Did Not Play - The DNP Podcast or A View Of Sports From A Room.

I'm an unashamed fan of the internet podcast. Have been for as long as I've had a high speed internet connection and knew how to use it. In my journey through the landscape of internet broadcasting I've come across many fine programs covering many fine topics but, there is no doubt that comedy remains my go to for entertainment, enlightenment and relaxation. 

There is a certain brilliance in comedy that is done well. Sure, it can be laugh out loud funny or razor sharp witty but the comedy that I find most appealing is the type that is thought provoking. When you come away from a comedic performance laughing your tookus off - that is a worthy investment. When you come away from a performance that stays with you long after the curtain has fallen, that is something special. 

You might wonder then, whether a comedic podcast that combines the best elements of performance and wit with an examination of American sporting culture can achieve that alchemic zenith of lingering, thought provoking observation. It can be done and it has in the form of the DNP Podcast. 

The DNP Podcast, a bi-weekly comedy talk radio show, takes its name from a well worn sporting acronym meaning "Did Not Play".

The brain child of Chicago comedians Dean Carlson and Victor Marinier, the DNP Podcast observes and documents American sports in real time. From American Pro-Football, North American Hockey, American Basketball, Baseball and MMA, Dean and Victor review the week within each sporting code, discuss the defining moments from each sporting code and they preview the upcoming rosters and offer their predictions. But it is not simply a clinical dissection of the sports that they admire or the teams they cheer for.

Dean and Victor - bro-time.

Sport can often be seen as a reflection of life. Thus, employing their considerable comedic skills, Dean and Victor extend their observations into a wider discussion about life - particularly life as a sports fan. Their astute and wickedly funny discussions about sporting achievement and sporting failure and how each of those influence us in our day to day is where the genius of this show lies. I have said elsewhere that the DNP Podcast turns the mirror back on this most human of endeavors and pulls it's pants down. 

Further though, their independence from the mainstream media allows them a freedom to explore sporting culture in far more depth than would otherwise be possible. The net result from this is a far more engaging show that is laugh out loud funny but also thought provoking. 

Dean Carlson.

Dean Carlson has been involved in the Chicago comedy scene since he was 15 years old. He has trained with Second City in Chicago (from high school into his adult years) has performed with his own sketch/improv troupe Tortilla Moustache and has been performing regular stand-up throughout Chicago and across the Midwest United States for the past decade. As an acerbic and astute observationalist, Dean brings to the DNP Podcast a keen eye for the minutiae of sporting psychology. 

Victor Marinier.

Victor Marinier has been a fixture of the Chicago Comedy scene both as a performer, writer and editor, collaborating with a number of notable performers including Dean Carlson, Brendan McGowan, Mike Stanley and Mike Bridenstine. Victor brings to the DNP Podcast an encyclopedic knowledge of sporting statistics as well as love of popular culture. 

The DNP Podcast broadcasts bi-weekly across the internet and is available for podcast download from the official site as well as iTunes. 

Connect with the DNP Podcast here.

Subscribe to the DNP Podcast on iTunes here. 

Connect with Dean Carlson here. 

Connect with Victor Marinier here. 

DFA.

Catch the Interview - Dean Mayes one on one with Tania Elizabeth - live now.

"Dream" People - Inspirations For The Characters in The Hambledown Dream (Part 3 - Andy DeVries)

I'd taken a break from this little series of articles but I thought it would be a good idea to kick it along again as I think it's a worthwhile part of my story's telling and it gives you - the reader - an idea of the thought processes that have gone into the development of my characters.

Andy DeVries was a character who was central to the story, right from the very beginnings of the idea that has now become The Hambledown Dream. He was the individual who first germinated in my mind and I felt I had a real sense of him, even before I had a name for him.

Likewise, the idea of a character who is, at first glance, irredeemable but who has the spark somewhere deep inside of him to make a profound life change in his life was one of the earliest ideas that I had. All he needed was the oxygen in order to coax that spark to life - a spark that, as the story progresses comes from a fairly unlikely place.

Andy DeVries is a fairly "ugly" character when we first meet him. He is emaciated, he hides his features under stringy and long hair, black mascara - sometimes lipstick too - and fairly gothic/emo clothing. An insatiable desire for drugs fuels his destructive existence and, at the outset, Andy is not a character who we want to like. Yet there is something about Andy that prevents us from totally writing him off. He has an uncanny talent for classical guitar and he walks a delicate tightrope, trying to juggle two worlds - but is failing. Then he arrives at a critical point, where the very foundations of everything he has come to know about life is shaken irrevocably and we bear witness to something profound.

In imaging the character of Andy DeVries, I sought to have in my mind someone who is very much a Chicagoan, someone who embodies an idea of the potential we see in Andy from the earliest scenes of Andy's journey - but in saying this I have to stress that the person I eventually used as a physical template in no way represents the actual character of Andy as he is when we first meet him.

Dean Carlson is a Chicago stand up comedian and writer who, from a relatively young age, has established himself as one of Chicago's most interesting and painfully funny individuals. He has explored his rather hard knock existence to date, through his comedy which is laced with an acerbic wit and a surprising poignancy that I have not found in quite the same measure in any of his contemporaries.

Chicago Comedian & Writer Dean Carlson.

