As you know from reading all of my reviews, I celebrate a few, crucial things about podcasts:
You can listen to them as you please, at your own pace and often while doing other, menial tasks (thereby making the task enjoyable).
You can super-easily skip content you dislike, and replay content you do like.
Podcasts are easy to get on lots of different mediums.
Podcasts are free.
That last one? Free is a big thing. You can, and should, go on to support your favorite podcasts monetarily, but free is amazing when you want to sample 20 different podcasts to find the 4 that you will enjoy for years.
But right now, I'mma tell you something. Something that no one on the Internet wants to hear.
Sometimes? Sometimes you have to buy some stuff. Which leads me to Kickstarted funded podcasts.
Kickstarter funded podcasts were just brought to my attention by Penny Arcade. They're bringing their excellent podcast back at a pay-as-you-choose price, and you can get in on it early with their Kickstarter for Downloadable Content. I've already reviewed the existing episodes, and they're bringing it back! Hooray! I love this podcast and will gladly donate to get it back and get PA content back in my ears.
But did you know that there are lots of podcasts that you can support on Kickstarter? I didn't, and I review the damn things!
There are lots of people out there who are asking for your help to create podcasts. I highly recommend that you go shop around and see if anything catches your fancy. Your donation could help fuel the next #1 iTunes podcast! Or you could just help a few people make something that you will enjoy. Check it out!
As you know, I like to use this blog as a way to express my enjoyment of things, mainly podcasts, as a way of hopefully getting other people to enjoy those podcasts.
This is not a post about a podcast. In fact, it is a post about a thing that is still being made! Like a tectonic plate beneath your feet it is shifting, moving, becoming something awesome like a mountain or the Mariana Trench. This is a post about a documentary called STRIPPED. It is about comics, it looks like it is going to be awesome, and it needs your help.
STRIPPED is a love-letter to comic strips. It brings together the
world’s best cartoonists to talk about the art form they love, and what
happens to it as newsprint fades away. Over 90 interviews were
conducted, including the first-ever audio interview with Bill Watterson (Calvin & Hobbes), as well as Jim Davis (Garfield), Cathy Guisewite (Cathy), Mort Walker (Beetle Bailey), Mike & Jerry (Penny Arcade), Matt Inman (The Oatmeal), Jeff Keane (The Family Circus), Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics), Lynn Johnston (FBOFW), Zach Weiner (SMBC), Scott Kurtz (PvP), Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), Richard Thompson (Cul de Sac), Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), Stephan Pastis (Pearls Before Swine), Bill Amend (Foxtrot), Kate Beaton
(Hark! A Vagrant) and more. STRIPPED sits down with these creators to
talk about how cartooning works, why it's so loved, and how they're
navigating this dicey period between print and digital options...when
neither path works perfectly.
Does that whet your interest? How about a trailer:
I've been reading comics since I achieved literacy. I would read my Mom's Bloom County collections before I understood the jokes and the funny pages were the only part of the Sunday comic I cared about. Now I have over a dozen webcomics that I currently read. When I'm not reading webcomics, I hang out at a comic book store (which is a different thing than strip-format comics, yes, but let me have the connection).
Comics are rad, and learning about the history of comics via a documentary made by people intensely passionate about comics is going to be beyond-rad. Meet the dudes at the helm of this creation:
- Fred Schroeder is a twice-Sundance-nominated film-maker. His IMDB credits can be seen here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0775480/ - Dave Kellett is a twice-Eisner-nominated cartoonist. His strips can be seen here: http://www.sheldoncomics.com and here: http://www.drivecomic.com - Sequential Films is their LA-based film company, which sounds hoity-toity but really it’s just two dudes in a garage.
The STRIPPED documentary is nearing completion, but Schroeder and Kellet are reaching for the stars with licensed media that pushes past their current funding. If this catches your interest, you still have time to get in on the STRIPPED Kickstarter and make this thing even better!
THEY HAVE AN INTERVIEW WITH BILL WATTERSON HOW COULD YOU NOT BE INTO THAT????????!?!?!?!?
Check out the Kickstarter and throw in ya cash if it moves you. As always, thanks for reading.
