Tv Talk Machine

We reach out and touch people in this podcast -- and they like it. Well, OK, we only called out of the podcave to one person, but you never know when your phone will ring! All across the globe, but strangely enough not Central America or China or India (what is wrong with you people -- get on the horn!) we field television questions and, in a dramatic change, actually answer them. Another big-time bloated podcast, but hey, you'll miss us when we go on vacation! Soak up the bloat! Besides, someone had a dream about the podcast! Joe Garofoli, aka Question Boy, reads the letter with incredible, breathy suspense, but unfortunately it doesn't end with shorty robes tossed about, but with Benny/Manny doing some repair work. That totally bummed our voyage. But hey, someone called from the Yukon. Tyler! Yes! The Arctic Far North! Of course, we had to have Benny look that up because we didn't even know where Edinburgh was last week. Hello Scotland! (Plus, we get points for renaming Halifax as "Hellafax" in the last

After Question Boy, Joe Garofoli, ruined everything last week by spending quality time with his family, we are finally back with a TVTM podcast that more than makes up for what you missed last week -- in length. We tried to improve the quality as well, then got interrupted and went to lunch. That might have messed things up. And it will surely ruin Part 2, coming Thursday, which will also be bloated, rambling, pointless and shameful.

In this podcast, we make a vow: No more lies! Total transparency! "We don't know what we're doing...It's Benny's fault." We bust open the lie behind this two-part podcast fraud. Which is that we record one super-bloated podcast and then we hack it into bits. And Benny puts it back together, re-animator style. So it's not two. It's one. Filled with lies. And, as you'd expect, lameness. Chronicle media (and political) writer Joe Garofoli continues his butchery of British accents. In fact, the sun never sets on his awfulness. But hey, that doesn't stop either one of us from bringing the stupid. In fact, Joe and I do hockey announcer voices. It went pretty well. We may bring them back. We sing now with an alarming lack of embarrassment. This episode: "Ebony and Ivory" and "Don't Go Back to (Rockridge)" -- our modification of an R.E.M. song to reflect our neighborhood. Possibly some Clash. But there's always some Clash. We're like poster children for Uncut magazine. By the way, this podcast is mostly calls. We w

Quick out of the gate with few stumbles, a new (okay, partially "borrowed" theme song from a listener), a call for more such creativity (you want to make us a theme song? -- go for it), more Bill Walton (in fact, we break new ground with him), lots of Angry Regis, some talk about sports announcing, swear words and tons and tons of questions answered! No, really. We do. In fact, we are "efficient." There's also some singing. Some hating. Some Canadian stuff. And we answer a few Ask Mick LaSalle questions as well. See? Full service. Also: "Vomiting is cool." As to our Canadian, British and international "friends," we apologize for saying that we have a toll-free international hotline when, in fact, it's not free. It's only free for Americans. However, since the dollar is taking a beating, it's still worth the money to call us, especially if you have a great accent of any kind.

Sorrys for all my friends! Sorrys on sale! Sorry for the sorrys. But of course, we'll take it all back later. Sorrys are for sissies!

We are known for being all over the map, and even all over the world, but on this podcast we ponder why we're popular in Britain when they have to pay for the call. We discuss the fact that our 888-prefix hotline actually blocks Canadians from calling. (Maybe they don't want to pay for the call?) Question Boy (Chronicle media writer Joe Garofoli) wants people in China to break out to freedom and give us a call. I opt for South America, which is apparently ignoring us. In other news, we talk about why the TV Critic shouldn't be on TV. We bust out the multimedia shorty robes ("that's a cable, right?"). Question Boy does the Worst...British...Accent...Ever. Which means we'll probably lose all of our British listeners. We end up apologizing for this (and soooooo many other things -- which will come in Vol. 2). I denounce nature. Joe does Andy Rooney. But more important: Angry Regis. A lot of our e-mails were long. Really long. And so, unappreciative as we are, we ask for more calls instead. Oh, and we act out a

We take a ton of calls in this, our second of two podcasts this week, including a call from London where a guy named Will tells us, definitively, that our international toll-free number is not, in fact, free. In turn, we offer Will a couple of pints and a ticket to the Giants if he ever comes to visit. On the other hand, paying to call the TVTM hasn't stopped our international domination from growing ever larger (this week: Paris, London, South Korea, Calgary!). In fact, Will even likes our Bill Walton impressions. So there. (Of course, Will also asked a question about "Deadwood" and brought up, ahem, that swear word they used a lot on the show, so I had to tell a story about that -- with lots of bleeps.) Benny never lets us get away with anything. Manny, you (beep!)-sucker! We also act out what a documentary on our podcast might sound like. We revisit the idea of Pixie Brawls. A plea goes out for women with British accents to call in (though it might be cheaper if they live in this country now, since the ho

