Shabcast 17

The new Shabcast - this time featuring special guest Shana from Oi! Spaceman, chatting with me about The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth - is up, here.

Shabcast 16

The latest Shabcast is available to download.  This week/month/time (delete as applicable) I'm honoured to be joined by Kevin Burns (the American half of Pex Lives) to discuss the Matrix trilogy, for reasons that defy easy explanation, but in ways that I believe turned out to be rather amusing.

SHABCAST L15TEN

Shabcast 15 is up, and features myself in conversation with Daniel Harper, one half of Oi! Spaceman, on the subject of Steven Moffat's 'Listen' from series 8... which we both like a lot. 

Shabcast 11 is out now

Hot on the heels of Shabcast 10, here's Shabcast 11.  It's the Matt Smith of the Shabcasts.  Features Phil Sandifer and I talking Hannibal, True Detective and JN-T (amongst a lot of other things)

Shabcast 10 is out now

Shabcast 10 - featuring me in conversation with Gene Mayes on the subject of the Gothic, A Field in England, and loads of other stuff, is available to download now.  Please go here. 

I think it's Kinda funny, I think it's Kinda sad

I just realised I forgot to post a link to the commentary tracks Phil Sandifer and I recorded for 'Kinda' as part of Phil's ongoing series. 

There's a zip file you can download which includes all four episodes, here.

Apologies about the poor quality of the audio in my sections.  I was, for various complicated reasons, temporarily forced to use my laptop's integral mic.  Which is, as you will discover, shit.

In other news, Pex Lives has recently released a special episode - here - in which James Murphy chats Orson with Gene Mayes.  Lots of fun for orsonians like me.  Gene will be my guest for Shabcast 10, out next month.  Here's a link to his new blog, which I heartily recommend.

Holly and James' most recent episode of City of the Dead is here.

And Phil Sandifer has just interviewed Peter Harness, writer of 'Kill the Moon' (which I still haven't seen) and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I did see and thought was fantastic.  The interview can be downloaded or listened to here.

Phil and I will be shabcasting again soon, and we'll be back with commentary tracks for 'Vengeance on Varos' before you can say "Zyton-7".

Oh, and you'll have noticed that Shabgraff's URL has changed to www.shabogangraffiti.com.  The old blogspot address will still redirect you, but it's just possible you might need to update your bookmarks, RSS feeds, etc.  So get on it.

Viva Hate (Shabcast 9)

This month, the Shabogan Graffiti Podcast sinks happily into a morass of bile and spleen.

I'm joined by the wonderful Holly B - star of the City of the Dead podcast, Pex Lives guest appearances and her own blog - for a gargantuan complaining session, an epic voyage into annoyance that goes on for so long I had to split it into two parts.  Hate is fertile ground.

Download or listen to Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

In Part 1 we cover Doctor Who that we detest.  We both choose victims from both classic and new Who.

In Part 2 we move on to non-Who hates and lambast and villify a movie each (two of the most popular, lauded and loved movies of recent years as it happens - ha!).  We round things off by indulging in rants about pet hates.  I go for a soft target, Holly for a tougher one.

No clues.  You have to listen.

Proud of this one.  Lots of fun to record and (I hope) listen to.  And much credit must go to Holly who not only came up with the idea for the episode but also the structure of the discussion.

PS - This episode also features a cameo return appearance by a popular Shabcast star of the past.  But again, no clues.

PPS - Very excited about forthcoming Shabcasts.  Returning guests and new ones.  Great topics.  

As always, thanks for listening.  You're peaches, all of you. 

(Except you.  Yes, you.  You know who you are.)

Is this a Shabcast which I see before me? (Shabcast 8)

What bloody man is that?  It's bloody Jack Graham.  Again.

The curtain rises on Shabcast 8.  Listen and/or download here.

Another Shabcast so soon?   Yes, but don't get used to this kind of schedule.  It's only happening because time is out of joint.

This time, myself and my actorly buddy Elliot Chapman (returning guest from the Macra shabcast, and Big Finish's new Ben Jackson) discuss Shakespeare's great tragedy 'Macbeth' (we only shabcast about things that begin with 'mac'), and Shakespeare generally.  We even say the word 'Macbeth' occasionally... hopefully without bringing too much theatrical ill-luck down upon ourselves.  We chat as we watch the TV film of Trevor Nunn's legendary production from 1978, starring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench, and produced by Verity Lambert.  The second most profound material she ever televised.

