Story Recording - Premature Adventures in Dating

I told this story last Sunday at a house show. I squeezed my story in between sets by Von Strantz and Families, though there were also excellent songs coming out of Kevin Schlereth and Up the Chain. Check out all their music and also listen to this story for like five minutes. The sound quality is low, but the story quality is high.

Nostalgia For Things That Are Not Gone

Part of a series of Live Story Recordings.

Art by my friend Alex

This is a story that I told at some friends' apartment in Chicago last week. They host a monthly arts showcase event there called The Workshop. If you'd like to know more about it, email them at theworkshopchicago@gmail.com and ask. They host all kinds of art, from movies, to poetry, to dance, to whatever you care to share with a group of friendly people. It's really cool!

This story is about this feeling that I don't really know if anybody else really has, but basically, it's when you really miss something that you could have if you really wanted it, but it's pretty much not worth the effort required to track it down again. I'm calling this feeling "nostalgia for things that are not gone." When I shared the story on Friday, I hadn't come up with a title, but I think that works well enough.
 

Podcast Episode 12: The Other Side of the Hedge

The Other Side of the Hedge, by E.M. Forster

This is a story I read in high school in my Honors Mythology class, though how it was tied in with the other themes in the class, I no longer remember. It is either about the futility of the pursuit of progress, the importance of enjoying the simple pleasures in life, or the nature of life and death. Or some other thing. It's a beautiful, weird little story.


Notes:
At last, no more introductions! I swear I thought I'd abandoned them long before this. To be fair, there are lots of other episodes (which are readings of material that is more or less obviously still copyrighted) that I produced besides the twelve I've archived here on the blog, many of which came after this point and likely had no introductions, but still. My memory of having abandoned introductions earlier certainly proved unfounded.

Okay, so it's got a tiny introduction, where I refer to myself in the third person like I'm reading you an audiobook you bought off a rack in the gas station. I thought I was so cool.

I'm fond of the things the narrator lists as examples of human advancement: radium, the Transvaal War, and Christian Science. I wonder how many of these Forster thought of as a joke. Probably all of them.

The music in the middle sounds really tossed off, like I felt like I'd established that my podcasts have music, but I didn't feel inspired to create something that actually worked in the story. I think that's the case in a number of places. I'm still very fond of the music in the other E.M. Forster story I recorded.

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Podcast Episode 11: Tobermory

Tobermory, by Saki

This one is also by Saki, who wrote Sredni Vashtar; the tone on this one is similarly biting and funny. It concerns a cat who is taught to speak, and then proceeds to embarrass his owner and her friends.



Notes:
Ha ha! This is from my radio show; I actually read this on air. I should write a post about being on the radio sometime. I sound so different from the other podcasts; I'm clearly nervous but also apparently enjoying myself. The fact that it's on the radio live means that any mistakes I made were stuck in the recording. Maybe I should try to edit this to cut a few out; there are a lot.

Things that made me nervous while I was on the radio: worrying about making reading mistakes; the idea of broadcasting my voice, live, to other human beings, with no filter, and whatever the unimaginable consequences of screwing up might have been; and especially the constant worry someone would call the studio, which I had no great plan for addressing (occasionally in the radio recordings you will hear me just put on some music at a random point because I had to answer the phone; I think that's what the music at 10:40 and again at 11:30 or so is about) and which was never for me anyway.

Answering the phone at WHPK was always at least moderately infuriating, because the person on the phone always wanted something I couldn't give them, like a song request or contact info for a DJ I didn't know. I never really knew anyone else working at the station. The way things worked was, you came to the station, rang the bell (which flashed a light in the booth, rather than making a sound that might get on the air) and waited for the DJ to let you in. They left after their show was done, and you performed the same service for the next DJ. This process probably accounts for at least some of the random music stops in the episode.

