The Drabblecast

Drabble- Hanging
by Doug McIntire

Storm Comes A' Callin'
by Jeremiah Tolbert

I heft the axe. Lighter now, and warm in my palms. My old bones creak, I lift it over my head. I stare at the groove in the ground, beaten into the land. Many a storm been broke here. Too many, maybe...



Music by
Big Bill Broonzy, John Campbell, Cheyenne Wright and Norm Sherman

Things I love:
The story
The narration
The Intro/Outro
The idea of the song
The voice of the storm
Things I don't love:
The way the song was done. It was too long for a song that's not intended to be intelligible. Would have been better, IMO, shorter and blended with the sound of wind and rain.
The Drabble was okay, extremely straightforward for DC. Could have stood some crowd noises at the start. And it's vigilanteee justice, I think.
The Intro on Science bordered on lunatic. Don't go near EP with that mess. Norm's accent here is a curious hybrid of British and Mandarin Chinese, but the grammatical rabbit trail really lolled, and I'm delighted that this character is episodic. Great idea. I can see that we might actually have proven the existence of aliens and Chupacabres, but for the Clouseau-like investigator in charge of the project, which might be called The X(traYChromosome)Files.

For anyone hearing the promo and desiring more information about this year's Mega-Beast Death-Match competition, check out the topic: http://drabblecast.freeforums.org/mega-beast-season-iii-f48.html

Official debuts and voting will begin next Wednesday (the 30th).

Wow. Just wow. That was so cool. Chills went up my spine the whole time.
I guess I'll follow the list format:
Things I loved:
Intro/Outro, as usual.
The music.
Cheyenne Wright's voice.
The story. Awesome.
Things I didn't love:
Same Deathmatch promo as last year?!
Just playin, it was even sort of funny how Norm just cut out the 8 in 2008 and replaced it with 9.

Yah, whatever Connor Choadsworth's accent is, it's a dead-on impression of what those documentary journalist types usually sound like. Low, sorta british, sorta mumbly. Hilarious how it so easily becomes a writing workshop for the Mongolian man, who could have provided detailed information about the worm if only he could have done it according to Strunk's Elements of Style. Redundant adjectives annoy me too; clever how by the end they get so extreme that Norm just stops using synonyms and calls the DeathWorm deadly twice.

This was my favorite of the Tolbert stories DC has run. It had a really cool vibe and great imagery, which he has shown a talent for in his other stories here as well. I don't get how the protagonist escaped at the end though. It seemed like a cop-out transition into "it's springtime now" after he's up to his neck in water and still somehow hacks apart the Storm Man.

Norm and Cheyenne are maybe the two best voices on the internet. Having them together in one episode was amazing.

I disagree with strawman though, I think the music was really neat. It was cool how it started with the original Big Bill song and faded into storm and wind. The cover of the song was really dark and fit the mood perfectly, loved the eerie harmonica mixed with wind, rain and guitar. I thought the 12bar blues format was perfect for weaving the rounds in between the narrative. The way that Cheyenne says "people began to holler and scream" at the end of the song wins creepiest moment in DC history as far as I'm concerned.

I really enjoyed this story, it was very atmospheric. This was in part due to the fantastic production. Tom Waits on guest vocals?

Well, the story was great, the narration was awesome, and the "In Search Of" bit made me want to dig up some of the old Nimoy tapes in my basement.

Really, the only thing I didn't like was that the concept (sentient storms) might hurt the chances for my recent submission being accepted. And that would be terrible.

Norm,

Please, please tell me you were joking when you pronounced it Buck Go-Dot.

ROU Killing Time wrote:Norm,

Please, please tell me you were joking when you pronounced it Buck Go-Dot.

.... .... .... ..... ....
Eh...I was joking?

Man, you're easy to please.

normsherman wrote:

ROU Killing Time wrote:Norm,

Please, please tell me you were joking when you pronounced it Buck Go-Dot.

.... .... .... ..... ....
Eh...I was joking?

Man, you're easy to please.

/facepalm

This was all made of win, but the redundant redundancies were favorite. I liked how the joke appeared to be going in an entertaining, but familiar direction (cryptozoology), but then it veered away and galloped off down an unexpected path. Abbie hearts writer humor.

This is one of my favorite Drabblecasts so far. The story was good, but the songs and the production took it over the top. "That old Ohio River. . ."

I have to give my hat off to Mr. Tolbert, all of his stories are reality bending machines, gripping through the ectoplasm of the mundane, and booting that mother for ten points on the jumbotron. Yes this how I feel. A great story of a man wrestling old demons, and coming out on top. And I love a story where enemies respect each other, despite what they know they have to do to each other. Many stories make this cheesy, but this was done well with the music at the heart of it.

This story along with the production was perfect. Had to listen to it twice, Mr. Tolbert you were right, it took two swings!!!!

The opening intro was wonderfully awesome and hilariously funny.

Maybe it's because I punched a hole in my finger with a nail gun on Sunday, then proceeded to go chop wood with an axe until I needed surgery (click for a photo if you're into that kind of thing, sicko)... maybe that's why this story really got to me. I even broke the handle that day, and will need to replace it with some fine hickory. The kind you wear smooth with hard hands.

Even with a broken handle, my axe is heavy now. But it will be lighter soon.

Still, not sure how one goes about swinging an axe when you're up to your neck in rain water.

I really enjoyed this story. The way he describes that it could be another storm makes it feel like he has some history with this particular being and might actually take him up on his offer the next time. The blues, wind and rain all mixed together made for some great imagery. Definitely in my top 5 thus far. Well done!

Great episode! I really, really enjoyed it.
What was the story about? I mean, I get it, old foes and all that, but I don't really get it. What are the axe and storm metaphors for?
Great production, Norm!

Oh man, this is like a high school English quiz, right? But I'm pretty sure the storm is a metaphor for the forces of nature. And the ax is a metaphor for the forces of humankind. Storm knocks tree down, Ax splits and shapes tree into logs and lumber and houses and civilization, storm floods and washes civilization away, ax wops storm upside de haid.
(I think I remember getting points off for that last phrase.)

If this were an essay question, you would then have to pad that paragraph with 6 pages of bovine fecal matter. You would probably frame the discussion around the metaphor choices being a primitive example of the man vs environment meme, and trace the development of the meme up through Cloverfield, and then recent Escapepod episodes (Kindness of Strangers, EP 217) in which aliens are added to the meme to act as referees who step in as man is about to permanently destroy nature with a food processor (The Food Processor, Drabblecast 104). All of this would be woven into a seamless multicolored garment and brought to the conclusion that since mankind is a product of nature, nature has sown within itself the seeds of its own destruction as well as (as represented by Al Gore) the seeds of possible salvation and redemption. All life hangs in the balance. And since a tree which falls in the forest when no one is there to hear it is the sound of one hand clapping, ergo the Universe ceases to exist.

And this is the utterly predictable, anti-human precautionary theme of an awful lot of science fiction, which is preponderantly misogynistic.

With the notable exception of the newest evolutionary form: the Drabblecast. DC has poisoned the well of Sci-Fi pessimism with the gene therapy of humor. Listen to the forum screams on certain forum threads, and hear the sounds of suffering from wounded SciFi Puritan Moralists.

But this is not a quiz.

Something really strange happened to you in high school english class (such an impressionable age, those teenage years,) didn't it, Strawman?

strawman wrote:If this were an essay question, you would then have to pad that paragraph with 6 pages of bovine fecal matter.

Hahahaha! So true.

You could also focus on the storm as the agent of entropy and the ax as the agent of organization - yin/yang, creation and destruction, blah, blah, blah.

I live in Florida and this story made me rethink my Hurricane Supply Kit. I know now that all I need is a big ass axe. When the storm comes, I'll break that mother up!

Great story. Great narration (no surprises there) and great sound effects. Plus a kick ass blues song. Nice all around.