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"The Lo-Fi Ballad of Daniel Johnston"
High Five Contest!
 Some great entries into today's Sound of Young America contest, which requested that you take a picture of yourself high-fiiving a coworker. Our randomly selected winner was Mary from San Francisco... congrats, Mary! Here are a few other entries... From Eric (also in San Francisco):  From Josh in Miami:  From Christian in Chicago:  From Rob in LA:  And thanks to Steven, who works in a "secured area" where he can't bring a camera (building a super-soldier?), but drew a picture of his high five in MS Word, which got all messed up, too messed up to show here, but definately included cool word art of the word "SMACK!"
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One more entry from yesterday's contest
They Might Be Giants Live
An Alternate View on Superman
Noel Murray of The Onion's AV Club has some interesting things to say about his favorite superhero, Superman over on their blog. "The appeal of Superman—again, maybe just to me, though I think to others as well—is that because he can do everything, he doesn’t have to do much at all. He can take care of business and then chill out, solitude-style, at his Arctic clubhouse, where he tinkers with robots and obsessively arranges his souvenirs into a massive monument to himself. Or he can spend a whole day thinking up the perfect birthday present for Batman. Or he can make publicity appearances, while dodging Lois’ attempts to find out his secret identity. The stakes are pretty low in those forty-year-old Superman stories—even in the “imaginary tales” where some bored staffer figured out a way to end the endless Superman saga, at least for a week. And if somebody today wants to know how to write a Superman story, it shouldn’t be that hard. Just ask a ten-year-old boy what he’d do if he were Superman, and take notes." Link
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Rakim Allah Interview
 Amazing interview with the God, Rakim, the greatest rapper of all time, on Halftime Online: "I’ve been writing rhymes for so long I got like five or six different ways I write a rhyme. It might be from the last word in the verse to the first or sometimes I sit there, toy with it and I might come up with sixteen of the illest words I can and write the rhyme to fit in. That’s just when I’m fucking around or when it’s a little slow for me and I’m not in the mood to write I know how to force it out. I’ve been writing for so long I got a lot of different ways to write. Everything becomes too normal after a while. I’ve been writing for so long it’s like how could I do this different. How can I make it seem like I’m not writing a rhyme today. Those are just some things I do. People bug out when they see me grab a paper and start writing from the bottom. People be like what are you doing? Just slow down. By the time I get to the top I’m done. They like done with what and I be like this is sixteen bars. I just wrote a rhyme nigga. It’s crazy man." He just breaks down how he changed the hip-hop world forever in this question: " Halftimeonline: When I was 19, I heard you talking in an interview about how you messed around with jazz. You said one of your favorite artists was Thelonius Monk. He saw visions when he wrote songs so it’s funny how you just mentioned you see a whole song before you write it. So do you still mess with the saxophone? Rakim: Oh no doubt. I ain’t played one in a couple of years but I think that had a lot to do with my rhyme flow. Playing the sax and then enjoying jazz music man. It’s like I learned how to find words inside of the beat. Back in the day rappers were bump bump bump ba bump ba bump. They was rhyming like that but I was like bababa bump bump babum ba babump bababa bump. The syncopation and the pauses is all from knowing music, playing the saxophone, listening to John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk and the crazy shit they were doing. I just tried to incorporate that into my rhyme flow. That played a big part in my flow." Link
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Contest, 7/7: HIGH FIVE!
 I was talking with my girlfriend yesterday, and we came up with what I think might be our best contest yet. Take a picture of yourself high-fiving a co-worker. Email it to contest @ maximumfun dot org, with the date in the subject and your address in the body of the email. If you don't want to be on our e-mail list, mention that in your email. Your prize is my last Kids in the Hall season four box set, thanks to the good folks at A&E Home Video. READY... SET... HIGH FIVE! ** CONTEST IS CLOSED! **
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John Candy on Letterman in 1983
The Creation of The Sound of Young America
Today's contest for a Kids in the Hall DVD set was to create a depiction of the creation of The Sound of Young America. Six brave listeners entered. Thanks to all six for entering, and congratulations to Max L. of Austin, Texas for his winning entry, selected at random. I would be remiss, however, if I didn't celebrate all the AMAZING entries... so here they are! From Max in Texas:  From Steve in Santa Maria, CA:  From Dan in Meriden, Connecticut:  From Michelle in Ebony, Virginia, an entire creation myth: " Once there was this unicorn and he was shot with many arrows. The virgin Mary saw what was going on and decided that something good had to come out of its death. So she used her saintly abilities and from the dieing beast emerged the Sound of Young America." From Kyle in Housatonic, Massachusetts:  And finally, click this link for the piece from Corky McDonell! I feel so lucky!
