On the recent Remastered NiM Movie Minis

 

I just realized that people probably don't understand what these so-called 'Remastered' podcast episodes really are, they might think "I've already listened to these episodes long ago." and that would be wrong. THESE ARE NEW EPISODES -- the conversations we recorded long ago for the NiM Holiday Packs (The NiM Movie Mini's were originally available to Listeners who donated to the show and they would receive an email response with a link to the downloads) for 2011 and 2012 and they were rushed, hurried, whatever you want to call it to meet a deadline that landed before Christmas. The recordings didn't sound great, Mics were too hot or too low and that always bothered me. 

I was proud of our conversations about these films but the final product while a lot of work in a short amount of time were disappointing to me at the time but I had to go with it. NOW all of these years later when I've been podcasting less and less, thinking back on what was it about podcasting that I found rewarding, what brought me joy? It wasn't just the conversations, the banter, it was the working on these projects, putting ideas and being creative with clips and music and piecing together something that brought a smile to my face and hopefully someone else's. Things I've never enjoyed about podcasting has been the loneliness after an episode has been completed and released, that lack of conversation, that lack of knowledge if someone truly enjoyed it. We live in an age of social media and instant gratification and maybe someone did listen to something I made but they've listened and moved on, they don't realize I wanted something from them. I wanted a connection, sure a 'like' is nice but it also hurts when there's one or none on an episode you've worked weeks on. I want to know that you enjoyed the episode, did you laugh, did that clip make you smile? When I went back and listened to these old NiM Movie minis I couldn't get over the fact that they sounded terrible, there was noise under the recording that I tried to hide by putting constant music in the background. I found it un-listenable but I did enjoy the conversation. 

 Then I thought, 'Hey, I'm not working on anything right now, why don't I go back, remove the noise and redo those episodes just like I would now, like I did with that Ghostbusters 2 Movie Mini? (the episode that broke me by the way, zero response -- it hurts, people.) and I learned a lot making that episode (why not throw in old interview clips of people talking about making the movie, throw in references that Will and I made to other films and products in said films?). SO I went back and tried to fix the Back to the Future episode, my mic was way too hot but I got rid of the noise, I edited it again, took my time and I'm pretty happy with the episode and damn proud of that intro. From Goonies to Gremlins and Robocop and Lethal Weapon and finally Die Hard I feel like I've learned so much more than I knew back in 2011. I wish I could go back and do BTTF again with the knowledge and Ideas I've gained in just four weeks lol but I won't. It's done, I'm not freaking George Lucas. 

So anyway, I've included screenshots of the work that went into these episodes, the clips, the music and the editing software I use. I also use Audacity for a lot of stuff like fade-ins and fade-outs on music and clips and removing noise -- it's very handy. I would like to thank William Laughner My Bud and Co-host for buying the podcast editing software called 'Propaganda' in the year 2005 it's what I've used to make every single podcast and I don't think I could have done the things I've done on audacity alone. Thank you, sir for all of the fantastic conversations. Going back to these episodes has truly been like traveling in a time machine and whenever I miss my friend I can go back and listen to these episodes and laugh with those two guys from the past and I hope you laughed too. My work is not done, I've got a few more episodes to do and when they're done maybe then my work will be done. I don't know... Maybe there are more films to talk about. 

 

So when you look at those screenshots I want you to notice all of those little black dots in the software, those are clips added -- so many. I get a kick out of it when it's all done. A lot of love and nostalgia and joy went into these remasters and I hope that you enjoy them and just remember They are Brand New! You've never heard them before and maybe you will hear something you never heard in those old original episodes like competence in editing LOL. Also, I'll be here to talk about any and all of the episodes if you want. One more thing, when you work on one of these episodes you find that you have the film and music from the film, the dialogue stuck in your head for weeks and the only way to get them out is to start work on an entire new episode. To go from Marty's voice to Chunk's voice to laughing Gremlins and then Clarence Boddicker -- I think I'm going a little insane lol. Okay, that's it for now, enjoy!

 

 

Finally here's my screenshot of all of the work that went into the Die Hard episode, so many clips, so much editing. 

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Father's Footsteps

I've seen The Road Warrior or Mad Max 2 so many times I've lost count, it could be hundreds -- I just don't know. Yesterday it was on one of the HBO channels and the movie had already started but I didn't care so I turned it on in the background and of course I found myself watching it once again. It's one of my favorite films of all time. This time was interesting though, I've watched the film enough times that I know it by heart but I noticed something I haven't paid attention to for a long time if ever. It's when Max returns to the Gas Tribe's compound with the precious Big Rig Truck they will need to escape from Lord Humungus and his Marauders. It's a really intense scene and Max has given these people hope for the first time in what is probably a very long time.

