robotech_master

Woohoo! Friday, January 12th, at 10 p.m. Eastern, I will be interviewing Chase Masterson—Deep Space Nine Dabo girl Leeta, and Janice Em's voice from the upcoming Shadow Chronicles—live on Space Station Liberty. I'm really excited about that.

I've put together a press release about the whole thing, which you can find below the LJ cut. I've gone around sending it to all the major SF and Star Trek news sites I could find. Wonder if there's anywhere else I could send it…hm, maybe I should check for major Trek-related blogs.

( For Immediate Release: Actress Chase Masterson will be interviewed live on talk show Space Station Liberty )

Well, today I did the Storyteller's Bowl TalkShoe interview show with Diane Duane, Sharon Lee, and Steve Miller. It ended up going just over an hour, and it went very well for the most part. I stuttered and stammered a few times toward the end after I basically ran out of things to say, but there was a lot of good stuff there for fans of the Wizardry and Liaden series. I hope that I can have all three of them back for longer reviews on more general topics in the future.

Checking my stats, so far I see it had 4 participants and 11 streaming listeners, and has had 18 downloads as of the latest time tallied by TalkShoe's meters. (Well, actually, there have been 18 downloads of all episodes of my show since then. I'm going to assume they're all or mostly the latest show, however.)

I also did a two hour, fifteen minute Robotech show, where a bunch of Robotech fans got together and talked about the show. I cut it off at 2h 15m because I didn't want to intimidate people who don't want to download five-hour monsters, especially when there aren't any guests to attract the more casual fans. I'll be honest, it's basically a whole lot of arguing over minutia again: stuff people have heard about Shadow Chronicles and whether General Leonard really was "evil." There's only so much of that I can take at a time, and I'm one of the biggest Robotech fans I know.

Anyway, both shows can be found via my TalkShoe page.

Well, I just discovered that the iTunes Music Store has a Talking Heads album, Bonus Rarities & Outtakes, that I can't seem to find anywhere else. Even Amazon doesn't have it, which is something remarkable.

Anyway, I couldn't give a darn about most of the songs on that album—they'd be nice to have, but I'm not going to shrivel up and die without them. But the album also has one song I've been seeking for a long time. And I couldn't resist...it was just 99 cents. So now I'm sitting here grooving to it on infinite repeat.

The song in question is the one from the climax of the Talking Heads movie True Stories, "People Like Us," sung by John Goodman. It's not been available on any other albums, as the record label never got around to releasing a true "soundtrack" to the movie, just an album with all the songs performed by the Talking Heads themselves. It's a wonderful upbeat country song, all fiddles and twangy steel guitars, and John Goodman really puts his heart into the song. It's no wonder he ended up joining the Blues Brothers band and starring in Blues Brothers 2000.

True Stories is a marvelously offbeat little movie. Kind of like something you'd expect David Lynch to make; great music, too. You can generally find it on DVD for under $10 these days. Unfortunately it was put out in 1.33:1 pan and scan back in the early days of DVD, and has never been reissued in a proper aspect ratio.

Other news: I've made a Wikipedia entry about TalkShoe.com. There wasn't any sort of entry there before, and I spent the day coming up with something good and comprehensive. I figure it'll get cut down by Wiki regulars soon enough, but better to write too much than too little. It's also a sort of job application for a tech writing gig for my bro Aaron's employer. Aaron got my my last job, with the ISP where I worked for two years; maybe he'll get me this one too. Hope so. I need to do some other writing stuff for it, but that can happen after I get up today.

Also, tonight I'm doing an interview with Harmony Gold representative Tommy Yune on my TalkShoe talk show, Space Station Liberty. I've got my questions all ready and I'm really looking forward to it—partly for the sake of the interview, and partly for seeing how many people show up for a program that's actually gotten some advance publicity. Any and all Robotech fans are welcome to call in!

Oh well...to bed.

Well, after this run-through of the song finishes, anyway.

"...there's something special 'bout people like us! People like us, the kind who answer the telephone..."

In a half hour, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on December 1, I will be interviewing controversial Robotech fan Peter Walker on my TalkShoe Robotech show, Space Station Liberty. Feel free to listen, chat, or call in, using the Talkshoe client! Just register and it's a free download. After the show is over, it will be available as a free download in mp3 format. See the link below for information on ways to call in.

Also, Thursday December 7th at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time, I will be interviewing Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles co-writer/co-director Tommy Yune. Feel free to tune in!

I'm going to start a Talkshoe Internet talk radio show about books; each episode will cover a different title, series, or book-related topic. The show will be called "The Biblio File," and episode 1, scheduled for Monday, November 27th at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, will focus on the first Dragonriders trilogy by Anne McCaffrey. I'll even have a three-in-one hardcover edition of said trilogy to give away to some lucky listener (with Bookcrossing label attached, naturally).

Future anticipated topics include other series of books, ebooks and why they aren't widely accepted, BookCrossing, how new forms of publishing might affect libraries' traditional roles, and perhaps topics suggested by my listeners.

To participate in the show, all you need to do is register online at talkshoe.com, and download their free Java-based chat client. Then you will use either Skype or an ordinary telephone to dial in and participate in the discussion. If you just want to listen, you can do that directly from the show's homepage without any registration or download needed.

For more information about the show, see the show's homepage at:

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/protected/tscmd/tc/7022

I hope I'll see and hear you there!

I'm planning to try out this Talkshoe thing and do a live call-in talk show relating to Robotech tonight at 8 eastern/7 central. I've posted the information about it in various Robotechy places on-line, and hope I'll get enough listeners/participants to make an interesting hour of it. Here's the show information; hope I'll hear you there!