After a long day of grading papers and driving for dollars, I crashed out on Saturday night and slept right through my scheduled live show. But no worries, join me in the car on Sunday morning as I deliver food to the good, hung-over people of Birmingham, AL.
Later that night, sit with me outside to celebrate the milestone of what I’m choosing to believe those thousands of screaming, cigar-puffing folks were cheering on in Tuscaloosa on Saturday Night. That’s right, I finally finished “Gravity’s Rainbow”! — a book it took me 12 years – and just as many tries – to finish. I give you (what I’m sure won’t be) my final thoughts on the novel.
Tonight, we continue the countdown to Episode 300 — the series finale of The Midnight Citizen. Although, after tonight’s show, I’m not sure I’ll make it that long — this after a FREAK SCARE about an hour into it, when my whiskey toast to Diane Keaton was cut short by a ghoulish face outside the studio, staring in at me. Can Halloween be over? Please?
Music Break: “Get Me a Job” by The Riptones (CC-BY-NC-ND) | “Debris” by Greg Cartwright (CC-BY-NC)
Video Street Video Store: “What’s Happening, Mr. Silver?” (1967) — David Hoffman (Youtube) | “The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t” (1979) — The Museum of Classic Chicago Television (Youtube)
Listen on Spotify and Apple Music: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast…
You can also watch over on Spotify and on the Youtube page | @the_themidnightcitizenpodcast…and be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! “I am a Christmas Adventurer! I have a higher purpose!”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released October 2025 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.
Tonight, we begin the countdown to the series finale of The Midnight Citizen show. It’s been a long, strange trip, but after 15 years, I’ve decided to close the curtains and throw up the “Closed” sign for good at episode 300. So, sit back, crack open your tasty beverage of choice, and enjoy these final four late-night rambles!
Music Break: “Promised Paradise” by Emma Acs (CC-BY-NC-ND) | “How Good Can It Be” by XL Kings (CC-BY-NC)
Video Street Video Store: “Dick Tracy: Behind the Badge” (segment) — Intermission Society (Youtube) | “Brady Bunch 1977 — Mike Douglas — Part 1” — BradyNut (Youtube)
You can also watch over on Spotify and on the Youtube page | @the_themidnightcitizenpodcast …and be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! “Life, baby. LIFE!”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released October 2025 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.
This week, I’m sitting on the back porch of my folks’ house in suburban Birmingham, AL., gazing out into the serene channel of woods and darkness, wondering why my family chose to live here in the late summer of 1992. I guess I’ve never thought of it before, or, for that matter, why one of our neighbors, the heir to one of the state’s great Department Store fortunes, chose to build his dream house here back in the late 70’s — a dream house that was torn down a couple weeks back after Mr. Pizitz’s passing at 86.
Have a drink with me while I tell you what I know of my former neighbor, a mysterious guy who was kind of like the neighborhood Howard Hughes — aloof and reclusive, but who had a lot to do with the shape and character of Birmingham in the 70’s and 80’s.
Content Warning: It’s not my intention in this episode to misrepresent Merritt Pizitz; everything I say is constructed from my own memory, local myth and conjecture, and the record. You can read the Bham Wiki article on him here.
Later on in the night, I give you the latest on my never-ending quest for meaning (spoiler alert: I’m still searching…), and I break some important news about the future of The Midnight Citizen podcast…
Hang out on the makeshift back patio with me while I reminisce on morning TV and what happened after that on those long hot days in the summer when you had nothing to do and all day to do it.
Anyway, I was feeling real nostalgic today when I took a small break to take in a double feature — something I don’t get to do much these days when I’m driving for dollars and looking for more stable work.
Later on in the night, I speculate on the identify of the mystery person who left an odd trinket on my podcast patio. My own personal Boo Radley? Or just some strange coincidence, as the artifact is, indeed, the facsimile of an old-time radio microphone.
Also…an encounter I had this week with a real bad sport, and reviews-of-sorts of my Al Pacino double feature: Michael Mann’s The Insider (1999) and Sidney Lumet’s Serpico from 1973.
