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We are roughly one month out from my favorite event of the entire year – Dragon Con. Normally I would have posted my summary of the Progress Report by now, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on one. Instead, I’m going to share something with you. I’m going to tell you about my game show and how it came to be and how it’s one of the most important things in my life.
We are roughly one month out from my favorite event of the entire year – Dragon Con. Normally I would have posted my summary of the Progress Report by now, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on one. Instead, I’m going to share something with you. I’m going to tell you about my game show and how it came to be and how it’s one of the most important things in my life.
I
just love having a mic in my hand and using whatever talent I have to
effect people. It’s the only “job” I’ve ever enjoyed.
Several
years ago I discovered fan fiction or slash fic or whatever you want
to call it on Topless Robot in a feature called “Fan Fiction
Friday” or “FFF”. I had no idea such things were going on and I
certainly didn’t know that people were sharing it all over the
internet. I sent one particularly hilarious piece of nerdy filthy
filth to a friend of mine and he – being much more internet savvy
than I – said, “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen that.”
It
was at that point that I had the idea to have a bunch of friends sit
around at Dragon Con and get drunk and attempt to read slash fic to
one another. I doubt my friend even realizes he was there for the
inception of The
Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show.
He’d probably take a shower if he did.
I
didn’t follow up on that idea because at the time my nights at Con
involved drinking as much alcohol as I possibly could and wandering
around until there was literally nothing left to do but go back to my
hotel room and pray that I wouldn’t be hung over when I woke up
four or five hours later. Most of my friends prefer that activity as
well, so trying to organize anyone for anything would have been a
futile effort.
“Trying
to organize anyone for anything is a futile effort” could go on my
tombstone.
I
kept following along with Fan Fiction Friday basically until Rob
Bricken stopped doing it. But the idea of entertaining people with it
never left me. It was something guaranteed to generate a visceral
reaction and a way to bring people together. A weird
way, to be sure, but if you can find the right group of people with
shared interests and the right tolerance for insane filth, they’re
all going to share similar responses to the subject matter and an
awkward, hilarious time will be had by all.
In
2012 I was on my first Dragon Con panel for the American
Sci-Fi Classics Track,
thanks to my relationship with the ESO
Network.
It went very well. I had a blast, people liked me, and I was asked to
do more the next year. I had gotten my foot in the door of performing
at Dragon Con and a taste of being the entertainer rather than just
the entertained.
Around
the same time I started working as regularly as I could for a
wrestling promotion called Monstrosity Championship Wrestling. This
afforded me the opportunity to work with a huge variety of talented
entertainers – including the amazing Ghouella
DeVille
– in a live, constantly changing environment. It was chaos, but I
learned many valuable things there.
Both
of those events are extremely important, but also require posts of
their own. The point is that I was finally getting to do things in
front of people and I was loving it. And very
good at
it. I’m not saying I’m the bomb dot com or anything. I won’t
ever stop learning and improving. But I don’t think that anyone
would deny that I have a strong stage presence and a talent for…
whatever it is that I do.
After
two years of good relations with Gary and Joe – who are the heads
of the Classics Track and the wind beneath my wings; also a whole
other post – and a very successful Needless
Things Toy Panel,
I wanted to do a thing. A weird thing. A thing that nobody in their
right mind would approve.
But
first I needed a partner. Because as big as my ego had become at that
point, I still didn’t have the balls to attempt this thing on my
own.
I
had gotten to know Dana
Swanson,
aka Miss Lady Flex of the Sexxxiest Band in the Whole Muthafuckin’
World, Le
Sexoflex
as an
acquaintance through live shows and an interview
with the band on the podcast.
She’s brilliant and strong and hilarious and quickly became one of
my personal heroes.
Dana
had always been incredibly nice and friendly, but to this day I don’t
know what gave me the gall to text her and ask if she wanted to
co-host a dirty game show with me. Much to my surprise and relief,
she was not just interested, but excited.
I
wish that I had taken better notes about how we came up with what we
did that first year. The basis of the show was that she and I were
the co-hosts and that we would have contestants pulled from the
audience read pieces of slash fic that I had pulled from the internet
in various competitive ways. It would be silly and over-the-top in
every way. When I thought of us as a team, I used Thomas Lennon and
Kerri Kenney’s duo from Viva
Variety
as a point of reference. Not their actual characters or relationship,
just the chemistry that they had.