This story would be better if I weren't reading so quickly and poorly. I did manage to make up on the spot a bunch of different weird voices for different characters that seem to work all right. I'm surprised that I didn't really try any British accents. Maybe I was worn out from reading a Sherlock Holmes story earlier, during which I found out what it is like to attempt a voice with a foreign accent for a sustained half hour or more.

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Podcast Episode 10: Hearts and Hands

Hearts and Hands, by O. Henry

This short, fun piece is by the old master of the short form, O. Henry. It's about a chance encounter between old friends on a train. O. Henry's work is all about the crazy twist ending, sometimes to a fault. At his best, in stories like this one and perhaps the well-known Gift of the Magi, he's able to make you feel some human depth and soul in his characters as he propels you toward the "gotcha" moment. Like many of my podcast episodes, I first encountered this particular piece in a high school English class, where I thankfully had a teacher who was willing to challenge his students with a broad variety of material.
 


Notes: 
Yay, it's the shortest podcast episode ever! I like the voices here. Of course, it's easy to distinguish characters when there's only three of them; here it's my regular voice, a low voice, and a slightly higher, breathier lady voice. Thank goodness I knew better than to try to use falsetto voice for women when I recorded them.  I think the music works better for this episode than it does on a lot of them; a nice, light, fun tone and pretty unintrusive.

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Podcast Episode 9: Sredni Vashtar

Sredni Vashtar, by Saki

This is a brief story by British author Saki. Saki was a brilliant satirist, and this piece is particularly fun; it reminds me of Roald Dahl, mixed with some of the Screwtape Letters' sense of British life and attitudes. It's also, ah, pretty weird. Be prepared for a bizarre personal religion and some slightly strange narration.



Notes: 

Hah! Again I'm faking it in my introduction: talking as if I'd read a bunch of Saki. Seriously, I've read two stories: this one and the other one I read for episode 11.

I'm really hit or miss with regard to music on these podcasts. I always wanted to have some music, but I wasn't always able to produce the right moods with my limited musical abilities and materials. I feel the wall-to-wall soundtrack is a poor choice for any podcast, but it doesn't help that here it seems utterly disconnected from the tone of the story.

I think the line "He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable" is my favorite moment in the story. This kind of thing is something I remember well from childhood: latching on to a word whose real-world meaning is less important than what it personally might mean or do for me. Also, doing or thinking something to irk someone who has no idea what you're doing or thinking and thus can't actually be irked by it.

Small detail, but the "chanting" at 8:40 or so would have been a lot more effective if I'd actually tried to chant it. I wonder if I even read this all the way through before recording. I was and am a lazy young man.

I don't know if it's just the podcast medium or simply that I delivered it poorly, but the ending has no impact at all. (If you missed it like me: the kid's ferret attacks his cousin, whom he dislikes, and he's indifferent about it, so he eats some toast.)

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Podcast Episode 8: A Dream of Armageddon

A Dream of Armageddon, by H.G. Wells

As part of my fascination with ways for the world to end and what people do about it, I present this excellent work by H.G. Wells, prolific science fiction author and prophetic genius. This work is shot through with problems of illusion, dream, and reality.

Wells's work is pretty cool stuff, all things considered: he invented tons of the basic concepts involved in science fiction (The Time Machine is pretty much the first story about time travel as we conceive of it today) but it doesn't always make for the best read-aloud material; the language is old-fashioned and often unwieldy. Still, this story was interesting enough to take the chance on the occasional awkward sentence or outdated turn of phrase; it's got some haunting, moving imagery and ideas in it.  



Notes:
When are these embarrassing introductions going to die already? I thought I gave up on them long before this. I'm getting sick of listening to my rather facile, ill-prepared, poorly thought-out remarks at the start of each of these. Ah, well, I suppose there have been worse ones than this one.


I like the narrator's total resignation (at ~5:30) when he decides to listen to his traveling companion's dream. Like, "What the heck, I'm going to be totally bored no matter what. Might as well listen to this crazy guy." I know I'm not a huge fan of listening to people's dreams either. As a rule I try to describe my own in 2 sentences or less when I do. I suppose if this character had followed the rule, we'd have a much shorter story.

