Dana Snyder's Talking Dennis Miller doll

You may remember when Dana tweeted that he was selling a Talking Dennis Miller doll on eBay:

After some furious bidding I became the heir to Dana Snyder's Talking Dennis Miller doll. It's a great responsibility.

Yesterday he arrived in the mail, so I did something I never thought I would do... an unboxing video. I think now I can count him as a tax write off.

Yes, like a newborn baby emerging from the womb, Dennis Miller shook free of the shackles of packaging.



Well, not want to leave him home alone, I took him with me all day. I mean, what if some burglar burgles him?

Anyway, I took my wife and son to Sesame Place (a local theme park based on Sesame Street) and Talking Dennis Miller came along. Here we are waiting for the parade:

Here he is getting his caricature drawn:

Here he is meeting a pink muppet:

And here's a couple shots of us later at the bar.

Yep, it was Miller time... Talking Dennis Miller time:

The night ended with this tweet:

Who knows what other adventures Dana Snyder's Talking Dennis Miller doll has in store for him?  Maybe I will put him in a box and ship him off to drink beer with Aaron and Brian from Cabin Fever. Perhaps I will ship him to Australia to visit with some of the Aussie Snydecast listeners.

Either way, I wanna ship him somewhere. He's drinking too many of my beers.

Dana's Friend Chip

On KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #176: Groove Me Dana mentions that his friend Chip had to learn lines of The Odd Couple in a hurry because the actor that played Oscar was about to be a father.

Unless Dana has more than one friend named Chip he is talking about Chip Duford who appeared on a Snydecast in 2006.

KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #18: Flyover States:

[adult swim]’s Dana Snyder and Ken Plume’s weekly chat podcast returns with a special guest, as Dana is trapped in the midwest with his good buddy Chip Duford in this special 2-part episode.

Playing beer pong with Dana Snyder...

On KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #176: Groove Me Dana mentions playing "beer pong" at a few recent parties.

It reminded me of this tweet I saw in April:

Brian Fitzpatrick talks about the Ken PD Snydecast

Today I got a chance to speak to Brian of Cabin Fever. We talk about the Ken PD Snydecast as well as leprechaun's, the lost Snydecast video episode, Run DMC and Chick-Fil-A.

Absolute With Seduction

Thanks to Aaron Cooper for sending me the pictures!

Subsonic Radio

KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #176: Groove Me features talk of the Subsonic Radio app for iPhone and iPad.



The app allows users to hear the Epcot Mission Space & Spaceship Earth & Magic Kingdom Space Mountain loops anywhere in the universe.

Actually, you'd need either 3G or wifi so, you probably can't leave earth, but I was in the middle of a "space thing".



The app does start up each time with a modified Main Street Electrical Parade intro (as heard on the podcast.)

Plus, like Dana, you can sleep to it and drift off to dreams of Briar Patches and Country Bears. Just set the timer:




It's in the iTunes store or find it online at subsonicradio.com.

KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #176: Groove Me

KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #176: Groove Me has been UNLEASHED! It's a wonderful return with talk of Shia Labeouf, Danny Devito's foot, Disney music and old people playing beer pong.

Go and give it a whirl! KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #176: Groove Me!

Cop Rock

KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #34: Cabin Fever features talk of the show Cop Rock. It was an attempt to combine police procedural with musical theatre.

Take a look:

The Foster Brooks Robot

Dana posted a fascinating video to Twitter yesterday:

Foster Brooks was an actor who was best known for playing a lovable drunk on TV and in his comedy act.

The robot shows up at about 2:32.

Here's the real Foster Brooks:





lasvegastripadvisor.com did a "Question of the Day" giving us plenty of info on the robot:

Q:

Whatever happened to the animatronic Foster Brooks that was placed in the MGM Grand when it first opened in 1994? It was described as costing over $150,000, and took over 825 man-hours to build.

A:

It changed its name to “Oscar Goodman” and ran for mayor of Las Vegas. But seriously, folks …

Foster Brooks (1912-2001), a k a the “Lovable Lush,” was a comedian whose humor wouldn’t pass muster nowadays. He specialized in a “drunk act” and his sozzled manner earned him many a guest spot on late-night television and the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. He even recorded, believe it or not, an album of song interpretations. Its jacket featured a photograph of the marquee of the old Desert Inn.

Back in 1994, Brooks’ humor was still considered sufficiently amusing that somebody at the then-new MGM Grand had the bizarre idea of garnishing the Betty Boop Bar with a robotic replica of Foster Brooks. An anonymous recollection, posted on the Internet on Sept. 26, 2005, described the spectacle as follows: “Every 5 minutes it would ‘Awake,’ mumble and slur, and wave its arms, then pass out again at the bar.”