Elliot will be appearing in a production of 'Macbeth' soon to run in Redcliffe Caves in Bristol, produced by Insane Root as part of the Bristol Shakespeare Festival.  Jack will be appearing in the kitchen soon to make himself an evil sandwich as part of a obscene, perverse ritual.  Root for us insanely, and download our shabcast.

When shall we two meet again?  Probably to discuss macaroni cheese.

Exeunt.

Shabgraff in Wonderland (Shabcast 7)

"[T]he speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life."

- Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Today is the 150th anniversary of the origins of Alice in Wonderland.  A century-and-a-half ago today, Lewis Carroll took a boat trip with the Liddell family, and told the children a story.  Alice Liddell asked him to write it down.  He started the next day.

To celebrate, follow me down the rabbit hole and listen to Shabcast 7 - here.

A special one, this.  I'm once again joined by Josh Marsfelder (of Vaka Rangi) and for the first time by the wonderful Jane of many fames.  We watch (and chat about) the neglected 1966 Jonathan Miller TV version of Alice in Wonderland.  A forgotten masterpiece.  Well, maybe not forgotten... but not exactly remembered either.

This podcast had various titles before I settled on my final choice: 'Alice Narrates Herself'.  It was going to be called 'Cobwebs on the Tea Urn', then 'Mock Turtles all the Way Down', then 'Pig Latin'...  I even toyed with a facile but amusing 'Shabcast Madness Returns'.  I eventually settled on a title which reflected something myself and my guests all seemed to notice and cherish: the fact that this production gives control of the narrative to Alice herself, and lets her tell the story.  One of the many things which makes this production unique.

I'm very proud of this episode, not just because I was lucky enough to get Jane to guest with myself and Josh, but also because the dynamic of the discussion is lovely.  The three of us attend a tea party, detached from time (it's the evening for them, the middle of the night for me) and talk at cross purposes for ages... though, of course, unlike the Hatter and his friends, we're hopefully not talking nonsense.  I love the way our distinct perspectives each hook into something different about the story we're watching, and the way we overlap and converge.  We don't always end up in exactly the same territory... but we get to read and enjoy each other's maps.

What could be more apt?

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UPDATE (Same day):

I somehow forgot to link to Josh's pieces about Alice.  Here they are:
http://forest-of-illusions.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/pet-hobby-of-mine-has-always-been.html
http://vakarangi.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/and-when-i-grow-up-ill-write-one-once_26.html
http://forest-of-illusions.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-second-song-of-queen-aliissa.html 

And here's Jane's essay about LOST, mentioned in the Shabcast:
http://www.philipsandifer.com/2013/11/pop-between-realities-home-in-time-for_27.html

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EDIT (Also same day):

In the original version of this post I mistakenly claimed that today was the 150th anniversary of the publication of the book.  I have corrected this howler.

Shabcast 6

Shabcast 6 is now available to download or listen to here...

BUT HANG ON!

This Shabcast is an accompaniment to this month's edition of Pex Lives (download or listen here), which features the long-awaited encounter between Phil Sandifer (from off of TARDIS Eruditorum) and 'Vox Day' (from off of fascism and fucking up the Hugo Awards).

Kevin and James have kindly turned the June installment of Pex Lives over to the Sandifer/Vox Day interview, in which Phil quizzes Vox about his attitudes towards two texts, One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (which Vox loves and Phil hates) and Iain M. Banks' The Wasp Factory (which Vox hates and Phil loves).

One Bright Star... slid into the Hugo noms on Vox Day's Rabid Puppies slate, by the way.  Hmm.

Shabcast 6 is something in the way of an 'afterparty' for Phil, in which Phil chats with myself, Kevin and James about the Vox Day interview.  Very much necessary listening.  And lots of fun.  After the serious business of the interview itself, the four of us kick back and have a chat which veers from the serious to the plain giggly.

This Shabcast also features frequent and vehement contributions by my elderly, crotchety and extremely loud-voiced bengal cat Quiz.  You won't be able to understand her, but I can... and she's telling me to kill.

You'll need to listen to both podcasts so, once again, here are the links:

Pex Lives/Eruditorum Press - the Sandifer/Day Interview

Shabcast 6 - The Sandifer/Day Interview Afterparty

(Also, here's a link to Shabcast 3 in which myself, Phil and Andrew Hickey chatted about the Hugo Awards fascist fuck-up fiasco not long after it hit.)

