Christmas isn't what you think it is. It isn't contained within the waking, sometimes sleepless days of the yuletide season; it doesn't simply begin and end at those polar midnights of late December. It's not quantifiable by tallying cards and presents, not merely a protracted spree of buying and giving, wrapping and tearing, hugging and crying. Christmas, really, is more akin to music or memory than the temporal here and now; even when it's not loudly ringing out, even when it happened so long ago, you carry it within you to summon against the darkness, holding it tight against the quiet and the cold. It's something you know as a child and try your absolute hardest to forget as an adult, but the truth is that Christmas is truly, deeply, embarrassingly about that one special thing: it's love, actually.

Now, this is a story all about how Galinda's actually Glinda now

And we're talking bout Wicked

Massive hit of the year

So take a break from all your worries and lend us an ear

On the stages of Broadway, born and raised

Where this musical originated back in the days

Of George Bush, Usher and low-rise jeans

It sure was a hit of grandiloquent means

Elphaba's green, and people are mean

"What's up with that?" I suppose you might scream

Well it's a metaphor, stupid, for prejudiced people

And how rejecting diversity can be terribly lethal

Wicked Wicked Wicked, what a crazy little movie

Chic-a chic-a chic-a, scooby dooby dooby

F is for the way the snow falls fast

R is recording a film podcast

O is "Oh my gracious, this is so outrageous!"

Z is the zillion times we've all heard Elsa's sing-song rhymes

So E's enough of the poem mode

N so now we can listen to the episode

[Sung to the tune of L-O-V-E but then it just sorta falls apart, I guess]

Enjoy the latest Throw in the Pal!

Remember when you were sick from school and your grandpa who you didn’t like that much and looked an awful lot like TV’s Colombo came by to read you a story about a fantasy world where no one has the same accent and eels can shriek and extra fingers are somehow a disadvantage and originally he kinda took it easy on all the horny stuff in the story but leaned reeeal into it by the end because at that point you were both super into it, so much so that you asked if he could come back the next day to read you the same exact story?! Well, turns out they made a movie about that self-same relatable thing that every one of us went through as children, and it’s not called The Princess Diaries. It's the other one, actually. So... enjoy the Pals talking about that!

A harrowing war film about a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team in Iraq led by a loose cannon!

A WWE wrestler whose whole shtick is a little too confusing and niche to get picked up by the mainstream!

A band that plays math-rock mixed with noise punk whose members don't grasp the nuances of mixing or songcraft!

A location that a kid who gets bullied too much at a stereotypical American High School in the '80s spends a lot of his time!

Question: what do these things all have in common? Everybody knows they're all called The Hurt Locker!

Where are you most likely to find the world's most-famous form of Diesel?

Better yet, what's an accurate description for a speeding motorist?

Or, if you're feeling cheeky, what's the best way of describing the means by which each of the Pals lost his virginity?

If you answer is, "In a car", you're correct.

But "Fast & Furious" also works.

This week, what is it that the (dead)Pals have (wolver)seen that they’re dying to deliberate? Still not sure? We’ll give you a clue: it’s this year’s most anticipated new entry in a flagship cinematic series! Now would you care to take a gue-? No, it’s not Inside Out 2, try again… Nope, not Dune 2 either, although we get how you might have- Ok, no, not Furiosa, and upon reflection maybe the set-up for this was a little too open-ended. No, goddammit, it’s not Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Think big, like a BIG and widely beloved… (sigh) No, not Despicable Me 4, Kung-Fu Panda 4, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus or The Garfield Movie, you insipid poltroons! It’s Deadpool, alright?! It’s the new Deadpool! Wolverine’s here too, ok?! Ok… Jesus.

Are the Pals off their face, or are they ON their face? You be the judge!