This week's Sound of Young America broadcast commemorates my recent layoff with the theme "Career Killers."
My first guest, Annabelle Gurwitch, is the former host of TBS' "Dinner and a Movie," and a comedienne. Her book, "Fired: Tales of the Canned, Cancelled, Downsized, & Dismissed" compiles stories of firings from folks like Felicity Huffman and David Cross. She herself was fired from a play by Woody Allen, who said her performance was "retarded." We talk with her about getting fired, some of the most interesting stories in the book (Jeff Garlin's is a doozy), and more. She's appearing at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival May 19th and 20th with Robert Reich.
Our second guest, Dan Clowes, is the screenwriter for the new film Art School Confidential. More importantly, though, he's the creator of the long-running comic book title Eightball. Eightball was the birthplace of the film, as well as the home of the story which became "Ghost World." We talk with Dan about his experiences in art school, his artistic process, working with director Terry Zwigoff and more.
West Coast Live looking for interns and volunteers.
I just got an email from my friend Kathi Kamen Goldmark, producer of West Coast Live, a syndicated public radio show produced live on stage here in the Bay Area.
WCL are looking for a volunteer or intern to help produce the program on show days. This is something I did for quite some time, and really enjoyed. It entails showing up early on Saturday, helping set up, assisting Mitchell, the engineer, and filling in wherever help is needed. If you're interested in helping around the office of the show, I'm sure Kathi would love the help. You can do it for school credit, or out of the kindness of your heart.
West Coast Live is a great show and a really great bunch of people. If you're dependable and bright, they will help you learn more about radio production. No special skills are needed, only enthusiasm and dependability.
The Sound of Young America's subscriber history...
This neat graph shows The Sound of Young America's subscriber history, based on the Feedburner metric. Feedburner measures the number of unique hits to the feed in a given 24-hour period, so be aware that downloads for a given show over a week tend to be about 2.5 times the feedburner number. Each bar represents a day, and you can hover over it with the mouse for the exact subscriber number.
The two big peaks you see are the times we were featured on iTunes. The little tiny valleys are the weekends, when less folks are on the internet.
PRX.org, the online public radio content clearinghouse, is hosting the public radio special "75 Laughs, an Evening with Jonathan Katz." The hour-long special also features H. Jon Benjamin, Bill Braudis, Tom Leopold, Laura Silverman, Ron Lynch, Tom Snyder, and Andy Blickenderfer.
Home of the Underdogs is one of the most amazing websites around. It's what's called an "Abandonware" site, dedicated to computer software (particularly games) which is now out of print. Of course, LOTS of computer games are out of print, since they're only state-of-the-art for about a year.
The site features hundreds and hundreds of games, in every genre and from every era, and any game that's out of print is downloadable. You can, for example, play Beaurocracy, an Infocom text adventure game from 1987 written by Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Or the original Bubble Bobble. I remember playing Loom for hours on my best friend's dad's Amiga... and I can't even tell you how many hours I spent creating plays in Front Page Sports Football Pro. You can even get old Voyager CD Roms, like this one about Steven J. Gould.
Another Dispatch from San Francisco's Northern Police District
My local police station has the greatest newsletter ever. Here's an excerpt:
Thursday, May 4, 3:44 pm, Auto Burglary Arrest: Officer Cesena was on patrol in the area of Polk St. and Myrtle St. He has received numerous complaints from victims who have had their cars broken into. While patrolling, Officer Cesena noticed a man leaning into a car through the broken window. This is commonly referred to as a clue. Officer Cesena, recognizing the clue, detained the man and determined that the man did not own the car and had no lawful business in the car. The man was arrested and booked at Northern Police Station. The suspect earned himself a one-way bus ticket back to prison as he was on parole and Parole Agents frown on their parolees committing felonies while under their charge.
Thought I'd offer an accounting of where your donation dollars (and the show) are going...
The big expense this month is our mailing -- we're sending out 225 or so Maximum Fun Club cards, we made stickers (they're expensive!), and of course, there's ink and envelopes and postage and everything. So that's a total cost of several hundred dollars, enough to put us a bit in the red for now.
Also... I bought our first ever bit of advertising, just to try that out. 10,000 impressions on the Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society blog through Federated Media. Those ads just started running today. May be a disaster, but I figured it was worth a shot. $75 total, iirc.