Max walks with confidence his Dog along side of him and not far behind is The Feral Kid. This child cannot speak most likely because no one has had time to teach him how because they are too busy fighting every single day for their lives. This is what I noticed -- As the Feral Kid follows Max, the Kid is looking down at Max's feet trying to match Max's footsteps. The Kid follows Max's stride mimicking him and I smiled. I thought it was a very nice detail -- How did I not notice this before?

The Feral Kid looks up to Max, The Road Warrior, he wants to walk in his footsteps and all that and BOOM IT HIT ME. I remembered the scene in the original Mad Max film, there's a moment when Max and his wife Jesse are laying outside talking.

Max talks about his Father:

"When I was a kid...

...me and my father used to go for long walks I remember staring down at his shoes.

They were special shoes, brown.

And he always kept them really shiny.

He was tall, and he used to take long strides.

And there I'd be right alongside him...

...just trying to keep up with him.

I don't think he ever knew how proud I felt of him.

Or how good it felt just to be there alongside him..."

Max disappears for a moment, thinking about his Father. The man he looked up to, the man that probably instilled in Max the drive he now has to survive and what also causes Max to eventually do the right thing. Max may seem selfish at first but he always ends up helping others. So here's The Feral Kid -- We have no idea if he had a Father or where he even came from. He's staring down at Max's feet trying to match Max's stride and one day he grows up to become the leader of the Great Northern Tribe as we're told by the closing narration. Perhaps when he saw Max, this lone warrior, this last hero in a world of scavengers and human trash he found inspiration to be more than just a man in a wasteland he found the inspiration to be a leader and help others along.

I don't know, but it's cool that a movie I've watched countless times made me think and see something new. God, I love George Miller and I love this film.



*Originally written in a Facebook Post in the Entertainment Landfill Fan Club Group Page Sep 9th, 2017*

Green

Just don't leave me alone, he thought. Just don't leave me waiting here for you to return. Don't make me sit and wonder when you're coming back. Don't make me be the one that does all of the hand wrenching, all of the nail biting and nervous breathing. Don't make me, you can't make me. But there he was sitting in an empty room waiting for her to return. How many times had he tried to prevent this very situation. The situation of caring. Heart beating for someone else. Who can know, how can anyone know that every time your heart beats for someone else, their's beats for yours? There is no way of knowing. You have to go on faith or the actions of that other person. You can't read minds can you? Of course you can't, some people can read body language but Jack wasn't someone that could do that.

"You're coming back, right?" He had said half-joking but with an air of seriousness. Was she indeed coming back? How many times had he pushed the worry back and back further into his mind? He would worry and then talk himself out of the worry. He would pick up the game controller and start playing and let the hours pass by. By the time he looked up at the clock he would realize that he had wasted the entire day. He had accomplished nothing. He would turn off the console in disgust and make a half-hearted effort in cleaning up the apartment. The trash would be easy, do that. He would run around collecting all of the garbage from each room adding it to one bigger trash bag. He would run it outside to the dumpster and come back in and look around. Vacuum, that will be easy. He would vacuum for five minutes, not even picking up shoes or pants off the floor, he would go around them. There, that's done. Wipe the counters. A few quick wipes. There, that's good. It looked like he made an effort.

The problem is that it doesn't occur to him until he is in a panic. When he is at ease he is too much at ease where something like effort is too much effort. He'd rather screw around accomplishing nothing until there are so few minutes left in the day he has to cram it all in, all the cleaning in a last ditch effort of sweat. When she would come home the room had the illusion that it had been cleaned, that he had been trying hard all day long to make the place nice for them. In reality he didn't give a shit. Does that mean if he was alone he would live in filth? He didn't know, that's why he needed her to always return.

Do not leave me alone. He needed just enough to live each day when he was alone. He needed about ten dollars a day. He could live off of that. A few donuts here and a few sandwiches there. He could live on cans of chili and ravioli. He had done it before but he didn't want to do that again. To sit still in that place, to not do anything but feel air on the hair of his arms. He could do that. He could be nothing but a tree. He could blow in the wind. Where was the effort in that? Did a tree have to think about creating oxygen or did it help the world just by being? Why couldn't he do that? If he were just to be, to just stand there and sway in the wind, he would be a lunatic. A loser with no hope for any future of any kind. Didn't he want to accomplish things? Of course he did. He just didn't know how.

