even know the song, the joke that you made earlier on in the episode. Who the fuck knows about once in a while. And uh right at the very, very end, right before the last uh the last verse of the song I broke character and I was like, come on, you all know the words and that obviously broke the ice way more than it should have. And then everyone kind of erupted into applause. But, uh I love that song. It's my favorite song in Rocky and it was great to be able to perform it. Yeah, we had, we had, uh, a bunch of little treats in there for, for anyone who was familiar with it. We made sure to get some of our alumni from years past to come and join us for the show. Very fortunately, we had the Max Wells, Ron and Hillary came uh as well as Phil Dee and Cinnamon. So that was fucking amazing to see them out. They absolutely loved it. Although I think my favorite interaction of the entire evening is uh our Brad for the night, Quinn who's relatively new uh to Rocky in general had absolutely had no idea who Ron Maxwell was, but in character before the show went right up to him and said, hi, I'm Brad Majors and Ron just looked at him like, uh-huh, you are, are you if there's anybody who is at this show who is Brad Majors? It's Ron Maxwell. But I'm pretty sure he gave him the Ron Maxwell stamp of approval at the end because boy, he knocked it out of the park too. Like it was just such a great show. Everybody was having a great time like and really interacting. That was one of the big takeaways from this that we're going to carry over to all of our other shows is like, how much the audience likes being interacted with in character characters, walking around the theater, like ordering drinks, asking if they can borrow people's phone or like, oh, did you see my, my, my wife Janet or my fiance Janet? She's supposed to be around here somewhere. I don't know where she went. It just, it worked really well. Yes, it did. There were a lot of other pieces that we kind of added into the show. Like, for example, Aaron cannot sing. No, not, I love you, but you can't singing. So what we kind of did to offset that because you know, riff has a few, a good chunk of vocals in the movie. We actually had our Magenta Steph sing the Magenta parts as well as the riff parts. So Magenta sang Risk versus Over the Frankenstein Place sang all of time. Warp sang Takeover and Steph is a phenomenal singer and knocked it out of the park. But the way that they kind of played off of it is that every single time Aaron went to actually like go and sing, Steph would like grab the microphone out of Aaron's hand and you know, take over the spotlight. It was a really cute little nuance thing that we did. Our doctor Scott was an N Y C R H P S alum missy who unmatched. Absolutely, absolutely unmatched. Like one of the funniest things I've ever seen period there were parts in the show where like other character, like some characters weren't even on stage and that they were existing elsewhere in the show. Uh, for example, at the very end of the movie, when Riff shoots Columbia, I laid on the ground dead for the rest of the movie in the middle of the audience. So people had to like, step over me and I had, I had somebody who directly next to me actually thought I hurt myself because I did not get up. So believable theater, believable immersive theater. That's what we're going for. Yeah, I, I think one of the biggest things with it too that we completely failed to mention already is that we uh completely updated costumes for all of this. Um So everybody was in very modern takes on the costumes and holy crap. It works really well. It worked really well to get the audience to set the expectations right? For the audience that this wasn't just rocky. Like you might see it in a movie theater. These aren't the same shadow casting characters that you've seen, you know, 50 times before they're doing something different with it. And it, it played so well, Missy or Doctor Scott played like um sexy schoolgirl, Doctor Scott, which she would never kind of like or excuse me, sexy school teacher, Doctor Scott, which you would never kind of expect. But holy crap, it works so well. Um Also because the venue like was kind of small, like we weren't gonna have her wheeling around in a wheelchair. So instead she had a, uh, a chair bitch for the entire night where she would, uh, any time she would come on stage, she'd just wander around. Doctor Scott can walk in our version of the show. Uh, and she just snap her fingers and have her chair, bitch, bring her her little chair. Uh, and then when she was done, he'd come and take it away and you know, next time she needs it. Snap, snap, snap Jacob, bring me my chair. Uh Our, our lovely writer, Jacob was playing chair bitch for the evening. Uh That was his contribution. Uh And he, and he did a fantastic job too. He always got her her chair. So all this to say that our weird experimental Rocky show went phenomenally. Well, we sold out the performance days ahead of time and we've been invited back to the venue to do another showing of it, which we'll probably be doing sometime in February. Yeah, everything went great. I mean, it's gonna be so awesome to have the opportunity to polish it up more now that we know exactly what we're working with from like the whole performance perspective, the venue, all of that stuff. So if anyone is interested in checking out the show, the venue offered an option to record the show's audio and video, which we've received just a few days ago. We honestly were