Big and Rish on "19 Nocturne Blvd"

So, once again, the talented and hard-working Hulie Joverson has used Big and Rish to voice characters on her podcast, 19 Nocturne Boulevard. This particular episode is entitled The Naked Truth. Julie writes at least one audio drama a month, and as far as I know, she edits them, mixes them, foleys them, and acts in them herself.

In "Naked Truth," Big voices a thug and Rish voices a movie producer, both in the olde tyme Film Noir style. Ish.

Recently, she also had us do voices on her Western audio drama, "The Deadeye Kid: Auld Lang Syne." We got to play the parts of villagers and also a couple of bandits. Amusingly, her directions told us to play one of the bandits as "vaguely Mexican." I had no idea how to play that, and I still don't. I can understand being "vaguely sleazy" or "vaguely drunk" or even "vaguely foreign," but I couldn't get my head around the Mexican thing. It would be like playing a character "vaguely white."

I never took the Kobayashi Maru Test. What do you think of my solution?

Upcoming Schedule

So, we'll try and get one more regular story in this week, then start airing some spooky stuff for the (great) month of October. Either three or four episodes. After that, it looks like we'll do the Broken Mirror winners.

Also, I think I'll stick the unedited game of Two Truths & A Lie Big and I played here on the blog, like the TGMG shows. If you've got a guess for that, send it in soon.

Lastly, we're still taking zombie sounds if you'd like to contribute to our upcoming zombisodes. Just send your recording to submissions(at)dunesteef(dot com). Thanks again to those who've already participated.

It's possible we'll have a special mini-show written by yours truly the week of Halloween. If I can adequately motivate myself, that is.

Also, there was a moment in our last episode, where, in the midst of talking about masked characters in comic books, I began to talk about Doctor Doom, and a story I had been told about him with his mask off. I told the tale, then we talked a bit about the Fantastic Four comics and movies, and then went back to our regularly scheduled program. When it came time to edit the episode, I felt that the FF conversation didn't really belong in the episode, and I snipped it out, even though I normally love to hear myself talk. That's where our outtakes section can come in handy. Yeah, usually it's just us screwing up during the reading, or doing funny story voices, or saying something about minorities, but in this case (and my lengthy Comic-Con description), you can go to the outtakes section and hear another little anecdote.

Did it deserve to be cut out? You be the judge.

Remember, short, controlled bursts.

Rish

That Gets My Goat 6

Wow, looks like a feature-length episode today. I made Big stay up until past three to record this bad boy. What's worse, the last two shows were actually one massive one until saner heads prevailed and it got split into two. Chances are, it could've been split into three with no ill effects.

In this show, Rish talks endlessly about getting old and not being able to enjoy amusement parks like a nine year old, Big talks about his awful internet/telephone service, and they both talk about being taken advantage of by, among other things, pushy salespeople on the phone.



Oh, and Sean Connery is eighty, folks.

Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

Big and Rish on "The Drabblecast"

We got to do characters on this week's Drabblecast episode, "Something Borrowed, Something Doomed by Robert Jeschonek. We do voices of hillbillies. It's fun stuff. But then, it's always fun.

That Gets My Goat 5

Still trying to get the hang of these. I thought it might be helpful--not to people searching for old, archived episodes; I'm not that deluded--to have a description of what we complain about in each episode. That way somebody can see that Rish complains about changing the name of RAPUNZEL to "Tangled" in an episode and say, "Oh, I sure don't want to hear that one," at a glance.

So, in this episode, Big complains about computer and car problems, while Rish complains about auto mechanics, his hate for cellphones, and his broken windshield. Then they talk about why they can only record for ten minutes at a stretch.

What happens next? Find out in Marvel Comics!




Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

That Gets My Goat 4

I don't know about Big, but I've really enjoyed producing these little conversation podcasts. If anything, it makes it so we can sit down for twenty minutes, record one of these, and then go for a walk or watch a movie, yet still feel like we accomplished something.

I suppose that makes these incredibly bad for the Dunesteef, when you look at it that way.

Regardless, in this one, Big complains about people who can't spell or use correct grammar, and Rish complains about message board idiots.



Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

Whatever Happened To Baby BMSE?

Did you read that last post? I can't let Big be the only one painting his face with shame. Not when it's my fault the Broken Mirror Story Event still has no winner or announcement.

You see, a couple of months back, when we promoted Suddendeath Nicole to Submissions Editor, she wondered what to do about the Broken Mirror stories (which, you may recall, are a pseudocontest we do on the show every year where people can submit stories with the same fixed premise). Big told her to take care of those herself, but that he and I wanted to read the submissions too. So, she took all the entries, cut the name of the author off, and sent them out to a number of readers. Each reader went through and gave them a number grade between 1 and 10, and if they're like me, wrote a few words about what they enjoyed or didn't like. When all the reviews came in, Nicole would average out the scores, and viola, we'd have our winner.

