Rod Blagojevich has a (completely alternate-reality) new book out, Mackenzie Phillips has a (truly squicky) new book out, the chattering & punditry classes are punditting and chattering away, and the local trivia nights (or at least the ones I’ve gone to this week) have been more raucous, in an entertaining way, than usual. Just — the people who’ve come have been more engaged and vocal. Frankly, I kind of like it. No danger, just a bit more party in the house, which honestly is fine by me.

This week’s podcast gives a shout out to Rhino Records, which may be about to disappear as we know it. They did great work for 30-plus years, and the music world, especially the outsider world of freaks like Wild Man Fischer, Barnes & Barnes & much of the rest of the Doctor Demento and MST3K multiverses, is now without a home, on Westwood Boulevard or anywhere else. (Sure, there’s the Rhino-employee halfway house label Shout! Factory and tons of assorted outsider music blogs like Largehearted Boy, STG, That Unsound, The Delete Bin, Music For Maniacs, and the greatest of them all, the mighty WFMU blog, but it’s still a sad day when a joint like Rhino finally slips beneath the waves, absorbed ashes-to-ashes style into the great corporate sea.

So take good care of the the crazy people in your life. Each one is a wonderful treasure, a little fortune cookie of not-the-same that shines a light sideways through the world. Don’t sleep with them or elect them to office or let them sleep in a tent on your front lawn or anything, but if they’re there, just — acknowledge them. This is their hometown too.

Enjoy the podcast.

• The full archived list of podcasts are here. Subscribe via RSS Feed or iTunes.
• The opening theme is by “22:50″ by Sternklang, and the question music is “Latin Canteen” by The Rurals. The interval music is the selectively famous “Left Bank Two,” by the Noveltones, as heard on any British kids’ art show from the 1960’s and 1970’s, and this week there’s a special appearance by one W.M. Fischer.

Maybe the better analogy would be to Eddie Izzard, who at the beginning of this summer was a tubby middle aged pomme de terre de chaise longue, but after a few short weeks of training has gone on to become some kind of heavily blistered Bikila-esque running man for the ages, banging out the miles like Albert Pujols bangs out homers, or like the woman in that Ricky Martin song bangs out… whatever it is she bangs.

My point is, the podcast is getting better. I’ve expanded it to nine questions from five, and I think it moves along a little faster and better, which works to everyone’s benefit. The interlude, in which I read the best team names of the week, feels like a good idea, and the easter egg at the end is a bonus for anyone who listens all the way to the end.

Thanks for listening, and please, pass news of this podcast on if you like it.

• The full archived list of podcasts are here. Subscribe via RSS Feed or iTunes.
• The opening theme is by “22:50″ by Sternklang, and the question music is “Latin Canteen” by The Rurals. The interval music is the selectively famous “Left Bank Two,” by the Noveltones, as heard on any British kids’ art show from the 1960’s and 1970’s.

As everyone knows, Switzerland was the land time forgot, the birthplace of the blues, the home of the original Harlem Globetrotters and the setting for the Lord Of The Rings. But did you also know there were mountains there?

I know, it blew my mind too.

This week, the TriviaNYC Podcast comes to you from our fallaciously palatial Astoria Studios, mere yards* from where they shot much of the Sopranos series, if that matters. Certainly, it never came up in the podcast itself. The podcast is all about the Swiss, and their penchants for adding knives to other knives, beating up other countries at tennis, and stubbornly refusing to choose sides in wars due to some silly line of logic involving some absurd and unknowable percentage of all the monetary wealth in the world in their hideously oversized and impenetrable vaults. Fine, you nice-watch-bearing chocolate fetishists. Be that way. I’m going to start pulling for Rafael Nadal if you keep this up.

Seriously, though, happy Switzerland Day, Swiss people. If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, you will never be my enemy.