Once
Dana was on board, I pitched it to Gary and Joe. I’m not gonna lie
– I was shocked when they gave me the green light. I had done my
best to emphasize how filthy and potentially offensive it was going
to be, but they had faith in me and my ability to entertain. And in
the fact that it would be happening late at night, when all of the
craziest stuff that happens at Con occurs. If anyone did show up,
they would probably be just the kind of inebriated freaks we wanted
to entertain.
Dana
and I had a
lot of
conversations about what we wanted to do. I might have sparked this
whole thing, but we are partners. A big part of the reason that I had
wanted her involved was her background in entertainment – voice
acting, improv, comedy writing. I hadn’t done any of that (aside
from the amount of improvisation required to fill large, unintended
gaps between matches in MCW) and no matter how much natural aptitude
I might have, I had little experience. I knew I needed that element
in order to pull off a show that I could be proud of.
A
bit about my idea of performing – I believe that the audience has
invested their time and/or money in watching you do what you’re
doing. While you need to enjoy what you’re doing, you can’t ever
forget that you have a responsibility to them. Nothing
is more valuable than time and it’s an honor when someone gifts you
with theirs. Whether you’re the highest tier of celebrity sitting
on a panel in front of hundreds of people or a street performer
playing to one person, your audience deserves the best you can give
them. That means you look the part, you give it your all, and you
plan, plan, plan, and plan some more in advance to have the tightest
show possible and anticipate potential problems. Problems are going
to happen (and have both years so far), but if you’ve got your shit
together, you can handle them.
As
they say, they show must go on. And if you’re committed enough, the
audience will stay with you.
All
in all, that first year was simple. It was called Whose
EFF Is It Anyway?,
which isn’t the best name or too indicative of what we were doing.
It’s just something that stuck initially. “EFF” was supposed to
stand for “Erotic Fan Fiction” and the title was obviously a
reference to Whose
Line Is It Anyway?,
a show that I adored. It turns out “EFF” is widely known to stand
for “Electronic Frontier Foundation” and that even though erotic
fan fiction is a thing, nobody calls it that.
I
owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Red
Light Café
for allowing us to put on a sort of rehearsal show there. Dana
recruited our version of Johnny Blue Jeans – Sexy Wolverine – in
her friend Rueben, who is a wonderful powerhouse of entertainment.
The three of us had a great chemistry and learned how to work with
each other that night. It was invaluable training for the Dragon Con
performance.
Whose
EFF was
simply me and Dana giving stories to people to read in different
formats, and Sexy Wolverine being sexy and hilarious. It was a lot of
fun and we had some amazing contestants. The room was packed –
standing room only – and we received very high ratings in the
Dragon Con app.
It
was one of the most incredible and satisfying moments of my life. I
had made this thing happen. I had a ton of help and support, but this
thing had come out of my brain and had happened and had entertained a
large group of people at the biggest event of the year. I had never
been so fulfilled by a “job”.
I
quickly demanded assurances that we would be allowed to do it again
the next year and that we would have a bigger room. Assurances were
assured.
Whose
EFF
was, unsurprisingly, not without controversy. Some Twittiots got
upset about some things. There were things that I can understand and
some that I can’t. Some of those things influenced how we changed
the show. Primarily in the fact that from that point on we would
write all of the slash fic ourselves.
One
of the basics of the show is that as dirty as it might get, we are
never mean-spirited. If someone feels that we are and is reasonably
justified, we’ll look at the problem.
There
were other lessons that didn’t come from outrage junkies on social
media. We felt that the reliance on slash fic was too strong ad that
a variety of filth would be better. And the name had to go. Dana came
up with the overly-long and absurd The
Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
and I never would have gone along with it if I’d thought about how
many times I’d have to type that shit out. But it is perfect and
wonderful and now we’re getting it on t-shirts.
More on that later.
My
idea of what the show should be was evolving, and Dana shared my
vision. I suspect that she had loftier ideas from the start, but you
have to begin somewhere.
We
both wanted actual games. Not people reading things the whole time.
We kept the crowd happy with Whose
EFF,
but we both agreed that we could do better. If the scope of the show
was going to grow, then we were going to have to recruit more
personnel. There were disastrous A/V issues with that first year and
we decided that we needed a person specifically for that. This is
where Rad Ranger came in. We also wanted props and actual logos and
stuff. That’s where Oz came in.