not expecting it to be as highly produced as it is. We thought we'd be getting like a single camera shot from the back of the theater, but it honestly looks like a fucking Steven Spielberg production with different camera angles and focus pows and shit. So, yeah, if you'd like to check it out, just hit us up and, you know, we'll send a link your way. That was a hell of a jerk off. Sesh. Hell, yeah, it was high five buddy. Nicky. Nicky. Did we lose Nicky? I don't know, man. How long were we whacking it? Oh, that was a nice snap. You guys done that segment wasn't about me at all. You're absolutely right. We're sorry. Tell you what you can make it up to me by serving me a delicious snack snack. Not that sorry. All right guys, I want to get us back on track with our delicious snack snack this week with the holiday season at hand. I think it's time to discuss the greatest of all holiday traditions. Your family asking when you're finally going to do something with your life. That super racist uncle who thinks birds don't exist and lizard people have infiltrated the food and drug administration. Is that real? No, of course not. Everyone knows that the birds control the FDA. No, no, no, no. This is how we get sidetracked. No, I want to talk about the glorious holiday tradition. That is the pantomime. I fucking hate. Mime's lowest form of art, not Mime's dumbass pantomime, the great British holiday theatrical tradition. You know, the audience participation, slapstick and cross dressing, low brow theater event for all ages like babes in the wood or Cinderella or whatever other fairy tale they decide to turn into a sea list. Celebrity laden romp. You're gonna have to give a better explanation than that. Not for me, of course, I'm obviously a cultured individual but for all of our non tea sipping gav listeners out there and you know, maybe explain what the hell pantomime has to do with Rocky because Rocky is not pantomime. We'll get there. Yes. But first pantomime for the uninitiated has been a Christmas institution in the UK and parts of Europe for hundreds of years. Think of it like a slapstick theatrical show, a fairy tale, something like Snow White or Aladdin. But with a goofy and riotous pop culture twist. Historically, uh pantomime gets its origins among other places from ancient Greek, Mime, French theater and 16th century Italian, Comedia del te in Pantomime. A production will rework a classic fairy tale into an over the top kind of family friendly farce. There's generally a smattering of contemporary pop tunes and the odd television personality or sports star. In order to draw in the crowds, there's usually a pile of vaguely subversive jokes that are intended to fly over the heads of the Children in the audience. There is almost always a strong drag element just adding to the ridiculousness, I believe the technical term is a cook and a frock. See you do know. And it's in pantomime that you see a lot of audience participation, all of the classic childhood screams of he's behind you. As you know, the villain creeps up on the hero. You'll often find kids donning their snow white costume for the show all for them to scarf down sweets and dance and sing along with the songs and just have a joyous holiday family outing. All right, I see how this ties into Rocky Horror while we all know that Rocky certainly didn't start as anything resembling a panto. It was just your average low budget stage show. It was well received risque and like nothing anyone had seen but not all that different from other traditional stage musicals. The audience observed not participated. It wasn't until the movie released. The Phantom took hold and audience participation became the expectation rather than the exception. But once that happened to your average theater grower, Rocky began to exist in many people's minds as a less kid friendly pantomime for adults, which is entirely inaccurate and just wrong says you. But really if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, no, fuck the duck. Jim Sharman addressed this actually quite succinctly in his autobiography, he wrote, quote, everyone assumes Rocky horror is just pantomime camp, but it's subtler than the cliche suggests. The secret isn't in the outrageousness, but in the fact that Richard o'brien created a skillful comedy of manners, a tradition as old as 18th century restoration plays or Mozart and Deponte operas. This is often overlooked in revivals and the result can be grotesque. The cult audience engages with the cast and the characters, but also with the style in which it was played. That sounds awfully Hoy, Hoy without addressing the actual point. Ok. So Rocky isn't pantomime because it's written straight. There is nothing straight about Rocky True, but also yes, according to Rob Bagnall and Phil Barton, in still the beast is feeding probably the most significant and often overlooked difference between pantomime participation and that of the Rocky Horror Show is that active audience involvement is an integral and customary part of the traditional panto structure. Unlike Rocky Horror, pantomime participation is deliberately written into the script and vigorously encouraged by the onstage performers. And it's not just Jim Sharman or a few scholars, even Richard o'brien has vehemently argued that Rocky isn't just an adult pantomime though the confusion is understandable, especially given the way Rocky Horror was presented on stage throughout the eighties and the nineties in describing the show, one longtime fan