Someone
recently suggested check out the world of podcasts. I like audio
drama, was their logic, and there are a lot of cool ones available
for free (with an option to support them on Patreon, etc,.). I
solicited suggestions from friends and have a list as long as my arm
(but further suggestions certainly welcome). Wolf 359 is
on the list, obviously, but that seems like a rabbit hole I'm going
to want to put some real time into but another friend suggested
something a little more digestible and from a talent I was already
familiar with.
I've
been watching Jim Sterling's video game current affairs show The
Jimquisition since it was on The
Escapist. Hey, remember that website back when it was more than a
forum being kept alive by Yahtzee Crowshaw's shows? Yeah, me too, it
was before the Nazis decided to make a comeback through the medium of
gamer self-entitlement.
Anyway,
Jim Sterling alongside Conrad Zimmerman and Paulson Sear (and Caitlin
Cooke in earlier episodes) form the staff of FistShark Marketing, the
world's most morally bankrupt PR firm. As you can imagine, that claim
is up against some pretty stiff competition.
The show is
available on iTunes and YouTube and it is hilarious. Each episode has
two or three sketches, all improvised by the three actors playing
executives of the titular firm. Between them they weave a surreal
world of awful products; inexcusable exploitation of a hated
co-worker called Craig; the scientific misadventures of company
physician Doctor Nightscream as well as “Balthasar and the boys in
the basement” who may or may not be Satanists; and Dean Cain.
That was one
of the things that sold me on the series: an odd fixation they have
with Dean Cain and presenting him in more and more bizarre ways. One
episode had him living in the company's basement and bothering the
staff because he had a wasp's nest inside his head. Miley Cyrus is
also a “client” of the firm and somehow comes off worse.
I am not
going to claim everything in the series is in good taste, it most
certainly isn't, or that every sketch works because this is improv
comedy and sometimes things just don't land. If you're interested in
a rollickingly bizarre time I personally recommend the episodes Hello
Dolly (featuring a doomed
attempt to stop Richard Dawkins tweeting) and Viva
Slaatvania (in which the team
try to build a Biblical Ark to survive a teambuilding exercise).
