The Skinner Co. Network
FC02 - Out Of Control
Prepare yourself for corrections, Jan Brewer, how not caring makes work easier, accents, and week-making.
(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to Flashcast episode two. Prepare yourself for corrections, Jan Brewer, how not caring makes work easier, accents, and week making. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) All right, so last episode, we're talking about giant octopus versus mega shark. And I used it as a reference for sort of a classic idea of modern, well, classic modern. I hate that kind of whatever. And modern idea of pulp, right? So I got this email from friend of the show, Ray, and he told me, 'cause we were confused about where the Erkel was. He's actually in mega shark versus humongous crocosaurus or something like that. - There's more than one mega shark movie. - That's what I'm saying. There's more than one mega shark movie. - Oh my gosh. - So I need to go diving through the Walmart discount bins. - You can't find that off the internet. - That would be illegal, madam. - Yes. Right. - Right. Yeah. - Anyway, speaking of Ray, though, I did want to mention really quickly that he recently came out with the first episode of his walker journals, which I greatly enjoyed. You can find that somewhere in the archives at Skinner.fm or? - His zombie chronicles. - Yeah. It says zombie apocalypse. - Walker zombie ranger. - Oh, no, no kung fu. - Was there a kung fu in Walker, Texas? Are you kidding me? - You've obviously never seen an episode. Every episode ends with him like side-kicking somebody. - Yeah, it was a roundhouse kick. - That's great. - And his cowboy boots and his two tight pants. - Awesome. - But, and he did his own stunts 'cause he's Chuck Norris. - Indeed. And then while we're making corrections, I also wanted to mention last episode, we got mixed up about a certain American congresswoman, or possibly Senator, I don't recall. And we accused, what's the one from Nevada again? - Wasn't she the governor? - Governor, yeah, he may be right. Anyway, American female politician. But what's the, who is the representative from Nevada that we were confusing her with? The one who ran against her, he read for Senate. - The witch? - No, not Christina at all. No, the other one. Jane Brewer, there's another lady, and I mixed them up 'cause they're both kind of crazy. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Anyway, so we got that confused, but who we were actually talking about last episode was Jane Brewer, and I believe that we either got a call from her that we're gonna throw to later, or we edited something together, I don't know. - That's how you're setting it up. - No, I figured you'd go back to it and set it up properly later. - Oh, okay, okay, yeah, later, later. 'Cause she's the mastermind. You know what, I also had a couple corrections. - Oh my goodness, we have one episode, and most of this episode was gonna be corrections from our last episode. - I know, isn't that terrible? - Anyway. - At least we're consistent. I had actually mentioned earlier one of the-- - Sharon Engle. - Sharon Engle. - Sharon Engle. - Sharon Engle, yes, thank you. Sorry, good. - Jane Brewer, Sharon Engle, both crazy. - And? - I had mentioned that the first episode of Karwick was the neighborly farmers. But it's actually, I went back through our archives and it's actually the downtown couple. But here's the thing, the neighborly farmers was written first. So I always consider that the first Karwick episode, even though the downtown couple was published as the first. - I originally wrote that as just a little short piece of fiction on my blog and then eventually repurpose it into an episode. This is kind of interesting. Actually, I don't believe not to give away state secrets, but I don't believe in the original version. It was even Karwick who rose up out of the ground. It may have been straight up Cthulhu. - 'Cause we love that Cthulhu. - But you needed a rip off for your cereal. - Yeah, it wasn't, yeah. Well, that's the whole idea. That whole Karwick situation is a total homage to Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos and sort of the idea that people don't really get Lovecraft. Most of what he was going for was like just this super cosmic idea of the mega horror and almost like your life is totally insignificant against this massive, you know. - Copping horror. - Yeah, being of another dimension or whatever. - Totally stunned. - Yeah, and I try to convey that in a little bit more of a humorous light with the Karwick stories. Like usually it's hopefully kind of funny when the apocalypse eventually shows up. Although occasionally I try to play it serious. Straight faced, doom. - But that was actually one of the, one of the original flashpopes, if you will. - Yeah, yeah, it's true. - That and say it ain't so. - Yeah, a long time ago, 106 episodes ago. - Our dog is crying 'cause he cries all the time. - He plays to his strengths, which is