This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - 2024 KC Fringe Review

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

We wrap up our 2024 KC Fringe experience with this review, including a review of one of the other Fringe shows doing an improv of us. FringeProv is the property of Bryan Colley at jupiterkansas.com

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. 20, 4 fringe is here, every voice we want to hear. Stage is set, the lights are bright, bring your art into the night. Casey's heart, it beats so loud, every artist in the crowd. crowd voices rise and colors blend create a world that won't end welcome to fringe the place is calling lights are flashing hearts are falling join the wave come feel the motion dive into this fringe devotion oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh stories told and laughter shared every state shows how we care

welcome to our fringe wrap-up show so by now you've heard all the fringe shows and you've heard all the fringe adjacent shows that we were able to do on the side so again shout out to everyone who helped out with that especially Heather but first one of the other shows in fringe this past year It's called a French prof. The idea it was that they put all the shows that were in fringe this year into a hat. And each of their shows, they would pull out of hats at random one of the shows. And they would do an improv based on that show.

well I was informed that one of the shows I was selected was our show so thank you to Brian Colley the producer who sent me the file and gave me permission to use it here on the podcast so Brian is a

KC fringe veteran he often works with Tara Varney who also participated in this you will hear both of their voices is in the fringe proff clip Brian is the one that's introducing our podcast to be improved upon and Tara is the critic you'll hear on near the end of the clip and I'm going to cut it and interject wherever I can because I do have some thoughts about it I thought it was really damn funny but still I got

to a response to some of this so without further ado I bring you this podcast is on called for at fringe prof. Who do you choose? He chose. This podcast is Uncalled for by Mike Zernuski. This podcast is Uncalled for is a podcast hosted and produced by Mike Zernuski. This podcast will be an interview-based podcast that explores different aspects of the host life so far. and introduces the audience to some very interesting people.

For our program, we'll be recording our interviews in front of a live audience. Each show will be a different interview, and no two shows will be the same, just like Fringe Prom. All right. Okay, so right off the bat, nothing offensive or anything, just reading verbatim what's in the fringe program, which, yes, did write that and it is pretty much the omission of the podcast and has been from

day one I think because let's be honest how many people would actually listen if I get the an artful answer it's about whatever the fuck I want to talk about and whoever I want to talk about

it with so so it's a little more artful to say It's life exploration and interviewing interesting people, which it is that too. But I do need to correct you, Brian. Zernuski is the most common mispronunciation I have encountered of my surname. My name is pronounced Chernevsky.

CZ in Polish. This is the extent to my knowledge of the Polish language, by the way. C-Z produces a C-H sound, like in chair. And W, you should know this if you've studied German at any point. W. W. produces a V sound. So we don't say al-weider-zain, we say avidazain in German.

So, same principle there. It's Chernevsky. Well, now you know. So let's continue with this program. See how close they came to capturing the essence of what we talked about. You guys, pre-playing? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. They're checking their script. I got the microphone ready. Great. Are you ready for my guest? Yeah, you should go get your guest. Yeah. Hey, I'm Mike Zagoski.

This podcast is uncalled for. I need someone to come up so I can talk to them about my life. Yes, you sir. Time out. So, yeah, this guy did a worse job than Brian did on a game. my name. I don't hear any, I don't say my last name with geez. Yeah, nice to try. And it's not just talking to random strangers about my life.

If you are new to the podcast, let me explain how this works. I pick my guests, historically I picked my guests among my friends. And we talk about things that we have in In fact, I intentionally pick guests based on things that we have in common. Like, that's why you hear a lot of filmmakers and actors and chess people and I mention West grads, because I have things in common with those people. All right, and they are my friends.

So that's how guest selection has historically happened on this podcast. Now, of course, lately, we've branched out of little bit bringing in experts and whatnot in fact co-hosts that brought people and so Braden brought in his buddies and of course Heather brought guests to the fringe program as well and I do appreciate that but that's how it there's no random talking to strangers like he is trying to portrayed as, you know, is very intentionally has selected who appears on the podcast.