How do you accomplish things? Is it as simple as doing them?There were times in the past when he stood and breathed the air outside and the way things felt, the slight chill made him think about his childhood, a different time and a different place. If only he could go there now. When he was a child he could walk a few miles up the road and find different places he could drift to. He could play games at an arcade with the few quarters he had in his pocket. He could buy ice cream at a local drug store for thirty five cents. He could do whatever he wanted. He chose that day to sit on the corner and watch the cars go by. A purple bug, a red sports car, a white van. He was only existing in this place and watching it happen. Watching it pass him by.

"It's because it isn't real." He says to no one. "Wasn't real." This place is an illusion meant to make him feel alive.

To be a tree, leaning and green.

The History of NiM Part One

There are times when I take a moment to reflect back on just how many years that I have been podcasting with my friends Bill and Stephen. I also reflect on people that I have met because of the show who I could now call friends. There are many. Sure, there are times that I get bummed. There's some kind of strange longing for more listeners, more numbers. More feedback. I mean what is it that I want? Do I want a hundred people telling me how much they love the show? I don't think so. I have thought long and hard about this and I think what I crave is laughter. I want to hear the laughter. I love hearing the laughter.

Now, I'm not a Stand-Up Comedian and I don't plan on being one. Perhaps I chose the wrong medium to express myself as podcasts don't seem to get the attention that I want or at least the one I do does not. We have gotten feedback on the show, we have people that have sent us great voicemails and I eat it up. I love when people tell me what made them laugh on the show. I cherish it like a warm bowl of soup filling up my hungry tummy. What? C'mon Jason can't you do better symbolism than that? Not at the moment. Just keep rollin'.

There are times when I get really nostalgic for the old days of the show, I listen to how much freaking energy I had. I did clip shows, where we on the show encountered Aliens and Zombies and even Zombie Snakes on a Train. We even encountered the Cloverfield Monster. There's a history there and I look back on the body of work that we have accumulated and I am proud. Look at that archive. It does make me a proud papa. I have no idea if people are listening to those old episodes but they are there and I admit that every once in awhile I will go back and look at all of the episodes in one place and think about all of those hours and all of those laughs that we had during those shows.

When the show first started my Sister Vanessa did the show with us and then much later my Sister Laura joined us on the show for a short time. I wanted Vanessa on the show so badly at first to relive childhood memories of times we would hit record on our old cassette recorder and improv some silly show like Angus Scrimm hosting Star Search or a radio call-in show where I would pretend to be different people calling in to annoy the radio host Vanessa. We had a lot of fun times doing that but I soon realized that the only people that thought those recordings were funny were Jason and Vanessa. When we started the podcast it was hard to achieve that same magic again. There were times when we did and I'm grateful for it but there were also times where it became a lot of work so it was better to move on. There's a reason people say you should never work with family. Someone says that right? They should if they don't. I kid I kid. I love my sister but I don't think that we were ever on the same page of the show I wanted and what She wanted.

I dubbed Stephen 'The Pop Culture Zealot' and he has always been there for the show whenever I have asked him unless there was a Skinny Puppy concert in town. Stephen has always been a great friend and he's also been my longest running friend in my life. He's just a genuinely good person who is honest and can make me laugh. I have known Stephen since I was 19 years old. He was the Frame Shop Manager when I walked in. I was just out of High school and I had no professional demeanor in any way. I was a young punk who needed money for fast food and video games. I had no knowledge of how to save money or how to pay my bills. I was an idiot jack ass that lived in a protective shell. I was very introverted when I met Stephen. It took some time but over the few months that I worked there I started to open up and realized that Stephen and I shared similar silly senses of humor. We made a game of making each other laugh and created some fun ways to get through the days in that frame shop. Good times.