weeping. - Actually, quite often during flashpopes, we have to stop and encourage him to do something else so we can go back to recording. - Somebody showed up Kramble. - There's nothing we can do for him. - No, yeah. He came that way. - On another note, I had embarrassingly been unsure as to the origins of a Mr. Kerry Grant, much to my dismay. - Now, I mean, I was right, he's from England. - Yeah, that's good from Bristol, right? Around Bristol? - Yeah, from Bristol. And he actually, he picked up his Cockney accent as well. - Oh, and he faked it like later on? - Yeah. - That's funny. - When he was 14, he left home and entered into a comedian troupe and picked up his Cockney accent there. And then two years later, we were shipped off to Broadway. - Speaking of the British, I was talking about this the other night. I have a bunch of British friends on my Twitter feed now. Those people love them some X-Factor. What? - Yeah, they were saying the other night, it was like 14 or 15 million people. They said it was like a third or fourth of Britain was watching X-Factor. - I think there's something to be said for the cultural concentration that must go on there. Being in Ireland and just having everybody sort of, well, actually, that's not fair. I guess they've been fighting each other, even inter-islanding on the same island for a long time now, but I mean, you don't get that many people watching anything in Canada, certainly not in the States, or at least not by proportion. - Yeah, yeah, like if you get a two or three million sort of year, you're considered on top. - Yeah, I wonder if it's, well, I guess they're not as stringent with just the straight BBC channels anymore, so. - But who would have known such a show would bring together an Asian? - Yeah, yeah, well, it's one of those shows. - The ball or X-Factor. - Yeah, I'm not usually a fan of the type of people on Twitter who will just start spouting random things about a show that they're watching at the moment, but it seems like everyone in unison is discussing the show like, "Oh, that was terrible." And I mean, everyone watching it understands, but no one else does. - Yeah, and there's always this assumed knowledge, all this base of knowledge. - Yeah, yeah. - We just call people by their first names and everyone knows what's going on. - Well, I mean, we've got that two in a way, right? Not like that, but we've got our-- - Dancing with the Stars. - Well, the shows that you can mention that everybody will know what you're talking about. - Lost at a time. - Or even like, what's that one with Snooki in it? Jersey Shore or something like that? - Yeah, but here's the thing though, you're not even fully aware of what the name of the show is. - No, but I mean-- - I know for a fact that you've probably never seen in an episode-- - But I have no idea what X-Factor is either. - X-Factor is essentially American Idol as far as I can tell. The reason I bring up X-Factor, and the reason that I think it's worth mentioning on a show about, well, nominally about pulp, is 'cause it's such an prevalent, popular thing, right now in Britain. I'm kinda wondering, well, I think the show's been popular for quite a while, but I'm wondering if people are finding a certain amount of comfort in it, considering the brutal, artistic beating those people are taking right now with the government cuts? - Yeah. - I wonder if they're sort of sheltering in the, you know, in the same way that movies became a big deal in the 30s, and it was all about glitz and rich people and whatever. Wonder if they're sheltering in the glitz of the X-Factor? Or if they just want somebody to yell it? - I just think of like production costs. I guess they have celebrities on there, so there is money that they have to put into it, and advertising can sub how many people watch it, but you wouldn't think there would be that much money to put into that show, you know? Like production costs? - Well, isn't it like a Simon? You know all you mean like the actual cost of the show? Yeah, no, it must be pretty low. I mean, isn't basically everybody just a volunteer, essentially? - I don't know how it rolls, but-- - I assume it's very American-idally, like they just pick up random people and see how well it goes. Anyway, I think this might be a good time to roll into-- - The Audi, oh, an accident of hope. - I don't really have a whole lot going on. Like, I mean, I did, each of us has a section obviously, so I wanted to have some music for everybody. The other thing that I did was the Jan Brewer thing. You sent me an audio clip and just said, "Do whatever with this Jan Brewer clip." So I basically just listened to it and made her say stupid things and sound drunk and make my concept actually for Jan, her putting it at a robo call, but doing it at a bar and after she's like really loaded and eating snacks and she really shouldn't be because she has so many moments of that, like where she's like, "Okay, go Jan," and then she completely loses it. - It's