I also joined the Association of Independents in Radio, which is a trade group for independent radio producers. There are precious few independent programs like this one, but hopefully the much more seasoned folks at AIR can help guide this show to future successes, particularly in the radio arena. They were nice enough to let me sign up at the student rate of $35/year.
On the horizon are new pins and t-shirts, although that may be delayed by my employment status (or more accurately, unemployment status).
Talking with some folks about whether to incorporate or become a non-profit, or what. That's still in the air. If you happen to know a lot about those issues, get in touch.
So, there you have it... your donation dollars at work. If you haven't donated already, consider doing so now. You can support the show for as little as $2 a month, and I know you like it that much, or you wouldn't be here :).
Keith Barber writes in to give us the rundown on the Mr. Katz Live experience at Gotham's Comedy Club in NYC...
Show was decent, considering it was only $12. I think it was less than an hour. H. Jon Benjamin was there, and the guests on the couch were Susie Essman and David Cross. Most of the remarks were ad-libbed. Laura Silverman wasn't there, but at one point Katz pushed the intercom button and we heard her say, "Dr. Katz's office." The next time he pushed the button, Ben answered and said he sent Laura home for the day.
Friday night, I had the pleasure of stopping by Pirate Cat Radio in San Francisco. I'd describe the locale, but I'd hate to give up their coordinates, so I'll just say there was some speculation that preperation for an orgy was going on in the other room and leave it at that. I spun some records on Brain Dead Dave's show, and the one that got the hottest reaction was Swamp Dogg's "Total Destruction to Your Mind," from his 1970 LP of the same name.
Swamp was born Jerry Williams, and as a child he was a singing star as "Little Jerry Williams." He grew up to be an accomplished soul producer and songwriter for Atlantic Records.
Then, in 1970, he decided to unleash Swamp Dogg upon the world.
Swamp's music is straight soul music, dipped in LSD. His singing is like no one else -- I used to play his records back when I had a music show, and someone called in and said, "Who the hell was that? Sounded like Van Morrison crossed with Cher!" He's also blessed with an unbelievably off-kilter sense of humor, which he is entirely unafraid to display on wax.
The photo above is from Swamp's second record, "Rat On!", and it's typically ridiculous. Many of his album covers feature him in his underoos, which as you can see, is not an erotic sight.
Anyway, here's three Swamp Dogg tunes. If you like them, his website store has both "The Excellent Sides of Swamp Dogg Vol 1." and Vol 2. These are from Volume One, which features "Total Destruction to Your Mind" and "Rat On!"
The comedy audioblog Milton Berle's Cock has a great update today, featuring, among others, Bruce McCulloch's "Shame Based Man" CD. My freshman year college roomate loved McCulloch, and owned this CD. It's very, very odd. As you might expect.
Loyal listeners may remember Jarrett J. Krosocska, the author of "Punk Farm." Jarrett emailed me late last year to say he listens to The Sound of Young America while he paints, and would I like to have a copy of his book... I said, "sure!" Turns out Jarrett's book is a beautiful tome for toddlers about a group of farm animals who get together to perform a punked-out version of "Old McDonald."
Jarrett emailed me this week to say that "Punk Farm" was optioned by Dreamworks for a film. He's got the news release and other official stuff here on his website. We can only hope that he'll remember The Sound of Young America fondly while he's taking a treasure bath.
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One of the reasons that Christopher Walken is so great on Saturday Night Live, I think, is that his natural delivery is so stilted that it's like he's reading from cue cards anyway.
"Wake Up With Whoopi" is now more than just a recurring nightmare you've been having. Soon, it'll be a Clear Channel syndicated radio show. The Times is reporting that the Whoopster has inked a deal with the radio super-conglomerate to host a morning show starting July 31st.
Cheap jokes aside, it's either a sign of either how desperate the radio industry is, or that the radio industry is waking up. On the one hand, Whoopi long ago passed has-been on the road to completely forgotten. On the other, she remains a big-name talent, and her skill set is genuinely suitable for morning radio. One of the reasons Whoopi still has any career at all is that she comes across as sincerely personable, and building a personal connection is what that kind of radio is all about.