We've got a two-part TV Talk Machine podcast this week and I would have had the first part up earlier, but as it turned out the Diamondbacks were in town having a day-game tilt with my beloved G-Men and, well, you can probably guess what happened. We decided to get right into this one (or, "right into this one" in theory, because we're incapable of actually moving forward in a brisk, informative manner) because a listener in France asked us to read his e-mail in the first five minutes and we do pretty much whatever our international callers ask (especially after we learned later that our international toll free number isn't actually free for international callers). Also, the TVTM takes a few minutes to honor Tom Snyder (one of our rare turns of seriousness), and we plow through a ton of letters, try out some slogans ("the podcast of doom"), find a theremin sound, discuss both CBS comedies and MILFs, which doesn't seem plausible; we also sing the praises of "Flight of the Conchords" and some of "Business Tim

Joe Garofoli and I were trying to lock down this TV Talk Machine podcast as quickly as possible so that we could walk down and watch the Giants home opener (we didn't know at the time that the G-Men would get pounded, though we did have our suspicions). Opening Day still means something to us because we're proud American baseball fans. So, doing only one podcast this week, we were anxious to make it quick and informative. We did neither. But hey, we were wearing the Bunting Robes, we took a few hacks at e-mail and phone calls (and we were about as successful as the Giants against Greg Maddux); we got bashed for our slackerness from, ahem, Jeff in the NoMi area (North Mission); we also got an e-mail from someone representing the 919 area code (why we love area codes and the respect they engender from the people who live there can't really be explained); and then, after a sagging middle section, we got some great calls, including one mystery caller who completely beat down one of our regular callers. This is wh

A fast-paced, answer-filled TVTM. No two-parter this time. Also: no quality. Well, that's not exactly true. We did good work here. Me, Question Boy (Chronicle media writer Joe Garofoli) and Benny Evangelista. I mean, not as good as listening to Eddie Izzard. But we answered a lot of mail, and took a lot of calls. There was a theme running through it (anger) and we only swore five or six times and Bill Walton only popped up like eight or nine times. All told -- very reserved, possibly even informative.

Eddie Izzard flew into San Francisco last week and came to the Chronicle (and our sad little podcasting "cave") to tout his superb FX series, "The Riches". But as expected, we went on all kinds of tangents. Izzard is brilliant at letting his imagination take flight in often spectacularly funny ways but also in being serious and analytical about any number of topics. Unfortunately, much of the delay in getting this podcast assembled is that we had some massive technical glitches that neither one of us were aware of. We spent about an hour and twenty minutes talking about all kinds of things -- and I can only wish now that we had video of it, because Izzard's physical movements and facial expressions added immeasurably to the discussion. All told, we lost about half of the podcast to technical issues that couldn't be overcome. That we have 45 minutes to have fun with is a testament to Benny Evangelista sitting in a room all day trying to save it (as opposed to his normal job of trying to forget or erase what w

So we had a lot of fun talking about the BBC discovering -- probably to its horror -- our little show that can't (or won't), your TVTM. But now we get back to actual questions. Which means Question Boy (Joe Garofoli) stumbles all over his reading of the questions and I provide almost no information. For his part, Benny is asleep. Just a reminder to newbies who stumble upon us and don't get it: If you're looking for something coherent, edited and polished, you'll have to go elsewhere. Cheers to all.

It's true. BBC Radio 5, or Five Live, as they like to call it across the pond, interviewed me about what can only be described as the awesome power of -- third person alert -- Tim Goodman's TV Talk Machine podcast. Of course, I played along and didn't tell them that our podcast was incredibly lame and that our goal at TVTM is to be as unprepared as possible and do bad impressions. Colin Murray, a BBC radio guy who has his own sports podcast called "Fighting Talk" did the interview and I touted our Question Boy, Chronicle media writer Joe Garofoli, as a contributor to the TVTM greatness. Then we played a snippet of Colin's podcast and realized that he's really good and we really suck. Then we went into a tailspin of self-loathing. Once the BBC posts its story -- unless of course it cuts us out, which we're totally expecting -- we'll link to it. In the meantime, here's what you can find in our podcast after we stop weeping and whining about how great "Fighting Talk" is and how badly we suck: 1. Joe does Pearl

Not that improving is our goal, mind you. We are much more Zen about it than that. Or lazy. Pick your religion. And this one has been up on the SFGate.com front for, what, two days? Anyway, it's our gift to the world, set sail on the breeze of indifference.