May is Macra Madness Month (Shabcast 5)

Fraternal May Day greetings to all workers by hand or by brain, all socialists, and all anarchists.  Have a good one, comrades.  And implacable hatred, opposition and ill-will to all capitalists and their class allies.  Boo, hiss, etc. 

This month, both the Pex Lives Podcast and the Shabogan Graffiti Podcast are covering the classic 60s Doctor Who adventure 'The Macra Terror' by Ian Stuart Black, sadly junked long ago, and represented nowadays only by a soundtrack and a reconstruction. 

Shabcast 5 (download or listen here) sees me joined by my longstanding online buddy, actor Elliot Chapman, who also happens to have recently been cast as the new Ben Jackson by Big Finish.  The Early Adventures will be available soon, and will feature Elliot alongside Anneke Wills and Frazer Hines.

Elliot is so smart and erudite that he seems to be on some kind of mission to singlehandedly disprove the old stereotype about actors being thick.  And he likes my blog, which proves he's clever.  Our chat was fantastic fun, and I've had to edit it down savagely to make the episode anything approaching a reasonable length... but this means I've got loads of good offcuts, which may appear in later Shabcasts as something in the manner of 'deleted scenes'.

This Shabcast is possibly the most shabgraffy Shabcast yet, i.e. lots of Doctor Who and lots of politics... as well as unrestrained ramblings from both of us about stuff as diverse as complicity, conspiracy, CRPGs, The Prisoner (of course), Herbert Marcuse, Universal horror films, Abbott and Costello, Marshall Berman, the Nazi's Degenerate Art Exhibition and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Should keep you nice and distracted as you toil in the pits.



Shabcast 6 (which will be along later this month) will be Phil Sandifer and myself continuing our discussion about the fascists and the Hugo awards.

Also look out for our forthcoming commentary tracks for 'The Three Doctors'.

Shabcast 7 is already recorded and waiting for its June release.  That's going to be a special one.

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Here's my previous writing about 'The Macra Terror', a story I appear to be slightly obsessed with:
  
Skulltopus 3: Yes We Have No Macra

Skulltopus 6: Macra Revisited

Happy Workers

32

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Also, here are links to all my previous audio stuff:

Shabcast 4 (Second part of my interview with Josh Marsfelder)
Shabcast 3 (the emergency anti-fascist Hugo-awards edition with Andrew Hickey and Phil Sandifer)
Shabcast 2 (First part of interview with Josh Marsfelder)
Shabcast 1 (Interview with Phil Sandifer)

'Mind Robber' commentaries (I join Phil)
'The Rescue' commentaries (I join Phil)
These are best listened to while watching the stories, as long as you've seen them once before.  If you're very familiar with the stories, you can listen to them on their own.

Pex Lives Frankenstein podcast (I join Kevin and James, and Gene Mayes)
Pex Lives TV Movie podcast (Myself and Josh join Kevin and James)

Shabcast 4

Normal shabcast service has been resumed after the unplanned emergency anti-fascist edition from earlier this month (though you may be hearing more from Phil and myself on the issue of the Hugos and the nazis).  

This episode of the Shabogan Graffiti podcast is the long-awaited continuation of my mammoth chat with the lovely Josh Marsfelder, writer of the ridiculously good Vaka Rangi blog.  A slightly disjointed episode this one, but you're getting all the good bits.  The bits I chopped out are mostly me being inconsequential.  What's left is mostly Josh being eloquent and passionate about TNG, Trek generally, Dirty Pair, aesthetics, fan fiction, slash, Mary Sues, singularity archetypes, and all sorts and manners and conditions of interesting stuff.  We also do a bit of violently malevolent hating on Wesley Crusher... which should be entirely acceptable to all right-thinking people.  

You'll love it, trust me.  Hardcore nattering, with no fascism to ruin everything.  Paint a bulls-eye on your heart right now.

ADDITIONAL:  Umm, I've actually added the link to the new episode now. 

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Also, here are links to all my previous audio stuff:

Shabcast 3 (the emergency anti-fascist Hugo-awards edition with Andrew Hickey and Phil Sandifer)
Shabcast 2 (First part of interview with Josh Marsfelder)
Shabcast 1 (Interview with Phil Sandifer)

'Mind Robber' commentaries (I join Phil)
'The Rescue' commentaries (I join Phil)
These are best listened to while watching the stories, as long as you've seen them once before.  If you're very familiar with the stories, you can listen to them on their own.

