Sunday, April 21, 2013

The Life and Death of the Super Uber Kickass Nerdcast

Part One: The Life

Kids, let me tell you a story.  No, its not the story of How I Met Your Mother, but its the true story of the rise and fall of one of the coolest podcasts to ever grace your ear holes.  At one time, we thought that there was no power in the 'verse that could stop us.  Just like Kato and Nash, and even Tango and Cash, there was nothing that could break us up.  But, just like Joss Whedon's Firefly, our show came to a very abrupt end.  In our case, there were no Fox execs that pulled the plug on us, we pulled the plug on ourselves.  But how could such an awesome show that had a fairly steady following come crashing to pieces?  Well, here is my side of the story.
To understand how this whole thing came to be, I need to take you back a few months.  June 17, 2011 to be exact.  Now, what makes this date so significant?  Well, this day saw the release of the long awaited live action Green Lantern movie.  But more importantly, this day saw the formation of the coolest group ever to walk the face of the Earth, the Super Uber Kick Ass Nerd Squad.  Now, Pete and myself had gone way back, as we used to work together at Edwards Theater.  And then I had met Ryan through working together at Melaleuca.  And Adam and Ken had both been friends with Ryan for years.  
Now, all planets must have aligned or whatever, but we all met that day, and it was that day where the seeds were planted for the nerdcast.  After the movie, we stayed out in the front lobby for a few hours, chit chatting about every single nerdy thing under the sun.  Every time we were able to meet up, it usually ended up that way.  No matter what combination of us got together, it usually ended up the same way.  A bunch of nerds talking about a bunch of nerdy things...and it was great!  When you get a bunch of like minded individuals together, it is one of the greatest things ever.  We were not able to meet often, but when we were able to, we could have talked for hours.  Unfortunately, we were not able to get together as often as any of us would have liked to. 
Thus came the idea for the podcast.  Now, every so often when we got together, Pete would always bring up the idea of getting us together and doing a podcast.  Now, the first few times, we all sort of just agreed when the idea was presented, but then nothing ever seemed to come of it.  I mean, you don’t really hear a lot of demand for people wanting to sit and listen to a bunch of nerds giving their diverse opinions about all sorts of random nerdy topics.  But then, after bringing up the idea once again, you could see the gears turning in our brains, the smoke starting to pour out of our ears.  Finally, for some reason, it started to sink in that this whole podcast idea would actually be a really great idea.  The biggest perk of all of it?  The chance for us to get exactly what we were wanting...the chance for us to hang out a lot more often.  I mean, we were not going to be hanging out in person, but we would be getting to get together and talking, which was just as good.    

So, the decision had been made.  We were going to do a podcast.  But, with the majority of us unfamiliar for the most part what a podcast even was, we turned to Pete, who has listened to so many hours of audio entertainment, he eats, drinks, and sleeps podcasting.  We basically just decided to do whatever the heck we wanted to do.  What we wanted to do was capture the complete randomness of our conversations.  We wanted to try and find a nice way to keep our spontaneity but find a way to keep it short, sweet, and to the point.  So every week, we would put together a rough outline, where we would include a bunch of talking points, but for the most part, it would still be very natural.  
And in my opinion, the way to make this work, was for us to remember two very important things.  The first thing was to make sure that we tried to keep it as natural as possible, because if we scripted it too much, it would not be as good as if we kept it natural.  And the second thing, and I feel that it is the most important thing, that we needed to remember that this was going to be more than just a show.  In my opinion, it was never about the show.  I am really glad people liked and enjoyed listening to it week after week, but the most important thing I felt that we needed to remember was that this was never about the show, it was about a group of friends getting together, to talk about the newest, latest, and greatest things to hit the nerd community, to talk about the things in our own lives, and to enjoy each others company.