Prepare yourself for Patrick Stewart, more Bothersome Things, The Murder Plague, The Collective Detective, and secret theremins.
The Skinner Co. Network
FC005 - The Family Theremin
I want some answers, where is Ruby, where is she, did Joe Monk send you, is that goddamn smith following me again, kill me, kill me now? Who really needs to read anymore? Flashpulp. Available on iTunes or download a dose today at Skinner.fm. [MUSIC PLAYING] Prepare yourself for Patrick Stewart, more bothersome things, the murder plague, the collective detective, and secret theoremons. [MUSIC PLAYING] Tonight we have myself, Opoponax, lead artist, and voice talent, Jessica May, audio producer and emotional cornerstone, and Jaredie, keyboard polisher, so I wanted to lead off sort of the general pulp section with some sort of odds and ends before we get right into it. First of all, I'm going to take a poke at a sacred cow and I think I might actually get in trouble in this room and also on the internet. I'm intrigued to continue, continue. I was actually going to post this up as a blog post but I think it works better as a Flashcast topic because I think it's sort of in the realm of pulp. Now listen, I love Patrick Stewart as much as the next man, but have you realized how many sort, how does he maintain his position of respect, given that Dude was in Dune, we're talking about Charles Xavier here through not necessarily the most high quality series of superhero films in recent memory, X-Men 1 maybe started strong but I think it was all downhill from there personally, Dude was captain of a starship, like you don't take, you don't look at Bill Shatner and go, he was French too, is he not? I don't know, I don't actually- he was supposed to be French. Oh, you mean the character like he's from France? Yeah, but he sounds distinctly British. Yeah, well it's the future man, Accenture. It's the future, baby. What? But no, when he went back home to the vineyards, everyone else was French. I was French and then he had just had a random recaction. Yes, true, well. Yeah, well it's true and I mean listen, you don't, like I was going to say, you don't think of Bill Shatner and then kayaking. And so how did he manage out of everybody to maintain all of this respect? Like everyone goes, "Dude could do Shakespeare." Well, I think he had a range and I think that was like, I don't remember what it was to happen that would change his personality. I'm not talking Borg because I think anyone can do Borg but there was a few where he went completely loony or he was like bad Picard or whatever but I think he showed a much broader range than Shatner did. Even in that episode where Shatner fought Spock? Yeah, I don't think one episode from Shatner can make up for it. Yeah. Not even the one where he fought the gournd. Anyway, it just, listen, Guy was the next caliber. That movie was just redonculus. Who's he playing that? Oh wait, maybe I'm thinking of First Night, was that what it was called, with Richard Gere? Oh gosh, I never saw that. Anyway, what I'm saying is he's made some not quality films and even the work that he's most famous for is not necessarily something that you would think. Yeah, and all those commercials later. There's a lot of commercials, yeah. Well, he's done well since then but for, you know, silly, campy, weird, you know, things that are not beyond him. So do you think what it is, is that he has a very kind of theatre attitude, even though he doesn't really, maybe he does more theatre work than I'm aware of, I don't know. I think he does. But, no, not Shatner, card. Do you think, because he projects sort of a British of the theatre, but he doesn't necessarily, no one knows him for doing any Shakespeare. Everyone just thinks, "That guy could do Shakespeare," because he classically fits that role. Do you think it's because-- Are you sure he hasn't done? No, I'm sure he has. Or, you know, but it's not something, you don't go, "I'm going to go rent Patrick Stewart." I almost called him Picard. "I'm going to go rent Picard's Hamlet." Anyway. No. So, yeah, Picard, what's the deal with that? I mean, Patrick Stewart, what's the deal with that? That was just one little item I wanted to say. And then, oh, speaking of variety of work, our own, a Pope and Acts here, recently. She cringes. As I mentioned, her name for some reason. Recently did a little bit of audio work for bothersome things, guys, over at bothersomethings.com. I thought that was fantastic. I happen to know it's debuting this evening. I didn't have an opportunity to listen to it yet, but it is sitting on my iPhone, so I'll check that out in the morning. I'm pretty interested to hear it, too. Mm-hmm. Well, you haven't heard it? No. That's terrible, because I actually have a copy of it. Do you have a copy? Yeah, I've heard it. It was good. Yeah, it was. It was very good. For me, I guess. Whatever their does good work, well, they both do. I learned I would do good work. Yeah, we were so excited to get the request, and then so concerned, you know, like we were constantly going over it and being like, "Mm, should it be a little more this, a little more that?" We recorded it a lot. Well, that, and they've been so generous with what they've given us that I really wanted to make sure that we... Well, you say a lot. I think you did what