Let's take a bold step away from podcasts for a moment. I know, I'm as scared as you are.
Hold me, reader!
Wash your hands first, though, hygiene is critical in inter-Internet-personal relationships.
Sometimes even I don't listen to podcasts! Sometimes I do other things! Especially when I'm a dumb ass and forget both sets of headphones at work. That's when I'm forced to turn to other forms of entertainment. Like all them moving pictures on the YouTubes! There sure are a lot of them. Allow me to show you one that I like in particular, won't you?
For your consideration, I offer the board game stylings of TableTop.
My major goal behind this site and all of my podcast reviews is to show other people things that I enjoy, in the hopes that they will enjoy them as well. If I were a dry cleaner or a car lot, that would be the thing engraved on the elegant "Mission Statement" plaque hung up in the front lobby. I want to promote the works of creative people who do cool things that are also awesome and fun. Every once and a while I might step outside of podcasts to help give a signal boost to a thing I like.
And of course, I also make sure to promote things that everybody and their mother already know about. Like TableTop.
Wil Wheaton, beloved nerd who is in pretty much every damnthing relating togeek pop culture, is your Tabletop host. He provides a setting in which he can gather friends to play board games, card games, and anything that can be played on a tabletop (get it!?) together. While Wheaton is a well practiced gamer, most of the guests on the show are what the youngins' refer to as "newbies". The play session is recorded, and hilarity ensues.
Content Rating: Clean! Bad words are bleeped. Might be some innuendo if that knots your delicate panties.
This show provides a great way for those interested in board games beyond the worn copy of Monopoly in their closet to see how a board game is played, and whether or not they'd be interested in purchasing it for their own collection. The rules of each game are explained so that viewers can pick up the basics and their are some nice post-production effects to help you see where and why players do what they do.
TableTop has a great feel to it as you watch. Wheaton is delighted to introduce people to new games and his guests are raring for some friendly competition. Most of the guests are celebrities of varying recognition and are prepared to be aesthetically pleasing to your senses.
Unintentionally Good Part: How the set pieces change in the background to thematically match whatever game is being played.
Unintentionally Bad Part: I am not there playing games with Wil Wheaton. Boo.
If you play table top games, if you enjoy delightful people playing board games while you watch, or if you never realized that there were board games beyond Snakes and Ladders and that Ouija board you hid under your bed from your parents, this show is for you. I highly recommend it and think you should go check it out!
The Internet: never have there been so many crystal clear springs set next to so many filth-ridden pools of the spit poured out of those nasty cups people who chew dip carry around with them in a pathetic attempt to disguise the fact that they're spitting in the produce section of the grocery store. For every website that attempts to light the beacon of knowledge, humor, or beauty there are about 23 that are not only producing content that is insipid, wrong, or flat-out dangerous.
Luckily for us, a lot of those sites are also hilarious. But who has the time or mental fortitude to pluck out the choice, laughable nuggets from amidst the sprawling sewers of the Webatrons?
These guys. Get to know The F Plus. Since 2009 (dawn of the Internet, I believe) these brave souls have willingly plunged into the dumbest, foulest Internet forums known to mankind to retrieve humorous posts and display them to you, the listener, via dramatic reading. There will be voices, there will be laughter, and there will be things that once heard, cannot be unheard.
Hey, you're cool, right? Of course you are, just look at you, brimming with coolness (I like that shirt, good color on you).
So that means you like cool things, right? Naturally. Your instinctive good tastes lead you to coolness like a lightning bolt to a tragically unconcerned golfer.
Well it just so happens that I have a cool thing that you should take a look at. It's not really my cool thing, but it was made by cool people who subsequently want to share their coolness with other cool people.
Like you.
It's a documentary (hang on, I'm getting to the cool part) about comics. Trust me on this one.
Check out their cool video, which is also totally sweet:
Those cool people made the documentary and now it is up to cool people like me and you (you are cool, right?) to help them get the money they need to properly finish it and make it the epitome of cool. We're not talking star-swipes left here, kids. This documentary will be so cool, you'll be able to take your DVD of it (which you can get when you back this project with $25 or more) tap it on a broken jukebox and make it work.
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