A Happy Moment

Bob talks to Dan from A Happy Moment about film, podcasting, life, and who knows what else.

https://youtube.com/live/pyYVU7IZkUs

Bad AI Transcript

Hey, everybody, and welcome to a conversation with Dan from a Happy Moment podcast. Hey, Dan, how’s it going? Good, Bob. How are you doing today? I’m pretty good. Well, today’s been kind of a day, I’ll tell you. I’ll be honest with you. I was busy all day long, and then now this is my relaxing time. So hopefully it’ll be happy for both of us going through all this. What do you think? Hey, every time I’ve talked to you so far, it’s been a happy moment. Oh, good. All right. So Dan does a show called Happy Moment. And how long have you been doing that now, Dan? Roughly two years. I took a small break in between there, but going on about two years now. And I’ve got about close to 100 episodes. Oh, wow. Okay. And what was kind of the antithesis? Like, were you just sitting around one day and you’re just like, you know what would be good for me to do?
Have a show or how did it come about? I just wanted to try it as kind of a challenge to myself. I’ve always been kind of a quiet person. You know, I was in high school. I was voted the quietest. Really? That was a category? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it was. I didn’t know that. Okay. At least at my school. Okay. So you kind of used it as a way to do something a little bit different that was a little bit out of your normal regular day or whatever, regular routine. Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of a, and also just kind of like a creative outlet. Okay. So how’s it, I mean, whenever you started doing it, like I think you told me you concentrate mostly on,
Uh, movies, uh, wrestling and pop culture or one of those maybe i made up. I can’t remember now. No, I, I do a lot of, uh, movies, books, uh, gaming, wrestling. Those are probably the main ones oh okay well that there’s my pop culture, movies, books, gaming. That’s all on the right track. Yeah. Yeah. We could, we could crunch that into pop culture. Uh, So that’s interesting. So then you decided you’re going to do this in order to do kind of, I guess, break out of your shell a little bit from being the most quiet guy. Has it worked? Yeah. I’d say there’s been varying degrees of success. I mean, the first thing I wanted to accomplish was just to see if I could even pull it off.
And as I, as I just mentioned, I’ve got close to a hundred episodes, so I I’d say I’m definitely pulling it off. And yeah, I would say overall it’s, it’s probably, it’s helped me a little bit. I’m kind of introverted by, by nature, but you know, this, this helps kind of get me out there a little bit more and, you know, it’s good practice talking to a variety of people. So yeah, I’d say it’s working, yeah. Oh, good. Well, I just was wondering, because that’s what you said was kind of the push for it. So you kind of want it to work. Otherwise, you’re like, well, what am I doing this for? But I will tell you, as a personal aside here, you probably won’t believe it, but I’m a fairly introverted person as well. And doing these kind of things has helped tremendously.
And in fact, um, I’m trying to think what it was now. It’s had to be about 10 more. It’s been more than 10 years ago anyway. So, uh, but anyway, I, I, it has helped me with doing public speaking. So I don’t have to do it like with any regularity or anything like that, but because of doing shows, podcasts for a long time, um, I have been called at times to be up in front of an audience and an audience of hundreds of people. And they say, you know, if you read anything about that, they’re like, that’s one of the worst fears. And by doing this, I’ve been able to, you know, pull that off and, you know, more than once. And it went pretty well, I would say.
Overall. So, you know, maybe there’s something to it. I think maybe you’re on the right track basically is what I’m getting at with doing this in order to kind of, you know develop that skill because it is a skill. I don’t think people you know, nowadays it’s hard. It’s a little bit harder because so many people do this kind of thing. But once you do it for a while, it really is a skill in order to kind of talk off the top of your head on topic so Kudos to you for giving it a shot and making a go of it and accomplishing it. Fantastic. Thank you. One thing, when I do an interview with someone, a lot of the times I feel like it comes pretty naturally. But the one area I still struggle with is when I…
Most of my episodes are interviews, but I also do a few shorter solo episodes, usually like a horror review or a game review. And when I do a solo episode, I cannot just start talking about a topic off the top of my head. I have to script everything out to the word. Really? Yeah, or else when I’m recording, I’ll be stumbling and stuttering, and it’ll take me like an hour to record a 10 minute video so everything has to be scripted out when I’m by myself that’s interesting well here I’m going to give you another hint for that so I a friend of mine, his name is Frank Nora, and he’s a long time podcaster out of New Jersey. And he does a thing called the overnight scape if if anybody wants to take a listen to it. And he does monologues. That’s all he does. He only talks monologues.
He doesn’t do interviews or anything, really. And he only does monologues. And he generally does them while he’s walking around New York City because he works in New York City. And it’s fascinating. And I’ve done that. Actually, I did a show on his network for a while called Morning Commute, where I would talk on my… This is pre-COVID. When I talk on my morning commute into work, where I used to drive into work for about 35, 40 minutes… And I did a show for a few years just doing that. It is so difficult to do that, to talk on your own without having somebody as a sounding board and so forth. But if you can do it, you know, if you can kind of, you know, force yourself into it, it really is a whole other skill to be able to just launch into things and so forth. And so, I mean, keep working at it. I think you’ll get there. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I think you’ll get there because…
But if you listen to Frank, it’s so natural for him. His show is based off of a show that was actually in the 60s and 70s. I’m blanking on his name here. Gene Shepard is the name. He was a radio DJ in New York City. He ended up writing the Christmas Story movie. That’s his real claim to fame. But before he did any of that, he was a radio host and he would make up these stories on air. And one of those stories was about the Red Ryder BB gun. And he ended up fleshing that out into a book. And then it became a movie. And that’s really what he’s famous for. But it’s based on Gene Shepard’s monologues. And his monologues were just telling stories about his childhood and things like that. And so, you know, it really is fascinating to,
that style is a whole style unto itself. And I don’t think there’s a lot of folks who do that, like, regularly. But, you know, it’s a whole other genre, I would say. So I would, you know, for yourself and whoever else wants to, go listen to The Overnightscape and listen to Frank. He’s a real nice guy, and he generally has lots of interesting things to say. Some of them are… like thought experiments and he’ll just kind of launch into a monologue about what he’s thinking about. And it really is fascinating to, to listen to originally I started listening because I enjoyed hearing the sounds of New York City in the background, which is kind of weird. I mean, I was listening to him, but, but it was fascinating to hear that he’s walking down like he’s in Times Square and,
and you can hear Times Square in the background while he’s talking...

A Conversation with Dan from A Happy Moment