I wonder how many of the perhaps hundreds of blogs out there once began with the phrase ‘I swore I’d never start a blog’. I, like them, swore I’d never start a blog, but then I also swore I’d never have reverse twin separation surgery with my longtime chimp housemate, Paul Revere-- but here we are: four hands clacking furiously away at what will become my first Podweaver blog post.
Podweaver began when four friends, tired of the mundanity of their low-paying jobs, began feverishly deluding themselves that they could create a comedy show with all the ambition and intensity that an adult human might need to open a checking account. Those friends were, of course, failures and were eventually killed while trying to skitch cross country on the back of a 737 Max that crashed into a different 737 max. Their ghosts went on to haunt Sean Landis, Una Ulla, Nevin Zehr, and myself who created Podweaver in the summer of 2015.
Ah, the good old days: when the idea of ‘President Trump’ was just a very funny joke, as opposed to now when it’s just a very sad one. The Podweaver crew sat at opposite sides of the Earth and produced the Podweaver original run, a show so inspired and ahead of its time that its critics could only fairly be called artistically wayward dirt people. Podweaver Classic ran for five-ish episodes before expiring with the force and majesty of a dying star. The effect of the loss of that cultural pillar has yet to be truly acknowledged by most people.
Four years followed the end of our first attempt at a comedy show, and though my memory is not what it used to be, I believe we all did things during that time. Sean became a lighthouse apprentice and filled in for the lighthouse when the bulb was broken. Although he never became the primary light in that house he did eventually retrointentionaly burn it down, the light from which guided and burned no less than a dozen ships.
Nevin left reality to become a dairy. Using advanced breath-holding techniques and virtual-reality equipment he eventually realized didn’t work, Nevin melded minds with an Argentinian dairy, the tasks of finance, production, and day to day operation he performed with the simultaneous efficiency with which the human body pulls air, pumps blood, brews marrow, and scratches butt. It was an innate and beautiful connection, and when he eventually burned it down and woke up in his neighbor's kitchen and reality diluted the dream he reflected that, real or not, the time he spent as a dairy was undoubtedly his peak. His fever dream memories returned to the aether, but the arson charges lived on in the court of San Luis.
Una took several jobs during this time, ranging from scuba-baker, to electro-matador, to being the first Latvian terranaut, leading 6 expeditions into the earth’s core. Research she conducted led to the discovery that if you dig far enough you wind up in space again. She eventually landed a job as an ‘elephant-bee keeper’, which turned into ‘elephant-bee liberator’ after learning to tame and ride the wild elephant bee, destroying the honey-mines, and leading a mass escape that would eventually crash into Sean’s lighthouse. The two would soon after be married at a Japanese municipal building’s koi pond.
And lastly, myself. After the end of Podweaver’s original run I was forced to take work as an amateur houseplant and part time floor, but I was never very good at either. Still, the money was good, and I had to take what I could get. At that time the only positions that were consistently hiring were secretary positions in the Trump Administration and, even though I was over qualified to serve under President Trump and under qualified to be a houseplant, I made the ambitious choice. I was eventually black-balled by the union for houseplants, floors, and white house officials for refusing to take one funny picture at the end of union meeting group photos. It was during this period of unemployment that I invented Sriracha. Yes, as readers of the previous sentence will recall, I invented Sriracha, but was robbed by greedy sauce-mogul Lakut Suwanprasop. This wasn’t my first run in with Lakut, but it did solidify our mutual rivalry.
All paths eventually came together to place Nevin, Sean, and I in a bar in downtown Harrisonburg with friend of the show and builder of wooden children, William Klempt. It was William who provided the jumpstart we needed to get back to comedy writing. After this meeting I put on hold my plans to do stunts for Martin Starr and once again picked up the pen and began typing with it. It took a lot longer pushing the keys one by one with my pen, but my computer back then shocked me when I touched it. Thankfully, after the release of one episode of a podcast that everyone who never asked for still doesn’t know about, enough money has started coming in for me to afford a new computer, a chimp, and surgery to combine us.
And so we began a blog in order to compensate for our molassesian release pace. We thought that writing some blog entries would make up for the fact that we only produce about fifteen minutes of content every month. But hey, you try writing and producing a new scripted podcast every month. No, please don’t actually, we don’t need any more competition. Instead, why not check out the latest episode of PBNR. No refunds.
Timothy Wiggins