The Nerdologues Present: MBSing

Ali Barthwell sank her teeth into the sometimes-ridiculous NBC musical drama Smash from its premiere, and she continues to curl up under the blanket of its creative process years after its two season run. She walks the listener through [most of] the many story lines and breaks down the plot holes of the original musical added in the second season, Hit List. Beyond the delicious stretches they ask the audience to be on board for in order to have all the singing happening diegetically, there's a lot of discussion to be had surrounding talented females in music and how the show responds to some of these ingenues. This is a fun conversation of a fan embracing what's great about a show and exploring ways it could've been pared down.

Notes:

Ali's One Shot appearances and Vulture recaps

CAH Live tickets

Katy, Dylan, and Molly share a love for watching and performing within the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres as well as sharing the stage in Otherworld Theatre Company's forthcoming original play, The Rogue Aviator. Dylan is an Otherworld (and MBSing) vet, Katy is a cast member of OTC's ongoing Sailor Moon parady series called Moon! Prism! Power!, and 10-year-old Molly is Otherworld's first child actor and was previously the youngest podcast host in the iTunes store. We spend some time on each of their favorite entries in the genres, the joys and frustrations of being a fan of these novels/films/TV shows, and the desire of the cast and company to bring more of these escapes to the stage.

Notes:

Rogue Aviator info and tickets

Your Stories with Smashcoven at the Beat Kitchen

Cards Against Humanity Live at the Greenhouse

New Nerdologues podcast Let's Get It On and tour ep from LA

Thanks to Field Notes Brand for sponsoring and to the Chicago Podcast Cooperative for having MBSing as a part of their crop of shows.

Andrew has been an Anglophile since his Nana and Papa's living in Great Britain meant they passed along bits of its influence, pop culture, and kids books and toys on to him. Specifically citing Terry Deary's Horrible Histories series as the spark, Bentley's interest in the monarchy knows few bounds. He can rattle them off in order, expound upon their specific legacies, and cite both inspirations and inaccuracies in pop culture created about monarchs from before and after the creation of the UK. 

Notes:

The Street Wizard's Apprentice webseries from Muscular Clown

Competition Kitchen Kickstarter

Attend the Tale of Danny Tanner, directed by Andrew

James has been GMing RPGs like a boss for four years as the host of the One Shot Podcast, and he brings his love of tabletop RPG design to MBSing with the same kindness and fervor that pervades their network. From finding the most basic of rules to honing in on how to bring about specific attributes in characters via their abilities, so much design ground is covered. If you're into D&D but have never ventured outside of the dungeon OR if you've always thought tabletop RPGs were only for serious gamer geeks and fantasy nerds, this conversation is absolutely for you. Games like Fiasco, Feng Shui, Honey Heist, Everyone is John, and a few of James's own creations get some air time. 

One Shot Podcast Network

Your Stories Tour Kick Off Event

James played Competition Kitchen! The Kickstarter is still open

James and Kat's Talking Tabletop interview

Noisy Person Cards

Hal's enthusiasm knows few bounds, especially when it comes to the joys and silliness of professional wrestling. From his childhood fandom when WWF was only regional wrestling in the Northeast to having every match every week immediately available via the WWE Network, Hal's seen a lot of facets of wrestling at home, ringside, and even during one backstage endeavor (!!). There's talk of wrestler's music endeavors, the wonderful Aronofsky film The Wrestler, and what Hal would try to get over on audiences if he had the chance.

Notes:

SB Nation piece from a first-time watcher of wrestling

Hal's shows Tights and Fights and We Got This

The Nerdologues Kickstarter for Competition Kitchen

Savvy MBSing listeners will note that Alex Trepka talked about pro wrestling on episode 23, but MBS and Hal are both aware of that and OK with it. PLUS this is ep 203, so that's uncanny, huh??

Enrico Fermi posed to his colleagues in 1950 that if aliens exist, where the heck are they? The Fermi paradox is a conflict between arguments of scale and probability that seem to favor intelligent life being common in the universe and a total lack of evidence of intelligent life having ever arisen anywhere else. Drew has been pondering this pseudoparadox since he was a science-interested young person devouring Sci-Fi novels and films, and as an adult he's been able to explore more of both the stats that have gone into the probability of ET life and the filters that life has to pass through into continued existence. The result is his structuring a wonderfully interesting dialogue about the existence of non-Earth-based intelligent life and why we may not have seen it yet. 

The Street Wizard's Apprentice from Muscular Clown

Competition Kitchen from The Nerdologues

Alex Kliner has wanted to write film scores since he found out his biggest musical idol (Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails) was getting into the business himself. This self-proclaimed former "mall goth" went from taking piano lessons from an uber Christian teacher to writing music for friends' shows in college to touring with the Second City as a musical director to scoring a crowd-funded feature film and beyond. Get into his influences, methods, and favorite projects to work on as a composer and enjoy your own ability to passively listen to music without deconstructing everything you hear in order to mimic the style.

Notes:

Kliner did not send those pics of himself as a mall goth. Inquire via Twitter?

Alex's film scoring debut

Competition Kitchen Kickstarter

Thanks to Know Your Company for sponsoring and the Chicago Podcast Coop for a home.

Jenn Bane feels she wouldn't be the woman she is today without Neopets; It introduced her to gaming, message boards, and friends she still keeps in touch with. What started as and could have easily remained a conversation about the land of Neopia awaiting users at Neopets.com ends up being a discussion about Jenn and MBS's social habits as young people and how Neopets and youth have changed over the life of the Internet. There's talk of brands, business acumen, and the Disney Channel Original Movie Brink! (there's always time for Brink!).

Notes:

Jenn is a cohost of the Friendshipping podcast along with MBSing episode 100 guest Trin Garritano. They made a friendship sandwich across 100 episodes of MBSing. Heck yeah.

There was A LOT of coverage of The Day The Neopets Message Boards Went Mod-less. MBS's favorite post is, "Y'ALL NEED JESUS."

Thanks to Know Your Company for sponsoring and the Chicago Podcast Cooperative for all their hard work.

It's always a treat for MBS to share the love of a topic with her guest, and this RENT-head reunion was no exception. Mark saw the show on Broadway with its original cast as a high school southerner doing college visits, and it kinda changed his life. In addition to introducing him to a world of artists and diversity (and disease) he had no concept of, it "reaffirmed and maybe even instilled [his] love of a big ensemble of people trying to tell a meaningful story together." For this hour, there's only us, there's only this, and this is talking about how great Rent is.

PS - Somehow we managed to not discuss Jonathan Larson's passing the morning of the show's first preview. If you want a good cry and a sense of how emotional and passionate those performances were, read Rapp's book for a first hand account of the process without him.

We Got This with Mark and Hal

International Tom Hanks Day

Chicago Podcast Cooperative

Author and professional puppeteer Mary Robinette Kowal describes her love of puppetry as an interest in the boundless nature of the medium. She can play any type of character, there are countless ways to present the puppets themselves, and combinations of puppet actors and "fleshies" are ripe for new experiences and metaphors for audiences. She even tells a great story about the unfortunate(?) place her hand ended up while on set for Sesame Street. Garner a new appreciation for how the craft of writing overlaps with the entry point for puppeteering and how many puppeteers are making the puppets they perform with while you count how many times MBS says "cool!" or "that's amazing!"

Notes

Center for Puppetry Arts on Czeck Black

Puppeteers of America

UNIMA-USA (Union Internationale de la Marionnette)

2 Eps of Jim Hensen Presents The World of Puppetry