The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show, Episode 20: Mel Blanc

Generally speaking, when life gets busy, the podcast tends to slip further and further down the list of priorities, I’m afraid. But I do enjoy creating new episodes of The Hard-Boiled Poker Radio Show whenever I can find the time. Managed to pull together the 20th one over the weekend, and have now posted it on the show’s website.

For this episode, I decided to focus on a few different items featuring Mel Blanc, the great actor and comedian who provided the voices for something like 300 different cartoon characters over his long, illustrious career. On the show I begin with a funny song by Blanc called “Money,” then talk about a couple of old Bugs Bunny cartoons in which Bugs plays cards. Finally, I play an entire episode of the old time radio show, The Mel Blanc Show.

There is a bit of gambling in the episode. Took me a good while to search through episodes of Blanc’s show to find any references whatsoever to card playing or gambling. But at last I found one. Unfortunately, the episode I found was one that did not feature my favorite element of Blanc’s show, namely, Jim Backus’s hilarious portrayal of Blanc'’s exceedingly vain acquaintance Hartley Benson. So I play a little bit of Backus from another episode right before the full show, just so to give a sample of this side-splitting character.

During the recording and mixing of this episode, I realized that despite my earnest efforts the previous episode (No. 19) had some sketchy audio here and there, although I think it is at least listenable. I wanted to say that this new Episode 20 sounds quite good in terms of audio-quality -- indeed, it might be the best-sounding episode I’ve done. I used a new microphone and did a lot of post-production noise removal and what not to make it sound good. Still not up to professional standards, but a decent job of faking it.

Also, as it happens, the recordings of The Mel Blanc Show are of excellent quality, which isn’t always the case with these old time radio shows from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. So if you happen to give this episode of the HBPRS a spin, you can expect decent sound throughout. And a few grins along the way, too, I think.

As always, any feedback or suggestions are welcome. Comment here or over on the show’s blog. You can also subscribe to the show in iTunes (click here to get to the page in the iTunes store), where you can review it as well. Or just shoot me an email at shamus at hardboiledpoker dot com.

Work is calling, so I’m gonna go ahead and cut it short today and say...