And Whoopi is talented. I mean, 15 years of awful movies (then awful TV shows, then awful commercials...) may have erased it from our minds, but she exploded out of the San Francisco theater/comedy scene around 1980 on merit. The Broadway show that brought her to the national consciousness was genuinely funny. And she's a bright and articulate advocate for the issues she cares about, even if the occaisional outrageousness gets in the way of that.
Crispin Glover is a legendary Hollywood eccentric, famous for his role in Back to the Future, as well as for printing his home phone number in the odd rock album he put out in the 80s (really, we used to have the LP at KZSC).
Josh Modell of the Onion AV Club attended a screening of Glover's feature film, "What Is It?" and describes it thusly:
Then, the movie. In an interview you can read elsewhere on this site, Glover insisted to our own Keith Brammer that What Is It? has a narrative structure, and you’ve gotta believe that it does to him, but 72 minutes of strange encounters portrayed by actors with Down’s Syndrome (and Glover himself) won’t be following any traditional story arc. Instead, there’s a lot of snail killing, some swastikas, Shirley Temple, a minstrel, murder, an alternate universe (apparently the main character’s inner self), and more. Did I mention the naked man with cerebral palsy who’s manually stimulated (at length) by a naked woman wearing a monkey mask? Yeah, that happens. And he’s resting inside a giant clam shell at the time.
We're trying to find a guy named "DAN" who came on stage with us during our show in Chicago, November 10, 2004. If you're him, get in touch with us! info@stellacomedy.com. We have a clip of him on our upcoming DVD and we need his permission to use his face!
The Times today has an interesting piece on the new breed of low-print-run, high-gloss lifestyle magazines. The focus is Swindle, a relatively new mag that is apparently re-inventing the idea of the zine for Generation Y. (It also mentions, Lemon, a magazine which apparently is SCENTED).
About 3/4 of the way in, the piece quotes Shepard Fairey, who's one of the two creators of Swindle. They call him a "36-year-old street artist turned marketing guru." He's better known to the world as the creator of Obey and those stickers and wheatpastes that say, "Andre the Giant Has A Posse."
When I first started seeing the posters in San Francisco, maybe ten years ago, there was a captivating mystery to them. When I learned more about Fairey, I was doubley captivated... the wheatpastes were intended as a sort of satire of consumer culture, an advertisement for a product which didn't exist... agitprop for a nonexistent ideology.
Of course, since those posters became a phenomenon, Fairey has basically pooped upon his original idea by making his "Obey Giant" brand into just that -- a brand.
I'm not one to accuse people of selling out -- I know we all have to make a living, and I would have had no problem with Fairey using his aesthetic skill and renown to teach big companies to be cool or whatever. But what he did really took selling out to a new level.
And then I read this article, and read quotes like this:
"We want the advertising to sort of blend with the content," Mr. Fairey said on the phone from his Los Angeles marketing firm, Studio One, which counts 20th Century Fox and Coca-Cola as clients. "When there's an ad that doesn't seem simpatico, we think it messes up the feng shui of the magazine."
It must be fun to live in New York or LA... it's a life full of beautiful people, expensive cocktails, and amazing comedy shows.
Two upcoming shows that unquestionably get The Sound of Young America seal of approval...
In LA: Neil & Paul's "Growing Up is Tough"
Neil Campbell and Paul Rust are a remarkable pair of sketch performers. Two young, sweet fellas with incalculable verve and a deep reserve of silly charm. Their shows are loose and winning, and often involve ascents into glorious madness. The closest analogy I can think of is Pee-Wee Herman -- somehow both lighthearted and scandalous. Their newest show, "Growing Up is Tough" is a thematically linked sketch program about coming of age.
All the way across the country in New York, Elephant Larry are preparing their new show. As far as I can tell, it's called "The New Show!"
Elephant Larry is (are?) another set of charming young men -- old school chums, graduated from Cornell University. Their tight writing and winning performances earned them raves in both The Onion and The New York Times their last time out (2005's "Boom!"). The team's bizarre premises are executed straight and true, and the results are always guffaw-inducing. The New Show is running at the People's Improv Theater in New York May 13th & 20th and June 3rd, 17th, and 24th. You can buy tickets for the same paltry sum of $8 here.
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There's a remarkable piece in the Wall Street Journal today about the growing diversification of Comedy Central. The channel (owned by MTV Networks / Viacom) has expanded from simply being a cable channel to being a record company, non-traditional media content provider, and tour manager.