Anyway, let's continue. This year, you're my producers, Brentlin, and I'm in, uh... Hey! You seem interesting. This is going to be the best episode ever. It's going to be the best.

A couple parameters, though, make and pry. I really want to be emotional. No promises. Okay. Are we live? Yes. We're streaming right now. What's up, chat?

How's it going? Welcome back to this podcast is uncalled for. I'm here with my guest. Dave. Dave. I'm an absolute pleasure to meet you, Dave. I also want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Big Grundles, stinky little diapers.

teleprompter over here these doctors come free stanks that way when all your babies smell good they won't all right all right

sponsors okay let's talk about sponsors we don't have any sponsors everything to this moment has come

directly out of my pocket but if you want to do sponsors okay Kent State Chess Club and DoorDash are primary sponsors not

because I have any sponsorship deals with them or anything but it's because I fucking work for them. All right. So I have tried to get the word out about sponsorships. We just do not have the downloads

to justify sponsorships at this point. There are ways that you can help make that happen like telling your friends about the podcast and listening to the podcast yourself. We are hosted on Lipson. Lipson does have the ability to give you ads and all that ad placement or thing.

The problem is you need, so we're coming in with a little over 20,000 downloads for the entire podcast. They want that per episode. to justify ads so let's get to it let's get to it so that's one way you can help just start listening to the podcast and maybe the sponsors will come so so right now we just don't have the numbers to justify sponsorships i would love to have sponsors to be completely honest with you they're just not there so let's continue heard I am separated from my child. My wife took him from me and I have not seen him in 10 year. Very sad. What aspect of your life do you think tell me about me? I mean, like I lost my dog

once. That was pretty sad. You call him my kid a dog? I'm so sorry. People are mad on Facebook live. Chat, I'm sorry. People love it on Twitter though, so I don't know. Okay, okay, like people, I just don't know if our sponsor was controversial, like if we want to maybe address like smell. People love diabetes. We know this. Okay, just as long as you know. Dave, tell me about your dog. Uh, well, he's like a whole, like a little corgi mix, so he's like little short and real fat and real lovable. That's just like my kid. He's also real short, real bad. He could be different now, though. I haven't seen him in 10 years. That crazy?

How old was he when he got taken? 19. Probably not that much different. Yeah. Your wife is here, and she's really angry. Okay, now we've reached the portion of the program that has me a little upset.

Clearly, the actor has never listened to the podcast. So if you are the actor who played me in this sketch, please not only listen to the podcast, but specifically listen to

our St. Archelette's Day special. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. But before I get more into that. That's not how the podcast works. That's not how the podcast works at all.

You know, again, I bring in guests who know who knows something about something I want to talk about. And we talk about it. Yes, I'm going to inject my own experience into it if necessary. But for the most part, it's, Just a conversation.

If it's a subject, I know a little something about it. I have thoughts about, that's the thoughts episodes for you. We'll do discussions with the co-hosts and everything. But really, nothing like what's being portrayed here. And in terms of, yeah, the actors should listen to the San Arshelaz Day Special. I've never been married, and I don't have kids. I certainly don't have a 29-year-old kid. I would have been 17 at the time of his inception,

but the fact of it is I'm still a virgin. I know, 45 years old, still have never been late. And I addressed this in Brian's Three Peets, which you can now here in the in our fringe 24 program because I do address it

now it's kind of hard to have kids when every almost every woman that you've dated dumps you one or two dates in all right I'm sorry but that's that is true

okay probably the woman I've dated the most is a friend of the podcast Caroline and even then it's mostly been platonic there is a friend of the podcast who

did offer to fuck me it never happened so so nice so never been married and don't have kids if you're going to make fun

of me at least get that part of rights all right I am an uncle but biological speaking I have no uncles have nothing to do with it except for

being the sibling of one of the two parents that's the extent of it unfortunately so so yeah listen to the St. I'm martialitis episode

we continue okay Dave this is huge for us Now this is a story. I'm sorry. Honey. Our son just called us. Our son just called us.

