Friday, June 26, 2015

Succotash Clips, Epi111: Clippin' The Prez And More

Yes, it’s me. Your host and cat wrangler for Epi111 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. This is another Succotash Clips episode – that’s two in a row – and I’ve got a bucketful for comedy podcast clips for you this time around.

Our Associate Producer Tyson Saner grabbed some of ‘em, I clipped some, and we also had some podcasters upload them directly to us, using our Succotash upload link: http://Hightail.com/u/succotash.

In addition to the clips, we’ve got a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst segment, with political comedian and social commentator Will Durst. We’ve got a Henderson’s Pants ad. We dig into the Tweetsack. And that’s about it.

Where Are We?

I’m not sure where you grabbed this episode of Succotash from, but we’re available from iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, PodBay, Overcast, TuneIn Radio and you can even listen to us on the Succotash Facebook page – why don’t you go ahead and Like us while you’re there? We also get replayed over on CWERadio.com – that’s Clutch And Wiggle Entertainment Radio. In fact, one of the clips we have today is from the actual Clutch & Wiggle Show.

Besides the Clutch And Wiggle Experience, clipwise, we have samples from A Twilight World of Ultimate Smoothness, Date Speeding, Deviants Church, Don’t Worry – It’s Only The End of The World, Four Listeners, Pistol Shrimps Radio, Strong Opinions, The World of Mindshaft, and WTF.

Where Will We Be?

The 4th Annual Los Angeles Podcast Festival is coming up in September. I’ve been to the first three and they’re always a lot of fun. I already snagged a 3-day ticket for this year’s PodFest and I plan to hunker down in the SquareSpace Podcast Lab like some kind of great podcasting Jabba the Hutt. It’s September 18-20th at the Sofitel Hotel in Beverly Hills, and you can get tickets and more details at Eventbrite. I’ll be interviewing podcasters and ne’er-do-wells, so I hope you get a chance to stop by and say hello.

BTW, if you’re curious about what I do when I’m NOT on the Succotash microphone, crammed into Studio F and chatting at you, there’s a fun little article that came out this week over at http://SmartUp.life, entitled, The Man Who Named The BlackBerry. That’d be me. And the piece talks about some of the other brand names I’ve helped bring into the world from out of my brain.

Special Offer (Sort Of)

Maybe you’ve noticed that Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast, doesn’t drop every week. Hell, or every two weeks, for that matter. I’d like to do it more often. Really I would. But work is tough and pays pretty well, too. So that’s where I have to put the majority of my focus. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. And you can help. If you click on the Donate button on the homesite, then kick us whatever you can afford to give in order to help us pay for the stuff that podcasters pay for to keep all of this going, I’ll start pushing myself harder to get these shows cranked out more often. Here's the deal: For every month that the Donate button brings in enough to cover our Succotash nut – that’s about 60 bucks — I will push out 4 consecutive weeks of this show, by hook or by crook. So get clicking!

Clips


WTF w/guest President Obama
We’d be remiss to continue on without acknowledging perhaps one of the most important milestones in comedy podcasting: A sitting president has appeared on one. I’m sure you’ve heard about President Barack Obama’s visit to “the garage” to talk to Marc Maron. No matter what you think about Obama OR Maron, this is a Big Deal. I reviewed this episode for both Splitsider.com and Huffington Post Entertainment, and I thought we’d go ahead and play just a little bit for those few who haven’t heard it yet. This is right toward the end of the show and Marc gets the opportunity to ask The President about his favorite comedians.


Pistol Shrimps Radio
Last week I found a new podcast from a couple of the gents from Superego, a long time Succotash favorite. Matt Gourley and Mark McConville have teamed up to bring you play-by-play women’s basketball. Sort of. It’s a lot of improvised nonsense and hilarity AND it actually is done courtside at the Pistol Shrimps games in LA. I’ve got a sample I pulled off the latest episode and the hosts are joined by fellow Superegoist and the hardest working man in podcasting, Paul F. Tompkins.


A Twilight World of Ultimate Smoothness
Ripped from our Tweetsack comes something completely different. It’s a 6-episode mini-series called A Twilight World of Ultimate Smoothness. I got a note from the show’s producer, David Wilcox, who explains the show as “chronicling the decline and fall of a veteran R&B/smooth jazz DJ named Greg Willis. It's a psychedelic, surreal recreation of late-night commercial FM radio, complete with requests/dedications, in-studio interviews, station IDs, ads, and tons and tons of music. Imagine taking some of the darker elements of British comedy (Chris Morris' "Blue Jam" or some of the Alan Partridge stuff) and wedging them into an Art Laboe/Quiet Storm-style radio format and you'll kinda have an idea of what we're up to. The show was written by myself and Johanna Hyman -- we previously worked together on a couple episodes of the Radiotopia podcast The Truth. A musician named John Schmersal, who currently plays in the band Caribou and was formerly in Brainiac and Enon, did our music and sound design.” I downloaded and binge listened the six episodes across a couple of days of commuting to work. It’s like listening to a real radio station with some odd technical difficulties and a radio personality who is unraveling before your ears. But funny.


