I was up late last night, a little TOO late, completing the edits to my first podcast for GiveMeSeltzer.com. I’ve been involved in web design for over ten years now and I have to say I haven’t felt anything like this since I launched that first web site back in May, 1995. I get that thrill in my gut that I am watching something new begin, and I have the privledge to be there at the start.

But I feel something else as well, something I haven’t explored in a long time. In the time before DVRs, before even VCRs, I would take my tape recorder and shove it up against my tv, recording my own shows. I loved that power. Before long I was using that recorder to make my own shows, whether with friends or own my own. Fake talk shows. Fake news shows. Sometimes I would just read an entire comic book, supplying all the voices (which, in retrospect, probably all sounded the same).
Later I would graduate to 8mm animated films, camcorders, digital filming and web design. But speaking into that mic last night, attached to my computer, sent me straight back to the sheer glory I felt when I was in my pre-teens, talking to myself as if I represented the world and then playing it back to hear a voice that only slightly resembled my own.
I don’t have the theme song recorded yet (I am still interviewing musicians willing to do it for little money), so I just threw some samples up with Noemi’s a capella version (that should keep it podsafe, right?). I love the way that waiter from Long Island sounds, as well as my opening with the Lou Reed song. It took me a LONG time to get the technical logistics down, but one I figured how the two software programs (Final Cut Pro and Audacity) would communicate, and I would use my digital recorder for voiceovers until I purchase a mic, I had the whole thing flowing.
I put three pieces together. The first is my Heard On the Street segment; those are just so much fun. I love doing the interviews and just wish I could include more each podcast. The second was the core of the show, the first Bibliography Unplugged: Cast a Giant Seltzer. That was exciting to put together, using film sound clips and two phone interviews. It was rather labor intensive and will need to do simpler things in the future. Finally, I added a Book Update, which felt funny since it was the first update of them all. It could have been stronger, but I felt it worked.
When I was done with it, exhausted at 3:30 in the morning, I didn’t feel so much tired as elated. I had birthed something and I was proud. Now that I have the MP3 I STILL need to figure out how to turn it into a podcast and get it listen and distributed. And plan for shorter podcasts to follow. I can hardly wait.