Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Succotash Chats Epi123: Speakin' with Wayne Federman


Ho, ho, ho! Yes, it’s me, Marc Hershon. Your host and Santa Claus for Epi123 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. My gift for you this year? It’s another installment of Succotash Chats, where I feature a conversation with someone associated with podcasting in one way of another. And this Christmas edition is not different, as our Special Guest is none other than Wayne Federman!

I thought he’d be the perfect holiday treat since, just like Jesus, he’s Jewish, funny, and occasionally misunderstood. Wow. That comparison would draw SO much hate mail from fans of both Jesus and Wayne…IF anyone actually listened to this show.

Wayne’s a great guy, a funny comedian, and a delightful actor, not to mention the co-host of a podcast called Human Conversation, with Erin McGathy. Regular Succotash listeners may remember I spoke with Wayne during multi-part Epi116 back in September when I was at the LA Podfest. We’ve got more time to delve into things this time around and we get into his long time served on the comedy stage, his podcast experience, and some other topics besides.

In addition to my chat with Mr. Federman, we have a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst, a brand new Henderson’s Pants commercial penned by our friend Harry White and featuring our own Bill Heywatt, back in fine form after a brief illness.

In fact, as a special Christmas treat for you and your hole…family, we have Bill singing a special holiday song!

Speaking of songs, we also have a new and bizarre a cappella tune from Abner Serd, which will immediately follow the Tweetsack this time around, and before Mr. Durst’s second segment.

Before we get into the stuff, I just wanted to wish you and yours a happy holiday season, whichever holiday you celebrate. And that includes no holiday at all, depending where in the world you might be or whatever your philosophy might entail.

Sometimes I feel like Succotash is out on the Island of Misfit Podcasts, since we’re mostly playing clips and promoting other comedy podcasts and we only generate a tiny amount of our own material, plus some interesting interviews with cool people connected to podcasting.

We’re not fancy by any means, and we’re not the kind of show a podcast network is keen to pick up — what network wants to be promoting podcasts that aren’t on that network? And we don’t have much sponsor appeal it seems, either.

But YOU’RE listening to Succotash and that means the world to me. When I started the show almost 5 years ago — FIVE years! — I didn’t know if anyone would want to listen but you and a lot of other people have proven that there’s an audience for what we do at Succotash, and I want you to know that its’ really appreciated.

I want to thank the crew here, too, especially our producer/engineer Joe Paulino, our announcer Bill Heywatt, and especially our Associate Producer Tyson Saner, without whose help this show might have stalled out. Harvesting clips is no easy task. It reminds me of my days as a segment producer for a clip show on TV — largely thankless but imminently the hull that keeps the whole damn ship afloat.

I also want to thank all the comedy podcasters that we’ve clipped this past year for their generosity in letting us pick and choose what we want to feature from their shows.

And, of course, I want to thank the guests that have been kind enough to let us visit with them on the Succotash Chats editions of the show. I’ve enjoyed every interview we’ve presented for you. Sometimes the audio quality hasn’t been the best but I’d rather take the opportunity to interview someone when the moment presents itself rather than to be overly precious with making sure we can get the best location to record it in. Just because I’ve lost a couple of chances to chat it up by doing that and it doesn’t seem worth missing those opportunities.

That’s going to put a bow around the Christmas gift that has been this episode of Succotash Chats, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. Thanks again to Wayne Federman and thanks again to YOU! May you and yours have an absolutely stupendous time this holiday season and if you forgot someone on your gift list this year, you can always make it up to them by passing them the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Succotash Clips Epi122: Movin' Toward The Holidays

Yes, ‘tis I, Marc Hershon. Happy holidays and welcome to Epi122 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. I’m back with another edition of Succotash Clips, the version of this podcast where we feature clips, snippets, and bits from comedy podcasts harvested from all around the Internet.

Special thanks, as always, to our Associate Producer, Tyson Saner, for going out and getting many of the offerings to be found in this installment.  I hope you find at least one new show that you’d like to track down and download after listening to our little Whitman’s Sampler of a show.

Coming up this episode we have slices off of Comic Book Jones, The David Steinberg Podcast, The Eisenstein Effect, The Gisele Show, The GSMH Podcast, Proudly Resents, Sweet Feathery Jesus, and Wooden Overcoats.

