It Happened One Year

Episode 41 - The Great Boondoggles (or the Buffoondoggles!) of 1994

It wasn't all hand-over-fist success stories back in 1994, no sir! There were also ego driven flights of fancy and wild money-making schemes that backfired royally! Sarah & Joe dive deep into this pack of '94 boondoggles, including the Steven Spielberg theme restaurant Dive!, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 sequel Closing Time, the Canadian Football League's ill-advised expansion into America, and Fox's abortive live-action Krusty the Clown spin-off from The Simpsons. The restaurant industries of Los Angeles and Las Vegas get a glance, plus the fanbases and appetites for foreign football in places like Sacramento, Shreveport, Baltimore, and Memphis, random spin-off football leagues like the XFL and the Lingerie Football League, and what the ramifications could've been had Krusty the Clown actually aired. Are three-decade-plus sequels a good idea in any medium? Should they give the CFL another shot in the U.S.? Will The Simpsons ever actually end? There is plenty speculated about in this information packed, quixotic forty-first episode!

Episode 40 - Justice Stephen Breyer Needs to Retire Immediately

A show centered squarely in 1994 shouldn't often try to influence modern decision making, but the ongoing Supreme Court crisis cannot be ignored here at It Happened One Year! Sarah & Joe take us along separate, parallel journeys through court history, as Sarah details the life and times of '94 appointee Stephen Breyer, his early life, education, judicial career, and opinions opposite Joe's journey back through history, highlighting the other dozen men to occupy this Supreme Court seat. Finally, the hosts contemplate modern America's rolling conservative nightmare, with its minor public support and the crooked dealings that brought us to this point. Cameos abound from throughout American history, including George Washington, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oliver Wendell Holmes, JFK, FDR, LBJ, the worst president in history, the historic Jewish seat of the court, and speculation about Breyer's '80s action hero style one-liners while he was in the army reserves. It might just be gallows humor, but interspersed with bon mots about copyright law, in this legislative fortieth episode!

Episode 39 - Saoirse, Give Me Strength!

It's further adventures in audio chaos as It Happened One Year looks at the life and career of 1994 baby Saoirse Ronan! From her near-miss casting in the Harry Potter series to her many Academy Award nominations, Ronan's place as darling of the indie circuit is discussed, along with Sarah & Joe's speculation as to if/when she will finally land in a major Hollywood franchise and make that sweet franchise money. Along the way, much discussion is given to potential future Oscar winners, the best strategies for taking home the top film honor, lesbian period dramas, recent Muppet films, Wes Anderson, the Titanic, and the fleeting value of pre-intro banter. It could be called unconventional, but let's face it, so many IHOY episodes fit this description lately that it has probably become the norm. Tune in!

Episode 38 - Tonya & Nancy & John & Lorena & Weird Al

Ostensibly designed to discuss three large news stories in the general vicinity of 1994 - Michael Fay's walloping adventure in Singapore, the epic showdown between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan at the Lillehammer Olympics, and the violent dissolution of John and Lorena Bobbitt's marriage - this entry in the IHOY catalog spends the most time gushing over the sheer genius of one "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose '94 song "Headline News" forms the basis of this discussion. Dial in as Sarah & Joe talk about their earliest memories of the famed parodist, his classic albums Bad Hair Day and Even Worse, his Christmas songs and polkas, and their personal favorites from his vast repertoire. Sarah's off-handed suggestion later to tag Weird Al on Twitter leads the hosts down the road of other random celebrity interactions they've had online, roping in such disparate notables as Nick News' Linda Ellerbee and former American Idol host Brian Dunkleman! And yes, loyal listeners, "Stuck in a Closet with Vanna White" makes another triumphant appearance on the show! Planned as a straight news episode, transformed into a Weird Al lovefest, intense media scrutiny and songs about lasagna are given equal time in this splashed-across-the-front-page thirty-eighth episode! 

Episode 37 - The First It Happened One Year Book Club!

Gather up your literature cronies, put the kettle on, and cozy up to a roaring fire as Sarah & Joe invite you to quite possibly the only book club episode this season! 1994 featured plenty of popular book releases - with the usual suspects topping the sales charts, such as John Grisham, Stephen King, and Robert James Waller. When choosing a subject for this read-along episode, the hosts debated the format and the novel itself a while, but ended up with best, craziest option imaginable. Recorded over a month's time, featuring a litany of wild plot predictions and horrified reactions to the author's choices, It Happened One Year turns a weird corner and discovers plenty about the hosts, the readership for this sort of book, and America circa '94, and whether this kind of book could or would be written in this manner today. Kick your feet up and crack the spine of this page-turning thirty-seventh surprise filled episode! Yes, the book's title is withheld for a reason! Give it a chance! 