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Podcast Episode 7: Fables

Fables, (re)told by various authors

This is a collection I put together to make up for the fact that each of the stories is quite short; in fact, the story I wanted to read the most, the first, is quite ludicrously short, and I certainly felt at the time that it needed some accompanying material to be justified as a podcast episode. (Off topic: check out how deep I am making my voice in the intro to this. I was super into honing my radio voice. It sounds a little goofy to me now, but it was really important to me at the time.)

The Appointment in Samarra, told by W. Somerset Maugham
The Camel and His Friends, from the Panchatantra, told by Arundhati Khanwalkar
The Snow Man, by Hans Christian Andersen
Godfather Death, from Grimm's Fairy Tales



Notes:
I like how I felt compelled to clarify whose perspective the first fable is from. Seems a bit condescending now. Also, my attempts to project a super-deep James Earl Jones radio voice appear to be back, alas.

My intro to the second story makes it sound like it's going to be about The Cannibal and His Friends, which frankly might make for a more interesting tale. HOLY CRAP I totally forgot about the voice modification I used on myself for the lion voice. Weird. I guess it sounds kind of cool.

So I guess these are all about death and dying, huh? I wonder why I didn't just call the episode "Death Fables."

What the heck, God's voice sounds terrible in the last story. Seriously. The lion's voice was basically fine, but I made God sound like a buffoon. Blerg. I like how the King excludes half the human race from helping his daughter when he offers the reward for healing her. Also, Death is mostly cool in this story, and then ends up being a total jerk right at the end.

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Podcast Episode 6: The Cask of Amontillado

The Cask of Amontillado, by Edgar Allan Poe

This was the Library of Babel special Halloween episode. The Cask of Amontillado is my favorite Poe tale, and is frequently read at the annual Halloween story-reading event in my apartment. The story is well-paced, with just the right blend of dread and suspense building throughout till the chilling conclusion.



Notes:
I'm still freaked out about whether the "ll" in "Amontillado" should be pronounced as an "l" or a "y." I'm fairly certain it's a "y." (I think it's a Spanish name, that is.)

I believe we're in the end stages of the death of the podcast introduction, which has now evolved into a simple vocabulary lesson (though that's helpful for just about any Poe story, so I think it was a good choice). For some reason, I neglected to define niter, which appears throughout the middle section of the story, begriming the walls and serving as an indicator that they are in a damp place, bad for someone with a cough, and which, in my experience, most modern readers have never heard of.

I take back what I said about music levels in my last entry. Here the music is usually pretty un-intrusive in terms of volume, though I think there's probably way more music than there needs to be. I'm not sure it really adds anything in most of the places it's present. Occasionally you get the slightly unsettling effect I was probably going for. I appear to have been trying to use it as a substitute for sound effects for things like chains clanking and so forth, which may or may not have been successful.

I think my vocal work on this episode is pretty decent, insofar as I clearly tried to create different voices; the narrator is just my normal speaking voice, and Fortunato is a slightly lower register, speaking slowly and slightly slurred. I've never been drunk, nor do I have much experience with drunken people, so it may be an understandably poor imitation of drunkenness. I do think the ending is pretty creepy, which is the really important thing. 

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Podcast Episode 5: —All You Zombies—

—All You Zombies—, by Robert Heinlein

This story is from Robert Heinlein, celebrated science fiction author of the twentieth century. —All You Zombies— concerns not the undead but rather time travel, especially time paradoxes. It can take two or three readings to fully understand, like any great time travel narrative (see, for another example, the excellent, and wildly confusing, independent time travel movie Primer), so if you end up listening to the story and not getting it at all, I certainly recommend you check out the text for yourself. Few stories tackle the time paradox in such a fun and intriguing way.