What Else We Got?

In addition to the clippage, we’ve got our Burst O’ Durst segment with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst, where he’s running down the Top 10 comedic news stories of 2015 for you. This episode is sponsored by Henderson's Pants seasonal Jingle Drawers. And we’ve also got your tweets and emails and reviews in the Tweetsack.

And that’s about it. But isn’t that enough, really?

Clips

David Steinberg Podcast
Funny how younger comics have, for the most part, paved the way for older comics to make their way into podcasting. The great David Steinberg is now jumping in, even though he’s mainly been busy writing and directing television for years. He started out as an improvisor and a standup. In fact, he was one of my comedy influencers back when I was first figuring out what made something funny. The guest in his second episode is Kathy Griffin and, even though David is a great conversationalist, with Kathy in the room you don’t really have to try that hard to keep the chatter going.

Wooden Overcoats
If you’re a fan of British comedies, particularly the sitcom kind, there’s a podcast out that just wrapped up its 8-show, first season run that doesn’t miss a beat. It’s called Wooden Overcoats, created by David K. Barnes, and features a fantastic cast that really bring the characters to life. “Wooden overcoat” is slang for “coffin” and the premise of the show is that the only undertaker in a sleepy Channel island village is bent out of shape when a rival sets up shop. There’s intrigue, violence, romance, and a narrating mouse.

The Gisele Show Podcast, mit Friends!
You might know Gisele Nett from her gig co-hosting the Nooner podcast on SModcast Internet Radio with Marty Yu. She’s started her own, entitled The Gisele Show Podcast, mit Friends! There are a pile of cast people, too: Jonna Tamases, John Pirruccello, Jon Stahl, and Gena Key. Tyson clipped this from her very first episode, featuring guest comedian Cassandra Cardenes.

GSMH (God-Shaped Mommy Hole)
I’m not sure how our associate producer Tyson Saner finds some of these shows. Which is precisely why he’s as good as he is as our top clip clipper! Thanks to him we bring you a snippet of the GSMH Podcast, the initials of which stand for God-Shaped Mommy Hole. Headed up by a dude named Toni Rager, it’s a bunch of friends, just hanging out. There’s also Louis, Tim, Clicks and Freiddo, plus Rubbi Rager, but her mic was dead this episode. This clip features an interview technique with the acronym FORD, and some of the gang tries to explains to the rest of the gang who Joe Rogan is.

Proudly Resents
This clip comes in directly from the source: Adam Spiegelman. Friend of Succotash, as well as past and, no doubt, future guest, Adam is the host of the Proudly Resents podcast. It had grown into kind of a mishmash of content and Adam was having a tough time figuring out what his own podcast was supposed to be. But in his note to me this week, he says that he has, “finally split up my podcast.” Meaning he’s got different bits and pieces but they’re all making sense. He says he got recaps, interviews, Nicko – his sometimes sidekick, and “The best of the worst Christmas movies.” He recently did a live “Saving Christmas” show at the Improv in Hollywood, with Jimmy Pardo, Todd Levin (a writer for Conan), and Sharon Houston, who is a podcaster and TV producer in the same vein as Adam.

Sweet Feathery Jesus
We’ve not played anything for quite a while from the boys over at the Sweet Feathery Jesus podcast – Belasco, Beardo and Chuck Turtleman – so let’s correct that now with a segment from their show. This clip is from their #111, entitled On The Wagon Train, because their fourth cast member, Booze, is absent. It features an installment of their segment Denmark Is Shit.

The Eisenstein Effect
Comedian Vickie Eisenstein hosts The Eisenstein Effect, which is – according to her homesite – “a weekly jaunt to explore the careers, hobbies, and passions of funny, artistic, talented, and intelligent guests!” I think she’s based in Chicago, so she’s got access to lots of like-minded comedic types. Including the guest in Epi23 of her show, Anthony LeBlanc.

Comic Book Jones
There’s a comic book store in Staten Island, New York, a legendary place on Forest Avenue, called Comic Book Jones. It also happens to be the name of their podcast, hosted by proprietors Socko and Tiger Jones. They’ve been podcasting since Fall of 2012 and they’re still going strong with their special brand of geek chatter and comic book mayhem. And, at least around Thanksgiving, talk about disgusting White Castle Thanksgiving sliders.

