45:00 — While I’m in-between producing shows or whatever, enjoy one of the random recordings I’ve been posting on my Spotify feed since the last episode of my podcast, The Midnight Citizen, back in November 2025.
This one I recorded on a humid Christmas night in Birmingham, AL. Join me for a drink as I mull over Stanley Kubrick’s last movie “Eyes Wide Shut” — the weirdo plot, theories old and new, and why nobody “saw” it when it came out…even though I processed countless late fees for the VHS at Blockbuster.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released August 2026 on The Overnightscape Underground.
43:43 While I’m in-between producing shows or whatever, enjoy one of the random recordings I’ve been posting on my Spotify feed a little bit before and after the last episode of my podcast, The Midnight Citizen, back in November 2025.
This one I recorded after seeing one of my favorite movies, The French Connection (1971), at the local independent movie theater. I walk around downtown and talk about it, and duck into a quiet cellar bar for a bit to grab a drink and take a rest from the chill November air.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2026 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.
34:04 While I’m in-between producing shows or whatever, enjoy one of the random recordings I’ve been posting on my Spotify feed a little bit before and after the last episode of my podcast, The Midnight Citizen, back in November 2025.
This one I recorded after seeing the much-anticipated film, One Battle After Another, based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 book, Vineland.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released July 2026 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.
1:51:45 — Join Mike in the studio for the last time…maybe?
After 15 years and 300 shows, it all ends tonight. Bring out your drink of choice and make a toast with me as I say goodbye to this weird, wonderful podcast that’s been, altogether, not a bad way to document all the ups and downs of a random guy’s life in this world.
Hear all about the show’s origins, the various stops-and-starts along the way, and, in the true spirit of randomness that The Midnight Citizen’s all about, take some hard digressions with me into an exploration of a wide variety of topics, including the surprising thing Filmmaker Kevin Smith and OC Bomber Timothy McVeigh have in common, pre-Star Wars George Lucas movies, fertility clinic waiting rooms, and a lot more!
This is a jam-packed final episode that I prepared for very little and recorded LIVE, so anything could…and did…happen, like the cat unplugging the mic and camera for a little minute, and two surprise, special guests who dropped in like I was doing a 70’s Television Special!
Music Break: “Carry Your Own Weight” by Forget the Whale (CC-BY-NC-ND) | “Hung Over” by The Crevulators (CC-BY-NC)
Video Street Video Store: “Acting Class for Commercials” (1988) — Watch Fight Back [Youtube] | “A Seductive Hollywood Scam” (1991) — Watch Fight Back [Youtube]
Listen on Spotify and Apple Music: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast.. You can also watch over on Youtube!
…and be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! “I was one of the authors of the Port Huron Statement. The original Port Huron Statement. Not the compromised second draft.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released November 2025 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.
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.
