For a change of pace, I've decided to read some of my favorite short stories instead of my own work. Yeah, I'm lazy like that. Anyway, the first of this new type of episode is "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor.

I'm back!

After nearly a year in hiatus, I'm back to posting again.

 

This is was test of my new mixer and trying to harmonize with myself.

We talk about video games. And popular culture. And news. And games. Video games.

Topics include:
 - Borderlands
 - Fallout 3 DLC
 - Fallout: New Vegas
 - iPad

Cory, Brian and I continue our discussion of video games with a few detours into movies and TV talk.

 

Topics include:

 - Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
 - Space: 1999
 - Batman
 - Star Trek: The Animated Series
 - Batman
 - Shutter Island
 - Just Cause 2 Demo
 - Shoot 1UP
 - Bionic Commando: Rearmed
 - The Metroid series of games
 - Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, Chapter 1 of the Hoopz Barkley SaGa
 - Mass Effect 1 and 2

Brian, Cory and I talk about video games. Mostly.

Things talked about include:

 - Portal
 - Portal 2
 - Left 4 Dead 2 DLC
 - Valve
 - Ubisoft DRM
 - Twilight Book 4

(This is part one. Part two will be out within the next two days. There might also be a part three. Maybe.)

The cost of.

Rugged individualism vs. WoW.

Some thoughts about the connection between myself and my grandfather.

This is a true story that happened to me. That might be a new trend.

I've been doing more work with foley effects and I've really begun to love what they add to the soundscape. What I am not liking however is all the time it takes to get all of them right. Oh well.

This was inspired, in part, by recent events. Sort of. The name at least.

Foley Effects:

By Gaiamuse
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=593941)
TV Static.mp3
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=50500)

By Corsica_S
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=7037)
vcr09.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=39493)

By BristolStories
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=113976)
u_chimes3.mp3
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=51710)

Most of my episodes start with a simple premise "What if...?". What if Johnny Cash sang about zombies? What if an Igor had a cooking show? For this one though, the question was even simplier: "What if I told a whole story using only foley effects?"

I want to take some space here and thank the good people at Freesound.org. Without the various sound clips that other people had uploaded, this episode would never have been created. Thank you for your site.

Foley Effects:

tictac.clock.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=16651)
By andriala
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=52876)

Fluorescent Lamp 090324.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=69868)
By LG
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=36188)
           
011 Door opens and shuts.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=23168)
By FreqMan
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=92661)
           
Hospital sounds 2.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=54485)
By ERH
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=215874)
          
gravel walking.aif
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=15562)
By tigersound
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=23035)      
       
Footsteps on Tiles (www.rutgermuller.nl).wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=50725)           
By rutgermuller
(http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=179538)

I really like my title puns. This time, it has to do with both the content and the resolution of the story. Kinda neat.

I messed around with multiple track recording this time. That is why my voice seems layered on top of me doing another voice at the same time. It makes the audio turn out better but means I have to take more time to line up everything.

Making up your own mythology is rather tough, both to think of and to actually say out loud. I think I did a good job at it though. Even if you don't know exactly what they are talking about, they seem to, which is more important anyway.

What is the worst setting for a noir story? The dentist office. That is what I decided as I was pondering that question. So, that is where this started.

Compared to the last episode this one is kinda, well, rougher. I liked all the fancy that I bought for the last one but on the schedule I have, I can't do that every time. It has to be enough that I just get an episode out most days.

10 Episodes! Whoo!

While for many people this may not be much of an exciting thing, for me, this is great. I really did not think I would make it this far. I felt for sure that I would have given up within a coupe of episode but here I am at ten!

To celebrate, in a way, I upped both the production and post-production value of this episode. Not only is there another voice but some select foley effects to really add to the picture of the story in your mind's eye. You can expect this higher level on episodes that are multiples of ten. (Or maybe just when I have more time to edit.)

Credits:

Cory Davis  --  Narrator
Dan Cox  --  Frank/Betty

Foley Effects:
Car_Stop_Breaks_Screech_Engine-Rev_by-monnie101.mp4.WAV
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=58150)
By monnie101 (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=289925)

crash.wav
(http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=40158)
By sagetyrtle (http://www.freesound.org/usersViewSingle.php?id=43834)

This was almost another song. Not that this story was to be a musical, no, but I wanted to put together another episode that featured some music stuff. I ended up not having time to do that so I went with this standby I had been working on for the last couple of days.