Episode 36 - Around the World in 4,834 Days

Did you ever think how breathtakingly loopy it would be to grab one of your dumb buddies and attempt to circumnavigate the globe using only human power? No engines, no sails - nothing! Just spit and sweat and gumption! Well, that's basically what two intrepid, inexperienced British lads chose to do, setting off from Greenwich, London on July 12th, 1994! Sarah & Joe contemplate the many obstacles and trials faced by Jason Lewis and Steve Smith on their journey around the world nicknamed Expedition 360, where they encountered everything from wild crocodiles, drunk drivers, malaria, and schizophrenia to how wise roller skating across North America was as a strategy. As you can probably guess, a fair number of lousy Forrest Gump impressions populate this globe-trotting thirty-sixth episode of It Happened One Year!

Episode 35 - The Neon Lights are Bright on Broadway, 1994

The 1994 Broadway season was highlighted by the industry-shaking arrival of the stage adaptation of Disney's Beauty and the Beast - an otherwise unremarkable show which nonetheless changed the way musicals got made from that point forward. Previous successful movie-to-stage musical transformations of the '80s and '90s - including Kiss of the Spider Woman, Nine, Grand Hotel, and Little Shop of Horrors - are discussed, plus the complications around turning Beauty and the Beast into a live-action product, and all the lessons Disney learned from this endeavor. Since '94, it has been a parade of these sorts of shows, with decidedly mixed results - musical versions of Back to the Future, Mean Girls, Rocky, Dave, Bend it Like Beckham, Debbie Does Dallas, Silence of the Lambs and, of course, Lin-Manuel Miranda's Bring It On get a hard look from the hosts. Sarah & Joe are stepping out onto the Great White Way for this star-studded thirty-fifth episode of It Happened One Year! 

Episode 34 - The Crossroads of America

While sitting at the 49'er Drive-In Theatre in Valparaiso, Indiana waiting for Jungle Cruise to begin, Sarah & Joe made the ill-fated decision to find all the news items and notable firsts that took place in the Hoosier State in 1994. The result? This brief, chaotic thirty-fourth episode of It Happened One Year!  The 78th Indianapolis 500 is given a hearty look, along with season recaps for the Indiana Pacers, the Indianapolis Colts, the University of Indiana football and basketball programs, and that the minor league Indianapolis Indians probably need to change their mascot. It's not just sports though - Dick Lugar's third re-election to the U.S. Senate, the chain of Hooks Drug Stores demise, plane crashes, rowing championships, IUPUI, and famous Indiana graves also get airtime between symphonies of car horns. Cameos abound, with the Rolling Stones, Sasheer Zamata, Carole Lombard, Whiting's New Years Eve pierogi drop, Jesse Ventura, and Blaster the Rocketman's The Monster Who Ate Jesus all saying hi. The familiar IHOY refrain of "Is this anything?" rings loud and clear across this bizarro road recording! Enjoy?

Episode 33 - My So-Called Matlock

It Happened One Year famously broke down NBC's cross-sitcom promotion of November 3rd, 1994, "Blackout Thursday", way back in Episode 13, but then wondered, what were the counter offerings on that fateful night of television? This unearthed the insane ABC pairing of the legendary high school drama My So-Called Life and the elderly courtroom antics of Matlock - which brought up a lot of questions. Sarah & Joe get to the bottom of this bonkers slate of TV, looking at the 10th MSCL "Other People's Mothers" and the 180th Matlock "The Tabloid". The critical reception to the teen drama is reviewed, plus possible reasons it didn't last beyond that first season, plot elements introduced and discarded, the raw erotic appeal of Brian Krakow, and, of course, that Jordan Catalano can't read. No such wide-ranging breakdown is afforded Matlock, as the hosts question whether this wackadoo episode is typical of the show or was this a glorious one-off in its final season, featuring three separate instances of Ben singing coupled with possible extra-terrestrial sexual trysts, broken up by discussions of the characters' favorite sandwiches. Brief interludes abound, throwing time to the CBS and FOX schedules of the same night, the abrupt ALF finale, what METV stands for, and can you instinctively know which network aired a particular show. They won't be covering November 3rd television again (or will they??), so come get the comprehensive look at this singular day in broadcast history with this incongruous thirty-third episode!

Episode 32 - The Not Particularly Unsung Greats of 1994

In direct opposition to the earlier episode covering forgotten wonders, this week It Happened One Year heralds the heavy hitters, the master blasters, the success juggernauts that emerged in 1994! Sarah & Joe have much debate over the title of this episode, before launching into an extended, uncomfortable look at Sex.com and the adult website industry, before pivoting to safer tech spaces like Amazon and Yahoo and Webcrawler. Bottled water giant Aquafina emerged that year, while the Wonderbra made its American debut, and the Sony Playstation made waves overseas. The engineering marvel The Chunnel opened (and the hosts reveal their complete ignorance as to how this structure functions), as did Chicago's United Center, which gets them off on a whole different series of tangents. Many, many cameos and segways along the way (including the original patent for The Segway, incidentally), featuring the various video game systems of the '90s, longtime urban myths about Mountain Dew, the differences between whitehouse.gov and whitehouse.com, how great Joe's dad was as a build-your-own video game character, Sarah's adventures with water and wine bras, speculation about who Brian Pinkerton is, Viktor Stalberg's only career hat trick, and that one time Pete Townshend sang "My Generation" at a Who concert. It's wall-to-wall topics and information in this chock-a-block thirty-second episode!