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Is Your Spouse a Pod Person?
The Gear of Young America
At least one electro-dorky listener has requested it, so here's a rundown of the gear I use to produce The Sound of Young America. I'm no gear expert, and I reccomend doing some reading at transom.org and podcastrigs.com if you're looking to make your own decisions. That said, here's the rundown.  Microphone: Shure SM7A
This is a great voice mic, one of the standards for radio broadcasting. Especially good on the lower side of the register, where you can find me hanging out and having a soda. I got the 7A instead of the 7B because the only differences are a slightly larger windscreen and like $100.  Mixer: Mackie 1402 VLZ-Pro
Mackies are sort of the industry standard, known in particular for their mic pre-amps. I bought mine from a nice roadie type who'd upgraded his home studio (he wanted more channels). Luckily, I don't really need more channels. I chose this one over an even smaller one because I wanted sliders instead of knobs. I'd like to get one of these some day, because of the built-in firewire interface, but those are expensive.  Telephone Hybrid: Telos One (rack mount version)
(It's the one in the middle, by the way.) The telephone hybrid basically takes a telephone conversation, which is inherently two-way (i.e. you can hear yourself in the earpiece) and breaks it into two parts. One channel is the other end of the phone line, one is the microphone in the studio. If one were to tap directly into the phone line, both sides would sound all phone-y. The Telos is sort of the industry standard for this kind of machine. I've used several kinds before, and the Telos is easily the best. Any phone interviews in our Santa Cruz days were conducted on a Gentner machine, and the results were passable, but less than satisfactory. Everything Else
For in-person interviews, my second microphone is a Studio Projects B1, an inexpensive mic with pretty excellent sound. Not as good as the Shure, but pretty dang good for $75 or so. In a pinch, I use some Grady mics I bought three for $20 after a tip from Matt over at AST Radio and Never Not Funny. They're surprisingly passable.
I use a PC to produce the show. It's a Dell, and it's very powerful... my mother teaches college, and she has some kind of program where they take the cost of a Dell out of her paycheck over the course of years, so it didn't hurt the pocketbook too bad. I have a couple of external hard drives, as well -- a total of about 650 gigs right now, and I'm planning on buying another HD soon. I keep an eye peeled on deal blogs for big rebates and whatnot for those.
My computer has a Sound Blaster Audigy 2ZS sound card, and I just go direct from the output on the mixer to the input on the sound card. I'm working on a USB interface, perhaps a multi-track one, haven't figured that out yet. Anyone has any good resources, let me know.
I produce the show in Adobe Audition 2.0. For single-track recording, I usually use SoundForge, which I'm more facile with, since it was all we had at KZSC. I usually edit interviews in that, then put the show together in Audition, though I'm working on learning Audition better.
I have a couple of boom-arm mic stands I bought at Guitar Center, and a broadcast mic arm (the kind that's like the arm of an architect's lamp). Unfortunately, I managed to bust the clamp of the broadcast mic arm, and you'd be surprised how hard they are to replace -- if anyone knows somewhere that sells them, please email me.
In fact, if you for some reason have any questions about any of this, just email me. I'll help however I can.
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Contest 7/6/06
Another weekday, another Sound of Young America contest here in listener appreciation month. So awesome to get all these entries -- time was, we would have a contest, and we'd get exactly as many entries as we had prizes. All that aside... today's contest... draw a picture on the theme "The Creation of The Sound of Young America." Email the picture (or even better, a link to it) to contest at maximumfun dot org, along with your name and mailing address. The best entries will be published here on the blog, and one randomly selected entry will win a Season Four DVD set of Kids in the Hall. One entry per person, please keep file sizes under 1 meg, and good luck! As usual, if you don't want to be on the email list, please mention in your entry. **Contest Closed!!** Here's the final results.
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The Ike & Tina Turner Revue
Where does my money go?
