Hello and welcome to the Smile Syndicate Music Hour. Get ready for some Funtime music and Funtime comedy. By the time we’re done with you, you won’t believe a single one of your senses.
Let’s go, Jason!
HELLO
Thanks for listening. If you’re a new to the show, welcome. Look around the audience, look like a bunch of oddballs and misfits, but trust me, they’re all good as gold.
If you’re a returning listener, thanks for your vote of confidence. Your time is precious and Miss Elizabeth wouldn’t dream of wasting it. For me, though, I usually take a little more liberty when it comes to spending your time.
We’re going to have fun – play Smile Syndicate songs, lean back on the purple velvet couch from Roman times, indulge our appetite for Funtime Entertainment. And grapes.
The last episode of summer
We’re going to have a great fall together. Spin on a merry-go-round, frolic in the leaves, we’re gonna be building snowmen together before you know it.
60th episode – the Joyful Treadmill continues. To celebrate: get 60 people you know to listen to the show. Follow up with them to make sure they do. If you can present proof and we see sudden subscriber spikes in multiples of 60s, we’ll have some kind of prize. But really, telling people helps a lot.
Let’s take a look at the Smile Syndicate Music Chart.
Most competitive, violence-obsessed, over-the-top, blood-soaked music chart in the biz. Competitors rise from the primordial ooze, perfect specimens of evolution gone mad. Compassion and kindness bred out of them, the only thing they understand is pummeling, bashing and smushing. These songs fall upon each other in a frenzy of flailing limbs, hurled spears, and howled shrieks. We in the crowd obsessively munch our popcorn, unable to take our eyes of the spectacle. Who will be the champion? Who will be added to the rolls of the honoured dead? Who will have a rough week but will be back the next, stronger and crazier than ever? This week, we have an answer – coming in at number 3 with a bullet, this is the Smile Syndicate with ZIP IT. Hit it, kids!
THE SMILE SYNDICATE CHART – Zip It
LAST WEEK’S SHOW –
Did the Death Metal Update – people are loving that.
Jerry update – more than one person wrote in suggesting that for the upcoming match I adopt a luchiador style of wrestling. If I’m up in the sky, they can’t touch me. Thanks to Michael and Jarred for the suggestions. Mailbag@thesmilesyndicate.com if you have any feedback or suggestions.
SHOW RUNDOWN
Jukebox, Marquee, Mailbag, Supernatural Mysteries
There’s always stuff going on here in Smileton, and not all of it happens in our normal workaday world. There are dark corners, supernatural spots and twisted paths on which baffling, impossible mysteries spread like a fog to confuse our senses and warp our brains. We’ve gotta to get these mysteries solved. And who better to solve them than
MISS ELIZABETH, INVESTIGATOR OF SUPERNATURAL MYSTERIES
In past episodes, I told you about how some supernatural force was turning people here in Smileton into brass statues in the Smileton Mall’s food court. I assembled a crack mystery solving team and we’ve really been getting after this. We’ve gathered many clues, documented them on beautifully printed 3×5 and 4×6 cards, and maybe most importantly, we’ve really come together as a team.
You wouldn’t believe how smoothly our daily team meetings run. Connie, Tiffany and I really just march straight through the agenda. (What about Hunter and Duncan? They’ve told us they’re most comfortable with flunky or sidekick roles.) Did we check out the three now potential new office yesterday? Check. Did we finalize plans for our team bar-be-que in the fall? Check? Did we look into how to take that printer to small claims court for screwing up our business cards and not making things right? Better believe we did!
Last time I gave you an update, I told you about how we interrogated that shifty Jasper Joseph about the brass statue mystery. He didn’t confess, but I’m pretty sure he’s involved somehow. And we have no shortage of suspects, because we caught someone spying on us but he ran away before we could apprehend him.
