End Notes, Episode 5

ANNOUNCER (ELI)

The End of Time and Other Bothers: End Notes. Episode 5.

SEAN

Hey everyone! Welcome to a slight update to the End Notes — this may be its own End Note, this may be added to another End Notes… We were supposed to record two sessions today, and Sean has had…?

CARTER

Hmm… about a minute and half of sleep.

SEAN

About a minute and half of sleep in the last 48 hours. So we recorded one and then we decided to do a little bit that was supposed to be out on the town. So what was supposed to happen is, I was supposed to take the characters out on the town because Eli wants to let our listeners see more of Farloria.

MARISA

Or hear more.

SEAN

Or hear more of Farloria, thank you. That didn’t quite happen! So those of you who have heard the episode will know what happened. And so we’re just going to record some End Notes about that crazy little experience.

And so we have everyone here; so we have myself, Sean, we have…

MARISA

Marisa.

SEAN

Darcy…

CARTER

Carter.

SEAN

Blat…

MIKE

Mike.

SEAN

Eggerton.

OK guys! What just happened?

MIKE

I dunno.

MIKE

I don’t know anything any more, man.

CARTER

What just happened, apparently, is when I’m given free rein to come up with whatever I want, my brain immediately goes to Three’s Company. “There’s been a crazy misunderstanding! Someone thinks they had sex with somebody else!”

This will probably have repercussions on dozens of future episodes.

SEAN

(laughing)

Right. So for the record, you weren’t saying that your character had sex with Snegal…

CARTER

No! No.

SEAN

You just woke up after being high and passing out…

CARTER

To him… To me lying on his stomach while he strokes my hair, so… I believe since he already seems to really really be interested in me, that perhaps while high, we did the bidness. And now things are going to get really — well, more uncomfortable. Things were already uncomfortable between us; it’s much more uncomfortable now.

CARTER

And it will be confusing because Snegal won’t know what I’m talking about, not that Snegal ever knows what I’m talking about.

SEAN

No, not really.

CARTER

But yeah. I’ll think that, um, something untoward had happened.

SEAN

(laughs)

So I… like, my notes were, “Give them all six shillings”… and you were going to go out on the town.

MARISA

We got no money! At no point…

SEAN

Yeah, that didn’t — it didn’t end up happening.

MIKE

Yeah. Typical — the man is hanging onto the money and the rest of us have to just do the work.

SEAN

So what was going on in my head was — like, you said, Marisa, you were like, “We can’t just go out on the town!” We just… like, where we ended the last major session…

MARISA

Yeah, it didn’t seem like we were just going to do, “Hey, this is all really deep and we all learned things maybe, except for Eggerton who talked to fruit…”

MIKE

(snickers)

MARISA

But suddenly we’re just going to party on the town? It didn’t really seem very organic.

SEAN

Right. So I think my thinking in my brain was, OK, we’ll do a little segue, move forward in time…

(laughing)

And I had so much fun doing those! And we started just weaving this little story, and I was like, yeah, we’re not getting to town.

MARISA

No. There was no getting to town.

SEAN

No.

MIKE

Town was not gotten to.

MARISA

Carter went to town with the bazooka.

CARTER

Booooom!

MIKE

I’m really looking forward to hearing all of this with the sound effects because we all worked in explosion sounds.

MARISA

(laughs)

Did we?

SEAN

Yeah.

MIKE

In all the different little scenes.

SEAN

So we’ve set canon now, we should talk about that. Who wants to talk about pleather canon?

MIKE

So, we early on discussed the whole concept of, you know, what is animal use, and is this vegan, is it vegetarian? And there’s a whole lot of conversation about that. And while we obviously won’t be perfect in this, and we can’t be idealistic at times because of the improv nature, we have come up with a little bit of a cheat, and that is using the concept of pleather, which I know has been talked about as an actual material — which it is, like pleather pants…

SEAN

Yeah. Like a leather replacement.

MIKE

But then, just started saying, “Oh, that butter you mentioned is actually pleather butter.” And a pleather cheesecake.

SEAN

Yeah, because, just so everyone knows, around the table we have people who are vegetarian, we have people who are vegan, and so… time after time I just — the thing that comes into my head is, I threw butter on. Right? I was just like, “Snegal grabs butter!” And then you changed that to pleather butter.

MIKE

Pleather butter.

SEAN

But then… there was a moment, I don’t know if you’re going to hear it in the cut, where… I just did a setup to Marisa but I didn’t give her an offer. It was just like, “You hear a word.” You know, just give me any word, kind of idea.

(laughing)

And Marisa was just like, “What’s one word?” And Carter just leaned forward and said, “Cheesecake.” Sorry.

MARISA

And just to set that up, I was thinking it was going to be something really deep and spiritual, you know, like… well, you’re right, you can’t do it in one word, but like, “Look inside,” or “Courage,” or “Heart”… and then Carter says… “Cheesecake”.

SEAN

We needed one of those Japanese words that has that theme.

So where did “Cheesecake” come from, Carter?

CARTER

Well… I find that the only way to improvise is to clear your brain of all thoughts…

CARTER

And just… come up with the first thing that pops into your head. And for some reason that was cheesecake, I have no explanation as to why it was cheesecake, but that’s… that was just the word that popped into my head.

MARISA

He doesn’t even like cheesecake.

CARTER

No, I hate cheesecake. It’s… it’s cheese with cake! It’s a terrible idea!

CARTER

Why do so many people like it?! It’s awful! Just eat regular cake.

And yeah. There we go. It moved the story forward. And I think the story made sense!

SEAN

Oh yeah. I loved it. At first, I was like, “What am I going to do with cheesecake?!”

But yeah, the nice thing about getting a wacky word is, coming up with a wacky word is harder for me than just justifying.