I've had some folks wondering where donations go, and about long-term plans for the show, so I thought I'd break it down. I'm using approximate numbers here, for no reason other than that I'm at work right now, and I don't have the exact numbers. First of all, I don't get any income from any of the stations that carry the show. This is unfortunate, but it's pretty standard in the public radio world. Only a few shows get what are called "carriage fees," and those are the big BIG names (Car Talk, for example). I was a volunteer at our former home, KZSC, as well. Right now, listener donations are bringing in about $200 a month, maybe $250. This number has been growing very slowly but very steadily. Thanks to all who donate. We've gotten a few hundred dollars in one-time donations (about $400, total). I've generally been asking for the small-amount subscriptions because they afford both a relatively stable level of income and require much less administrative and fundraising time on my part. That's about it on the revenue side of the equation -- basically a couple hundred bucks a month. Which is awesome. What about costs? Our total hosting costs are $35/month. This includes both our web hosting, and the seperate hosting of media files (the bandwidth on those is huge, but our very nice host Libsyn gives us unlimited bandwidth). Expenses for equipment have been about $50 per month since I started taking donations. In the past month or so, I've purchased a much-needed USB audio interface, a new mic stand, and some cables. Much of the equipment I use (the main microphone, the mixer, the telephone hybrid) I bought with money I got from selling my car six months or so ago. The rest of the revenue ($150 a month or so), I've been plowing back into marketing. In an endeavor as modest as this one, that means stickers and postcards and Maximum Fun Club cards (and soon, t-shirts). All of that stuff I've been trying to spread around as broadly as possible to both listeners and potential listeners. I think the show has the potential to be interesting to many more listeners than already listen, and I know that getting more folks to listen is going to be vital to the long-term viability of this operation. I think it's really cool to be able to get stuff like stickers that I've always wanted to make for the show, but was never able to afford out-of-pocket. And that's about it. In short, right now, it's all going back into non-me parts of the show. That said, in the medium- to long-term, I hope to be able to pay myself enough to... you know... eat. As I see it now, this income would come from two sources: listener donations and underwriting sales. (Underwriting, by the way, is the sort of sponsorship you'd hear on your local NPR station). For that to be viable, the show would need a lot more listeners (tens of thousands more, probably). So for the time being, my plan is to keep paying the costs with donations, and promoting the show to the best of my ability. I'm also pursuing more radio carriage of the show, which could also help our prospects for increased listenership. Hopefully some of that will come to fruition, if it does, you'll be the first to hear. If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to email me and ask. And thanks to everyone who's been listening and donating and telling friends and all of all of that.
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Jesse vs. Brent Weinbach on The Apiary
Want to be linked from this very blog?
If you've got The Sound of Young America linked on your blog or website, I will gladly link back, just let me know via email. And if you don't have The Sound of Young America linked on your blog or website... seriously... what are you thinking? How are we ever going to get rich and famous if we're not LINKING TO EACH OTHER? It's time to get serious about this, folks. Let's do this thing.
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Contest, 7/5
Man, two Kids in the Hall sets given away... three more to give. Today's contest: what Kids in the Hall sketch convinced Newsradio creator Paul Simms to build a show around Dave Foley? Email your answer to contest at maximumfun.org, with the date in the subject line, and your answer and mailing address in the body of the email. If you don't want to be on our mailing list, please mention that in the email as well. You have until 5PM pacific. I'll pick randomly from the correct answers then! [Editors note: I originally wrote, "what Kids in the Hall sketch convinced Newsradio creator Phil Simms to build a show around Dave Foley." That should read, "What Kids in the Hall sketch convinced New York Giants quarterback Phil Simms to build a show around Dave Foley?" **Contest Complete!** The winner today is Matthew K. from Boston, Massachusetts, who correctly answered The Chicken Lady! Which, by the way, is a sketch that still gives me the willies.
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The Roots f. Peedi Peedi - Long Time Comin'
I am feeling the shit out of this new Roots track. I've definately been checking for Peedi Crack (now Peedi Peedi) since he MURDERATED Beanie Sigel's "Gotta Have It" (aka 2005's monster hit that shoulda been). He delivers on this one. I wasn't as crazy about Phrenology as some, and while I liked The Tipping Point, it certainly didn't blow me away. When I heard the new Roots single ("It Don't Feel Right"), it, uhm, didn't feel right. But this joint right here, this joint is FIRE. Black Thought is such an amazing MC -- either the most under or overrated in the world. His effortless flow, beautiful voice and stage charisma sometimes make me think he's great. Then I listen to his hit-and-miss lyrics, and his almost total lack of personality, and get dissapointed. But he certainly marries his style to the music like no one else in hip-hop. He's got something -- heart maybe? There's something there that'll never let the Roots become real stars, but will always keep them from being the novelty act that a hip-hop band maybe deserves to be.