just so in professional. - It's hard on the road. You got to make a lot of calls. You already really did run this thing. - So this is like, yeah, it's like a robo call from tears down the road. - I'm Arizona Governor's Jam Brewer. - I'm calling to let you know. I'm clearly out of control and I'm out of touch. This is Jan Brewer out of control. This message is paid for by a little Democrat. - So what did you think? Did you like it? - Yeah, very nice. Stay classy, Jan. - Yeah, I mean, there were still more I could do. There's always more I could do, but I figured that was enough. It was probably like two hours worth of effort to make Jan sound like that. - Wow. - And really, it takes no effort at all. - On her, yeah, yeah, well, she does it so well, but I think it's a good thing to do. - Yeah, I mean, it's a good thing to do. - Yeah, it's a good thing to do. - She does it so well, but I thought I'd up the ante. - So do you think you're gonna do more like sound design on the actual episode? - Oh, it was so stressful though, 'cause it was like I had really no idea what I was doing. I'd ever done anything like that before. So it was just like rearranging words, rearranging words, finding things, looking for things that would fit in between. And I really probably should've thought of a concept first as opposed to just like farting around with everything that I had there, like just a whole mess of everything. - So... - But it just seemed like a frantic rush to finish, and I didn't really know what I was doing, so it was just like this blind sort of just grabbing at whatever, and then when it was done, it was just like magic. So hopefully I can just calm the crap down next time and... - Yeah, but that's what this is all about, right? - Learning, yeah. - Yeah, it was the first... - It didn't sound the smoothest, but I think it's an accurate representation of the future of Jan Brewer. - Speaking of firsts, this is only our second flash cast. Having already recorded the first, do you find this one like this type of podcast easier to record or harder? In the flash pulp podcasts, I'm sitting in a closet under the stairs, and that really helps with all of the surrounding noise for you, but we don't all fit under the stairs, and that's not where we are now. So is it harder for you to block out the extra noises, or do you just deal with what? - Well, I worry a lot less of it about it when we're just talking conversationally. Obviously, it's a lot more time to have mess ups, but because it is just kind of us hanging out and talking, there is ambient noise and dogs and stuff. It just doesn't make me worry, whereas with flash pulp, anything could be a distraction from the kind of moment we're trying to make. - Yeah, okay. - I'm surprised we haven't picked up any baby monitor noises yet, but I suppose that'll happen eventually. - Yeah, eventually we'll hear babies, but-- - And more crying dogs. - But yeah, there's sometimes just like a weird awkward silence or two with a flash cast, but so far it's been pretty easy. It's just a huge amount of time that I have to listen through and make sure there's no, you know. - No nothing we don't want our podcast listeners to be listening to. - All right, speaking of new stuff, I think it's time to move on to-- - The art of narration. - Yes, actually I've been working on some more episode art. It's not for anything or any recent episodes we've had. It's actually in the Joe Monk storyline, but I've come up with a couple of little doodles of him recently and they're more cartoony than his little picture is. It's actually a picture of Joe and a picture of Macbeth. I'm pretty excited about getting them up, but I have to have them scanned and inked and put on to the computer e-bits first, so. - That's okay, they are kind of cartoony characters, like they are written intentionally. - Yeah, I actually have absolutely mine too. - I think like the Jetsons. - Yeah. - Yeah, a little bit. It's supposed to be sort of reminiscent of that future, that bright future age, but also-- - I don't really know, it's just sort of like an ignorant version of the future. - Yeah, well you'll notice that I try to make every alien just basically something from Earth (laughs) like they used to do in every ridiculous old science fiction movie. - But he doesn't even really know that much about Earth himself. - Yeah, he has no idea. But that'll come to light more later. There is actually a story that is supposed to be moved through, but I find Joe gets the least amount of reaction under people and I just don't end up writing for him because I feel like he's unpopular. - Aw, we love Joe. - But that's okay, you can, you should write it more. - Well, it basically ends up happening, like, I'll write a Mulligan story that I think of as a 7.5 story, because people seem to enjoy Mulligan and that flies well, but I'll have to wait for like an eight or an 8.5 before I'll sit down and do the joke 'cause I want it to be good enough to carry