The Nicest Debt Collector Around (Ep. 84 - Great British Bake Off)

October 27, 2016 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Edd Kimber

Why is food so important? I mean, other than the whole keeping-you-alive thing. My guest this week found his life forever changed by food when he won the first season of The Great British Bake-Off. Edd Kimber was a shy, unhappy banker when his cakes, cookies, and pies catapulted him to national fame. It was all a bit much for a young man who once dreaded attention -- but it also meant a once-in-a-lifetime chance for him to pursue his dreams of baking for a living.

This Week's Recommendation: Stirring the Pot

Thanks again to Edd for joining me. If you liked hearing from him, check out his new podcast, Stirring the Pot, where every episode he talks to a different chef, food writer, or celebrity about how food has touched their lives. It's kind of The Sewers of Paris, but with food.

Edd's conversations on Stirring the Pot are lovely and heartwarming and funny and familiar. Like the entertainment we talk about on this show, meals are something we craft and consume for each other.

And maybe I'm giving away too much by telling you this, but the truth is that this show, The Sewers of Paris, isn't really about entertainment. It's about people, and the ways that we connect. Often, it can be difficult for us mostly-hairless apes to relate to each other, but our shared experiences can provide a universal language where words fail. Whether those experiences are a book that two people loved, or a dessert that they shared, they provide nourishment and inspiration.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Vagabonds Like Me (Ep. 83 - Stand by Me)

October 20, 2016 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Robert Roth

How do you know when it's time to stop wandering and put down roots? This week's guest is Robert Roth, who spent years looking for the right place to call home. After he ran away from home, his journey took him to some dark, dangerous places. It took a lot of work to pull himself back up to where he could create a home not only for himself, but for those on a similar journey.

By the way, if you're in Seattle, a semi-autobigraphical play written by Robert is debuting in November. It's called When There Were Angels, and it runs from November 10 to 13 at the Calamus Auditorium at Gay City.

Also my partner and I are working on a documentary project about queer gamers, and this November we'll be livestreaming some highlights of the stories we gathered. If you enjoy the storytelling on Sewers of Paris, you'll want to see our project Playing with Pride. Just visit PlayingWithPride.com to sign up for updates -- you'll be the first to know about some exciting news we're about to announce.

This Week's Recommendation: A Supermarket in California

In his travels, there are a lot of places that Robert could have settled down, so I'm grateful that Seattle was able to claim him. And for this week's recommendation, take a look at the Allen Ginsberg poem "A Supermarket in California," in which the Ginsberg, seeking inspiration, wanders into a supermarket where he encounters gay poets of the past: Walt Whitman, from the 1800s, and Garcia Lorca, from the early 20th century. In the poem, Ginsberg wanders the store with Whitman, then contemplates a stroll through America, a country unrecognizable to those with whom he shares a spiritual bond.

It's a poem about walking, and exploring, traveling together with a kindred sprit to what Ginsberg calls "our silent cottage." He asks Whitman "what America did you have?" and "where are we going, Walt Whitman?" and "which way does your beard point tonight?" He notes Whitman's eyeing of the grocery boys and dreams of lost love.

If you like, you can join their rambling journey, picking up from where Ginsberg left off, and where Lorca left it, and where Whitman left it to him. We recognize something of ourselves in them, even though we can't understand the times in which they lived. And reading the poem sixty years after it was written means that Ginsberg would today be as out of place as Whitman was to him.

Still, the act of wandering hasn't changed, the search for home, the search for love.

Clips of Stuff we Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Moon's About to Fall (Ep. 82 - Majora's Mask)

October 13, 2016 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Enrique Quintero

This week's guest has seen the end of the world. Enrique's favorite game growing up gave players a choice about who they could save before an impending apocalypse -- and of course, you can't save everyone. It was a dark obsession for a little kid, but playing through the end of the world got him through some tough times as a kid -- and even tougher times as an adult.

This Week's Recommendation: Fragments of Him

I'm so grateful to all my Sewers of Paris guests who open up and share their pasts -- I know it's not always an easy thing to do, especially when the past hurts.

For my recommendation this week, take a look at the game Fragments of Him. At least, I think it's a game -- Fragments of Him is one of those genre-bending experiences that pokes at the rules at what's a game, what's art, what's a story, and what's a presentation. I played it a few months ago with my partner, and though there are no puzzles to solve or enemies to shoot, I still found myself immersed in whatever it is you want to call it.

