The thirtiethth episode of our podcast, Paul and Storm Talk About Some Stuff for Five to Ten Minutes (On Average), is now online.
This week’s episode: various terms are used recklessly and/or inappropriately; too much time and contention spent on a new Minion designation; still more musings on fame, in light of our recent increasing proximity to those who possess it; the lasting power of embarrassment; and passing along our enjoyment of the works of John Scalzi.
AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION ALERT: Tell us about that embarrassing thing you did that you still beat yourself up over.
Featured post-show song: “Johnny Saucep’n” – Moxy Fruvous
Show #030: Tacos with Paul McCartney (Some content NSFW)
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21 Comments
Did a quick inventory of all my actions this past Friday night, and I think I’m reasonably confident that I did not “try too hard.”
I am thankful I did not get downtown very early however, as I had considered going early enough to snag some quick sushi before the show and I know I would NEVER be able to convince anyone that would have been the coincidence it in fact would have been…
Oh man Storm, I hear ya. I replay events like that in my head all the time. 6th grade, writing “MO + EA” on every random page in my notebook, finally sending her a note on a card with my name on it, and getting the “maybe we can be friends” reply, I made a big dramatic scene about ripping out the pages with all those hearts and declarations.
Too bad that was most of my notes for the ENTIRE YEAR. O_O
10th grade. The object of my affection never wore socks. I read a poem in class about how much I loved to gaze at his ankles. Everyone knew. Poor guy.
We did end up being good friends… eventually. I was the first friend he told that he was gay. I still feel totally stupid remembering what a spaz I was.
btw, glad I was directed here. I’d forgotten who that band was that I’d liked at Dragoncon. You were it!
Re: Order of Teh Cloth — What if existing minions could recreate our original submitted photos while wearing our spanking new Official Minion Shirts (TM)? Or photoshop an inset that proves our shirt-having status? Of course, that wouldn’t fix the chronology problem. Can you backdate files on Flickr?
Paul, you used explicate quite correctly. The other word you wanted is inveterate (pronounced in-VET-er-it). [/wordnerd]
I’ve actually found that the best way to get over the try-too-hards is practice. Since I started going to sci-fi cons and book signings and the like, it’s gotten a lot easier to interact with the people who create the entertainment I enjoy. I’m somewhat shy around strangers in general, but that’s offset at cons by the fact that we’re all there for the same reason.
I’m sure there are mistakes in my past that still embarrass me to this day, but none spring to mind just now. Maybe I’m repressing the memories. :p
Most embarassing story?
I was a freshman in high school, and the only one in the cast of the fall play. The lead in the play was The Coolest Senior At The School. Handsome, smart, friendly, talented (singer/actor/dancer/captain of the band drumline), and did I mention incredibly handsome? He was cool, as in nice to everyone and not a stuck-up bastard like you’d expect The Coolest Senior At The School to be. He was perfect. And incredibly handsome.
So we’re at the local pizza place after a performance and I somehow manage to be seated next to him and another senior who was in the cast. The second guy told a joke of some sort right as I took a sip of Sprite. I laughed…and the Sprite went through my nose. And EVERYONE at the table, and worst of all The Coolest Senior At The School, saw me do it and laughed.
Upside? The Coolest Senior At The School, while he did laugh at me, also handed me napkins so I could clean myself and the table up. Only making him that much more incredibly handsome.
*sigh*
I’ll be in my bunk.
My cringe-worthy moments are too numerous to recount (e.g., I chased down Tyr Anasazi at O’Hare). Instead, I have some Früvos synchronicity to share. Murray Foster of Früvos also plays bass in Great Big Sea, one of my favorite bands. One night, before reporting for a volunteer shift at a concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music, I stopped into the excellent Laurie’s Planet of Sound and spied a Moxy Früvos CD, which I bought. Later, another person working the show casually brought up that she’d dated a bass player (cue ominous music) in a band called Moxy Früvos, which she’d assumed no one had heard of. I then amazed all and sundry (especially sundry) by pulling out the CD. Respect to the Früvos!
Over here from Whatever.scalzi.com
This is more of a regret, but it’s a cringe mea culpa element as well.