In a way, it's good news: the power of Viacom is getting behind comedy. It's also bad news, however, as Comedy Central extends it's hegemony in the comedy (and particularly standup comedy) media world.
It's clear that channel boss Doug Herzog's goal is to make CC the go-to brand for comedy entertainment. As he says in the article, "A guy can tell a joke Sunday night at the comedy club, and we can deliver it to our audience in six different ways the next day."
What Comedy Central is offering here is "a brand and a platform." One of the central problems in the standup business is this: most people like good comedy, but they aren't familiar with the talent the way they might be with a band or a TV star. Getting familiar with a comic usually means seeing their act -- and once you've seen it, well, you've seen it already. So why go see them?
So the brand platform (not to be confused with the brand and platform) becomes important -- if people trust the club they're going to, or "Comedy Central Presents," or "Blue Collar Comedy" or whatever, then they can go see something (or buy something) without seeing it first free and ruining the joke.
Matt writes in to tell us about the lanwhal. This creature is like an ordinary whale, but it has evolved to live on land... so it can smoke cigarettes.
He was inspired to share the animal with us after hearing our discussion of the "Land Narwhal" in this week's College Years podcast.
Have you ever been inspired to create or share a fantastical creature by an episode of The Sound of Young America? If so, please share it with us at splangy@splangy.com!
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YOUNG AMERICAN: If Santa Cruz radio has chapters, one of them surely came to a close this month with the passing of Jesse Thorn's 'The Sound of Young America' from the KZSC airwaves. Thorn's final show for the station that saw him through those difficult college years at UCSC was titled 'Santa Cruz, You're Not That Far' (after the song by Dublin's The Thrills) and featured two of his all-time favorite segments: the debut episode of Mace Detective: Private Detective and an interview with primal rocker Andrew W. K., who talked about his UCSC professor uncle and gave Brendan Thorn, the host's little brother, career advice on how to be a rock superstar. As a result, Brendan, who's now 10, has a five-song Total Annihilation EP out featuring four originals and a cover of Iggy & The Stooges' 'I Wanna Be Your Dog.' The elder Thorn describes Andrew W.K. as "the most amazing person ever" and raved to Müz about how Andrew somehow combines total sincerity and amazing kindess with the intensity of hardcore punk and "those Swedish death metal bands that implant horns in their heads and kill people and eat them and stuff."
But we digress. Asked why he left KZSC, Thorn said he hasn't been a student for two years now, and that he wanted to move beyond community-specific programming. After all, his show also airs on stations in San Francisco, Hattiesburg, Miss. and, of course, Walla Walla ("a town in Washington," he explains, "where they have a college and onions"). Thorn says he's in talks with another, mysterious unnamed Santa Cruz station that may end up hosting the show. "Hint," he offers, "it's not KDON." Which is too bad, because, as Thorn himself notes, "I'm in the house like YEEEEEEEEEEE."
Santa Cruzans can still get a weekly Sound of Young America fix by subscribing to the band's podcast through www.splangy.com. In fact, the show has just launched a second podcast reprising Thorn's "College Years," which will rerun all the old broadcasts in succession, a move bound to appeal to the show's hard-core fans as well as individuals with severe cases of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
My first guest, Annabelle Gurwitch, is the former host of TBS' "Dinner and a Movie," and a comedienne. Her book, "Fired: Tales of the Canned, Cancelled, Downsized, & Dismissed" compiles stories of firings from folks like Felicity Huffman and David Cross. She herself was fired from a play by Woody Allen, who said her performance was "retarded." We talk with her about getting fired, some of the most interesting stories in the book (Jeff Garlin's is a doozy), and more. She's appearing at the San Francisco Documentary Film Festival May 19th and 20th with Robert Reich.
Our second guest, Dan Clowes, is the screenwriter for the new film Art School Confidential. More importantly, though, he's the creator of the long-running comic book title Eightball. Eightball was the birthplace of the film, as well as the home of the story which became "Ghost World." We talk with Dan about his experiences in art school, his artistic process, working with director Terry Zwigoff and more.
compiles stories of firings from folks like Felicity Huffman and David Cross. She herself was fired from a play by Woody Allen, who said her performance was "retarded." We talk with her about getting fired, some of the most interesting stories in the book (Jeff Garlin's is a doozy), and more. She's appearing at the 
