Wastin' Away on the North Coast
 

Friday, August 10 2007

Caseville 2007

    Episode 47 was recorded last Wednesday, but it might not be uploaded till Sunday or Monday.
    The boys are a bit pre-occupied right now, seeing as they’ve gone up to Caseville again for this year’s Cheeseburger Festival!

M-53 North

Schmoe enjoys a Landshark and another Riverside Roadhouse Spicy Burger

    As we said, we had the same waitress on our return visit.  You can compare this picture with last year’s.

Our favorite waitress

    And a Show Notes Blog exclusive.  We were too busy eating and drinking to shoot a proper video documentary, so here’s a bonus podcast featuring Schmoe and me watching the Perseid meteor shower:

    Day 2: we head back into town, go to the official store for souvenirs, get gumbo for brunch, meet Mike at the Riverside Roadhouse for lunch, spend some time at the beach, go to Lefty’s Diner & Drive-In for this year’s winning cheeseburger, and then go to the amphitheater to watch Air Margaritaville.  Unlike yesterday, I mainly shot video…and I think I need to buy another hard drive before I can start importing the footage for editing.
    Until then, here’s another Show Notes Blog exclusive podcast…

    P.S.: we’ve returned from our Caseville weekend, but I’m still not sure when Episode 47 will be ready to go up.

Tuesday, July 31 2007

Episode 46: Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Review

Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, July 25 2007 (10:00 PM - 11:00 PM), at Prime Time Joe’s, Gibraltar MI
    “Our marathon review of A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean continues, this time with Scott and Greg getting their two cents in.  They and Mickey and Schmoe discuss the  Indy concert and reveal their pathetic ignorance of the BBBB box set.  Guests include DJ, Carol & The Serb, and Elise.”

    00:00 - this podcast is now a member of the PodSchmoe Network
    00:31 - already discussed in the Episode 45A show notes (at 8:46)
    02:10 - according to Google Earth, our longitude and latitude is 42 06’23 N 83 13’05 W
    02:34 - also already discussed in the Episode 45A show notes (at 6:54)
    03:09 - a quick check shows six songs “Grapefruit - Juicy Fruit”, “I Have Found Me a Home” (Beaches), “Cuban Crime of Passion”, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk”, “They Don’t Dance Like Carmen No More” (Bars), and “He Went to Paris” (Ballads).  I am vindicated!
    05:33 - as you probably already know, “Tinsley” should be Tinley
    08:13 - WCSX morning’s are hosted by Jim Johnson and Lynne Woodison
    11:10 - no, actually from http://www.buffettworld.com/lyrics/whitesportcoat.php.  (And Buffett News’s song archive too.)
    11:15 - instead of the usual hard plastic table, we were sitting at wooden table with a central but loose post
    11:44 - that’s DJ filling in, obviously
    12:03 - Dwight’s “Blah, blah, little comment” comment is from the “Product Recall” episode of The Office
    13:04 - KATG.com, of course
    13:27 - for your urban legend needs
    13:33 - as he record clearly shows, that was not me bellowing
    14:23 - my math is probably very bad, but I think 50¢ nowadays gets you sixty-four ounces of gas
    14:32 - “Was she in the window?”?  well, Gregspeak scholars can interpret this as “No, if she to stay in the ‘shade’.”  But “Yes, if she wanted a ‘good look’.”  Otherwise, we have no idea what the hell brought that up.
    16:22 - Armed Robbery is commonly defined as “taking property by putting the victim in fear by displaying a weapon”.
    16:49 - “[S]creeners at four United States airports had discovered suspicious, but benign, assemblies of wire attached to cheese-like substances in carry-on bag” [Link]
    17:50 - the benefit of doing show notes late: Greg follows Scott’s instructions at the end of Episode 48
    22:00 - Hialeah
    24:12 - oh yeah?  Go back to 24:02, then.  Right there!  I am vindicated!
    25:01 - in Greg’s defense, it was a “hook song” for me too, when they would play it loudly in bars at college
    25:49 - with all the underlying homoeroticism, it’s inevitable we’d start making Friend of Dorothy references
    26:51 - Shandy
    27:12 - Greg’s “Unknown Poet” is clearly inspired by Murray Langston’s Unknown Comic
    27:42 - since I brought it up, I might as well explain.  I stole baseball cards at Cunningham’s; but, in my defense, the bag of baseball cards had already been ripped open
    28:46 - uh-oh Scott set off the Greg 2.0 double entendre alarm again
    29:29 - Greg’s predilection for using ballads as driving music was explained in Episode 40
    29:59 - apparently a unique mixture of Bahamian and Bohemian, by the sound of it
    30:32 - yes, on Ballads
    33:12 - Good God, we have no idea what we’re talking about
    34:50 - Greg will use this same excuse in Episode 47
    36:35 - despite all the product placement to follow, we have yet to get free booze sent to us
    38:22 - Scott will use this same excuse in Episode 48
    38:29 - Good Hart MI is located here
    38:51 - it’s easy to find out where to find Landshark Lager.  Just use the “Locate a Retailer” app on the Landshark Lager homepage.

