I found this little parody kind of amusing…
pondering about podcasting…
Not entirely sure how the idea came up, but last night I started seriously thinking about creating a podcast.
My first preference would be to make some sort of comedy show, like the Daily Affirmation with Scott and Kris – that was a really fun one while it lasted, but sadly I don’t exactly have the second half of a comedy duo needed to pull that one off and frankly, I just don’t think that I could be funny enough “on air” all by myself…
So my second thought was to do something where I just talk about creativity and being a writer and struggles and rewards and all of that once a week – something I think could be kind of interesting because as weird as it might sound, I already do this a lot already just talking to myself throughout the day! I tend to work things out verbally when I’m alone in the car or something anyways, so it makes me wonder if anyone else would find any value in listening to how those thoughts unfold as well. Personally, I love shows like Webcomics Weekly (another Scott & Kris, and Co production) where it’s just a bunch of creative people sitting around talking shop about their trade – even if they’re several orders of magnitude more successful than I am at the moment, it’s still interesting to hear them talk about their own conflicts and issues that they find important.
The truth is, at the end of last year I was strongly considering doing some sort of video series this summer to chroncile the making of as well as just help to promote my second humor book, and my wife even got me a little video camera for Christmas to do so, however at this point I’m almost thinking that this new podcast idea might take the place of the whole video thing. Mainly this is because I’m just not sure how confident I’m going to be in front of the camera and I’m almost thinking that audio might be a little easier to nerve up to … not to mention it sort of ties into another project that I still want to try and fit in this year.
My second excuse, and I guess it’s still sort of along the same lines as the first one, is that if I were to do a video podcast, I think I’d feel more inclined that it would have to be funny to garner as many views as possible, whereas it almost feels a little “safer” to just stick to an audio podcast where I can talk from the heart and not necessarily worry about whether it’s funny enough or not. Plus, I don’t want to spread myself too thin by trying to write a funny column AND trying to do a funny video podcast by myself every single week – that seems like a lot, but a funny column and then a more down to earth audio podcast about the making of said column might be a little more managable…
…and again, it’s not like I’m not already having a lot of these conversations with myself in the car, anyways! The only difference is now they’ll be a little more structured and I’ll be recording them.
Ultimately I’m pretty excited about the idea of trying out a new medium that I’ve enjoyed from other people for so long, so now it’s just a matter of seeing where it fits into my schedule to begin. Right now I’m kind of thinking sometime later in July – I still have one huge project that I desperately need to finish before starting anything else, but for what it’s worth I sat down last night and filled a full sheet of notebook paper just brainstorming to see if I even had enough ideas for more than one show, and I think I do, so hopefully in less than a month I’ll be following up this post with an announcement to come check out my very first episode about being creative!
*hopeful, excited fingers crossed*
infected hamburger extreme close-up
I honestly don’t know how this poor fish is still alive…
“LEGO Mordor Cannot Be Reached With Plastic Eagles”
And I wish that I could say that I came up with that epic title all by myself, but that would not be very noble of me…
http://io9.com/5815605/lego-mordor-cannot-be-reached-with-plastic-eagles
This pic in particular says it all, though there are some other cool angles both on the article page and the builder’s Flickr page. In an attempt to keep the LEGO Tolkien kick going, I was hoping to find even more gigantic representations from Middle Earth here in this Flickr group, but unfortunately most of the others are in fact very small.
Who knows, maybe Kevin will step back up to the plate himself and next construct a massive Minas Tirith to stand across the mountains against the Dark Tower … or even an equally impressive model of Mt. Doom would be cool, too, if he’s strictly a Ring Wraith kind of guy!
the epic victory of Mario Marathon 4
After an incredible grand slam performance as far as charity drives are concerned, I would be remiss if I didn’t follow up my post from last Saturday with a few final thoughts now that the truly incredible Mario Marathon, in its fourth year, has finally come to an impressive close…
First and foremost, this year’s grand total – $110,642.
(…actually, closer to $112k, as donations have apparently still been trickling in between now and when it officially ended around 2am last night…)
I’ve got to say, this year I caught myself watching the marathon more and more as the time progressed, to the point where I think I’d like to try and get a little more involved next year. It kind of reminded me of the old PBS pledge drives I remember from growing up where Mom would call in and donate $10, and then we’d sit by the TV and wait to hear our names announced by Captain Banana. Mario Marathon seems to have a great fan community going – I don’t think I logged in once and saw a live viewership of less than about 1,500 people, so it might be nice just to interact with everyone a little more next year when Mario Marathon 5 comes along.
Or who knows, maybe I’ll try to set some time aside and actually play along with the guys on some of the games! This is the second year that I’ve been inspired to pull out Super Mario Galaxy and explore after the Marathon had concluded, so it might be kind of cool to have a laptop sitting nearby with the chatroom open and play along! Either way, it’s such a great cause and it’s really awesome to see how much the entire crew puts into making this amazing fundraising effort such a fantastic success. It’s very clear from all of the prizes and contests and giveaways that hosting Mario Marathon is a lot more than just streaming video games for 5 days straight, and we can only hope that the guys had enough fun this year to want to continue the tradition once again in 2012!
I don’t know, but judging from the credits it seems like everyone probably had a pretty good time… 😉
Once again – a lifetime total of $234,931 for four years of playing Super Mario Bros. Wow.
entirely too much comfort!
