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The Maximum Fun Drive: All the Details
 The Sound of Young America, Jordan, Jesse Go!, this blog, and all our other programs are supported by your donations. That is how I eat, buy microphones and suchlike. Presently, less than 2% of MaxFun listeners donate to support the show. My goal in this pledge drive is to recruit new donors and bump that number up to something a bit less... well... embarassing. A consortium of 26 listeners, all of whom already donate, have issued a challenge to those of you who don't donate, yet. For every new donor, they will give a total of $37.70. Some of these folks are giving a lot, some just a dime or a quarter. They all are going above and beyond to encourage new donations. That's not the only incentive to give, either. I'll be printing a special t-shirt for the drive -- one for every donor who gives $5 or more per month. It was designed by Cody Mix, and it's awesome. You can see it above. All donors will get a Maximum Fun Club card, and I'll try to get everyone stickers as well, supplies permitting. I've also got a whole box of really cool posters for John Hodgman's upcoming book, which feature a TAXONOMY OF ALL WORLD KNOWLEDGE. I'll give those out until they're gone, too. Furthermore, we have over 150 awesome thank-you gifts donated by generous publishers, artists, authors and all-around great people. These range from comedy DVDs to books to zines to even some original art. A complete list is here, and I'll give one away to every new monthly donor. So dig into your pocket and find five or ten bucks a month to support Maximum Fun. Or even two, I'd take two. Labels: Maximum Fun Drive
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State DVD, Comedy Central Special on the way!
 The State reunited earlier this year for some live performance at the UCB Theater here in LA, so when Kerri Kenney-Silver, Robert Ben Garant and Tom Lennon stopped by here earlier today to talk about Reno 911, I couldn't resist asking what the reunion status was. They told me that there will definitely be a Comedy Central special with all-new material sometime later this year. They also said that the DVD of the show is complete, including commentary on every sketch and extra material (every cutting room floor sketch, including some they don't like). The release of the DVD should coincide with the special. Look out for the full interview in the podcast feed soon! Labels: comedy, tv
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Pledge Drive Thank-You Gifts
I want to thank all the authors, editors, publicists, comics, artists and writers who've contributed thank-you gifts to the MaxFun Drive. My goal was to accumulate 100 thank you gifts. We've now got 150! Everyone who pledges $2, $5, $10, $20 a month or more will get a thank you gift. I don't have an inventory system, so I can't guarantee your choice, but offer a few preferences when you check out and we'll do our best. The first hundred or so folks to donate will get a poster/pamphlet for John Hodgman's new book, which is called "More Information Than You Require." This beautiful poster features information on one side, and a TAXONOMY OF ALL WORLD KNOWLEDGE on t'other. It is not, by the way, available in stores. Here's what we've got:
BOOKS
Five copies of Adam Koford's "LOL Cats" book
Five copies of McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes
Five copies of Jack Handey's "What I'd Say to the Martians, and Other Veiled Threats"
Five copies of "If I Did It" aka The Kittenpants Anthology, featuring interviews with David Cross, Michael Showalter & David Wain, Bruce Campbell and many others.
A number of Uncle John's Bathroom Readers
Five copies of Chuck Thompson's very funny Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
Five copies of Kenny Mayne's An Incomplete and Innacurate History of Sport
Ten copies of Mike Edison's "I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage tales of pot, porn, punk rock, pro wrestling, talking apes, evil bosses, dirty blues, american heroes and the most notorious magazines in the world."
Five copies of Dan Kennedy's "Rock On: An Office Power Ballad"
Five copies of Tanner Colby and Tom Farley's "The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts"
Five copies of Arkansas by John Brandon from McSweeney's
Five copies of At A Crossroads: Between A Rock and My Parents' Place by Kate Williamson (a MaxFunster, btw)
Five copies of Will Shortz' 1001 Sudoku Puzzles to do Right Now!