I still regret something I did to you guys, actually. A couple of years ago, you two played a concert at Cafe Montmartre in Madison, WI. I’d seen you in a much larger venue earlier as part of DiVinci’s Notebook, and was pretty excited about the performance. Unfortunately, the bar/restaurant was noisy as hell and there was a particularly loud table 5 feet away with management or the door bouncer (also very close) making no effort to say “Hey, there’s a concert going on”. In addition, the chairs they set up in front of the stage was extremely uncomfortable, and overall it was a frustrating experience. Good music, bad environment to see it in.
As I was leaving, I said something to the effect of “Great show, sorry you had to play it here.” in a very pissed off voice. Which I’m still in agreement with, but the problem was I said it with the Cafe sound guy RIGHT THERE, which was uncool and I’ve wondered since if the impression of it hurt your ability to get gigs there. If it did, I sincerely apologize and I’ll drop them a note apologizing and asking them to invite you back if you do a solo tour in the future.
This is related to both the topic of star fucking, and the question of embarrassment. A few years ago, I was really into this Hawaiian band (I doubt anyone here would know them). Without going into the boring details of how it all came together, the guys in the band offered to take me out and show me around their hometown (where I was living at the time).
As a fan, this was the kind of thing I had only dreamed about happening. In what reality does my favorite band ask me to hang out with them? They bought me dinner (coincidentally, we had tacos), showed me around Honolulu, were incredibly down to earth and let me be a part of their world for a few hours. A few years prior to this, one of the guys in the band was on a reality show and then was in a different, quasi-famous pop group. So, while not super famous, he was recognized in public every once in awhile. While we were out together, he ended up signing an autograph and we received free dessert, which made my inner star fucker sing with glee. Hanging out with “famous” people was even better than I could have imagined. Except there was one little snafu: ME. I was so worried about not appearing to try too hard that I went in the opposite direction; I became completely introverted. I’m naturally shy anyway, but this was ridiculous. Afterward, I thought about all of the witty, interesting things I wished I’d said, and became more and more embarrassed at having blown my chance to be cool in front of these people I admired. So, while there’s no specific, cringe worthy moment of embarrassment in this story, it stands to me as proof that sometimes, saying nothing is NOT the best plan of action.
I feel like I’m 0 for 2 with you guys, too. I had a repeat performance of introversion the first time I met you (possibly because of the added Coulton-factor). And, then, in an attempt to atone for this, when I saw you guys perform alone a few months ago, I felt like I fell into the “trying too hard” category. Hopefully, this Friday in Ann Arbor will be less of a disaster. We’ll see…
Watch out it’s a shark, jump guys!
man, i know this cloth minion thing is gonna make a lot of minions upset. I feel that any cloth minion will be disproved/hated by other upper minion. Almost false sense of minion amongst them… to call them elite is poppy cock! clearly you want to make an extra buck, but I’m not about to pass up my title just to get this … t-$hirt minion.
I say, cloth minion should be the only title or additional title one can get (should other minion addon titles come along). Otherwise, you’re gonna get minions upset!
not so much the most embarrassing thing, but one that’s stuck with me for a long time. I was put on the spot to spelling my last name in front of the whole class in 2nd grade during our spelling words rounds. it was it went something like this:
teach:Cat
class: c-a-t
teach: dog
class: d-o-g
teach: Kernytsky
class: K-e/i-r-r?…
teach: no! i want Dorian to spell it.
dorian becomes clueless and embarrassed.
I forget what happened next but i know that teacher really know how to divide a class among itself. god, i hated that teacher. rumor had it she was an ex-nun. It’s taken me years to get over it (maybe in the last few).
Thanks for sharing your feelings of awkwardness, guys. Misery loves company. 😉 I have too many uncomfortably embarrassing stories to share. One of them involves pimping your Nun Fight reveal with my boxing nun puppet at the last set of shows in San Francisco. I apologized to Storm after the show. He was very gracious about it. Thank you.
Oh, Moxy Früvous, we hardly knew ye! You know, there was a time when Mr. Coulton didn’t know about them. I hope you’ve since remedied that!