Great Gift Ideas!

If you’re looking for something special for that someone special, might I suggest you visit our homesite, at http://SuccotashShow.com, where you can use the Amazon banner at the top of our page to slide over to the world’s biggest online store. Every time you purchase something there after using out link to get there, we get a little taste of the purchase price, but at no cost to you. You can also shop at our Succotashery, if that special someone would like something with our show logo on it. And if WE’RE your someone special, you can click the Donate button in the upper right hand corner of the page and slip us some delicious cash to help us keep Succotash alive in 2016!


That’s going to do it for Epi122 of Succotash Clips, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. Hopefully I’ll get another episode or two out before the end of the year. No special plans for a year-end show but you never know – maybe I’ll whip something up. I know this time of year gets busy but feel free to take Succotash along while you’re Christmas shopping or heading off to visit friends and family this holiday season.

And while you out there visiting, don’t be afraid to pass a little Succotash!

— Marc Hershon
 

Monday, November 30, 2015

Succotash Chats Epi 121: Talkin' Ear Movies with Franklin Leonard

Yes, it’s me — Marc Hershon, your host and rattan patio furniture, covered for the winter — and this is Epi 121 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. It’s another Succotash Chats edition, featuring my recent interview with Franklin Leonard, the creator and host of The Black List Table Reads.

Franklin’s got a pretty fascinating history, including working with both Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Smith’s production companies, and we talk about that and more.  The Black List Table Reads is a pretty unique podcast, just starting its second season, featuring recorded table reads of full-on, feature-length motion picture scripts that have not yet been produced but have been voted as the most popular on the Black List website, which our guest is also the brains behind.

(Just to give you a taste of what it’s like to hear a movie being read aloud — it's a bit like an old-style radio drama from the 1930's an d40's — we feature a few minutes from a couple of the film scripts Franklin features, one from their last season and one from the first movie to kick of Season Two, just last week.)

A Succotash Exclusive!

In the spirit of  The Black List Table Reads, after my interview with Franklin is over, I play a few minutes from an unproduced screenplay I help Dana Carvey to write almost a decade ago. It's a comedy called The Happy Idiot…and hearing these few minutes on Succotash is likely to be the most of it you're ever going to find.

But That's Not All

We’ve also got our Burst O’ Durst segment with our own political comedian and social commentator Will Durst (if you're in the San Francisco Bay Area this holiday season, be sure to check out Will's Big Fat Year-End Kiss-Off Comedy Show, playing all over the place between Christmas and into the New Year.); a classic ad for Henderson's Holiday Pants;, a dip into the Tweetsack and, at the very end of the show, yet another acapella masterpiece by our friend Abner Serd, whose Tall Tales & Shaggy Dogs podcast offering is available via iTunes.

A Holiday Plea

Please, friends, remember that we need YOUR favorable reviews and comments to grow the crap out of Succotash and, if you’re NOT going to give us money by clicking on our Donate button, or shopping through our Amazon link or buying merch from our Succotashery — all availalbe through http://SuccotashShow.com — you can at least throw us a bone and give us a glowing review on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or wherever you might run across our humble podcast.

Our next installment is going to be a Succotash Clips episode, I’m pretty sure, and we’ll bring you a buffet of podcast snippets from all over the place. In the meantime, won’t you please remember to pass the Succotash?!

— Marc Hershon
 

Monday, November 23, 2015

Succotash Clips Epi120: Passin' The Thanksgiving Succotash

What? Me, Marc Hershon, your host and toaster pastry? Back within a week with another installment of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast? Yes, it’s true.

This is Succotash Clips, Epi 120. And we have a Thanksgiving Feast of comedy podcast clips for you. It’s a veritable spread of different flavors and — given the humor in some of them — truly a groaning board of a clip buffet in store for your ears this time around.

We’ve got The All-Seeing Guys, Bitter Sound, Ear Goggles, Ice & The Face, The McCue Report, Primalcast, The Reigning Lunatic, Rob & Slim, The Vince Wylde Show and Who Charted? 

In addition to that earload, we’ve got a visit to the Podcast Graveyard, courtesy of our associate producer Tyson Saner, who also harvested a number of the clips we’ve got on hand. We also have another double dose of our Burst O’ Durst with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst, a rummage around the ol’ Tweetsack, and a brand new Henderson’s Pants commercial.