Five copies of the big beautiful "New York Times Guide to All Essential Knowledge"
Five copies of The New York Times: Crosswords to Keep Your Brain Young
Five copies of my new filing techinique is unstoppable by David Rees
Five copies of Gorrilaz: Rise of the Ogre
Five copies of each of the following books by George Saunders: The Braindead Megaphone, Civilwarland in Bad Decline, In Persuasion Nation, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, and Pastoralia
Five copies of Sloane Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake
Five copies of John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise
Five copies of The Onion's Our Dumb World
Five copies of Tony Millionaire's "Premillenial Maakies"
CDs
Five copies of Steven Wright's "I Still Have a Pony"
Five copies of Michael Ian Black's "I Am A Wonderful Man"
Five copies of Chris Trews' nerdcore album "Terp 2 It: The Freshest Dude"
DVDs
Five copies of Brian Regan's "I Walked on the Moon"
Five copies of Mike Birbiglia's "What I Should Have Said Was Nothing"
Five copies of Wholphin Number 5
ETC
Five full-size promo posters from Showtime for This American Life, signed by Ira Glass
The zine pack: five copies of the beautiful literary zine Kaleidotrope, and five of the similarly beautiful "Busted" issue of the zine Fray (including a piece by MaxFunster Bucky Sinister)
Five one-month subscriptions to Never Not Funny Primo Labels: Maximum Fun Drive
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Podcast: Standup Comic Mike Birbiglia
Jordan Morris: How to Spend Your Tax Rebate
Monsters of Podcasting: June 28th in San Francisco
Podthoughts by Colin Marshall: "Experts and Intermediates"
 The best thing about writing Podthoughts isn't just having justification for listening to homemade radio when I should be working, it's holding the title of Podcast Kingmaker: I wield the awesome power to anoint certain ventures with a slight audience boost, and to cruelly withhold a slight audience boost from others. This week I crown Experts and Intermediates [ iTunes link], an arts-and-culture gabfest for which I've got high hopes. High-apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes. Why "high hopes" rather than straight-up "high praise"? Because, while I already enjoy the program, I think it's got big untapped potential. Before getting into what the podcast could be, however, let's talk about what it is. Of all the new kinds of shows the Podcast Revolution TM has loosed upon our unprepared society, perhaps the most visible format — or, I guess, audible one — is the Two Twentysomething White Guys. I am forever in the debt of erstwhile Podthinker Ian Brill for introducing me to Battleship Pretension, an excellent weekly film discussion that might also be titled Two Twentysomething White Guys on Movies. There's another swell show called Jordan, Jesse, Go! &mdash perhaps you've heard of it &mdash whose alternate title could easily be Two Twentysomething White Guys on Being Two Twentysomething White Guys... Hilariously!Experts and Intermediates could fly under Two Twentysomething White Guys on Convergences in Cultural Opinion, which is marginally less catchy but could probably land a public radio grant. B.J., Jason and sometimes a designated "expert" take on different works of popular culture each time, including: - Shakespeare, especially the problematic nature of The Merchant of Venice
- The best Spider Man and Batman story arcs
- Hip-hop duo Atmosphere
- High School Musical
- 20th-century dystopian literature
- Night of the Hunter
- Christian rock
Looking at that list, you'd think the guys make their selections at random. But while the show is informed by a hearty spirit of randomness, there's actually something of a throughline, at least to the best episodes. I would submit that B.J. and Jason are primarily interested in works about which (a) one's experience or opinion differs sharply from the other's or (b) both of their experiences or opinions differ sharply from those of the work's fan base. This is borne out by two of the show's regular features. The second-best, "Will We Be Infected?", has the guys pick out something popular yet, to them, unsavory — the aforementioned Disney franchise, or some thrashing for Jesus — and mainline it to see if they, too, will get on the bandwagon. The best is when the hosts give each other assignments. Typically, the item assigned is something the assigner believes the assignee hasn't consumed enough of; for example, B.J. assigns the comic-bereft Jason a Spider Man series. I love hearing and experiencing reactions to something out of one's own cultural sphere. If the podcast consisted entirely of assignments, that'd be fine by me. It might solve the show's slight focus problem, too. What else does Experts and Intermediates need before taking the podcasting world by storm? First, regularity; a month between episodes isn't unheard of. (In all fairness, B.J. and Jason acknowledge the inconsistency, not that that makes it any easier for the fans.) And the guys shouldn't even bother talking about music without including clips for the audience; I won't utter that old "dancing about architecture" line, but come on, we gotta hear the stuff before you dissect it. These, however, are mere issues of polish, ones that a deserved kingship should provide the impetus to address. [Direct all correspondence to colinjmarshall at gmail. Podthoughts discussion thread available here.] Labels: Colin Marshall, Podthoughts
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"Rust, a fungus disease, sapped the
wheat crop. Production of durum wheat dropped from the 10-year average
of 31,547,000 bushels a year to 4,976,000 bushels."
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