A List of Pop Culture Blog Titles that I Considered after This Weekend’s Smoke Out / An Announcement
1. A List of Pop Culture Blog Titles that I Considered after This Weekend’s Smoke Out
The Portland skyline from my back porch, Saturday morning. Usually those skyscrapers are crystal clear.
bold = drawn from a thing I like
* = drawn from a thing I don’t like
The Portland skyline from my back porch, Saturday afternoon.
Of a Fire on the Moon; Smoke on the Water; Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer; Fire and No Rain*; Bat out of Hellfire; Smoky Joe’s Café; Catch a Fire*; When We Kiss, Fire; Burn Baby Burn; I’m on Fire; Ring of Fire; Lake of Fire; World on Fire; Portland’s Burning; A Song of Smoke & Fire; Smokin’ in the Boys Room; Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; Smokestack Lightning
2. An Announcement
After rather a lot of dithering and inability to commit, I’ve decided to announce the creation of the Touched with Fire Podcast. The first episode will, barring unforeseen consequences, “air” two weeks from today, and episodes will replace Monday entries on this blog.
Part of the reason I could never get started before is that I felt restricted by every single thing I’ve tried, so this is going to be a bit of a hodgepodge, kind of like this blog. If you’ve heard The Memory Palace, the production will probably owe a lot to that show. If you don’t know that show, it’s a series of short, historical anecdotes set to music. Listen here. Unlike that show, I will be using archive tape and a higher incidence of personal narrative. As it evolves, it may sometimes involve interviews with people I find interesting, or more traditional, 99% Invisible-style explainer journalism.
I have basically two goals for the show:
(1) To feature the strong voice I have developed for myself as a writer over the years. You can expect cynicism, dumb jokes, erudition, and a little bit of poetry. The show will be narrative — no navel-gazing, no overwrought cultural analysis.
(2) To operate as something I’m not totally sure I’ve seen before: a sort of audio memoir. The show won’t always be intensely personal, but it might be sometimes. But it won’t just be another guy blabbing into a mic. There will be real production values.
(3) To come out regularly. To start with, I’m going to shoot for once a week. If that turns out to be too much, I’ll scale back to once every two weeks, but given the way things are going right now, I think I should be able to do this.
Anyway, if you are one of the two or three loyal readers of my blog, I suspect you’ll like the podcast. If you do like the podcast, I’d ask you to tell other people about it — unlike the blog, which is sort of like writing practice, a method of keeping my skills honed for other, more important work, the podcast is intended as a primary outlet for my audio work. So I want people to hear it.
Also, I’m thinking of calling the show News of My Awesome Life, though it’ll probably end up just being called Touched with Fire.