Where is he? He's in jail. What? He's in jail. Dave, what the hell? My kid's in jail. He needs you, but you're too busy with your podcast. Well, I had to make a living. I'm sorry.

I raised our son. Dave, I'm gonna need $5,000. Who's the diapers is going to pull out if you leave, by the way? That's fine. I have my own. Screw the movie diapers. I know she was coming out of this. Great job, Dave.

I completely forgot to ask if anyone had seen this show for. Will anyone admit you having seen the show, knowing the consequences of admitting such a thing? Yeah, I think so. Well, let's see what our critic has, of this podcast is on top form. Well, it remind me, it was a little Pinterest as in the search for identity and how our identities and roles in life are constantly shifting. with the power plays and status of ourselves and our families and those others around us. It's that really.

But it's so true. Let's give it up for Dave. Dave, I noticed your artist button. What the, what show are you in at Fringe? I'm in Romantic Fools at the Arts Asylum. Nice! And I definitely don't know the guy who was playing Mike. Definitely never met him before.

We haven't done that show yet, so you might get lucky tonight. How many points would you like to see? Oh, uh, pincher. A dozen. Dozen? Okay. Okay, so I definitely think Tara was spot in her spot on in her critique at the end there.

Yeah, that bit was funny. Yeah, that bit was funny, yeah, your son is in jail, Yeah, a 29-year-old son who never existed is in jail. So, aside from that, that's the big thing that pisses me off about that, that has portrayed as have no wife and a 29-year-old son. Again, never been married and have no kids. So it would behoove this particular actor to see, at least listen to that episode

in particular the Arslaiast episode and kudos to the brave volunteer said yeah I never met the guy that played Mike so I never met him either but I'm giving them peace in my mind right now and yeah it would have helped

to have audience members who actually went to the show I was walking down the highway in the sea of burned out cars. The seats just blackened skeletons, empty eyes, and screaming jaws. Well, the planet's hung suspended in the sky of violent red, and in the stillness there I heard the chorus of the dead. But I feel so fucking good Must feed

You can not Thirteen I'll profane the temple and I'll shine my spills. I'll dig the mountains and I'll dam the streams. I'll do all the things best left in dreams. I'll rise the lions, the witch, the crows. Tell me where your secrets go. I'll drink the ocean and salt to field.

If you will see, I'll try to reveal. As, man, feel so fucking good. must be free you can not say you can not like soon So that music you just heard, is called, R-O-Z-E-K-O-L-L, is called, We've Been Here Before, by Roskell, R-O-Z-E-K-O-L, is like, License at Creative Commons by Attribution 4.0 International License.

You can find this music at free musicarchive.org. And the reason I mentioned it is because it is one of the songs that we played in our intro for the podcast live at Casey Fringe 2024. So first thing I need to talk about is, well, the circumstances surrounding the festival this year the big one of course was

being without the car you may have heard I've heard me talk about during our tech rehearsal episode but yeah the car started doing that

da da da da da da da da da da taking too damn long to start we ultimately found that it was a fault of the engine control module which is not a cheap part to replace at all luckily my mechanic was able to give me good deal and we were able to after two weeks it got done only for the replacement part to fail a weak layer uh uh to put in even more context it's been hot

this summer okay now once again climate change is real all right we have to address this shit and uh now it's affecting uh very important pieces of automobile equipment at the time of recording this has been back in this shop for over a month now as they search for a replacement parts which is a lot harder to come by because of something called planned obsolescence. But, frankly, has been affecting me quite a bit lately, including air guards to getting this podcast done. Because I had to switch machines.

You know, the machine I had been recording on decided it doesn't want to work anymore. So I got a new one. I credit to Mo. uh for gave me in touch with this machine but now it doesn't want to run my old uh adobe software so i and i have yet to look for a good solution for that i have yet to talk with a tech person about that that's on my to-do list for now we're just using garage band and it's working pretty well This guy hits issues, but I can live with it. And once again, credit to my dad for letting me use his car.