When my Wife and I finally bought our first house my dream was to create my own Home Theater. I had that dream for a long time and it's something that I have never achieved. I do have a cool Plasma TV though. One thing that I must have learned long ago as a child was how to window shop. I used to collect catalogs and stare at the toy sections. I would save pictures of whatever toys I wanted and that became pictures of Home Theaters when I was older. Things that I wanted. One place where I would look at those things was the Home Theater Forum. I would peruse the threads of people who had way more money than I, purchasing high end toys that I could never own. It was there that I found a thread about a new MMO game. A Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game called Star Wars Galaxies. I became fascinated with the thread on the HTF where members of the forum described their adventures. Now at the time my wife had just shelled out a lot of money for our first bonafide Dell computer. The PC we had before I had purchased from Stephen's neighbor for $50. It was a POS starter computer, we're talking days of AOL here people and dial-up. But with our new home Heather wanted a new PC so we got one with a fancy flat LCD screen and it had a whopping 100gb harddrive with 512mb of Ram!!! Wow, now that's a monster computer right there, so naturally I wanted a game to play on this new rig and Star Wars Galaxies was the perfect game to try out.

I bought the game one day and started playing, there was a steep learning curve but I quickly learned in those types of games the best thing to do is quickly make friends that can help you out, tell you how to play the game, where the best places are etc. I joined the Home Theater Forum group in the game, joined their same server and met Grady. Grady would eventually be Mulberry Bill. We had a great time in the game, killing Gungans and Tusken Raiders. We soon began talking movies and tv shows while we played and realized that we shared mutual loves of the same things. Eventually we got on a program called Team-speak where you can talk in-game with headsets to your friends and soon Bill and I were talking everyday. If we would have recorded these early conversations we could have created a podcast. We talked about current films and tv shows and had a great time making fun of stuff. We became fast friends. It's hard to get the timeline exactly right buy I know that my wife became pregnant not long after this and I knew I had Nine Months of goofing off to do. I had to get my shit together, my life was going to change very soon. After my daughter was born I played less and less but I still talked to Bill on MSN Chat, remember that? It doesn't exist anymore. When you are a stay at home Dad you find different things to entertain you while  you do other things, mostly I found things to listen to. This is when I discovered my first podcast.

Leo Laporte and the Screen Savers crew had all moved on to other things when G4 bought Tech Tv. Leo started up this new thing called a Podcast. It was like a radio show that you could subscribe to and download. You could subscribe on iTunes and it would downloaded right to your iPod. Wow, how nifty. I knew as soon as I heard the first episode of This Week in Tech that I had to create my own podcast. One thing that I failed to mention before was that in my years at the Frame Shop, long after Stephen had left, I found a Sports Radio Station called 1310 The Ticket. I brought my own portable Radio to work and had The Ticket on every moment I was there. Now, I had listened to Howard Stern a lot years earlier. I loved waking up early and listening when he was played on local radio and then I would fall back to sleep. I loved the idea of a radio show. I knew that I wanted to do a radio show. Just like Howard -- meaning I wanted to do a long form talk show. The Ticket played lots of Drops just like Fred did on Howard -- drops were sound clips that they would play usually for comedic effect. I knew that I wanted my own drops, I had to play lots of drops.

When I told Bill that I wanted to do a podcast, would he like to do one? he said sure but how long should it be? I said I don't know, 1 or 2 hours? He laughed, wondering how in the world we could find anything to talk about for that long. What I had envisioned was a Drive Time Radio Show that would play locally in a Small Town, the Town of Mulberry. Mulberry was the fictional town in a screenplay I had written when I was 19 years old called Laughing Boy. This was one of those Anytown USA types of places with the old storefronts on main street and had festivals and parades. We would be doing the show from an imaginary tiny radio station right there in the heart of town.

When we started the show, this idea quickly fell by the wayside but before I get to that I want to talk about the name. Nowhere in Mulberry was the name of the podcast. I knew I wanted the show to be titled something about the town of Mulberry but in hindsight I honestly should have called the show TV Talk or something really lame. I would scan the different podcast names on Podcast Alley which was an early podcasting site. It was a place where people could share their Rules of Podcasting and what equipment they used. As I would see all of the different names like Geekcast, Bookcast, Dorkcast, CastCast and JediCast. I knew that I didn't want to call the show anything 'Cast'. Screw that, It's totally lame. So I decided I didn't care if the name was catchy I wanted it to be something different. So after talking names with Bill. I said 'Something Mulberry' and he said 'Nowhere in Mulberry?' and I was like 'YEAH!'

Everyone hates the Juggler

Another year in the books. So they say. Whoever 'they' are. Is this really the way you are starting this? Apparently so. Either a year drags or a year speeds by, this year happened to fly by like a comet. It never decreased it's velocity, it was time for a new school year at a new school for my daughter. It was Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas in the blink of someone's eye. On some planets time is different than on this big blue marble. So I learned from that there Interstellar space movie. Remember back when it was funny to remember Wooderson from Dazed and Confused saying "Alright, Alright, Alright"? Well, that time has passed because everyone remembers. Do you remember that kid in school that pretended not to know all of the names of the Brady Bunch? That kid was a liar. Hopefully he's in jail.

