The You Look Nice Today Writer’s Retreat is located in the bristly pine hillocks just west of Coalinga, CA, accessible via Interstate 5 or the Pook County Community Airfield. Men and women whose applications have been approved (and checks cleared) are welcome to use the retreat and its 200-acre arboretum for reflection, meditation, and vigorous masturbation.

Hernes, the historic mansion where we serve supper and hold readings, towers over the cottages that dot the rest of the property. It was originally built to house a hot spring spa whose radium-based treatments drew convalescents from as far away as Kettleman City. The spa proved too costly—and too carcinogenic—to maintain, and the owners abandoned the property in 1911. We took over the place in 2005, and have kept the fire lit ever since. Come any evening between May and September and you’re sure to find a pot of Adam’s famous beluga lentil stew a-boil on the range.

A near-certain bout with cancer is a small price to pay for the quiet, and the camaraderie, of this special place.  read more »

We learned that The Smoking Gun was about to publish this, so we decided to get it out there first. Someone, at some venue where we’ve performed in the past, got a hold of our performance contract’s “rider”: the addendum that spells out how we’d like the dressing room to be set up, etc.

Background: together with our podcast pals Jordan, Jesse Go!, we occasionally perform live as the Monsters of Podcasting. In fact we’ve got two shows coming up: one in Seattle on April 23 and one in Portland, OR on April 26.

We love Jordan and Jesse. We think their show is fabulous. Without them there certainly would be no Monsters of Podcasting. Are they demanding? Sure. Unreasonably so? OK, maybe sometimes—see the rider. But we love them anyway.

They’ll be criticized, maybe even vilified, for the contents of this document. But you know what? We’ll stand by them. Well, near them. Kind of close-ish. The same room. Probably.  read more »

Making college affordable, restful, and culturally relevant; the cupping comforts of secondary scholarship; Adam becomes a costumed mascot and buys a new koch; how many greeting cards does it take to change (or not change) Los Altos?; Playing Marco Polo with immigrant labor; sweet corn, fresh from the tank; Leopold Bloom, Herman Blume, and the subtler hermeneutics of dysentery; abrupt Chinese c*nsorship; Merlin gets talk-blocked by a blogless Belizean zookeeper; Kraftwerk speak through a vocoder about “Das Futur”; the suspicious motions of Ad Hoc Tai Chi; still no cream for senioritis; and Scott offers East Arcadia State’s surviving TAs an urgent drum solo.

Photo Credit: The Lion sleeps tonight by law_keven (cc by-sa)

Merlin: Boy Scout
Scott: Boy Scout
Adam: YMCA Indian Guide

Listen as we conduct our exclusive pro gift-giving super-session TED Talk master class webinar. Over $600 in essential GiftWisdom™ is yours for FREE. Topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Virtual presents
2. Secret Santa? Secret Sucker!
3. 1978
4. Holiday photography essentials
5. Lessons from Guantanamo Bay
6. Cinco de Nada
7. A members-only sponsorship opportunity

As a special bonus, Adam reveals his secret “Thought That Counts” method: learn how to give gifts without actually giving them!

But wait, you say, I’ve already completed my Christmas shopping. Heck, I’ve even given out all the presents already! Whatever, busybody. Luckily, these Power Tip Essentials are just as relevant for anniversaries, birthdays, and any other holiday where gifts are expected.  read more »

Most people assume that silent films were silent for technological reasons—that there wasn’t a way to capture and reproduce sound along with the moving image in those classic early films.

That’s a lie: the technology was never a big deal. Directors at the time simply chose, for aesthetic reasons, to embrace the purity of silence.

When the Silent Film Institute* asked us to create something inspired by the era of silent films, we knew we had to honor the early foley artists, those brave sound effects engineers who chose silence over noise.

Three of our best pals are foley artists, and by a fantastic coincidence, they’re working right now on a project we simply had to document.

We’ll let Evan, Lanolin, and Tiborg tell you the rest of the story.

The video also is available in a much prettier HD version.  read more »

Many have asked, so here is the full story:

Our opening theme music is a track called “Pony Gallop (Morning Surprise),” by the Five Senses. They were a mostly-ukulele jam band out of Montréal, famous for their 4 hour sitar/uke trance sessions and subsequent pancake breakfasts. Sadly, their CD’s were deemed “obscene” by US Customs (a clerical error, one must assume), and all copies were destroyed at the border. Worse, the band had forgotten to hold on to the original recordings. 