I wasn't telling him I was doing KC. Fring. Well, I did tell him I was volunteering at Casey Fras. I did tell him I was doing the actual show at Fringe. But, yeah, here we are. the venue itself Independence Boulevard Christian Church well

the first part should tell you exactly where it is it's on Independence Boulevard not exactly the best part of town however the festival made sure that everyone

that parked there gated parking lot at least everyone that parked there parking experience to the point that they had hired private security to keep an eye on everything we are literally in the church basement so you go down a couple of flights and stairs from the back into the hall area go into basically the kitchen area is a corridor connecting the stairs to where we were

That's where the volunteers were set up, ticketing, and everything. They had a snack counter set up, everything, and they served in nachos. Which greatly appreciates, you know, I want to see more fringe venues offering food like this and drink. So they had water, not alcohol drinks in a can. probably some beer but I digress but yeah you could get you can snacks if you want to and

I'm grateful for that because of its location I want to be there at least want to get there when there's still light kind of hard to do when you have a show starting to attend in the evening like we did the first show

maybe venue had something to do that maybe we didn't do a good job marketing everything but we could have done better all right I'm happy with what we did wind up with

but yeah we go done better shout out to all the acts that we shared the venue with Chris you've heard his episode by now we shared the venue with him I talked with Melny about

doing the podcast. I've yet to hear back from her, but Melanie, the offer still stands, if you are listening. I'd love to have you and your crew on at some points. We'd probably have to do it over Zoom, and that's perfectly all right. But yeah, overall, I think we had some pretty good shows in there, and I do want to give credit to the Best of Fringe for our venue. that's Wendy and her show which was

it was an interesting nods to feminism and women's rights and had a very obnoxious a male character

I can't do the whistle but a fictional character whenever they bring up a official character like say Catherine Janeway and of course

shout out to Hannah our tech. She did Magnusman job. But we had pretty simple tech as it is. Yeah. We do have to have do a better job with projecting with some of our

guess, as was explained to me after our last show. So and no, we did not make our money back. so but that's besides the point the experience itself was I think it was worth

it's the one time I don't know if we'll do it again next year but I can't say as far as I'm concerned I had a good time doing it and I hope the guests and Heather had good time. That's one I could not have done it. There's help. She got half the guests rounded up. Everything. I was responsible for bringing George and Brian on. They asked to come back on and I definitely applied. You know, once a friend of the podcast, always a friend of the podcast and you're always welcome back. So I'm glad they decided to come back and everything. Now, attendance-wise, yeah, our first nights, oddly enough,

it was probably the best attendant night. That was the 10.30 start. And shout to Matthew Stevens, past IFC president for showing up. You actually hear him in the episode. He has to bet. Megan, are you doing any of that aerial? stuff at the union station is any of that part of the fringe

turns out no but so good question a friend of the podcast Jessica filled was at Bryan's show night two thank you Jessica for

showing up and it was after that show that she gave us the invites to do prepper I wound up record my lines for that and

yeah We'll see what happens there. And Mary Welkins, got to give a shout to Mary. She showed for the last night of Fringe. And well, so that was pretty cool. We did have much of an audience for the other two shows. In fact, we had pretty much no audience for the third show with Mike and Terrence, who showed up late. and he had a good reason he drove through the traffic on 69

that's not to talk to me about what's going on in 69 but that's that's what happened I think Heather did a great job handling the interviews as she did and she's been to just great assets to the podcast and I look forward to working with her even more

as we continue on now we did get a couple of other French acts to agree to do the podcast of course you've already heard their episodes but there's some more that we can

get on to like Brother John institution of KC. Fringe has to come on and we will get him on. I promise you that. So we will get Brother John on. Melanie, I talked about we could get out again.

