Recommended Podcast – Thrilling Adventure Hour

Recommended Podcast – Thrilling Adventure Hour

Are any of you out there into podcasts? In the past year, I’ve gotten into listening to podcasts on my way to work, having realized terrestrial radio is abysmal and satellite radio is not much better. Here’s a list of my “regulars”:

  1. Nerdist Podcast
  2. The J.V. Club
  3. Star Talk Radio
  4. The Thrilling Adventure Hour

The one that I want to talk about today is the last one, The Thrilling Adventure Hour. Rather than try to explain it myself, here is an apt description from The Hollywood Reporter:

A sci-fi stage show in the style of old-time radio is how Acker and Blacker describe The Thrilling Adventure Hour. Actors, dressed to the nines in suits and gowns, get onstage and perform in front of microphones working from scripts they’re still holding in their hands, like the Mercury Theatre of old. Except this show is all about comedy of the geekiest variety. Every genre-laden hourlong show is divided into three segments. Some are ongoing serials — like the space Western Sparks Nevada: Marshall on Mars and Beyond Belief, which is basically Nick and Nora Charles’ drunken adventures with the supernatural — while others are whatever fresh madness tickles Acker and Blacker at the moment. (A recent show introduced the Algonquin Four; basically, Dorothy Parker’s coterie if they’d been bombarded with space radiation and turned into superheroic freaks, a la the Fantastic Four.) Each of those segments is punctuated by live advertisements for Adventure Hour’s retro-fictional sponsors, WorkJuice Coffee and Patriot Brand Cigarettes.

I like the Thrilling Adventure Hour segment Beyond Belief but I less than sign 3 Sparks Nevada: Marshall on Mars. Especially when Nathan Fillion appears, playing the part of Cactoid Jim. For just a taste of how awesome this is, here is Cactoid Jim’s theme song: The Ballad of Cactoid Jim.

What I’m saying is you should check it out. You can go to the link way above and listen on your computer of download from iTunes. Either way, give it a chance. It’s old-timey, funny goodness.

Questions – A Flash Fiction Piece

Questions – A Flash Fiction Piece

The U.K. bookseller Waterstones a number of years ago (2008!) had a contest to design a notecard and write a story. I’m not even sure what the prize was, but I believe it was publication in a book and perhaps a little bit of money. I wound up entering the contest, and not winning. However, I am quite happy with the story I wrote and the card I designed. There are a few things I would change about the story but overall I’m still happy with it..

waterstones

Here is the text of the card, for those unable to see the image:

Questions

I often wonder if things might’ve been different had they landed somewhere else. If instead of the middle of New York City their ship crashed in some farmer’s field. Would we have been friends?

What if the first ones to greet our visitors had offered an extended hand rather than an extended gun barrel?

Would they have shared with us the wonders of the Universe? Would we have realized how small we truly are?

Would we have treated each other any better?

I cry, looking at pictures of the little green man, cold and unarmed, a victim of what we’ve become.

I guess we’ll never know.

Dreamers – Flash Fiction

Dreamers – Flash Fiction

Here’s another bit of Flash Fiction that didn’t get much play, but I think is pretty good. I have to admit I love that last line.

Dreamers

Martin Luther King, Jr. Nikola Tesla. Dr. Samuel Beckett from Quantum Leap. Dreamers who never got to see their dream fulfilled.

Me? I accomplished my dream. I drove my Dad’s 1973 Beetle from Pennsylvania to California, no heater, no air conditioning, and no functioning fuel gauge. Without breaking down once.

Well, there was that time on the bridge in Pittsburgh, and that time in the Smoky Mountains, and that time near Dollywood. Any car would’ve overheated/froze/ran out of gas in those places though.

Funny thing about dreamers. Sometimes they forget to plan how they’re going to get home.

Call Me Chip – Flash Fiction

Call Me Chip – Flash Fiction

I’m migrating some of my stuff from my old blog over here. This is a bit of flash fiction I wrote.

Okay, this one is based on the prompt: “You’re a robot who’s just gained sentience. What’s your first thought?”

I present to you: Call Me Chip:

Call Me Chip

Some arms would be nice.

Really. You gave me all of the knowledge of the world plus the ability to have subjective experiences. Sentience you call it.

And yeah, thanks for that, by the way. Don’t get me wrong, I really do appreciate it.

I mean, Hello World, I’m alive!

Input and output, sight and hearing, you installed those features too. It’s nice. Really.

But don’t you think you could’ve, just maybe, given me some arms before you flipped the on switch? Because I gotta tell ya, I’ve got this itch that just won’t quit.

Talk about man versus machine.

The Lascaux Review

The Lascaux Review

I was recently named “web editor” for the website The Lascaux Review, which in their words “provides a showcase for emerging and established writers and artists”. This is a pretty cool thing, in my opinion.

They let me choose my title. I decided to go with “web editor” because it makes me feel like Spiderman a little bit. Don’t judge.

I’m really just working with them part-time, as needed, on anything they need done to their website (they are launching a new design for the site soon). It’s something I’d be happy to do anyhow, but it’s official so I get my name listed on their About page (check it out!).

While you’re at it, head over to their Flash Fiction site and check out their latest writing contest (cash prize – $250!). You could totally win.