I don’t mean to pick nits here or anything, but is it just me or does The Onion’s advertising here for this caustic, high school flashback of a whiskey seem maybe just a tad bit over the top???
I think the only thing they’re missing is to somehow incorporate a liquor bottle into their logo, too!
The Onion: Southern Comfort’s Finest Southern Comfort Source (brought to you by Southern Comfort)
P to the Z
Yep, I’m still playing Plants vs. Zombies. Apparently it actually just starts over after you beat it the first time, with that crazy drunk guy now choosing a few of your slots for you, which is an interesting and sometimes challenging twist. I’ve been trying to use more of a variety from game to game as opposed to sticking to the same general line-ups like I used my first time around. So far they’re still pretty easy simply due to having so many high-end plant options that I didn’t have earlier, but I’m sure that’ll only last so long…
seeking summertime grill recipes
Tonight was a nice night – after Cleo’s class, we pretty much just ended up hanging out around the house for the rest of the afternoon and evening, playing some Mario Galaxy and then eventually other random games on the Wii and grilling out for dinner.
We ended up trying chicken and corn on the cob this time, which I figured is about a half-step up from just your traditional hamburgers and hotdogs, and surprisingly they actually ended up turning out pretty good! I was a little worried that everything would either be raw on the inside or charred to a crisp … especially considering that I had to take all of the chicken back out to the grill after going to take my first “test bite” and noticing that it was still uncooked inside! But the chicken was still very much moist and had a great flavor, and the corn was nice and crunchy, and more importantly not scorched, too!
So I want to do more, but I’m not really sure where to go from here. Honestly I didn’t even know how to do these ones until merely minutes before throwing them on the grill! I had actually looked up how to do the corn while it was Sara’s turn in Mario, and didn’t realize until some random phone surfing while waiting by the grill that chicken actually takes a lot longer than hamburgers and hotdogs, but all in all I was pretty proud with the way that everything turned out. And as a bonus, later after dinner I ended up running to the store to get things for s’mores at the last minute because my sister-in-law shockingly had never had an honest-to-goodness s’more, and boy, did those end up hitting the spot in so many both delicious and nostalgic ways combined…
Anyways, I feel a sort of obligation to grill out as much as humanly possible this summer because of our awesome, new digs, as if to say that there’s a specific amount of grilling XP that will make me worthy of such a magnificently humongous patio! Sara wants our next grilling adventure to be steak because she’s a bit of a steak fan, which admittedly I’m a little nervous about simply because it seems like it would be a lot easier to ruin a nice steak than it might be a hunk of chicken breast or something. I don’t know.
I can only hope that the Internet will serve me well once again like it has in the past. I’ve already begun my research and so far it looks promising, however consider this an open call as well if anyone out there happens to have any tips or tricks or surefire way to make awesome steaks out on the old grill! 31 years in, I’m just now starting to reclaim my manhood by way of grill mastery, and I can use all the help that I can get…
Little Dog, Big Bully
Cleo is currently going through some training classes over at PetCo in an attempt to mold her into the model dog that society needs of her. I didn’t go last time because Sara wanted to give me a chance to write, but today I came along and witnessed the disappointing fact firsthand – our puppy is a gigantic bully.
Well, actually, she’s still very small in stature, however apparently that didn’t stop her from nearly jumping on the back of the greyhound that was in the class with her this week! I mean, seriously – the dog looked like a freaking baby deer that could probably fit my entire shoe inside its mouth, and yet this barky, little brat was pouncing on him left and right to the extent that he didn’t want to “play” with her half the time because she was just being obnoxious!
It probably makes me a bad pet owner, but I was actually kind of glad when the greyhound finally took a stand and pounced right back because a good, old fashioned trampling is what it finally took to get Cleo to shut the hell up and leave him alone for a few minutes! I guess I would’ve thought that the laws of the jungle would at least include the “Don’t fuck with animals that are a lot bigger than you!”-rule, but apparently not so much in the doggy world.
PLECO GROWTH???
I know I haven’t exactly been taking the best care of my fish lately, but this is just plain gross…
And granted, I’m sure it’s not exactly a picnic for my plecostomus friend here, either, but there’s not really much that I can do about it at this point, now is there??? My best guess is that it’s some sort of infection that got out of hand – I’m honestly surprised that it’s not already impeding his ability to take in food, although maybe it is. I did notice that he’s a lot more jittery than normal – it was hard to get him to keep still even just for the picture, whereas normally he doesn’t really give a crap about anything that’s going on around him inside the tank or out.
I tried dumping some fish antibiotics into the tank and I guess I’ll continue to do so, but I have a feeling that ultimately I’m just going to come home and find that gigantic beast floating upside down at the top of the tank. I mean, I’ve had him a long time at this point – at least 5 years, maybe more, and he’s probably over a foot long at this point. He’s also getting too small for even the 35 gallon tank that he’s in now, even though I’d hate to move him to a bigger one because he’ll just keep on growing again … and Sara doesn’t want him in her 55-gallon tank because she thinks he’s ugly.
Well, he is, but try finding a better bottom feeder to help keep the tank clean – you can have pretty or you can have efficient, but you can’t have both.
super-grossed-out (but I’m sure that it’s worse for him) zoomed-in view