The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Full disclosure, this was originally written to be posted LAST week. However, the trials and tribulations of selling your house took their toll on me. So, I’m going to go through this and make some changes. Bold italics will be my commentary.

It’s the Holiday Season

What can normally be a busy and stressful time of the year is even more stressful and busy for me this year. First and foremost, it’ll be the fifth year that we’ll be without my uncle. Not just for Christmas, but his birthday a few days beforehand. While the five-year anniversary snuck up on me last month, I’ve been actively working to pull myself out of that rut. Between normal life, writing, getting Starbird Media up and running, selling a house, looking for a new house, and getting ready for Christmas, it’s been CRAZY.

The good news is that almost everything has been going pretty smoothly. HAHAHAHA, Kev of two weeks ago, how young and naive you were. “Going pretty smoothly.” You young dumb idiot! That’s how selling a house works. It’s smooth until the week of settlement. THEN you find out there’s a VERY expensive repair required for U&O and you don’t have that… the buyers don’t have that… WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN! The biggest project at the moment is packing up the house—while I’m certain we’ll fit everything (we didn’t), the 16’ storage pod is comically small. On the flip side of that, looking for a new house has been an emotional experience. We’re very lucky and able to stay with family while we do look for a new house, but the process of finding a house we love and putting an offer on it just to have it passed on is draining. Yeah, yeah… it’s just because we haven’t found the one yet. I get it… but I really liked the last one. Younger Kev, I know you liked that last one a lot. So did I. But guess what, not 24 hours after you write that very sentence, you find a house your family really likes, put a bid in, and get it! Too bad all that other stuff happened at the same time, so it was hard to enjoy it at the moment. But STAY TRUE.

Anyway…

What’s Up With Starbird Media

Well, since last week, I’ve gotten some services switched from my personal information to Starbird Media. The biggest strides were getting a business checking account open and moving forward with our logo designer to get us an official look! With any luck, we’ll be debuting that logo next week or the week after (we still don’t have the logo, so maybe next week? I’ll be getting an update shortly). Realistically though, I don’t plan on much getting done in 2021 with Starbird Media. That said, there are two immediate goals as we enter 2022:

1. Establish our online presence. This is mainly to have an informational site up about the company. Now, this site will also be home to our produced audio and video and our online store.

2. Enter Pre-Production on The The Muppet Show Show and Single Player. When it comes to Single Player, we’ve technically started this show sometime this past year, but I hit many mental roadblocks in getting the show off the ground. Come January 1, we’re getting back on track with a bonus episode or two plus 13 or so games in Season 1. For 2022 (which would include two seasons), I’ve budgeted $420 for Single Player; those costs are to pay for games.The The Muppet Show Show is going to be a silly fun project. But, it’s also going to be the most expensive show I’ve ever produced. I’ve budgeted $1900 for the first two seasons, which would take us through a year worth of shows. That breakdown is $400 for a theme song (commissioned from Arne Parrot) and $45 per episode for a guest and two written/pre-recorded segments. Since this show has a much higher budget, I’m tossing around the idea of a “Muppet Drive” in 2022 that would recoup costs related to point 1 above AND fully fund 52 episodes of The The Muppet Show Show. That means people and creators get paid!

There are some other 2022 goals I have set for Starbird Media, but these are the first things that come to mind.

Before We Part Ways

Last week, we featured a promo that I wrote up for That’s Entertainment. This week, I wanted to quickly promote that very site! That’s Entertainment is something that has been around, in one way or another, for several years. Mike DeAngelo started it as a video game review channel on YouTube and segments on one of my early podcasts. Now, I serve as the managing editor for the site. I’m currently writing Hawkeye reviews (episodes 1-3 are up now, with episode 4 scheduled for tomorrow (HAHA, JK… remember the selling the house stress? You ain’t writing shit Young Kev) and some random news articles. We’re hoping to get on a schedule sometime in early 2022 where I’m posting 1-2 news items a day.