Join Mike in the studio late on a Saturday night. Tonight, check your commie cynicism at the door and give yourself a little permission to be a proud Ameri-CAN on this 4th of July weekend. Go on, now — call a ceasefire on the whole “Us vs. Them” thing. Just watch yourself a little “Back Up, Terry” and I promise, it’ll all feel right as rain…
Now that we’re all feeling appropriately patriotic, join me as I check in on the newest branch of the armed services, the United States Space Force. Who are they and what are they doin’ with all those golf ball antennas that look like Spaceship Earth?
Anyway… Once the fireworks are over, I return to bein’ a mean old man, and try to get at what the cause of all this cynical ire in me — and maybe most of us — really is. Maybe it’s, like I’ve said before on the show, all this truth you learn that has no where to go if you don’t have kids. Existential indigestion? Or maybe it’s just the textbooks they gave us when we were kids ourselves — those that taught us that history was all in the past and everything these days is mostly a-O.K. Yeah, that’s probably it.
Later… After I play you some music, I talk about small town crime and the Dixie Mafia, and one shocking murder that went down in Biloxi, Miss. in the 1980s. It inspired Edward Humes’s excellent book “Mississippi Mud”, which itself maybe even kicked off that whole sick, wonderful obsession we all have with True Crime.
Also… Sad Juggalos, that great date movie “Operation Dumbo Drop”, and a toast to Michael Madsen, who passed this week at 67.
Music Break: “It Won’t Be Too Long” by the Cut Worms (CC-BY-NC-ND) | “Automaton” by Vampire Lezbos (CC-BY-NC)
Video Street Video Store: “Police Sting Nabs The Unsuspecting!” — Caught on Tape TV | “From the Archives: 1987 Hamilton Place Mall Opening” — WDEF News 12
…and be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! “Sometimes I dance around the house in my underwear. Doesn’t make me Madonna.”
Additional backing music for tonight’s show by Topher Mohr and Alex Elena, Ketsa, legacyAlli, BFCMusic (“Soulmate Strings”, CC-BY, Free Music Archive), Mr. Smith (“Slingshot”, CC-BY, Free Music Archive).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2025 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.
Tonight, to kick off 4th of July week, I bring to you some quotes from a barrage of great American patriots — George Washington, Justice Potter Stewart, Missile Command Champ and former Playgirl Centerfold Roy “Mr. Awesome” Schildt. From there, we get onto the idea of “underground” postal systems, which Thomas Pynchon talks about in his Crying of Lot 49, and how the Internet was kind of a natural successor to the Trystero system…until it got infiltrated by, among other sinister agents, your mom.
Music Break: “Morning, Noon, and Nite” by Daddy Long Legs (CC-BY-NC-ND) “Nature Boy” by Harpo (CC-BY-NC)
Video Street Video Store: ?“Mr. Awesome — Roy Shildt”? ?“Waffle House Training — Harassment”?
Check out the video for this show over on Spotify and Youtube | ?@the_themidnightcitizenpodcast? …and be sure to join the ?Facebook page? and find me on ?Instagram?! …”True pornography is given to us by vastly patient professionals.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released June 2025 on ?mikesbonfire.substack.com? and ?The Overnightscape Underground?.
Join Mike in the studio late (and LIVE!) on a stormy Saturday night…
Tonight, on the eve of Fathers’ Day, and in the absence of having kids of my own, I pass onto you some sage advice handed down to me by my dad…or maybe it was the funny coach from Teen Wolf:
“Never get less than 12 hours sleep… never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city… …and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body.”
Anyway, the second week of Camp was smashing. I taught the kids how to write plays using tried-and-true methods for creating conflict given to us by that Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling trucker movie Over the Top. It all went real well, which I know because the kids wrote a song about throwing me down a well. (Don’t ask, you just have to listen to the show and it’ll all make sense.)
Later… The job hunt continues…poorly. I kind of lose it on this episode when it dawns on me that Nazi Scientists were able to get gainful employment so quickly after Nuremburg…yet I continue to go unemployed. Honestly, it’s getting real desperate these days — like posting-on-LinkedIn and attending “Networking Events” desperate. I even emailed back a podcast spammer to ask if he had any jobs going.