      >  Download Episode 46

Friday, July 27 2007

Episode 45B: Stars On Lake Michigan

Show Notes:
Recorded Sunday, July 21 2007 (12:00 AM - 1:30 AM), at Silver Sands Resort, Mears MI
    “Mike, Schmoe, and Mickey wrap up their Pink Crustacean review and their vacation at Silver Lake. Topics include the Chicago concert, peeing skies, HP7, and shooting stars. Catering by Chefs Jacob and Brian of the Northern Hemisphere Firewood Pizza Co.”

    Note: the file first uploaded Friday morning (July 27) is incomplete.  Unfortunately I was kept from correcting this for several hours.  The file was re-uploaded as soon as I got home this evening (also July 27), and I encourage you to redownload Episode 45B to get the entire show.  (The complete show is 25MBs.  If you’ve got the 16MB file, it’s the incomplete one.)  Sorry about the inconvenience, but a redownload is the only way you can hear my gadget story, Schmoe’s HP7 story, and our latest hilarious joke.
    01:37 - seeing as the book went on sale at 12:01 AM, it could be argued that Sunday is the first full day for the seventh Harry Potter book.
    04:13 - whose theme song, by the way, can be sung to the melody of the Itchy & Scratchy Show theme
    04:33 - the cooker is like a clamshell, with a handle on each half; I probably should’ve just said that and saved everyone some time
    18:08 - due to signing their non-disclosure statement, I cannot discuss the details of Mike & Schmoe’s Krazy Tahco stand
    21:55 - growing up on the North Coast I had the hunch the forgotten poet was Stephen Foster.  I had this feeling because Foster’s house now resides at Greenfield Village and a dog house is prominently positioned by the front porch.  However, the Unpopular Poet’s dog is named Spooner and Foster’s dog is named Tray.  And with songs such as “Oh! Susanna”, “Camptown Races”, “Beautiful Dreamer” and “Old Folks at Home”, Foster is hardly forgotten….so I’m not sure why I even brought this up.
    26:37 - the noise they’re talking about is barely discernible on the extreme right
    27:13 - yes, that is a real last name
    27:43 - “The Sky is Peeing” came very close to being the episode title
    32:27 - after coming home the following day, Sunday, I discovered Borders had a “Buy 3, Get the 4th for Free” sale, so Schmoe could’ve spent the same amount there without needing any luck.  I think I broke his heart a little when I told him.
    33:35 -  learn more about the Summer Triangle here and here

      >  Download Episode 45B

Sunday, July 22 2007

Episode 45A: A Silver Lake & a Tan Caucasian

Show Notes:
Recorded Friday, July 20 2007 (11:00 PM - 12:00 AM), at Silver Sands Resort, Mears MI
    “A remote podcast from the upper reaches of the Lower Peninsula.  Mickey joins Mike & Schmoe on their annual Silver Lake pilgrimage, by the shores of Lake Michigan, to review White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean and to hold an HP7 vigil.”