The Five Senses finally disbanded when their entire tenor uke section disappeared while berrying in Greenland. Our possession of one tiny fragment of one song is pure luck: Merlin was working at the incinerator where the ill-fated CD’s were sent to be destroyed. He rescued one half-melted disc from the flames, and spent the next year piecing together the 1’s and 0’s—the digital scraps of the once-proud ukelele band’s magnum opus.  read more »

1930’s wandering troubadour Trinket Pills (? - 1939) scored a brief hit on the Wichita charts with his plaintive Ballad of Joey Nickelpuss:

Th’ evil alley boys taunted him,
But ole’ Young Joe made his way.
Terrible crash of bowlin’ pins
Th’ sound of a long long day.

Rags to riches to rags it went,
Th’ boy would rage and cuss.
“Mama ain’t mama for me no more,”
Spit poor little Joey Nickelpuss.

We’re bringing back ‘ole Young Joey Nickelpuss. A generation of children need a hero for these lean times.  read more »

We’re basking for one more moment in the afterglow of the past three weeks. YLNT VSOP was pure joy.

Future VSOP (YLNT + Hodgman + Coulton) scheduled appearances:

1. Look for the five of us in paper hats, tending the falcons, at the 2009 Minnesota State Fair.
2. We’ll be teaching a course entitled “Bacon and Bicycles: Critical Perspectives on Quicksilver” at Deep Springs College in 2010.
3. In December 2011, we hope to sell our predecorated miniature Christmas trees on the corner of 22nd & 9th. Look for the white van.

The VSOP Episodes

I: Selfish Express
II: Faux Tog
III: Faire du camping

Related Ephemera

Session photographs by Ryan Carver
“Selfish Express” production journal
MN State Fair booth poll

Our Guests

John Hodgman (buy his book here)
Jonathan Coulton (buy his poems set to music here)
 read more »

If “penultimate” meant “last,” this would be the penultimate episode of our VSOP series. Thanks again to John Hodgman, Jonathan Coulton, and the sturdy padlocks on the studio doors that prevented their escape.

This episode will be more interesting than average for: farmers, Québécoises, basket weavers, camp counselors, small business owners, and a capella aficionados.

This episode will be less interesting than average for: dancers, hair stylists, carnies, Renaissance buffs, vegans, and criminals.  read more »

We’re not very good with money. Our accountants gnash their teeth as each promising opportunity disintegrates into a costly failure. That’s why we’re really excited about the booth we’ve been offered at the 2009 Minnesota State Fair. Anyone who’s ever been to a fair knows that you can sell anything to a chunky yokel holding his toddler on a leash. Beer mirror? Check. Giant stuffed Speedy Gonazalez? Check. No seriously, check our basement. It’s full of that crap.

In Parts I and II of our VSOP series with John Hodgman and Jonathan Coulton, we asked them to help us come up with a guaranteed moneymaker, something that none of the other booths at the fair would think of. They had some really great ideas. In fact, they had too many great ideas. We’re in love with all of them, so we need you to help us choose.  read more »

YLNT VSOP, Part II! The drugs* have kicked in, and we have reached cruising altitude. Stay tuned for the final, gripping conclusion to the VSOP series next week. Or so.

A partial list of works referenced in this episode, and their creators:

• “Colonel Heimlich Grows a Beard” (Graham Greene)
• Mall, Mini-Mall, Strip Mall (M.C. Escher)
• Shut Up, Hick! (George Carlin)
• LEGO Group v. Linden (U.S. Supreme Court)
• Carnival Displacement (Damien Hirst)
• Dream of an Undiscovered Room (René Magritte)
• Resuscitation Situation (Jamiroquai)

* Imodium, Dermarest  read more »

We’re flattered when listeners tell us how “natural” or “off-the-cuff” we sound. Dozens of men and women on our crew toil for weeks to achieve the ralaxed, conversational tone that characterizes our show. If they’ve done their jobs well, even the close listener should be fooled into thinking we don’t do any preparation at all.

But with so many moving parts, things don’t always go smoothly. Here’s a peek at the production journal for our most recent episode, “Selfish Express”:

Oct 7: With just a month before we’re set to record, Adam spills Jamba Juice on the only copy of the script, rendering it illegible. Back to square one.  read more »