Well, enough of that… After I play you some music, I invite you to take a toast with me to Brian Wilson, who passed this week at 82. Kick on back in the proverbial sand as we remember the great creative genius, his fraught relationship with the jolly Svengali Dr. Landy, and the woman who saved him — all depicted in the excellent, underrated film Love and Mercy (2015). Along the way, we’ll enjoy some memorable television moments with Brian and his late brothers…and, yeah, even Mike Love.
And finally… We take a look at Sammy’s Gentlemen’s Club, the infamous house of ill repute in the button-down Birmingham suburbs, that closed last year after the dancers united over unfair tipping practices…and will soon be holding its grand reopening as something called “The Pony Lounge” …Oo-la-la… I wonder if they’re hiring.
Music Break: ?“Belmont Jail Song”? by Crete Boom (CC-BY-NC-ND) ?“When You’re Gone”? by Bombay Laughing Club (CC-BY-NC)
Listen on Spotify and Apple Music: ?https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast…?
Video Street Video Store ?“Tom Savini on ‘Friday the 13th’ 1 & 4”? ?The Beach Boys on ‘Good Morning America!’ (early 1980s)?
This was one jam-packed show that was recorded live before an Internet audience. You can watch the whole thing on Spotify and also over at Youtube | ?@the_themidnightcitizenpodcast?
…and be sure to join the ?Facebook page? and find me on ?Instagram?! …”You stick to that and everything else is cream cheese.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released June 2025 on ?mikesbonfire.substack.com? and ?The Overnightscape Underground?.
1:56:06 —Join Mike in the studio late on a Saturday night.
Tonight, I’m wondering why my generation has gotten such a bad rap for so long. Is it really just our love for Avocado toast, or something much deeper? Maybe we’re all looked down on because all the 80s and 90s pop culture we’re so nostalgic for was kind of vapid and banal, or it’s simply the fact that we never claimed to not wanna sell out? Whatever it is, we’re tired of taking it, and I dedicate a large portion of this episode to my kid sister, born in ‘84, who went viral recently for turning her middle school history classroom into a “Museum of the Millennial”, making the case that we did have a unique culture that, like so many generations before us, is totally antiquated and wholly mysterious to the kids of today.
I play some music before I tell you about the new movie I saw — Friendship, starring I Think You Should Leave‘s Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd (who has a mustache in this one, which means it’s kind of artsy — but not really; it’s just darkly funny and demented in a very non-mainstream way). Anyway, I give a sort of review with no spoilers, but mostly talk about what the movie has to say about adult men, loneliness, and also the whole “A24” thing…
And lastly…I relate the particulars of my latest existential crisis — this one happening over paying too much for a donut at the Circle K. Kind of dramatic, I know. But really… Why are we all so cool to live in a world where a day old donut costs the same as a gallon of gas? The answer, I guess, lies in the work of post-war Critical Theory and that ultimate Debbie Downer, Michel Foucault.
Tonight, a real experimental episode as we cross over into June, and I do my first live show in over 2 years! Of course, you’re downloading it, but still… Witness the drama as I attempt to engineer a livestream while clumsily monologuing about bullies, 90s self-help videos for kids hosted by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Teddy Roosevelt, and memes from World War II featuring Kilroy, the perpetual schlemiel of late 20th century pop culture. You know the drawing — I didn’t until yesterday, but everybody else I talk to seems to.
Later, I drink a toast to Loretta Swit, “Hot Lips” Houlihan on “M*A*S*H”, who died this week at 87… and two more toasts to other recently passed folks George Wendt and Simpsons composer Alf Clausen leaves me a little too flighty to talk about Thomas Pynchon’s first novel V…but I do it anyway.
Also…we’re bringing MUSIC BREAKS back to the show! Tonight, enjoy a back-to-back serving of music by Caühaüs and our favorite band from New Jersey, Forget the Whale!
And…I’m excited to take you back down to the Video Street Video Store, where we’ll check out a double feature of tapes on how to get a date in the 90’s!