Believe
it or not, I started planning for last year’s The
Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
in February. I knew the second year had to be bigger, better, and
dirtier to justify not only the name change, but the changes I had
asked for. It was important for me that we put on a show that rivaled
anything else that might be happening at Dragon Con. That even if we
were just a panel in a track room in the book, we would provide
entertainment on the same level as any band or puppet show or
performance. My determination was to be so fucking good and so
fucking outrageous that somebody somewhere would have no choice but
to put us in a big room. We would demand recognition.
A
quick aside – speaking of puppets, Beau Brown is possibly the most
wonderful human being I have ever met. His support and encouragement
has been absolutely vital to all of this. I can never repay all of
the things he doesn’t even realize he does, let alone the ones he
is conscious of.
Over
the course of the year everything came together. We brainstormed
ridiculous new games and Rad Ranger made them happen. Oz fabricated
the Crown of Dicks and donned the mantle of Popeye the Sailor Moon
Pie or whatever we ended up calling him. Reuben was unavailable, but
through a wacky series of events we were gifted with a new Sexy
Wolverine. She had been a co-worker of mine years ago and was good
friends with Dana. The five of us essentially formed like a goofy,
dirty Voltron and immediately were on the same page.
Not
everything I wanted to do came to fruition, but that’s the nature
of being ambitious beyond your means. Someday I’ll have those
means.
At
the pre-show meeting we made our last-minute preparations, but
overall I felt very good. Whether or not anyone showed up, we were
ready and were going to be fantastic.
I
wrote extensively about the game show and the adventures of Sexy
Wolverine in a
recap last year,
so I won’t go over it again now, but despite some of the exact same
issues cropping up that had plagued us in 2014, the show was a
massive success. We packed the room again and turned away nearly 200
people. The feedback from the Dragon Con app was once again stellar.
We had put on a bigger, better show and succeeded.
Once
again I quickly demanded assurances that we would be allowed to do it
again the next year and that we would have a bigger room. Assurances
were, once again, assured.
I
am not comfortable asking people for things and I am certainly
not comfortable demanding things, but The
Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
means so much to me and has become such an invaluable part of my
creative life that I asked many people to help with the effort to get
it into a bigger room.
Asking
people for things is a constant struggle and one that I am not well
equipped for. Whether it’s sponsors, favors, people to take
pictures, or whatever; I don’t handle that stress well. I don’t
mind being told “no”, it’s the non-responders that tear at my
soul. Or the ones that do respond initially, but then just fade out.
That’s even worse.
But
I keep working and trying and pushing because, truth be told, The
Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
is my favorite thing that I do. I love the podcast and the website
has been an invaluable outlet over the years, but nothing provides
the thrill that the game show does. I very badly want to travel it
around to other cons or events, but it seems that “dirty pop
culture game show” is not a niche most are looking to fill. I’ll
keep trying, though.
That
brings us to this year.
The
powers that be came through and we have a ballroom. The Hyatt Regency
V, to be precise. Follow me
and The Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
on Facebook to stay current on that. The location could
change, but I sure hope it doesn’t. That ballroom has a legacy of
greatness that I want to be a part of.
Well,
I already am a part of it, but I want the game show to be part.
See,
this is the ballroom where the very first Dragon Con Late Night
Puppet Slam was held. It is also the ballroom where Puppet Improv has
delighted fans two years in a row, including my unexpected
performance last year. I want people to remember that The
Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
happened in that ballroom.
Unfortunately,
our Sexy Wolverine has an opportunity elsewhere in the country the
same weekend as Dragon Con. We hate to lose her, but these things
happen. We will alter the show accordingly and continue on.
And
that, Dirtymaniacs, is where the story ends for now. I guarantee you
that this year’s show is going to be bigger, wilder, and more fun
than anything we have done before. The last week has energized me in
a way that I can’t believe and I can’t wait to share this magic
with you at Dragon Con. Of course, there are ways that we can share
magic right
now.
I
have ordered a run of The
Dirty Dirty Con Con Game Game Show Show
t-shirts. I funded them with the proceeds from my Patreon,
which is the only real source of income for the game show or for
anything else that I do creatively (Amazon and Google Ads don’t pay
jack squat). If you’re so inclined, join or share.
As
for the t-shirts, they are available in Boastful Blue and a very
special limited run Passion Pink. The pink ones are going fast. If
you want to be sure to get the size you want, preorder now from the
Needless
Things Store.
They will ship out by August 19th
and will be in your homes in time for you to wash cold with
like-colored items and tumble dry low. Do not iron.
To
sum up, here are the important links you need:
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