When/How/Why did you become a FOT?

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Inspired by Erika's recent thread, I'm curious to hear when all y'all crossed over from mere listenership into full-blown FOTdom.  I'll start:

2007 was sort of my breakout year as a playwright, and I wound up traveling to a lot of different cities.  This was awesome, but also lonely - sometimes I would know a lot of people where I was going, but other times I just wound up tooling around by myself until I had to be somewhere (not to mention all the flying was a drag).  Listening to podcasts in general kept me grounded, but it was really TBSOWFMU and the Scharpling and Wurster CDs that kept me sane and happy.  I have a few specific recent memories:

Last May, I was in Austin staying in a little house behind a bigger house - the guy in the big house ran a theater company and used the little house for visiting artists.  It was pitch black and eerily quiet, so at night I would sit by the screen door and listen to the show and the archives.  This was probably the first time I started to get really obsessed with the show.  I think I started lurking on the boards around then too.

Then, in July, I was in Portland, Oregon - I loved that city, but after a year or so of traveling, I started to feel a little nuts.  For the first two or three days I was there I really felt like I had no idea where I was.  After I was done with this theater festival, my wife came out for a cheapo vacation, which was great - but we couldn't get a flight home together.  It was one of those things where her flight was at midnight and mine was at 7AM, so I stayed one night at a depressing fleabag airport motel.  Listening to TBSOWFMU kept me from spiraling into despair.

By this time I was a full-fledged fan, but not yet a FOT.  It wasn't until after the monkfish incident that I actually registered for the boards and started posting.  I can't remember exactly what my logic was, but there was some vague sense of urgency that led me to start participating.  And that's all she wrote.

So what's your FOT origin story?

[Gilly]

3 or 4 years ago my friend gave me New Hope For the Ape Eared and I loved it and a few months later I realized that the show was still on the air and that's about it. I think I started listening every week a couple years ago via the archives and then the podcast and just recently over the web.

[erika]

I know I was lurking on the boards a bit -- maybe for a few weeks after I started listening. I didn't post here but I'd post on the AST thread about the show... But then I decided to start posting and add this to my very short list of message boards I like to visit.

Though I think I became an FOT before I actually started posting. That happened right away.

Why did I become one? Does one really need to ask such a thing? My answer: The Man.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

T

Why did I become one? Does one really need to ask such a thing? My answer: The Man.

This makes me think of an interesting sub-question for tha ladeez: did most of you find the show through male friends or significant others?  Did any of you find the show on your own?

[Sarah]

Finally, a question worthy of my 1000th post.  Answer:  Hell yeah I discovered the show on my own, via SSD, which I also found on my own.  And it was one of my sisters who told me about FMU, back in 1980.  Not a speck of male influence in sight.

[erika]

T

Why did I become one? Does one really need to ask such a thing? My answer: The Man.

This makes me think of an interesting sub-question for tha ladeez: did most of you find the show through male friends or significant others?  Did any of you find the show on your own?

I found it through an AST thread... no penis involved.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

Aha, so "The Man" = Tom.  I think I misunderstood. 

Anyway, bring it, sisters!

I ask this because both WFMU fandom and the alternative comedy scene have reputations as being male-heavy, but I've always found both to have plenty of estrogen.  It's an interesting topic, perhaps worthy of its own thread.  I have a friend who's on staff at The Daily Show, I think the only female there, and she once told me that all of the guys she works with are totally sweet and nerdy and enlightened, but often she can't get a word in edgewise at the writers' table just because her voice is higher.  She came up with the title "You Don't Know Dick" for the Cheney series, but no one heard her when she said it - she had to send it by email or something like that.

[mike a]

Pretty quickly.  It took me about a month of listening to the podcast to figure out what was going on.  By the time the Poster Children war happened and I figured out when Tom was and was not being ironic (e.g. not really a Bush supporter), it occurred to me that this show was something special.  But I didn't become a "true" FOT until the first time he announced the podcast was in danger - only then did I stop and reflect just what an integral part of my week it had become.

[masterofsparks]

I'm pretty new to the Best Show - I found out about it back in June or July. I was visiting the Chunklet website and Henry posted clips of a comedy panel discussion from SXSW that included, among others, Jon Wurster. The show was mentioned a couple of times during the discussion, so I subscribed the podcast and was hooked pretty much right away. That first episode I heard was the one when Hammerhead called, and I've sunk only deeper into my obsession since then. It's nice to know that others share my geekiness.

[Phantom Hugger]

I am a frequent mail order customer at Aquarius Records http://www.aquariusrecords.org/  and one of the staff picks was the "Art of the Slap" cd. I listened to some sound clips on their site and immediately bought the cd on my lunch break. After hearing the Heaven 13 concert on Mt. Everest calls I had to stop working and lay down under my desk to compose myself. I found the archives the same day and have been pouring over them ever since. I remember getting a Christmas morning feeling when i received my FOT card in the mail and got that thing laminated the same day.

So the short answer is whenever that cd came out...... spring 07?

[moonshake]

After hearing the Heaven 13 concert...

You need to listen again, son!

I became a devoted FOT in Summer '06. To help myself get through a summer of immense boredom and pain, I began listening to at least one episode a day from the Best Show archives. I soon became inseparable from the show and when I received my FOT membership card in Fall, I considered myself officially inducted.

[Phantom Hugger]

After hearing the Heaven 13 concert...

You need to listen again, son!

I stand corrected, Mother.

[mike h]

I had seen the show listing in the WFMU schedule a while back, but I didn't start listening to it until January of this year, after reading an enthusiastic post about it on the Matador Records Bulletin Board. A lot of love for the Best Show in those parts! I believe Gerard Cosloy had "The Art of the Slap" in one of his posted listening piles a while back...

The Best Show was a particularly nice discovery in that it made me feel a lot less lonely while I was studying in England for the first half of this year. Have been getting a lot of laughs since then! You're my hero, Tom.

[Jason]

I found it through an AST thread... no penis involved.

But quite a few dicks.

[Shaggy 2 Grote]

I found it through an AST thread... no penis involved.

But quite a few dicks.

ZING!