three takes. No, more than three. Four weeks. No, we did three. Really? Solid ones. Anyway. Yeah, we did happy, and then I'm like, "Okay, give me, you know, kind of perturbed and at first you just couldn't do it." And then you gave me a super perturbed, but super perturbed. Yeah. They ended up not using that either, so you'll have to go and see that bothersome things. Yeah, it'll be like a surprise which one it is. But it's awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Sauce. Okay. So we have some feedback that I wanted to get to off the top. We're going to do... We have two calls and an email that I want to discuss, and the email I want to talk about upfront, because it relates to the previous episode of Flashgast, Flashgast 4, Hospital Rec Room. I have heard back from three-day fish, and the mystery is solved. I understand now why their name is three-day fish. Okay. For those who weren't aware, three-day fish left us a very nice five-star review on iTunes with a little bit of commentary. Oh yeah, it was lovely. And we were pondering at what the meaning of their name might be. So... Lead on me. They share an iTunes account with a sibling who is a big fan. Okay, I'm going to get this wrong, but I believe that the originator of the comment is a fan of real big fish, and the other, their sibling, is a fan of three-day's grace. Does that sound proper? Okay, so three-day's grace, and the other one is real big fish. Real big fish. Real big fish. Is that like a fishing thing? No, it's a band. No, it's a band. Yeah. Anyway, so they come on both the names, and they have one iTunes account. I apologize. Three days. Three-day's grace. Well, let's just move on from there. Oh, that's rough. Anyway, I... It is rough. Oh, I... I appreciate your feedback. I would give out their Twitter name, because they have a Twitter account as well that I've had some back and forth with, but I don't know if they'd be comfortable with that, so I'll just pass from here. Anyway, so we got some other feedback. This is a good opportunity, actually, to move into back through watch. Before we begin this, we actually got a call in. I just want to play that before I begin our discussion, because it basically directly relates to it. Hey, guys. This is Jeff, checking in from North Carolina. I just wanted to tell you guys how much I enjoyed last week's shows. I especially liked the collective detective. That was my first experience. I don't know if you've done any more of those, but that was my first collective detective. And it was awesome, and just big props for the good job that you guys do, keep up the good work. And now I have to go to the grocery store and prepare for the next snow apocalypse that we're supposed to have on Tuesday. So have a good time. Bye. Well, that was awesome. Yes. Thanks, Jeff. Hope you're staying warm in the snow apocalypse. Man, I hear his voice, and I just can't compare to that. It's so... He's got a great voice. Yeah. You really want to keep listening. He's talking about us. It's so nice. Yeah. But snowpocalypse, maybe that'll be the kicking your butt again, too, to get some stuff done. Not to say that you don't get stuff done, but I hear that you get a lot more done when it's all you have to do. I know it under. At least you have that. So I did want to address that it is the first episode involving the collective detective. It's been something that's been on your board a long time that you wanted to get to, though. Yes. It directly came out of, like, years ago, the whole Bush internet pulling in situation. And it was something that I kind of have been turning over and turning over. What do you mean? Explain. The whole... The whole... ...of tapping the entire internet and everything that went over the pipes in the States. That's actually all true. Through the tubes. Yeah. Out of the tracks. The dumb tracks. Yeah. It's a series of tubes. But so what I was saying anyway was that the first one was sort of almost a test balloon to see if I could keep it up. I've been balancing about it for a while now because the problem is that to do it justice I need to separate the characters out and do only a couple characters per episode and you don't really see the same person over and over again. You might hear, again, something about... You might hear something about Harris again down the line, but he's not necessarily going to be the main character in a story from here on because it's not, to me, really... It's not about your members of that collective. Yeah. It would be different focusing on different sections of the collective. So we made some other people, like, coming in now and again. Oh, that's so cool. I really like that idea. That's what I found so interesting about it. It's that it wasn't a story about any one person. It was, like, a group of people, so it was always changing and there was always potential for more exciting new things to happen. Well, I hope that we can keep that up because I do have a lot of ideas for the series and... Sorry, Campbell's looking at himself as distracting us all. That does mean I do have to come up with a new picture for that, though. Yeah, well, I figured we could discuss that in a moment, maybe. Yeah, you got yourself a deadline from Jaredier. Yes. Jaredier. He's like, "Yeah, you think you can do it by Friday?" It did. I