Just get back to me. And a couple of others. I'm not going name names but a couple others that could come on so um because i was using my dad's car i did not feel comfortable doing any of the after-party stuff and uh uh and that's probably for the better and i'll explain uh i'll explain why in just a little bit now that's the uh performer side of things no I was also

volunteer and went to a few shows myself so as a volunteer I did a couple nights volunteering as a house usher and all

one night was at the KC Oasis so this is an interesting thing it's a church building but it's a church organization I

would uh learn uh for people who aren't necessarily religious which is an interesting concept in enough itself yeah I don't believe in God but let's go to church anyway just within walk a distance of KU Med which is good because parking was hard to find around there very nice a little set up I and I learned from talking to those people that

they do volunteer work at Independence Boulevard Christian Church. So that's really neat. They don't profess to be Christian, but they're acting

Christian, you know, feeding the homeless. Once twice a week, so that's awesome. That's very Christ-like to by the way and

their big consumables schick was barbecue pork so they did a few shows there including Brother John's show was there this year as well as a friend of the podcast Jamie Morrow

she had her her class because she started doing acting classes lately and turns her acting classes into a full-blown production. And it just happens to be ushering, well, her group was performance. That was pretty cool, and all that. And my second night of voluntary was at the Bird Company Theater,

which also held French 411. the heart of fringe operations while the festival is going on. So that was pretty cool. And I did watch a few shows. So for the show watching, I got to go back to the unofficial first weekend because they do have a weekend before the rest of the festival just for film programs. And cry to Tim Harvey. for getting that put together.

Tim, another former IFC president. Yeah, together all the films and put the film program together. I got a chance to see the Blood program by Richie Wolf. Richie, we still need to get you on the podcast. So the program included the aforementioned Blood. This is the little short film that Sam talked. friend of the podcast did as a vampire going to a church

actually expecting the blood of Christ to be actual blood as opposed to wine and I'm in that film as well as a member of the congregation the a little bit I did did not survive the foul draft and that's fine That's fine, but the majority of the rest of that program was skateboarding videos. And that kind of reminded me, oh, yeah, Richie's really into skateboarding. So, well, there you go. And, yeah, that was a fun experience. And then I went to two shows, two of the best selves.

So one of the best selves was Brother John. Got to see his. program and the other was Danielle ate the sandwich so Danielle I met during the fringe previews not at the actual

fringe previews but before that's at the Inglewood Arts Center where we did a little bit for our shows to get them promoted everything very nice lady and all

and very talented she did her show was called the greatest garage sale ever she played a number of different characters and there's a guitar and ukulele and singing

and had a good time with it a very nice very nice lady I find out she's based here in KC and I've also invited her to do the podcast if she wants to that if I still stands

and then the actual fringe after party which I did not stay long to be honest with you if you want to know anything about me and parties is that we do not get along

if you put me in the group odds are I'm the one that's going to be ignored I'll just stand there hearing conversations back and forth or at least trying to but there's just too much noise everything and uh never being asked to participate I like what the fuck am I doing here that time of thing so I didn't stay too long and uh yeah that is uh pretty is the sum of my

Casey Fringe experience for 2024. I will definitely volunteer again. But as far as doing the podcast again, to be determined,

we may take a year off and try again in 26. That said, I I like the idea of doing the podcast in front of a live audience and I would like to do it a little more regularly but I am not posed to

once every year five times to a festival then is the first festival a good venue for recording podcasts in front of a live audience these are questions I'll consider over the coming months

whether or not we choose to get this again 25 we'll see 26 we'll see but it was an absolute thrill

and an honor to actually be able to participate this year. Shout out to Audrey for putting it all together. Shout to Brandon, the volunteer coordinator without whom

now this really works. And shout to everyone that went to KC. Fringe who participated as a volunteer, as a performer. You guys are awesome and I'm glad to be associated with Casey Fringe. So all that said,

let's go and call it and we'll talk soon. This podcast is Uncall for is hosted, produced and edited by Mike Chernefsky. Opening music for our Casey Fringe program is welcome to Fringe, courtesy of sueno.com. Outroom music for our KC fringe program is Fantasia, Fantasia by Kevin McLeod at Incompetig.com, licensed under creative commons by 4.0 license. If you are in the United States or Canada, you can call us at 816-832-5160. Leave your message or question for us, and if we like it, we will play it on the podcast. Please support the podcast and purchase our exclusive on-called for merchandise, t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, stickers, and so much more. Go to www.com.com Thank you so much for podcasts. We will see you next time. Thank you.