Podcast Excellence

So I am a big fan of podcasts.  This started when I got my first MP3 Player in December of 2007.  For the uninitiated, a podcast is an audio or video show that is distributed via the internet.  Podcasts come in many formats, dramas, audio literature (books and short stories), Talk shows, sketch shows, comedies and many more.  I can blame or 90% of my podcasts on two shows. Cort and Fatboy show here in Portland, it started out as a terrestrial radio show.  They started podcasting the conversations that were going on off the air between the on air segments, they are now a strictly internet based podcast.  The Other show was City of Heroes Podcast with Chooch and Vivid.  They are a married couple that podcasted their tips for the game. 

Cort and Fatboy led to Geek in the City, Rick Emerson Show, Chronicles of the Nerds, KA Podcast, Big and Loud Podcast, The Mediocre Show, Funemployment Radio, Boy Howdy Podcast, Ham Fisted Radio, Portland Sucks, Uni-Bash Radio, and more.  They were my introduction to the Portland Geek Community.  Thanks to them I have become involved in the greater Metropolitan Portland, Oregon/Vancouver, WA area.  I got involved with Geek Trivia, Listener parties for the various shows, Midnight Movies, Geeklesque (geek themed Burlesque by Critical Hit Burlesque), various local conventions (Wonder NW), comic book release and signing parties, and many more local events.  I have even been approached to help out with Portland Geek Council of Commerce and Culture.   I have made friends; I have been given a pirate name, and created new social connections I would have not made otherwise. 

The City of Heroes Podcast led me to Chooch and Viv’s other show Into the Blender.  They had various promos that led me to various Podcast Dramas, Podcast Novels, and Podiobooks. The Podcast writers, sites and shows that they led me to are:  Podiobooks.com, Philippa Ballantine, Tee Morris, Nathan Lowell, Christiana Ellis, P.G. Holyfield, Scott Sigler, Matthew Wayne Selznick, Mur Lafferty, Jared Axelrod, J.R. Blackwell, J. Daniel Sawyer, A.P. Stephens, Basil Sands, Bill DeSmedt, Drew Beatty, Steve Saylor, Prometheus Radio Theater, Seth Harwood, Paulette Jaxton, Brad Gamblin, Patrick McLean, Phil Rossi , Tuning into SciFi TV, Angle Between the Lines, Buffy Between the Lines, Mark Eller, Lindsay Buroker, M. Terry Green, Paul Elard Cooley, Abigail Hilton, John Lenahan, Nobilis Reed and many more.  Thanks to this show I was part of the City of Heroes Podcast community.  I have not only discovered new innovative writers and their works, I have been given ideas how to approach my own writing career.  I have made friends here too.  I have not met many of the folks on this branch of my podcast community.  I did get to meet Scott Sigler and some Portland area Junkies.  They have me wanting to attend Balticon and Dragon-con someday.  I also feel the need to try the local conventions I have missed, Rose City Comic-Con, OryCon, and Stumptown Comic Con.

When I first was introduced to these, I was in a bad relationship and bad work situation.  Both of those situations have improved since, I left the relationship and changed bosses.  All these shows and folks gave me hope and something to aid me in dealing with life’s garbage.  Not all of this will be for you, but there is something for most people in these artists and shows.  That is My Not so Humble Opinion.

[Author’s Note: Warning many of these podcasts are no longer with us. Look for them, but many will be gone]

Morality versus Ethics

Now who would have thought that television has me question heavy subjects?  Thanks to recent television, I have looked into the differences between being ethical and moral.  Your stereotypical protagonist is both ethical and moral.  In opposition your stereotypical antagonist is Immoral and unethical.  In three of my favorite recent shows, The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, and Justified, they have explored a different dynamic.  First lest look at the definitions of Ethical and Moral.  The definition of Ethical is being in accordance with the rules or standards for right conduct or practice, especially the standards of a profession.  Moral is defined as the following: of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong.  In the Shield, Vic Mackey is Moral, but Unethical.  He does all the wrong things for the right reasons.  In the opposite corner we have Clay Morrow on Sons of Anarchy; he is Ethical, but Immoral.  Clay does all the right things for the wrong reasons.  Clay has a code of rules he does not break.  Those rules are outside the norm.  Both shows have these characters devolve as they break their own personal codes as things snowball against them.  The funny thing is Sons of Anarchy creator, Kurt Sutter was a staff writer on the Shield.  That is probably why we some of the same themes on both shows.  Let’s break down the two characters.

Vic Mackey is a hardboiled detective.  He is working in the world of Los Angeles street gangs.  This is not a world of black and white.  Vic knows drugs will never go away, so he tries to control things so the least amount of harm happens to the general public.  His control is an illusion, the more he tries to control the streets the more things get out of hand.  He finds himself so deep down the rabbit hole.  Like the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Vic’s behavior cost him, lives, friendships, relationships and his reputation.

Clay Morrow on Sons of Anarchy has does some bad things, but he is a criminal.  He wallows in it.  He however is against drugs being in his club and town. Typical of both works, he compromises his beliefs and all that goes out the window.  He broke a big code years ago and the fallout form that leads to more chaos.  In Clay’s downward spiral he sacrifices everything he loves and believes in, his family, his club and his standing. 

What I like about theses shows and Justified, is that they deal in the moral and ethical ambiguities that our world is made up of.  There is never a clear action that is not going to compromise something.  There is never a clear right or wrong.  Also when something seems to be too good or too easy, it blows up in the faces of the main characters.  Life is never clean, easy or understandable.  Good guys do bad things and bad guys to great things.  People are never A or B, they are sometimes both in varying degrees.  That is My Not so Humble Opinion.