The Best Show On WFMU Greatest Hits podcast has arrived.

Everyone should go listen, because Scharpling and Wurster are among the top things you can listen to.

Philly Boy Roy is Newbridge’s Mayor

Big Words, Tough Talk

I heard about this from two places in quick succession – Podthoughts at MaximumFun.org and on Battleship Pretension, so I checked it out and enjoyed greatly.

It’s a parody podcast of US local talk radio. Now there’s been plenty of parodies of such things before, but what sets this apart and worth following is that between the level of production and the fact the central characters of Mike Hudson and Craig Gaines never become over the top, it maintains a level of believability. It’s more along the lines of a “I’m Alan Partridge” than the surreal and violent flights of fancy that Scharpling and Wurster’s tales of Newbridge involve.

I recommend starting from episode 1 as you’ll get a better feel of how the world of Great Haven and its environs grows.

http://www.hudsonandgaines.com/

I need some fancy pants blogroll widget that allows you to just show the 10 most recently updated blogs on it. Or a new theme. In the meantime I’ve been reading.

似顔絵ロック 〜 Portrait in Rock – You don’t need to be able to read Japanese to appreicate yu-shio the Rock’n'Roll Illustrator’s portraits of classic rock stars

The Wolverine Daily – Gideon Boomer draws a new Wolverine everyday.

The Rossitano Report – A record of every hat worn by Judah Frielander’s 30 Rock character.

The Fury of Linus – Newbridge’s top blogger.

Rick Veitch’s sketch blog

Photo Basement – Photo’s scoured from the web, the best bits are things like this.

Paul Scheer.com – Human Giant’s Paul Scheer

Pappy’s Golden Age Comics Blogzine – Is there any scanblog better than this?

Paleo-Future – Yesterday’s Future, Today

Nerd Armada – Chowder creator CH Greenblatt’s blog

Hey Oscar Wilde! It’s clobberin’ time!!! – Artists draw literary figures.

David Wain’s Blog – Stella/The State/The Ten/Wet Hot American Summer/Wainy Days chap David Wain’s blog

Cartoons, Model Sheets, & Stuff – No prizes for guessing what this is about.

Bateszi Anime Blog – One of the few anime blogs I read.

Here’s the podcasts I currently subscribe to, along with some sort of comment as to their appeal to me.

Anime World Order - Despite the slightly annoying delivery the hosts can tend to have – everything tends to be pronounced with an upward lilt towards the end of a sentence, making everything sound like a rhetorical question – this is an excellent anime podcast, albeit a lot more infrequent than it used to be.

AST Radio – talking of infrequent, Matt Bellknap’s A Special Thing podcast hasn’t released anything since July, but there’s plenty of great interviews and comedy perfomances to be found in the back catalogue. Especially recommend the Doug Benson Interruption episodes and any Paul F Tompkins episodes.

Comic Geek Speak Podcast - Heavily superhero bias, sure, but they get a lot of good interviews, put out a lot of material in a week and now have a impressively varied voice. The most annoying thing is the tendency a couple of the hosts have to reduce explanations they are putting forward to “blah, blah, blah”.

Dave And Joel’s Fast Karate For The Gentleman – Probably my favourite anime podcast that I’ve heard. And the only videogame one I listen to. It feels like eavesdropping on a genuine conversation, even if I disagree with the review, I tend to have a good time listening to it anyway.

Fighting Talk – Colin Murray used to annoy the hell out of me when he was doing the afternoon slot on Radio 1, but his work on this Radio 5 comedy sports panel show I really like.

Friday Night Comedy From BBC Radio 4 – It’s the News Quiz at the moment, The Now Show is also offered when that’s airing. Not sure if anything else will get added – do they still put that Armando Ianucci thing on Fridays?

Jordan, Jesse Go! - The idiot cousin of Jesse Thorn’s The Sound of Young America. The show works best with a guest, as Thorn and co-host Jordan Morris can be a bit annoying on their own.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews - Grumpy fifties throwback Kermode’s film reviews as excised from Mayo’s Radio 5 show. The feed tends to include film related interviews from the show as well as some podcast exclusive material from time to time.

Never Not Funny – Jimmy Pardo’s (and Matt Belknap’s) conversation-based comedy podcast is easily my favourite podcast around. It’s moving to a pay format soon (20 dollars for 26 episodes) and I’m more than willing to pay.

The Sound of Young America – Jesse Thorn’s PRI interview show in podcast form. Often has extended versions of the broadcast interviews.

Quiet! Panelologists at Work – By all rights I should find this comics podcast annoying, but it’s really well produced and has a “Smith & Jones’ head to head”-esque idiot charm.

retroCRUSH - Just coming back to this after a long time forgetting about it. Robert Berry of retroCRUSH talking about pop culture detritus is what it is.

WFMU’s Seven Second Delay – Monk creator Andy Breckman and WFMU station manager Ken attempt to perform various radio stunts within one hour. Often collapses into an enjoyable trainwreck.

WFMU’s The Best Show On WFMU – Monk writer Tom Scharpling takes phone calls, occasionally has guests and invariably receives at least one death threat. The calls Jon Wurster makes in character are perhaps my favourite thing right now.

Wrestlecrap Radio – RD Reynolds and Blade Braxton fail weekly to discuss the week’s wrestling news. The greatest thing about the show is how recurring jokes expand and take on a life of their own, the Trolla Corporation being perhaps their cleverest conceit.

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Anything else I should be listening to?

Lenin Of The Rovers was a Radio 4 sitcom from 1988 and 1989. It starred Alexei Sayle as Ricky Lenin, a footballing descendant of the more famous Lenin, who turns Felchester Rovers into Britain’s only communist football team.

The other key characters are Stevie Stalin, Terry Trotsky, Colonel Brace-Cartwright and commentator Frank Lee Brian. The latter role was just as key to the show as Alexei Sayles, as it was played by iconic football commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme.

The series was a dual parody, of football comics like Roy of the Rovers, and of the commercialization of football, which had begun to pick up steam at the time. The first series seems a little leaden now, and Keith Allen’s Terry Trotsky is a one note Liverpudlian stereotype. The second, with Phil Cornwell in the role, is a much livelier affair, helped in part by guest appearances by John Sessions and Jim Broadbent. This was born out by the audio cassette release the show was given, with only series 2 seeing the light of day on BBC Audio. Which was a much loved Christmas present when I got it in 1992, and subsequently played to death.

With the creation of BBC7 the series has been repeated on occasion, and there have been torrents appearing here and there. There’s a user on Demonoid (down atm) who has seemingly created a vast archive of BBC comedy shows and I picked up a fresh copy of the series from there a few months back. I was surprised to see that recordings were taken from the original broadcasts, complete with the continuity announcer informing the listener that the first two episodes are the final performances of the late Ballard Barkley (the Colonel in Fawlty Towers) as Colonel Brace-Cartwright.