HEY - BE READIN' THIS HERE MESSAGE, YOU FLUNKY BOWL OF MOUSE VOMIT: Even if you feel that "flunky bowl of mouse vomit" doesn't describe you, you can still benefit from this brief note. Quickly put, this post is about the new format for The Smartest Man in the World - my uberly amazing podcast. But, it's not just mine anymore - I've got cohorts, and the show, as I told a friend today, is going to BLOW YOUR PANTS OUT OF THE WATER.

The post below is about how and why the format changed, but you don't need any of that crap to improve your life with the pilot for the redesigned show (by "pilot", I mean that this is a rough version meant to get the concept across - but it's still good if you ax me). Download the sucker here:

    The Smartest Man in the World - New Format - Episode Zero - Pilot - Beta

Now, on to the post...

Carl doesn't even know about this yet. I wanted everybody to find out at once :)

The Smartest Man in the World has been fun, but really just in the release. The process of putting one of those episodes together isn't as exciting as you might think. It involves me sitting in a hot isolation booth and talking to myself about myself because I'm just reading my own stuff into a mic. It's not much fun.

After Carl and team have cleaned it up, added music, fixed the timing, and so on, they sound great, but it still doesn't change that my involvement is still just me in a booth reading to myself.

The new show is a group effort.

I'm hoping Carl likes the new format - I hope you all do.

When I create stuff, I almost always work alone. The writing here, songwriting, the video things I just started to post, and the rest, is all done when nobody else is around. It's, like, lonely. I love to create, but sometimes I want to work with other people than just me and my ego.

I've tried for years to work on things with my two best friends in the universe, but it's never worked out. We worked on music together, but we all had our very specific ideas about what to do, and those ideas conflicted much more often than they... well, didn't.

I still wanted to make something with those guys, though. So, here it is.

It's The Smartest Man in the World, but in a completely different format from before. I thought it up a few weeks ago, notified the friends that they were going to be involved (they were drafted - not invited), and then worked through this first episode.

To be clear, this is Episode Zero - it's the pilot - the beta - whatever you want to call it, but it's our test. Neither friend had ever done anything like this, so we went down to the studio, I told them what to expect and gave a few pointers on how to go about their roles, and we were off.

That night, I think we recorded a couple hours of material, but most of it was scratch. We'd go through a sequence, listen to the recording, and then talk about what was good and what was crap.

I didn't think we'd be able to do anything with those recordings, but one of the friends - A Man Called Shmallio - spent twelve hours editing the recordings down to under twenty minutes, and the show actually turned out pretty demmed well. Well enough that it works as a demo.

I'm proud of these guys - when I first did something like this, I was petrified. I hardly said anything - I was scared that I'd screw up and that everybody would think I was an idiot. Years later, it's much easier now that I know I can be an idiot, but my friends just arrived at this wonderful phenomenon where anonymous bastards on the net get their kicks by poking holes in self-esteem wherever they find it. Should be interesting.

The goal of this first episode is to find out what you people think. As a first and totally unrehearsed/unprepared effort, I think it's great. Having worked on it, though, and having worked with Shmallio on further editing, we're too close to the project to have any perspective on it. We know the ins and outs of the thing, so the humor makes perfect sense to us. We need somebody else's perspective.

Here's how you get you some new Smartest Man stuff:

    The Smartest Man in the World - New Format - Episode Zero - Pilot - Beta

There's a little "adult humor" in this, as well as one quick use of the F word. We don't get into "adult humor" for the sake of shock, but because it's where the content went. Anyway, as far as shock goes, there are six year old kids doing things on YouTube that make our show look like Mary Poppins.

We don't have the show locked down at all yet, but we're going to get there, and when we hit our stride, I honestly think this thing's going to be huge. Felix and Shmallio, although they really didn't know what they were doing, were fantastic. As we move along, I expect to see them play to their strengths as they figure out what works.

When critiquing, I expect you'll all beat me down as much as you think necessary (or compliment me - either way), but I'd ask you cut the other two a little slack, even though they don't need it at all. I'm the weakest element in the mix. The only reason I'm there is that I thought the thing up, and this is my web site, and if they don't like it then I'm going to take my toys and go home.

If you like it, then please, oh, PLEASE tell your friends. In the past, I didn't do a lot of utterly shameless self promotion, but I want to take every creative endeavor I'm involved with to the highest level possible now that I'm unemployed. I don't know what "the highest level possible" means, but I'm positive it involves you telling your friends.

Lastly, thanks to Yuvi for providing the foundation upon which the broader idea of this episode was based on. There's going to be a lot of opportunity for involvement from friends, readers, listeners, random people, criminals, and whoever else would like to take part. Each episode is based around a topic, and this week it was Yuvi's.

Yep.

Let us know what you think, and, regardless of what you think, tell your friends that it's awesome. If you can get close enough, then sneak this episode's MP3 into their startup folder.

Solid.