Saturday, July 8 2006

Buffett Listening Party #2

    As hinted in the last show notes, here’s some video from Saturday, July 1.  Mike offered to host our second Buffett listening party, where we could gather for Sirius’s presentation of the Jones Beach concert.  Schmoe was threatened by undersea monsters, and Mike’s wife Sarah, after one bottle of Twisted Tea, stole the show, singing her “Night Light” song and mistaking “conga lines” for “party lines”.

    (As before, the above is also available in QuickTime [with synched audio] through our podcast feed.)

Friday, July 7 2006

Porch’d!

    Yesterday, right before I left for work, I caught a news story about an old man who’d accidentally crashed his car into someone’s porch.  It had happened in Dearborn and I waited to find out on what street it had taken place.  Two of our podcasters live in Dearborn and I was wondering if this might have occurred near them.  No one in the house was hurt, since the residents were on vacation.  The old man however is in serious condition.  The reporter never did give a street name.
    The following day, just a moment ago, I got an e-mail from Joe.

    Greg is on vacation.  Houghton Lake or wherever he goes.  He calls me at 12:30pm yesterday on my cell.  He had just found out that, within the hour, his 92-year-old neighbor across the street came out of his driveway and rammed into Greg’s porch and garage at 55 miles per hour!  He’s lucky nobody was home.  I guess the fire department had to demolish Greg’s property more to get this guy out.  He was at the hospital and there were questions he would live.  Greg asked me to check it all out, although he had been in touch with a well-informed neighbor anyway.
    I jogged over there.  The porch is screwed up - some cement is crumbled and his landscaping stones/bricks are messed up.  Some glass is still there and a bunch of oil-dry.  The garage door is gone.  Completely.  They have put this ply-wood up (the city does this I guess) with hinges so barely—and I mean BARELY—a car may be able to fit through perfectly.  I know he has a car in there.  It is all locked up and a key is either being sent to him or is with the neighbor.
    Crazy.  Fox 2 was supposedly there.  I recorded most of the early Fox 2 News for him.  This is really why Greg contacted me.  To record his house on TV.

    Never did I expect that the poor sap who’d had his house driven into would be someone I know!  And you know him too, in a way, since Greg has been a frequent contributor to this here podcast.  He can be heard in episodes 2, 3, 6, and 7.
    Incredible!
    Here’s what our NBC affiliate, WDIV, has to say:

    And here’s ABC affiliate WXYZ’s coverage:

An elderly man was hospitalized in serious condition, Thursday, after plowing his car into a neighbor’s Dearborn home.     According to police, the 89-year-old man was backing into his own garage when he hit the wall.  He then put the car into drive and possibly panicked, hitting the gas and driving across the street and into his neighbor’s porch.     The man, who was alone in the car, was taken to Henry Ford Hospital.  There was no one home at the neighbor’s house at the time of the accident.     Neighbor Darlene Fisceri said a year and a half ago the man accidentally backed over his wife as she was taking something out of the trunk and broke both her legs.     Police said the man does have a valid driver’s license.

    What’s also amazing is that the car came from across the street.  The video footage makes it look like the car came from next door, from the angle of the crash; but the car reportedly came up the driveway and then swerved at the last second.  You can barely see skidmarks on the driveway where the old man must have avoided hitting the garage.  The neighbor quoted in the WXYZ story added that after impact the driver was found on the floor of the car, with his legs under the steering wheel and his head under the glove compartment.  It’s unfortunate he may have sustained serious injuries in the accident, and we look forward to hearing of his improved recovery.  We’re also looking forward to hearing Greg’s side of the story.

Tuesday, June 20 2006

BONUS: 2006 Radio Ad

    I recorded WCSX (94.7 FM) for eight hours Sunday and Monday to catch this ad. It aired at 9:22 AM Monday, less than an hour before Pine Knob tickets went on sale.

    Yes, they’re still using audio from Feeding Frenzy.
    And here’s the ad from Sunday’s Detroit Free Press, from page 3F of the “Entertainment” section.

Second Free Press ad

Monday, June 5 2006

Party at the Start of the Tour

    Schmoe makes margaritas for the first time.  Mike plays an old out-of-tune guitar.  We intended to celebrate the first night of the 2006 tour by drinking Twisted Teas, making margaritas, keeping an eye on the Pistons game, and recording a podcast.  We accomplished all of those ... except the podcast.

    Granted, it’s no Tiki Bar TV, but we still had fun making it.
    ...And we even got our first review on iTunes that night too!  Too bad it was only one star.  (Speaking of which, not that a certain “Twinkles” would care, a slightly longer version of the above [with synched audio] is available in our podcast feed.)
    P.S.: video remastered on July 8 to a more appropriate aspect ratio.

Monday, May 15 2006

“The Ship Can’t Take It, Captain!”

    After struggling all weekend to get this page to show up properly in Internet Explorer (while it displayed without a problem in other browsers), all I can say is:

Saturday, May 13 2006

Changing Tack

    I was going to label this “Picking Up Steam”, but that didn’t seem to fit with all these sailing references.
    There’s more news to share though, in the form of another new development with our feed.  I (without consulting the others) impulsively bought a domain for our podcast.  Northcoast.com and northcoast.net are already taken, but I came up with using NorthCoastCast as our new port of call.  Short, simple, and hopefully easy to remember.  It’s paid up for two years too, so those other WANC’ers better continue ’casting with me to get the most out of this investment.
    There won’t be any additional content there however, since, in fact, the new URL simply refers you back to this page.  Therefore, you needn’t bother trying the link now.  If you’re here, you’re here.  But the new URL might be a nice mnemonic to bookmark.
    Similarly, scrap all those e-mail changes too.  They’ll all still be active, but you might as well use our new address: podcast AT northcoastcast DOT com.
    P.S.: more changes.  I can’t say I’m surprised one of the podcatcher sites is displaying our title incorrectly.  The site is Yahoo! and the problem is that danged apostrophe.  Therefore, effective Sunday morning, our feed is now called “Wasting Away on the North Coast” (as opposed to the canonical “Wastin’ ”).
    Also, in the interest of cutting down on bandwidth usage, the downstreaming versions, playable on that cool iPod player—how ’bout that iPod player?!—have been downgraded to monaural 32kbps versions.  For the full-quality 96-160kbps stereo versions, you’ll have to subscribe.

Friday, May 12 2006

Wind in Our Sails

    I was trying to spruce things up a bit last night, and I guess I broke the column display (for those using IE).  It took me all day today, but I figured out what the problem was; so the page should be looking proper now.  Also, I finally got our XML feed so that iTunes will display our (temporary) feed art.
    P.S.: Don’t forget you can drop us line at ladi34t AT shortfatguy DOT com.  (The “ladi34t” of course refers to the title Livin’ and Dyin’ in ¾ Time.)  Or you can Skype us at “shortfatguyonline”.  Or leave a message at our phone line: 774-221-7346.  That’s 774-221-S.F.G.O.
    We’re glad to have you along for the ride.
    P.S.: And how ’bout that new podcast player?!  (Thanks to Jeroen Wijering, “Eric”, and The Tyron Effect! [né “Where’s Your Tyron”] for help with setting it up.)
    P.P.S: scrap the e-mail information.  The address is still good, but to keep us from having to explain “ladi34t” every podcast, we’ve set up an easier address for your comments and criticisms: northcoast AT shortfatguy DOT com.  And, seriously, how ’bout that new podcast player?  Isn’t it cool?!