• The full archived list of podcasts are here. Subscribe via RSS Feed or iTunes.
• The opening theme is by “22:50″ by Sternklang (I still like it, guys), and the question music is “Latin Canteen” by The Rurals.
• Sponsorship for this podcast is still available, so if your restaurant or store would like a weekly plug for what right now is about 500 subscribers (between on-site downloads and RSS/iTunes subscribers; that number should grow relatively quickly this summer), contact us.

Thank you for your support, and come on out to one of the live action nights if you’re near New York City.

* where “mere” = “many hundreds of”

Anyway, I may be out of practice, but the best way to get back into practice is to start doing stuff. And with that in mind, here’s Podcast #23.

Okay. A few things:

• The full archived list of podcasts are here. Subscribe via RSS Feed or iTunes.
• The opening theme is by “22:50″ by Sternklang (I still like it, guys), and the question music is “Latin Canteen” by The Rurals.
• Sponsorship for this podcast is still available, so if your restaurant or store would like a weekly plug for what right now is about 500 subscribers (between on-site downloads and RSS/iTunes subscribers; that number should grow relatively quickly this summer), contact us.
• Feedback is also welcome — I kind of need any input you have, actually — for the podcast. With your help, the next one will be better. Let me know what I did, and what you’d like to hear. I want this to be something you want to listen to every Friday morning.

Thank you for your support, and I’ll hopefully see you next week.

Oh, I’m not kidding about me finally getting a Facebook profile. I’d be willing to bet that anyone left who still doesn’t have one isn’t going to get one. I’m the last one on the boat. (Feel free to prove me wrong, but, well.)

Our special guest this week comes to us courtesy of the nice people at VozMe. VozMe: it’s not Stephen Hawking, but it’s as close as we mortals may ever get!

Uh, yeah. Enjoy.

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Music samples:

• Our bodacious opening theme: Sternklang - 22:50 (via dBut records)
• Our beautimous question theme: The Rurals - Latin Canteen (buy @ 3beatdigital)
• and our special guest is reciting her lines impeccably in a field of frolicking goats.

(As a separate plug for our sponsor, may I just say that Jon Blackwell’s Notorious New Jersey is a fine site, if you like reading about the seamy underbelly of New Jersey. Say what you like about the Garden State, they do interesting scumbags very well.)

So there you go. If you like this podcast, please, tell somebody. (If you don’t, please, tell me.) Thank you for your support.

I know, my friend. Welcome to the brotherhood.

In this week’s podcast, I really wanted to include Enrico Caruso as the audio clue (it is his 135th birthday today), but then I found a striking instrumental track by a trumpeter named Eddie Caruso, and I couldn’t reconcile it. Besides, how many opera singers from the earliest era of recorded music do you know? I’ve heard some good ones from back then, but is there another famous one (where “famous” = “you’d get it in a trivia question”)? I can’t think of one, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t another.

Regardless, this is our 21st birthday. Please, take this podcast out and get it hammered tonight. It doesn’t have to be anywhere for the next few days.

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Music samples:

• Our stellar opening theme: Sternklang - 22:50 (via dBut records)
• Our question theme: The Rurals - Latin Canteen (buy @ 3beatdigital)
• and the horn bit in the middle is Eddy Caruso & I Five - Smoky (from the Mo’Plen 2000 Comp (buy it here)

(As a separate plug for our sponsor, may I just say that Jon Blackwell’s Notorious New Jersey is a fine site, if you like reading about the seamy underbelly of New Jersey. Say what you like about the Garden State, they do interesting scumbags very well.)

So there you go. If you like this podcast, please, tell somebody. (If you don’t, please, tell me.) Thank you for your support.

I’m just saying, I’m trying.

Once again, I’m fighting off some kind of sinus thing to get this podcast through to you, which makes my voice deeper, though with one clogged sinus I sound like Pavarotti doing a Bert imitation. I ‘ll be back to my regular mellifluous self for next week’s 21st birthday. Maybe I’ll do next week’s podcast while hammered. Oh yeah, that’d be a good idea.

Enjoy.