think I have some ideas, but yeah. We'll see how that goes. Yeah, I definitely think we will see a return of the collective detective. Actually, we may see a return of the collective detective in the next week. I haven't really had blocked out which three stories I'm going to be running with. Hopefully not before Friday, but yeah, very glad that you did it. Thanks so much for the call. I appreciate it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, you sound awesome. It's great. It's awesome. I also, while we're discussing background plots, I did want to go back a couple of weeks and discuss briefly the murder plague and the three-parter that we went through there. Mostly wanted to mention that when I'm writing those episodes, I've been trying to write it so that you can just pick it up at any point, sometimes, especially while the worst offender is black all likely. It's very tough to just step into the middle of six-part black all series and just pick it up. The individual parts have less of a feeling of individual stories than I try to attempt even with a mulligan. I usually try to have some sort of sub-arc of conflict and resolution in that single story. Mm-hmm. But I'm trying a lot harder on that angle with the murder plague, and I'm wondering if that series especially gets a lot of positive feedback, but I do find it interesting that people are starting to make guesses at one of the struts of the story, which I haven't really gotten into yet, which is, is harm-infected himself. Yeah, everybody he meets is trying to kill him, right? Yeah, you're not paranoid if they're actually trying to kill you, but at the same time are you? Yeah, I guess to the people who are murdering each other, they have no real concern for their own life. They'll get themselves in anything just where he looks out for himself. He kills before he's killed. Yeah, I guess you can't have a question there. He doesn't really seem to have an urge to kill people. Well, I mean, he tries to avoid doing it, right? But that might be, is that the plague you don't want to? Yeah. I have to. Everyone thinks something I'm hoping to eventually make extra clear is that everyone thinks they're being rational while they're doing it. Of course. Like the doctor was sure that, you know, harm was going to do something, so he needed to give him an injection to put him down. Mm-hmm. It was just the humane thing to do. Yeah, it all makes sense in there. To them. They're diseased minds. Yeah. I found the last one especially nice because he didn't have to kill his daughter. Technically, this, the completion of that last story marks what I would call the end of chapter one of the Harm Carter, sort of SAG of the murder plague. Yeah, well, because it's not so much about finding his, like, finding and getting to his people, right? He knows that there's really no chance for his daughter because she's already infected, so he's got to let her go. It's not like he really has anybody else that he's, like, his wife's already dead. He said he's not attached to anybody else, right, so now it's just him and the world. Yeah. Well, you will see that his daughter isn't entirely out of the story yet. Like you couldn't just ignore that sort of thing, but it's all going in a certain direction that hasn't really been revealed yet. Yeah, and he don't really want to, like, people having to go, like, and feel the sensation of, you know, she could be dead by now, like, who knows what happened in this last amount of time, you know. Yeah, well, that's, I'm quite, I'm always quite excited to get to the next story because there always has, with that story, especially, there's always some big thing coming up that I'm like, oh yeah, with black hole, it's harder because it's, the big event is him eventually meeting up with Mary and getting that all resolved. But everything else is just him traveling westward, essentially. And with Mulligan, there's no sort of larger narrative that, well, there are, there's, there's a back history to Mulligan that I maintain that kind of drips and drabs out as the story goes on, but there's not some end goal, like, it's not like, and then Mulligan saved the world. There's no... Yes. There's no resolution. It's funny because of the story with the most building in a certain direction, Joe Monk. He just rarely gets done. There's any, like, there's a huge line towards that, but it never happens. So I think this might also be a good opportunity to bring up. The art of narration. Yes, that's right. Joe Monk, it's been a while since we've had Joe Monk story, but I actually have some new Joe Monk art, which just has to basically get on to the intertubes now. I haven't seen it. Have I? No, you haven't. I'm thinking of one of the drawings I have, it's going to be the new Joe Monk picture, but there's also a little bit of bonus material. I've got a picture of Macbeth drawing. Very nice. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. Macbeth the crab man. Is it in the same sort of style? Yeah. Very cool. I'm really happy with it. Are the action shots? Are they together? Um, well, you know, one's more like a title page shot, you know, and the other one, it's just a character sketch of Macbeth. I'm very excited about it. Sorry, I like how the cartooniness sort of matches up with the idea that Joe Monk and that whole universe is sort of a play on the '60s and '70s sci-fi that I really enjoy and where it's a bunch of buff hard-chunk guys running around the universe and ridiculously overpowered spaceships. It actually makes me think of Flash Gordon. Yeah, that's exactly the work of Robert A. Heinlein or Heinlein, sort of play on that. He has no business being who he is or where he is or with, you know, still being alive. Cosmic Force is. Yeah. So I'm pretty excited about that. I've got to get those up, but hopefully we'll have that done in the next couple of days. So, do you feel there's going to be a time crunch between that and the fact that Friday's episode is probably going to be a collective detective? Well, uh, I've got the Joe Monk Pictures drawn already. So I need to get them onto the computer and get them inked. Um, I don't know if I can skip any steps there, so we'll see. But, uh, the collective detective, that's a brand new picture. And I've got some ideas for it, but there's still ideas in Minog and so, uh-huh. We'll see. I've got to get a pencil and paper there. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, speaking of Friday deadlines for the collective detective. The audio of an accident of hope. Would. Get to bother some things. So he's going to- I would love to hear some theremin in the collective detective theme. Not that I can get him to run out there and record me some theremin or anything, but I'm listening to a lot of Bernard Herman, especially during writing the murder plague stuff. Bernard Herman is the guy who did a lot of the soundtracks for Hitchcock films, but also did, like, the day the earth stood still, which the soundtrack for that is symphonic, but it also contains a lot of theremin. It's less fun. And you know who I happen to know who has a theremin? Who? Jessica May, do you know? No. Your brother. No way. Your brother has a theremin. No way. Little known fact, Jessica May's brother is also heavily into the, uh, musical business. Even smaller known fact, he has a theremin. Yes. He has a theremin. He has at least one theremin. He may have multiple theremin. Oh, what? Thermopylae. Huh. Why is his news to me? That's pretty cool, though. Yeah, I heard about the violin, but I had not heard about the theremin. Maybe he thought I wasn't hip to that jive. Feasibly. Well, it takes a special kind of person to... Yeah, I guess he doesn't think I'm a special person. Oh, I think you're a special person. But he doesn't, clearly, because he won't tell me about his theremin. Secret theremin. Yes. Thanks, brother. I'm in a secret theremin addiction. We're going to have an intervention. His horde of theremin. It's actually his, uh, his museum of the theremin. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so I think this is maybe a good, uh, opportunity to move into our final section. So we have another call, uh, final call for the day. This time from a friend of the show, Ray, Zombie King Walker. Excellent. Hello, Flashbald team. This is Ray, aka the Walker Journal Guy. Well, you know who I am, at least quite out of your house for a couple of days or a couple of weeks ago. Um, I had an idea that I wanted to run by JRD. Have you ever thought of maybe making one of your characters into a video? You know, like bring them to life a little? Uh, let me know. That would be interesting. Talk to you later. Bye. See, my first concern with doing something with video is with our audio production and everything, it's all pretty simple. It's all pretty like easy and not expensive to do. And you know, we have a certain caliber of work and I'm afraid that if we were to move to video, we haven't done video before. It would end up being silly and... I can see that. I think that as soon as you move into video, you start requiring a lot more funding A and B people to help you. I don't think that I could really sell as Mulligan. I'm not an actor in any way. I think I've got a solution. Stop motion Lego photography. Yeah, well that's the other thing, is video can be, especially video in which you're attempting to do some sort of dramatic reenactment or reenactment is tough. Yeah, when you're doing the cast in the pulp three days a week and you have to write on those off days in order to have it done, there's not a whole lot of time. I don't know. Maybe if something was super compelling or if we, you could shoot video of places that inspired you that look like or sound like a location in the story, like acting out specific scenes or something. Well, I could see you maybe someday if I... A ransom video? A ransom video would not be cool? Not like a whole story, but just little sections, little things. Well, that's a good idea, I'm thinking on this. Sorry, that just sort of reminds me, do you recall the sort of serialization that I was proposing before we actually got into the Flashbulb, that whole superhero thing? Yes, I think so. The League of Extraordinary Superpeople? The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, not quite, but yes. I had sort of an ongoing serial idea involving a modern day team of superheroes and I was going to tell it through sort of various media articles, like each episode would be either a blog post or it might look like a CNN page or it might just look like somebody's Polaroid photos or... But it's all about the