arts & culture
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
I n Yiddish, “potchki” means to daw-
dle, dilly-dally, waste time.

First-generation Polish-Jewish
immigrant Robert Palmer feels the word
is grossly underrated.

Palmer’s Polish parents immigrated
to Philadelphia in the 1960s and met
at Temple University, finding a slice of
Ashkenazi Jewish culture in the likes of
satirist Jackie Mason. Palmer himself
was a fan of Jewish comedy giants Peter
Sellers and the Marx brothers, “potch-
ki-ing” comedians who were the life-
blood of 20th-century entertainment.

It’s a lifeblood Palmer wants to keep
alive. Taking inspiration from his Jewish
entertainment heroes, Palmer, along with
childhood friend Eric Horowitz, created
“The Potchki Chronicles” in 2001, a hokey,
low-budget film that they reprised as a
podcast “The Potchki Audio Chronicles’’
in 2019. Palmer, Horowitz and the rest
of the “Potchki” crew teased the sec-
ond season of the podcast at their first
Philadelphia Fan Expo panel on April 10.

“The Potchki Audio Chronicles,” a de
facto sequel to the film, is a scripted comedy
where inept sleuth Potchki teams up with
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pseudo-intelligent and hyper serious I.M.

Nebbish to stop crimes in the underbelly of
a very fictionalized, very Eastern European
Philadelphia-esque metropolitan.

Like Potchki, sidekick Nebbish — and
the rest of the podcast’s characters — draw
heavily on Yiddish vocabulary. Nebbish
in Yiddish means timid and submissive,
foreshadowing the sidekick as ineffective
against recurring villain Flaczki, whose
name derives from a Polish tripe soup
Palmer deems “absolutely disgusting.”
The escapades of the intrepid heroes
take them to even sillier locales. In a
future episode, Palmer and Horowitz
intend to take Potchki and Nebbish to
the Borscht Belt — not a summer resort,
but to a wrestling tournament, where the
winner takes an oversized wrestling belt
with the familiar, if not misleading name.

Palmer and Horowitz may now be liv-
ing in different cities — Palmer is in Los
Angeles and Horowitz is in Ambler —
well into their careers as movie and film
producers, but their love of storytelling
together has deep roots.

The two met through Palmer’s brother,
who was friends with Horowitz at Lower
Moreland High School in Huntingdon
Valley. Palmer and Horowitz hit it off;
Horowitz’s love of Mel Brooks and
his encyclopedic memory of “Blazing
Saddles” helped the two find an instant
connection in Jewish humor and media.

Beyond superficial interests, Palmer
and Horowitz shared similar stories.

Horowitz had Russian and Ukrainian
ancestry, understanding the obscure, lit-
tle details of Palmer’s childhood, such
as kogel mogel, a raw egg drink which
Palmer describes as “similar to the one
Rocky would drink.”
“Eric came to me, and he was like,
“Hey, have you ever heard of kogel mogel?
My mom mentioned it,’” Palmer said.

“And I’m like, ‘Yes! My dad used to make
me drink it!’”
Kogel mogel later made an appearance
in “Potchki.”
Their collaboration culminated in the
2001 “Potchki” movie, but even after the
life of the film reached a dead-end, the
life of Potchki certainly didn’t.

In between Palmer’s credits as execu-
tive producer is Hulu horror film “I Am
Alone” and Horowitz’s helming of Green
Socks Production as executive producer,
the two stayed in touch, still throwing
“Potchki” pitches back and forth.

“We talk to each other pretty much
every day,” Horowitz said. “Every time
an idea comes in, I’ll instantly start writ-
ing, and then we’ll just go back and forth
with the idea. I’ll copy it and paste it to a
Google doc, which we’re now up to 300
pages of stupid ideas.”
It was Horowitz’s idea to revamp the
project in 2019, hoping that the podcast
medium would be perfect for listening
on road trips and commutes. By the time
“Potchki” hit its stride again in early
2020, people were no longer commuting
to work or going on road trips to visit
friends and family.

The project stalled, but because Palmer
and Horowitz were so used to com-
See Podcast, Page 39