16: The Kissing Bandit Diaries (with Alison Evans and Justin Gausman)

SUDDENLY: a Frank Sinatra podcast

*WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD FOR EPISODE 15* As a tribute to the spirit of Peeter Pedaja and last week's guest, Tim Batt of The Worst Idea of All Time, I, Rabia, watched THE KISSING BANDIT (1948) a total of 11 times in two weeks and kept an audio diary of the experience - presented here unedited, making up the first hour of this wildly experimental four-hour episode. During the 11 watches, I also visited places in the life of Peeter Pedaja and documented the time in Australian history following the death of Queen Elizabeth II as events unfolded around me. For Watch #5, I'm joined by Alison Evans, YA author and also my wife, who shares their thoughts on the film having previously watched every Elvis Presley film with me some years earlier.

Continuing the Elvis theme, for Watch #11, at about the 1hr15min mark, Justin Gausman from TCBCast: An Unofficial Elvis Presley Fan Podcast joins me for an in-depth and fascinating chat about THE KISSING BANDIT in the context of the Elvis musicals of the 1960s and the cultural legacy of both Presley & Sinatra in general. This segment is the most like a normal episode of SUDDENLY and is really worth hearing. Justin truly elevates things, despite the fact I'm incredibly delirious as it was recorded on my end after four hours' sleep, before sunrise and immediately following a 4am watch of THE KISSING BANDIT. He deserved better but truly made the most out of being thrown into the deep end of this show. Around 2hr40min, Felix joins in. We've just watched GROWN UPS 2 (2013) and SEX AND THE CITY 2 (2010), films covered on the first two seasons of The Worst Idea of All Time. As a nod to Sinatra, I'm very drunk on Jack Daniel's. Shenanigans follow. I haven't listened back to any of this and can't be held responsible for whatever I said.

A few days later, I visited my friend Ashley aka DJ GROUP HUG. She had been up for over 24 hours and, for some reason, asked me if I wanted to watch GROWN UPS 2. I said yes and we watched it again. She then made a song about the experience sampling both GROWN UPS 2 and THE KISSING BANDIT. "Insomniac" by DJ GROUP HUG closes out our episode. All of this is completely unedited and runs over four hours. It is what it is and will probably vary wildly from the unlistenable to the sublime. Enjoy. I dig you the most

TWITTER & INSTA: @suddenlypod

EMAIL: suddenlypod at Gmail dot com