Comedy
One Small MomentToday I want to talk to some specific friends who I won't name, but I'm fairly sure that this will apply to way more of just them.First things first, I'm not going to insult your intelligence by giving you a bunch of platitudes. In my experience, they're nothing but empty calories. Filler and no substance, they're designed to make the person giving them feel better, not the person who needs help. In some cases, people who need help end up feeling worse. I'm one of those people, so I absolutely understand the feeling. So, no bullshit from me. Cool? Moving on.Let me describe my lack of bona fides right upfront. I'm a guy with a high school education and one year of college because I let my dick do the thinking up to the point that I ended up homeless and friendless. I tried to follow in my Dad's footsteps and join the military and washed right out after six months because I have a mouth bigger than my brain. I come from a family that describing as dysfunctional is exceedingly generous. My dad had anger issues, my mother was a narcissist manipulator, as is my brother. He's got a criminal record and is probably on his way back to prison for at least 12 years as I write this. I'm the voice of reason in my family, and as I have said repeatedly, this should scare the fuck out of you. I got married at 24, and I had three kids by the age of 30. I've been dirt poor most of that time. At this stage of my life, I believe that I am an undiagnosed case of autism from the 1970s because my kids--all of them--are on the spectrum. I didn't have a bad childhood if you looked at it from one angle, but I had a horrible one if you looked at it from the inside out. I inherited my Dad's anger issues and my mother's narcissism. I was a horrible husband for years until my wife walked out on me in 2005. It made me face myself in a way I had not seen before, and I couldn't take it. I had a nervous breakdown. My wife thought I was worth saving, and I am forever grateful for it. I promised I would work on my issues, and I have. Three times in my life, I thought I was at the end of my rope. Not from a thought of suicide ideation, just that there was nowhere else to turn. No one else to ask for help. No one else I could lean on. Just Roley.That moment right there is the point. The entire lesson. One small moment when your brain says, "Well, you're really fucked now, aren't you?" There is only one answer to that question, and that answer is yes because if you answer no, you ain't there yet. Trust me on this. You have to answer yes. This is the moment where you're accountable to no one but you, and you cannot lie to yourself. You can TRY. It ain't gonna work. Not for long.Let's not bullshit ourselves. There is a lot of work in repairing a life that you fucked up on your own. You climb up out of a hole for years before you ever see daylight. I was a shut-in for two years because I thought it better that the world forgets about me. I tried to make a living from home in 2006-2007, but this world we live in hadn't come to pass yet, and I was living a fantasy. It made me feel worse that I couldn't provide for my family, but I could barely function as a human at that point. So I decided to do the only work I was capable of: Working on myself. I read every self-help book and mental health book I could lay my hands on. I dug deep into myself to try to figure out why I was the person I was, how I became that way, and the answer was straightforward. First, I thought I was absolutely normal. My behavior, though abhorrent, was how I was raised. My parents treated each other and us kids horribly, but it wasn't physically abusive save for a couple of times I'll keep to myself. I grew up in the same environment I perpetuated. I was continuing a cycle. Secondly, to accept that fact and to change meant work I wasn't ready to take on. But human psychology is a lot like a car in that regard; you can do the work now, or you can do it later, but it's going to cost you a lot more. In my case, it almost cost me everything. It was the third of those three times that I faced myself in the mirror and heard that voice, and this was the time I said yes.For two-thirds of my life, my story is a story of failure, of self-hatred, of being a bad example. But from the age of 35 to 50, it's a story of repair and redemption. I'll put my humble path to today up against anyone's and dare them to do the work I've done to heal myself and come out who I am today. I'm still married to the same woman for over 25 years now. I've got three amazing kids who I adore. Up until May of this year, I had what I consider to be a dream job until COVID ate it, but I'm still with the same company, and I'm going to bust whatever amount of ass it takes to get my job back or demonstrate the skills I learned there to someone else who's willing to take me. I have a sense of self-worth and purpose that I've never had before, and I'm not taking being a call center tech support agent for the rest of my life. It is a means to an end, and it is not my