Saint Mort Show: An Origin Story

For the last few months I've been doing my podcast the past few months. I'm certain that by this time next year I'll be one of the most famous podcasters of all time and while I'm sitting down to talk with the likes of Marc Maron, Conan O'Brien and the Nerdist Podcast crew they're going to ask the same two questions.

1. Where does the name Saint Mort come from?

2. What inspired you to do this podcast; which by the way... I think is the greatest podcast in the history of the world?

Now, I don't have time to be answering these types of questions over and over and over again... so to simplify things I'll just direct them to this blog entry and tell them to do better research next time.

So...

QUESTION 1: WHERE DOES THE NAME SAINT MORT COME FROM?

- In 2002 I was in a band with two friends (one who later became Matt Howard, yes THE Matt Howard of pop-punk superstars Racing Kites) called "Off the Wall". We were a terribly untalented pop punk band. At the time I was an extremely religious kid and wrote specifically christian lyrics. I was admittedly a bit of a stickler of what Matt and Nick (the other member) were allowed to say as 10th grade me really wanted to market us as a christian band. This was probably why the band eventually broke up. I had a few ridiculous "silly songs" and decided that I could teach myself guitar and perform as a solo artist. I was mostly wrong. I still almost a decade later can barely play guitar and am merely a "passable" singer. Up til this point, this "answer" hasn't "answered" the "question"... well be patient motherfucker... damn. ANYWAY I was performing under my name for a while (aka about 3 shows in 2 years) and was thinking about getting a stage name. It was my first day of my senior year of high school and my english teacher told us to sit wherever we want and she'd just pass around a seating chart and we could write our name in the seat we were currently located and that'd be our seat for the year. Apparently years of typing destroyed my handwriting because she thought my name was Mort. For about a month or two I played shows under that name; it was on a youth group trip (yes I was still a jesus freak at this point) my friend who was in seminary was trying to explain the term "Saint" and said a basically all you need to do to be a Saint was stand out amongst the other people. I figured that since I played silly acoustic punk songs in a predominitly hardcore music scene, that I'd be the Saint of the scene... thus the stage name Saint Mort was born and stuck.

QUESTION 2: WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO DO THIS PODCAST?
The Saint Mort Show is hardly my first podcast. For a few years I had multiple failed podcast with my best friend Jeff, all under the name Below the Radar. There was Below the Radar Radio, Below the Radar TV and then simply Below the Radar The Podcast. (the later lasted the longest with about 16 episodes). After that I ran a short lived (11 episode) call-in show called the Saint Mort Show on Sunday Nights. While it had a decent following the show never really changed much over the years (the episodes are still available on iTunes if you're curious). I had pretty much give up on Podcasting and wanted to focus more on film and Geekscape. While I started planning my move to LA I thought that maybe I could start up a new podcast specifically for my friends and I to stay in touch, almost like a blog you could listen to. The original idea was basically to rip off the Paul F Thompkast and have different sketches and segments. While listening to WTF with Marc Maron and Nerdist I decided I still wanted to have guests, but until my previous shows (which were structured like Geekscape) instead of just having people sit on a couch with me and repeating a format of movie review, music and comics talk... I decided I'd rather to do the WTF/Nerdist way of having a conversation with them.

Around the time that I was wanting to do an in depth interview, Conan returned to Television. It was from watching Conan and listening to Comedy Death Ray Radio I realized I could do the same thing. Put together a fake talk show, using all the of the "talk show format" institutions and mock them (while at the same time honoring them). That's when I decided to incorporate multiple guests and musical numbers. That's been the format I've stuck to for the last few episodes and I don't forsee it changing anytime soon. Now I Just need to find listeners.*

*I would omit this last part in the fictional interview scenario as I'd be a superstar now with MULTIPLE listeners; I'm just that fucking good*

-Check Out The Saint Mort Show at www.saintmortshow.com; new episode is coming this weekend

Are You There Blog? It's Me, Mort

So I haven't posted anything in over a month. There's no much to say so here's the simplest versions of the last month:

- I have 23 days of work left to go

- I leave for LA in less than 100 days

- On June 19th there will be a concert as my farewell party; be stoked for that (more info to come shortly)

- I've been mostly working on my podcast The Saint Mort Show. Some of my past guests have been Mink Stole (Pink Flamingos), George Hardy (Troll 2), Michael Swaim (cracked.com), filker Tom Smith and hobbit hip-hop group Lord of the Rhymes.

- I still write for geekscape and do work for them

So what is to come with this blog? I'm going to be posting more random reviews; they won't be remotely timely and mostly be me reviewing old CDs, Movies and books for shits and giggles. It'll also be the big source for Saint Mort Show related news (not to mention my twitter)

*The title of this blog is inspired by the fact that I'm currently 'Are you there God? It's Me Margaret' in a race to read all 100 of Time Magazine's 100 greatest novels since 1923 before my best friend Jeffery "Shrop" Shropshire... this book is a piece of shit and I don't recommend it to anyone outside of the intended age group. Apparently a 12 year old girl talking about wanting to grow boobs and have her period isn't a very interesting read for a 25 year old male*