The “Black Century” blog even managed to unearth photos of this strange creation, taken by Jack Pendarvis. The latter mused, back on July 8, 2008, on his own blog: “The robot clanked its mouth up and down in a lackadaisical fashion, hardly bothering to match up with the scratchy phonograph recording of a live Foster Brooks show [20 minutes of material, in all]. The robot was sitting at a little table, as if enjoying an aperitif in a cafe. So the laugh track seemed out of place. So did the robot, I guess.”

Even by Vegas standards, the Foster Brooks android ranked high on the eccentricity meter, to the point that it earned its own page in Mike Weatherford’s Cult Vegas. He records the actual Brooks’ reaction to his replicant as, “I look like an old man, which is what I am. It’s better than I’ll look like when I’m dead, I guess.” In a delicious irony, Weatherford adds that real-life inebriates would, in their alcohol-befogged state, mistake the Brooks robot for a real live person.

As weird as the episode sounds in retrospect, it may have been all of piece with inauspicious 1993 rollout of the MGM Grand that confronted Las Vegans with what Weatherford describes as, “goofy cartoon mascots, giant plastic French fries, and creepy Wizard of Oz wax figures.” All of those –- along with the Brooks robot and his Betty Boop Bar hangout — were evicted in a 1996-97 makeover, preceded out the door by the original CEO, Larry J. Woolf. (The latter would be exiled from the Strip for over a decade, eventually making a comeback at the Sahara.)

One Internet rumor had it that the animatronic Brooks’ demise came at the fists of Mike Tyson. Supposedly MGM’s in-house boxer was upset over something or other and took it out on the robotic Mr. Brooks. Alas, this legend is entirely more entertaining than true. According to NV Energy executive Jack Leone, who worked at MGM Grand from 1995 until his departure for Mandalay Bay in 1998, the android was a victim of old age. “It was in such bad shape, it was just thrown out,” Leone tells LVA. “Nobody knows exactly where [it went].”

So if you’re out in the desert and stumble across an inebriated white-bearded robot, you’ll have just solved one of the ongoing mysteries of the Strip.

A Second Listen: KEN P.D. SNYDECAST #141: Marathon Men

On Ken P.D. Snydecast 141: Marathon Men, the boys talk about all-nighters.

On this episode we find out that Ken took Latin at 8am from a professor who spoke in monotone.

It was in, what should have been a study room in the library, it seated about 7. Anyone that had to sit in the front of the room had to go in first or climb over the desk.

Also, he once watched True Lies at 4AM to take a break from a marathon study session.

To learn more about Ken and Dana's all-nighters re-listen to Ken P.D. Snydecast 141: Marathon Men.

Mission Accomplished!

They hit the $10,000 goal!



Still 30 hours to go! If you haven't donated, do it! More is better!

http://kck.st/N3eU4q

Almost there!!!

Go! Kick Ken's Kickstarter!!

http://kck.st/N3eU4q

REMINDER: Support the "THERE'S A ZOMBIE IN MY TREEHOUSE!" kickstarter

REMINDER: Support  the "THERE'S A ZOMBIE IN MY TREEHOUSE!"  kickstarter (for an  iBook and sequel.)
Click here!



Here's some info cut and pasted off the Kickstarter website:


THERE'S A ZOMBIE IN MY TREEHOUSE! is a book written for children of all ages by Ken Plume & John Robinson and drawn for children of all ages by Len Peralta.  It was, however, created specifically with you in mind.

How can we be so sure of this?

Well, this is a children's book project that involves zombies--and you're reading this page. That says a lot about you, and we salute your morbid and whimsical nature. We ask you to embrace it...and read on.

The story of TREEHOUSE! involves our young hero, Johnny Fry, who loves his treehouse.  It is his base of operations for imaginative adventures where he can be a pirate, a cowboy, or even a pirate-cowboy.  But one dark day, a zombie somehow finds its way into his treehouse.  And Johnny is no fool--he knows that playing in a zombie-infested treehouse is not a safe notion, so he stays away.  His family tries to help him face his problem--tries being the key word there--and hijinks, mayhem and mystery ensue.

We had a lot of fun making the book.  We were very happy that Wired liked it as well.  And now, as we've marched into the future, these things called iBooks have come along.  And we realized they could give us a chance to merge the physical book with an audiobook version.  And not just one...but several.  So the idea was hatched to use Kickstarter to fund the creation of the There's a Zombie in my Treehouse! iBook, complete with audio versions of the book from awesome celebrity narrators.

But then we thought: "Why stop there?"  We have also kicked around the idea of a sequel in which our hero, Johnny Fry, is brought face-to-face with another incredible menace: Evil Snowmen.

And so our stretch goal is to fund the creation of the sequel, Conquest of the Snowmen, as both an iBook and a physical book.  And Mr. Neil Gaiman, we're very pleased to say, is on board to be the audiobook narrator for the sequel.  (Of course, for Mr. Gaiman to have something to read, we must unlock the creation of the book first...)

And thus we have created multiple reward levels for those of you who want to help make all this possible.

An interesting note about the Reward Levels.