Notes:
I think the guitar music throughout is a little too upbeat for the tone of the story, (and too loud—I never really mastered the proper levels for putting music under speech properly; also, this is certainly one of the stories where music interferes more than anything else) but whatever, at least it's kind of engaging.

I'm clearly uncomfortable speaking into a microphone without a script, but was also apparently too lazy to get around that by actually writing out my intro, at least for this one.

I'm pretty sure there's a less torturous way of pronouncing "ouroboros," but I probably didn't practice beforehand.

 I think my favorite part of the story is the "By-Laws of Time" at the end. Aside from that, I still haven't figured out what's going on at the very end of the story, in particular what the story's title is referring to. Still, the ending's got a wistful beauty to it that I like a great deal, and I think it's one of the few places this episode really succeeds. 

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Podcast Episode 4: I, Cthulhu

I, Cthulhu, by Neil Gaiman

This story is Neil Gaiman's lighthearted take on H.P. Lovecraft's work surrounding the now-dead-but-soon-to-rise-again anti-deity Cthulhu. In it, Cthulhu dictates his memoir. I definitely recommend reading some Lovecraft before listening to this story; it's a humorous take on the utterly black and bleak universe that Lovecraft created, and the humor only makes sense if you've been exposed to at least a little of the blackness and bleakness. I'd recommend starting with The Call of Cthulhu and At the Mountains of Madness.



Notes:  
Around the time I created this episode, I also made a recording of Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space that was then lost in computer crash, and I felt it too time-consuming to re-record (...it's a long story, literally). My introduction presupposes that you listened to this recording, which is of course impossible. This is the level of professionalism I achieved in my podcast production, ladies and gentlemen.

This episode predates my love of all things Neil Gaiman; I had never heard of him when I first read it, I just enjoyed the story. Nowadays my list of favorite Gaiman stories has to be at least 5 entries long to really be fair to the depth of my admiration (and the quantity of dude's work).* My memory tells me that I pronounced his name wrong in this recording, but apparently I got it right. In contrast, under the heavy influence of my ongoing linguistics education, I made the amusing choice to interpret the exclamation point in Ia! Shub Niggurath's name as an alveolar click, which is not, I believe, the canonical pronunciation at all. Speaking of clicks, I apparently lacked the wherewithal to edit mouse click sounds out of a couple places, notably the points where I overlaid two sets of vocals to give a weird quality to the gibberish Cthulhu occasionally spouts when dictating his memoirs. All that said, I still think this one is a lot of fun, especially if you know enough Lovecraft for it to be really funny. 

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*Fine, since you cared enough to read the footnotes, I'll give it to you: Neverwhere, Stardust, The Graveyard Book, "Murder Mysteries" from Smoke and Mirrors, and in a related note to this post, A Study in Emerald (Gaiman has a bit of a Lovecraft obsession, if his bibliography is any indication).

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Podcast Episode 3: The Celestial Omnibus

The Celestial Omnibus, by E.M. Forster

In this story, a boy takes a bus to Heaven, which in this case is populated exclusively by characters from classic works of fiction. The reason I originally chose to read this story for my podcast: I read it in my favorite English class in high school, Honors Mythology. I had a wonderful teacher who I felt understood more about me, and certainly more about literature and words, than almost anyone I knew. She could just look at me and tell when I needed to say something, and always had the right word to say to get me to come out with it. This story is at least partly, if not in fact mostly, about the wonderfulness and transportative quality of a good story, which, as you may know, I believe in more than almost anything. This teacher taught me a great deal about such things, and I dedicate my reading of it to her.



Notes:
This is the first podcast that I'm not really all that embarrassed about. I still think the music is really pretty good. Note also the fairly short and almost to-the-point introduction, well on my way to just dropping them all the way. I did a decent job with distinguishing voices. There are still some fairly bad line readings I was too lazy to go back and fix in editing, as well as some rumbly noises that should have been cut out or re-recorded. Other than that: good job, twenty-year-old me! Way to imbue this thing with that wistful, longing feeling (pretty close to the constant range of feelings you were having anyway 'cause of girls not liking you back and not knowing what to do with your life). Ah, to be young again.