    Your humble podcasters spent most of the last week on vacation, up north at Silver Lake.  Since the core group was all together, we recorded two shows, both of which have now been uploaded.  Along with recording, we also shot lots of photographs, many of which can be viewed over in our Gallery.
    And now, the notes:
    01:59 - I’m trying to recall information I learned twenty years ago in one my geology class, when my instructor described the North Pole glaciers growing bigger, increasing southward, and pushing sand into the moraines which became the dunes along our Lake Michigan shoreline.  According to this informative PDF from the Geological Survey Division, “These dunes are a result of massive ice sheets which covered Michigan, and much of North America, during what geologists call the Pleistocene Epoch, some 1,800,000 years ago.  Glaciers transported sand and other materials and deposited them as glacial drift.  Large masses of glacial ice gouged out the basins that now confine the Great Lakes.”
    03:29 - I’m revealing a common prejudice.  Your right palm is not a map of Michigan, it’s a map of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.  You’ll need your left palm too, pinkie tucked in if possible and thumb pointing slightly upward, for the Upper Peninsula.
    06:10 - it was actually my coworker’s jury duty.  I could not take a vacation day because I had to cover for him, and if he was chosen for a jury I probably wouldn’t be able to go up to Silver Lake at all.  He was part of a jury pool in a case with a black defendant, and the defense attorney was fairly obviously trying to get as many African Americans onto the jury.  My coworker’s name got picked, but he was quickly dismissed.  And that, since it allowed me to take Thursday and Friday off, is the kind of racism I can live with!
    06:54 - long story short,  I dropped a brand new HD camcorder into the lake.  I was disembarking from our boat and the camera fell into the surf.  Mike spotted it first and when he lifted it up the camcorder had water pissing out of it from every opening and crevice.  What really hurt it more than the water was the sand.  Even though it was in the water for only a few moments, it somehow got gritty sand all inside its works.  I’ve let it sit for several days and was eventually able to power it up, get the LCD viewfinder working, as well as its CMOS chip; but there’s still so much sand in the works that I yet to get the tape ejected.
    07:51 - Goin’ Coastal.  Goin’ Coastal!  Goin’ Coastal.  Why couldn’t I think of that during the show?! 
    08:46 - some piece of shit with the inevitable “.ru” extension took advantage of the fact our e-mail was a catch-all.  We had fun creating new e-mail names to use, secure that they’d all wind up safely at our .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) location.  But, early on the morning of July 9, some took advantage of our catch-all and started spewing out all sorts of bullshit, male enhancement e-mails with our domain name.  Between that asshole’s spam and all the Mailer-Daemon replies, we were inundated with hundreds and hundreds of e-mails filling up our inboxes.
    And now the fun is over.  Because of that shitsucker, we had to disable our address being a catch-all.
    Our three working e-mail address are .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), and, if you’d like to send us an audio comment, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
    14:30 - in fact, Texas Connection, which ran weekly on TNN (1991-1992), was hosted by Jerry Jeff Walker.  [Source.]   I can’t find any video links, so maybe I might have to dredge up some 3/4” player and digitize my tape.
    20:48 - this is answered in Episode 46
    22:15 - the book was torrented the previous Tuesday.  Despite what Scholastic said, it was obviously not a fake, and I couldn’t resist finding out the ending.  I figure it’s not a spoiler when it’s the book itself giving the secrets away.  And besides, it was too difficult to read as much as I wanted to on vacation, and now the pressure was off me trying.

      >  Download Episode 45A

Sunday, July 8 2007

Episode 44: A Midsummer Night’s Ween

Show Notes:
Recorded Friday, July 6 2007 (9:00 PM - 12:00 AM), at Casa de Mike, Canton MI
    “Mike will not go quietly, insisting Schmoe and Mickey podcast at his house. They review the last two concerts, look at current news, discuss the weather, and rag on Scott.  Cameos by Jacob, Brian, Sarah, Ghallahad, The Jimmy Show, and a frog (and even a bit of Scott).”

    The heavy editing of the previous episode tricked Mike into thinking we’d had a fun fast-paced show last week, and he wanted back in.  He made a special effort to get back in on the phone, only to find the joke was on him.  We recorded even longer tonight, maxing out our SD card at over three hours!  Once again, I severely hacked away at the recording, in an attempt to make it bearable. 
    00:49 - Camp Dearborn
    01:59 - Detroit News coverage of the tragic accident in Melvindale
    02:15 - Commonwealth Displays site and commercial
    04:04 - the Ween’s desktop hard drive died, his laptop computer started smoking, the latest iTunes 7.3 update ravaged my music library, my DVR ate most of my archived TV shows, and Schmoe has been having trouble with his new laptop.  All in all, a crappy week for gadgets on the north coast.
    04:04 - as discussed in Episode 17
    04:14 - that’s right, mortals—I gots me an iPhone!
    09:50 - Smithsonian magazine’s Inspiring Americans
    10:39 - what I meant to say was the voting deadline was the day after we recorded and the winner was already announced the day before the episode went online.
    11:06 - Time‘s 10 Questions for Jimmy Buffett, their full list of questions, their podcast page, and the direct link to Jimmy’s interview (or from this alternate link).
    It looks like Time‘s page for Jimmy’s answers is unavailable.  But Listener Tom provided this screen grab for the benefit of Buffett News forum members, which we’ll link to too.  And belated congrats to Listener Tom for getting a question answered!
    16:44 - Jimmy Show, recorded live Tuesday, July 3, at Monterey Music Café in Allen Park MI
    17:52 - Mike, re: “Margaritaville: “Now we’ll have another copy of it.”
    21:10 - Schmoenades were of course also mentioned here (in more detail)
    21:29 - There’s My Wank! had a brief but disappointing run on BBC2 in the early 80s
    22:37 - that old joke came from Barenaked Ladies, actually
    23:09 - we’re talking mainly about the fish joke from the end of Episode 42 and the blinded-by-a-seagull joke from the end of Episode 35.  Plus Greg’s performance at the end of Episode 43
    24:49 - Listen to the Real Men of Genius ads here or here
    27:38 - Scott’s promise came at the end of Episode 42
    31:00 - if you listen closely you can hear Scott’s cameo, ragging on Jimmy for not having finished our song

      >  Download Episode 44

Saturday, June 30 2007

Episode 43: Leg of Bama

Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, June 27 2007 (8:30 PM - 11:00 PM), at Joe’s Prime Time, Brownstown MI
    “Only Schmoe, Greg, Mickey, Christina, and Jacob participating, but our look at the latest Bama Breeze Tour shows took 150 minutes to record and thirty hours to edit!  (The Roger Clyne Podcast starts at 17:07.)”