life's work. I know what that is. It's helping you in the best way I know how: By being not the example of how to fix it, but from showing you by my example, it CAN BE FIXED that you can go from being a person full of anger and self-loathing and cruel behavior to being a person of kindness and compassion and love for people. That you can go from being a person who has no prospects to a person who can go to a job every day that fulfills them personally and professionally. That you can go from being a person who hasn't got their shit together at all to a person that can get morning to night without falling apart at the seams. This is my road, and my lane, but it's big enough for you, and I want you on this road with me. Some of you are gifted and talented beyond description, but the world doesn't know it yet because you have these problems. I know. I get it. I also see who you are, and the world deserves to see you as well. I had no one else to turn to at that last moment, so I did what I had to do. Myself. I'm asking you to take a walk with me because I don't want you to have to do it on your own. I may not know your way home, but I can get you as far as Anchorhead. You can get transport there to Mos Eisley or wherever you're going.I had to get one joke in there somehow. Did Joe Know About This?On the heels of the news of Joe Budden maybe-kinda-sorta-moving his show to Patreon (which is weird since it looks like it’s being hosted on Libsyn now), Spotify has announced plans for multiple business models for podcasts, possibly to include ad-supported subscriptions and a la carte options. These may be discussed at a live stream event later in February.Asked if Spotify thought customers would be willing to pay for podcasts, Ek on the earnings call responded that he believed there were several new models that could be explored.“I think we’re in the early days of seeing the long-term evolvement of how we can monetize audio on the internet. I’ve said this before, but I don’t believe that it’s a one-size-fits-all,” he said. “I believe, in fact, that we will have all business models, and that’s the future for all media companies — that you will have ad-supported subscriptions and à la carte sort of in the same space, of all media companies in the future.”“And you should definitely expect Spotify to follow that strategy and that pattern,” Ek added, more definitively.The answer seemed to indicate that Spotify is considering some of the ideas in that recent survey — of getting consumers to pay for some podcasts, instead of accessing them all for free or having them bundled into their music subscription.I wonder if Budden was aware of this and balked. Would there be a revenue split between Spotify and the creators, and what’s the ratio? Now that I think of it, isn’t that what they’ve been crying about re: Apple?For more than a year, Spotify has been making noise about Apple’s unchecked power over the App Store, and in March 2019, it filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission. Spotify claims Apple’s practice of taking 30 percent of an app’s revenue is unjustified, and says the company operates as a monopoly on iOS.Suddenly, I find this Budden/Spotify deal more intriguing. Wait, You Can Make Money Doing That? Julie Miller from Vanity Fair writes about Hollywood coming over to the Pod Side for ‘fun and profit’:…entertainment types began orbiting the audio space about two years ago in earnest, as the number of Americans listening to podcasts every month headed toward the 100 million it is today. It was also around 2018 that agencies like CAA began incorporating audio deals into their development packages. One insider estimates that many celebrities could get a six-figure guarantee per year, with the biggest actors receiving between $1 million and $3 million to launch an unscripted podcast. Scripted projects offer less up-front money but can be adapted into TV shows, films, books, and so on.For the record, I am Steve Jobs, “Podcasts are Amateur Hour" Years Old. For years, podcasting was seen as less-than, so when I see stories like this, the little imp of the perverse in the back of my head tosses a bone at every true media elitist who, strangely, has a podcast now.. How About Not Doing That?Chris Curran over at PES has a question about your thin mouth:When I’m doing my fine-tuned editing on a podcast episode I use TwistedWave or Sound Forge because they allow me to VERY QUICKLY zoom in, highlight very small things like single mouthclicks, and delete them. When I try to make the same kind of edit in a DAW (Reaper and others) it takes forever. What say you?For the most part, my workflow tends to remove mouth clicks, or at the very least minimize them. If they still show up through my noise gate, I highlight and remove them. I can’t say this happens often because I like to make sure I keep some water near me while I’m recording. The single biggest thing you can do to prevent mouth clicks is to keep hydrated. Remember, you can’t fix it in Post if it never happens in the first place.