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- Bobby's Snacks Vol. 31: Happy Bob-Day to Me
Bobby's Snacks Vol. 31: Happy Bob-Day to Me
Bob Raymonda
October 27, 2024
Happy #AudioDramaSunday Pals!
It’s finally starting to feel like fall here in the northeast and I’m incredibly grateful for it. Sam and I have made our favorite curried butternut squash soup recipe twice this week alone, to fully take advantage of it, and I’m feeling warm inside my bones, even if I’m really chilly underneath a blanket. My birthday was at the beginning of this week, and it’s been a nice, if low-key one this year. Spent last weekend celebrating with friends and family, and then had an appointment during the week with my pal Ray Hauer for my 36th tattoo from him in 12 years. Decided to go full bore this time and get a weird little dik dik on my left hand… and I’ve gotta be honest with you, I can’t stop looking down at it and laughing.
Today I’ll be having band practice with my buds in Ghost Tour to prep for our Halloween show at Bushwick public house this Wednesday. We’ve got some really special tricks up our sleeve for this one, so if you’re NYC local and feel like dressing up on the 30th, you should come out and join us!
Honestly? Right now I’m pretty bummed that I’m not at either the 31st annual Austin Film Fest, as was my original plan for this weekend, OR at Resonate Podcast Festival out in Richmond Virginia, where I’ve been seeing nothing but incredible updates from all of my friends and colleagues who are attending. Neither were in the cards for me this year, but I’m still incredibly inspired (from afar) to see these two spaces thriving with a celebration of our medium. It’s so necessary, and such a labor of love for everyone who puts them on. If you’re in Austin, please have a breakfast taco for me. And if you’re in Richmond, gosh, I hope you got to listen to some of those presentations while wandering the beautiful museum where the event was being held!
And now? We do a little podcast chatting ourselves.
I’m cheating with this one because I actually listened to it in time with my last update and just forgot to include it in my roundup, but I couldn’t get away without writing about its triumphant return! This lovable band of fantastical theater misfits are audio-comfort food for me (as evidenced by their delightful Fennel’s Food Cart minisodes). In all seriousness, Ishani Kanetkar is one of the best performers in our medium, and witnesses Leona stumble through her first ever cast party, not fully understanding how to interact with her friends and chosen family during the revelry resonated with me super hard. Sometimes, being surrounded by everyone you know can be an incredibly lonely experience, even if you can’t quite wrap your head around why. Good thing she’s got friends like Fel & Dalyn to help bring her down back to earth and grasp the fun she was having all along.
I’m still an episode behind on this one, but bluntly, it is impossible for me to be 1) normal about this show, or 2) unbiased about it. I mean, you give me a delightfully steam punk series that follows a trio of queer bandits, anchored by my own beloved Josh Rubino? There’s just simply no way for me to be anything but obsessed with every single release you put in front of me. What I REALLY loved about the premiere, though, was the time we got to spend with primary antagonist Ariadne, a woman so gleefully nefarious that she’s prepared to turn everyone around her into live grenades in order to get what she wants, with a fantastic performance by Addison Peacock, as always. I can’t wait to go hear the second release of the season!
Harrison Kip (played by series co-creator Jeffrey Cranor) stops by to read from The Book of Lost Things for Cecil and listeners to his community radio show. This series has a masterful track record of introducing a heretofore unmentioned phenomena, and yet weaving it into the pre-existing lore in such a way that it’s as if it was there the whole time. Kip’s sporadic list of items lost to time may have served as a frequent interruption to our narrator, but they tugged at my heart strings in such a way that I wanted to get out there and seek each and every one of them down, just so I could reunite them with the people they’d left behind. Fantastic stuff!
Alright, I’ll be honest with you: while I enjoyed the improvisational nature of Moonward, the first series set in the post-Midst cosmos… THIS is the show I was hoping for. As I’ve mentioned before, Actual Play podcasts aren’t my personal medium of choice, so while I absolutely respect the craftsmanship that goes into capturing that kind of storytelling, having another scripted series guided by the three mischievous narrators who introduced us to Stationary Hill in the first place? That’s my bread and butter. And wow… what a difference several decades can make. Gone is the tiny hamlet of misfits we were used to, replaced by a giant metropolis of brand new misfits for us to fall in love with. I could FEEL this team’s glee as they told this story, and I’m so excited to keep exploring right alongside them.
Move over Night Vale, it’s time for my true favorite Night Vale Presents show to return for another season of found footage goodness! When I first heard the premise for this year: a lauded children’s performer shows up to record VO for an audiobook only to find out that the director for the session is her estranged ex-wife, I was surprised! I assumed that, for the first time ever, we’d have two voices leading us through another story of this alt-history where families are outlawed… but that expectation was immediately subverted as soon as I listened to the premiere, because while we hear a hint of the director’s notes to Robin, it’s through the blurry lens of ambient noise sneaking outside of her cans in the booth. This is such a brilliant subversion, giving us one side of a conversation that’s dripping with unspoken history and abandoned chemistry. Truly fantastic stuff as always.
Lauren Shippen is back with more adventures of Whiskey & Harry! Though, this time, with far more sleep for her real life self, as dispatches have yet to return to their weekday-daily routine. That being said, I’m so glad that this show isn’t over after its initial experiment, especially after the twist at the end of season one, which opened up a world of possibilities, that have been even further explored in one of its most recent dispatched, which includes a direct, spoken message from a brand new character named Red. So while Birdie and Fox might be nowhere to be found… there’s a whole new world of folks out there for them to hear from. To feel less alone alongside… even if it is through extra-dimensional radio waves and not physical presence.
