Hoot’n & Holler’n With Matt Mitchell

VBS Fight Club

Grab a Dixie cup of watered-down Kool-Aid and pull up a folding chair — this week the boys are digging into Vacation Bible School, that summertime rite of passage for every kid raised in a Southern Baptist stronghold. Matt, Eric, Drake, and Joey trace VBS from its surprising origins (a rented beer hall in New York City, believe it or not) all the way to today's megachurch productions with parking attendants and Monsters Inc. themed sanctuaries.

Along the way they get into the stuff you actually remember: the sand-flavored cookies, the "spy Jesus" who crept around one church in a wig and a football jersey, the infamous Rickshaw Rally theme nobody wants to talk about anymore, human videos and white-glove dramatic dances, a pie-eating contest gone wrong, and yes — the kid who tried to start a fight club in the middle of VBS. Plus getting dragged to the altar for admitting you don't like reading the Bible, and one unforgettable gravel-slinging exit from the church parking lot.

Was the slapped-together backwoods VBS of the old days better than the polished version kids get now? The fellas hash it out. New episodes every week — if you enjoy it, do us a favor and subscribe.

Go to Church or the Devil'll Get You

Pull over, we're stopping. This week the boys are riding shotgun through the South's greatest (and grimmest) roadside attractions — the giant Tin Man outside Demopolis, W.C. Rice's Cross Garden, the chrome bumper chicken, and that peach water tower that looks suspiciously like a butt. We rank the go-to stops (Peach Park cobbler, forever), crown the most overrated (sorry, Biltmore), and settle whether a man standing on his porch counts as a landmark.

From See Rock City barns to Buc-ee's, Ruby Falls to a $15 mud house in the middle of Colorado, it's a love letter to every billboard that ever talked you into pulling off the interstate. Grab a bag of boiled peanuts and ride along.

New episodes every week. If we're your favorite roadside attraction, do us a favor and hit subscribe.

The gang is playing along at home this week as we run the whole game show gauntlet — from the daytime classics you watched while faking sick to the chaos of late-night Japanese TV.

Matt, Eric, Drake, and Joey get into Price Is Right, Wheel of Fortune, and the Pat Sajak / Vanna White era, then argue about Steve Harvey's reign on Family Feud (and every host before him — Richard Dawson and that very long microphone, Ray Combs, Louie Anderson, and the "Al Borland" guy). We hit the big-money primetime boom with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Deal or No Deal, the celebrity editions nobody asked for, and the panel-show heyday of Hollywood Squares, Match Game, and $10,000 Pyramid.

Then things get physical: American Gladiators, Pros vs. Joes, Fear Factor, Wipeout, MXC, and the Nickelodeon hall of fame — Double Dare, Guts, the Aggro Crag, and Legends of the Hidden Temple. Plus Game Show Network nostalgia, a mystery early-2000s show nobody can name, and a childhood teacher who actually went on Double Dare and won.

Where's the line between a game show and a reality show? Is Survivor a game show? The Bachelor? Naked and Afraid? We don't fully settle it, but we have a great time trying.

A Southern Guide to the 4th of July

The South does Independence Day different, and we've got the receipts to prove it. This episode breaks down why TNT Fireworks (the nation's largest fireworks distributor) calls Alabama home, the unwritten rules of haggling at a firework stand, and exactly when it's socially acceptable to stop shooting off Roman candles in your neighbor's driveway.

We also get into the surprisingly heavy overlap between church and country on the 4th — LifeWay's data on pastors working patriotic music into Sunday service, the unofficial ranking of National Anthem performances (Whitney Houston vs. Chris Stapleton vs. an all-time Fergie disaster), and why "God Bless the USA" might be the most-sung song in America you didn't know had a survey behind it.

Then it's on to the cookout: burgers vs. hot dogs vs. ribs by the numbers, the baked beans vs. potato salad standoff, and why a giant flag-frosted cookie cake might be the most patriotic dessert in America.

Grab a cold one, fire up the grill, and let us walk you through how it's really done here. 