    I still can’t get over how we recorded for two and a half hours this night.  Our panel consisted of only three people and we had little to talk about, but regardless we rambled on long enough to create our longest recording to date (till next week).  Our guests were helpful in killing time too.  Prime Time Joe told us about his next set of planned renovations, as well as sharing some confidential details about several real estate investments.  Christina visited a lot too, telling us all about the latest developments in Grey’s Anatomy for instance. 
    Thanks to some perhaps heavy-handed editing, we managed to hack the show down to a show shorter and snappier length.
    00:37 - no, Sammy Hagar did sell Cabo Wabo for eighty million
    00:54 - read along with the Post-Gazette concert review
    03:37 - the “43 or 47” quip stems from something that happened before our show started.  Schmoe had Christina guess his age, and behind him Greg was helpfully holding up a hand to show four fingers followed by three fingers.  This confused her however.  She guessed forty-five, Schmoe said “Lower”, but because of Greg’s four-and-three hand signs she responded by guessing forty-seven.
    06:39 - we discussed our most unique Buffett souvenir in the previous episode
    06:43 - I used to have a photo of my unused 2001 tickets in my online diary
    09:27 - no, Jimmy did not get the lyrics wrong.  I edited those parts together for the heck of it
    10:02 - the BufettNews setlist database confirms “King of Somewhere Hot” was not performed at Pine Knob
    10:22 - you can find that 2000 “Treat Her Like a Lady” recording here
    10:42 - and the coda, of course
    11:57 - did I confuse the stories of Margaritaville opening Hawaii and Jimmy performing in Tahiti in December?
    13:18 - that weird multi-tone hum is an airplane and a vibrating cell phone
    17:29 - get your tickets for Roger Clyne at Magic Bag here
    17:51 - Greg has won what?!

      >  Download Episode 43

Friday, June 22 2007

Episode 42: Mike, the Universe, and Everything

Show Notes:
Recorded Wednesday, June 20 2007 (9:30 PM - 12:00 AM), at Joe’s Prime Time, Brownstown MI
    “Scott is back, joining Schmoe, Greg, and Mickey in saying a possible goodbye to Mike.  We conduct a wide-ranging, free-wheeling interview with Mike, quizzing him on his Buffetty past.  Special appearances by Christina, Greg 2.0, and Schmoe’s and Mike’s brood.”

    00:00 - do I need to mention the episode title comes from Douglas Adams?
    00:17 - Scott injured his knee playing goalie in a soccer game at the Shark Invitational the previous Friday.
    02:32 - the official House Resolution No. 333 of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania in PDF format
    02:57 - the Wizard of Oz?  More like Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder version, of course)
    03:21 - and now it’s more like Barry Fitzgerald from The Quiet Man
    04:32 - the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Buffett/Chesney “Tropical Twosome” quiz
    05:00 - the occasional slapping sound is us trying to kill flying bugs
    05:25 - Schmoe is singing “Kristina”, from Rick Springfield’s 1995 album  Success Hasn’t Spoiled Me Yet
    06:00 - Jimmy did not pick up the guitar in high school, as Scott says.  He picked it up in college (which Wikipedia confirms), but since the quiz specifies “freshman year” it might still be right
    08:21 - hey look, there’s a poll at the bottom of this entry!
    09:04 - sound effect was requested by Schmoe
    09:35 - The Jimmy Show on MySpace; the Monterey Café in Allen Park
    10:13 - Beer Pong rules
    17::01 - what’s all this crap about 8-track?  Try 8-Track Heaven

the Wikipedia entry
    17:34 - Mike and I road-tripped to Deer Creek in 1990 and Cincinnati in 1998
    22:31 - You can hear the Corona PR guy’s announcement here (at the bottom of the page), albeit in crappy RealAudio format
    25:39 - the highly recommended Utley/Greenidge CD Heat
    28:17 - Schmoe references the fifth-season “Rosebud” episode of The Simpsons
    29:03 - you might notice an absence of Scott for the next four minutes.  He had actually left by now, but he’ll be back for the joke—which was actually recorded before this part
    32:13 - and now my John Candy impersonation: “Orange Whip?  Orange Whip?  Orange Whip?  Three orange whips.”    ...Ah, I love that one.
    33:32 - oh-oh, Scott set off the Greg 2.0 double entendre alarm!
    34:15 - Schmoe has confessed to being the one who brushed his script against the mic
    35:49 - Billy Gilbert was a frequent foil of Laurel & Hardy

      >  Download Episode 42