Hoof. This show. It really is truly magnificent what husband and wife duo K.A. Statz and Travis Vengroff are still capable of after all of this time. We return to the immediate aftermath of the end of Goshawk season one, as Iffy reaches Dragana in an attempt to summon help for a wounded Adele in the snowy wooded expanse of Maine. It’s creepy and unsettling and, as always, you can’t be quite sure who to trust as Lewis attempts to save face and explain that no, he was only there to do his job, not to hurt them, that was just collateral damage, while Jason purrs from the outside that he can reunite them with her lost sister… if only she’d come out and let him. Terrifying stuff that I cannot WAIT to continue alongside.
What’s really funny about me having finished this show now is that my biggest complaint? The fact that it’s another series following a journalist investigating some spooky phenomenon? Is basically entirely abandoned as it goes on. Kay becomes far more entrenched with the people taking part in the experiment, as well as the experiment in itself, too busy to bother documenting what she’s witnessing before her very eyes. And honestly… that’s the show I wanted. The one where she, as a person with a deeply tied history to her sister, and Manifold, the creature that’s been haunting their nightmares for years… THAT’S it. So, it got better as it went on, although, it did make me wonder a bit why that was ever there in the first place, if it wasn’t really going to be an important aspect of the story. Still, wonderful performances and sound design across the board. I still think it’s worth a listen, even if it is a bit clumsy and rote at the start.
This week’s election special begs to ask the question: how on earth are we supposed to dissuade the followers of a literal fire breathing dragon from voting for them? And… hoo boy, did it hit close to home. I, along with everyone else here in the States, am incredibly sick of the unhinged political theater that comes with another presidential election, so I had a harder time with this one personally. The choice for the show to keep VP Harris as the Dragon’s political opponent is understandable, as Trump is obviously a deranged fascistic maniac, but with the Democratic Party’s full throated support of the ongoing genocide in Gaza feels pretty dragon-like to me, too. I certainly empathized with Malik & Jamie in their acknowledgement that this, like every other election we’ve lived through in our lives, is being presented to us as the most important election of our lifetimes, the same way the election in 2028 will be touted. And 2032… and beyond. But still.
Our Halloween miniseries continued this week with Night of the Living Red by Jeff Van Dreason, an episode that was a true delight to put together. Because who of us who's lived in a major metropolitan area hasn’t been turned into a zombie begging for Trains on our next morning commute? Also, Ian Depriest who plays Brian Brown is one of my favorite new additions to the cast from season 4, so getting to spend any extra time with him is a treat. Tuesday will see the release of our final minisode, written by yours truly and starring my friend Cornelius Mohr from Windfall and Black Friday. It’s incredibly stupid and was also SO fun to put together. Can’t wait to hear what y’all think about it!
I’ve been meaning to check out more of Realm’s ongoing anthology series, created by Maine-based horror maestro and audio-fiction great Fred Greenhalgh for a long time now, and felt this season was the perfect time to do it! I’m one episode behind on their most recent series, an Australian import about a UFO that appears in the skies above a small sleepy town, and the various people who witnessed it. What I’m really loving about this series is its sense of creeping dread, that has far more to do with what was going on in each character’s interpersonal lives while they saw what they saw, more than the object floating in the sky itself. Plus, there’s no trope I love quite more than ineffectual deputy who is trying to take a case seriously, but can’t get past the fact that no one in town takes them seriously. Beautiful stuff.
I followed up that first marathon with another season from the same show, this one created and produced by Fred Greenhalgh himself! I’ve always loved how Fred, like Stephen King, has anchored so much of his own personal storytelling in the woods of Maine where he’s based. Now, this series takes place on an island off the coast where a woman has been lost to sea during a diving mission, and the people who are there to attempt to retrieve her. At least, that’s what we’re lead to believe, until her daughter and a friend begin to realize that something far more nefarious may be going on, and may be linked to the people who promise they’re there to help. It’s unsettling and weird and spends a lot of time underwater, which is such a perfect setting for horror. I can’t get enough, and I can’t wait to finish it up!
I won’t say too much about the episode I listened to from our show this week, as it’s our upcoming Thanksgiving special, other than to tell you that it was written by my friend Jordan Stillman and features a starring performance by none other than Wolf 359 alum Emma Sherr-Ziarko herself! It’s a low stakes, hilarious confession that I can’t wait to share with you. But the main reason I wanted to bring this show up, is that you’ve only got a few days left to audition for our upcoming fourth season! The casting call ends on Halloween, so please, if you were thinking of throwing your name in the ring, don’t forget to do so! This is our first open call since we originally created the series, and we’re so stoked to get to reviewing everybody’s work, and going about the impossible task of choosing the final 13. So do me a favor… and make it harder for me!
BONUS SNACK
I was introduced to Keith Rosson at my one of my favorite local indie bookstores, Transom Books in Tarrytown (right on the border of Sleepy Hollow) last year with the book Fever House. The Devil By Name is a direct follow-up to that novel, both of which were punk rock zombie masterpieces that both kept me on the edge of my seat and tugged at my heart strings in equal measure. I couldn’t put either book down when I sat with them, and devoured both in mere days. I’m bummed that this story is over… but so thrilled to know that there’s a whole body of work by Rosson that I've yet to dive into… and inevitably, much more to come.