On Christmas Eve in the nation’s capital, your friends in podcasting (and broadcasting!) got together in-person for this very special (and pre-recorded) holiday treat! Dean discusses his Los Angeles adventures, including the Cerritos mall, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and nudists! Phil discusses his east coast adventures, including a visit to the Hillwood Estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post and the night his beloved cat, Fuzz Aldrin, decided to go walkabout! They touch briefly on the death of beloved novelist Joan Didion, and they discuss a handful of holiday season cinematic releases, including (more on) Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, Being the Ricardos, King Richard, Spider-Man: No Way Home and The Matrix Resurrections. There is even time for a brief follow-up on the zen brilliance of Bill Murray, and there is a photo shoot during the show! Join Dean and Phil as they ring out the final week of 2021 in style …

Because he’s been driving all over California, Phil tackles the insane, apocalyptic weather racking the Golden State, and Dean updates on the building of his steam room and his graphic novel (both of which are long-awaited) on this week’s installment of YOUR Chillpak Hollywood Hour. The madness of America is addressed through the oddly appropriate lens of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ and speaking of Scorsese, his mentor, John Cassavetes is very much a subject of discussion, from his directing of the under-seen classic The Killing of a Chinese Bookie to his acting in such crowd-pleasers as the 1964 version of The Killers and The Dirty Dozen. And one of the “Dozen”, the great music star-turned-actor Trini Lopez gets remembered in “Celebrity Deaths”. Robert Altman’s penultimate film, The Company, receives some fascinating analysis. And speaking of fascinating analysis, somehow a discussion of TV’s “Columbo” and “Law and Order: Criminal Intent” allow Dean and Phil to figure out once and for all why the Back to the Future sequels are so bad! At the close, your friends in podcasting preview next week’s show when they will be discussing the series nominated for the Emmy in the “Best Comedy” category and the dire circumstances threatening SAG-Aftra in the wake of the union’s health plan implosion.