Deviants Church 
Associate producer Tyson Saner tossed this next clip onto the stack for today’s show, and I confess I don’t know much about. And my search for their website turns up…nothing. It’s like this show has taken an abrupt right hand turn into the Podcast Graveyard.This show seems to be DOA. No website. It is still findable on iTunes, but the last posted episode was back in early April. And the last tweet from their account was a week after that. We’ll check in periodically and see if there’s a pulse for the Deviant’s Church.

The Clutch & Wiggle Experience
Rob and Craig over at The Clutch & Wiggle Experience have been friends and fans of Succotash pretty much since the time we started over three years ago. They regularly replay the show on CWERadio.com and so isn’t it high time we got back to seeing what THEY’RE up to? Even if they had to send in the a clip themselves? Recently on The Clutch and Wiggle Experience, Rob and Craig discussed the recent passing of legendary BB King – and that his family has the feeling he was poisoned to death.

Strong Opinions
I got a request from Mary Sasson, host and producer of the Strong Opinions podcast, asking if I’d do a review of her show. She writes: “The premise of the podcast is I invite on two comedian and we discuss our opinions of everyday topics ranging from belts to milk and everything in between. Some past guests have included stand-ups like Jake Weisman, and tons of UCB performers like Nicole Byer, Drew Tarver, Will Hines, Betsy Sodaro, and Alex Fernie.” I will try to get around to reviewing the show – it sounds pretty funny – but for now I’ll do the next best thing: Clip it.The episode featured Lauren Lapkus and Mary Holland.

The World of Mindshaft
He’s got his teeth back into the world of podcasting. Our old pal, Nigel Boydell, was having some dental challenges a while back and had started a show called the HMS CodCast, which he wrote and then had various podcasting friends narrate and do the character voices. (I did one. I think it was the best episode, personally.) Well, he’s got some shiny new choppers, and Nigel is back with The World of Mindshaft. It’s a fun, bizarre, ramble through the mind of character who is clearly…well, different in the head, let’s say.

Date Speeding

Friend of Succotash Jason Duplissey recently started his own podcast, separate from The Duvet Show, called Date Speeding. He plays the Reverend Rich Hugh, and the advice he dispenses about dating is just plain wrong. There’s no homesite up yet for Date Speeding, so find the right Reverend Hugh and his so-called advice on iTunes. There’s also a Facebook page. 

Four Listeners
We got yet another clip in via the Tweetsack, this one from a podcast called The Four Listeners…featuring three guys. Chris Spear, Zeth Weissman, and Corey Gantzhorn. They’ve been up and running for about four years and just celebrated their 200th episode. Congratulations! They tell me that their format is “Something Must Be Done About…” and then they have a new topic every week with only TWO rules to avoid about the topic: 1) No politics, and 2) No religion. Everything else is fair game. In this clip, sent in from the 200th episode, is some rambling about SportsTalk radio.

Don’t Worry: It’s Only The End of The World
We have another podcast miniseries in the works, but I’ve only heard a little bit of it so far. It’s called Don’t Worry: It’s Only The End of The World. It’s put together by Alfie Shaw and, well, it’s a self-contained series that you can binge-listener to very easily. Artie was good enough to send along a clip. You can find more at their homesite, which has a very long URL.

--

Another episode of Succotash Clips is now history. In the can. Kaput. I’ll have another one coming up pretty quick. Even quicker if you guys hit that old devil Donate button on our http://SuccotashShow.com homesite. Remember, if we clear 60 bucks, I’ll crank out an episode a week for 4 consecutive weeks. See how that tastes, right?

Until next time, thanks for passing the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon


Monday, June 1, 2015

Succotash Clips Epi110: Bringin' Back The Clips

Yes, it’s me. Marc Hershon. Your host and rack jobber for Epi110 of Succotash, the Comedy Podcast Podcast. This is a Succotash Clips episode — finally back after two Succotash Chats epis — which means we’re featuring clip after clip after clip from comedy podcasts scattered all over the webiverse.

A lot of them were harvested by our intrepid Associate Producer Tyson Saner. I scraped up a few. Some were sent in by comedy podcasters themselves, or uploaded to us directly via our upload site, at http://hightail.com/u/succotash.

One of them isn’t even a comedy podcast, but the host asked if I’d feature a clip and I figured “Screw the network fatcats and bigwigs! This is MY show, dammit, and I’ll do what I please!” That’s right. This one non-comedy podcast clip is going to be played come Hell or high water! But just a little bit later in the show.

