Succotash Epi295: 4 Clips with a Slice of Dan St. Paul

Hello, listener. Glad you’re here! I am Marc Hershon, as stated so eloquently for our booth announcer, Bill Heywatt, here to present Episode 295 of Succotash, THE Comedy Soundcast Soundcast. Before I get into what’s in store this week, did you happen to catch last week’s Epi294 with my punctual and well-read co-host Tyson Saner?

He brought the heat, with clips from a trio of shows, including Wheel of Randy - A Randy Newman podcast, Podcast Killed the Video Star, and The Hollywood Experience. If you missed it run, don’t walk, to download or stream it from any of the wonderful distribution points on the World Wide Web, including Apple & Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, YouTube, Soundcloud, Audible and many others, including our own homesite, SuccotashShow.com, where you’re find a blog entry for every show we’ve done for the past 10 years and 11 months with clickable links to the shows and the social media accounts for the hosts and many of the guests.

I just want to take a moment to acknowledge the international clown fiesta that Vladimir Putin is orchestrating on the people of Ukraine. There’s not much that we, as the hosts of a comedy soundcast can do to actively help the situation. But we do stand in support of the people and country of Ukraine and, just as we’re no longer distributing Succotash via that streaming service that Neil Young doesn’t like, we also will not feature clips from any comedy soundcasts produced in Russia. It’s not much but it’s what we’ve got to offer.

All right. Enough of that. Let me take your mind off the troubles of the day with the distraction of a quartet of soundcast clips that we have never featured before: Comedy Gold Minds with Kevin Hart, Hypochondriactor, The Extramundane with Max West, and a brand new offering on the podwaves entitled Let’s Make A Sci-Fi. We’re also brought to you this week, as usual, by Henderson’s Pants and their Scavenger Slax!

But that’s not all, as they used to say on the Ginsu Knife and Ronco Pocket Fisherman ads on TV. I’m introducing a new “thing” on the show this week. San Francisco-based comedian Dan St. Paul, a friend of the show whose work we featured back in Episode 211, started a blog a while back during the pandemic lockdown called Slices. He writes up these funny essays and thought pieces about the absurdities of life. I’ve been suggesting he think about recording them and get them out there somehow and then it hit me: “Hey!  I have a soundcast! A comedy soundcast! Dan could play them on our show!”

So Dan cut his first one this week and we added in some music and some sound effects along the way. It’s called, “The No Tube Alternative”, the first entry into the audio realm from Dan. St. Paul’s Slices blog. You can read that one, and more than three dozen more at https://danstpaul.substack.com/. You can also follow him @DanStPaul on Twitter. Let me know what you thought – drop a note to [email protected] or hit me up @SuccotashShow on Twitter or Instagram.

I think we’re going to work up another one by the next time I’m back with Epi 297. And – this is confidential so don’t spread it around – but Dan is in talks with Succotash Patch Productions to possibly release his own soundcast based on his Slices essays.

CLIPS

Comedy Gold Mines
I don’t think it’s my imagination that Kevin Hart seems to be everywhere these days. He’s got a series on Netflix called True Story, he’s developing a hip-hop animated project for HBO Max, he was even in a Super Bowl commercial. His soundcast, Comedy Gold Minds, has been going for a while now, where he deep dives into the brains of well-known comics to find out what makes them tick. I clipped his chat with David Spade from a few weeks back, from a part of the convo where they get into what getting started on the standup stage was like.

Let’s Make A Sci-Fi
Fans and friends of Succotash know that I am a nut for any soundcasts that come out of the funny factory that is Kelly&Kelly Productions. This Sounds Serious, Dexter Guff is Smarter Than You, and just scads of other crazy satirical stuff they pump out is all comedy gold. (Flip back to Succotash Epi221 for my chat with Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring, two of the main brains behind those shows, to learn more about how the humor sausage is made…) Now they are presenting Let’s Make a Sci-Fi, and this is a show that’s different than a lot of their mocku-style products. It’s the 8-part adventure of three comedy writers - Ryan Beil, Maddy Kelly, and Mark Chavez – and their earnest attempt to write a pilot episode for a serious science fiction TV or streaming series. Here’s a snippet from their first episode, where the three writers are spitballing ideas for what the core of the show might be about.

Hypochondriactor
Actor Sean Hayes, who you know from TV’s Will & Grace, and from soundcasting’s Smartless, is a bit of a hypochondriac and has parleyed his groundless fears and obsession with maladies into a soundcast that he co-hosts with Dr. Priyanka Wali, a legit doctor and comedian, to delve into the sick side of life. In what has to be considered a pretty good “get” for a soundcast guest, Sean pulls in pal Robert Downey, Jr. for last week’s episode. They talk about a lot of stuff in just under an hour: Downey’s penchant for Wing Chun Kung Fu, his thoughts on Iron Man’s final words in Avengers: End Game, and his “Cat Scratch Fever”. You’ll have to grab the download for a couple of those topics, but our clip does start to get into the whole Kung Fu thing.

The Extramundane with Max Ward
If you like creepy, cryptid-based, spooky soundcasts…you’ll have to look further than The Extramundane with Max Ward. Why? Because it’s a spoof of those kinds of shows. A bit in the vein of My Neighbors Are Dead, this show rips the veil away from the supernatural to reveal, well, like the title says, the extramundane. Host Max Ward is voiced by Dan Kozuh, a writer of fictional non-fiction for places like McSweeney’s, The Hard Times, Infinite Worlds, and others. Our clip comes from Episode 6 – The Woman Who Raised Bigfoot, where Max tracks down and interviews, uh, the woman, L. Melacetti (Nicole Kemper), who raised Bigfoot. Or A bigfoot, who was left on her porch as a baby in 1964.

Well, friend, there it is, then. Episode 295 is stocked, cocked and locked. I don’t know if that’s actually a thing. I DO know that my cohort in soundcasts, Tyson Saner, will be right here in this very feed next week host episode 296. So close to Epi300 that we can TASTE it! And next month is this show’s ELEVENTH ANNIVERSARY in soundcasting. Some folks said it couldn’t be done. A lot more folks said, “What’s the show called again?”, followed immediately by, “How the hell do you spell Succotash?”

Just remember S-U-C-C-O, the “sucko” part, and you’ll be able to Google the crap out of us. Thanks once again to Dan St. Paul for letting us try out one of the Slices from his blog. We’re hoping to try out another one next time I’m here, in Episode 297.

Until you deign to hit us up again, won’t you please keep yourself and those around you as healthy as you can, brush after every meal, be nice to each other and the next time you’re buzzed by a low-flying cropduster and the pilot yells down to you, “Have you heard anything good lately?”, won’t you please pass the Succotash?

— Marc Hershon