Found *NSYNC Fan Fiction #7 (A Ray of Blight Mini-Episode) now available

My most recent offering is the next episode of the podcast I do with my friend Sacha at rayofblight.podbean.com. We chronologically read aloud pages of one author's NSYNC fan fiction, from a binder found at a thrift store in Chicago. We have not read ahead, so you're experiencing each page with us IN REAL TIME.

In the most recent episode, the narrator Kelly goes with the band to a meet and greet (where she is seated next to Britney Spears), followed by a tearful call home. We experiment with using a variety of accents while drinking from a bottle of questionable ten year old Caravella Orangecello found at my house.

Listen to it here, as well as find a link there to listening/subscribing on i-tunes.

"Previously On" Parodies I Made: Twin Peaks, Battlestar Galactica & Glee

So there's part of me that thinks that all I'm really capable of doing creatively is either a) making fun of things and/or b) making parodies of things. In some ways, I'm like a shitty critic who can't actually write original material but can totally make fun of other people's material. Shame on me! But then there's another part of me (perhaps a part of me that rationalizes things) that feels in making fun of a thing, or parodying it, I'm synergystically creating something new. Sometimes also, the parody comes from a place of appreciation for the source material. This push and pull negotiates territorial control in my brain and sometimes the "make fun of" wins over the "synergystically creating something new" or vice-versa.

On the entertainment podcast Ray of Blight I do with my friend Sacha, we do a segment called *NSYNC Fan Fiction, which is basically us reading aloud from a binder full of some anonymous girl's *NSYNC fan fiction that our friend found at a thrift store here in Chicago. Before we start the reading though, there's a recap of what's happened previously on *NSYNC Fan Fiction. At some point I started making these recap segments into parodies of "previously on" segments from television shows I enjoy. It amuses me that I could take these unrelated things like a boy band from the early aughts and shows like Twin Peaks or Battlestar Galactica and tie them in together. That stimulates the part of my pop culture psychic third eye consciousness that thrives on a good mash up. Edited lunacy, the best kind, especially when there's a poetry that evolves from the pairing of two opposites. Sometimes a hilarious poetry evolves from pairing two things, like when you're reading multiple books at one time and they start to fuse in your head, and then you start drawing awesome connections.

But I flatter myself that my edited lunacy is in any way poetic; sometimes the Weird Al part of my brain wins over the Greil Marcus part of my brain. Occasionally however, I can't separate the two, and those are my favorite moments.

So here are the recaps, in descending starting with the most recent.  I hope you like them!

Found NSYNC Fan Fiction #5 Now Available For Listening at Podbean and I-Tunes

I do a podcast with my friend Sacha called Ray of Blight and one of the segments is us reading from a binder full of found NSYNC fan fiction, which our friend Sarah found a thrift store.

NSYNC Fan Fiction started out as its own segment on Ray of Blight, but it has now been given its own life. All for you (and for us because we enjoy it so), here's what we do on each episode: we chronologically read aloud pages of one author's NSYNC fan fiction, from a binder found at a thrift store in Chicago. We have not read ahead, so you're experiencing each page with us IN REAL TIME.

You can download it for free on i-Tunes (and subscribe to it there too) or listen/stream/download it on Podbean.

Also! I've been blogging at the Chicago chapter blog for Dance Dance Party Party here. It's a one hour dance party I help run for ladies.

Ray of Blight #3 Celebrity Smells, Now Available For Your Listening Pleasure

The new episode of Ray of Blight is available. You can stream/listen to it by clicking on this link to podbean, and/or you can also download it on I-Tunes.

Ray of Blight is the podcast I do with one of my friends, and this episode focuses on celebrity fragrances. To collect fragrance samples we did a guerilla smell recon mission with the aid of index cards, plastic bags, a pen and a whole lot of giggling. Also, we have another installment of *NSYNC Fan Fiction, as well as Oops I Did It Again performed karaoke-style with lyrics transcribed by Google Voice Mail. Then we got an equipment upgrade!

A small sampling of relevant subtopics, as discussed: Britney Spears' Radiance and inner death, celebrity dust and genetics, drum and bass notes, the many extremes of Christina Aguilera, Taylor Swift's eyes, Everybody Wang Chunging, Perfume the movie, Faith Hill and synthetic grapefruit crossover fruit smell, boring ladies named Heidi, Paris vs Perez, Alicia Bridges, Beyonce, Justin Bieber's vulva-shaped fragrance bottle, soda suicide, Céline Dion, Seal's forehead, celebrity perfume marketing, Lady Gaga, a drop of blood and a femur from Angelina Jolie, The Flame by Cheap Trick, The Dollhouse, Jennifer Lopez's Love & Light vs Love & Glamour, SJP mannishly horsin' around with Matthew Broderick, Crazy Train, confusing John Candy with Usher, Innocuous by Phil Collins, Rihanna, the smell of plastic bags and index cards, Hilary Duff's Whipped With Love, spirit mother of Kohl's Daisy Fuentes, Mariah Carey's festive Tinkerbellian Perfume, bubble gum-ish body souffle, retail therapy, nightmares on Fantasy Island.

Go listen to it now! And we're on Facebook too if you want up to the minute news. You know, late breaking celebrity smell updates. Extra! Extra! This just in! The above picture is just a sampling of what took over my kitchen table for the project.

New Episode of Ray of Blight Podcast Available For Your Listening Pleasure

The second episode of the pop music podcast I do with Sacha Mullin called "Ray of Blight" is up! It's available at podbean and I-Tunes for streaming or downloading as a you see fit, and of course it's free.

This week we talk about the surreal musical releases offered by actors.

A small sampling of relevant subtopics: Donna Summer, Molly Ringwald, David Hasselhoff, anonymous *Nsync fan fiction, Raise Your Voice staring Hilary Duff, Many Mamas, Many Papas, Esther Rolle, Drunk Text, Minnie Driver, Spotify, Hal featuring Gillian Anderson, Charlotte Rae and Friends, Don Johnson, Ken Nordine, The Alice in Wonderland TV Musical, Celebrity Vinyl by Tom Hamling, Melissa Joan Hart, Yentle, Britney Spears, Jewel Staite, Lindsay Lohan albums, Russell Crowe, You've Got the Touch, Maaya Sakamoto, The Brady Bunch Theme performed jazzy and majestic, Philip K. Dick, Ringo, Jack Wagner, a chocolate lab snout, HR Giger, celebrity classification, well rounded entertainers, The Golden Age of cinema, boy band archetypes, Venn diagrams and more.

(Can't find it on I-Tunes? Click here to go to podbean, then look to the right, scroll down a little, and there's an icon that says "subscribe with I-Tunes.")