I’m trying to post the occasional update on creative stuff I’ve been doing and upcoming shows!
Creative stuffs I’ve been up to!
I’m having a lot of fun being a contributing writer for RiffTrax. Basically, I get assigned a chunk of the movie and write the jokes for that chunk. In the past few months, I worked on a short starring a pedantic talking dog called The Value of Teamwork and an obscure little indie film called The Force Awakens.
I also made a new comedy video called Adult Storytime, featuring artwork by Alex Robinson, the co-host of the great podcast Star Wars Minute. If it goes well, I might make more. You can watch it right here!
I’ve been doing a lot of Star Wars talking! I was thrilled to be a guest on Collider Jedi Council, a very popular YouTube show and podcast covering all things Star Wars.
Finally, Obsessed is continuing to grow thanks to all the listeners and the kind support of my Patreon backers! We’re just wrapping up our fourth month of weekly episodes. Your support is great, Feral Audio (the podcast network Obsessed is on) has a lot of big plans, but I still want to grow the podcast more. If you enjoy an episode, please SHOUT IT TO TO THE DIGITAL ROOFTOPS! A personal tweet or post with a link to a specific episode helps us out massively! This month’s topics were Your Mom, Hamilton, Snapchat, and the X-Men. You can catch up on them all here!
I’ve also got some exciting writing projects brewing in Hollywoodland. Hopefully, there will be more to report there soon!
Shows!
This Monday, May 30th I’m doing a live recording of Obsessed podast about selfies with Angela Webber of the The Doubleclicks and Molly Lewis. Full info is here.
Then, back in LA on Friday June 3rd, it’s my new monthly comedy game show with Hal Lublin called HEADCAN(N)ON! This month’s guests are J. Elvis Weinstein, Allegra Ringo, Allie Goertz, and Wil Wheaton. You can get tickets here!
Stand-up in LA! I’ve been doing more sets here in Los Angeles. In March, I did my first set on The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail and on June 7th, I’ll be on Put Your Hands Together with Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher. Tickets for that show will be available soon here!
On June 22nd, I’m visiting San Francisco for a double-bill of a new stand-up show I’m working on (called Joseph Scrimshaw Versus Reality) and another live Obsessed podcast. This one’s about NETFLIX with special guests Rebecca Watson and Bonnie Burton. Sadly, you can’t stream the show from your home, but you can get tickets here!
I’m going to try to update my blog every month with the creative stuff I’ve been doing so it’s all in one place.
Last month, I started to release my comedy podcast, Obsessed, once a week, every Thursday. Recent episodes include Jordan Morris on NOFX, Matt Belknap, Riley Silverman, & Clarke Wolfe on THE FORCE AWAKENS, Allie Goertz & Will Weldon on TINDER, and Mike Black on ACTION FIGURES. You can catch up on past episodes and subscribe to the podcast here!
I wrote another episode of James Urbaniak’s great comedy podcast, Getting On With James Urbaniak and it got a great review on The AV Club’s podmass. You can listen to the episode here and read the review here.
I also wrote an essay about the comedy theory behind Munchkin for this book celebrating the popular card game. There’s even a new Munchkin card based on my essay. It’s available now on Amazon!
I’ve been doing some writing for RiffTrax, too. Two of the shorts I co-wrote are available now. Tremble before the might of The Litter Monster and learn more than you would ever want to know about The Shapes We Live With.
I was recently a guest at the big Doctor Who convention in Los Angeles, Gallifrey One. I got the chance to be on my friend comic book writer, novelist, and Doctor Who TV show scribe, Paul Cornell’s great podcast, The Cornell Collective. Hear me say funny, weird, and deeply emotional things about Doctor Who here.
I’ve also been hosting a series of Star Wars podcast with my friend and Screen Junkies’ producer, Ken Napzok. It’s multiple shows all under the umbrella of Force Center. You can check out the podcast feed here.
Finally, I’ve got a bunch of shows coming up in Los Angeles and I’ll be at Wizard World in Las Vegas in March. PLUS, my pal, Hal Lublin and I are putting together a new comedy game show that will debut at Nerdist Showroom on Friday, April 1st. More info soon. You can always find show info right here on my live shows page!
