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Pop Culture Happy Hour: Best Bad Movies And A Punishing Quiz

Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton star in <em>Twister. </em>
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THE KOBAL COLLECTION
Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton star in Twister.

It's a fun week at Pop Culture Happy Hour, as we welcome back, as this week's fourth chair, original PCHH panelist Trey Graham, who gives an update on how he's been since he departed NPR. We're so excited to see Trey, and we know a lot of you will be, too.

There was nothing especially current we wanted to tackle this week (and had time to tackle), which made it a good week for a deep breath and a couple of general good-time topics. First, we all take a turn coming up with our favorite bad movies. Does Glen do some voices? He does. Does Stephen recall a noteworthy non-hero of the '90s? He does. Does Trey salute some divas? He does. Do I talk data-gathering ping-pong balls and the time Philip Seymour Hoffman played the Jack Black part? I do. (I apologize for imperfectly remembering a couple of plot details from Twister. It's less that they have competing teams than that they've been doing research separately and wind up on the same team. With the ping-pong ball thing.)

By the way, we discuss the fact that long ago, in the olden days of PCHH (our fifth-ever episode), we talked about the gymnastics movie Gymkata, and if you want to hear that, you look right here. It's actually too old, believe it or not, to be in the regular podcast feed.

In our second segment, Glen delivers a quiz on pieces of culture with "return" or something similar in their titles. Trey acquits himself okay. Stephen and I ... well, the less said about our performances, the better. It was kind of like when we were on Ask Me Another, for those of you who remember that. So it was bad.

As always, we close with what's making us happy this week. Stephen is very happy about a movie our buddy Gene Demby has also written up. Glen is happy about a song and video he enjoys (NSFW for language and good-looking bods, BTW). Trey is happy about a vibrant, optimistic piece of writing about theater (makes sense, what with his being Trey). And I am happy about a great podcast episode about Verizon and a piece of radio I discovered on the NPR app known as NPR One.

And speaking of NPR One! You can still download the app from wherever you get your apps, and for the month of April, that will mean that if you do a search for Pop Culture Happy Hour, you should be able to find a preview of Friday's episode on Thursday. So: you get the show a day early, for trying out an app that I legitimately think is terrific and will make you happy.

Find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter: the show, me, Stephen, Glen, Trey, producer Jessica, and producer emeritus Mike.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.