Give It To Me Straight

Mylène got way too comfortable during the break and is fully reclined for the rest of the interview. I also turn away from the mic a lot to pour drinks. We continue talking about our mentality when it comes to performance. We also talk about what stagnation can lead to. At the end, I completely misinterpret a very simple question.

Part 2 with Mylène starts with how good we are at blaming ourselves for any conceivable situation in our lives. I point out how most issues we have tend to boil down to one or two central traits. We talk about the varying scales of narcissism, how dismissive and vaguely selfish it is to say “Oh, you’re not fat/ugly/etc.”, and how normal false equivalence is in society. There are a lot of therapeutic ways to deal with stuff that aren’t necessarily therapy,but work even if they are really weird. Lenn gets into the other prompt in the last leg of this episode, explaining how she got into improv comedy. All performers are similarly weird for getting involved in performance arts in the first place. Intro Music: The Warmth - Fat Night Outro Music: Spacesuit - Matt and Sam’s Brother

Mylene, aka Lenn, aka Lennie is on the show! At the time, Mylene and I were basically strangers. Lenn goes from prompt two to start with. She addresses her body image issues in relation to how she’s perceived by others and how that affects her in various relationships. We talk about the things that we feel make us undesirable in romantic relationships. We take a tangent into death for a while, like the tendency to only talk positively about people who have died, and how we personally respond to personal loss and other people grieving. Being egocentric manifests in weird ways especially when combined with other fun mental quirks. Into/Outro Music: You’re Good, But I’m Better - Kill J

Disclaimer: My mixer was on its way out when this was being recorded, so the sound quality is a little off. Part 2 of Cindy’s interview starts with why she enjoys music (since we took so many tangents in the first hour) both as a performer and an instructor, the importance of diversifying your music experience and keeping up different skills. When we get into the second prompt, we sort of struggle to nail down Cindy’s growth in regards to how she manages her personality quirks. She talks about her passive desire for attention and the different ways it manifests. Cindy then decides to eat the world’s loudest candy into the microphone. We both love calling things trash and garbage and explaining the difference between the two. I drop some vaguely related knowledge about narcissism in our culture and how easy it’s become to find an audience as technology develops. Intro Music: Garbage Truck - Sex Bob-Omb Outro: Now You Know My Name - The Derevolutions

Disclaimer: My mixer was on its way out when this was being recorded, so the sound quality is a little off. This episode has been sat on for so long it’s practically a throwback. Cindy was one of the first guests I had on the show and I don’t really know what happened with editing and publishing it, but it’s finally here! Cindy (following my trend of almost exclusively musicians on this show) talks about her musical origins, we talk about how we picked the instruments we started on, and the desire for music as a job. Cindy explains how she was late to the game becoming a music student in college, we breakdown the instrument personality types, try to call attention to the apathy we’ve noticed in some musicians, compare music programs, reminisce about high school band, and talk way too much about our respective jobs.

Part 2 with Merissa start of with some bathroom talk, but is mostly about relationships. We talk about different personality dynamics, growing up as the oldest sibling, and how we deal with conflict in romantic situations. I’m kind of a hypocrite in this area, but we talk about how to give and receive advice and when it’s appropriate to do so. In a bit of a tangent I say a bunch of stuff about language I refuse to fact check.We also talk about some shortcomings in communication we both have. There’s just a lot of different things being talked about.

During our extra long pre-show talk, we ended up on the subject of pornography. Streaming sites are terrible. Unless you're paying them.

The first of four minisodes with Merissa. I tell the story of how Diva came into my life. I don't know why I never thought about minisodes before.

With possibly the longest pre-show conversation to date, it’s Merissa! Merissa’s a vocalist friend of mine, so you can probably guess what we talk about. At least at first. We very quickly get into the fear of failure, rejection, and not being supported. Merissa talks about her personal mission to make people feel good and we consider where that comes from. “Podcasting as therapy” should be a thing.

A landmark third episode with Stephanie! We don’t have show comments or emails, so we skip over the idea of reading any, Pretending to be white has it’s benefits and dating white people is its own whole ordeal if you aren’t white. Early film performances and music composition are worth studying. The show goes full circle talking about Quentin Tarantino at the end.