said, it feels like our pantomime, not the one your parents take you to. It feels naughty and subversive. I mean, can you really blame them? Like the mid to late eighties was the height of the Rocky Horror Show being thoroughly derailed on stage. We've talked about it before the cacophony of audience callbacks overshadowing the actors, the irrelevant props being thrown like candy bars and bags of flour. It was a mess that thoroughly distracted from the stage show and with Panto style casting, swapping performers in and out with very short runs, Richard o'brien went so far as to call the show just plain sloppy. He recalled one performance in Bristol in the mid eighties where the inexperienced actors unaccustomed to the audience participation had allowed nay even actively encouraged the crowd to drag them into a cheap panto style. Oh, yes, it is. Oh, no, it's not. Oh, yes, it is. Oh, no, it's not kind of routine. But you can't lay all the fault at the actor's feet for that one. The posters for that tour's 1986 December engagement showed the long established and iconic Colombia face wearing a Santa Claus hat with a trio of cartoon ghouls dragging a sleigh through the snow. And if that wasn't telling enough, it was un ironically marketed as Manchester's alternative pantomime. Richard o'brien really, really hated that entire tour and he was extremely vocal about it so much so that the producers penned an editorial in defense of their choices that was published into the tour's final program. It said we do believe our Rocky of 1988 is some way on from the original Rocky. It has had to move with the times this was such a hot button topic. The director for the tour even wrote a brief note in the brochure saying it is this cult following that has turned the show into an adult pantomime, not the show itself that has become one which feels a bit like splitting Harris. Does it not if panto is about the absurdity on stage and the audience's involvement? And if you take Rocky so far outside of its tradition, presentation and start completely breaking the fourth wall. At what point does it matter if the actual script has the interactions in it? If every single performer on stage is acting as if they were. It was at the end of that tour that a little oddity crept its way into the history books. You get the one and only performance of the tacky horror show. A 30 minute spoof put on by the theater Royal Hanley's front of house staff and hosted by the legendary narrator Peter Thorne. It was full of self referential in jokes, some that landed and many that fell flat were a few scathing bits of reflection on the entire tour. The parody saw everyone's favorite protagonists, Mad Dangers and Annette spice as they braved quote, typical stoke on Trent weather to look for help at a nearby building which looked like a theater for rich trustees. The owner might be a theater royal producer observed Annette and you may never get paid a supposed reference to producer Paul Barnard who had been fired the previous year amid allegations of fraud and tax anomalies all this before the entrance of everyone's favorite, sweet transvestite, Frank and Spurder. I'll Frank and spur her right in your fucking face. Yes, that's the joke. Got him. And while this tour is famous for its panto like excesses and being the tour that broke the proverbial camel's back causing Richard o'brien to pull the rights for the touring production and spawned the creation of the new version of the live show that has toured ever since. There is one holiday moment that I think is actually pretty cool. And on Brand Mark Turnbull, who played both Frank and Doctor Scott during the Handley tour, remembered a New Year's Eve show in Manchester. He recalled on New Year's Eve midnight came, we stopped the show, everyone sang O LA and then we killed Eddie. We should remember that we've got a New Year show in New York this year. That's pretty good. Right. Following the Hamley tour. I think Peter Blake summed up the feelings of many of the actors who had been involved with Rocky since the beginning saying, sadly, I think it's become a parody of itself. It's turned into a three ring circus with Frank as the lion tamer. They've tried to turn it into professional musical theater and it's not, it shouldn't be. There was absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel because it wasn't broken. It's become pantomime and it's lost its soul as a result. But Peter certainly doesn't speak for all of the actors who performed in Rocky since its evolution into the audience participation la in performance that we're all familiar with Anthony Top, who played Eddie and Doctor Scott in the 2005 European tour spoke very fondly of the rambunctious audience. He said, as an actor in Rocky, you can't afford to coast because of the audience participation. The whole thing creates such an atmosphere and you really become wrapped up in it. No one show is ever the same which is great for the cast. Anything can happen and anything goes just like the B movie it's written has. But when you dig a bit deeper into top's comments on the 2005 production, you can easily see how you might chalk it up to a difference of expectations. While much of the traditional Rocky horror casting was composed of bona fide theater professionals. As Rocky entered the new millennium, much of the pantomime atmosphere resurfaced much of which top him accounts to the rigorous performance schedule. The two week rehearsal formula is exactly like Panto he attested. Here's your