Succotash Epi311: Moving to the Sounds of Laughter

Old habits die hard, right? I can’t seem to drop an episode on time these days! What is this, the third show that I’ve hosted in a row to drop a day or more late? Ridiculous. BUT I have an excuse. Okay, I’ve had an excuse every time but THIS time it’s real-er.

Firstly, as our announcer Bill Heywatt will tell you, I AM Marc Hershon, the OG host for Succotash, The Comedy Soundcast Soundcast, and you’ve gotten hold of Episode 311. My excuse? I’ve been moving. Not just down the street, or down the block, or across town. My lovely wife, Debra, and I have uprooted from Sausalito, California – right across the bay from San Francisco, if you’re unfamiliar – and headed for the hills. The Sierra foothills, that is, in Grass Valley, CA. That’s a good 3-hour drive from the Bay Area, or SIX hours if you’re making the trip in an electric car with a 100-mile range.

Anyway, just moved in last Friday so “Studio N”, my Nerd Nook, had to be disassembled, boxed up, and re-assembled in our new place. It’s been a journey, friend. Average daily temperature is in the upper 90s to low 100s. And just a couple days ago, a wildfire broke out about 14 miles away with smoke I could clearly see through the Studio N window billowing up.

So enough of my excuses. You downloaded or are streaming this installment of Succotash to hear some snippet of comedy soundcasts, didn’t you? Well, friend, I’ll let you know what I have in store for you right after I ask whether you heard my inestimable colleague Tyson Saner, who always drops HIS show on time, in this feed last week with Epi310, entitled “Question, Listen, Kill”. It was a good time, featuring three shows I’d heard ABOUT but had never actually heard before: What'd You Do This Weekend?, I Hear Voices, and Kill Me Now with Judy Gold. If you didn’t catch it then you can still catch it now through a variety of authorized listening posts, including Apple and Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, Audible, iHeart Radio, YouTube, PodBay, Podchaser, and always – along with more than 11 years of archived episodes – on our homesite, SuccotashShow.com.

That gets you up to speed and gets us to this episodes fascinating lineup of featured snippets. I’ve harvested “sound seedlings” from 5-4, Crazy Town, Prop Culture, and Romance Road Test. In addition, we’ve got a new fake sponsor this week: Sarsaparilla.

Let’s get started, shall we?

CLIPS

5-4
This episode’s first entry is from 5-4. If you’re looking for it, that’s the numeral five, then a hyphen (or dash, if you’re from the Old Country), followed by the numeral four. It’s a soundcast, as they say right upfront, about how much the Supreme Court sucks. A sentiment I happen to agree with more and more with each judgement they render. Or mangle, as the case usually is. The hosts, Peter, Michael, and Rhiannon look at the reasoning behind SCOTUS’ issues, using their dark humor to reveal the high court’s biases, as the About section of their homesite tells us. Spoiler Alert: The clip I’ve selected doesn’t really have a whiff of their trademarked humor in it as if comes from their recent Emergency Episode: Roe Is Overturned. I didn’t want to play anything funny because I don’t think the matter is funny and neither do they.

Romance Road Test
It’s always fun and interesting when one soundcast begats another. And now the long-running By The Book soundcast, hosted by Kristen Meinzer and Jolenta Greenberg, have had a baby soundcast, entitled Romance Road Test! Kristen and Jolenta are also co-authors of the book How to Be Fine: What We Learned from Living by the Rules of 50 Self-Help Books. After years of experimenting on themselves with every self-help technique under the sun, they're leveling up and putting their own long-term romantic relationships on the line. Over 16 episodes, Kristen and Jolenta and their partners will test out popular recommendations for reigniting romantic connections. Everything from grooming each other—to sex every day for a week. Audiences will listen in and learn about what actually brings them closer…and what makes them want to run screaming away from each other. In this clip from their debut episode, they set up the idea of re-creating your very first date with your partner…if you can remember back that far. (You can get the first episode of Romance Road Test in their By The Book soundcast feed BUT the remainder of the episodes are exclusively available on Audible.com or through the Audible app.)

Crazy Town
For our next clip this episode, it’s off to Crazy Town, a soundcast hosted by Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, and Jason Bradford. This motley trio from the Post Carbon Institute uses their show to try to keep it together while diving in to maddening issues like climate change, runaway capitalism, and widespread social delusionism. I clipped their episode from early June entitled, “Throwing Superman Through a Cigarette Truck: The Insidious Manipulation of Advertising”. Our snippet has the hosts getting into the annoying practice in movies known as “product placement.”

Prop Culture
I am still trying to wrap my head around the concept for our lat featured show, entitled Prop Culture, which is another brand new soundcast. First of all, it’s not to be confused with a Disney+ show of the same name, hosted by Dan Lanigan, who is a movie prop collector. The Prop Culture we’re clipping is hosted by 3 NFTs characters Loot Bag #2020, Quirkies #307, and Quirkies #1988. It seems to only be available on iHeart Radio, or was – the more I look for it, the more it seems to be leaking out into other distribution channels. I’m not sure who’s doing the three voices. I do find it interesting that the show description on iHeart Radio ends with: “Prop Culture. We bet you’ll hate it.” See what you think with this snippet from their first episode, “The Pickleball Murders”.

That’s what we got for you and apologies to anyone who used out @SuccotashShow handle in their socials this past week to get into the TweetSack. This episode is so late I’m dispensing with the Sack for this week. But I’ll save up those handles until I’m back for Epi313.

Tyson will be back for Epi312 next week in this very same feed, so tune in for his soundcast shenanigans and check out his gaming videos at Tyson Saner: Gamer on YouTube, too!

Until next time, if you should happen to find yourself careening wildly down a steep hill on a bike with no brakes, and a pedestrian you narrowly missed as you zipped through an intersection screams out, “Have you heard anything good lately?!”, won’t you please pass the Succotash?

— Marc Hershon