But the days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into months, and the months turned into . . . hours, for some reason. And it just so happens that everybody–even lazy old Big Anklevich–had submitted their scores, and the only one who hadn't . . . was Richie Doody Outfield.

I don't know why it was so hard for me to get through them. It should have been fun. After all, this was my premise, and even if I wasn't personally able to come up with a good take on the idea (I wrote up a whole list of possibilities; I might even share it on the show), I could enjoy what other talented, hard-working people managed to pull off.

But one of the first submissions on my desk was my own. And I thought, "Last year, I recused myself from rating my own story high, since I didn't want to seem like a cheater, only to find that Big gave himself an 11. That can't happen again."

But instead of moving on, I moped around the house feeling sorry for myself for, well, a decade, more or less, and got no work done.

This is why we had such a long response time before we brought Nicole onboard.* It's difficult to be an editor, to read someone else's work, decide whether to accept it or reject it, and worse, decide the whys and the hows. I always struggled with coming up with things I liked about particularly bad stories, and conversely, with reasons I didn't want to take the pretty good ones. Not to mention the time(s) I sent my thoughts about a story to the author, thinking I was saying it to Big Anklevich. Whoops.

I vowed to Big last week that I would finish up all the submissions and get my scores to Nicole, so we could move on and let people know where they stand. But having said that, I found myself seriously unwilling to read them (even though there were only three left). I'm stubborn that way, and it's got to be one of the main reasons I'm as unsuccessful in life as I am.

But as of yesterday, I finally finished them (and the last one I read was particularly enjoyable), and sent off my thoughts. I imagine that means she's already got the scores all calculated, and we can start the lengthy process of doing them on the show.

I've met a couple of new voice actors recently who will probably do good things when we start handing them out. It would be fun to have different people produce each of the Broken Mirror finalists, just to make them all the more different from one another.

But those are decisions for another day. Right now, I must decide if I will get up and do something productive this afternoon.

It doesn't look good.

That was only a joke about the eleven, by the way. He gave himself a fourteen.

Rish "More-Broken-Than-Usual Mirror" Outfield

*Oh, and let me say that she has been tireless, and (mostly) cheerful, taking over a sweaty, thankless job for absolutely no pay and only the most minor appreciation from people like me. Without Nicole, our final episode would have probably already aired . . . even if we hadn't recorded it yet.

About This Week's Episode

I was way behind on this weeks episode, and I had no excuse. Rish had cut the story and the post-story chatter too. All I had to do was put the sound effects on, and get it out there. And yet, one week passed, then two...two and a half, and still the episode was not up. Things were getting in my way, you know, life and all that, and I was letting them.

So finally, I sat down to work on the show, and I tried to cruise through it as quickly as possible. I felt so bad for being so late, so I was going to do minimal sound effects. But of course, once I got working on it, I was just having too much fun. The Coleman lantern attack segment sucked me right in, and I was looking for and downloading whooshing noises from freesound.org, finding breaking glass and clanking metal on Soundtrack Pro, and then it got to the part where Ann One starts shooting lasers out of her hands. Well, I had to do that justice too.

Needless to say, I wound up taking another day on the sound effects and putting in a little more effort. In the end, I think the story turned out much better because of it. But I can take little credit for the most part. Rish was the one who put together the spoken part of the story. He sped up my voice, to make my rat guy sound cool, he roboticized Julie's voice to make Ann One so awesome. Did you notice how Ann One's voice sounded the same, but subtly different, or better once she'd gotten all her modifications at the end? Rish really rocked this one.

So, again, sorry this one took so long. Sorry especially to Rish, who put so much work in, only to have my laziness keep his work in the dark for far too long. I hope, at least, that you think it turned out really good. It would have been much better if the episode where we talk about being nominated for a Parsec didn't come out the day that the Parsecs were awarded. That was all my fault. It would have been better if the episode where Rish tells us about his experiences at Comic-Con didn't come out so far after Comic-Con that you already knew about everything he said. That was still my fault. Ah well. Next week's show will come out much sooner.

Thanks for sticking with us.

That Gets My Goat 3

We're not entirely settled on this being the title of our sub-cast (what happens if we get together and our goat remains ungotten?), but I think it's easy to remember, and almost catchy. So, here we are again, complaining in the middle of the night, about Big being accused of sounding like a Muppet, his Wolfman Jack impression, the "Thomas the Tank Engine" movie, and Rish complaining about people getting offended on behalf of other people.



I gotta warn you: once Rish opens his big mouth, these podcasts might not always be work-safe or TV-friendly.

Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.

Big and Rish stories on the web

This week, both Big Anklevich and Rish Outfield found one of their stories published.

Big's short story, "The Search For Freedom" was printed on The Cavalcade of Terror on the 26th.

And Rish had his one hundred word story "Packets" read on The Drabblecast by Norm Sherman on September 2nd.

Feel free to check them out.