Other than our ads from Henderson’s Pants, Succotash remains fitfully sponsor-free. The good news: you aren’t burdened by listening to those pesky ads. The bad news: money to keep this show going basically comes out of my pocket. You can help out with one of several methods, all done by visiting our homesite at http://SuccotashShow.com. You can click on the Donate button and shoot us some moolah. You can click on the Amazon banner at the top of the page and buy stuff at Amazon, then they give us a slice off the top. Or you can click on the link to our Succotashery and purch some merch, a percentage of which comes back to us after they print up whatever you buy. Or you can keep on listening to this show for free and just know that, in the back of my head, I’m thinking you’re just an electronic freeloader. No guilt, no judgement, though.

The Clips

Ear Goggles
So you might remember when I announced on this show earlier this year when the 10-year-old podcast known as Sibling Rivalry celebrated its decadeness was re-branded as Ear Goggles. I ran into 2/3’s of the hosting team – Jeremy Grater and Susan Black – last September at the 4th Annual Los Angeles Podcast Festival. Host #3 – Aaron Ristrow – lives on the East Coast, as opposed to his Seattle-based compadres. I chatted with them, which we featured during the PodFest upload frenzy, and they chatted with me for their show, which just dropped recently.

The Rob & Slim Show
Just this last week I was a call-in guest on the LIVE partycast known as The Rob & Slim Show. They’ve been retweeting our stuff the past few months and I had just had Tyson clip me off a chunk of a recent show but, I figured as long as I was going to be on their show, we may as well use THAT clip. Rob and Slim — I haven’t been able to find much else about them or the other voice that seem to float around during their ‘cast — run a 3+ hour live whoop-de-doo, in the style of a morning radio show as they put it and they cover the gamut of topics that are fresh in and around the news. Plus they drink. How can you lose?


The Bitter Sound
This clip comes to us from The Bitter Sound, uploaded directly to us by host Davian Dent. He and sidekick Matt Bubbles managed to get OUR booth announcer, Bill Heywatt, to call in for a visit. (I can’t get the guy to stand still in Studio P long enough to do another Boozin’ With Bill segment yet these jokers get him just like that. I even pay the guy’s salary!) Oh well. If the only way we can get Bill on the show is with him being slightly tanked and yammering on a clip from someone else’s show, so be it.


The Reigning Lunatic
Friend-of-Succotash Geoffrey Welchman, who was the former host of the now-kaput Inverse Delirium podcast, came roaring back after a time away from Podcastland with a brand new offering! The Reigning Lunatic is a scripted situation comedy about a crazy king and his hapless servants and subjects. Geoffrey asked me to play a part in the series opener as Sir Jerry, and I, being an audio whore, was only too happy to comply.

Ice & The Face
So we had several direct uploaded clips this week (through our upload link at http://hightail.com/u/Succotash) including one from someone named Rick. His cover note with the upload reads: “Hello, my name is Rick, and I had a conversation with someone on twitter today from Succotash. I said I would provide a five minute clip from our comedy show, Ice and The Face, for your show. This clip is from episode #75 - 10.9.15. We hope you enjoy it! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email or twitter DM if you like. You're show is awesome, and we very much appreciate your interest and are looking forward to hearing back. Thank you, Rick” Cool. Thanks, Rick!

Who Charted?
I’m not sure we’ve ever featured a clip from this next show before. Not sure why. Who Charted? has been around forever and is quite beloved. They cover the hits that are charting in music and movies, with lots of comedy guests. The hosts are Howard Kremer and Kulap Vilaysack normally, but in this episode clipped by our Associate Producer Tyson Saner, Kulap is off, replaced by guest co-host Emily V. Gordon, who hosts another podcast – The Indoor Kids – with her husband, Kumail Nanjiani. Their guest is James Adomian, who’s gotten some attention lately because of his Bernie Sanders impression.

