Big and Rish hijack the "Journey Into" podcast

Rish here.  A while back, Marshal Latham approached us with an invitation to come over and do a "Journey Into..." episode with him.  But we didn't really know what he was talking about until we had agreed. 

It turns out, he had in mind a twisted plot wherein we took over his show, pushing Marshal out of the way, and doing the whole darn thing ourselves.  He gave us quite a bit of freedom, though we still had to play the episode of "Zero Hour" Marshal had picked out, one entitled "Skylab, Are You There."  It featured the voices of William Shatner and Casey Kasem, which leads me to believe it was destiny that we host this particular episode.

Well, it's now been posted (dang, Marshal is good about getting episodes done on time!), and can be found at: http://journeyintopodcast.blogspot.com/2012/08/journey-42-skylab-are-you-there-with.html.

Check it out.  It turned out to be surprisingly funny, and more fun than I would have guessed.  I do pity the regular listener (listeners plural?) of "Journey Into..." however, if they are particular haters of Big and me, since the theme song is pretty much the only thing we don't ruin over there. 

TGMG 87: The Dark Knight: Descension

As the conversation about THE DARK KNIGHT RISES continues, the nitpicks start to come out.

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

Big and Rish on "Journey Into..."

Rish here.  Marshal Latham used to produce stories for us, and always did an excellent job. Then he went off and started the "Journey Into..." podcast, and I hoped he would become discouraged, then come crawling back to us. But he not only manages to put out a great show, but he's much more consistent in putting out episodes than we are. Heck, he's up for a Parsec Award now, in the same category as we are!

This week, he put out a story called "Red Road," by David Barr Kirtley. It's a fantasy adventure, but with talking, battling mice instead of people. To hear Marshal talk, there's a glut of anthropomorphic mice fiction in the world, but I dug it and found it pretty unique (though it did remind me of Abbie Hilton's "Cowry Catchers" novel, with its intrigue and battles between speaking animal species).

Check it out here:
http://journeyintopodcast.blogspot.com/2012/08/journey-41-red-road-by-david-barr_16.html  Big and I both provided our voices for a couple of small roles, though I'd be wise not to claim the voice you hear on the show is mine.

Regardless, Marshal's got a good thing going over there in "Journey Into..." Go over and check it out. Heck, maybe Big and I will do the same sometime, and see if we can't wrest some of the control away from Count Latham.

TGMG 86: Rise, Dark Knight, Rise!

Big and Rish take a few minutes to talk about Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.  What sort of things did they like about the movie?  And how do you cover it in all in such a limited time?

Answer: well, you don't.

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

TGMG 85 : Batman Versus the Elephants In the Room

So, it's time for Big and Rish's overlong, in-depth-yet-still-missing-key-points discussion of Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT RISES. But there is something to get out of the way first. A couple of things, actually. Maybe three. Or four...

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

Retraction...Sort Of

We printed some misinformation on this blog a few posts ago. It wasn't our fault. It was a clerical error on the part of the Parsec Awards folks. They printed on their list of award finalists that our story from November, "Beachcombing" by Ray Cluley had been nominated for a Parsec award in the Large Cast category.

This seemed a little strange to me, since I hadn't sent them a sample of "Beachcombing," but it was a really great story, so it didn't surprise me too much. I just assumed that SonnySee, who had produced the story, had sent the sample. However, talking with Sonny, we learned that he hadn't sent the sample either. I was starting to get the idea that there might be a clerical error here, and that they actually meant to nominate the story that I did send them a sample of, Jason Sanford's "The Ever-dreaming Verdict of Plagues."

I checked with them, and it turns out that was in fact what happened. Their spreadsheet had a misprint in it that hadn't been changed, and "The Ever-dreaming Verdict of Plagues" was the story that was nominated, not "Beachcombing."

So, I suppose congratulations are in order to Jason and Bryan Lincoln, who produced the two episodes that included "The Ever-dreaming Verdict of Plagues." We submitted that story because it was a very good story that had been brought to life with fantastic production elements by Bryan. It seemed our strongest entry for the Large Cast category. "Beachcombing" was a hard one to deal with. It is definitely one of our best stories...perhaps of all time. It moved me in a way that no other story we've run has. But its production caused Parsec category issues for us. Do we put it in the Small Cast category? That category is allowed to be two people or less. There's no dialog in "Beachcombing," it's just a single narrator the whole time, but there are those people we hear in the memories that the boy receives when he touches their items. If the Parsecs wanted to be sticklers, they could say that it doesn't qualify as a Small Cast entry. However, it seems to pale in comparison to the other Large Cast entries that include a...well...large cast. Because of all this, we chose "Asshat Magic Spider" as our Small Cast entry and all the handwringing proved to be for naught, because we were shut out of that category completely. Maybe we should have just sent them "Beachcombing" after all. In some other parallel universe... So, Sonny and Ray, it was factors beyond your control that kept your story out of the Parsec Awards. I hope it doesn't hurt too much to find out that you were in fact not nominated. You're winners in my book, for what that's worth.