This past week, we’ve really moved things forward. Word about the team has been getting around town and we decided we really need to do something big to raise awareness. “There’s a supernatural mystery solving team in town now and you shouldn’t have to put up with a supernatural mystery complicating your life. ” So we decided to launch an ad campaign.
We’re going to start with a huge banner that will be hung up downtown. Getting a design the three of us were happy with took a few days. We went through lots of prototypes but finally, we had consensus and we got the banner printed up – at a different printer, not the one we’re suing.
Our banner has a big picture of Bird with a speech bubble next to him saying “Consider it solved! Bwawk!
He’s got a monocle and pipe. He’s a feathered Sherlock Holmes!
New store opened in the mall across from Connie’s Kettle – a supplement store. The guy who runs it is a big guy who yells all the time. Connie’s not happy about this since she’s trying to have a relaxing mood in her tea place. He’s always yelling at the customers, punching holes in the drywall, running around telling everyone he can bench anything. He should get some tea from Connie’s Kettle and settle down.
So anyways, we put the banner up and right when we got back to the Kettle, the phone’s ringing. We got a new line put in so this is our dedicated Supernatural Mystery Team Hotline. Connie answered and guess what – it was someone with a mystery that needed solving! He was at the record show and told us we had to come down there right away. We hopped in the Mystery Mobile and got there as fast as we could. We left the two guys back at the Kettle playing xbox.
The show was being held in the Smileton Convention Centre. There were vendors everywhere, great live music courtesy six different Jimi Hendrix impersonators. They were scatted around the hall and all playing at the same time. When they played different songs, it got pretty noisy.
We finally found the guy’s booth. He had dozens of bins of records. Lots of people were going through them. He was sitting at the back in front of a typewriter. He saw us and waved us back. We walk back to where he’s sitting and he starts type. Turns out, he won’t talk. He just types what we want to say. And he’s pretty bad at it. We ask a question, then we sit there as he hunts and pecks on the keyboard. I think his name is Hew Hewson – it took him a while to type it and he kept going back over it when he made a mistake. He really seemed to be into puzzles – he had crosswords and word puzzles scattered all over the place. All done with the typewriter.
But the interesting thing is, he knows about the statue mystery. He’s been working on it, too. He very slowly typed to us that he’s actually scared. He typed stuff like “Stop looking for answers. They will only lead to further questions.” Oh, the best one was – “If you value your sanity, leave this alone. I’ve been investigating for 2 weeks and I’m losing my mind.” Hah – 2 weeks. We assured him we’re veterans when it comes to solving this case.
Apart from telling us to stop looking for the brass statue culprit – which made us quite suspicious, quite frankly – he did have a mystery to solve at the record show. As he was typing a description of what had happened, it was so cute – Bird sat on his shoulder and it looked like he was reading what Hew Hewson was typing. Bird even squawked “He did it. He victimized himself for the insurance money.” Hew shooed Bird away and finished typing out his problem.
Some unknown fiend had got ketchup all over a valuable Herbie Hancock album. The perp actually took the album cover out of its clear protective sleeve and left ketchup fingerprints all over it, plus the LP itself had a good gob of relish on it. Looks like someone put condiments on their burger using the record as a placemat.
The three of us agreed to split up. Connie would take Hall 1, Tiffany’s got Hall 3 and I’m staying herei n Hall 2 to have a look around. Bird took off and would be our eye in the sky. 3 scouts plus aerial recon? Ketchup Man is going to be doing the perp walk pretty quick, I think!
It was hard to know what I was looking for. Everywhere I looked I just saw a bunch of guys proudly showing each other that they just bought 5 copies of the same album. But there had to be something special about this perp. Some hint that would show me which of these guys was especially careless or ill-intended with condiments.
All of a sudden, I hear squawking. I look up and I see Bird circling and dive bombing. He’s saying “it’s here! It’s here!” I know he must have found something. I ran over to where Bird was. He was swooping down over the snack area. Once he saw I was there, he landed. It turns out, he was excited to have found some french fries and was asking for some. As I went to order some fries, I noticed one guy over by the condiments. His hands were completely covered in ketchup and he had a T-shirt with a picture of 20 cheeseburgers stacked up and the word BURGER underneath. I knew I had to approach.