The Vince Wylde Show
Tyson harvested us a clip from a new-to-me show, The Vince Wylde Show, part of the AM Podcast Network. (Not sure what that is, but the AM comes from the network founder, Adam Mulholland.) The Vince Wylde blurb on the homesite reads, “The Radio Show with Attitude, Humor, and great production. From Schizophrenic Studios on the 36th Floor of the FMI Building.” I don’t know where the Fmi building is, either. In this clip, Vince and his partner on the show, a guy named Ben sample some soft drinks from a company called Carbonated Atrocities. Bottoms up!


The McCue Report
There’s a show from the Boston area that reached out to Tyson Saner directly, which is another way to go if you’re looking to be clipped on our show, called The McCue Report. It features comedian Jim McCue interviewing interesting and entertaining people, according to their homesite. The show’s been chugging along for about a year and a half now, and is part of Boston Comedy Festival Radio. In this clip, which was furnished to Tyson via Twitter, McCue chats with his guest, standup comedian Al Parks, about working on the road.


The All Seeing Guys
Our man in Great Britain, Davian Dent, when he’s not producing his own podcasts – The Bitter Sound and Strange Times – is out looking for other fun stuff to put in his ears. This time he’s sent some of it along to us. It’s a clip from a show I’ve not caught yet, called The All-Seeing Guys, and features two blokes — are guys still called blokes in England? — named Greg and Joe.

As I said, a cornucopia of podcasts for your Thanksgiving week listening pleasure. Take us with you on that long drive to the relatives' house or listen while you're digesting on the couch after stuffing your face. And for those of you NOT in the United States, have a great Thursday and Friday.

Whether you're celebrating Thanksgiving or not, remember that I don’t care if you pass the turkey or the stuffing or the pumpkin pie, but I will always thank you for passing the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon
 

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Succotash Chats Epi119: Takin' Haley's Comments

Oh, yes, it’s me, Marc Hershon. Your host and benign growth for Epi119 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. And finally we have a Succotash Chats episode for you!

The last chats I had were in relation to the Los Angeles Podcast Festival about two months ago. And while I enjoy featuring comedy podcast clips as much as the next guy who hosts a show featuring comedy podcast clips, it’s enjoyable for me to sit back and chat it up with some fun and/or funny people.

Our special guest this episode is actor/comedian Brian Haley, a guy I’ve known for 30 years, dating back to when I used to run the Comedy Underground club in Seattle. As you’ll hear in this interview, he quickly leapt from the standup stage to roles on television and in the movies, and he talk about his regret at not spending more time in the comedy realm.

We talk about some of the roles you’d know Brian from, including the season he did on NBC’s Wings, the Coen Brothers’ The Man Who Wasn’t There, the film Always, directed by Steven Spielberg, Baby’s Day Out, which made him a huge star in India of all places, and more.

But Succotash IS a podcast about other podcasts, primarily comedy-based but when there’s a comedian involved somewhere in the mix, that pretty much makes any podcast a comedy podcast, right? And Brian has a role in a new podcast being produced by GE of all people, something called The Message. I’m fascinated by it, and we talk about that show and Brian’s role in it. We’ll give a listen to a clip from The Message as well.

What Else?

In addition to our chat with Brian Haley, we have a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst segment with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst. We also have a Henderson’s Pants ad, we’ll take a gander into the Tweetsack, AND we have a new acapella song by our friend Abner Serd, a sweet ditty about Autumn, which we’ll play at the end of the show.

I wanted to take a moment to thank those of you who have been using the Amazon banner at the top of our homesite, at http://SuccotashShow.com, to do your shopping at Amazon.com. Every time you do that, we get a little taste off the top of your purchase at no extra cost to you. And lately we’ve been getting a nice tidy direct deposit from Amazon into the Succotash coffers, which is helping to defray the costs of producing this show.

The other thing that helps us out is when you take the time to rate and review Succotash on iTunes. I wanted to give a shout out to Rick from the Ice and The Face podcast and also CEO Pistol Petey for posting a couple of lovely 5-star reviews! Thank you guys very much.

We’ll be back really soon with a Succotash Clips episode, with soundbites from a whole bunch of comedy podcasts. In the meantime, let your friends know about us and we’ll cheerfully thank YOU for passing the Succotash!

 — Marc Hershon
 

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Succotash Clips Epi118: Pickin' N' Stickin' W/The Clippin's

Yes, it’s me, Marc Hershon. Your host and non-Presidential candidate for Epi118 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. This is another Succotash Clips episode. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a long Succotash "Chatsisode", but I have a few potential interviews lined up for the next couple of weeks. We’ll see if anyone wants to talk to me and, if they do, then we’ll see if you want to listen to it.

