September 22, 2026 “Hello, this is Sy Greenblum, president of Spatula City. I like the spatulas so much, I bought the company.” This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie and Emily welcome Justin Kramm, founder of Shitshow Creative, to talk about the cult classic comedy UHF. This 1989 film, written and starring Weird Al Yankovic, was a box-office failure, but a major pop culture success. Justin shares with the Guy sisters how the off-the-wall comedy encouraged him t

September 15, 2026 Now put that thing back where it came from or so help me… Tracie revisits the classic Pixar animation Monsters, Inc in today’s episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit. This family film, which was released just after 9/11, offers the deeply reassuring message that laughter is much stronger than fear, and Tracie argues that our country’s collective mental health needed that pop culture lesson in late 2001. But in addition to the lovely psychology, this cl

September 08, 2026 “I love you, but I love me more.” This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily shares her complicated love of the television show Sex and the City. When the HBO original comedy first aired in 1998, it was a breath of fresh feminism in pop culture. The show featured a quartet of fabulous single women in New York who had created a found family through their deep and abiding friendship with each other. Although Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw an

September 01, 2026 Don't let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become. In this episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits the surprise hit of 2002: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. This comedy broke many of the tropes that can make romcoms hard to watch, from the Hollywood gorgeous leading lady who is clumsy to show she's just a normal woman to the heroine enjoying a glow-up in response to her new romance. Writer, director, and star N

August 25, 2026 “Somebody has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, flyboy!” On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily tackles the foundational pop culture text of every Gen X childhood: the 1977 film Star Wars IV: A New Hope. By following the storytelling rubric offered by Joseph Campbell's monomyth (a.k.a., The Hero's Journey), George Lucas created a film that changed the industry. (If only he knew when to leave well enough alone.) Emily reminds

August 18, 2026 Don’t you…forget about me…Don’t Don’t Don’t Don’t! In this reprise of episode 23, Tracie takes another look at the 1985 John Hughes film The Breakfast Club. This classic Gen X teen movie passes the Bechdel test and explicitly names the prude-or-slut trap of female sexuality. It also treats Claire and Allison like prizes for the boys in the film and assures the audience that we’re not so different from each other–by featuring a cast that is entirely white, cish

August 11, 2026 Hold on to your butts. On this week’s episode of Deep Thoughts, Emily shares her analysis of the 1993 film Jurassic Park, a pop culture phenomenon that offers a surprising level of feminism. Emily describes the social thrill of being the target audience for a summer blockbuster (she was 14 when it came out) and her discomfort with how Michael Crichton's original book portrayed the only two female characters as an annoying child and a cardboard cutout with brea

August 4, 2026 Tale as old as time? It’s old, alright. True as it can be? Hmm, about that... Beauty and the Beast is an old and not-so-necessary model for romantic love. Hiding in the remarkable Howard Ashman score to this 1991 film is a not-like-other-girls feminism and a reified classism that isolates poor Belle and gives her no choice but to fall for her captor. The sisters grapple with the conditioning from this movie (and so many other sources) that invites us to find m

July 28, 2026 It smells like the funk of 40,000 years in here! In today’s episode,Tracie shares her deep thoughts about the iconic and groundbreaking 1983 music video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. From the way the mini film subverts expectations to the meaning behind the horror tropes it relies on to how to contextualize Jackson’s immense talent with the troubled and abusive life he led, the Guy girls explore what it means that a novelty song featuring a zombie flash mob an

July 21, 2026 Sometimes you wanna go Where everybody knows your name This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits the must-see-TV comedy that was always on at the Guy Sisters' house: Cheers. This powerhouse of 80s and 90s pop culture, created by the Charles brothers and the late James Burrows, is genuinely funny: the pilot episode is used by TV writers to teach efficient storytelling to establish a new sitcom. And while the ensemble cast offers great physical

July 14, 2026 Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion Grease is the way we are feeling This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily revisits one of the classic movies of her Gen X childhood: Grease. This musical comedy was set in high school, but all of the lead actors were in their 20s and 30s, which may help explain why much of the lessons about romance, performing adulthood, and gender expression sailed over her head as a child. The lyrics in many of the so

July 07, 2028 I am standing here beside myself. For this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to one of the beloved movies from her and Emily's shared Gen X childhood: Short Circuit. The sisters remembered the charming robot Number 5 who gained sentience, the romance between Newton (Steve Guttenberg) and Stephanie (Ally Sheedy), and the funny malapropisms from Ben, the Indian character played by Fisher Stevens--a white actor in brown face. Even th

June 30, 2026 “…all this nothing has meant more to me than so many somethings.” This week, Emily revisited everyone and their aunt’s favorite late-90s advertisement, er, romcom, You’ve Got Mail. The film was a feature-length commercial for America Online starring two of the biggest names in romcom, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. With the biting interactions that lead to romance between Kathleen Kelly (Ryan) and Joe Fox (Hanks), this Nora Ephron-written and -directed film showed us s

June 23, 2026 No-one said anything to me about the full monty! For this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to the 1997 British comedy The Full Monty. The film is a meditation on masculinity from multiple angles, including economic, sexual, psychological, physical, parental, and societal, as well as a treatise on the political aftermath of Thatcherism that left an entire generation of British men without jobs. But instead of a snooze-fest of dry

June 16, 2026 By the Power of Grayskull! On Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit this week, Emily returns to her first pop culture crush: He-Man, aka, Adam, prince of Eternia. As a very small child, she loved the cartoon He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, and she was somewhat disheartened to learn that this beloved staple of her Gen X childhood was created specifically to sell He-Man toys. The animation, storytelling, and even the cultural commentary (via little public servic

June 9, 2026 "E.T. phone home!" On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie revisits one of the classic movies of her Gen X childhood: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Director Steven Spielberg is at the top of his storytelling game with this sci fi film that introduces E.T., a gentle alien botanist who is accidentally stranded on Earth and taken in by 10-year-old Elliott, the middle child of divorced parents. Not only does Spielberg use every visual tool ava

June 02, 2026 "I see dead people..." This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Emily returns to M. Night Shyamalan's 1999 masterpiece The Sixth Sense. The film was a pop culture phenomenon when it debuted, and all everyone could talk about was the last ten minutes of the plot, when Bruce Willis's Malcolm Crowe (and the audience) realizes that his situation is much different from what he had believed. And to give Shyamalan his due, this plot twist uses masterful storytelli

May 26, 2026 Whether you like it or not, you're in the middle of a war that has been raging for the better part of a thousand years. Tracie returned to the 2003 film Underworld to find a delightful – but maybe not very good – vampire and werewolves version of the Matrix. Starring Kate Beckinsale as Selene in skin-tight leather, Underworld is a visually beautiful, blue-tinged movie that marries feminist impulses with decidedly not-feminist tropes. The sisters unpack a fairly

May 19, 2026 I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal. On this week's episode of Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t, Emily revisits one of the most unhinged pieces of Gen X pop culture: the 1986 cult classic film Highlander. Starring French-American actor Christopher Lambert (who didn't speak English prior to being cast) and noted Scot Sean Connery (who was playing an Egyptian characte

May 12, 2026 We must have a wawwy. You know, a large gathering of mice for a reason. This week on Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, Tracie returns to one of the classic movies of the animation storytelling boom of the 1980s: An American Tail. Animated by Don Bluth, the film follows young Fievel Mousekewitz, a Russian mouse immigrating to America to escape the pogroms (perpetrated by Cossack cats and humans in this world) who is separated from the rest of his family. But Fievel