Weekly Firesign Chat Cheese Log

A Firesign Chat
04/09/2026

Archive

||||||||| Catherwood re-enters the Waiting Room and explains "This is the main discussion room which is logged each night."
||||||||| Catherwood announces, "The time is 4:32 AM - I now declare Thursday's chat log for April 09, 2026 officially open!"... and then, he retires back to the vestibule...
||||||||| A time machine materializes at 8:00 PM and Tweeny steps out, carrying a grape from ancient Greece.
||||||||| New notice: '** WE'RE GLAD YOU MADE IT!! **
The Firesign Chat & Show starts at 7pm Eastern/6pm Central/5pm Mountain/4pm Pacific
Tonight: Cat Ishikawa's Firesign Theatre Radio broadcast of Free Time With The Catman "Food"
plus part 3 of his new collage series "Resistance"
and from the Jack Poet Loves You collection
"Firesign Theatre Hype Machine Demo"
Listen to the 256k stream at: http://listen.ehhh.us:8000/rfd2 or the 16k stream at: http://listen.ehhh.us:8000/rfd1
This show is archived at www.kurtericson.net/firesign | Cat’s collage archive is at www.kurtericson.net/cat'
||||||||| "8:00 PM? I'm late!" exclaims Tweeny, who then scurries out through the french doors and down through the brambles.
||||||||| Catherwood strides in with a trumpet, plays a fanfare, and proclaims "Nine PM on Thursday, April 09, 2026 - I now declare alt.comedy.firesgn-thtre's chat officially open!" -- then he looks around at the empty room, looks at his watch, and mumbles "...am I early?"
||||||||| Catherwood strides up and pipes up "Presenting 'Cease', just granted probation at 8:00 PM", then leaves hurriedly.
||||||||| Mutt enters at 8:00 PM as Catherwood takes their hat and goat and scurries off to the Chapeau Manger.
Mutt: Evening Catmaster!
Cease: The Muttman. I thought I'd be alone tonight
Mutt: Nope. You’re stuck with me, old bean
Cease: thus us the unedited version of this.
Cease: firesign didn't mind swearing on their radio
Mutt: When appropriate
Cease: lol
Cease: nixon's fucks were all edited out. trump is outfront. a diferent world.
Mutt: Yeah, but Nixon saying it was funny.
Cease: there was a recent tv show called shit's creek. that opened the door for that word.
Cease: in a sense, mutt
Mutt: My wife loved that show. I was ambivalent. Big fan of the SCTV folks amd Chris Elliot but not my thing.
Cease: was that austin as fdr?
Mutt: Yep I think so
Cease: i iked the firsrt season but stopped watching the 2nd season. that's true for a LOT of tv shows.
Mutt: Sometimesit is hard to tell
Cease: yeah, did you hear john candy was much influenced by Firesign?
Mutt: I knew he was a fan
Cease: it's in his new biopic.
Cease: so i suspect sctv was influenced by firesign.
Mutt: I have yet to see it but look forward to it. SCTV was a huge part of my life
Cease: but then comedians are always influenced by othre comedians
Cease: it was Really good
Mutt: William B. Williams
Cease: one of the best tv shows i've seen.
Mutt: “Can I just say something, here?”
Cease: sounds like a name from Billvile
Mutt: Candy as Sammy Maudlin’s sidekick
Mutt: The Great Joe Flaherty
Cease: a rich vein of comedy, that archve
Mutt: Indeed. Priceless.
Mutt: Early to mid 70s. Python, SCTV, SNL original cast - unbelievable.
Cease: ok, firesign, python, sctv, kids in the hall....any other amalgamations of that caliber?
Mutt: I’d add Living Color from late 80s
Cease: yeah, they were great
Mutt: Homey dont play that
Cease: only dim memories of them
Mutt: They went some places that others dared not.
Cease: true, but memory is diminishing. turn 75 on sunday.
Cease: just told my spine is fucked. not in good shape here
Mutt: Well, then just turn around and go backwards!
Cease: lol
Mutt: Yeah sorry about your back.
Cease: our organs, etc aren'rt permandnt. we noly rent them.
Mutt: Like beer.
Cease: was that martin mull?
Mutt: Not sure but I could hear him saying it.
Cease: as yu oa you said beer, this comes on
Mutt: Spooky
Cease: my first drink i had upon arriving in japan, aug 16, 1971, was a bottle of beer with a red star on it.
Cease: i thought it was a commie beer.
Mutt: Lol
Mutt: I had a few Japanese beers in my day and usually enjoyed them
Cease: yeah, pretty good
Cease: the first form of alcohol i formed an attschment to. very refreshing in japanese summers
Mutt: Been a loooong time for me
Mutt: My grandfather used to send me to pick up his beer from the package store, as it was called. I was 9.
