Well, apart from not being able to figure out when we were "on the air," my first webcast interview didn't go too wrong. This was because I was wise enough to pick as my first guest, my pal Paul Harris, who has 40 years of experience in radio — which this almost is — so he's seen things go a lot wronger than anything I could do in front of about eighty people. Eighty people you can't see or hear is a comfortable audience size when you don't know what the hell you're doing.
More of you can watch it when it's posted later today to YouTube and I'll embed it here. We're going to have a lot of video embeds on the blog today.
The first time I was asked to speak in front of human beings — as most of them appeared to be — at the first Comic-Con in San Diego, I froze up. Even though someone had told me what to say, I suddenly didn't know what to say. Fortunately, someone else thought he was supposed to do what I was supposed to do and that person got up and did what, at that very moment, I didn't know how to do. (If that sounds convoluted, I told the story in slightly greater detail here.)
I was asked to do nothing on the program at the second Comic-Con in San Diego and then at the third, I was asked to moderate my first panel. I might have been scared but I'd seen the room and it only held about fifty people. Even if we'd filled it, which we didn't, you know that even if you make a total fool of yourself, not many people will see it. So I did make a total fool of myself, not many people saw it and in years after, I was asked to speak in increasingly larger rooms. So you work your way up.
Tonight, I expect a larger turnout as I ruthlessly interrogate my partner (and friend for 50+ years), Sergio Aragonés. We start at 7 PM my time, which is Pacific Time. Last night went almost exactly 90 minutes. I have no idea how long tonight's will go. I'm going to try and embed it live here but if it doesn't work — or if you want to type in questions or comments — go over to my YouTube page at the proper time. And you can always reach it via the NFM TV icon in the right-hand column here.
Sergio is tonight. Tomorrow night, I'll be talking with Shelly Goldstein, who has done amazing things as a comedy writer in this town and amazing things as a singer-performer in Los Angeles, Chicago, London and other cities that are now not allowing performers on stage. That is not because of her since she is very good at it.
Friday night, I'll be talking with Bill Kirchenbauer, a comic I've known since before he got on The Tonight Show and the guy behind the desk (someone named Johnny Carson) thought he was hilarious. I'll be asking Bill about how that moment changed his life…and believe me, it changed his life. Soon, Bill was everywhere, including two hit sitcoms. And yes, I'll be asking him about portraying lounge singer Tony Roletti on Fernwood Tonight — the first of many, many comics to "do" lounge singer characters.
Then Saturday, we have the Cartoon Voices Panel at 1 PM and after that, I'm going to give this whole webcasting thing a good think. I hope those of you who are tuning in to these webcasts are enjoying yourselves as I try to learn my new toy and figure out what I want to do with it in the future. If you figure it out before I do, lemme know.