Podcasting Is So Yesterday. RIP JumpingOffRoofs Podcast

It looks like I am the progenitor of another failed project as I am officially call it quits on the JumpingOffRoofs podcast. The last podcast I was part of “The Failed Experiment” ended in an equally unspectacular fashion as I completely botched the code on the site and didn’t know how to make it all better, but it was on the way out creatively anyway. The Failed Experiment was conceived to be a fun a podcast where a few would get together, crack jokes and share funny stories with friends and JumpingOffRoofs was supposed to be a communal gathering with a rotating cast where in the best of scenarios I wouldn’t have to be present on every episode but that dream never came to fruition. So what happened? Well Like that last “P” on OPP, it not quite the simple.

Topics, Topics, Topics
If you were an avid listener to the podcast…which at this point I am positive I am screaming into a vacuum, then its is pretty easy to see the better episodes we had were when everyone got involved in the conversation but that was few and far between as finding an actual topic that everyone wanted to talk about was pretty much impossible. Having no main topic or drive of the podcast I feel really hurt the show and I knew it from the start but it was hard enough getting four people in a room to record on a regular basis (an effort that I failed at hard, we’ll get to that). I wanted to have a focus but there really wasn’t one I could take on that was interesting to the assembled cast of characters, well one that didn’t come down to just talking about race for an hour and a half. It starts out funny but gets weird and offensive quick, trust me. I thought about what amounted to a book of the week but for movies, like we all watch a movies and then talk about it on a podcast or do commentaries but that’s a lot of time and I’m just talking about agreeing on a movie. I thought about gaming but I’m a shitty gamer and since I’d be the creative force I didn’t want to in charge of something I don’t really care about. A show about web video and internet memes, well that requires a lot of research and that’s a lot of work. I’m not opposed to work but I knew I was the one who was going to be doing all of it plus editing and posting the podcast and if there was any art that needed to be made it was all up to me. I guess the lack of focus is my fault and I’ll eat that one.

2 Is Not The Magic Number
I will admit I am a terrible host and should have engaged people more but one of the issues I ran into was a room full of well lush individuals are hard to control so I pretty much gave up on the idea of steering the ship when the full cast was assembled. However the episodes that I came to hate are the ones that were the ones with just me and my roommate. The reason for the hate you ask? Well you don’t actually ask because I talking to nobody and this is more of a catharsis than anything but the reason I didn’t really like doing them is because most of the time it was just me talking and Dennis (that the name of my roommate, loyal listeners would know that but they are fictional characters) tossing in a “yeah, really” every so often so I don’t sound like a mad man talking to myself even if it felt like that most of the time. I don’t blame him, It was basically my idea and I roped him into it because he lives here. The main issue with Dennis was that he basically cut himself off from the world of current events and the reason why I talked a lot was because I had to tell him the entire store for him to not really engage with it give the verbal equivalent of a shrug and then I’d talk dome so more to fill the time. It was not fun. The best arrangement was the time we had three chairs full. John was a good third chair because he’s almost as narcissistic as I am and he offset Dennis’ silent nature. Fun fact: Dennis’ quiet nature is why people like him more than they like me – cause I’ll just frickin’ say it. Three just works the best because it makes it so two conversations can’t happen on mic at the same time, a problem I ran into every damn time.

When Yes Means No (Participation Rape)
As I basically said earlier this and the other failed podcast were devised to try and capture comedy gold and it turns out that I’m not the Gorden’s Fisherman of Podcast Comedy…we all know that crown goes to the comedy button. When I started this project I wanted to put a new episode up every week but ass the weeks and months went by and I struggled to come up with topics and I noticed that my constant cohost was spending more and more time glued to the screen of his laptop rather than participating in the conversation I released that the main reason why this is even happening is because I am forcing it and if I stopped than no one will really ask about it or want to do one. I was right since the last podcast to be posted was in late December and not one person has asked about it or wanted to fire up the equipment and hash it on mic. This must be what it’s like to guilt trip a girl into having sex with you.

So basically nobody is really into it anymore and I can’t be bothered. A podcast is a lot of work and I don’t really want to do it all and put out a bad product anymore so I am officially pulling the plug. It was fun for a time and I wont say I will never put out another podcast or what ever my blog becomes, maybe I’ll start to write more, but for now the JumpingOffRoofs Podcast is dead.