Today is a big, big day. Why? Because it’s a S’up Cuz? anniversary, you silly gooses!
Who would’ve thought that two guys with the attention span of four year-olds could sustain such a labor-intensive podcasting effort for five episodes? You can celebrate with us by listening to this week’s podcast, “The Emergency Room Show.”
Click here to download the mp3 file. Or—and I know that you know what I’m going to say here—subscribe via iTunes. And if you have the bandwidth at work, listen to the full hour show below.
Topics this week include: trips to the emergency room, the “box truck wave,” Olive Garden’s response to Michael’s praise and the music of recently deceased punk rocker Jay Reatard. As a bonus, Michael launches his new interview series and Justin paints a mental picture that will make you vomit a little in your mouth.
Also, we discuss The Blind Project, a charity run by one of Michael’s college friends, which you can learn more about here.
In our ongoing effort to seem like a quasi-legitimate media outfit of sorts, we’ve launched a new series within S’up Cuz?. It’s called “Curious Michael” and it’s an interview series in which Michael interviews otherwise regular people who have something special going on. Maybe they’re award-winning amateur filmmaker, or perhaps they’ve climbed K2, or maybe they’re a beat cop in a really bad part of town. Maybe they’ve even met Burt Reynolds, which would obviously be amazing. Who knows? In other words, they’re people who have something interesting to say. Unlike you, Sam Barnes of Evansville, Indiana.
In the first segment of “Curious Michael,” Michael sits down with Daniel Farris, drummer for Jason Freeman and Jeffrey James & the Haul (available on iTunes), to find out what life as a drummer in an up-and-coming band is really like. Farris was also the drummer in Staynless, Breath Your Alive, the Colorcast, ElDorado and the Ruckus and The Coach and Four.
Click here to download the mp3. Or, as always, you can do the logical thing and subscribe via iTunes. Or, just listen in the player below (run time is 15 minutes).
And for the record, I am aware that I said the name of the segment wrong in the outro song.
Finally, Michael has been bugging me to get these pictures up for a month now. There. Are you happy now, Michael?
Possible Captions:
“Want some candy?”
“Seriously though, how many roofies should we take with us tonight?”
“So where do we sign up to be cops?”
“For Sale: Van. Slightly used.”
“What do you mean he shaved it off? Tom Selleck you are dead to me now.”
“Mustache trimmed…check. Eagle on Trans Am hood polished…check. Aqua Velva applied liberally to erogenous zones…check. Zero percentage that we’ll spend the night at a ladies house tonight instead of Mom’s basement…check.”
By all means, add your own in the comments section.
Hello, Internet peoples. It’s been a while since you heard the sounds of our voices. If you’re like our Moms, that makes you sad. If you’re like our wives, that makes you happy (unless you’re faced with the daunting task of opening a new jar of pickles).
But allow us to remedy that with Episode 4 of S’up Cuz, entitled “The Reunion Where Michael Screwed Justin Out of $200 Show”. You’ll have to listen to learn more about the ridiculously long title.
Click here to download the file, or for the love of Baby New Year, subscribe on iTunes. Or, if you have the time (and the bandwidth), just listen below.
A few thoughts on this episode:
1. We waste no time insulting a potential new demographic, but I think I’m okay with that.
2. If you listen hard enough, you can actually hear the discomfort in Michael’s voice when he talks about the clothes he had to wear for his family holiday portrait. I’ll work on getting the photo so I can post it in all its awkward glory.
3. Something about the song at the end makes for one of the more homoerotic outs yet. Maybe that’s because of all the harmonizing?
I think The Olive Garden might be my favorite Italian restaurant. That’s right, I said it, and you just go ahead and start making fun of me. This is something I would have probably never admitted until I did a lot of soul searching today after leaving the Olive Garden for lunch. As I sat in my car reflecting back on the delicious meal I just had, I realized what had been right there in front of my eyes for years.
The O.G. (as I’ve never actually called it, but may begin soon) gets a horrible rap for really no good reason. I’ve heard it called the Captain D’s of Italian food. That’s utterly ridiculous. I mean, seriously, if you think about it, have you ever had a bad meal at The Olive Garden? They have a huge menu with tons of Italian delicacies to choose from. Today I had the appetizer sampler with stuffed mushrooms, fried calamari and toasted raviolis for like $10. Are you kidding me?
I have friends that won’t eat at “chain” restaurants. They say it’s because they’re just trying to support the local small restaurant owner. The real reason: they’re a-holes. The reason The Olive Garden is a chain is because it started small and then everyone said, “Damn, this is awesome Italian food, I wish I could get this in like a million different places” and voila…supply and demand! If they sucked so bad, would there be so many of them all throughout the country? No.
Besides some of my friends, you know who else is an a-hole and who would never eat at The Olive Garden? A Foodie. This is a term that has become popular lately for people who enjoy good food. Can we all agree on a few things here? For one thing, there isn’t anyone who doesn’t enjoy good-tasting food over crappy- tasting food; we don’t need a term for this. Second, “Foodie” is not a real word and it actually sounds stupid. Third, a “Foodie” is really just something that fat people came up with so that it would sound like their over-indulgence was actually a hobby. I think they were hoping we’d see some 400 lb. guy walking down the street and think, “oh, he’s not fat, he is just a big Foodie.”
