Marc Maron Love-Fest

So I’ve been listening to my albums of Marc Maron when I got some great news related to him. The first item was that someone posted his UCB show from CA online:

Item no. 2: he now has a podcast located at: http://wtfpod.libsyn.com and the show can be followed on twitter via http://www.twitter.com/wtfpod.  That’s all I have to say.  I did say it was a love-fest, right?

Podcasting, Twitter, or Blog?

nar·cis·sism (n): Excessive love or admiration of oneself.

When I first started this blog, it was with the intention that I would try blog about things that I found interesting and worthwhile to share with the masses, or at least my opinion of newly discovered things,  as there really isn’t any possibility for me to discover anything that hasn’t already been discussed in the massiveness of the Internet.  Then I started doing a podcast with my wife, where in audio form I would also share my various view points on different subjects and ideas and share podsafe music that I like with whosoever was willing to subscribe to my podcast feed.  Then along came twitter, and I was able to “micro-blog” my points of views on things and anyone who was willing to follow me would be able to catch my random musings throughout the day.  Through all this, my blog has suffered considerable neglect and I have had good intentions on coming back to it but for one reason or another I just kept failing.  This realization brought to me some possible reasons for this.

For one thing, what do these various social networks do but feed one’s ego and just perpetuates a narcissistic and an attention-defecit-disorder oriented society. The self-deprecator in me sees this and thus keeps knocking me down a peg to prevent this from happening.  This is one of the many reasons my blog keeps failing, and yet, despite myself, I still do enjoy podcasting and whipping out quick 140 character-lined thoughts in the twitterverse.   So why have those two ego-feeding tools prospered against my self-defeatism? 

Well on my podcast, I’m pretty much just having a discussion with my wife on various topics like we normally do day to day and this particular moment in my life just happens to be recorded and posted on the internet for posterity .  I’m not trying to be grandiose or significant in society in my podcasts.  I’m just being a regular joe schmo who just happens to record and post things on the internet.  There really isn’t much to scrutinize there, except maybe my ego for being able to even do that much; though, since I podcast for a hobby, that takes more wind out of the sail of my internal ego-basher.

When it comes to twitter, I just type what random thoughts hit my fancy, it’s only 140 characters long and then just like that it’s gone in a flash.  It’s so insignificant and so temporary that my ego-deflater doesn’t have enough time to catch his breath to utter some emotional-tearing retort.  Also I use it to share sites, youtube videos and the like, to the masses and not really have to say much except, “here’s this thing I enjoyed” and then insert a link and boom. Done.  It’s kinda like blogging but not really. Which brings me back to…

Blogging… Aye there’s the rub.  Blogging requires well thought out sentences, good grammar and good spelling (these things are excused on twitter because you only have 140 characters to express yourself).  Also, for my internal admonisher, it should be something worth taking your time to jot down and equally significant to post for all to see.  Otherwise, what’s the point of sharing this particular insight of yours, if it isn’t anything new or interesting that will garner notice or more importantly, affect someone in that deep primordial and visceral way that a good writer aims to affect?  Yes, a blog is a big and slow enough tool that before I even type my first sentence I’ve already shot down my idea and it just never materializes. 

The other problem is finding the time to really think out what I want to say.  With twitter you just have to react, type away and off it goes.  Now podcasting does take more time altogether than writing a blog entry; however, that’s just in post production.  Since I talk more than write on any given day, talking in front of a mic doesn’t garner as much inhibiting responses from my brain the way writing does. Also, as I’ve said earlier, talking to someone versus just my internal thoughts also tends to loosen me enough to be able to express myself.  And of course there’s a rapport, a bouncing of ideas and  a clash of opposing view points.  Dialogue with someone is just dynamic and full of life and such an enjoyment that before you know it there’s a good amount of recorded content ready to be edited and there you have a show.  Writing takes all these processes and puts them together into one nice intense self-restraining box that is sometimes really hard to open; hence, the reason for my lack of blog entries (other than when I just copy and paste the show notes of my most recently posted podcast episode).

