[Editor's Note - For the latest on International Talk Like A Pirate Day, make sure to listen to our 2010 interview with Cap'n Slappy on our Hobo Radio podcast.]

John “Ol’ Chumbucket” Baur

International Talk Like A Pirate Day is perhaps the only holiday that began as a sport’s injury. On June 6, 1995, John Baur and Mark Summers were playing racquetball together when one of them strained a muscle and let out an “Arrr.” They had no idea this one moment would end up changing their lives forever.

Once the initial “Arrr” was spoken, the two friends from Albany, Oregon spent the rest of the afternoon talking in pirate voices. “After the game we decided there ought to be one day a year where everybody just talks like a pirate,” said Summers.

The two friends decided to create Talk Like A Pirate Day. The only problem was, they needed to pick a day for their holiday. “I’m a guy with a brain the size of a pea and I can only fit a certain amount of dates in my head,” Mark said. “I was recently divorced at the time. [My ex-wife's birthday] was stuck in my head and I just wasn’t doing anything with it.”

So, Sept. 19th, Summers’ ex-wife’s birthday, was declared Talk Like A Pirate Day.

“The next thing you know, it’s become a private joke among a few friends who call each other up at work every Sept. 19th and go, ‘Arrr,’ and then hang up,” John recalled.

“And then we got Dave Barry’s email address, so we invited him to be part of it,” said John. “He wrote a column that appeared on Sept. 8, 2002 and we thought, ‘Aww, there that’s cute, there’s our 15 minutes of fame.’ And the thing just took off.”

After Dave Barry’s column ran, Baur and Summers were contacted by the creators of Chase’s Calender of Events, who asked if they could include Talk Like A Pirate Day in their publication. They agreed and when their holiday was included in the book the following year, radio stations began contacting them for interviews.

Talk Like A Pirate Day began to grow. As the two garnered more attention, they had to adopt pirate personas. Baur dubbed himself Ol’ Chumbucket, which he imagines to be a pirate ship’s cook with subpar culinary skills. Summers adopted the nickname Cap’n Slappy, which was a moniker he used in videogames.

In the past few years, they have celebrated Talk Like A Pirate Day by doing radio interviews across the globe. They begin getting calls on the afternoon of Sept. 18th from Australia and continue fielding calls around the world, from places like England, Amsterdam, Ireland, Switzerland and, of course, the United States. They have received fan mail from all seven continents, including a research station in the South Pole.

“It’s amazing. We had absolutely no idea what we were letting ourselves in for,” said Baur.

“Talk Like A Pirate Day for us used to be as simple as calling our friends at work and saying ‘Arrr’ into the phone, then hanging up. We had no idea we’d spend so much time on the phone in future Talk Like A Pirate Days,” said Summers. “We literally got to travel around the world by telephone in our underpants.”

The two enjoy doing the interviews, but things can get rather tedious, since the DJs tend to ask the same five questions over and over again. They occasionally have to deal with small-town disc jockeys more interested in getting their own material over than actually interviewing the duo. And, in years past, they have done as many as 80 interviews over the course of 30 hours.

Working behind the scenes to support the two is Baur’s wife Tori, who is affectionately referred to by the pirate nickname “Mad Sally.” John and Tori met while doing community theatre, which is also where John met Mark. While Ol’ Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy are doing their radio interviews, Mad Sally fields calls behind the scenes and does the interviews John and Mark can’t squeeze into their schedule.

Mark “Cap’n Slappy” Summers

“It’s crazy, we get no sleep at all,” Tori said.

Due to Talk Like A Pirate Day’s popularity, “Team Pirate” has been able to branch out into other ventures. They officially incorporated as The Pirate Guys, LLC, and set up a website, TalkLikeAPirate.com. The site, which is run by their “web wench” Jezebel, received 19 million hits the first September it was up. Capitalizing on their newfound popularity, the duo also decided to write a book.

John said, “Almost everything that’s happened to get us to where we are now started with the words ‘You know what would be funny …’” Baur and Summers began joking about writing a book about pirates, but never followed through.

“These are guys who sit around and drink a lot of beer and just talk a lot out of their ass,” Tori said. “So I basically said, ‘Okay, look guys, I’m going to find you an agent.’”

Tori, who was attending Oregon State University at the time, skipped a physical fitness class and used one of the campus’ computers to query literary agents. She created a form letter and sent it out to 50 agents, pretending she was John. One agent expressed interest and asked to see the manuscript in 10 days when he returned from vacation.