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Podcast Episode 2: Is He Living or Is He Dead?

Is He Living or Is He Dead? by Mark Twain

This episode is a short story from the America's greatest satirical writer, Mark Twain. If you have ever been or are planning on being a starving artist, this story will speak to you. It's got a really dry, sardonic take on the fate of the great artist in his or her lifetime.



Notes:
I never fully came down on a great model for introducing episodes of the podcast. In this one, I tried to be moderately informative and fun; instead, it comes off as pretty scattered and silly, what with the tossed-off analysis of the tone of the story and the goofy echo-effect for the book title. Also, I made it sound like I actually read the late-period Mark Twain novel I sort of recommended, which is a lie; we read like a two-page excerpt from it in an English class once. I later pretty much abandoned introductions of any sort and focused on telling the story, which was probably for the best.

My vocal abilities are pretty sorely lacking in this reading. My voice is shaky and muddy, and I strike the wrong tone at the beginning of the story; you don't get the sense that what follows is going to be at all funny, or even particularly interesting, from my gentle, mellow, nasal intonations. It gets a bit better after the first couple minutes, fortunately. I think maybe I was trying to avoid the big puffs of air that come with "p" sounds in English and which are so time-consuming to edit out. Note also that I'm more or less guessing at how to pronounce all the French names for things. Thank goodness I didn't try a French accent for anybody. Though that might have served to distinguish the various characters, who I failed to develop separate voices for.

On the positive side: I think there's some good energy in the reading here, and occasional notes of real enjoyment in my voice as I read the story. I really do like this story a great deal. It's a silly idea, sure, but well executed and fun. I think the piano music at the start and end blends fairly well with the story; it sounds like the kind of thing old men might have on in the background while sitting around telling each other stories in a lounge somewhere.

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Podcast Episode 1: The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel, by Jorge Luis Borges

This story is the one my blog is named after. It's about a really, really strange and terrifying library. (The reason I named the blog after the story is that the Library in Borges's tale is said to contain all possible books, which, while a bit of an exaggeration, does a decent job of getting across the idea that this is a blog about basically anything.) I'm no Borges superfan, but just about everything I've read by him is either solid or utterly amazing, and almost always surprisingly weird. Like most of his stories, this one mixes the real with the fantastic in a compelling and unusual way.



Notes:
Lord, I haven't actually listened to these recordings in years. I guess I was worried I would be embarrassed. And I was right, though there's still some good to be found here.  

I like the first part of the introduction here; I assume I intended it as something that would be repeated at the start of each episode, but I apparently became immediately embarrassed by it (the "and get someone to listen" is a bit cringe-inducing even now). The rest of the intro is pretty pretentious. I'd forgotten that I went out of my way to find relevant quotes for the subject, but it's clear to me that while I was trying to sound like I'd extensively researched and read on the subject of Borges, I probably just cobbled together whatever I found most readily on the internet. Sidenote: I promise my ability to speak Spanish in real life is less abysmal than this recording makes it seem. Maybe I was nervous at the time, but it's virtually unintelligible and, again, utterly pretentious. I could just as easily have used the quote by itself.

I've always liked the music for this one. It goes on way too long, as the music I wrote tended to do throughout the podcast. I left the metronome clicks in, which I thought sounded like water dropping. Eerily. I still think this was a solid idea.

The editing on this is pretty terrible. I'm still not a great editor, but on this episode there are a number of places where I had to go back and re-record something and insert it in the main recording, and these moments are extremely obvious to my ear.

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Story Lab Recording II

Part of a series of Live Story Recordings.

Art by my friend Alex

This week, I'm posting a story I told on stage at Story Lab Chicago in June of this year. I had a lot of fun telling it! If you're interested in reading instead of listening, I've told it in slightly altered form here. (The art above, which is from a collection of stories I made into an album, was made by my friend Alex; you can find more from her here.)