In the ... game, you navigate through the memories of the people who loved and lost someone they cared for, reflecting with melancholy on the ways that their lives intersected. The whole thing is about two hours long, and very somber. Your experience, and indeed everyone's experience, will be different, layered with whatever history with with loss and grief you bring. I found myself grateful to be playing it alongside someone I loved, and grateful that he was there to share it with me. But it was also a reminder that even though none of us will be around forever, those around us will go on after we're gone. Death and loss and grief aren't an end -- they're just steps in a process that loops continuously, and always has been, and always will.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Where's the Pazow? (Ep. 81 - HR Pufnstuff)

October 6, 2016 Matthew Baume

This Week's Guest: Sam Pancake

For many of us, going home to the place where you grew up can be, at best, stressful. But what if you could recreate just the good parts of your childhood home -- the TV shows that kept you company and helped you shut out the rest of the world?

My guest this week is Sam Pancake, who you may know from Arrested Development, Legally Blond 2, Where the Bears Are, Last Will and Testicle, and the fantastic film You're Killing Me.

Sam grew up on a steady media diet of 70s cheese that had, by the time he moved to LA to be an actor, grown a bit stale. So imagine his shock when he discovered a troupe of actors who'd found a way to remix the schlock of his childhood into something new and absolutely insane.

By the way, Sam's doing a one-man show in LA on Wednesday, October 19 -- it's called Hot Sweet and Sticky at the Cavern Club Theater, and you can get tickets at BrownPaperTickets.com. You can also see him on Season 3 of Transparent, and coming soon on Documentary Now, Bajillion Dollar Properties, and Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life.

This Week's Recommendation

Thanks again to Sam for joining me. You can currently see him on Season 3 of Transparent, and coming soon on Documentary Now, Bajillion Dollar Properties, and Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life. He's also doing his one-man show, Hot Sweet & Sticky, at the Cavern Club Theater in LA on October 19.

My recommendation this week isn't necessarily gay, but it is deeply queer: a 1980s children's safety video called Strong Kids Safe Kids, starring our old friend Henry Winkler. It is completely well-intentioned and sincere, but unfortunately the whole thing is deeply troubling and bizarre due to a combination of weird dialogue, dream-like editing, disastrous advice, and guests that range from John Ritter to Yogi Bear. The result feels more like an art film than a public service announcement.

If I had to guess how this strange project happened, it would be that a group of adults thought that it would be an effective way to talk to children. That's why, for example, Henry Winkler cautions characters from Pac Man not to follow strangers into the woods, and a man in childish overalls sings a song about penises and vulvas.

But in trying to overcome the language barrier between kids and adults, somehow Strong Kids Safe Kids manages to become gibberish to everyone, advising children to make honking sounds at abductors and giving lines about disclosing abuse to Baby Smurf. And this is why grown-up attempts to talk to kids so often go wrong -- our memories of what it was like to be young are often wildly inaccurate. That can turn into something fun when it's a campy adaptation of The Brady Bunch, and everyone's on board with it being a silly tribute. But Strong Kids Safe Kids is exactly the opposite -- sincere and earnest and utterly clueless about what a non-stop train wreck it is from beginning to end.

Clips of Stuff We Talked About

Music

Parisian Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

About The Sewers of Paris

The Sewers of Paris is a podcast about how queer lives are shaped by our favorite books, movies, music, and shows. Each week, guests open up about their secret struggles, hidden passions, and surprising triumphs by plucking a piece of entertainment from their past and answering the question: What’s the entertainment that changed your life?

About Defining Marriage

Each week on Defining Marriage, hosts Matt Baume and James Morris chat about what's happening with marriage equality, featuring frequent digressions into pop culture, silly banter, and the jokes and quibbles that have kept them together as a couple for over a decade.

The first eighteen episodes of the podcast contain the complete audiobook version of the book Defining Marriage, which traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it, featuring personal insights from the lives of Evan Wolfson, Dan Savage, Ken Mehlman, Dustin Lance Black, and many more.

About Matt's So-Cast Pod

Revisit the iconic '90s drama My So-Called Life, one episode at a time. Every week, host Matt Baume & his guests delve into the teen angst, the grown-up turmoil, and the endless flannel of the 90s -- and examine the show's impact on television and our lives.