#0425 - Stephen King, GTA 6, The Double Jab, Acid Bath, and Christmas Metal - 09/17/2026

Viktor Wilt enters this particular episode of the program operating at approximately 14% battery life, having slept like absolute garbage, endured a night of mysterious nightmares, repeatedly awakened from the dead, and apparently spent enough time watching Mindhunter to permanently transform his brain into a haunted bowl of oatmeal. The morning begins with Viktor wondering whether it is even Thursday, discussing a nightmare in which he apparently slept until the end of his work shift without notifying anyone, and generally establishing the central theme of the entire broadcast: this man desperately needs to go to bed. Unfortunately, the universe has other plans, including caffeine, radio, the internet, bizarre news stories, video games, horror movies, and approximately seventeen thousand opportunities to become irrationally angry about modern society. He also prepares for a Saturday live broadcast at the Melaleuca Event Center with Bullfrog Spas, proudly reports that his hot tub has been cleaned and prepared for the coming cooler weather, and briefly imagines the glorious existence of drinking coffee in a hot tub on a crisp winter morning. Then comes the double jab. Viktor explains that he received both flu and COVID vaccinations, resulting in a sore arm but absolutely no regrets after having previously been obliterated by both illnesses. Naturally, he considers posting a photograph of his two bandaged injection sites on social media and asking whether this somehow makes him a communist, before wisely remembering that Facebook comments are basically a digital gladiatorial arena populated by people who will fight over literally anything.

With his brain already operating somewhere between a microwave and an overloaded Windows 98 computer, Viktor begins clicking through increasingly terrible internet content. He encounters lists about famous people who suffered horrible deaths and discussions about the worst physical pain imaginable, immediately realizes that this is perhaps not the ideal breakfast material, and slams the mental escape hatch. He then wanders into a list of jobs that were once highly respected but are allegedly considered jokes now, leading to a spectacular rant about journalism, 24-hour cable news, sensationalism, media bias, suits, radio programmers, and the general collapse of civilization. Newspaper journalists come under discussion, followed by bank managers, travel agents, elevator operators, secretaries, real estate agents, librarians, and eventually politicians. Viktor's political commentary remains part of his broader ranting persona, but the real target is his frustration with what he sees as timid, stagnant political behavior and institutional inertia. From there, the episode takes a hard left turn into Idaho library rules, young-adult books, parental permissions, Harry Potter somehow becoming the apparent gateway drug to societal collapse, and Viktor once again wondering why Idaho sometimes feels like it has been running on a 1950s operating system.

Then the internet presents Viktor with a relationship dispute involving a couple in their mid-20s, a girlfriend's mother, sleeping arrangements, and a hotel room. Viktor cannot understand why two adults in their 20s would be expected to sleep separately simply because they are visiting the woman's mother. His solution is brutally simple: get a hotel, enjoy your own space, and stop allowing other people to manufacture unnecessary awkwardness. The conversation becomes a referendum on adulthood, personal boundaries, hospitality, and the timeless human experience of desperately wanting to leave somebody else's house and return to your own bed. Naturally, this somehow transitions into energy drinks, caffeine, and the realization that Viktor's brain is already beginning to resemble a badly shaken snow globe.

The next major crusade is against ticket scalpers. Viktor warns listeners not to Google event tickets and blindly buy from secondary-market sites when official artist or venue ticket sources exist. The discussion begins with Metallica tickets and expands into the absurdity of paying dramatically inflated prices for concerts. Viktor recounts seeing seemingly outrageous secondary-market prices for comedy tickets and talks about paying around $250 per ticket for Nine Inch Nails, prompting the horrifying realization that perhaps his concert spending has contributed to his financial situation. The official-ticket-versus-scalper debate becomes another entry in the growing Viktor Wilt Museum of Things That Make Him Furious. He repeatedly encourages listeners to check the artist or venue directly instead of handing absurd amounts of money to ticket resellers, while lamenting the fact that concert prices themselves have become increasingly difficult for ordinary people to swallow.

The musical portion of the episode then detonates when Viktor discusses Falling in Reverse's strange, heavy, wildly unconventional new song featuring an absolutely ridiculous lineup of major rock and metal vocalists. Viktor loves the track precisely because it is weird, progressive, chaotic, heavy, and unwilling to behave like a conventional radio single. He then reveals the truly deranged statistic: according to his discussion of MediaBase airplay data, the song had been played by only 15 stations across the country at least once, with only six of those stations playing it outside nighttime or overnight hours. Viktor uses this as ammunition for a broader rant against conservative rock-radio programming and programmers who, in his view, are too afraid to take chances. He praises the stations willing to play heavier and stranger music and describes the bizarre reality of being a rock-radio personality whose job is not necessarily to play only what he personally loves, but to serve the audience. Ronnie Radke also gets discussed, with Viktor recounting his own interactions with the Falling in Reverse frontman and suggesting that Radke understands how effectively controversy and an online persona can generate attention.

Eventually, the show becomes a gigantic horror-and-literature symposium disguised as a radio program. Viktor discusses the upcoming Resident Evil movie and the outrage from fans who had apparently already decided they hated it before actually seeing it. He points out the absurdity of judging a movie that has not even been watched and becomes increasingly excited when positive critical reviews begin appearing. The conversation expands into Zach Cregger, Barbarian, Weapons, and Viktor's plans to see Resident Evil at the cheap theater in downtown Idaho Falls. Then Acid Bath enters the bloodstream after a listener posts footage from an Acid Bath performance at Red Rocks, sending Viktor into a state of profound jealousy because he wants to see the legendary band headline its own show rather than catching part of its set during a daytime festival. Naturally, this leads directly into Venus Blue, because apparently the only logical response to concert envy is to play one of your favorite songs.

The second half of the program introduces Jay Davis, button-down shirt-based hostility, phone calls, and an extremely important discussion about Christmas music. Viktor and Jay discover that another station may have beaten K-Bear to the Christmas-music punch, which is treated as an act of war. Their counterattack? Type O Negative's “Red Water” and Korn's “Kidnap the Santa Claus,” because if you're going to play Christmas music absurdly early, you might as well commit fully to the darkness. The conversation somehow evolves into old people, AM radio, the FCC, the death of analog technology, retirement, War of the Worlds, rocking chairs, flipping off children from a front porch, original Nintendo, arcade games, Pinball, and Pogs. In othe...