That’s when Mad Sally went back to The Pirate Guys and told them they had 10 days to write their book. John recalls that most of the book was written over one long weekend, which involved consuming large amounts of pizza and beer and very little research. They found an agent interested in selling the book, but they had trouble finding a publishing house interested in buying it.

They decided that if the book hadn’t sold by February 2004, they would self-publish it.

“The whole thing has been one serendipitous event after another,” said John. He was working as a science writer at the time for Oregon State University, but due to budget cuts, he was informed that his last day of work would be the end of February 2004.

“It was like God telling us what to do,” John recalled.

The Pirate Guys self-published their book, entitled Well Blow Me Down. The book sold enough copies to make back their initial investment and New American Library, a division of Penguin Publishing, expressed an interest in buying the manuscript. At New American Library’s request, they tinkered with the format, added new material and renamed the book Pirattitude, which was a term Mark coined.

Summers defines Pirattitude as “that swagger, it’s that devil-may-care attitude that a pirate has. It’s the spirit of fun.”

In addition to writing the book, Mark and John perform live shows under their pirate personas. Their shows are mostly all-ages and rely heavily on interaction with the crowd.

“It’s very much audience participation because we want them to do as much of the work as possible,” said John.

The Pirate Guys teach the audience how to talk like a pirate, sing pirate songs and “create a public nuisance.” And, while they try to keep things PG, occasionally they slip up.

“We try to keep it family friendly, but occasionally I ad lib something that is so terribly off-color it makes John weep,” Mark admitted.

Tori “Mad Sally” Baur

Perhaps one of their strangest stops on their serendipitous journey was ending up on the ABC show Wife Swap, which Tori refers to as “Wench Swap.” Jezebel, their web wench, forwarded an email from ABC to the other members of Team Pirate, which was looking for pirate reenactors to be on the show. Jezebel asked if they wanted to put a link up on their website, adding “unless Tori wants to show them how it’s really done.”

“So, of course, I took that as a dare and I sent an email off to ABC saying, ‘Well, why would you want reenactors when you can have the real thing?’” Tori recalled.

The next day, they got a call from executives in New York and, before they knew it, they were filming Wife Swap. While the show garnered a lot of attention for their cause and helped to sell copies of their book, it was definitely a grueling experience.

“The filming aspect was amazing. The crew and learning that side of the television business, I thought that was amazing. I would do that again in a heartbeat because I love the film industry and theatre,” said Tori. “But actually trading families and trading lives, that was really hard because John and I are really close, we’ve never been apart from each other more than a couple of days. So being away from him for 10 days was really, really difficult because I had no contact with him at all. So being in a strange household with people who weren’t too friendly, that was hard.”

Tori traded places with Lisa Fine, a California women who ran an organizing business. On the show, Fine and her family were depicted as obsessively neat and organized, caring very much about appearances. The Baurs were depicted as slobs living in a chaotic household.

For anyone considering signing up for Wife Swap, John has some advice: “The first thing you have to do is ask yourself, ‘How bad can they make me look and do I care?’”

The film crew shot over 200 hours of tape, which was cut into a 48-minute show. John feels that they purposely slanted the show a certain way. “They came in knowing the story they were going to tell and knowing the shots they needed to tell it,” John said. “Even though I think a more interesting story developed, at the end of the day they told the same story they had planned to tell right at the beginning.”

John “Ol’ Chumbucket” Baur

One of the things ABC failed to mention was that the Baurs actually have six kids. Only three of them were seen on the show, the other three are older and are no longer living at home. They also didn’t mention that Tori was attending college at the time, which is part of the reason the house was such a mess. She ended up graduating Magna Cum Laude with an English degree.

Tori isn’t bothered by her portrayal on the show. “I’m secure with who I am. I’ve never had a problem being who I am,” she said.

As for her messy house: “It was an amazingly freeing experience to not give a shit about cleaning and how my house looked. And I’ve never cared. If people don’t like the way I live, they don’t have to come over.”

However, she didn’t enjoy her time with the Fines. “I was in a family in a household that was so oppressed,” she said. “They weren’t kind people at all. The husband was rude, he was boorish.”

The Fine’s daughter called Tori fat and lazy. “She was the antichrist so far as children are concerned,” said Mad Sally.

Tori also displayed some of her signature pirate spirit during the filming of the show. She was given a list of chores that she was expected to perform the next day in front of the cameras, but instead decided to do them on her own, filming herself using one of the cameras they left behind.

“The family had gone to sleep and I knew I had this list of chores to do and I’m like, ‘Screw this, I’m not going to do this list of chores with some asshole standing over my shoulder telling me how to clean or scrub things,’” Tori recalled. “And so I said, ‘I’m going to pull an all-nighter.’ So I stayed up all night long and I filmed myself doing all the chores all night long.” At the end, she licked the floor to prove how clean it was.