We're making Benny, who once again is "manning the knobs" here, truly suffer for implementing the split podcast. You may remember this was to cut down on The Podfather's workload -- wait, "work" load -- and edit our unwieldy (but oh so user-friendly if not actually educational) podcast from 45 minutes into two 'casts of roughly 22 minutes. Yeah, that was the idea. A kind of Tuesday/Thursday double-dip. Well, we only do what we're told, until we don't, so this week we are offering up two 35 minute podcasts. A couple more weeks of this and Benny, now as overworked as one of Ken Burns editors, will give in from exhaustion. Lots of e-mails, lots of calls this week. To join the "fun," you can call our toll-free international hotline, and risk not having your questions answered, or mocked. On the other hand, you never know when the world's angriest Regis impression will pop up (thanks in advance to Joe Garofoli, our Question Boy), or even Daniel Plainview. Enjoy.

Lots of questions, some answers, tons of yelling and swearing. Both knowledge and entertainment knock on the door -- actually the pod cave wall -- but we don't answer it. And yes, two parts. It's out of our control, but in all honesty, these two flowed a lot better than last week. Also, in all honesty -- it probably sounds too professional. We'll dumb it up more next week.

Man love alert: Colin Farrell, George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Question Boy. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Oh, we also answer questions. Joe Garofoli (Question Boy and Chronicle media critic) and I come back strong after two really terrible podcasts last week. We apologize yet again for those, but we are supremely strong this week. Well, alright, we did unveil Joe's impersonation of a very angry Regis. And we did make fun of some of our most loyal e-mailers and callers. Mostly we talked about the Oscars. And man-crushes. Grrrrr. We got a great "big picture" question about switching entire premises and casts for different series. (Insert bong hits here.) And I thought it might be nice to see the cast of "The Wire" appear on "Deadwood." And despite all the negative feedback for the so-called "split" podcast, we were forced to do it again, but this time it wasn't so ramshackle and low-rent. In fact, we introduced a new special effect. And -- pay attention, this is important -- I only had to be b

In addition to totally screwing up the narrative beauty of our podcasts, Benny fesses up that he forgot a call from a guy in London. London! And the call came in a month ago. You know what that means? One of our seven listeners has probably given up on us. Thanks Benny. By the way, if Charley from "Maisy" can call in (we think Tallulah did the dialing), then there's no reason you can't as well. Give us a jingle.

We've decided -- well, wait, "decided" hints at actual preparation -- that the podcast should be cut in two and run on consecutive days each week. At least that was the plan for about five minutes, and then the plan was to run Part 1 on Tuesday and Part 2 on Thursday, because Benny said we should "keep them wanting more." To which Joe Garofoli, admirably playing Question Boy, and I both said, "They don't want any of it, much less more." So that was the plan. We taped on Tuesday because of the Monday President's Day holiday. But then Part 1 got put up on the shiny new SFGate.com website, which was a nice placement, but probably gave too wide of an audience a peek at our rampant stupidity and lame call-back jokes (not to mention the impressions). Then, uh, we sort of forgot to post Part 2. Until today -- Friday. See? Planning just isn't our thing. But here they are, Part 1 and Part 2. Both awful. And Benny, who is actually supposed to know something about producing, has promised next week not to wave frantical

Just to make things clear, I wasn't aware that Manny was going to "man the knobs" so quickly and, yes, the podcast starts out talking about burping. Our grand intro -- ruined. But Question Boy (Chronicle media writer Joe Garofoli) plays Ed McMahon. And we do a bunch of stupid voices -- undaunted by last week's miserable impersonations. Including: My really bad version of Charley from "Maisy." I promise to go back to "Maisy" and get it right for next week. We also talk kids shows (Dora: loud; non-animated kids: precocious). Some anger. Groundhog Day fashion statement? Sensing the advent of spring, one of us trots out a leaner bod and a tighter robe. Need more? Bong hits. New neighborhood slang ("the Moan"). A salute to "Mister Rogers." Women who swear: "Hot." The phrase "It's almost like we planned this." Plus: We did plan one thing. And it went sideways. Also: Bleeps, and lots o' them. Lastly: The return of "hind quarters/hind parts."