Every year I post a bunch of stuff I did that year. I do this because no matter how much work I do, I beat myself up that I haven’t accomplished enough.
At the beginning of 2015, I made a list of 9 concrete goals. I only accomplished 2 of them. My instinct is to feel real, real bad about that and beat myself up. But then I look at this list of all the cool things I’ve been lucky enough to do and all the amazing humans I get to be around.
For 2016, I think I’ll make another list of goals. One of them will be TREAT YOURSELF NICE, ASSHOLE.
Anyway, here’s some fun stuff I did in 2015. WARNING: Includes deep gazes at my navel and a multitude of links to podcasts, albums, videos, blogs, and more!
RIFFTRAX!
I was thrilled to become an official contributing writer for RiffTrax! If you’re not familiar with RiffTrax, check out one of the movies I wrote jokes for: The truly bizarre Nintendo commerical/trainwreck that is The Wizard!
TABLETOP!
I appeared on Geek & Sundry’s awesome tabletop gaming show playing the game CONCEPT with my friend Wil Wheaton and YouTube superstars, Rhett and Link. It was a super fun collaborative game where I mostly had to battle my own SHAME.
I started a totally unplanned new part of my career: Star Wars Talking Guy. My friend Ken Napzok invited me to be a guest on his YouTube show/podcast Jedi Alliance. It was great fun so I kept doing guest appearances, then Ken left the show due to his new job as a producer for Screen Junkies so I started co-hosting Jedi Alliance with Mark Donica. BUT THAT WASN’T ENOUGH TALKING ABOUT STAR WARS. Ken and I missed working together so we started The Force Center podcast. Last week, the TFA review/discussion episodes of both shows were in the top 50 of iTunes TV & Film category. You can check out Jedi Alliance here and Force Center here. A huge thanks to Ken for introducing me to a ton of new friends, fans, opportunities, and giving me an excuse to buy Star Wars toys and write them off on my taxes.
I did two #NerdNightOut tours with The Doubleclicks. We did one on the West Coast in the Spring and one on the East Coast in the Fall. Molly Lewis was a guest for some of the West Coast shows and with us the whole time for the East Coast tour. We all worked together creatively on putting together a weird, geek comedy/music/variety show, but The Doubleclicks did the lion’s share of making the tours happen and I’m extremely grateful. The shows couldn’t have possibly been more rewarding and Angela, Aubrey, and Molly are all awesome humans that I’m thrilled to be friends with.
COMEDY DREAM TIME!
I’ve done a bunch of guest bits in various stand-up and comedy shows in LA, but I spent most of my energy on my own monthly show called Comedy Dream Time. The idea of the show is I ask people to give me a character they’ve always wanted to play and I write a sketch for them. Phil LaMarr played an 80s super cop, Matthew Mercer played a He-Man knockoff, Superego’s Jeremy Carter played Indiana Jones (you can read that sketch here), and a ton more. We also had lots of great comedians and special thanks to Allie Goertz and Ariana Lenarsky who both closed the shows with improvised songs based on audience suggestions.
BIG OL’ POP CULTURE CONVENTIONS!
I did a bunch of performing at conventions this year. I was a guest or performer at CONvergence in Minnesota, Dragon Con in Atlanta, Comikaze in Los Angeles, Wizard World in Las Vegas, the BAMF festival at San Diego Comic-Con, and more. I was also thrilled to perform at a Doctor Who convention called CONsole Room and get a chance to interview the 6th Doctor, Colin Baker.
REBEL SCUM and IT’S A VERY HOLIDAY THING!
I recorded and released two comedy albums. The first, Rebel Scum, is about Star Wars and social justice. It was recorded live at CONvergence in July and then we got it all edited, mixed, mastered, and produced in time for me to bring on tour in September. The second album is a short collection of holiday bits featuring music by Tony Thaxton and Marc Doty. It’s called A Very Holiday Thing. Both albums are available on bandcamp here. I put “releasing two albums” in the category of things I need to remind myself about when I feel like I’m being too lazy.
PAID OFF MY STUDENT LOANS!