Pex Lives Frankenstein podcast (I join Kevin and James, and Gene Mayes)
Pex Lives TV Movie podcast (Myself and Josh join Kevin and James)

Emergency Anti-Fascist Shabcast 3 (Hugo Awards)

Shabcast 3 was supposed to be the second part of my discussion with Josh Marsfelder.  (Here's part 1 of that discussion.)  But events have intervened.  Now, Josh and I will carry on our talk in Shabcast 4 (hopefully out quite soon... so you'll probably get two Shabcasts this month, you lucky blighters).  Shabcast 3, meanwhile, has been devoted to an emergency, hastily-convened discussion between myself, Phil Sandifer and Andrew Hickey on the subject of the recent right-wing incursion upon the Hugo Awards.

Download Shabcast 3 here (thanks once again to the Pex Lives guys for donating their bandwidth).  We do a fair bit of fash-lambasting, and Andrew especially gives lots of background to this particular issue, but we also find time to roam and rove a bit around some related topics, such as modernism and postmodernism and geek privilege and GamerGate and "what is SFF anyway???".

Andrew and Phil have both blogged about the Hugos issue (which is why I asked them to speak to me about it), and here are some more links...

Here's Charlie Jane Anders at io9.

One of the movers behind this business is the utterly reprehensible fascist shithead and 'fantasy author' Theodore Beale (AKA 'Vox Day').  Here's his entry at Rational Wiki.  And here is every post ever about him (there's lots of them) at David Futrelle's excellent MRA-watch blog We Hunted the Mammoth, cataloguing the man's career of saying vile, nazi things.  This is the guy who created a slate that swept the nominations at the Hugos, thanks to him organising his tiny gaggle of reactionary scumfuck fans.  Read, boggle and weep.

(Once again, here is the link to download or listen to our shabcast.  Special thanks to Phil and Andrew for joining me to do it at such short notice.)

NOTE 7/4/15:  I originally included a link to a Bibliodaze article about last years' Hugos.  Thanks to Phil Sandifer for pointing out my stupid mistake.

Shabcast 2

Yes, Shabcast 2 is here.  This month, you get the first part of my immensely long (and ongoing) discussion with the wonderful Josh Marsfelder, writer of the Star Trek blog that makes all other Star Trek blogs look like nothing more than Star Trek blogs, Vaka Rangi.

There will be more of the discussion up next month in Shabcast 3.

Meanwhile, Shabcast 1 - with me and Phil Sandifer - is still available here.

And, once again, thanks to the lovely lads at the Pex Lives Podcast for providing me with the bandwidth to make this project possible.  Pex Lives' latest edition is just out, and is about 'The Trial of a Time Lord', and is very funny and opinionated (I think they're a bit hard on Colin Baker to be honest, and far too kind to The Verve).  Download or listen here.

More Audio News

Phil Sandifer and I have started to record commentaries for Doctor Who episodes.  So far we've only done 'The Rescue', but the plan is to do some more.  We're both quite happy with the ones we've done, and I think they're a lot of fun. 

'The Rescue' Episode 1 can be downloaded or heard here.

'The Rescue' Episode 2 can be downloaded or heard here.

I'm so pleased with the result that I may use the 'natter while watching' format for future Shabcasts.

Shabcast 1 was a roaring success, by the way... at least in terms of numbers of listens/downloads.  Many thanks to Phil (again), and the Pex Lives boys (again) and to all the people who listened or downloaded.  If you did so because you're a reader of mine rather than a regular Pex Lives listener, then

a) thanks, and

b) you should listen to Pex Lives, because it's great.

The next Shabcast is being planned as we speak, and looks set to be just as good as the first one.  Look for it some time next month.

Shabcast 1

The long-threatened Shabogan Graffiti podcast - or Shabcast - is finally here.  Nobody asked for this, but you're getting it anyway.

Episode One is available to download here, bandwidth kindly provided by the very nice Pex Lives podcast fellas.  In a classic example of arrogant Trot entryism, I've infiltrated Pex Lives with two guest appearances on their podcast and am now barging to the front and taking over their bandwidth.

This first episode is basically a gargantuan, rambling chat between me and Phil Sandifer of TARDIS Eruditorum (which apparently I've been saying wrong as well as periodically spelling wrong) and other insanely long projects, with all the boring bits edited out (mostly the bits when I talk, or a couple of rubbish questions that didn't lead anywhere... this being the first 'interview' I've conducted since I was a journalism student about 712 years ago).

If you want, for some perverse and unfathomable reason, to listen to two men you don't know talking about television for pushing three hours, then today is your lucky day my friend.