people. - And a lot of the time you're rushing against the hands of the clock to get the story out and second drafted and read and stuff like that and edited, so you can't necessarily come up with, or it may be daunting to think in your mind, like I need to come up with a 10-month story and I'm gonna get people's attention. - Well, that's the other thing. It just depends on, I turn not to chase the ideas, I let them come to me and then use them as I need them, or attend to, it's different all the time. Like, sometimes you're like, it'll never happen or I will never write for this person, or sometimes you're like, I'm so excited, I'm gonna write about this guy and then it's somebody else or about his dad. - I'll come up with somebody new. - I mean, there are certain things, but I think you tend to go through three or four different, depending on the day, different sort of styles of freaking out before we go in. I don't know, it was a good, oh my god. Where's my coffee? - Yeah, well, I guess what I meant though was that 80% of the time the story that I end up writing is something that I've kind of scrolled away in my notebook and I need to come back, I need the idea now, so I actually sit down and draw it out into a full story. - When I thought, when you'd written the first teaser and said, diva wrangler, at first I was thinking like, you know, the artist, the person who says it or whatever, but you know, you're just as much of a diva as opposed to this, honestly, but I love you. - You're both divas. All right. - Whatever. - So you've been thinking about a new surgeon Smith picture too, is that right? - Yeah, actually I have a picture from Mulligan, but as Mulligan fans like myself would have noticed, there have been one or two stories involving Sergeant Smith, Mulligan's dad. And I was thinking, you know, maybe he warrants his own picture. He doesn't necessarily have his own series yet, but-- - I think he's a neat guy. - Yeah, I think all around there should be more pictures. - Yeah, that's my vote. - More pictures, please. - Yeah. - We need a really cool one for Flashcast. We just put together that one super fast on the fly and now Little Miss has a job now, doesn't have a time. - So speaking of new stuff, I guess, or coming up with a new process for things, you, the last Mulligan story we did, the character of the dude who is being abused. - Reuben Misha. - You wanted to give him a very distinctive kind of accent. - Yes, well, see, that's my issue sometimes is when I read a story, I can hear them speaking in my head. And this guy, he sounded a lot like Woody Allen to me. And that kind of bothers me a bit because where do you draw the line between having an accent that's not really your accent and offending somebody? I don't want to be that guy that's like, ho, ho, ho, with a French guy accent or-- - I think you do a very good French guy. - Well, thank you. But my point is I don't want to offend anybody, like, ooh, Baguerre, Milleprecon Gold, you know? - Yeah, well, I know we have some listeners from the UK. I'd be very interested if they want to call in to 206-338-2792 or just email me an MP3 at skinner@skinner.fm and give us their opinion about how they, you know, what they think about the accents that we do, 'cause we do British accents fairly regularly or some British. - And is there any that are so sensitive that you just don't go there, like if you sound kinda Jewish? - Well, I didn't go for Woody Allen in the end. I made him a little, your PC version, just to be sure. - Yeah. (laughs) No, no, no, rated R accents here. - You know what I've always wondered? Friend of the site, BMJ2K. I know that guy's from somewhere in the New York area. Well, I actually know more specifically than that, but I don't know how comfortable he is with having that announced over this podcast. But I know he's New York-ish. And I always wondered if he has an accent, 'cause I read posts by him very regularly, but I've never heard his voice. I know, I picture him with a deep, deep, like Brooklyn accent. - So he should send us a clip, say an eye. - Yeah, so we can hear his deep, deep Brooklyn accent. - And if he doesn't have one, he can make one up. - Yeah. - It's fine. - I don't know if he actually listens to the things or if he just reads the text posts, but anyway. So let's move on maybe to the final section of the show. (keyboard clicking) (keyboard clicking) - I like your intro 'cause it sounds so creepy. - Yeah, I hats off to your intro work on that one. - Well, it was really like, it was so easy to figure out, considering like what you called it. Blackroom plots, it sounds creepy and menacing and... - Anyway, so I've been working ahead a little bit. I've got sort of the future of Flashbulb lined up in my notebook. We're looking at a little bit of Christmas, actually, coming up on the Flashbulb. - On time for Christmas. - On time for Christmas. Well, actually, we're going to start a little early. Next episode is going to be a Mulligan-Smithy kind of