Creative Madness: the U of C Scav Hunt

Part of a series on Stuff You Might Not Know About.

It's really the wrong time of year to write about this, as the annual University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt (typically shortened to "Scav Hunt" or simply "Scav") takes place in May, not October. But Scav is great and I want to talk about it.

Sometimes in the middle of a conversation with a friend, often one I've known for quite a while, some topic will come up regarding insane amounts of creativity or fanatic zeal for an obscure and seemingly futile cause. And I'll say, "Have I ever told you about Scav Hunt?"

Scav is U of C students' yearly opportunity to expend massive amounts of creative energy to no practical end, for fun and for glory alone. Every year at 12am on the Thursday before Mother's Day, the Scav Judges release the List of that year's 300 or so items, which they have spent the previous 12 months meticulously researching and describing.

Some of these items will be straightforward to understand but somewhat difficult to acquire, like "A big rock. Really big. [Up to 30 points]"¹ or "A De Lorean. We've got seventy-five bucks riding on this one. [You've got seventy-five points riding on this one]."² Some are easy enough to understand, but require lots of time and creative energy to make, like this one:

An original table-top wargame playable with only coins, small office supplies, and other things I might reasonably expect to have in my pockets. (And no, I don’t reasonably expect to have three d12s in my pockets. Nerds.) On Thursday starting at 1:00 p.m., you’ll have 15 minutes to give me a copy of the rules, explain them, and play part of a battle with me. Playtests will be scheduled at Captains’ Operatory. [12 points]³ 

Some items require specialized knowledge just to understand what they are asking for (see, for example, item #44 on 2009's list, which requires that you know [I assume] Chinese). And some items are intentionally vague, left open for the Judges to drop on you when they choose; there is very often an item marked simply "TBA."⁴ There are also a list of "Scav Olympics" items that describe competitive events held on Saturday morning after the List is released (including a whistling contest,⁵ in which I placed third for the virtuoso whistling performance of a medley of Star Trek themes).

Me, whistling in a Scav Hunt whistling contest.

The participants in Scav are organized into teams, usually based on what college dorm they live in, though you need not be a student to participate, as evidenced by such teams as the FIST (Federation of Independent Scav Teams) or the GASH (Grad/AlumScav Hunt team). There are a number of powerhouse teams that usually vie to be the best; their power comes from large numbers, budgets, and/or a culture of extreme dedication to Scav Hunt. I participated on a smaller team that knew it would not place first and wanted to have lots of fun. We succeeded.

Each team delegates items as they see fit; some have "page captains," people who are in charge of assigning and following up on items on individual pages of the List. Others, like my team, just wing it, often coming up with items just a few minutes before they are due.⁶ One function without which no Scav team is complete is the Road Trip, a band of four team members who dress in a designated costume, decorate their car, and head out on a 1000-mile-or-so journey to somewhere designated by a series of items. Past trips have circled the Great Lakes, struck out for Georgia, or headed to the Badlands.

On Sunday, (aka "Mother's Day," and some Scavvies do indeed forget to call their mothers, though I was never such an one) the teams gather and present their items. First there is the Showcase, made up of the big, impressive, challenging items (like a vending machine that dispenses List items⁷ or a robot that juggles⁸). And then there is the Judgment: the teams gather at their respective tables in the Judgment location (in Ida Noyes) and the Judges come around and look at their items, secretly notating and tabulating points. Points are rarely discussed with teams; sometimes the Judge will tell you if you got "full points" or not, but typically they just tell you whether or not they are satisfied/impressed, and move on. No team has any real idea how many points they have before the Judges' Judgment is declared.

Scav Hunt is a great time. I loved it, and sometimes I still go back to see items at Judgment or watch Scav Olympics on Saturday of Scav. If you're interested in learning more, the official website is here, and I've found the Wikipedia page to be interesting and helpful.