It is because I’m so inept at blogging that I’ve even thought of terminating this other pastime.  But my wife insists that I keep my options open (she fancies me to be a writer someday I guess) and if for anything else, I still have another place to advertise my less nerve-wrecking hobby of mine.  Ironically, this is my longest blog entry.  Maybe there’s still hope for it after all.

New Year’s Resolution: Take 2

A new year is here and it’s time to once again reflect on the past year and see how close or far we’ve gotten with our resolutions of yesteryear.  For my part, I came pretty close to following all of mine.  The one resolution that I faltered on was being more health conscious.  In my podcast and on this blog, I have tried to learn and pass on information that correlates with the political-societal-economical paradigms that define the world around us.  Or at least a fraction of it as there are many points of view and I only have one of many of them.

Of course mental stimulation, when it comes to academic thought, is the least hard thing for me to do as I am a constant scholar on the studies of life.  I wholeheartedly enjoy learning new things on just about any topic.  It’s the nitty gritty hard-labor of the body that I am deeply flawed in.  Because of this, I am once again putting health consciousness and fitness on my resolution agenda for 2009 and limiting it to just that.  I will of course continue learning new things as I love to seek out knowledge and to continue to mentally grow as a person.  But now is the time for me to really take physical fitness seriously.

At the age of 31, I’m not getting any younger, and of course I’m only going to be more susceptible to aches and illnesses if I continue on with my bad eating habits at my age.  Plus it just makes sense that if you live a more sedentary life, your body won’t be as agile or flexible as it used to be when you were younger and more physically active.  So here’s to being more healthy for 2009.  I’ll let you know how that goes come 2010.

Promo for Matthew Wayne Selznick’s novel

I just wanted to let you guys know about a podcast novel, which I have been a fan of for the past 2 years called Brave Men Run by Matthew Wayne Selznik.  If you’re a fan of X-men, Smallville, Heroes or any coming of age story, a fan of teen dramas, like “my so called life” or “freaks and geeks” or just a fan of good speculative fiction, I highly recommend this book.

The reason for this little push for MWS is that for the past two years he’s had this book in circulation online through his website, podibooks dot com and lulu press.  Well thanks to his hard-earned work and his pseudo-internet fame, small publisher Swarm Press is going to re-release his book this coming Sunday, July 13th on Amazon.  One of the things he’s going to do to promote this new launch is do a little live webcast through his site reading short stories written by fellow podcast authors that will take place in the BMR universe and every hour he’s going to let you know how many books have sold.

I want to do my part in helping him sell some copies; hence the reason for this quick blog entry. Down below are some links to his website, the podiobooks page and my podcast promo.  Until the next blog entry.

Brave Men Run’s main page

for Brave Men Run (currently only way to subscribe)

Link to my podcast promo for Matthew Wayne Selznick

Having a pretty busy month thus far

It’s been a while since my last entry and I apologize for that. I also don’t usually write anything personal but this month has been phenomenal for me as a fan of podcasts and I just want to share my joy. On May 2nd, I went down to New York City to meet some fans of the Keith and The Girl show, as well as support comedian Jesse Joyce as he competed for a spot on the Montreal Comedy Festival over at the Stand Up New York Comedy Club. On top of meeting fellow fan Babbling Bryan, I also got to meet the stars of Keith and the Girl (Keith and Chemda) as well as their friends and fellow guest stars Rellek, Keith McNally, Matthew Bray, Spooky and of course comedian Jesse Joyce. On top of a stellar night of comedy, I actually got the pleasure of hanging out with everyone for a good part of the late night. Getting to know everyone on a more personal level made being a fan all the more special.

This past weekend, after emailing Seth Harwood some suggestions for a title of a new podcast that he is working on, he emailed me back asking me to do the intro for his latest episode of Jack Palms. Needless to say I was floored and honored. Not having any audio equipment of my own of course, I had to come up with some quick minute planning, contacted a friend of my wife and sent him the intro in record time. He just released it on his site and even though it sounds like I have a speech impediment, I can’t help but be pleased that I got to do it. This has been a very good month for a podcast fan indeed.

Below are some Pictures I took on the May 2nd event: