A Note from the Captain (UHF Ticket Giveaway, Remembering When)

Hello, this is your Captain Carlin speaking. To our patrons old and new: THANK YOU! I like to periodically chime in here so here I am chiming!

First off, we are presenting Weird Al's classic/only feature film UHF at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, CA next week on Wednesday, August 27 at 7:30pm as a part of the American Cinematheque Podcast Film Festival. So we're giving away three pairs of tickets for PATRONS ONLY. Follow these directions carefully please to throw your name in the hat: email officehourslive@gmail.com with "You're so stupid!" in the subject line and your full name in the body of the email. We'll select winners randomly and email them on Monday. Or you can buy tickets here.

Second off, SoCal heads, go see Tim, Doug and Vic TONIGHT in San Diego at the Casbah! Get your tickets here.

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Ok, onto the CONTENT portion.

A wise Italian-American man from New Jersey once said "remember when is the lowest form of conversation." But I'm going to take you on a brief stroll down memory lane anyway.

When I'm out and about meeting new people they often ask how I met Tim and how I got the job on Office Hours. Which is kind of the same story, so I'll tell you a quick version here for the record.

Years ago (2000 to be exact), post-college, in New York City, Tim and I, along with some other folks, were temps doing data entry at a music club called the Knitting Factory. It was the dumbest job ever. In between prank phone calls and general goofing off, our assignment was to plagiarize a jazz encyclopedia (we all shared one copy) to populate an online "resource" called jazze.com. Literally typing "Duke Ellington was born in 1889 in Lincolnton, North Carolina" etc. etc. into the database for what was no doubt some kind of dot com era investment scheme perpetrated by the owner of the club.

It was monotonous, truly pointless work - allmusic.com already existed, the money was soon to run out - but it forged some friendships and put chickens in the pots on the mini-stoves in our Brooklyn and East Village walk-ups. And we got to see unlimited shows and drank free at the club. Not a bad deal. I went on to get a more real job at the club as a writer/editor for the main website and the printed program guide, and stuck around there for a while.

Anyway, the friendship was solidified when I loaned Tim's band The Tim Heidecker Masterpiece a drum set to play a 30th birthday gig at the Unknown Bikers clubhouse in Williamsburg. I met the rest of the band, Sonny D and Ken Tuckitt, along with some of their extended friend group, and soon enough all these Philly transplants became my pals running around New York in our early 20s, hanging out, putting on rock shows, and generally finding our way in life.

Fast forward about 20 years, my old/current/still friend Tim reached out before a Tim and Eric tour to help set up Office Hours on Patreon, Covid-19 happened, and over the course of a few months the captain's hat became more firmly planted on my dome and the rest is the history you can watch for yourself here on the Patreon in our extensive archives.

Ok that's enough of that. But at the risk of some even worse schmaltzy nostalgia: what a treat it was to see Tim and the Very Good Band, along with Doug and Neil Hamburger perform in Los Angeles last night. I've been watching Tim perform for 25 years now, listening to Neil's albums for almost 30, seeing Doug perform for at least 15, and been watching Vic's vids since he started making them over 10 years ago. Objectively speaking - even if they weren't my friends and colleagues - these guys deliver the goods consistently and still make me laugh every time! And I can't even tell you what an honor is is to serve as their captain. 🫡

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Back to business: we hear the noisy, small minority complaining about the ad reads. We discussed and for now we're going to stick with them. Even though it's not a ton of money we're a small operation and every dollar makes a difference and lets us do cool stuff, give holiday bonuses, raises, etc. So for now they stay, bone pickers. Sorry/not sorry. I try to cut them out of the Patreon replay, but YouTube takes a long time to process those videos and it sometimes gets lost in the shuffle of waiting.

Speaking of the aforementioned archives, I'm still working on filling in all the videos (when they exist) for pre-100 episodes on the Patreon archives collection. Keep letting me know if you can't find a particular episode or something else. Completists should check out the Compendium if you don't know about it - it has EVERYTHING listed out.

Quick shout out to the amazing crew that makes the show happen every week: director Wesley Knapp, audio engineer Luke Burba, associate producer Lieutenant Carson Rohl who does too much to list here, graphic designer Dan Mulcahy who does (almost) all the funny show art and editor Chris Robison who does (almost) all the extended funny clips. They don't get nearly enough credit so here it is!

Have any other suggestions, questions or complaints? Sound off in the comments!

Thank you for listening,
Producer Matt