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Music samples:

• as always, the opening theme: Sternklang - 22:50 (via dBut records)
• the question theme: The Rurals - Latin Canteen (buy @ 3beatdigital)
• and yes, that’s Kitty Brazelton singing a song called “Fishy Wishy,” from one of my favorite weird albums ever, The Alternative Schubertiade: Homages, Deconstructions and Reinventions (an excellent review is here).

And give a look to Jon Blackwell’s Notorious New Jersey site, with a new updates and background on the best of the worst of New Jersey all the time.

If you like this podcast, please, tell somebody. (If you don’t, please, tell me.) I thank you for your support.

I expected to see a monkey, a talking animal, and a guy getting it in the corleones. The fact that it was Justin Timberlake taking that shot made it all the more sweeter of a Bingo.

Enjoy.

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Music samples:

• as always, the opening theme: Sternklang - 22:50 (via dBut records)
• the question theme: The Rurals - Latin Canteen (buy @ 3beatdigital)
• and Jean-Jacques Perrey and Dana Countryman - Edith Von Achenburg (from The Happy Electropop Music Machine (there’s sound at that link, just so you know).)

And be sure to also check out Jon Blackwell’s Notorious New Jersey site, with a new updates and background on the best of the worst of New Jersey all the time.

Thanks for listening, and if you like this stuff, please, tell somebody. (If you don’t, please, tell me.)

The kitchen at Dempsey’s is apparently open. They’ve hired an actual chef, and paid off the necessary people who needed to be paid off (in an entirely legal and above-the-table way, I have no doubt), and so the huge folder of take-out menus is now a thing of the past. You’ll be getting your fried products and your, um, other fried products from in-house now, and that’ll be a good thing for everyone involved, except for the dishwasher. And your personal trainer.

Oh, and we’ll be formally celebrating our two-year anniversary of doing this whole thing at Dempsey’s on Wednesday, February 13. If you don’t normally come out, that’d be a good week to make an exception. There will be the East-Village Irish pub equivalent of punch and pie.

I didn’t mention the anniversary of the Challenger disaster anniversary in this week’s podcast (not because I hate America, because that’s still a matter of hot debate between the Huckabee and Romney camps, and frankly I’m willing to let them decide for me), but only because I ran out of space for questions. That’s the unspoken theme: Space. There’s just not enough of it. (I need one of the new Doctor Who’s suits. Even the pockets have more room on the inside. Or so I’ve read.)

So enjoy this one fully, because as of this podcast, we’re legal.

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Music samples:

• The opening theme: Sternklang - 22:50 (via dBut records)
• The question theme: The Rurals - Latin Canteen (buy @ 3beatdigital)
• and Cubanismo’s “Jamming In Nijmegen,” from their album Reencarnacion. Check, as they say, it out.

And be sure to also check out Jon Blackwell’s Notorious New Jersey site, with a new updates and background on the best of the worst of New Jersey all the time.

Thanks for listening, and if you like this stuff, please, tell somebody. (If you don’t, please, tell me.)

What am I driving at? I don’t fully know. But this week, it seemed like a good week to finally try an all-music podcast. Monday the 21st was a banner day for musicians being born, so I present five of them for your edification here. Not included, but also celebrating a birthday on the one to the twenty-one: Billy Ocean and Placido Domingo. (You’re welcome.)

If you like this thing, check out the whole shebang every Wednesday. It’s ten audio questions, 41 non-audio questions, and they bring the drinks right to your table! It’s like being on an all-inclusive cruise, with fewer Hawaiian shirts and Gopher screwing up your shuffleboard game on the Promenade Deck.

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Music samples:

• The opening theme: Sternklang - 22:50 (via dBut records)
• The question theme: The Rurals - Latin Canteen (buy @ 3beatdigital)
• and the interval music is Sidney Bechet’s version of “On The Sunny Side Of The Street,” because optimism is free.

Thanks as always for listening, and if you like this stuff, please, tell somebody. (If you don’t, please, tell me.)