Given this is my last blog of this era – instead of writing out a list of thank yous which I’m sure you guys are sick of hearing from us self-indulgently blather on about this month, I thought I’d take a minute to talk about my history with podcasting – what I’ve gotten out of it and what I may do with it in time to come.
For those who know, I started writing over at Inside Pulse/Comic Nexus a long time ago, doing comic reviews and then wrestling reviews.. then one of my Rabble crew, Erik had been listening to our local radio station and the talking heads were blathering on about how it isn’t easy to do what they do and Erik asked if I wanted to try it out… well, the Rabblecast was born (and is still running, although I believe they are now a general pop culture thing now – but it is nice to see one of my babies lives on without me)
It took two years before the bug bit me again and I needed to find a microphone and a friend. The problem was, and to a big degree, still is – I love nothing enough to focus on one thing. When I focus on something too hard, I get bored of it real quick. I stopped doing comic reviews because I knew what the storylines were a year ahead of time, I stopped watching wrestling because there were no surprises (and the product sucked at the time), so walking into a new show, it couldn’t be about any one particular thing… and therein lies the rub. I love gaming and horror movies and puzzles and a thousand things… but none of them enough to be very good at being a critic of them. When I meet a horror fan and they say something like ‘Oh, did you hear Roger Kablingkin is revitalizing Phantasm after he won the lawsuit against Bloody Moon Studios? Aren’t you excited? OH, and Tabitha McWhazzerface will be back as Carmine’s mom!’ or when a gamer sees one of my video game tattoos and starts talking to me about deep lore of games I truly love… and I have absolutely NO idea what the hell they’re talking about. Yes, I love Final Fantasy 9 – no I have no recollection of the second act of that game.
You can hear me audibly blinking in response to these things. I LOVE the things I love, I obsess over absolutely nothing, so whatever the podcast was going to be, it couldn’t be about a THING. It had to kind of be about EVERYTHING.. or more specifically a lot of ..somethings.. The good of that is there is always more to talk about. The bad of that is people tend to listen to podcasts about those things they get nitty gritty about or have some weekly hook. It was never a concern for us, but the podbubble expanded so big in the last decade that our non-specific nature definitely made us easier to get lost in the sea.
So, now that this chapter ends – what’s next? We’ve made allusions to things being on the burners, and there are – but truthfully, I expect you’ll get more from Rob and I individually as well as in tandem after we’ve caught our breath – because, truly, we can’t not want people to notice us. It’s the curse of thinking you’re entertaining and built into your bones. You don’t turn off the microphones for the last time and go ‘Ah, time to stare the wall..’ all we did was free up some time and brainspace for something new to grow.
Whatever it ends up being, where ever it ends up being, we hope to see you there.
Sound off in all the places one last time. – Hatton