Cease: have you had belgian beer? in particular, Duchese de Bourgogne? Amasing.
Mutt: No I have not
Cease: if you can find it, it will be worth the effort to find.
Mutt: Alas, no. I haven’t had any since 2010.
Cease: to celebrate my upcoming birthday, i bought a botttle of an italian proseco, Villa Theresa. I'm going to open it now.
Cease: you don't drink, or just no beer?
Mutt: An old friend used to have Christmas beet from Germany flown in at midnight the day it went on sale in Getmany
Cease: wow
Mutt: Beer not beet
Cease: alcohol has been as big a part of my life as the Firesign Theatre
Mutt: Yeah, no. I haven’t had alcohol since 2010. Before that, yes, much.
Cease: i'll be sober when i'm dead.
Cease: wow, this wine is awesome.
Cease: ddi you listen to my play Vegas/Egypt? https://seemreal.com/seemreal-selections.html
Mutt: “There are several reasons for drinking, and one has just entered my head. If a man cannot drink when he’s living, how the hell can he drink when he’s dead?”
Cease: it's about transcendent food i had in vegas during the egyptian revolution of 2011
Mutt: I don’t think I have
Cease: those lunch menus sound pretty good
Mutt: Groat cake man, myself …
Cease: please do. i spend all my time creating my new plays, Smetana (Ukrainian for sour cream)
Cease: also other play but that's only vaguely in production.
||||||||| Catherwood interjects: "Ha ha ha - that's very logical."
Mutt: Will check it out. Ta!
Cease: it was Melinda and Phil who told me to start crearing radio plays, when i met them in 1995
Cease: creating
Mutt: That’s a great endorsement.
Cease: When Phil and Melinda tell me to do something, I pay attention
Cease: They both appear in my plays Neal Amid and Red Shift. Dave as father and Proc as son in Red Shift is the best acting I've ever heard.
||||||||| Catherwood walks in wearing his pyjamas, yawns, and mumbles "It's midnight here in New York city"...then he falls over and starts snoring loudly..
Cease: Austin starred in 3 of the plays. Did you not know that?
Mutt: I did and do.
Cease: ossman;s poem about bergman in istanbul made we want to go there, but back decline makes that impossible now, alas
Cease: bregman loved turkey
Cease: this was their 24 hour a day radio station they asked me to programme in 2013.
Cease: solar power company gave them an internet station.
Cease: this is before you were on chat
Cease: this is from a month ago.
Cease: next week's show is from march 28. heather cox
Mutt: I lurked in chat since the late 00’s
Mutt: Occasionally dropped in but under oher alias
Cease: chat began in 1995. early days of the internet
Cease: i was here on day one. still here. maybe allone, but i love mxing firesign with other stuff.
Mutt: I certainly didn’t know about it until 2002 or thereabouts
Cease: did you hear it when this came on line? forget one. used to be just typing. at some point it became audio
Cease: a couple had a radio show in virginia.
Mutt: I remember ah clem (Jimmy Lee) as dj
Cease: Bambi and her husband. they began broadcasting firesign albvums to be listened to while we were chating. forget when
Cease: yes, jimmy lee.they both died, so tweeny took over, quite a while ago
Cease: i began doing these collages in 2015,
Mutt: Wow
Cease: i did some earlier collages in 2009 for another project and did a bunch of radio shows for them in 2013-15 until Austin died.
||||||||| Catherwood interjects: "Not responsible! Park and lock it!"
Cease: this is decades after we began makig radio plays, eh?
||||||||| Catherwood interjects: "Shoes for Industry! Shoes for the Dead!"
Cease: odd, no one else has shown up tonightt
Mutt: I missed a few weeks a few weeks back due to circumstances beyond my control
Cease: it's great that you show up
Mutt: Perhaps because it is tax season here
Cease: ah
Mutt: Madness served hot
Cease: like your counry right now
Mutt: Precisely
Cease: as i typed right now, lenny said just that.
Mutt: Spookier
Cease: yeah
Cease: justr finished new pynchon, Shadow Ticket.
Mutt: I haven’t read a new to me novel in a bit. What did you think?
Cease: setg in 1932, Milwaukee and Hungary. not that dissimilar from now in its fascist currents
Cease: thre is some Beautfiul writing in it, though I'm not sure it's beauty is not an element to how stoned I was upon reading