Dean Carlson possesses a very streetwise, yet urbane presence and a simmering ruggedness just under the surface which, to me embodies the Andy DeVries that we see develop from a crucial point in the narrative of The Hambledown Dream. He possesses a world weary intelligence and this translates into his comedy seamlessly.

I have had the opportunity to work with (from a great distance) and talk to Dean quite a lot over the past couple of years and I like Dean a lot.

His qualities make him a an ideal physical representation for Andy in the novel.

You can follow Dean through his entertaining blog "Unhigherable".

DFA.

Dean from Australia talks Hambledown with Brink of Sanity Radio

Last weekend I recorded a great interview with Jason McKenna of Brink of Sanity Radio in which we discussed the book, the writing process and our mutual love of Dean Carlson...and hating Lady Ga Ga...

Enjoy this with a glass of '06 Montrachet - just because...

Dean from Australia talks with Brink of Sanity.

DFA.

Midlife Crisis.

Is the mid life crisis affair a concept unique only to the baby boomer generation?

I ask the question because, as I approach my own...midlife, - albeit from a very fucking great distance (I'm still on the good side of 35!) I find myself wondering what it is that motivates people of the boomer generation to indulge in illicit affairs.

David Williamson a noted Australian playwright and his wife Kristin Williamson, both of whom can be classed as baby boomers, featured in an article in the "Weekend Australian" magazine where they talked openly about this affair David had been having. Kristin Williams observed of her husband in her book that he spent much of his career satirizing this sort of rubbish. Now, it would appear that he, himself was up to his short and curlies in it. The feature mainly served to plug a book she had written about the affair and the impact it had on their marriage. That in itself, I found a little distasteful but I guess one should expect no less from these self obsessed arty-farty types. But it was illuminating, in that I started thinking about the mid life crisis and just how common it seems to be that people - couples - of my parents generation indulge in it more than any other.

I can point to numerous examples in my parents circle of friends alone where an illicit affair has visited a seemingly harmonious marriage. It sheeted home to me just how dysfunctional some these people were - people whom I looked up to. Shit, when I was 20, I found myself in a situation whereby I received some "attention" from one of these bored house wives (who I might add was way hot) but I didn't go there. It woulda been too weird.

Is there some switch in these people that flips at around 40 whereby they suddenly get horny as fuck and just have to go out and screw anyone but their spouse in order to satisfy themselves that they've still got it? I'm sure there is statistical evidence out there, somewhere that reveals that swingers parties and brothels boast patronage in the 40-55 year old age bracket moreso than any other demographic.

Is it that the mundanity of the suburban existence has become so spiritually barren that boomers crave some illicit adventure to reinvigorate themselves? I look across the rooftops of some suburban enclaves that I drive past and I shudder. They are so bloody soulless.

The fallout(s) from these affairs have varied. The affairs have been revealed, the couples have stayed together 'for the sake of the children' and hated each from then on. Or they have split 'for the sake if the children', hated each other from then on and gone on to fuck like alley cats...not each other - separately of course. Or they have somehow laid bare the truth of their situation, acknowledged fault on both sides, resolve stay together 'for the sake of the children', hate each other - for a little while - then end up fucking each other like alley cats, thus subjecting their children to a Steve & Elise Keaton/Family Ties midlife love affair that grosses everyone out. And they make it through.

Did you get all of that?

Mine was the generation X who grew up in a weird time. It began, I think, when Kurt Cobain topped himself and and ended probably around September 11 2001. My generation matured in a fairly dour time of political and economic reform, of recession and rationalization and of world events that were invariably regarded as abject failures - The Rwandan Genocide, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Asian Economic Crisis, Jennifer Aniston. The familiar catch phrase from that time 'reality bites' still lingers. This has evolved into the Y-generation which, with the exception of a handful of people I know, has to be the most comatose generation in history! "Do you want fries with that" Society has been homogenized and pasteurized down into a consumerist amalgam where everything from music to fashion to religion to sex has to have a profit potential attached to it or it has to be something you have to vote for via a fucking 1900 number from your cell.

Whereas my parents generation grew up in the generation of free love, Woodstock, social upheaval and Timothy Leary, I and my contemporaries grew up in a time of free fuck all, oppressive consumerist instrumentalities (constructed, ironically, by the very baby boomers that shunned it), an almost extreme social conservatism and...I dunno...Bono?!

The X generation are weary while the Y generation are so heavily narcotized neither group can be bothered with having an affair.

Dean Carlson, co-host of the popular internet talk radio show Red Bar Radio .com, recently observed that internet porn has ruined the sexual drives of a lot of our generation. Because it is so readily available and often for free, one can obtain instant, masturbatorial gratification without the need for expending effort on illicit dalliances which, quite frankly, just take too much effort.

I mean lets face it - all sex really is, is a moment of ejaculation - a bodily function that, since god knows when, human beings have coveted as though their lives depended on it. Don't get me wrong I enjoy sex - a lot! But the world, my world is complicated enough. I just could not be fagged expending time and energy on an affair for all the bullshit it would cause.

This is the "gift" I guess you could argue, that the boomer generation have bestowed on us. An oft-quoted "whinge" of the boomers is that my generation, in general, are lazy, lack motivation and "just can't be fucked". Well I guess when you have an entire magazine feature in a nations major daily broadsheet devoted entirely to a self obsessed boomer couple's mid life crisis and its fallout then our generations predisposition towards "not being fucked" can actually be considered admirable...