The next morning, the camera crew arrived and was a bit bewildered to discover she had already completed the chores, but they decided the video she shot was good and included it in the show.

Cap’n Slappy also made a guest appearance on the Wife Swap episode, but his experience was much different from the Baurs. Mark was flown to California to assist Tori. He was driven to the airport in a limo and had an assistant with him for his day of shooting.

“I highly recommend anyone who can get an assistant, get one,” Mark said.

However, he could see the toll the show took on his friends emotionally. Mark, who is a licensed clinical social worker, said, “By the time we all got back together after the whole ordeal was over, I realized that the two of them were responding like people who had been through a trauma.”

When the episode originally aired last September, sales of their book skyrocketed on Amazon.com. And the response Team Pirate got was mostly positive.

The Baurs and their children – Ben, Jack, Max, Millie, Alex and Kate

“One of the best compliments I got were letters from teenage girls and grown women with children of their own who said, ‘Thank you for showing us that there is an alternative way to live. You don’t have to pretend to be perfect,’” said Tori.

Wife Swap also has garnered them more attention in their town, making them quasi-celebrities.

“We were not unknown in the community before the pirate thing started,” said Ol’ Chumbucket, who explained the Baurs would occasionally be recognized from their performances at the community theatre. “We are what passes for celebrities here. We used to be curiosities, we’ve worked our way up to oddities and we are working on celebrity now.”

Cap’n Slappy also gets recognized around town. Being a man of larger carriage, he says that it’s not hard for people to pick him out of a crowd.

“When I go places, people either say, ‘I saw you on Wife Swap‘ or ‘Aren’t you Santa Claus?’” Mark joked.

He also gets recognized during his day job as a social worker. He goes into schools to council troubled kids and inevitably, some of the kids will recognize him from his appearance on Wife Swap. Usually, this leads to kids asking for his autograph, which is something Summers can’t quite understand. “Those kids need a Tiger Beat magazine.”

As their popularity continues to grow, The Pirate Guys have found support in the strangest places. Some of their biggest supporters are Pastifarians, followers of the parody-religion created by Bobby Henderson known as The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. One of the beliefs of Pastifarians is that global warming is caused by the decrease of pirates worldwide.

“Makes perfect sense to me,” John said. “I think this entitles us to federal grants because we are obviously doing our part to reinvigorate pirates and therefore reduce global warming.”

Mark agrees: “The science is indisputable.”

Talk Like A Pirate Day has also spawned imitators. In response to their holiday, the creators of the Ninja Burger website declared Dec. 5th The Day of the Ninja. This added fire to an already heated Internet debate over who would win in a fight – pirates or ninjas.

“For some reason, there is this whole pirate-ninja war that frankly I don’t understand,” said John. “I think we are all kind of working the same side of the street. We’re guys with swords that misbehave. I do think that perhaps the reason for all of this animosity is that ninjas are kind of jealous because pirates are so much cooler. Ninjas are supposed to be silent and invisible, so they should shut up and go away.”

“You’ve got to give ninjas a lot of credit for training,” Mark added, “but a pirate has a cannon. And, as far as fashion goes, a pirate wins every time. And really, wouldn’t you rather win the war on fashion?”

There are sure to be a lot of fashionably-dressed pirates at Ye Olde Tattoo Shoppe in Studio City, Calif., Sept. 19th. The pirate-themed shop has been celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Day for the past three years and has invited Cap’n Slappy and Ol’ Chumbucket to attend their big celebration, promising free tattoos to The Pirate Guys. So, the duo is breaking tradition and skipping out on 30 hours of radio interviews in order to party with tattooed pirates. Last year, the shop inked 120 skull and crossbones in 12 hours.

While out in California, The Pirate Guys will also attend a screening of Pirates of the Great Salt Lake, which the filmmakers will be showing on Talk Like A Pirate Day in hopes of selling their film to a studio. The boys, who both say the original Pirates of the Carribean movie is their favorite pirate film, are both big supporters and fans of Pirates of the Great Salt Lake.

Mark “Cap’n Slappy” Summers

It’s unclear what the future holds for Team Pirate. The Baurs are planning on leaving Albany and heading to the Virgin Islands. The Pirate Guys partnership will be continued via email. They also recently sold the sequel to Pirattitude, which is scheduled to be released next September. Tori has also written her own book Mad Sally’s Guide to Living Life, which encourages women to reject traditional feminine roles by borrowing pirate ideals, and she is looking into teaching full-time.

“Our life is an adventure and we’re having fun doing it,” said John.

“I would try to take stock of it all, but I’d have no confidence in the market,” said Mark. “It’s fun; it’s been a fun ride.”

And, for all of you planning on celebrating Talk Like A Pirate Day this year, Cap’n Slappy has some advice: “Drink a lot of rum and let the rest of it come naturally.”

Written by Joel Murphy, September 2007. For more information on International Talk Like A Pirate Day, visit the official website. To read Aeo from Ninja Burger’s response to The Pirate Guys’ pirate vs. ninja comments, click here.

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Zach Cumer

Most junior high school students can only daydream about making a grand entrance on the red carpet at a big Hollywood premiere and being interviewed by the likes of Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood.

But, then again – Zach Cumer isn’t most people. The 15-year-old, who plays the ADHD karate aficionado Warren in Smokin’ Aces, is living out every teenager’s fantasy.

“I’m all over the Internet now, it’s kind of cool,” said Cumer, reflecting on his recent red carpet experience.

Cumer, who hails from Cheyenne, Wyoming, began acting as a hobby. He was taking acting classes in Denver, Colorado, when a manager from California offered to represent him. From there, Cumer came out to Hollywood and found an agent, and since then, he’s had an eclectic acting career – including a role as young Howard Stern in the independent film Little Howie and the Stern Gang and a small part in the in the critically-acclaimed film, The Laramie Project. But Smokin’ Aces, which features an all-star cast including Jeremy Piven, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, Ryan Reynolds and Alicia Keys, is Cumer’s most high profile film to date.

And it all started when Cumer skipped school.

“My mom gets a call from my agent saying, ‘We have an audition for Zach for a Universal movie called Smokin’ Aces,’” Cumer said. “So, my mom calls the school and says, ‘Zach has a doctor’s appointment.’ She pulls me out of school, we go to my garage at home, we get out a video camera, we get out 1980s glasses and some ice cream sandwiches she bought along the way and we just brought it to life in my garage.”

All of Cumer’s lines in the film were adlibbed, which he truly relished. “It’s what every actor dreams about to have the total freedom between the director and yourself.”

The role has earned him a lot of praise, including some from his co-star Andy Garcia, who made it a point to come up to him at the premiere to say, “Hey Zach, you stole the show kid.”

But Cumer is more than just an actor. He is also the co-host of a radio show, a stand-up comic and a drummer.

His radio show, “Speak Up,” is a weekly feature that he co-hosts with his friend Mikey on Clear Channel’s KGAB in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The two talk about teen issues and entertainment.

“My mom and his mom are radio people,” Cumer said. “My mom hosts a show on Clear Channel. Mikey’s mom is the news director. So we decided, ‘Hey, why don’t we do a kid’s show.’”

The two have interviewed Tyler James Williams, who plays a young Chris Rock on Everybody Hates Chris, Steven Christopher Parker and even Joe Carnahan, the director of Smokin’ Aces.

For his stand-up routine, Cumer writes all his own material. His jokes cover a wide range of topics – ranging from himself to Vice President Dick Cheney, who is from Wyoming. The budding comedian has performed at the Hollywood Improv several times.

Cumer actually got a chance to perform for Vice President Cheney as part of the Junior High School Jazz Band, which performed for Cheney when he visited the Wyoming State Legislature. Cumer also plays drums for the Blues Boys band and the Cheyenne Youth Symphony Orchestra. His drum teacher is Tony Brock, who has played with Rod Stewart.

If all of that wasn’t enough to keep your average teenager busy, Cumer is also working on getting his pilot’s license. He has been flying with his stepfather since he was four – he even grabbed a hold of the yolk when he was five in an attempt to help his stepfather land the plane.

Somehow, even with all of these extra-curricular events in his life, Cumer still finds time for his school work. When he is on the set of a movie, he is provided with a tutor. Although the arrangement is convenient, not everyone completely endorses it.

“Sometimes I have to lie and say that I’m sick so my teachers will give me work,” Cumer said.

Zach Cumer in Smokin’ Aces

Because of his hectic schedule, Cumer does miss many of the memorable moments a typical school year provides, such as school dances and football games, but you won’t hear him complain. And from the sound of it, given the chance, most of his classmates would gladly swap places with Cumer.

“Some of them are very happy for me,” Cumer revealed. “Some of them aren’t, because I guess they’re a little jealous. But what can you do about that?”

Just because he’s not in a classroom doesn’t mean Cumer isn’t learning valuable life lessons.

“Stand-up comedy helps thinking on your feet,” Cumer said. “Acting helps being in other people’s shoes, so when you meet a person you’ve never met before who is different from you, you can understand where they are coming from. And the radio show is just plain fun.”

Don’t look for Cumer to slow down any time soon. If all goes according to plan, acting, comedy and radio work will continue to be a big part of his life throughout the next few years. But Cumer’s not looking to stop there – after graduating from high school, he plans on attending law school to study political science and even has ambitions to one day reside on Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation’s capital. Maybe he could call Dick Cheney and ask for a few pointers.

Written by Joel Murphy, February 2007. For more information on Zach Cumer, visit his official website.

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Joe Dunn with finacee Yeo

Joe Dunn might just be
the hardest working man in webcomics. He regularly updates three comics on his website, Digital Pimp Online, and he recently wrapped up a fourth strip which he collaborated on with Mitch Clem.

It regularly takes him six to 10 hours a day to do these comics, which includes seeing movies and writing reviews for his popular strip, Joe Loves Crappy Movies. However, Dunn sees this time as an investment.

“I have to work hard now so I won’t have to work as hard later,” he said. “When I have to worry about things like kids and mortgage, I’m not going to want to do the comics. But I can stay up until two o’clock in the morning now finishing a strip.” And luckily for him, his fiancee Yeo is “a very understanding woman.”

Dunn now resides in New York City, but he is originally from South Jersey. His mother raised him and his older sister in the suburbs. To keep him entertained at a young age, his mom would have him draw. “My mom used to bring home stacks of paper and sit them down in front of me,” Dunn remembers. “She said it would just keep me busy all day long.”

Around sixth grade, his friend Phil Chan got him interested in comics. Dunn began emerging himself in the world of superheroes and action adventure titles. When he lost interest in one title, he would just move on to the next.

“Comics change so much. You’ll get attached to a certain run, the creators will change, the characters start to get a little boring, so I found myself jumping around a lot,” said Dunn. “Originally, it was all about the Uncanny X-Men. I found myself collecting everything.”

However, as he got older, his interests changed.

“Once I got into high school, I really got into Fantastic Four. There was a guy working on that book, John Byrne, who really rocked.”

Dunn was attracted to the more intelligent storylines and the scientific elements that were incorporated, and partnered with Chan to create their own superheroes and comics.

His interests again shifted when he went to Parsons School of Design at the New School in New York City.

“When I got to college, I started to discover different kinds of comics, which also lead to the webcomics – less about superheroes and more about actual people,” Dunn said.

He also really enjoyed the atmosphere of studying art in the Big Apple.

“I had been to New York City for class trips and stuff, but actually coming here to live, and to study art in New York City is like nothing else. It’s the perfect place to throw yourself into that kind of atmosphere,” he said.

Fred the food critic being punched by Santa in Free Lunch

While at college, Dunn found a way of telling stories with just one picture and got into painting and collage work. But ultimately, this was where Dunn honed his craft.

“Art school is really about finding where your voice is,” Dunn said.

Dunn and Chan went on to create Digital Pimp Online, which features three of Dunn’s comics, Free Lunch, Matriculated and Joe Loves Crappy Movies.

Free Lunch is the story of Fred the food critic. The comic was originally started at the request of a family friend, who ran a food magazine and was looking to add a comic.

“I was really hesitant, but they made me do it,” Dunn remembers. “They dropped it after something like nine issues, but I kept it going.”

The comic has drifted off in some strange directions since its creation as Fred has had to take on an army of zombies and even an enraged Santa Claus.

Dunn began drawing Matriculated around the same time as Free Lunch. The comic, which is written by Chan, focuses on a group of friends in college. Dunn said it’s completely different kind of comic from his other work because it has a slow and steady pace to it. Dunn has also been very pleased with the response to the comic.

“I’m really proud to be a part of it because Phil is writing a beautiful story and I get a lot of credit because my name is on it for drawing it,” Dunn said.

He feels the same way about The Coffee Achievers, which was written by Mitch Clem of Nothing Nice to Say. Dunn was reluctant to get do the strip because he didn’t think he had the time, but Clem talked him into it. The story, which recently wrapped up, was a nine part epic about a group of friends who find their normal coffee hangout overrun by some supernatural forces.

“It’s the kind of story I’ve always wanted to be involved with, but it’s hard to visualize yourself,” Dunn said.

Even though the story is now finished, Dunn would love to bring the characters back for a Coffee Achievers Part II. “I think I’m really going to start pushing Coffee Achievers II, just because the fans really got into it. They were really passionate about it. That’s exciting as a creator to get emails from fans,” Dunn said. “I don’t want to kill it. At the same time, I wouldn’t want it to be an ongoing strip forever.”

Dunn also revealed plans to collaborate with Clem on another comic called Rain Dogs, which he said is “kind of like Serenity meets Water World.”

Artwork from Joe Dunn and Mitch Clem’s The Coffee Achievers

Dunn’s fourth strip is perhaps the most personal. Joe Loves Crappy Movies features him, his fiancee Yeo and his friend Irv as starring characters. Irv was a natural choice for Joe Loves Crappy Movies because “he loves Vin Diesel and no one else loves Vin Diesel.” Dunn writes comics based on the movies that he goes to see, then writes a review of the movie to go along with it. The comic was a natural evolution for him.

“I really love seeing really bad movies,” Dunn revealed. “When you find yourself sneaking out on a Sunday morning to catch a matinee of Flight of the Phoenix, you know there is a problem in your life.”

Dunn would go to see the movies with his friends, and they would discuss the movies afterwards, rating them from one to 10. From there, he began commenting on movies on message boards, posting his ratings and deciding whether or not the movies were “DVD worthy.” After about six months of wanting to turn his interest in movies into a comic, he finally did.

While the comic usually stays pretty true to real life and even occasionally features actual conversations he’s had with Irv or Yeo, Dunn isn’t afraid to branch out and have some fun with the storylines. Recently, after Dunn slandered George W. Bush in his comic for V for Vendetta, secret service agents rushed out and kidnapped him. For a month, Joe was replaced in the comic by a government agent named George. Dunn even wrote the movie reviews in character as George, giving an angry right-wing slant to the reviews.

“The more that I wrote it, I realized it was like Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, where he knows he’s saying crazy things and you know he doesn’t really believe it, but it’s funny that he’s saying it,” Dunn said.

Ultimately, Joe came back and confronted George, but Dunn said he plans on bringing the character back again someday.

In the future, Dunn hopes to branch out and review crappy DVDs, so that he can cover some of the greats like Road House. He would also like to do some print collections of his work. Whatever the future brings for Dunn, it should certainly be bright. He’s already witnessed big gains in readership.

“It’s definitely growing and it’s growing fast,” Dunn said. “I look back six months ago and compare where any of the strips were at that point and where they are now and it is a big leap. I’m sure a year from now, I’ll look back and these will seem like small numbers.”

Click to enlarge

Written by Joel Murphy, May 2006. Make sure to check out Joe Dunn’s work at Digital Pimp Online.

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Ms. Kitka

From the Star Wars kid to the creators of Penny Arcade, the Internet has the power to make anyone a star. Now, with the creation of video podcasting, anyone with a video camera and a dream can make their own show and be watched by a worldwide audience.

Of course, not all podcasts are created equal. While some shows have a distinct public access television feel to them, others look and feel as professional as your favorite shows on television today. One podcast that clearly rises to the top of the pack is Kitkast, a weekly ten minute show featuring “sex news and sexy interviews.” The show also features a lovely host, Ms. Kitka.

The opening of every Kitkast has a vintage newsreel feel to it, complete with a black and white shot of Ms. Kitka in a military uniform saluting the camera. The show itself is shot pin-up style, with Ms. Kitka dressed in a revealing outfit and striking a variety of poses. Originally, Ms. Kitka planned on modeling the show after Rocketboom, another popular video podcast. She was going to sit behind a desk reading stories with a large map as a backdrop, but when the map ended up crumpled in the mail; she ended up coming up with the current style at the last minute. One of the challenges for her, though, is coming up with different shots each week. “People like seeing the different angles and positions,” Ms. Kitka said. “It’s kind of like flipping through a magazine – you don’t want to see the same pose every time.”

Her podcast is a lot like The Daily Show, if Jon Stewart talked about porn every week. Ms. Kitka gives viewers all of the latest news about the porn industry and any other sex related stories, giving her own humorous slant and punchlines. Sometimes though, it’s hard for her to think of a good one-liner. “Sometimes, there will be a really good news story that you just have to use, but you can’t think of a punchline at the time,” she said. “So, I’ll write something in square brackets that says, ‘Insert joke here,’ or ‘Insert better joke here.’”

Every show also features a five minute interview segment. Ms. Kitka had never interviewed anyone before starting her show and in the beginning; she found the process to be rather nerve-racking. Admittedly, it took her a while to get the hang of it. During her first interview, it was hard for Ms. Kitka to keep a straight face. “I kind of stopped in the middle of it and giggled with the girl I was interviewing,” she said. “Luckily, you can cut this stuff out. It’s easy in the editing process to cut out your screw ups.”

Her favorite interview was one she did for the fourth episode of Kitkast. It was with her former high school classmate Tommy Torque, who was the male winner of a French Canadian reality television show called Porn Star Academy 2, which Ms. Kitka describes as “American Idol meets porn.” It was the first interview she did at someone’s house – she did the entire interview on Torque’s bed.

Ms. Kitka was really impressed with Torque’s honesty. “Interviewing him was hilarious because he came out with the most simple, regular things that you would talk to your friends about, but not necessarily say on TV,” Ms. Kitka said. “He said how hard it is to get a hard on when you are in front of lights and camera and all these other students in the Porn Star Academy, but also said it really is a dream come true to get to have sex with beautiful women.”

Ms. Kitka loves the honesty of the guests on her show and tries to give them an open forum to say anything they want to. “Whatever you want to say, if you want to piss on George Bush or John Kerry or whoever, I’ll put it up,” she revealed.

That honesty and the show’s unique pin-up feel help to keep people coming back week after week. Ms. Kitka averages 11,000 subscribers to her video podcast and estimates that she has a total of 40,000 total viewers each week.

The other reason her show is so successful is the production quality and professional look of each episode. That comes from the long hours she puts into each show. It takes Ms. Kitka three to four hours every week to write and research the content for each show, then five hours for filming (which gives her around 50 minutes of raw footage), 14 hours of editing and two to three hours of compression, uploading and posting. Considering she does all of this on her free time while holding down a full time job, it’s easy to see her dedication.

Of course, she’s always been interested in film making and communications. She tried to pursue a career in the field, but she didn’t get accepted to the communications program at her university. “I was 19 when it was time to go to university and even though I had studied some communications, I didn’t get in,” she said. “I think the reason I didn’t get in was because I was so strange. I was this punk rock chick with crazy hair and crazy piercings and crazy makeup and everything and it really didn’t jive with the image that they had at their university. So I ended up taking a completely different path, taking a U-turn and moving away to the U.K. to work. I turned to martial arts and studying Asia.”

Ms. Kitka never really planned on doing a show about sex. “I’ve never been a specialist in sex,” she said with a giggle. “I started it because I started this erotic dancing class and I was really, really excited about it. I just wanted to tell everybody just how cool it is and how much fun I was having and how sexy it is. Girls should do this just to feel good about themselves.” So, she ended up starting her own blog. “Originally I had a whole bunch of stuff, it was a real hodgepodge of things, but I started narrowing it down to only sex things because people were more interested and I ended up getting a lot more comments and I enjoyed writing about it. It got to a point where I just loved doing it and needed to do more, but I wanted to do it in a different medium.” After pitching the idea to her boyfriend, Kitkast was born. Her boyfriend, who she affectionately refers to as Zod, is the cameraman for her show.

While fans may see her as a witty sexual icon, Ms. Kitka reveals that she is really a nerd at heart. She was raised on Star Trek and is convinced that it is more than just a show; it can be a model for how to live your life. “Forget religion, all you need is Star Trek to teach you how to be a good person,” she said. Ms. Kitka even works at Sci-Fi conventions from time to time.

In fact, the only time she has been recognized by someone was because of a Sci-Fi convention. “I was working with Kevin Sorbo and Adam Baldwin,” she said. “I was sitting next to Adam Baldwin, taking money for autographs and someone came with a camera. I didn’t even notice the camera when the guy came. He was a video blogger.” A few days later, someone went to her blog and posted a link to the Sci-Fi fan’s video. “It had music on it and everything and it had me talking to Adam Baldwin and this guy recognized me.”

Of course, Ms. Kitka is hoping to get recognized more in the future. She would love to get her own television show one day. She even promises that if she did land a TV gig, she would still continue to do Kitkast as a side project, since she believes the future of broadcasting is with the Internet. As long as the future includes her in revealing outfits making wisecracks, we promise to be along for the ride.

Written by Joel Murphy, February 2006. For more information on Ms. Kitka and Kitkast, visit her website..

The Hazzards Anne Harris and Sydney Maresca

When Sydney Maresca attended a friend’s party in 2000, she had no idea it would change her life. Sydney had recently purchased a ukulele, her first musical instrument, and she was eager to brag to her friends about it.

“I was wandering around a party in Williamsburg telling everyone about my awesome ukulele and they all said, “Yeah, that’s really great. Go talk to Anne Harris, she just got one too,’” Sydney said. “We hung out and Anne was like, ‘We should start a band and it should be called The Ukes of Hazzard.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, now we have to because that name is so good.’”

And just like that, a new band was formed. The duo later shortened their name to The Hazzards “to stay on the right side of the law.” The Hazzards, who describe themselves as a “novelty indy pop band,” have been winning over audiences with their catchy songs and perky demeanor ever since.

One might wonder why ukuleles are their instrument of choice. For the girls, the decision was a simple one. “I know I got a ukulele because it looked really easy to me,” Sydney explained.

Anne followed up with, “I thought it looked really easy too. I’m not good at practicing, so I really wanted an easy instrument. I played viola and I played clarinet for two weeks. I guess ukulele is the instrument I’ve played the longest. Besides voice. And tambourine.”

But their decision goes deeper than that. “Another reason I got the ukulele is Marilyn Monroe plays it in Some Like It Hot,” Anne said. “She’s really pretty.”

Throughout our interview, the perky duo seemed to be having a great time. They were giggling and finishing each others sentences, like two schoolgirls enjoying a sleepover. Their giddiness is infectious. Of course, their schoolgirl charm should come as no surprise, considering they promote their shows by writing “Dear Diary” entries in an online blog. It’s also no surprise they consider themselves to be a modern day Laverne and Shirley.

When asked about their musical influences, Sydney responded with, “Wow, musical influences. That’s like a real band question.”

After considering the question for a moment, Anne had an answer, “I try to deny this so hard and I shouldn’t even be saying it now. Sydney busts me all the time on secretly liking musical theater, but I don’t.”

“She does, too,” Sydney quickly added.

“But I do think it informs my work,” Anne said.

“I, 100 percent hate musical theater,” Sydney responded, “but we went on a trip to England and she went there two days before me. And, I got there and she was like, ‘Oh my god, I just had the best time staying up all night and singing Le Mis.’”

“Oh my god, that’s so embarrassing,” Anne said while laughing.

“I just busted you. I’m sorry.”

Their biggest hit is “Gay Boyfriend,” which was one of the first songs they wrote together. The song was downloaded over a million times within its first three months on their site. The song was a bit hit in the U.K. as well, debuting at number 67 on the British singles charts, beating Seal. That lead to a promotional tour of England, including a cooking show, a morning talk show and a chat with the The Sun. “We were like Q List celebrities for like three weeks,” Sydney explained.

However, “Gay Boyfriend” still gets its share of air play. “If you go to a gay German disco, you will hear our song,” said Sydney.

The Hazzards are far from a one hit wonder. Their EP So Pretty, features five other songs, including “SexySpirit4U,” which is made up of real lyrics from a personal ad their friend received.

“We just took all of these emails that my friend got on Nerve.com,” Anne explained. “She was getting all of these Nerve personal responses from this dude in her neighborhood. They were all from the same day during a blizzard. He was so desperate. We were like, ‘Amazing. Cut and paste.’” They did make one change in the lyrics, though. “We changed his email address. People can’t really email him at magicianlover@yahoo.com.”

“Hotmail,” Sydney said.

“No, it’s totally Earthlink,” Anne clarified. Then, after a pause, “Netzero.”

The CD also features the song “Just a Temp,” which depicts life as a temporary employee in an office building. The song includes the lyrics, “The secretary’s got a cake for Cheryl’s birthday party. They’re all in the conference room. No temps aren’t invited.”

“I didn’t even change the names in that,” said Sydney. “That’s Cheryl Mintz’s birthday party.”

Of course, listening to their CD isn’t as much fun as seeing them live. According to Anne and Sydney, their live shows feature a ton of high fives and matching outfits. Their live shows also include a full band.

They have a regular gig in New York, their “Wednesday Night Make-Out Party” at Galapagos in Brooklyn. They also recently played at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage on the night Steve Martin received The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. To celebrate
the occasion, The Hazzards even wrote a special song just for Martin.

The band has now turned it’s attention to the future. They toyed around with the idea of tapping into the lucrative children’s music market by forming a kid-friendly band called The Blazzards. They are also planning on recording more music videos and working on another album in the spring.

The Hazzards Anne Harris and Sydney Maresca

What would be their ultimate measure of success? “Originally we said we wanted to have a Japanese beverage commercial,” Anne said, “But I think now we want to have either a cartoon show or maybe, we’re trying to write a movie.”

When asked about the plot of their cartoon show, Sydney explained, “We’d probably solve a lot of mysteries.”

In the meantime, the two are just having fun and honing their sound. They added a rap battle to their set and Sydney recently acquired an electric ukulele.

“I’ll probably come up with some sweet soloing,” Sydney said, “once I learn how to do that.”

Written by Joel Murphy, November 2005. You can keep up to date on The Hazzards upcoming shows, read thier blog, watch their music videos or purchase their CD at http://www.hazzards.com.

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