I've been starting to wonder if the various voices I do sound like me. To me, they do. But to others, I'm not so sure. Any comments about that?

Hopefully within a few days I will have both a longer and more involved episode to publish. I've been trying to get people involved for special stories and that may just come together very soon.

Johnny Cash sings about zombies. That is where this episode came from. I was listening to Mr. Cash sing of the blues of a lost love and just knew that he would write a good song about zombies. If he was given a chance. And wasn't already dead himself.

Yes, that is me playing the guitar quite badly during this episode. I borrowed it. It's badly out of tune but worked for the most part for this usage. I'm known to write a song or two from time to time, it's just the singing and instrument playing that messes me up.

There are some words I will not say. You will understand then that I changed, as far I know, only one word in the reading of the first chapter of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. You can look up the book on Project Gutenberg to see what word I changed but I imagine you already know.

There are a number of little mistakes in this recording. There is a great deal of popping in places and some slightly-too-long pauses where I cut sentences together. I also tried to do some equalization across the recording but that did little to help.

I'm not sure I will read the whole book. Probably I won't. This was, mostly, a test of me doing a reading in one voice. My American Southern voice could probably use more work but I like what I was able to do in such short amount of time tonight.

I was once told some really good advice. Never be afraid to suck. That is, do not be afraid to have work that is not good. Continue anyway, in spite of it. So, I am.

This episode is a sequel to Know Thyself. Well, somewhat. While it is true that it follows directly after that story, it does very little and is short. But I'm posting it anyway.

This was another story I created as I was recording it so there are no words to read. This might be a new trend.

There is more repetition that I'd like in this story. Not that I dislike the rhythm it creates but too many words occur too many times. I left them in anyway though.

Life is, as they say, a beach. Keep that in mind when listening.

Again, there are is no story to read. This time however the reason is different. Instead of writing it all out, I made up the story as I was saying it. A little more risky, sure, but I like the results.

I left in more of the Thinking Pauses. That is, I stopped talking as I was thinking up the next bit of the story and I decided to leave some of those in so it would sound more organic.

This is also the first episode in what I hope will be a daily or at least biweekly posting schedule. The longer I go without posting, the harder it becomes for me bring myself to do it.

I'm not posting the story this time. The reasons being that what I wrote and what I ended up recorded differed so much that the story had changed both in tone and resolution. Maybe next time.

This recording sounds clipped in places because I silenced out certain places to remove the noise my chair made. I removed the noise but also the content in a couple of places.

By the way, the original name of this episode was going to "Love is a Harsh Mistress" (as an homage to Heinlein) but I kept saying it wrong and I ended up changing it.

Bad Wolf

There was once a little girl who was loved by everyone who met her. No one loved her more than her grandmother though. For her eighth birthday, the grandmother gave the young girl a red stocking cap. The girl treasured it. She took it with here everywhere. To the store with her mother. To school with her classmates. Even during the heat of the summer, she would never take it off. The cap soon faded from red to a muddy brown, but not before she began to be called Little Red-Cap. This story, however, is not about her.

They'd kept him for hours. They'd been grilling him over and over about what he did with Little Red-Cap. He didn't know who they were talking about. He'd just been taking a nap in the woods when they'd grabbed him and brought him in for questioning.

"They're always quick to blame us", he mumbled to himself as he started his long walk home. “Every time there is a missing child they come running for the nearest wolf.” He gotten used to it by now. Species profiling. His kind was more likely to commit this sort of crime they'd told him. Still. He did wonder what had happened to the little girl they'd mentioned.

He told them he'd met a little girl in the woods but wasn't sure who this Little Red-Cap was. Could it have been that little girl he'd talked to on the path? She had been wearing some sort of worn out brown cap. He had been walking along when he'd heard a small voice behind him.

"Excuse me."

He'd turned around to find a small girl of around nine carrying a basket and looking quite lost.

"Yes, little girl? How can I help you?" He knew it was probably best to help her on her way. These woods were dangerous for those who didn't know them well.

"Umm." She chewed on her lip in a cute way. It reminded him of his own youngest son when he was frustrated. He waited her out.

"Umm. I'm not su'posed to talk to strangers but... uh, I need to granny's house. I have some bread for her."

"What kind of mother would send a young girl out in these woods by herself?" he mumbled to himself. He scratched his chin and looked at her again.

"Where does your granny live?" he asked her.

"Just passed the forest. Near Mr. Tree-chopper." Mr. Tree-chopper? Oh. She must mean the Woodcutter. He'd heard some rumors about that man. Living in the woods by himself all these years had done something to him. Something bad.