one subject, right? Or a different... Yeah, it was going to tell a larger story as long as every aspect would build up to a larger story and there might be some video there, there might be some actual photography there. But yeah, it doesn't necessarily have to be like actors, but you're trying to see me. But there was, I'd sort of to realize the sort of time investment necessary for each thing. And that was rough. Because it's not like you have the same sort of format, the same sort of layout where there's a certain amount of cutting and pasting, you know, like you're figuring out new ways of media incorporation that every single time. Definitely a pretty collaborative project that we could get to work on at some point though. Yeah, maybe the days when we finally shut down the Flashbulb we could come back with something like that. It was an idea I had, but doing a one-off video of like a Mulligan episode, like maybe the episode shoot. Which one would that be? In which he's in the restaurant with Mr. Slug and there's the little girl. That's the Casanova suicide. Casanova suicide part one, I believe. That's correct. And I could see shooting that if I knew somebody who I thought, well, Mulligan is actually sort of based on somebody do you guys realize that? Anybody really did you? There was a person that I think of sort of as the physical embodiment of Mulligan. And he doesn't really act that much like Mulligan, his attitude isn't really whatever, but... The Kodos? No. Justin. Really? Really? That's so funny because when I think of Joe Monk, Justin is what I think of. Oh, because Justin, he's one of my most social, if he's one of mine. Just the look. Just the look. Oh, physically. Yep. I picture a cartoon, Justin. That's funny. Which is kind of funny. My mental image of Joe Monk is much closer to a very generic kind of, not super well-muscled fellow, but that sort of '60s beefcake there, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, now I feel a little bit embarrassed because... What are you implying that Justin isn't very beefcake? Anyway. No, I'm just saying like, I don't really think of Justin as a pretty boy, so when you say you think of Joe Monk as being a pretty boy, and I just was like, yeah, I think of just doing like... Well, no. The thing is that Joe's attitude isn't that of a pretty boy. He wasn't raised in a society in which he'd be thought of that, but it's just, it's all part of that idiom that I'm going for, sort of the ridiculous space adventure. Anyhow, yeah. So I could maybe see doing a one-off video for Mulligan. Maybe we should say, fun fact, though, that Justin, who looks like Mulligan, wrote the music for our sci-fi stories. Oh, that's true, right? Yeah. And another fun fact is we were almost considering not doing flash pulp after a hundred, doing something different. That's true. But we're at 120 now. Yeah. Which seems ridiculous. And awesome. How did that happen? Um, a lot of dedication, and hard work, and super cool awesomeness on You're and My and a Popes part. And I like to thank my parents. No, no, they didn't do crap for me. No, they didn't do crap for me. Yeah, no. This is all about me. Yep. It's actually all about Jessica May specifically. Yep. Yep. And the Benjamin's. Yep. Which we don't make off this. No. One day, baby. One day. Okay, so thanks a lot for the call, Ray. Appreciate it. Yes. Thanks. That would be king. That's Rables. Big thanks to the Brothers of Things guys again for the intro thing off the top and check out their podcast, especially today's Sunday release, Sunday, the 23rd, I believe, which should include a little bit of voice work by a pope. Mm-hmm. Please remain in a seated position. Okay. Yeah, it's kind of naughty and not very flash pulpy. So if you want to have a little taste of something else, that's definitely... Yeah, I guess we should give some warning. I try to keep all of this business PG-13-ish, but there is some naughty language over there at the Brothers of Things. Yep. Yep. No judgment at all. It's... No, I enjoy it. It's taking well-placed for me. Yeah, absolutely. I love swearing like a sailor. Mm-hmm. So on that note, I think Jessica May is going to read us out. Huh. If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, you can find us at skinner.fm. Call our voicemail line at 206-338-2792 or email us text or mp3 to skinner@skinner.fm. My vocal talents and musical stylings can be found at maytunes.com. A pope's artistic work and general updates can be located at... Can be located like we're allowing it to be located. Oh, we've had this discussion before at a pope-next-feathers.wordpress.com. The entire run of flashpope can be found at skinner.fm or via the search bar in our... But in our tunes, flashcast is released in Canadian Creative Commons, attribution non-commercial 2.5 license and that's why I don't do this. Hello, and welcome to flashcast episode 6. Oh. Damn. It looked like a 6 from here. Now it looks like a 9. Now can I include that in the beginning? You should include that as the ending. Yeah. Like it's just like after everything's done as a last singer. So if someone's like, "Hey, there's another one after this?" It's like, "Oh, number 6, great!" Oh, s***! We should include the whole discussion about quitting it. Yeah. Okay. Hello, and welcome to flashcast episode 5.