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"More like SNOOZERMAN"
 This according to "Big Time" Gene O'Neill: ...more like "Snoozerman"
Current mood: amazed i have nothing better to do I'm aware of the foolhardiness of a man my age being disappointed by a comic book movie, but my expectations were unique. I knew going in that Superman, like all movies of its ilk, had a low ceiling for substance. But I also heard that the movie was supposed to be really, really gay. Like "Top Gun"-level accidentally gay, so I was eagerly anticipating some iconic innuendo not to mention Superman flying around and punching things into the ionosphere. I will now enumerate my dissatisfaction:
1. The movie is only a little gay and that might have my forceful projections to thank. I mean, Kevin Spacey is a little fruity but he's like that in all of his movies. I was expecting a lot of male-to-male close talking and delicately shrouded references to Super Cocks, but no. Nothing.
2. "Something falling and Superman catching it" encapsulates the full breadth of Superman's "heroics". Seriously, they should've called the movie "Guy who catches a lot of shit". In three hours of movie, he doesn't punch anything or anyone, somehow forswearing the obvious question "how far can I punch this?". Unforgiveable.
3. One of the more interesting subplots is the contest between the guy playing Superman and the girl playing Lois Lane to see who can be less interesting.
4. Superman is racist. He doesn't save any black people and doesn't go to the ghetto once. I guess even he's afraid to go to the ghetto. He's like the George W. of superheroes, which I guess makes Batman the Bill Clinton in that he's an honorary black guy by virtue of acknowledging their marginalization.
5. Clark Kent never seems to write any articles.
6. The best part of the movie was when half the audience would start clapping after Superman did something allegedly awesome and the other half of the crowd would aggressively shush the clappers. This progressed into a real battle throughout the movie. After some decisive losses in the early going, the clappers were really surging towards the end, making for a plot infinitely more interesting than the one on screen. It was so good I was tempted to pick a side and loudly root for them. (Here's a phenomenon I never understood: clapping at the end of movies. Whom are these people clapping for? Do they think the actors and crew are at the movie? Do they also clap at the end of TV shows or after they hear a song over the radio? I swear this only happens in LA. I think these people are only applauding their own self-perceived sophistication at having recognized what they think is a great film, which is hilarious, because the shittier the movie, the louder the applause usually is.)
7. Before the movie, there was a commercial for a cell phone (I think). And in the commercial, they show Rufio dancing around. Rufio! Who is this guy's agent? You can't find fucking Rufio a better gig than a couple seconds of mincing around on a cell phone commercial? This guy went from taking Peter Pan to the cleaners to pre-cinematic obscurity. Terrible. Just terrible. YOUR THOUGHTS?
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Contest: Tuesday July 4th
 Another Kids in the Hall Season 4 box set is our prize. Our contest? What New Jersey city is the center of the semi-fictional universe of The Best Show on WFMU? (Hint: it's not Jersey City, where FMU is based). Email your answer to contest at maximumfun.org. Put the date in the subject line and your answer and your mailing address in the body of the email. Special note: if you don't want to be on the show's once-a-month email list, mention that in your email. CONTEST CLOSED!The winner is Melissa from Poolesville, MD, who correctly answered Newbridge! See you all manana!
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Contest: Monday July 3rd
 Today, the prize is a Season 4 DVD of The Kids in the Hall, courtesy of the really good folks at A&E Home Video. Answer this trivia question: What was the name of the Toronto theater where the Kids in the Hall first made their name? Email your answer to: contest at maximumfun dot org with today's date in the subject, and your answer and mailing address in the body. You have until 5PM pacific time. GO! **Contest Closed!**Today's winner is Tim from Quensbury, NY, who correctly guessed The Rivoli Theater. Listeners my recall Dave talking about the theater in our interview. Congratulations, Tim! Watch out for tommorow's contest by 9AM pacific!
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July is Listener Appreciation Month!
 Without You, We Are Nothing.Together, We Are Better!
All July, we celebrate Listener Appreciation Month on The Sound of Young America!
 Every weekday this month, there will be a new contest here on the blog. Every weekday, a new prize. There will be awesome comedy CDs from Stand Up! Records, cool DVDs, a Pee-Wee Herman doll, Mr. T books, and more.
Each weekday, by 9AM pacific time, a new contest will be posted. You will have until 5PM pacific time that same day to email your entry to contest at maximumfun dot org. Your subject line should be the date. The body of the email should contain your mailing address, and your response to the contest.
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"There's no 'I' in Challenge Club"
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