I went up to him and said, “Excuse me, sir. Are you a Herbie Hancock fan?” He gasped and took off. Bird flew after him in pursuit. He pestered the guy until he tripped and fell. I got to him and said, “let’s go, pal. You’ve got a record to pay for.”
I called Tiffany and Connie back on the walkie talkie. The three of us hauled the guy back to Hew Hewson. He was embarrassed and paid the hundred bucks without complaint.
We left the record show, pleased with ourselves. When we got back to the Kettle, Duncan casually said “you guys see the new statue?” We were shocked. We raced to the food court and were stunned.
Sitting at a table, with his typewriter, was the bronze Hew Hewson. We started examining it and noticed the bronze typewriter had a sheet in it. On the sheet were some words. We quickly realized this must be a puzzle. The words were:
ONCE
FORUM
WARS
PURSE
RESET
LADY
Hew must have been leaving us a clue. His love of puzzles is pretty annoying in this case, though – he should have just typed a message instead of this mysterious set of words. We still don’t know what it means – it’s probably a message. We just need to decode it.
Okay, Mysteryteers, put on your thinking caps. Write down those words and get to work. The Mystery Team needs you. Send your answers in to mailbag@thesmilesyndicate.com.
ROUND WHEEL OF MYSTERY
Cult keeps growing. There were 25 people milling around out there before we stared recording.
Found out it’s a trillion years old. This is like Smileton’s version of Stonehenge. THose aren’t druids – they’re ne’er-do-wells and smart-ass punks.
THE SMILE SYNDICATE JUKEBOX – Goldfinger
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MAILBAG
1. Hello, Jason and Miss Elizabeth. I just started listening and I’m really loving the show. I was just wondering what Jason thought of your mayor wanting to change the name of Smileton to “Pepperton”. She can’t do that, can she? Signed, Josee in Tacoma
– yes I did hear it. Outrageous.
– I was downtown paying my latest round of parking tickets.
Saw a sign for a workshop hosted by the Mayor. Knew this couldn’t be good. Put my ear to the door. Mayor’s prattling on “town needs to return to its roots” “my family has been at the core of this town for generations” “Time for the name to reflect our essence.” Most of the people there didn’t sound enthused.
But then I sneezed – I heard her yell “someone’s spying on us! GET HIM!” I took off. A bunch of people were after me. I got out of the building, ran along the river for a while, then dove in and crossed. They lost my scent and I got away.
2. Hi, Why can’t I buy Smile Syndicate music on cassette? You’re missing a huge market here. I know I’d buy any tape you made.
Give us cassettes! Signed, Aaron in Calgary
You obviously haven’t been checking the site. Selling cassettes is pretty much all we’ve been doing for the last 6 years. Smile Syndicate music on cassettes, stuff taped off the radio on cassette, improvised monologues by me on cassette. Oh, one of the most popular feature was me reading DVD player manuals outloud on casssette.
But we switched our focus to Funtime Music and Entertainment, so we’ve been neglecting the cassettes. It’s too bad, in a way, because those were really good times. Cassette lovers really look out for each other. It’s a positive, vivacious community. But the calling for the Smile Syndicate is coming from a different mountaintop and we must go in a different direction. So it’s gonna be lots of music, lots of comedy and entertainment, lotsa Funtime and not so much with the cassettes.
There will be new Smile Syndicate releases before the year is out, and if the demand is there, we could put these things out on cassette. Let us know – mailbag@thesmilesyndicate.com
3. Hi, Why don’t we use the same knot for both shoelaces and ties. This could have saved me a bunch of time when I was younger. Please use this in the next Jason’s Life Hacks. Signed, Sir Adrick of Austin
Thank you, Adrick. I don’t know if this would be a good lifehack or not. On the face of it, having a big shoelace knot around your neck does sound cool, but to recommend a life hack it needs to be tested.