Mutt: I find Milwaukee a fascinating place. Never been there but it has connections with an array of interesting people snd ideas
Cease: jsut got book byh HUngarian writer Theodora Goss, synchronicity
Cease: hopefully orban weil exist momentarily
Mutt: Yeah. But what comes next?
Cease: hoefully, we'll find out
Mutt: The orange idiot didn’t think about that in Iran
Cease: true
Cease: i grew up in LA and lived for 17 years in Japan so I have some idea of citizenship
Cease: i love being Canadian.
Mutt: There appears to be no even semi-organized resistance movement. The regime has prevented anything like that from taking root.
Cease: how?
Cease: i would thinik the internet would faciliate that
Mutt: Power
Cease: millions got together for no kings, eh?
Cease: rachel, heather, others are doing fantastic work building the resistance.
Mutt: Yup. In a lot of places. Very proud of these folks. We are ruled by weasels and slime.
Cease: Hunter thomsson territory
Mutt: In many ways he wasn’t wrong
Mutt: If we ever needed Firesign it’s now
Cease: My friend is trying to establish this communication now, between us and can people he's a very high profile person
Cease: true
Mutt: We’ll survive the bastard, but the damage is almost irreparable.
Mutt: And his fellow travelers will go on
Cease: i fear for the young, being brainwashed by this
Cease: i hav e 4 grandkids, eh
Mutt: It’s a Kardashian world - we’ve lost that battle, I’m afraid
Cease: not while i'm alive, we haven't
Mutt: We are dinosaurs. But we do what we can, right?
Mutt: Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Cease: newton said he stood on the shoulders of giants. we can do that, or we can be midgets. our chioce
Mutt: Read The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster.
Cease: yes
Cease: i've spent most of my life reading.
Mutt: Forster + Huxley = Today
Cease: golem in in 2 of last novels i've read, Shadow Ticket and Kavalier/Klay
Cease: i have not lived in your country since 1969 so my knowledge is a canadian knowledge, nor yours
Mutt: Meyrink’s book still works.
Cease: what a song
Cease: 60 years ago and as good as ever
Mutt: Timeless
Mutt: And the girl XD
Cease: The lads certainly tried to make money, and stay honest.
Cease: what i hear, bergman died in perilous financial state. this a guy who taught economics at Yale
Mutt: Being able to teach economics does not automatically translate to being able to handle one’s own money
Cease: proc has a good career
Cease: lol
Mutt: It’s a brutal way to make a living.
Cease: i suspect oona's career supported phil and the ossmans have kind of skirted alnog in a very cheap place to live
Cease: bergman had many jobs, but didnt' pay his taxes. i suspect not for philosphiocalo reasons
Mutt: Long term financial security seems to have eluded them
Cease: my wife and i both taght english in japah for a long time. we made enought to livve on for the rest of our long lives
Cease: well, yes and no.
Mutt: I mean the commercial level that they could have expected
Cease: i can afford to be now drinking amazing wine
Cease: luck?
Mutt: Probably more than we like to admit
Cease: we lived in japan when the yen appreciated vastly. that's kind of luck
Mutt: It’s taking advantage of it that’s key
Mutt: I have been very lucky so far and try to remember that each day
||||||||| Catherwood interjects: "At your cervix."
Cease: no, i suspect people think about luck a lot. thatr's why there's an epidemic of gambling. i am committed to keep my grand kids from sinking intot that pool of madness
||||||||| Catherwood interjects: "Everyone knew her as Nancy."
Mutt: Thanks Tween, and thank you Cat. Good stuff tonight.
||||||||| Catherwood enters the room, strikes a gong, and bellows "THE TIME IN NEW YORK IS 1 O'CLOCK", then silently exits.
Cease: by mutt
||||||||| Cease rushes off, saying "8:00 PM? Mark Time is almost on! Where's a radio?"
||||||||| Around 8:00 PM, Mutt walks off into the sunset...
||||||||| Catherwood enters, and announces to all and sundry "It's 4:31 AM, time to change the log file and clean out unused rooms; please exit the chat room for a minute or two. Thank you for your patience."

The Evening's Participants:
Cease
Mutt

URL References:
http://listen.ehhh.us:8000/rfd1
http://listen.ehhh.us:8000/rfd2
www.kurtericson.net/cat
www.kurtericson.net/firesign
https://seemreal.com/seemreal-selections.html