See how that works?

For new listeners to this here podcast, and just as a reminder to you old ears out there, we feature clips of other comedy podcasts as way to let you know what’s going on out there in Podcastland. It’s basically a public service and, checking the level of donations lately, we’re definitely not-for-profit. Oh, we’ll take your money. We just need to find someone who wants to give us some. We also interview podcasters, comedians, and comedy podcasters, as well as other interesting people we happen to find.

The last episode of this show ran kinda long – about an hour and a half – and one of the reasons I split Succotash up into Clips and Chats in the first place was to get the show length down a little bit. This week should be a tight, tidy little program. Which means you can get back to your regular life, already in progress, very quickly.

Coming up, clipwise, in this installment of Succotash Clips is Pipedream, Radio BrendoMan, Think Again, VICE, and Worst Collection Ever. In addition we have a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst segment with comedian & social commentator Will Durst, a classic Henderson’s Pants commercial, and another end-of-the-show acapella song by regular contributor Abner Serd.

Other Business

I don’t think I have much in the way of business to get to, just the usual stuff nobody seems to pay much attention to, such as clicking the Donate button at the http://SuccotashShow.com website to help us out since we don’t have sponsors other than Henderson’s Pants…which doesn’t pay us squat. And if money is something you don’t want to spoil us with because you’re afraid that me, our producer Joe Paulino and announcer Bill Heywatt will just go out and drink it up – you may be right, actually – then get up to iTunes and give us a nice rating and a short review.

Our friend Travis Clark of Tiny Odd Conversations is in town this week, performing Tuesday night at the Throckmorton Theatre, so I’m going to get together with he and his wife-sash-co-host…or is that co-host-slash-wife…Brandy for dinner.

And if you’re in the Marin County area on Thursday night this week, I’ll be MC’ing a screening of the 3 Still Standing documentary and a live comedy show by the three guys featured in the film: Johnny Steele, Larry Brown, and our very own Will Durst. That will be at the Rafael Film Center this Thursday night starting at 7:30 PM. There’s a link in the blog piece for this episode at http://SuccotashShow.com to get more information.

Clips

Worst Collection Ever
For our first clip, I’m going to turn the hands of time back about a month, to the 4th Los Angeles Podcast Festival. That’s when I got to be a guest on a podcast called The Worst Collection Ever, co-hosted by friends-of-Succotash Shawn Marek and his wife, Jen Stansfield-Marek. They have a perverse pride in their absolutely dreadful, terible, wonderful comic book collection. Books that no one seems to care about. It’s more an Island of Misfit Comics. This visit with them was a year in the making because last year at the Podfest I had told Shawn that my favorite terrible comic character is DC’s The Creeper. So he and Jen combed through their collection and dredged up an issue of the Brave and the Bold featuring The Batman teaming up with The Creeper to stop a mysterious villain made out of paper.

Radio BrendoMan 
Speaking of the LA Podfest, our next clip was harvested by our associate producer Tyson Saner, who could not have known that when Brendan Creecy and Phil Vecchio of the Radio BrendoMan podcast were recording the episode this clip is from, that I was sitting just an arm’s length away in the SquareSpace Podcast Lab. I ever remember them doing this segment. But they never asked me to be on their podcast. Hmm…


Think Again
This past week, for Huffington Post and Splitsider.com, I reviewed the Think Again podcast with host Jason Gots and his guest, the great Norman Lear, producer of such TV touchstones as All In The Family, Good Times and Sanford & Son. It’s a cool premise for a podcast. Jason has his producer select and play three short audio clips from different topics that are taken from past guest on the Big Think website’s videocast. He doesn’t know which ones are coming up and neither does his guest. After each sound bite, they respond to the topic at hand. In the slice I’m about to play for you, Lear and Gots kick around Donald Trump and human cruelty. It starts out with the audio chunk that they’ll then respond to…


Pipedream
Tyson tracked down and clipped us a hunk of the Pipedream podcast, which is part of the ComedyPipe Network. That’s kind of all we’ve been able to find out about the show. Pipedream is apparently hosted by a trio of Albany, New York, comedians but it’s not easy to discover their names by ANY of the web presence we found. Tyson THINKS one is named “3D”. Beyond that, though, these guys need to get their PR together. Because it’s a pretty decent show and we should be able to know who the hosts are, right? In this clip, they talk to their guest — who IS identified — Harry White, a standup from New York and a Succotash fan. In fact, the only reason we found out about the show is that Harry clued us in that he was going to be on it. Hey, Harry! Who the hell are the guys you’re talking to?


