Sebastian Bach, Goonies Theories & Rizz’s Greasy Meatball Birthday

Some people celebrate birthdays with dignity. The Rizzuto Show celebrates them with sarcastic greeting cards, giant pastries, smoked deviled eggs, Italian rainbow cookies and a handcrafted pasta spoon featuring Tommy Wiseau.

Welcome to Episode 201 of The Rizzuto Show, the comedy podcast where turning 48 apparently means your coworkers get unlimited permission to remind you that death is approaching.

The show kicks off with some completely normal DuckTales appreciation before Lern proposes the crew go see Sebastian Bach, Quiet Riot and Great White. That immediately becomes a scheduling nightmare involving Rafe’s Funny Bone weekend, Moon playing Valley Park Fall Fest and Rizz trying to figure out whether everybody can somehow attend three events simultaneously. Also, Moon may or may not have dreamed about Sebastian Bach. His dreams apparently have continuity now, so that's something everyone has to live with.

Then Rizz brings up a movie theory that sounds just believable enough to ruin your productivity for the next hour: could The Goonies and Back to the Future take place on the exact same day?

Back to the Future establishes October 26, 1985. Meanwhile, clues in The Goonies appear to place its adventure right around that same Saturday. Coincidence? Intentional cinematic universe? Evidence that Chunk was one DeLorean ride away from completely destroying the space-time continuum? We investigate with exactly the level of academic rigor you'd expect from this program.

Which is none.

Then Brian arrives with enough food to turn the studio into a French bakery: croissants, bread, ham and Swiss, smoked deviled eggs and more. This comes after the gigantic birthday cake he'd already made for Rizz, because apparently we're now trying to see whether a radio host can be defeated entirely by carbohydrates.

From there, Crap on Celebrities brings another avalanche of entertainment news. The crew gets into Slipknot and Sid Wilson, Stray Kids dominating the Billboard charts, the debate surrounding a potential Asian pop Grammy category, and Frankie Valli continuing to perform at 92 — which leads everyone to wonder whether Frankie is enthusiastically choosing the stage or operating entirely on decades of muscle memory.

Nate Bargatze also sets a massive comedy ticket-sales record, sending Rafe and the crew into a genuinely interesting conversation about club comedy versus arena comedy. Rafe explains why smaller rooms create that perfect pressure cooker of laughs while superstar comics eventually reach a level where playing a 200-seat club makes about as much financial sense as opening a lemonade stand inside Costco.

Then somebody pays $192,000 for Sophia Petrillo's purse from The Golden Girls, because apparently having money is exhausting and eventually you simply run out of normal things to buy.

The entertainment conversation keeps rolling into movies, celebrity stories and eventually Brad Pitt declaring that bad acting is so distracting he can't watch porn. This results in Rafe questioning Brad Pitt's acting credentials and nearly getting thrown off the show by everyone else. The crew debates whether Pitt is actually an elite actor, just exceptionally talented at playing Brad Pitt, or both.

And somehow that's still not the most disrespectful conversation of the episode.

Because it's Rizz's birthday.

The crew surprises him with cards carefully selected to remind him that he's old, grouchy and one year closer to death. Lern gives him a Tommy Wiseau pasta spoon. Then Rafe produces Italian rainbow cookies from Sweet Seven Layers, delivered by a New York/Jersey baker who listens to the show and apparently understands exactly how to win over a “greasy meatball” birthday boy.

It's heartfelt. It's insulting. It's carb-heavy.

In other words, it's the perfect Rizz Show birthday.

Hair metal, ridiculous movie theories, entertainment gossip, comedy talk, celebrity arguments and enough birthday shenanigans to make HR quietly close its laptop — Episode 201 is another completely normal comedy podcast from St. Louis.

If you've ever wondered what happens when grown adults combine Sebastian Bach, The Goonies, Brad Pitt, Tommy Wiseau and Italian cookies into one morning show, congratulations. You've found your comedy podcast.

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Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.

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