On my birthday, August 17th, I paid off my student loans. I paid a lot of money (and interest) to get my liberal arts degree so allow me to say I enjoyed this crepuscular moment of my loans, however it was a Pyrrhic victory as I still have copious sundry debts. That said, I asked my wife to take this celebratory and symbolic photo right after I hit send on the last payment.
PATREON and BLOGS!
I continue to be extremely lucky to have fans and friends supporting me on Patreon. As an independent creative type, it’s amazing to have a steady, monthly source of income. My Patreon makes it possible for me to keep putting out episodes of Obsessed and writing a monthly comedy blog post. One of my favorite blog posts this year was Underwear That’s Fun To Wear in which I modeled some adult underwear.
WTFark – RIP!
I haven’t even been in LA for two full years and already my favorite bar is gone and a couple of awesome shows have gone on to that great internet in the sky. My friend Mike Rylander hosted this awesome weird news show, WTFark, for OraTV. When Mike was away, I got to write and host some episodes. Here’s one of my favorites about a shipping company that made a billboard that was just a giant cat head you can pet. Thanks and, sadly, goodbye, WTFark!
SOCIAL MEDIA!
As always, I spent an insane amount of time on social media. On twitter, I passed 10K followers largely because of this one insanely popular tweet.
Actually Frankenstein was the name of the scientist. I, the person correcting you on this trivial point, am the monster.
I also spent a bunch of time on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, five seconds on Periscope, and on tour Molly Lewis taught me to use Snapchat. Look upon my snaps ye mighty and despair.
You can find me on any social media by searching my clever username: Joseph Scrimshaw.
TV AND MOVIES!
While I did not write or star in any, I sure watched the hell out of them. To name a few, I enjoyed the hell out of Peter Capaldi on Doctor Who, Arrow, The Flash, Don Draper doing yoga, Jessica Jones, and I binge watched all of The Walking Dead in two weeks and spent the next week thinking about the best place in Los Angeles to survive a zombie apocalypse. (Hint: It’s the Dunkin’ Donuts that just opened by my home.) Most importantly, I saw The Force Awakens four times and I have tickets for another showing in the new year. If you have some concerns about the movie, I even wrote a blog post to try to help you out.
THE FUTURE!
I haven’t done the future yet, but I’m going to. As I write this, I’m working on my final hurrah of 2015–a big New Year’s Eve show with my pal, Hal Lublin. I’ve got a lot of fun stuff coming up in 2016 including being a guest of honor at CONvergence, doing an hour long stand-up show about Doctor Who at Gallifrey One, more stand-up shows in Los Angeles, more podcasts, recording another comedy album, and of course, lots of selfies of me drinking something.
Greg Benson of Mediocre Films, Ken Plume of A Site Called Fred, and Bill Corbett of RiffTrax join Joseph Scrimshaw and co-host Molly Lewis live at the 2013 Dragon Con for a rousing discussion of their respective obsessions: Jimmy Stewart, The Muppets, and the obscure movie Billy Jack. Topics include but are not limited to zombie Jimmy Stewart, intense hatred of Gary The Muppet, the value of karate in a young boy’s life, and many improv scenes of Jimmy Stewart eating things. Plus the Obsessed theme song is played live by Molly Lewis!
Jingles! Kevin Murphy (Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax writer/performer and author of A Year at the Movies) is not only obsessed with jingles, he is a human YouTube designed for jingle playback. Joseph and returning favorite Sam Landman (winner of our Sidekick Challenge episode) delight in Kevin’s encyclopedic knowledge of commercial jingles for beer, butter, meat, dog food, sun tan lotion, a creepy board game called Mystery Date, and more. Kevin also performs the Oscar Meyer bologna song as Tom Waits and invents new jingles to advertise the cloud, LinkedIn, PRISM, and himself! WARNING: This episode is delightful and your ears will get wormed. Enjoy!
Joseph tackles this huge obsession with help from the Three Bears of Star Wars knowledge: Actor/comedian Sam Landman (knows too much), actor Zoe Benston (knows too little), and RiffTrax writer/performer Bill Corbett (knows just the right amount.)
