Listen it's a long weekend, what even is time? I was around, I just fully forgot. As a mea culpa here are two wildly different podcasts I listened to this week.

No Gods No Mayors' "Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov" is about a gay Romanov failson who sucked and eventually got blown up (spoilers), and it's very funny for everyone except maybe the thousands of peasants who got trampled to death at Tsar Nicholas II's coronation. It's worth listening in particular for the intro, which talks about mayoral candidate Shayne McKinney, who is running in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and is also a vampire. And a landlord. And look, he is not a good guy but a great deal of fun can be had. 

On a lighter note, a new-to-me podcast is Bill & Frank's Guilt-Free Pleasures, which is a music podcast that takes deep dives into earwormy songs that are actually great and you don't need to feel bad if you like them. Because of the ages of the hosts, their musical touchstones are more or less the same as mine, and they're also Canadian, so their radio and MuchMusic experience is roughly similar to what I listened to at the same age. I listened to a few of their episodes recently, starting with the one about "Fairy Tale of New York" to just make sure they had good opinions, but the one I just finished was "Crowded House: "Don't Dream It's Over" (with Dave Kitchen)" It's one of those songs that I don't often think about and yet the second I hear the opening notes, I'm like, oh, this is a banger. I really love the analysis of the little details of the music, which is not something that I really pick out on my own but the second they explain it, I realize why it works as well as it does. They have a bunch of episodes with overly emotional power ballads, which I am a sucker for, so I'm excited about working through the backlist.