Christmas. And I know that's going to put two Mulligan one-parters together, which we've never done before. We don't usually put the same character in one part or back to back, but... I just really enjoyed the story and I wanted to get it out there. My suspicion is that by the time we actually hit Christmas, people are always so sick of Christmas that they don't want to listen to Christmas stuff. So I'm figuring I'll start a little bit early, hopefully help ramp people's mood up a little bit and then get out while they're getting's good. - He says early, it's mid-December. - I haven't done any shopping, so that's early for me. So we can expect a Ruby Christmas. I think that'll be funny. Christmas was on bees now, or fun, at least. There may be a black-call Christmas. - I have high hopes for that Ruby one, so just so you're aware of that. All right. - Yeah, and then in the new year, I think there's going to be a number of three-parters in a row. So we'll see how that works out. - With whom? - We'll be doing a harm three-parter, possibly a harm one-parter at the end of the week, too, but anyway, there will definitely be a harm three-parter continuing the murder plague, which will be fun 'cause I've been away from it a little bit and I kind of feel a little bit more confident. The last series, I felt like the first part and the third part were really solid and the middle part was good, but it was kind of a draggy a bit. It was a little too, not conversational enough. I think that was what a Pope said when at the time and it was sort of true. - Well, it is true. - It's enough true. (phone ringing) - For mail time, we don't actually have any call in mail, which is kind of too bad. And again, I would totally push you guys to either email me in attachment@skinner.fm or call the line at 206-338-2792. Leave us a little voice mail route. But we do have a blog comment, which I will continue to talk to Phil Time until I find. - On your crisp iPhone 4. I wish they came in more colors. Black, I don't know, it's kind of boring. - I think they announced the white. - The white? - They always do look the white. - Where's the pick? - Apple doesn't do that thing. - They take that. Where are the pastels? I need to coordinate. - On your grandmother's bathroom wall. - Oh, that hurt deep. - Yeah, I like pastels and I'm not a grandma. - I mean, there's no offense to be given to grandmas or pastels, but I'm not a grandma. - Okay, so we got a comment on the blog that I thought was really nice anyway. And he was just relating back to the idea of, it seems like there's a lot of people right now who are kind of into the 30s and 40s crime dramas. Anyway, I guess I'll just read it real quick. 'Cause this is an awesome idea. I've always been into the 30s, 40s crime dramas that played on the radio and I played around with the idea of producing my own updated stories. It makes me so happy that you're doing this. You've just made my week, which is very nice. - Mm-hmm, making a week, that's not like a day. That's like-- - That's like seven times. - Mm-hmm, when was the last time you said that to somebody? I don't know, maybe he says that to everybody all the time. - Maybe he's a really positive dude. - You know why? Thanks for making the bed hunt made my week. - Yeah. - Man, you put cheese on my eggs. That may be my week, man. It's great. Anyways, for the guy who actually did it and was sincerely doing it, I do appreciate it. It made our week. - It made our week. - It seriously did. Thank you. - Okay, so-- - Thank you for listening. - Yeah, it's funny. Like, the numbers have really been up. I'm pleased with the dozens of people we have listening to the podcast on a regular basis, but we get very little feedback. So I guess we'll close up the show now. Anybody have any last comments they wanna make? - I just wanna give a shout out to Ingrid, who's been posting a lot on her Facebook wall, has been very encouraging. And yeah, she's always quick to like things and show other people our stuff. So thanks, Ingrid. - Yeah, I definitely appreciate it. She is one of the good ones. - Thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - 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 mp3s to skinner@skinner.fm. Jessica May's vocal talents and musical stylings can be found at maytunes.com. Wapoponax's artistic work and general updates can be located at wapoponaxfeathers.wordpress.com. The entire run of FlashPulp can be found at skinner.fm or via the search bar in iTunes. Flashcast is released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution non-commercial 2.5 license. - I'm sorry, Jan Brewer. Sort of. ♪ To be my home ♪ ♪ But number there ♪ ♪ Here is the shadow ♪ ♪ I live with our number there ♪ ♪ Little light cloud ♪ ♪ Will never awake when you worry ♪ ♪ Not where the blackboards of the sorrow ♪ ♪ Has taken you ♪ ♪ In truth, I've no thought of ever returning you ♪ ♪ But baby, I live with our number joining you ♪ ♪ Oh, dear, one day ♪ (upbeat music) (music)