Archive for the ‘Audio’ Category

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Can’t find my way home

February 11, 2019

Good thing it doesn’t matter when a virtual press runs, because someone has been intercoursing the penguin as regards his self-imposed deadlines.

Radio Free Dogpatch is intended to be a weekly affair, scheduled for Fridays, but just ask the penguin how well that’s worked out for him (whoops, too late, he’s exploded). To date the thing has reared its ugly head weekly, semimonthly, and on Fridays, Saturdays and Mondays.

After three or four goes at this most recent episode, which came this close to becoming a plain-vanilla blog post, I’m starting to think Wednesdays are the ticket. Showtime. Whatever.

In any case, and without further ado, here’s episode 19 of Radio Free Dogpatch. Too bad I couldn’t get it finished in time to win a Grammy to go along with all my Pulitzers, Reubens, Emmys and MacArthur Fellowships.

Oh, well, there’s always next year.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Editorial notes: Shannon Hall wrote about the meanderings of magnetic north for The New York Times. Steve Frothingham has been following the trials and tribulations of ASE and the various media-consolidation stories for Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. John McNulty wrote about super-salesman Elmer “Sell the Sizzle” Wheeler for The New Yorker way back in 1938. And Sam Dean of the Los Angeles Times gave us a peek at Zwift’s e-sports ambitions.

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. I edited in Apple’s GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro, adding audio acquired through fair means and foul via Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack (no profit was taken in an admittedly casual approach to various copyrights). Speaking of which, Buck appears courtesy of the 1935 William Wellman film “Call of the Wild,” while Nick Danger took a break from his Further Adventures to ask directions to The Firesign Theatre’s Old Same Place. The background music is “Crusin” from Zapsplat.com. And Blind Faith wrapped it all up with “Can’t Find My Way Home.”

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Posted in Audio, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Bike stuff, Journalism, VeloNews.com, Viewing with alarm | 25 Comments »

Let them eat loans

January 25, 2019

Wilbur Ross, The Man in the $600 Embroidered Slippers, doesn’t understand why federal workers idled and/or unpaid by Darth Cheeto might choose to visit food banks instead of the other sort.

Well, for an appetizer, even idled and/or unpaid federal workers like to eat at least once a day.

For the main course, unlike regular banks, food banks don’t require collateral, charge interest or repo your lunchbox.

And finally, for dessert, idled and/or unpaid federal workers know they won’t have to look at some bogus billionaire wearing $600 embroidered slippers while doing business with the food bank.

Yes, yes, yes, it’s another low-fat, low-interest episode from Radio Free Dogpatch. Bon appétit.

And remember, Wilbur, the Big Dog always eats last.

PLAY RADIO FREE DOGPATCH

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with a Shure SM58 mic and a Zoom H5 Handy Recorder and edited in Apple’s Garageband on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The background music is “Stay Away,” from www.zapsplat.com. That dog enjoying a meal comes from peridactyloptrix at www.freesound.org. And “Ahoy, polloi,” lifted from “Caddyshack” using Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack.

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Posted in Agitprop, Audio, Podcasting, Radio Free Dogpatch | 16 Comments »

DT, phone home

January 5, 2019

We’re five days into another lap around the Sun, but we’re flying blind — that big yellow ball is proving hard to locate here in the Duke City.

Though we do have plenty of ice and snow left over from the old year, for anyone who likes that sort of thing.

Our unseasonably wintry weather is a mouse fart compared to the shit monsoon swamping the nation’s capital, though.

And with Darth Cheeto angrily dumping pretty much everyone except his storm troopers onto a dole he won’t pay, and the Chinese more interested in exploring the moon than the wowie-zowies of Apple’s latest and greatest black monolith, you have to wonder how much longer it’ll be before we’re all debating property rights with thigh bones around the ol’ water hole again. Ook ook ook.

That’s right, Star Child, it’s time for the first Radio Free Dogpatch of 2019. Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip, and come on up to the Mothership. Mind the yellow snow. …

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica AT2035 microphone, a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB audio interface, Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack, and a 2012 MacBook Air. Additional jabber via an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic and a Behringer XENYX 1200USB mixer wired to a 2014 MacBook Pro with an external LG 24MP59HT-P monitor, which I used to edit the audio with Apple’s GarageBand. Doc Strangelove and his backup band, Monk and the Monoliths, appear courtesy of Stan “The Man” Kubrick, who has Gone Beyond and will never know. Tires on ice from Freesound.org. Snow-shoveling performed and recorded by Your Humble Narrator using a plastic grain hog and a Sony ICD-UX533, which also did a fine job of capturing the sounds of a blizzard from inside El Rancho Pendejo.

