About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
Caleb and Katy McEwen, the artistic directors at Minneapolis’ legendary Brave New Workshop comedy theater and I discuss the challenges of running a comedy theater. The ongoing struggle to strike the balance between challenging material and filling seats. Additionally, Caleb’s definition of good improv feels an awful lot like a good podcast.
Listen to the Challenges of Comedy Theater at the Brave New Workshop [30 min]
On Tuesday, July 12th, I’ll be evangelizing podcasts, wikis, RSS, and weblogs as part of MN-ASIS’s “And Now for Something Completely Different” brain food sampler series.
Date & Time: 5:00 – 6:30 Tuesday July 12 (speaker starts at 5:30)
Place: Pad Thai 1659 Grand Ave just west of Macalester College
RSVP atreacy@ treacyinfo.com that you’ll be joining us
Cost: None
If you’ve been listening to the show through your web browser, your life just got easier. The latest version of Apple’s iTunes is out now and full support podcasts.
Here’s how Click Here to subscribe to the First Crack Podcast in Apple’s iTunes
and click ‘OK’
That’s it. Now you’ll automatically received each show immediately when it’s published.
If you just want to listen, and subscribe later, click here to listen to the First Crack Podcast in iTunes
The new iTunes 4.9 supporting podcasts is out today, it will do wonders for increasing the visibility of the most popular podcasts and radio station-produced podcasts. This is definitely the easiest way to subscribe to a podcast, whether browsing or manually. Until iTMS URL linking is functional, it’s a two step process to subscribe to a podcast. Still the easiest and simplest process.
Update: Podcaters, swap out the ‘http’ with ‘pcast’ in your feed URL and you’ve got iTunes 1-click subscription. Special thanks to Jason Ruby at the Delta Park Project for doing the legwork on this.
As expected, browsing the iTunes podcast directory is similar to browsing the iTunes audio book directory – after selecting a genre, the best way to navigate is using the ‘search’. This is works great for known things (my iTunes Library) – it’s far less useful for unknown things (all the podcasts in the world).
I’m migrating my audio-only podcasts to iTunes, the podcasts + weblog I enjoy are remaining in NetNewsWire. Here’s what I’ve seen thus far; The Gillmor Gang is available, but not the Gillmor Daily. This Week in Tech is available, though iTunes doesn’t know what to do with the torrent file. The First Crack podcast is in, though not the latest show (it shows up after subscribing) and the artwork is missing. Finally, unlike all the ipodders to date, iTunes doesn’t offer a way to export your podcast subscriptions in a way you can share them.
I’ve been so focused on client projects and podcasts, I didn’t know a new Batman was on it’s way until I listed to Elvis Mitchell’s interview with Christopher Nolan for KCRW’s the Treatment. In it, Nolan talks about how the entire story is about fear. It’s a good listen, and it’s what got me into the theater.
Before Batman Begins began, I sat through an advertisement for Sky High. A new Disney film about young superheros going through puberty. The acting was overly melodramatic, the lighting was overexposed, and the props were done by Little Tykes. Christopher Nolan’s Batman makes Tim Burton’s 1989 version – and the others – feel more like Sky High than Nolan’s tormented Dark Knight.
A few years back, Snickers had a tv commercial where a football player takes a hit and thinks he’s Batman. In the English version, the final line is, “Would you like to ride with Batman.” The German version ends, “Are you afraid of me?”
The difference between those 2 sentiments is the difference between all the previous iterations and Nolan’s Batman Begins.
The movie’s most successful aspects were the non-superhero scenes – the dialog and the character development. The manifestation of Gotham is superb – part Chicago, part New York, part comic book dystopia. I found the serious, non-melodramatic villians refreshing. On the flip side, the scene where Wayne gets the Batsuit and the Batmobile felt more stapled on than believable, more a means to quickly go through a checklist than deliberately advance the character.
I agree with peterme, the car chases are immediately forgettable. I also agree that Batman Begins is “not nearly as fun” (as Spider-man). The Batdance was fun, Jim Carey as the Riddler was fun, the Adam West’s campy TV series was fun. I didn’t see anything in Nolan’s retelling longing to be fun (any of Nolan’s other films).
After credits roll, I believe we are left with as Dave states, “the best superhero movie ever”.
A conversation with the Minneapolis improv group Five Man Job on the Minneapolis improv scene and the difference between the Who’s Line is It Anyway? and Del Close’s Harold flavor of improv.
You might want to know: there is some cursing in this episode.
Listen to Improv Comedy in Minneapolis with Five Man Job [32 min]
Seth Godin’s recent Shark Attack! post reminded me of the Bruce Schneier quote above. Schneier’s ITConversation’s interview is a fantastic discussion on risk and decision making.
His point and Seth’s are the same – it’s not the infrequent and spectacular events that will impact us the most. It’s the common and banal ones. The old frog-boiling myth comes to mind here.
Part of the issue is one of storytelling. Shark attacks, because of their infrequency, make good stories. Stories that spread quickly. Stories worth a couple of news reports and least one theatrical release. Unfortunately, the educational value (“how is my life better now that I know this?”) is proportionally inverse. As always, there are a couple exceptions.
Going back to Seth’s analogy, here in the upper Midwest, we do have a fair number of Deer Crossing signs on our back roads. I suspect a deer accident story wouldn’t be met with cries to blockoff the roadways.
To this point, musicians need to press bits of plastic (records, CDs) each time they want to share music with their fans. This means, enough music has to be ready to make pressing bits of plastic worth the cost. These bits of plastic are then shipped at an additional cost to stores where hopefully the fans, after hearing about the new bit of plastic via the marketing campaign, will purchase it. Passing little bits of money back to all intermediaries on the return trip to the artist.
I see two weak links in that process;
With a podcast, musicians can release whatever they’d like, whenever they’d like; demo tracks, rough tracks, experiments, final edits, interviews, conversations about the song writing process, anything their fans would enjoy. All of it delivered automatically to their biggest fans.
To access the podcast feed, fans pay up-front, or along the way, or at the end. Doesn’t matter. Passionate fans will pay for access to an empty RSS feed, thereby financing new work, while new fans pay for access to previous feeds, just as they do with previous albums today.
Faster publication and distribution helps musicians refine their work more quickly and gives fans a sense of being involved in the creation process. Two big wins.
What do fans lose when RSS feeds replace CDs? Aside from the physical artifact and the costs of designing, creating, moving, and storing the physical artifact? Very little. Cover art and credits are in the ID3 tags and the feed itself.
Record highs today in Minnesota when I pulled over for an en route police car complete with lights and sirens. As I stopped, the tire jumped the curb. I didn’t think anything of it until I couldn’t move after the squad car passed me.
Now, I’m stranded yards from one of the busiest intersections in Minneapolis on the hottest day yet this year with a dead front passenger wheel. Completely unresponsive to the steering wheel.
After calling for a tow truck (“all my guys are pretty busy right now”) and pondering my next move, a mechanic from the near by semi-truck repair shop stops by.
“Hi, I’m Paul. It looks like you popped a tie rod end. I think I can pop it back into place.”
He came back with a hammer and got the wheel back on. Then, he blocked traffic as I slowly backed up into his parking lot.
After we’re safely out of traffic Paul continues, “if you can pick up a right tie rod end by 3:30, I could probably install it for you.”
Jen picks me up, we run over to a car parts shop, pick up the part and give Paul my keys, phone number, and the new tie rod end.
A couple hours later, Paul calls and I ask him what I owe him.
“Whatever you’d like.”
When we exchange car key for check, he shrugs, “the Lord told me to fix your car.”
Thank you Lord and thank you St. Paul.