A Foodie is the kind of person who if you were sitting on a couch with them watching TV and an Olive Garden commercial came on, they’d scoff and roll their eyes and say something like, “How can they even call that garbage Italian food.”
You know what, I’ve been to Italy. And you know what I thought every time I sat down for a meal? “Damn, I wish there was an Olive Garden around here.” It’s like the restaurant founders lived in Italy for years, learning from the Italian cooking masters and then said, “Okay, now let’s make the stuff taste really kick-ass.” And that’s what they serve at the restaurants in the good ol’ US of A: really kick-ass food.
I beg of you to do some real soul searching of your own. Yes, there are some great little Italian restaurants in my city that I frequent, and that’s fine. I just don’t see any reason for bashing a place that gives you non-stop free salad and breadsticks. You know that salad is awesome. You know those breadsticks are delicious. Where else are you getting that stuff for free? Stop hatin’!
I’m glad I got that out of my system. And if you thought this whole diatribe was another one of my ploys to get a sponsor for the show, you’re dead wrong. If you know anything about us, you know from listening to the podcast that we’re currently working on a lucrative collaboration with a Dippin Dots sponsorship, so you can just stop that line of thinking right there.
Anyway, stay tuned for part 2 of this article next week, tentatively titled, “What’s your deal with not liking Red Lobster?”
On this, the fifth day of Hanukkah, we present you with the gift that keeps on giving: a new episode of everyone’s favorite cousin-hosted podcast, S’up Cuz?! As always, you’re welcome.
1. This was the first episode we recorded with Michael in Memphis and me in Chicago. The sheer technical complexity of how I did it would surely crash the Internet, so let’s just say it’s a technical miracle and the editing took more time than I anticipated. Hopefully the audio quality (particularly Michael’s, since there’s a big difference between his setup and mine) will improve each week.
2. I don’t like Phil Collins. Pretty sure that comes across loud and clear.
3. You’ll hear us make a pitch to Dippin’ Dots for sponsorship. It’s a pretty terrible pitch as we make our desire to “just get paid for this stuff” pretty clear, but it’s also honest and rooted in real events. So, Dippin’ Dots management, if you’re reading this, we’re ready to sell out and you can email us at supcuzpodcast@gmail.com.
4. Michael unveiled our first/worst listener contest ever. You’ll have to check out the podcast for details.
We may or may not be on hiatus next week. We’ll see how busy Michael’s party keeps him.
And finally, we leave you with this video clip from this week’s Good Enough To Netflix: Crossroads (1986), starring Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid 3 fame. In this scene, Daniel-son’s character is battling the devil’s guitarist for the soul of his friend, who sold it to the devil years ago for blues guitar prowess. No kidding. I couldn’t begin to make this stuff up.
Topics include the manliness of drinking tea, man-crushes, bad first CD purchases and Hootie and the Blowfish.
Will it be worth 50 minutes of your life? Of course not. But neither is that spreadsheet you’re working on or that disagreeable kid you’re making dinner for.
If you have listened to the second podcast, you have heard me suddenly come up with this grand scheme to make money from our ridiculous conversations. My idea was to have a link on our blog to music we talked about on the podcast that could then be purchased through iTunes. I figured there might be a way to get iTunes to pay us a percentage for each download. As a fervent capitalist and serial entrepreneur, I am constantly coming up with ways to make money, though I have always had a problem with the actual making any money off my ideas part.
When I announce my brilliant and prolific idea, Justin quickly shuts me down and says something to the effect of “that’s the stupidest idea I ever heard of” or “I’m the tech guru here, you know nothing,” or something like that. Ashamed and defeated, I drop the subject.
Now, I am not the most technologically savvy guy. I convinced my teachers in college that I didn’t believe in the use of computers and got permission to write everything with pen and paper. Just last month I got frustrated at my inability to add up a column in Excel and somehow erased all of Microsoft Office from my computer. So, that being my relationship with technology, I believed Justin.
But then after close to three whole minutes of research, I found out that this is a program that actually does exist. Looks like Steve Jobs must have heard our podcast and immediately put this business plan of mine in place. Either that or maybe I’m smarter than Justin about some stuff…
So anyway, once we figure out how to do it, after each podcast, we will list all of the bands or songs or movies or whatever that we mentioned during the show and you should be able to click on the item and go to iTunes and purchase it. And S’up Cuz? will then get paid. I haven’t read the fine details yet but I’m pretty sure we’ll get at least 90% of the price of the song. Right?
And I promise that being paid for these downloads will not affect the content of the show. We will not be influenced by the record labels or accept payola of any kind. That being said, have you guys heard the new hit singles from such artists as Shakira, The Black Eyed Peas, Taylor Swift, the Jonas Brothers or Lady GaGa? They are all fantastic. You should check them out. And tell iTunes who sent ya.
"S'up Cuz?" is a weekly podcast hosted by Justin Allen and Michael Malone, cousins who live in Chicago and Memphis, respectively. Michael is a writer, father of two and music guru of sorts. Justin is a writer and video producer, has red hair and also writes a blog called Underemployed. Both of them can be reached by email here.