I normally don’t like people suggesting life hacks like this because of the risks involved. I keep saying that hacking life isn’t child’s play. It’s tough to get it right and if you get it wrong, the consequences can be severe.
I’m thinking of doing a book of Life Hacks. Basically how stuff I’ve tried has gone wrong for me. It’ll be a bunch of cautionary tales. Maybe if someone else reads about them, they may be able to see where I go wrong. Go back and listen to previous episodes – you’ll hear all about how my great ideas usually end up steering me right into the ditch. But we’ve got to keep doing them. Life is too important to not be hacking it.
So, thanks, Adrick, but please leave the lifehacking to professionals. The Smile Syndicate Music Hour and its sponsors aren’t looking to be held responsible if you think up some dumb way to heat up a picnic basket with a modified hibachi or
4. Dear Miss Elizabeth, I think you do a great job on the Smile Syndicate podcast. During a recent episode, Jason complained that you were on 91 different podcasts. That’s amazing! How do you prepare for so many different shows? – Signed AidenInThe416
MISS ELIZABETH:
Thanks, Aiden. It’s a lot of work being on so many shows, but it’s a lot of fun and I get to learn a lot and work with some really talented people.
The main reason I’m able to do all these shows is that I am really focused on efficient time management. When I’m recording one show, I’m usually preparing for 2 or 3 other podcasts at the same time. Then I go do those 2 or 3 other shows, and prepare for 2 or 3 more while I’m doing them, and it’s just exponential productivity. With a little more practice, I think I could easily co-host over 200 podcasts at the same time. You’ve got to manage your time and you’ve got to want it.
Another trick I use is to repurpose content. I put together the Death Metal Update for the death metal podcast I’m on, Jorg Presents: The Ultimate Death Metal Hour. But I also use it here, and on the Russian History podcast, the French Improv show I do and a new one I just started up with a couple other ladies: It’s called Package Deal and we mostly focus on giving in-depth reviews of male exotic dance troupes. Lots of good info there, so make sure to check us out!
5. Hey guys, I found your show a few months and I’ve gone back to listen to earlier episodes. Way back at the beginning,
Jason was talking about being on the jury for a case, then running away. Whatever happened with that? I assume everything
was straightened out. Keep smiling, James P. W.
– No. I’m still on the lam. Thanks for bringing it up.
–
– the case ended in a settlement. The guy who smashed the mannequins agreed to pay for repairs. He became pals with his neighbour. Now he’s got a mannequin display in his backyard. They worked together to set up a beach volleyball scene using their fence as a net.
– So it was all for nothing, but I’m still wanted. it was another town over so I’m not too worried. In this part of the province, the different towns are like city states. Different towns, different rules.
PLUGS
Streaming music services
Twitter, Facebook – CrawlAWall – fitness-based social network. You communicate with webcams, but you have to be active. Jumping around, skipping rope, walking around on your hands. No one will listen to you if you’re just sitting there. It’s leading to some really dangerous situations – like up the danger of selfie taking by 10. People are surfing while doing CrawlAWall, they’re base jumping, they’re car surfing, maybe they’re climbing an actual wall.
Pateron. Tell a friend.
MARQUEE SONG SLOT – Get Thee To A Disco
BYE BYE
That’s it! We hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please consider joining the Smile Squad and support this podcast on Patreon – that’s patreon.com/thesmilesyndicate. Join our just cause as we pursue the values of Funtime music, Funtime comedy, and general delightedment. Get early access, exclusive extra stuff, and membership in the most awesome club on the Internet.
Please tell a friend about this podcast and, if you could, give us a review on iTunes. Spread the word, make a difference.
So it’s bye bye from Jason.
And bye bye from me. See you next week.
And as always, remember friend, the sun is a jukebox.