Yep, time is fleeting and you gotta stop to smell roses or whatever but there's no roses anywhere near me. Some people garden and pretend they are Zen and some people exercise and pretend to have life answers. We all know, at least I know that having a garden is peaceful because it's quiet and you are outdoors doing shit where no one can bother you and when you exercise you feel better taking care of yourself, neither one is an answer for everything but it's the answer to something. Why doesn't everyone do it? Because they are doing other things, hopefully not for selfish reasons but usually it probably is. Perhaps we all know we should be doing something more worthwhile. We should all be doing something more productive, when you are working too hard you are missing out on the roses, when you are tending to the roses you are boring. Nobody likes the gardener and nobody likes the fit person telling everyone how healthy they feel. No, you need to stay miserable and stay in your place, you need to keep on shoveling crap into your gob and you need to spend more time on your smart phone.

I don't believe any of this of course. I'm processing. Whatever kind of processor I have I think it's outdated. I would love to have some kind of octa-core with crazy gigahertz but you can't upgrade in real life. You can try to improve, you can try to process differently. God knows I have. I do the equivalent of seeing all of the icons on the home screen turning white for a moment until finally you see those icons again for what they are. I am at a point now where I can analyze what is happening to me in the now or why I am reacting a certain way. I sometimes think back to childhood and why I behaved a certain way. I'm talking about those times when you do not feel safe, when you are away from home and family. Those times when you are in a foreign place and you know no one. How did you behave? Were you outgoing and loud, were you quiet and bashful? I was always the one that kept to himself, that quietly observed that prayed and hoped that no attention came my way. Did I crave attention? Did I want to be the life of the party? Sure, I think so. I would daydream about playing some kind of up-tempo piano jazz number in front of the whole class, or being able to juggle. When you are a kid juggling seems like a neat thing to do, it's not until later that everyone hates the juggler. I wanted to do something that made everyone laugh and in my imagination I never got embarrassed and my cheeks never turned red. I loved the laughter and I loved the adoration but in reality I was just sitting there in my seat doodling.

When it came time to stop doodling and to start listening and to start doing the work, I couldn't. I wouldn't. I continued doodling. I drew all over my schoolbook's paper cover, remember those? They would pass them out at the beginning of the year and everyone would wrap their books, some were really good at wrapping books, it was like this pristine present that was perpetually wrapped for the semester. For others, they absolutely sucked at wrapping and their books looked like something that had been trampled in a stampede. I was average at the art of book wrapping. When I was finished it did not take long to begin the drawing, a face here a doodle there. Lizards's holding shotguns telling an unseen opponent to "Drop that hatchet, jerk!" or spaceships, lots of spaceships.

I lived in my head, in my imagination. Maybe that's why it takes awhile for me to process. When someone says, "I need you to..." or "You need to do..." and "Jason, look out!" I blink my eyes and wonder where I am because I was just there, in that place in my mind. That land where anything can happen that was way more interesting than anything anyone could tell me. At least that's what I assume. I really don't think it's a conscious decision. There were so many times when I was jarred out of my internal moment by the sound of everyone in class opening their books to a certain page or they would all be putting their books away and reach into their desks for a sheet of paper. I felt like I was underwater and I had just come up for air and the boat was gone. I would look around puzzled and panicked. "What did I just miss? I am sorry, I was gone! Please catch me up on what I missed!" I would have to play catch up, if I didn't have paper, I would have to ask for some from some other student that sat near me that seemed relatively harmless, someone nice. I would ask, "What are we doing?" Someone would say, "Spelling test." or something like that and I would think, 'Crap'. I wish I had studied, I wish that I had prepared. I wish that I didn't feel this way right now, unprepared and clueless as to what we are doing. You would think I would have learned, you would think that I would have changed and learned my lesson but I did not. History repeated on a daily basis and it still happens even now but I try much harder to not let it.

I try. As the new year comes I try harder to listen to the roses more than smell them, I try harder to keep them in my periphery and also focus on the rest of the garden. Vine ripened tomatoes. I always laugh when you see some restaurant commercial like Olive Garden or even a pizza place like Papa John's Pizza and they always make sure to mention that whatever crap you are there to eat has "Vine Ripened Tomatoes". Thank goodness.

Happy New Year!

by Jason Walstrom