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Posted in Agitprop, Audio, Radio Free Dogpatch, Satire | 23 Comments »

Videocy: Backstage at Radio Free Dogpatch

December 1, 2018

• Editor’s note: What we have here is your basic compound fracture of the funnybone: a video about a podcast with a blog post attached. It’s like watching some homeless dude trying to wash the windshields of a three-car crash with a squeegee swiped from the gas station across the street and a Big Gulp cup full of his own pee.

Don’t ask me why I thought this was a good idea, because I don’t have a reasonable explanation, beyond noting that it’s been a while since I shot a short for Adventure Cyclist and I thought it might be prudent to blow some of the dust off my less-than-mad videography skillz.

Also, I’m striving for a weekly episode of Radio Free Dogpatch, and while this isn’t exactly that, it’s close enough for government work. Especially if you consider the way our government works lately.

So, hi, and welcome to … to … to whatever the hell this is.

• Read the script after the jump.

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Posted in Audio, Podcasting, Radio Free Dogpatch, Video, Videocy | 14 Comments »

This bud’s for you

November 23, 2018

It probably wasn’t what Anheuser-Busch had in mind when they developed that tagline, but many years later, as certain laws have loosened their Sam Browne belts a notch or two, a number of craft brewers — and a few larger outfits, too — are finding ways to work a little lower-case bud into their beverages.

The New York Times has the good shit here.

Now, some of you may find this hard to believe, but Your Humble Narrator has some (ahem) small experience with hops and herb, coming of age as he did when he did, and as a Geezer Third Class he is prone to reminisce at length on such matters.

So you might as well lift one, light one and lean back for another enhanced episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: This episode was recorded with an Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB microphone and Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack. I edited the audio using Apple’s GarageBand on a 2014 MacBook Pro. The background music is “Departure Lounge” by Keshco, used under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) from The Free Music Archive. Other sounds courtesy Freesound.org, with an assist from Your Humble Narrator, who played the opening riffs from “Don’t Bogart That Joint” by the Fraternity of Man on a Tony Dixon tin whistle and an Art & Lutherie Roadhouse acoustic guitar.

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Posted in Audio, Beer, Podcasting, Radio Free Dogpatch | 7 Comments »

Not insane! (Well, maybe a little)

February 13, 2018

A Firesign sampler.

Thanks to Steve O’ for sending me on a little trip down Dr. Memory Lane with his mention in comments of a KCRW podcast that looked forward, into the past, at the Firesign Theatre.

I first stumbled across the Firesigns in high school. The source of the contagion may have been my friend Bruce Gibson, who was something of an audiophile, or perhaps Dan Stephanian, who was an actual disc jockey.

The Firesigns struck me like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist, and if I hadn’t planned to be a cartoonist I might have gone into radio instead of newspapering. Their skit “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye,” and far too many impromptu amateur performances of same, would provide an entrée into friendships that, like herpes, have proven impossible to eradicate.

We saw “Martian Space Party” at the Rialto Theatre in Alamosa way back in 1972, and even the actual Firesigns themselves in concert at the old Ebbets Field in Denver, circa 1977 or thereabouts.

One of our college hovels bore the sign “Ed Siegelman’s Ground Zero Equal Opportunity Apartments,” a FT reference from “Dear Friends.” And when I was assigned to build an actual show as part of a radio-production class I created an all-Firesign homage. Music, news, weather, sports and commercials, all were pulled from their tattered casebook.

Phil “Nick Danger” Austin himself even popped around the blog to try, Python-like, to squeeze a dollar or two out of the Bozos and Bozoettes who loiter around my drugstore, drinking chocolate malted falcons and giving away free high schools.

Phil’s gone now, dear friends, as is Peter Bergman. But last fall the surviving Firesigns, Philip Proctor and David Ossman, got together at the Library of Congress to perform and discuss the troupe’s work.

The Library has all their albums. I only have most of them, an oversight I intend to correct.

 

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Posted in Arts & letters, Audio, Memories | 15 Comments »

Mayor Chris meets The Outspoken Cyclist

January 21, 2018

Hizzoner having a spot of fun between mayoral chores.

Diane Jenks recently spoke with my old college roomie Chris Coursey for “The Outspoken Cyclist,” her radio show-slash-podcast.

They discussed cycling, journalism and Santa Rosa, Calif., which continues to feel the aftereffects of last fall’s horrific fires in Napa and Sonoma counties.

Don’t let the cycling kit fool you — you’ll recall from earlier posts that Chris is the mayor of Santa Rosa, and I expect he’s logging most of his miles in that capacity these days.

“We are still very much in the middle of this disaster, and hopefully on the road to recovery,” says Hizzoner.

You can give the interview a listen here:

T H E   O U T S P O K E N   C Y C L I S T:

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Posted in Audio, Friends, Podcasting | Leave a Comment »

Radio Free Friday

January 19, 2018

Mister Boo still looks pretty chipper for an auld fella, unlike the other one cluttering up the joint.