The VICE Podcast
According to their entry over on PodBay, which is a great app for listening to your favorite podcasts, by the way, the VICE Podcast is a weekly discussion which delves inside the minds of some of the most interesting, creative, and bizarre people within the VICE universe. From the clip Tyson picks up for us, VICE’s host Reihan Salam gets comedian and musical genius Reggie Watts to reveal his agenda of world domination.

We’re all done with Succotash Clips, Epi 118, and that didn’t hurt a bit, did it? I’m going to give you a virtual lollypop for being so brave.  Until next time, thanks very much for passing the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon
 

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Succotash Clips Epi117: Clippage With A Side Of Chat

Yeppers, it’s me, Marc Hershon. Your host and inflatable arm-flailing tubeman for Epi117 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. This is a Succotash Clips episode with one exception, which I’ll 'splain in a sec. I’m happy to have our associate producer Tyson Saner back helping me to harvest clips of podcasts far and wide. He was a little overwhelmed doing some moving recently so we gave him some well-earned vacation time from listenin’ and snippin’. But he’s back and we’ve got some interesting clips to get to.

I’m one week back from the 4th Annual LA Podcast Festival and what a time I had. I was mostly dug in at the SquareSpace Podcast Lab, interviewing a few podcasters and then cutting, prepping and uploading those "minisodes". (You can find them all listed, essentially, under Epi116 at http://SuccotashShow.com and iTunes. I forgot to get them up to SoundCloud, but I’ll do that soon just to have them up there as well.)

There was one last interview that I didn’t get a chance to produce and upload. That was with Michael John Simpson, co-host of The Something Something Experience podcast , so I’m going to break protocol — God, the network hates when I do this — and play that interview and a clip from Michael’s podcast as well.

In addition to his show, we’ve got clippage from The Chillpak Hollywood Hour, The Mild Adventures of Fred Stoller, Human Conversation, Taco Tuesday, The Talking Podcast, The Hooray Show, The New Hollywood podcast, and the Why Didn’t They Laugh? podcast.

We also have a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst segment, featuring political comedian and social commentator Will Durst, a classic Henderson’s Pants commercial, and an absurd folk song from our musical buddy, Abner Serd. Be sure to listen for that following Bill Heywatt’s closing credits.

Clips

Chillpak Hollywood Hour
Immediately following the LA Podfest, I was honored to be the first guest to Skype in on the Chillpak Hollywood Hour, with Dean Haglund and Phil Leirness, since they’ve gone international with Dean now hanging out down under in Australia. A little after 11 o’clock Sunday night, I pulled off the freeway into the parking lot of a KFC in Patterson, California, population 20,868. Dean and Phil wanted me to give them a review of the Ear Buds podcast documentary which had a couple of preliminary screenings at the podfest. In addition, I gave them and their listeners my take on the current State of the Podcast Union.

The New Hollywood
Brian Flaherty, host of The New Hollywood podcast, was our guest for Succotash Chats, Epi102, back at the end of the January of this year. I just reviewed his episode last week for both Splitsider and Huffington Post Entertainment, which featured his lengthy interview with the multi-talented and very entertaining Bill Hader. Since leaving SNL, Hader has been keeping himself busy – it seems like there is no acting job that guy won’t try – TV shows, commercials, and movies, including last year’s amazing The Skeleton Twins. Our clip features Hader outlining the audition process he had to go through to get on SNL.