You may notice that the reward levels offer free copies of the Zombie in My Treehouse! iBook as well as copies of the Zombie in My Treehouse! physical book.  Well, once the stretch goal is reached and the creation of the sequel is unlocked, those rewards magically include copies of the sequel as well.  So if your reward level included the first iBook, you'll get the second iBook, also free.  If your reward level included the first book, you'll get the second book as well.  You won't have to change a thing; we'll flick the switch for you.  (Bear in mind that the fulfillment date for the entirety of those rewards will need to be extended to July 2013 for Conquest of the Snowmen because, well, we do have to create the book first, as we've said.)

An interesting note about Celebrity Readers.

As the funding increases, so do the readers of There's a Zombie in My Treehouse! until we reach the stretch goal.  The higher we go, the more readers get unlocked.  Here are the levels you can help us reach:

UNLOCKED: $4000 - Alex Day!

UNLOCKED: $5000 - Joel Hodgson! (MST3K & Cinematic Titanic)

UNLOCKED: $6000 - Phil Plait! (The Bad Astronomer)

UNLOCKED: $6500 - Caissie St. Onge! (scribe of TV comedy & author of Jane Jones: Worst. Vampire. Ever.)

$7000 - Tom Kenny! (SpongeBob SquarePants)

NEW! $7500 - Mark & Emily Volman! (Mark of The Turtles and The Mothers of Invention)

$8000 - Kevin Murphy! (MST3K & Rifftrax)

NEW! $8500 - Peter Serafinowicz! (The Peter Serafinowicz Show and Shaun of the Dead)

$9000 - Billy West! (Futurama)

$9500 - Tom Scharpling!

NEW! $9750 - Michael J. Nelson! (MST3K & Rifftrax)

$10000 - Paul Dini & Misty Lee!

$12000 - James Urbaniak! (Venture Bros., American Splendor) 

$14000 - J. Elvis Weinstein! (MST3K & Cinematic Titanic)

$16000 - Trace Beaulieu! (MST3K & Cinematic Titanic)

$18000 - Molly Lewis!

$20000 - Bill Corbett! (MST3K & Rifftrax)

$22000 - Frank Conniff! (MST3K & Cinematic Titanic)

$24000 - Doc Hammer & Jackson Publick! (Venture Bros.)

$26000 - Charlie McDonnell!

$28000 - MYSTERY READER!!

$32000 - Jonathan Coulton!

$36000 - MYSTERY READER!!

$40000 - John Hodgman (The Areas of My Expertise & The Judge John Hodgman podcast.)

$42000 - Conquest of the Snowmen iBook & Book + Neil Gaiman reading Conquest!

What the funding is paying for.

In the case of the Zombie in My Treehouse! iBook and our initial goal, it's paying for the creation of the iBook itself as well as the cost of the resulting reward levels, fees, postage for shipping, digital distribution costs, taxes and so forth.  

In the case of the stretch goal and Conquest of the Snowmen, funding will be going to the creation of the sequel as well as its production as a physical book.  The sequel will employ color in the interior pages and we have a printer on board to get an excellent Kickstarter-exclusive version of the book printed. All this in addition to the other costs as mentioned above.

So, ideally, at the end of all this, once the stretch goal has been reached, we will have two iBooks (complete with audio versions from celebrity readers, including the fabulous Neil Gaiman) and a brand new, real-world, limited edition Kickstarter-exclusive physical book.  We've got 30 days to reach our initial goal.  If we make it, things happen.  If for some reason we don't make it, you will not be charged.  Our project has to be successful for any funding to occur...so any and all help is appreciated.

So thank you.

Thank you in advance for supporting our project.  We are excited to have the chance to update one book and create another, because these are the sort of books we wanted to read as kids (and still do).  We look forward to making all of this happen, and all three of us--John, Ken and Len--thank you for giving us that chance.

Go now! Pledge money! 

The one where Dana had a stroke...

Aaron Poole notified me of this post on the Fred message board:

I've been a snydecast listener on and off for years. I kind of feel off for awhile and have recently gotten back into it and have been listening to old favorite episodes. Can someone please let me know the name of the episode where Dana told the story of when he went to the ER because he had a stroke?... I remember it being pretty funny and a good story.
Thanks.

I do remember this one! "How much cocaine did you have?" and "a little cocaine with breakfast, maybe?" were my favorite lines.

If I remember correctly, this one tells the story of the older man who taught Dana how to smoke (without getting caught) in a hospital bathroom.

But, I don't know the episode title or number... do you?

UPDATE: Solved! It's Ken PD Snydecast 109: Vomit Luge

All props go to Aaron Cooper, Snydecast Superfan!

From the Snyde-mailbag

Hey Dr. Wienerbreath!

So I went and made Dana's delicious French Onion soup recipe again and remembered to get a shot of the end result. I don't know if it looks like his but it still tastes delicious!

Hopefully one of these days I'll get around to making the Snydewich... if only it weren't for those damn chips!

~ Dylan/Sithus