blocking, learn your lines and you slot in around Frank, who is the pantomime dame and much as Richard o'brien decried the pantomime atmosphere that plagued the show throughout the eighties. By the end of the two thousands, it had reared its ugly head again, culminating in a change of management within the Rocky Horror Company and the replacement of director Paul Winford. Though Richard has rarely spoken about this shuffle and management, the shift was pretty obvious with the 2009 revival, David Ella Frank extraordinaire, spoke of the differences between the oh six oh seven tour and the revival. He said on the first tour, we spent most of our time training the audience. It was still such an adult panto in 2006. Instead of playing Frank, I was thinking, how am I going to regain control? How am I gonna quiet them? So I couldn't give my all to the role this time around. The audience knew that things had evolved and it became a joy to perform. I could concentrate on the character and embrace the audience participation because it didn't overpower the show. The audience understood the payoff, do this and get a better Frank. It gave me the freedom to soar and I think this is truly what Richard o'brien had hoped for. He hasn't spoken much about the behind the scenes, shuffling that resulted in the show as you see it today. And since 2009, but he did make several comments during the tail end of the eighties tour, Richard in True Richard fashion had a rather prescient take on the whole thing. In a 1990 interview with Rob Cope comparing Rocky to the old British classics. Richard said, Rocky is probably what theater used to be like before it became church like and precious. The Victorians took a lot away from us. They took a lot of life away from us. Yes, the music hall was still on, but that was seen to be low life as we became more middle class. Rocky's probably closer to that experience than any other form of theater, rock and roll. Of course, concerts are close to it, but there's not an interaction just shouting at the guy gods, the gods don't talk back very much. Do they? They take the adulation. But apart from the songs, it's a narcissistic experience which is all for them. Toya Wilcox, an English musician, actor and presenter and self described lifelong Rocky fan who performed as Magenta in the 2006 Rocky Horror tribute show. Summed it up succinctly with the internet. Kids are brought into the adult world so quickly these days. But the show still retains its energy, its role as a rite of passage and its fun characters. When you look at the world we've made with theme parks and such like it slots right in if it is like adult panto, that's fine, is a fantastic genre. It's how Shakespeare's plays started and it's all encompassing and welcoming. The shouting out is all part of the event. Nowadays, we're all performers, whether it's game shows karaoke or posting comments on the internet, you go there because you want to shout your opinion loudly and to be heard. And I think regardless of all the back and forth. Is it pantomime? Is it more, is it a traditional theater turned on its head? Even Richard o'brien acknowledges that Rocky has evolved for the modern age. In a 2010 interview on radio, New Zealand, he had quipped. It's not so much theater going. It's party going, isn't it? It's the people going out to have a good evening, a good night out as opposed to we're going to the theater and I like that. And in this day and age you want a bit of a return on your investment, don't you? And to come out of the theater feeling a lot better than you did when you went in is pretty damn good. Which I think we can all agree. Pantomime or not. That's something that Rocky Horror definitely delivers on and that's our show. We want to thank the Francis Bacon Experiment for entertaining us this weekend with their Fabulous virtual show. And as always, we'd like to thank our writer Jacob and our editor Aaron from Tennessee. So a big thanks to both of you. We appreciate all of your work. If anyone has a question, they'd like us to answer on air for Nicky asked a question or some community news they'd like us to talk about or just a cool story to share with community. We'd love to include it in our show. Just go to our website rocky talkie podcast dot com and fill out our contact form to tell us all about it. If you're enjoying Rocky Talkie, please help us out by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show. It makes the podcast more accessible to new listeners, which really helps us grow the show. And if you want even more Rocky Talkie content, check us out on Facebook, youtube, Instagram and tiktok all at Rocky Talkie Podcast. We'll talk to you next week. Bye bye 57. Hello to all of you. Unconventional conventions. Welcome back to Duke is barking. He's still barking. Hold on. He's screaming at me. Ok. I'm Nicky, I'm John and I'm Aaron. And that's Dominic the Donkey, the dog. What's that song about the grandma that got run over by a reindeer? I don't think it's that one. Oh, well, I'm sorry, how are you guys? And that's our show underoos. They're fun to lose it as a oh, ok. Now has portrait and landscape pictures for sale. That's right. You can, I feel like I'm trying to sell something. That's right. You can pretty much. And last I just swallowed everything. Every single thing has been swallowed. I, you do. Uh You said horrible. No, that's a good one. Oh my God. Thank you. Yeah, dude. Just do a southern accent. Your oh, no condensation. But for all of our non tea sipping