Human Conversation
Last week was actually a review “two-fer” because I reviewed Human Conversation in addition to The New Hollywood. Human Conversation is a podcast that’s 20-something episodes in and I hadn’t heard about it until co-host Wayne Federman waded into the Podcast Lab at the LA Podfest. Wayne and I go way back but we’re not in touch all that often and this was the first I’d heard of his show, which he co-hosts with Erin McGathy, the significant other of Dan Harmon, the mayor of Harmontown. In the course of the show, she and Wayne talk about a variety of topics but the things is that neither is allowed to look up facts, figures, names, or anything else germane to the topics they discuss. Here, they talk about music and getting things done. Although Wayne and Erin don’t look up anything then and there during each episode, they DO look things up before the next episode and they kick every show off with a list of corrections. (I’ll have Wayne on an episode of Succotash Chats soon to talk about his monumental 30-year-project, The Federman Chronicles, which features parts of his standup comedy act dating back 30 years.)


The Mild Adventures of Fred Stoller
I reviewed past guest and friend-of-Succotash Fred Stoller’s new podcast, The Mild Adventures of Fred Stoller, back when it debuted in July. We’d had Fred as a guest way, way back in Epi15, when doing his own podcast wasn’t even a twinkle in his mouth. We also clipped that episode I reviewed, with guest Robert Forester, but our Associate Producer Tyson Saner thought it was time for a rematch. The clip captures part of the opening to the show, which is part of a phone conversation of Fred trying explain the concept of a podcast to his mother. Also in this clip, he’s joined by sometimes-co-host Amber Tozer, and they discuss comedy and dating with guest Darren Carter and Nikki Sullivan.


The Hooray Show
The hosts of The Hooray Show, which we’ve not covered on this show before, are Horatio Sands and Chad Krueger. Horatio is, of course, from SNL. Krueger is a musician, perhaps best known as the lead singer and guitarist for Nickleback. In this clip, from their Season 2, Episode 6, they talk to guests Peter Murrieta and Jaime Moyer about the fire that swept through the Second City offices in Chicago earlier in September. The theater, I believe, was largely untouched, but the offices took quite a hit.

The Talking Podcast
From the UK comes The Talking Podcast, which is the most content-related blatant titling of a show I can remember. It features three brothers, Joseph Snelling, Oliver Snelling and George Trevor White, who, in the words of their homesite’s “Who Are We?”, “arrogantly assume that others would like to listen to them talking.” Tyson found this show and this clip, and I don’t know why the third brother’s last name, White, is not even close to that of his two brohams, which is Snelling. Here they talk about a family outing as boys on the Isle of Man. They also chat about Time as a concept. Heavy.


Taco Tuesday
Okay, I’ve mentioned on the show before that I really don’t care for pre-recorded promos. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them, but they can be easily played on any other podcast to help cross promote another podcast. Clips are much more illustrative of what a show really has going on. And the guys at the Taco Tuesday podcast — Uncle Dan, Adam Wolf, and Dave In The Cave —know that. We’ve clipped ‘em before. But this week, they sent along a promo – it’s got a head, a tail, some chit chat in-between, and music bed throughout the whole thing. Maddening. But because I love the Taco Tuesday guys (and because they got this promo here using our upload link at http://hightail.com/u/succotashshow), I’m going to let it slide.


Why Didn’t They Laugh?
Comedian Owen Benjamin, who is also an actor started a podcast where he tries to deconstruct his act. He plays portions of his performances and attempts to figure out what it was that kept an audience from laughing at the material. He’s almost 40 epis into Why Didn’t They Laugh? But our associate producer has clipped the very first episode, which features a recording of Owen’s father recounting a favorite joke. Tyson thinks the senior Benjamin sounds an awful lot like the late Spaulding Gray.


The Something Something Experience
We slipped this clip of The Something Something Experience onto the end of my interview with Michael John Simpson. It features he and his "co-caster", Kitty Brown, and their visit with comedian Ron Swallow. It seems Swallow has backed off performing fulltime, and their discussion gets into the challenge of making ends meet offstage, working as a freelancer in various industries.

Thanks for stuffing your ears full of Succotash Clips (with a little bit o’ chat). If you’d like to do a little something-something to pay us back for all this free chuckle n’ jivin’, we would adore your ratings and reviews up on iTunes, your thumbs-ups and reviews on Stitcher, a heart on SoundCloud, a Like on Facebook, a click on our Donate button or Amazon banner at http://SuccotashShow.com — any or all of those options will make us all very happy around Studio P and some of them will even get you mentioned on an upcoming episode of our show!

Until next time, thanks very much for passing the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon