Wordsmoker

Off the top of my head, there’s about four “water-cooler” television shows out there at the moment. Some of them are not on the air at the moment, but that’s not going to stop me listing them here, right now, in front of your beautiful eyes. Ready? “Breaking Bad”. “Mad Men”. “Louie”. “Community”. You might talk about “True Blood” at this hypothetical water-cooler, but that’s just really well-made nonsense. And I know Senor Wences is wincing at the lack of inclusion of “Rizzoli and Isles”, but I’m sorry – I have to draw the line somewhere, Wences. “Rizzoli and Isles” aside, you can’t go wrong with watching and re-watching any of these shows. All of them have excellent showrunners, uniquely gifted, and we’re lucky to be around while they hit a hot streak. But I’d like to concentrate on one of these shows in particular, and the creator of one of these shows in particular – Dan Harmon, the particular particulate who created “Community”. For Dan Harmon has also created “Harmontown”.

Where to begin? Honestly? I’ve never laughed so much at a podcast in my life as I have at the end of episode one. I mean “laugh”. I mean “scream with laughter” laugh. Laugh so loudly, so long, that my mother came running through to see if I was okay. It’s not just the end of the podcast that was funny. I started off listening to it when shopping up the town. I carried back four boxes of teabags, two big bags of birdseed, spread evenly between two cheap plastic bags, over a distance of one mile. I walked along smiling, laughing out loud. Literally LOL’ing. I paused it when I got home, to empty out my teabag-birdseed hybrid purchases, then sat down at my computer box to check my emails. Then, about ten minutes into answering emails and firing off cock-shots to potential friends and enemies, the last part of the first episode came on, and I heard it with my ears and I laughed about as hard as I have in the past five years. No shitting you. It was That Funny.

Okay. I’m not really a podcast officionado. I listen to two regularly. Marc Maron’s and FilmSpotting. I recommend them both. And speaking of Maron? He interviewed Dan Harmon a while back, and Dan Harmon struck me as a kinda moody, really serious guy who was really serious about comedy and doing things right. Irony? I think when Marc Maron uploaded the Dan Harmon episode, he’d just been fired as Community’s showrunner by NBC. AREN’T NBC GREAT???? I know. When Marc Maron interviewed Dan Harmon for the podcast he was still in a job at NBC. This actually doesn’t matter a whole lot now. Well, it does. Because I was sort of worried about Dan Harmon. How would he take getting fired by NBC? Losing control of his baby? Watching as others came in to breast-feed it? Watching as new parents came in to fuck it up, Philip Larkin-style?

I think Dan’s going to be okay. Let me say this right here – Dan Harmon is one funny motherfucker. I mean “funny”. Sharp. Quick. Reasonably well-read. Knowledge of pop culture? Yes. Knowledge of movies, television? Surreal? Fuck yeah. I want to sit beside Dan Harmon of an evening and drink tea with him and listen to him talk. After listening to him on Harmontown, you will too. And it’s not just Dan Harmon. The “Comptroller” of Harmontown is Jeff Davis. I’d never heard of Jeff Davis before this. And I love him too. These are two seriously funny bastards, just riffing on shit. Oh! And Dan Harmon’s girlfriend, Erin McGathy. Jeff isn’t around for Episode 2, so Erin fills in. She is hilarious too. I hope these two get married and have hilarious little babies together and these babies can grow up and take over NBC in a baby-coup.

Did I mention that I thought Harmontown was pretty funny?

You can get Harmontown via iTunes I guess. I won’t have iTunes anywhere near my computer box on general principle (it’s a terrible, bloated piece of code), but I guess if you have iTunes installed you can search iTunes for “harmontown” or “Dan Harmon” or something. There are various places you can download it on the web, I think Onion’s AV Club does a thing where you can listen to it on the web in a flash player thing, but I don’t want to do that! I want to listen to it on my Android Phone while I’m walking back from town carrying birdseed and teabags! So – as a public service? Wordsmoker will be hosting Harmontown in its Dropbox-box. Below you’ll find links to them, and a little summary, but what I’m going to do is let you download them all, get yourselves up to speed, and from Episode Four (yet to be podcasted) I’ll post a new post thing for it and a link and then we can all listen and laugh at it and talk about it here, right here, on Wordsmoker.

Shit. I really hope you like this as much as I do. Okay. Episodes. Three are already up. Here’s some linkies and summaries:

Episode One – Achieve Weightlessness

Honestly? I don’t want to give away too much, but this entire episode is worth it for the final ten minutes. The ten minutes where I laughed so much I scared my mother? It’s this one. A little clue? “Disneyland Deaths”. DO IT.

Episode Two – The Inception of Girlfriends

Jeff is out of town and can’t be the Comptroller of Harmontown, so Dan’s girlfriend and fellow podcaster Erin McGathy fills in. Maybe you’ll fall in love with Erin too, like I did. Whatever. I hope these crazy kids make it in this crazy world. She’s fucking hilarious. And Dan is too. MAKE HILARIOUS BABIES YOU FUCKS!

Episode Three – If They Have Cubs We’re Already Dead

Jeff is back. Dan – for the first ten, fifteen minutes impersonates Liam Neeson in “The Grey”. For this – and the continuing riff on “The Grey” – it’s worth the download alone.

Okay. Get to it. Get downloading and laughing. And I’ll see you back here for Episode Four, whenever that goes up. I’ll do a linky for non iTunes sheeple and stuff, and we’ll all gather of an evening or a work-day and talk about it.

I can’t fucking wait.