(snaps fingers)

Justifying, you do naturally. It’s like, “That’s the word that the goddess said.” And you played it as a hunger for cheesecake…

MARISA

Mm hmm.

SEAN

So your playing it as the hunger for cheesecake led me to be like, “What if… what if the goddess is hungry for cheesecake too? What if she plays along?”

MARISA

Yeah, I really liked that, that she was actually wanting cheesecake through me.

SEAN

Yeah.

MARISA

Yeah.

SEAN

Which I thought was cool. It made it a little more fun. But it just came out of that word. I thought that was really cool.

CARTER

Well, you’re welcome.

SEAN

(sighs)

Yeah. So I don’t know if we’re ever going to make it into town for Eli. This might be the running gag, we’ll just keep setting it up, “OK, so we’re going into town to satisfy Eli.” And then not.

(laughs)

MIKE

Suddenly, out of the blue, a shark appears!

SEAN

Yeah.

MARISA

We never make it.

MIKE

Sharks are everywhere, man.

SEAN

Sharks are everywhere.

MARISA

Yeah. Everywhere in Farloria.

SEAN

That was super fun, guys!

MARISA

Sooper fun.

MIKE

Super fun, eh?

SEAN

Any End Notes, Eli?

No End Notes.

That’s it, we’re just going to end there. It’s going to be awkward. Awkward end.

MARISA

Just like Smegal and Blat.

MIKE

It’s Snegal.

MARISA

Thank you, just like Snegal.

SEAN

There was nothing awkward in that for Snegal! I just want to say, for the record.

MIKE

It was a beautiful, organic thing for Snegal.

ELI

(off mic)

Snegal’s love is pure.

SEAN

Snegal’s love is pure, Eli says.

MARISA

It is. I love Snegal.

CARTER

I’m sorry if you listen to this podcast and fell in love with Snegal and now things have become weird between him and Blat. And if you stop listening now, I… I understand.

CARTER

I’m sorry.

MIKE

An opportunity for our patrons is to get rid of Carter and…

SEAN

More Snegal?

MIKE

Bring back Snegal.

SEAN

Oh, Snegal’s not going away, everyone.

MIKE

Oh, excellent.

SEAN

Have no fear. No worries.

ELI

Hey, it’s Eli, breaking in here for a sec. So that was it for the main discussion, but the cast went on to discuss the scene where Snegal runs out of the kitchen to give Blat a fairy cake. Now, originally Sean had said Snegal grabbed an already-cooked fairy cake, but the one that Blat ate was the spicy one… so we hit on a solution, which was that he grabbed the batter, which then got cooked when he got set on fire outside. Sean actually went back and re-did the line.

Of course, this whole discussion you’re going to hear happened after we wrapped and everyone was standing up, away from their mics, which is why everyone sounds a bit different. So yeah. Actors.

MIKE

And there’s also a slight issue I think, because Snegal wants the one for Blat, but doesn’t want to wait.

SEAN

Oh, I know. I know.

MIKE

All right.

SEAN

And he went with that one, but that’s OK. It’s improv.

MARISA

(laughs)

SEAN

It was more interesting of a choice to go with that one. What I should have come back with was like,

(Snegal voice)

“Oh, I knew it would be good without cooking it!” You know, or something, like he grabbed it.

MARISA

But wait! But then the fire cooked it, so you were good.

SEAN

(softly)

Oh yeah…

MIKE

Ahhhh!

SEAN

So that’s what happened. If anyone calls us on it, we say Snegal grabbed the one uncooked…

MIKE

Are you recording our built-in excuse? Awesome.

SEAN

Snegal grabbed the one that was uncooked, and then the fireball cooked it.

MARISA

Yeah. Yup, there you go.

CARTER

You know what that is…

MARISA

You guys didn’t know how brilliant you were being.

CARTER

That’s the No-Prize.

ELI

(laughs)

MARISA

What’s that?

CARTER

Way back in like the ’80s, Marvel Comics had the Letters page, right? In every issue of all their titles…

SEAN

Yeah.

CARTER

And they had something called the No-Prize. And the No-Prize, because all the comics are written with different writers, there’s continuity errors everywhere. So if you can identify a continuity error, and explain why it isn’t actually a continuity error…

SEAN

Come on.

CARTER

You would get what’s called the No-Prize. And that was simply, your explanation gets printed in the back of the comic.

MARISA

But that’s it.

CARTER

And that’s it. And there’s no prize; good for you.

SEAN

That’s geek heaven!

CARTER

Yes, that is geek heaven, and that’s exactly what this — because there’s going to be people going,

(nasal nerd voice)

“It’s Tuesday, not Wednesday…”

SEAN

Yes!

CARTER

“That fairy cake was actually not cooked!”

SEAN

I love it. You’re that guy.

MARISA

I’m that guy!

SEAN

I’m that guy!

MARISA

We’ll be watching something and I’ll say to Carter, “I think in the last episode they were wearing this, and now they’re…” yeah, or whatever.

CARTER

The seasons between Friends drive her nuts.

MARISA

(laughs)

CARTER

Because usually after the summer break they’re usually in the same day, the same minute, that they left the previous summer. So everyone’s standing around in the same position, wearing the same clothes, but like, everyone’s super tanned…

MARISA

And their hair’s grown… And of course, since we’ve not seen it for four months…

CARTER

Yeah, you don’t notice, but when you watch it a minute and a half later, you’re like, “Wait a second!”

SEAN

That’s awesome. That’s true, I never even thought about that.

Awesome. So we’ll end it there. Thank you all for listening to this End Notes session.

MIKE

Ba-dum-bum.

SEAN

Ba-dum-boom.

CARTER

Let us know if you like cheesecake.

MIKE

(laughs)