"How about I walk with you till the fork in the road? I need to go one way and you need to go down the other. Is that good?" She seemed to think about it.

"Okay. Mister Wolf."

They walked a few minutes more and parted ways. He down one path. Her down the darker one.

His musing had taken him the whole way home. His wife was waiting for him.

"I got picked up again," he told her. "Seems this little girl has gone missing. I was the last one to see her it seems. They thought I'd had something to do with it." His wife just nodded and motioned him to sit down.

"Your brother is dead," she told him. "They found him in a cabin in the woods. The woodcutter killed him. He said your brother had eaten a little girl and her grandmother."

He placed his head in his hands. "Just when relations between species were getting back to normal, now we have this Little Red-Cap incident. No one will trust us now."

(See original story in Grimm's Fairy Tales.)

The Shoemaker and the Naked Men

There was once a shoemaker, who occasionally worked hard and was mostly honest to most people but was heavy in gambling debts. All he had left, after the repo man had came and went, was just enough leather make one pair of shoes. And an angry wife.

After having their daily shouting match, the shoemaker prepared to go to bed. On the couch. Before he went sleep though, he set aside the remaining leather so he could start as soon as possible. Having grown up Catholic, he decided a little prayer could not hurt his situation and so he whispered a quick prayer for help with his shoe business.

When the shoemaker went into his shop early the next morning, he saw a pair of shoes waiting for him on his workbench. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, he sold the shoes to his first customer saying that they were magic shoes and would give the wearer good luck. The townspeople, not known for their brains, accepted this idea and began to flock to his store for the magic shoes.

Day after day, the shoemaker would buy more leather and, in the morning, find that shoes were being made in the night. After several weeks, his wife began to get suspicious of all the shoemaker's new found wealth. She finally cornered him one night at dinner and he confessed.

The shoes were making themselves he said. Each morning he would find new shoes, perfect shoes, waiting for him. He never questioned it. The shoemaker's wife did however and hatched a plan to catch the night workers.

That night, they hide themselves in the cupboard and waited. Right around midnight, two small naked men appeared out of thin air and started to work on the shoes.

Their work was quick but efficient. Within an hour, they had done what took the shoemaker almost all day. The shoemaker was astonished. His wife was not. She was furious that two naked men were running around in her husband's shop. At least they could put some clothes on, she grumbled. So, she decided to knit two small sets of clothes for the mysterious men.

Two nights later, the husband and wife waited again in the cupboard. Instead of leaving the leather for the shoes out on the workbench, they left the clothes.

Again, right around midnight the two naked men appeared from nowhere. Once they saw the clothes on the workbench, they immediately put them on and danced throughout the shop. No sooner had their dance stopped then they vanished again, never to return again.

With the source of his magic shoes having stopped, the shoemaker soon went back into debt again. The resentment from the effect of the plan to clothe the two naked men ultimately made the shoemaker and his wife get a divorce. With his debts high and his morale low, the shoemaker took his life.

When the police found his body, they also found a small note. They were puzzled by the only four words on the note. Never clothe naked men.

(Recommend reading of original source from Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

So much for a couple of episodes a week, huh? Here it is almost two weeks later with episode three. Oh well.

Between the last episode and this one, I’ve been experimenting more with recording and voice acting. I had thought that recording Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” would be a good test. As it turns out, no. Because of the language difference, and his style of writing, I struggled to get the emphasis right on all the parts while maintaining the right tone. I did several different recording sessions but none seemed good enough. However, I felt I needed to post something.

This episode is special. I used the basic plot and tone of “The Tell-Tale Heart” as a base. I expanded and updated it but kept as close as I could to the story. I would highly recommend reading the original work before listening. I borrow heavy from wording in places but also add my own spin on things. It’s more of a remix than anything else.

(This may be a new trend. I’m considering doing a reading of another short story soon. Well, a remix of the story actually.)

For lack of a better name, I’m calling this new thing of mine the Garrison Keillor Project. My plan is to create 3 to 5 minute audio short stories in the same vein as A Prairie Home Companion. They will be posted on a regular basis (2 or 3 a week) with each week being based on a single theme.

The requirements of my postings in this project are:

1. Make the recording in one take
2. Use very little preparation
3. Do very little editing

This is the test post.

I welcome any comments or thoughts on what I can do to improve any aspect of this project. Oh and I would also like any suggestions for future themes.