What shows will we be clipping in this epi, mighten you ask? Here’s what in store: The Comatose Podcast, Eric And Stacey, Excuse My Adlib, The Blank Planet, We’re From The Internet, and The Wrong Foot Podcast.

Burst O' Durst

In addition to the clips we have a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst with comedian and social commentator Will Durst. He talks about who the hell would want to be President of the United States, and also a quick lesson on several advantages and disadvantages of being a Baby Boomer. Also, if you’re going to be in or around San Francisco at the end of June, you can catch Durst giving a workshop as part of the Beatnick Shindig going on at Fort Mason. It’s on Saturday, June 27th, just one hour from 10:30 to 11:30 AM and the cost is just 20 bucks. Hop over to http://BeatnickShindig.com and grab yourself some tickets.

Bill The Podcaster

Our announcer, Bill Heywatt, has come out of the booth and has embarked on his own podcast adventure. He's still with the show, but you can now catch some mini-episodes of The Bill Heywatt Show as part of The Strange Times Podcast, with Davian Dent and Kat Sorens. We feature his very first episode in it's entirety on this show.

Clips

The Blank Planet
The way Bill even came up the idea of starting his own show was during a discussion that was going on when he and I were guests recently of Davian Dent on his new podcast The Blank Planet. "Disucssion" is a term I use loosely - our chat degraded rapidly and then those Brits started prodding Bill to start his own podcast.

The Wrong Foot Comedy Podcast
We got a clip from the The Wrong Foot Comedy Podcast, sent in from executive producer Robin Brecker. They’ve got a big ol’ cast over there pulling off some delightful audio sketch comedy. I’m not sure who’s in this piece from their Epi194. It’s called “Unlucky Lou”.

Excuse My Adlib
Tyson grabbed us a sample of the Excuse My Adlib, which their website describes as “an online hiphop-based talk show brought to you…by you – the fans of hiphop and hosted by Rozay, Big Therm, and J Boss.” Well, that’s Succotash to a T. Big fan. Tyson says, “The selected clip is from the middle of a discussion about Trevor Noah” – soon to be replacing John Stewart on The Daily Show – “and is regarding whether or not someone's social media presence is a fair reflection of their non-virtual personality or being.”

Comatose Podcast
The hiphop thing was a little step away form our usual fare of comedy podcasts. So I’m going to slide a little further over to bring you a clip – a very self-contained clip – from The Comatose Podcast. Executive producer John Bauer wasn’t even going to send it in, he just likes Succotash, but I said go ahead, let’s do this thing. There are a number of people behind the scenes and on the microphones for this show, which is – according to their homesite – “the result of creative people who neglected getting into creative fields finding a way to collaborate and release their pent up energy. It’s one part learning to express yourself one part letting yourself go and opening up the expression that’s already there.” Cool. Heavy. Heavy and cool.

We’re From The Internet
Podcasting has really supplanted radio for a lot of people, and it’s begun to seek specific progamming niches in some case. We got a note from Kev and Steve, the hosts of We’re From The Internet, and they asked us to clip them. They refer to their show as “a daily comedy breakfast show” where they answer the most pressing question of the day — whatever it might be and wherever it might come from. Fair enough. Back in Epi9 of their show, the question was, “How big a house do you need if you want a pet panda?” Here’s a clip that has little to do with the original question but still manages to hover around the topic of animals.

The Eric & Stacey "Talking Rubbish" Podcast
Ripped from the Tweetsack, this clip comes to us from The Eric & Stacey "Talking Rubbish" Podcast. They used our instant upload option and got their clip to us just by going to http://Hightail.com/u/succotash. Their note with the clip reads: “Hi there Succotash! Got a clip for ya. We were in the middle of our ‘Dumb fuck of the week’ segment. The dumb tweet Eric read jogged his memory about what they opened the show with ( Eric's job at the car dealership) and had some more details to add. The clip is from episode 102 ‘well...that was gross’ of Eric and Stacey - Talking rubbish” Thanks, Eric and Stacey! Someday we may even learn what your last names are.

Podcast Graveyard
Tyson dreamed up this segment, which I love, because it pays homage to some late, great podcasts that – although they may have been beloved at one time – have gone away for one reason or another. In most cases, we may never know why. The latest show to lie in state is an old favorite of Succotash, mainly because we had some great interactions with the host over the past couple of years and even a couple of free beers at the very first Los Angeles Podcast Festival. I’m talking about PodCRASH! with Chris Gore, the same guy who started FilmThreat magazine years ago.

That’s it for this edition of Succotash Clips, friends. I know it was a long drought between shows this time – longer than usual – but I’m trying to get back on the beam and I already have a full rack of clips locked and loaded for another episode real soon.

In the meantime, enjoy, tell your friends, and thanks for passing the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon