The Post-ShockNet Era

The Post-ShockNet Era
(Or: What the heck am I going to do now that I don't have a live radio show to give me a sense of purpose?)

ShockNet Radio has now officially gone the way of City of Heroes...

Long live ShockNet Radio!

I spent many years helping RJ and his wife with both my own show and with RJ's. It has literally been a part of my life, a part of who I am. I have identified myself as "media personality for ShockNet Radio" for a few years now instead of as a writer or a comic book creator or an online columnist. This has been my dream job! And now that dream is shut down.

So the question of the hour is "What now?"

Well, for starters, I still have a whole half-year of archives to post. I have been using Ourmedia as my intermediary for the Internet Archive, and Ourmedia has been seriously screwed up since the spring. Since Ourmedia was essential in getting the iTunes link, I lost my iTunes connection as well. And since the folks at Ourmedia show no interest in getting the matter fixed (it's BEEN over six months!), I guess I'll have to come up with my own intermediary link for the Internet Archive so I can finish posting those archived shows that people have missed. This will also serve as the home for the return of the Brutally Honest Rants in late January 2014. 

The only question I have will be will I be using Blogger or Wordpress? Stay tuned.

The Brutally Honest - LIVE Facebook page will (hopefully) stay and has been re-purposed into "Brutally Honest Rants", so those of you that "like" it on Facebook will still have it around for updates.  The SNR logo has been replaced with Get Brutal Productions, but everything else should still be there.

This Monday's Brutally Honest Column will be the annual "Brutally Honest Awards" feature, wrapping up the year looking at the best of the best and the worst of the worst and everything else that I might be able to remember about the year. Then that will be it for the holidays.  But, don't worry, new articles WILL be coming back in the second half of January. (Hey, I've been doing this for seventeen years now.  It's the one thing that I completely control, so why should I stop now?)

That brings us to my OTHER ventures...

First, Battlerock Comics.

"Future's Guardian" #9 will be going online on Sunday, December 1st.  BUT no rest for the weary as I'll be working on FG10 for January 15th.

And in between that I'll be working on ANOTHER venture that will have some eyebrows raised and some pants wetted.  Keep checking the website and you might catch a little "Seasons Greeting" whipped up just for the occasion.

Then there's the NEW venture with RJ and company...

AHTV!

Yes, that American Heathen® Television! We've taken the radio show that kicked off ShockNet Radio back in 2005 and turned it on it's side... took some really nasty pics of it... and will be putting it on Blip.TV starting December 25th! But it's not going to be like the radio show you may (or most likely not) remember. No, we're going for your mind AND your funny bone!

And, yes, I'll be in it... or rather a "version" of me will be in it. Call it David2.1... always in perpetual beta-test mode. You'll see what I mean come December 25th.

So... pretty busy "down time" for me, but that's what I got so far. 

ShockNet Radio is gone, but the spirit lives on.

Brutally Honest - LIVE! - 11/25/13 - FINAL SHOW NOTES

This is it, folks.

THE LAST SHOW!

I didn't want it to end. I still don't want it to end. But end it must.

So this is it, and if we're going to go, we're going to go BIG!

The theme for this final show will be PAST, PRESENT, & FUTURE. Where we've been, what we are doing now, and what's to come.

We'll have the phone lines. We'll have guests. We'll have surprises. We'll have everything... well, everything EXCEPT punch and pie. (Sorry, I have to do EVERYTHING around here, and sacrifices did have to be made.)

And if you thought I'd be crazy to promise all of that with only one hour to do it all in, well then you'd be right.

SO we're bumping this last hurrah up to TWO HOURS!

Be sure to tune in one more time THIS MONDAY (11/25), right here on ShockNet Radio at 8pm Eastern (7pm Central and 5pm Pacific) over at www.shocknetradio.com and also at Apple's iTunes Radio Player under the "Classic Rock" category.

And don't forget that I'll be in the "BH LIVE" chatroom at www.shocknetradio.com during the show to discuss the subject LIVE, and I'll be taking your calls toll-free in the U.S. and Canada at 866-400-6684

Help me make this last show one for the archives!

When the truth is not enough, it's time for... BRUTALLY HONEST - LIVE!

Brutally Honest - LIVE! - 11/18/13 - Show Notes

We're almost there folks... this is the PENULTIMATE show!

And what a subject to talk about for this next-to-last broadcast...

THE DEATH OF HOPE!

This week marks a certain anniversary that many people wished never happened. (And if you happen to think that the event in question was my birth, then... well even I wouldn't be that egotistical.) And while a lot of people want to focus only on that one event in history, I think it opened the door to a much larger problem. One that has been affecting us for about fifty years now.

I'll explain more on the air, and then I'll want your thoughts on it.

Be sure to tune in THIS MONDAY (11/18), right here on ShockNet Radio at 8pm Eastern (7pm Central and 5pm Pacific) over at www.shocknetradio.com and also at Apple's iTunes Radio Player under the "Classic Rock" category.

And don't forget that I'll be in the "BH LIVE" chatroom at www.shocknetradio.com during the show to discuss the subject LIVE, and I'll be taking your calls toll-free in the U.S. and Canada at 866-400-6684

Oh, and by the way, if you like what you hear, if you enjoy the conversations and rants, then tell your friends about the show and have them tune in as well!

When the truth is not enough, it's time for... BRUTALLY HONEST - LIVE!

Brutally Honest - LIVE! - 11/11/13 - Show Notes

Our time here on the air is almost coming to a close, so I figured I'd share something special with you for this week's program.

You know how President Obama's new healthcare website has been undergoing problems? Well apparently someone has decided to work up an alternative program, and a certain commentator was asked to help "beta-test" it. And how better to "beta-test" this new program than to do it on the air?

So that's what we're going to do!

That won't be all I have for us, of course, but it should get your attention.

Be sure to tune in THIS MONDAY (11/11), right here on ShockNet Radio at 8pm Eastern (7pm Central and 5pm Pacific) over at www.shocknetradio.com and also at Apple's iTunes Radio Player under the "Classic Rock" category.

And don't forget that I'll be in the "BH LIVE" chatroom at www.shocknetradio.com during the show to discuss the subject LIVE, and I'll be taking your calls toll-free in the U.S. and Canada at 866-400-6684

Oh, and by the way, if you like what you hear, if you enjoy the conversations and rants, then tell your friends about the show and have them tune in as well!

When the truth is not enough, it's time for... BRUTALLY HONEST - LIVE!

End Of Year... and other endings...

We've come to the part of the year that I really don't put too much thought about... the END of the year.

And this year, the "END" comes in so many different ways.

If you haven't been listening to ShockNet Radio, then you probably don't know that the station will be shutting down at the end of this month.

This is not a temporary shutdown.  This is not the annual "Holiday Hiatus".  ShockNet Radio will come to an end at 11pm Eastern Time on Friday, November 29th. The station goes dark, the equipment gets broken down and sold and Studio B joins Studio A in obscurity.

Obviously this means there will be no more "Brutally Honest - LIVE" after this month.  The show needs a live radio station to make it happen, and there will be no more ShockNet Radio after this month, so BHL will come to an end.

Don't worry, I will have a grand finale on November 25th.  It'll be a special 2-hour final broadcast, and I have NO IDEA what I'll be doing for the last hour.

And I REALLY HOPE that you guys will tune for the shows on the 11th and 18th too!!!  I don't want you guys to think that I'M giving up on you before then, so please don't give up on me!  I'm not like some of the other hosts that I will not mention that have given up on their shows long before the plug is pulled on them.  I LIKE DOING THIS!  I WISH I COULD KEEP DOING THIS!  I feel just as let down as some of you that the decision was made to shut down SNR, but it wasn't my call and I have to accept the decision of those that made the call and were responsible for keeping my labor of love going for as long as it has.

That brings us to the question of "What next?"

Some people have asked that I return "Brutally Honest" to an hour or half-hour podcast like it used to be before going live.  I have a few issues with that. 

The first issue is that I don't have the time to dedicate to that kind of work like I used to.  I have work and a few projects on my plate, including the new AHTV series.  That's time, effort, and energy that I don't have to put into doing an hour or even half-hour podcast.

The second issue is a matter of spirit.  Losing BHL and ShockNet is taking a lot out of me.  This is a kick in the nuts on the same level as NC Soft suddenly killing my favorite MMO last year.  While I understand the decision of RJ and his wife to end the station (and their reason was a thousand times more credible than NC Soft's was), it still hurts, and I do not have it within me to try to pretend that I can "keep the magic going" by doing a self-published podcast.

That's not to say I'm hanging up the microphone and shutting down the soundboard!  I will most likely return to doing a weekly audio rant in 2014.  But it will be just one rant.  I'll have the details of that later on at this blog site.  Maybe some day when I can get someone else's attention and I have access to live radio I can bring "Brutally Honest - LIVE" back.  I just don't see that day coming anytime soon.

Next up... the weekly column.

I'm still doing the column, as I have been doing for the past seventeen years.  The last column for the year will be out on December 2nd, and it will be the annual "Brutally Honest Awards", and then that will be it for 2013.  However, unlike the radio show, the column WILL be back in January of 2014.  Believe me, I don't want to miss out on some prime commentating when it comes to the mid-term elections!

Now... let's talk comics and the future of Battlerock Comics.

"Future's Guardian" is still going on.  We are about mid-way through the "Psilence of Conscience" storyline and things are just starting to get interesting there.  The production schedule has been moved to a 45-day cycle instead of a monthly release because of some of the other projects on my plate right now.  We will be taking a break after the storyline ends, but that's only because there are some other comic projects that we need to concentrate on.  The series WILL resume afterward!  It is not being cancelled!

For more about that, please continue to visit the Battlerock Comics website.

So, that's pretty much it for now.  We have three more shows of "Brutally Honest - LIVE" to do, four more articles for the column for the year, the comic series is still going on, and, oh, AHTV makes its debut in December so you'll be able to find out why I have a face for radio!

Holiday?  WHAT Holiday?  :)

Brutally Honest - LIVE! - 11/04/13 - Show Notes

So how was your Halloween? Get any good candy?

Of course, for many local politicians here in America, the real sweets are this coming Tuesday with Election Day. A day that most people will probably ignore, but they really shouldn't.

Given the forthcoming local elections, and the fact that it falls on Guy Fawkes Day, I thought maybe we should look at what it would take to really fix government. Because there ARE some ideas being floated about, ranging from fixing how we are taxed to term limits and even one radical method of supposedly holding members of the U.S. Senate in line. We'll go over that and some others you may have either in the chat room or by calling in through our TOLL-FREE number.

Because we know that something is wrong; we just can't seem to agree as to what needs to be done to fix it.

Be sure to tune in THIS MONDAY (11/04), right here on ShockNet Radio at 8pm Eastern (7pm Central and 5pm Pacific) over at www.shocknetradio.com and also at Apple's iTunes Radio Player under the "Classic Rock" category.

And don't forget that I'll be in the "BH LIVE" chatroom at www.shocknetradio.com during the show to discuss the subject LIVE, and I'll be taking your calls toll-free in the U.S. and Canada at 866-400-6684

Oh, and by the way, if you like what you hear, if you enjoy the conversations and rants, then tell your friends about the show and have them tune in as well!

When the truth is not enough, it's time for... BRUTALLY HONEST - LIVE!