Namiko’s Note:
Xum loved podcasting. It was an artistic activity that was very
dear to him as he was sadly losing more and more of the use of his body. But
while his drawing hand wouldn't work as long or as well as it used to, at least he still
had his wonderful voice. And after he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, he still
recorded for his podcasts and other stuff for a number of months as a "happy distraction" (his words)
from all the doctor appointments and awful treatment trials and putting his affairs in order. And I am glad he had this to do at home since he was essentially retired while I still had to go to work
and the kids still had to go to school.
Xum would still edit his podcasts at
first, but when the tumor started to affect his eyesight, Isamu happily stepped
in to help, as he did in Xum’s early podcast days when Isamu “learned on the
job” on how to use Audacity so he could make his own audio works. Isamu helped
with Audacity editing, and so did Adrian Zet, a friend, A-V editor, and Xum’s former
co-worker that taught Xum everything he knew about the program before he figured out some tricks of his own. Isamu also helped his father type up
scripts and notes by taking Xum’s dictation, and was even a “voice in his ear”
when Xum guested on a few other podcasts and needed a prompt to remember his
notes when he could no longer read them. Even today Isamu and Adrian still spend
some of their free time finishing up a number of projects Xum had left
unfinished.
Xum told me that one of the most fun podcasting projects he worked
on were for the April Fool’s Day shows on the Fire and Water Podcast network, where
he would usually create funny promos for fake podcast shows, and other
comedy bits like having Yogi Bear meet a Transformer. He had done this
for three years, (though the second year was just a funny karaoke bit used on a regular show that happened to run on April 1) and right after he finished the last one he
already had ideas for what to do in 2020, and was working on those alongside his other podcasts.
He started with five ideas, and he dropped three. One was
called “Xum Yukinori Reads the Phonebook,” a response to a frequent comment
about his voice that was essentially a “careful what you'd say you could listen to” type of
joke. Another was a false ad for “Booked Xum on Phonics,” which had Xum record
every phonetic sound in the English language to create a voice simulator program
that would say anything you type in his voice. And Solomon Grundy and
Terra-Man use it to essentially insult each other. And because their typing is
not really good, the Xum voice would say things like “Cowbay Man is a bug dottie-head.”
The third was a sequel to the “Botcast“ one he did last year that was my
favorite: a near-ten-minute bit which had the bot explain Comicsgate to Grundy, which I thought was frigging hilarious, though Xum thought it would give that so-called "movement" more attention than it deserved, so he dropped it. And he dropped the other two because he didn’t think they were “funny
enough.” At least he made use of some lines from “Botcast” on his
Done-in-One Wonders Wonder Show.
So Xum went ahead with his other two ideas and added a third later
on, which was inspired by all of the early CW show crossover news that was coming out at
the time. It also involved another podcaster, Rob Kelly. And while Xum pretty
much had his lines worked out and practically
recorded on the spot, he was still fiddling with Rob’s lines for weeks, so a script didn’t
go to him until much later. And Isamu did a great job putting it together. Meanwhile
Adrian finished the other two, which expanded on previous funny bits Xum had
done before (one with a little Blackadder humor thrown in).
However, Fire and Water did not do an April Fool’s Day
show this year, which is understandable with all that's going on. But they did at least feature one of Xum’s fake promos on its own, which is the
best of the three IMO. You can listen to that one here, and the other
two are available at the links below.
As Xum would say, enjoy! And April Fools!
-- Namiko
-- Namiko
April Fool's Day 2020 promo one
April Fool's Day 2020 promo two