When a dog yelps at 1 a.m. in the Sandia foothills it can mean someone is climbing in a window with a $2 pistol and a $200-a-day habit, or the deer are in the backyard, eating the trees.

Or, if the pooch is of a certain age, it can be the canine equivalent of the old LifeCall bit (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”).

Mister Boo is of a certain age, and when he began yelping at 1 a.m. Thursday I was pretty sure it was neither dope fiends nor deer. He wouldn’t be able to ID either one of those, since he’s blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other.

And if it were a dope fiend, and the dope fiend brought treats, well, The Boo would have a new bestie and the rest of us would soon be chatting with the insurance company, or St. Peter.

You may recall that Herself has an actual job of work, while I do not, so as our furry air-raid siren wailed I stumbled over to the other end of the house to gauge the extent of the damage.

The Boo had peed all over his kennel’s absorbent pads, which was fine, and then toppled over into the pee, which was not.

I carried him outdoors, went back inside, replaced the soiled pads with fresh ones, filled a basin with warm soapy water, and set about freshening up our soggy doggy.

The Boo didn’t like this one little bit, being wet and cold and outdoors, and I didn’t like it either, being shirtless and shoeless, and did I mention it was cold out there?

Afterward he had the shakes and required a cuddle to warm up. I tucked him back into bed as a drowsy Herself wandered in, wondering if it was dope fiends or deer this time. Then we tucked ourselves back into bed and one of us drifted off to sleep.

Come morning I was foggy and irritable for some reason and it was a good thing I didn’t have any paying work on the docket. The Boo, of course, was just dandy. He enjoyed a delicious breakfast — ground beef, minced pasta and green beans in a sauce of apple cider and low-sodium chicken broth — and managed to pee and poop outdoors before joining the cats in morning zazen. Their posture is all wrong and their eyes are closed, but they seem to derive great benefit from these sessions nonetheless.

My mind was not at rest and it was a good thing that my friend Hal messaged me about his latest project. He has a nighttime noisemaker of his own and thought it would be a pleasant diversion to read one of his essays from “Endurance” into some device and pop it up on the Innertubes. So he had some questions about audio recording and distribution.

I am hardly an expert, but the distraction was welcome, so off we went, diving down the rabbit holes of iPads and MacBooks, microphones and headphones, QuickTime and GarageBand, Audacity and Sound Studio, Libsyn and SoundCloud.

The detour proved so absorbing that I drifted off into a side project, reviving my old Radio Free Dogpatch podcast. Well, “reviving” may be a little grandiloquent — as I said, I’m no expert, and audio is more complicated and time-consuming than writing, or even video — but I did rework a 2017 Bicycle Retailer column about The Boo into a sonic short.

And here it is:

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Posted in Audio, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, Dogs, Podcasting | 20 Comments »

The ‘Scoop’ on burros and autism

January 14, 2017
The latest book from Hal Walter on fatherhood, autism and the outdoors.

The latest book from Hal Walter on fatherhood, autism and the outdoors.

My man Hal Walter is on something of a virtual whirlwind tour of the digital media landscape.

Hal recently discussed burros, autism and “Nature Deficiency Syndrome” with the folks at the “Stable Scoop” podcast. He comes in around 21 minutes into the show to talk about how he has tried to share his love of burro racing specifically and the outdoors in general with his son, Harrison.

You can also catch Hal on “The Outspoken Cyclist,” from longtime friend of the DogS(h)ite Diane Jenks. Hal’s segment begins at 26:44.

Give him a listen in both places.

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Posted in Audio, Children, Friends, Podcasting, Radio | 4 Comments »

Rest day

November 21, 2016
The Irish should not be entrusted with any technology more advanced than the hoe and wheelbarrow.

The Irish should not be entrusted with any technology more advanced than the hoe and wheelbarrow.

Looks like I picked a good day to ignore the news in favor of fiddling with the dark corners of GarageBand (yeah, take cover, you might have to endure another podcast before much longer).

The homepage of The New York Times looks like the mounts of all Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse shat on it in a driving rain, which oddly enough is what we’re experiencing at the moment here in Duke City. The rain, not the horseshit, though that can be had aplenty too, if I am not otherwise occupied, which I am.

Even Charles P. Pierce is starting to make me nervous. When the headline is “Saddened, Angry, Sickened, Defeated,” it’s a solid tip that the guffaws will be few and far between.

Me, I’m just glad I don’t have any pressing deadlines. It was tough to bring the funny for the final Bicycle Retailer of 2016, and while delving into the mysteries of GarageBand is giving me a headache, it is in a largely unused corner of what remains of my brain.

 

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Posted in Audio, Bad news, Feckin' eejits | 16 Comments »

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