A vault episode from the early days, back when we were still calling the show Scattered and Covered and recording on location instead of in a studio. This one comes from Gamers Guild, a game shop in Jasper, Alabama, where we sat down in the middle of a Sunday night card tournament and talked to the folks running it.

We get into trading cards and the people who collect them, a binder that turned out to be worth more than most people's retirement, '90s satanic panic, dorm-room LAN parties, the worst Captain D's sandwich ever assembled, and a serious investigation into how many people in the room were carrying swords. Mostly we just hang out and wander around one very chaotic shopping center.

This is the last of our vault episodes — the fourth and final on-location recording we had in the can. Thanks for sticking with us from the beginning.

You don't walk under a ladder, you don't break a mirror, and you sure don't walk on a grave — not because anybody explained why, but because Grandma said so. This week we get into Appalachian superstitions: death coming in threes, black cats, cows lying down before a rain, holding your breath past the graveyard, and eating turnip greens for money on New Year's (still hasn't worked). We don't believe any of it. We just aren't going to test it either.

Child Labor & Other Fond Memories

Everybody's first job was technically a crime scene. This week on Hoot'n & Holler'n, the crew gets into first jobs, worst jobs, and the ones we quit in record time, the gigs the government knew about and the ones it definitely didn't. 

From hauling boxes of truckers' trip logs and choking on Bondo dust at a body shop, to practicing golf on company time, surviving the CVS pharmacy counter, and the fine art of quitting in three days flat (one clean polo per shift), no paycheck is safe. Plus a steakhouse way out in Bug Tussle and what really happened to all that leftover chicken from Chick-fil-A.

Pour something cold and clock in. Just don't tell the labor board.

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For half the South, there's no debate: it's Gatlinburg or nothing.

This week we make the great Southern pilgrimage up to G-Berg — Sevier County, Tennessee, a.k.a. the Smokies, a.k.a. the only vacation some families have ever taken. We get into all of it: the saltwater taffy and the fudge, the moonshine that took over the strip, the airbrush tees and glow-in-the-dark mini golf, the great debate over which pancake house actually wins, and whether you can really skip the national park (you can't). We argue about Cades Cove bear jams, the dinner shows, the aquarium, and the proper way to ride the chairlift up the mountain.

We climbed into machines bolted together by strangers, ate things on sticks that had no business being on sticks, and lived to talk about it. This week on Hoot'n and Holler'n, we're talking carnivals and county fairs.

The guys swap stories about the rides that shouldn't have been legal (the Scrambler, the Gravitron, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the one that was just a circle that spun you until you got a hangover the next day), the food that should never have touched a fryer (corn dogs, funnel cakes, chicken on a stick, candied apples, a deep-fried something that briefly seemed like a good idea), and the games that took every dollar in our wallets and gave back a Bon Jovi mirror and a goldfish that wouldn't make it home.

We also get into Visionland, Dollywood, the rope ladder game that nobody can climb, the time someone won a giant stuffed dog and had to carry it around all day, and the strange men who set up tiger cages in mall parking lots and answer to no government on earth.

Pull up a folding chair, mind your funnel cake, and try not to think too hard about who built this ride or when.

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Summer in the rural South wasn't a vacation. It was a system.

You got dropped off at grandma's in the morning, ate something, went outside, came back in for more food, went back outside, and came in at dark. Every day. For three months.

In this episode, the boys break down everything that made a Southern summer in the 80s and 90s what it was. The ice cream truck. The Little Hugs from the deep freeze. Cornbread and buttermilk for lunch. Watermelon on a newspaper. Magnolia grenade wars in the front yard. Driveway basketball where the only thing worse than missing a shot was losing the ball down the holler.

Plus a long detour into pawpaw culture including the khakis, the coveralls, the missing fingers, the steadfast refusal to own a single pair of shorts, carry an umbrella, or learn to swim unless his life depended on it.

This is a summer episode for anybody who spent their childhood with grass-stained knees, a belly full of hose-water, and a grandma who'd make you snap beans if you tried to come back inside.