I will conclude with this, the only item still in my possession: Item #207, 2009.⁹ It was hastily composed at my apartment over the course of an hour or so, and I performed it all myself, changing my voice for different characters and playing sound effects I had downloaded onto a CD. I was and am still quite proud of it, as most other teams used a whole team of people to do what I managed solo.

Old Time Radio Show - Scav by James Davisson

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<sup>1. Item #3, 2009.
2. Item #51, 2008.
3. Item #45, 2012.
4. For example, Item #215, 2009, which was apparently worth 10 points.
5. "You know how to whistle, don't you, Scav? You just put your lips together and . . . blow. Steadily, with an even pitch, and for as long as possible. And then, impress us with a virtuoso performance." Item #9, 2009.
6. My personal favorite was our last-minute response to Item #27, 2008: "Oh, I wonder wonder wonder what's in a WonderBallTM? No, really, what's in there? The more surprised I am, the more points you get. [30 or fewer points]," for which we hastily cut open a tennis ball, shoved in a black spot on a page of the Bible (scandalous!) and quickly made eye patches and tin foil swords; the Judge in charge of the item opened the ball and looked at the black spot as we put on our eye patches and took out our swords, and when it dawned on her what she was looking at she turned and said "Oh no..." and we all roared a pirate cry and she FELL DOWN IN TERROR. It was great.
7. Item #250, 2009, "Build a vending machine. Vending machines must be coin operated, with multiple button-selected options to choose from. In addition to whatever sugary goodness you choose, machines must vend three other List items when you type in their item numbers. [250 points]"
8. Item #183, 2011, "The dark side of the gleaming steel and bright lights of modern robotics is unemployment among laborers. Automobile assembly, heavy manufacturing, and even book retrieval in the library have been taken over by tireless, many-armed machines. And now, even the jugglers are being pushed out of work by their robotic counterparts. Build an automaton that juggles by tossing or bouncing at least two objects. Automata will be evaluated for their ability to continuously juggle multiple objects in a complex pattern. [250 points]" 
9. "Bring back the golden age of radio for at least 10 thrilling minutes! We'll give you the time slot at WHPK, you provide script, sound effects, impersonations, wit, humor, and drama. Your broadcast must have an original serialized radio drama, punctuated by an annoying call sign and commercials, no less than once every three minutes. All breaks from the action must leave us on cliff-hangers that compel us not to change that dial. The Judges will provide you an encoded message to broadcast for all "junior judges" to decipher with Item 217. Teams must combine decoded messages from all teams' radio broadcasts to figure out the secret instructions. [40 points, 10 points for advertizing your serial in the Reynolds Club in the proper `30s style, and 10 points for decoding the message]." Note that I did not include a decipherable message, for reasons I do not remember.</sup> 

This Much Is True Recording

Part of a series of Live Story Recordings.

Art by my friend Alex

 
Last week, I wrote about my experience at a Chicago storytelling event called This Much Is True. I told a version of a story that I wrote up a few weeks back, which you can read here, if you wish, but I think the live version was better. And now you can listen to that version here! Enjoy.


Coach V and the Native American Project - This Much Is True by James Davisson

You Can Never Go Home, or, How I Beat Jetlag

Part of a series of Live Story Recordings.

Art by my friend Alex

This week was the monthly open mic that my friends host at their apartment. The theme was "You Can Never Go Home," so I told this story about a time that a friend and I had trouble going home when we really, really wanted to. Folks seemed to like it, and I hope you will, too.

Story Lab Recording

Part of a series of Live Story Recordings.

Art by my friend Alex

Hey, everybody. Remember how a couple weeks ago I talked about reading a story of mine at Story Lab, and really enjoying it? I now have the recording of that performance, so if you want to listen in and hear the story, this is the place to do it.

If hearing this story sparks your interest, and you want to know more about the event that hosted it, check out Story Lab's website, where you can find out about upcoming shows, performers, and the growing Chicago storytelling community.