What I Did Yesterday.

Yesterday, I recorded the last official episode of Geek Survival Guide. Some people were a little disappointed by that, and I wanted to explore a little why I did it.

At the beginning of 2010, I came out of the gate with a ton of enthusiasm. I was going to run Mad Poet Files AND Geek Survival Guide, get a lot of content out there, really kick butt. And I recorded this gung ho episode that in hindsight was pretty hilarious where I said I was going to release a new episode of one or the other every week. Which was an utter failure on my part. I think I recorded something like two additional episodes of GSG in 2010 before we actually hit November and I did the NaNoWriMo thing again.

While I was doing NaNoWriMo, I realized that I enjoy podcasting, and talking about writing, but it just wasn’t coming across as FUNNY to me, and GSG has always… well, has MOST always been about the funny side of geekdom, geekery, sci-fi and fantasy ideas and all that fun stuff. If anything, it felt a little like a betrayal of the podcast to do NaNo 2010 in such a non-funny manner. Weren’t a lot of survival tips. Was a lot of writing advice, from people that I trusted on the subject, but it really wasn’t GSG. And one of the first criteria for me on GSG was always to make myself laugh.

And it’s not the first time I’ve thought about ending the podcast. I seriously considered ending it at the end of 2009, but let myself be talked into keeping it going. And we see how well THAT turned out.

It also needed a real ending - a “This Is The Last One” kind of a sign-off. In a way, it’s a return to classic GSG - the survival tips, the stentorian voice of the announcer, etc. It’s always been a combination of my love of science fiction, fantasy, the the old Goofy “How To…” cartoons. I loved those cartoons that showed such a crazy disparity between what the announcer was describing so seriously and what Goofy was actually doing. It’s hard to pull off in audio, but I hope I got at it. Lights Out Radio never had that, and I still feel guilty for not finishing those stories off.

Listening to it now I am still giggling, hearing the references to Sunset Boulevard, Casablanca, the long quote from Blade Runner, the crazy things people just accept in Close Encounters - always a rich source of GSG material. How many times have we gone back to the sculpting Devil’s Tower in mashed potatoes well? When you think about it, he did have to be nuts to get on the ship.

I probably should have made a reference to everyone getting off the spaceship actually being Tyrell Replicants, brought the whole thing back around full circle.

It was a fitting send-off, I thought.