Finally, I think it’s time for you to write a new song called “Tacos with Paul McCartney.” 😉
P.S. @Erin: Nice to see I’m not the only one who vacillates between too much and not enough. Always struggling with that balance. :-S
The tacos would have to be real meat tacos. I love the idea of getting an animal rights nut back to eating delicious animal flesh.
Sweat sock stuck to the but of my faux-suede/moleskin skirt by force of static cling would be right up there. Too bad nobody told me about it until I was on my way OUT of church AFTER mass. But then, how do you really approach someone about that? Admittedly, it’s not the best ice breaker 😉
Landed here from Scalzi’s place. I’m usually pretty good with meeting folk I admire. I can play the appreciative fan role without being a total mouth-breather about it. Then there’s my reaction to Julia Serano. I get *so* dumb around her. She does lots of things, but her poetry is what I know her for. She was walking around after a performance, and I talked briefly with her. I really didn’t say much, but I was excruciatingly aware of how intimidated I was. She was very gracious, and it was over quickly. I guess the embarrassing thing to me is that to this day I don’t understand my intimidation.
Thanks for the Darth Vader plates tonight! Paul’s mic stand was also a nice gift, but I felt I should return that one.
Excellent show last night, guys! Thanks again for the monkey, although I was hoping my Gumbo Pant(ie)s might encourage you to sing that song. 😉 Maybe next time…
@Colleenky: Not sure where I fared on the “trying too hard” scale last night, but you are definitely not the only one who vacillates.
Hey guys!
It was great to actually meet you in person last night at the Ann Arbor show. I wanted to meet you all at the Pontiac show last year but we had to bail out and rush back home because it had gotten so late that our babysitter was threatening to sell our kids for medical experiments.
I am very glad you could come back to Michigan. Thank you for signing my poster. And hope to see you back in the state soon!
Really hope giving you guys pieces of cake didn’t qualify as trying too hard. We just thought it’d be cool. 🙂
Great podcast guys! Sorry I’ve been rather absent, school and campus life is taking up my fun time.
So funny story, the other day I went to a carnival for to celebrate the Jewie Jewie holiday of Purim, except I didn’t have a ride there and since I don’t have a car or license I walked to shul – no problem, I do it all the time. Except it was raining. And (I know, starting a sentence with “and” is technically a bad thing) to make matters funnier, it was raining out AND I had forgotten sillyly (is that even a real adverb) to bring an umbrella… ella… ella… (If anyone reading this gets that reference I don’t quite know if you win or fail). Having listened to your podcast, I found myself going over memories in my life, though the funnier ones. The not so fun ones are hard to think about, so I try to avoid them as much as possible.
Do embarrassing things online count? Because I still beat myself up about one thing, and in fact it was a comment here. It was at the start of Geek Madness, and I’d noticed that Seth MacFarlane was on the list twice, and as far as I could tell no one had pointed it out, so I mentioned it. But me being overly snarky and not particularly fond of Family Guy decided to make a joke like, “Hur, hur, two times two many!” I realized immediately afterward that you guys clearly had a reason to put Seth in the bracket, and I felt like a total turd for making fun of your choice. So yeah, you probably don’t even remember, but I just wanted to get that off my chest. Hoooo, boy.
I just listened to this (I listen to podcasts in random order, and have a huge backlog.) I have several distinct things to say:
Woah, DVN used to open for Moxy Früvous? That just makes both groups more awesome. When forced to give a one-sentence description of Jonathan Coulton on his forums, I eventually came up with something like, ‘like Moxy Früvous, but there’s only one of him and he’s still pretty much together.’ And you two are like Da Vinci’s Notebook but there are only two of you and you’re still pretty much together. In both cases, I found out about the earlier artist because of the later one.
If it makes you feel any more famous, or makes me seem more like one of that kind of crazy person, I had never heard of Neil Gaiman until he went up on stage with you guys to speak a verse of Creepy Doll and play the creepy tambourine. I’m about to order a few of his books from Amazon.
I’m already a ‘Good, Obedient Merchandise-Buying Minion’. If I buy a minion shirt, does that have to change? If I don’t buy a minion shirt, does it change?
I can’t think of any embarrassing moments, but… oh God, all those references to ‘the four of you who have been following us around for the entire tour’ were hints that I should leave, weren’t they? There weren’t even four of us until the last show, by the way.
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