Showing results by author "Jerry Stearns" in All Categories

Over the years while writing, directing, and acting at radio theater workshops and in the Mark Time Radio Show performances at Minneapolis' CONvergence science fiction conventions, Brian Price and Jerry Stearns found that they shared a love for classic Beat poetry, Lord Buckley, and prose poems, so they started doing some of their own. This is a collection of their unique hybrid of humor, music, character, and performance.

Collected here are 18 plays, some of which were performed before a live audience at the Mark Time Awards shows. Firesign cofounders David Ossman and Phil Proctor and iconic children's show host Chuck McCann are among the many actors performing on this ultimate Great Northern Audio Theatre collection.

A song, a pressed flower, and the sound of two girls' voices recovered from a burned wooden beam by using a brand-new laser technique to read a charred surface like the grooves of an old 78 rpm record. These are the clues that archaeologist Digger Morgan discovers while working on a routine dig at a Maryland plantation. Who were the girls? When was the fire? The answers all lead to 1920s jazz pioneer Kit Jeffers, whose voice mysteriously appears on Digger's computer and whose existence remains haunted by a singular tragic event.

Villains on Parade, starring Chuck McCann, Wally Wingert, and the rest of our usual troupe, features an evil sorceress, bumbling henchmen, the annual Storming of the Castle, the Plunderers Day Parade, the Lost Orc Commentaries, and other extreme silliness. The bad guys have their say, and the pros take the stage and bring down the castle.

Peter Galaxy and his sidekick, Dr. Simon, used to be big stars on the radio. Now they're just two retired actors playing cards on the front porch and riding herd on the grandchildren. But can these two old-timers find work for 300 billion illegal aliens? Yeah, we wondered about that question too.

A stolen dream-driven dirigible, an evil steam-powered spider, and a Styrofoam grail all have the fair dream mistress Princess Doyle a la Carte and the decidedly bubbly Count Pierre d'Orc on the run beyond the overtaxed capacity of their Heisenberg Hyperextended Reversal Dream Drive. Steampunk and other steamlike stuff take a bath in this Brian Price and Jerry Stearns satire.

What if computers ran colleges and nobody came to class? This 1993 mockumentry was so far ahead of its time that it has already happened. The droll documentary style would make Christopher Guest proud.

Pangborn arrives unexpectedly on a lighthouse in space, startling the caretaker and his wife. Then Ripley shows up, looking for Pangborn. Then Ripley's father, space pirate Captain Squid, arrives looking for his daughter, and he doesn't like finding Pangborn there, too. Soon they all discover that the lighthouse is about to be smacked by an approaching passenger space cruiser unless they can do something. A hot bath is suggested. Will they all escape destruction? Will they find out who the father of Ripley's baby is?

Drummer Crowley is finally able to build the house he always dreamed of - a geodesic dome in the woods. That's because they finally released on CD the three albums his band, Bent Sunshine, made back in the 1960s. He hires a carpenter and enlists his son and daughter-in-law to help, but they find that the inside of the dome seems to contain a different world.

The rogue comet Skippy is headed right for Big City. The mayor is looking for a superhero to save everyone, but most of them are busy at the moment. Super Pal is discussed, but he isn't their first choice. In this superhero mockumentary, we hear about Super Pal from his friends, his agent, and his girlfriend, and we find out about his childhood.

Mack Brown remembers all those old Tumbleweed Roundup movies he saw as a kid and wonders what happened to them; they don't show up on late-night television or in video stores anymore. Driven by nostalgia, he begins to search for the missing films. As he hunts down this elusive piece of his childhood, Mack visits an old friend, finds one of the cowboys who made the original films, attends a gathering of the Tumbleweed Roundup Reenactment Society, and finds himself caught up in a conspiracy.

Three modern tales of wizards, magic, and silliness. "High Moon" is a Western showdown with magic and 50 meters. "Tell Them NAPA Sent You" is a story of a wizard, dwarfs, and auto parts. And in "Wizard Jack", the wizard accidently trades all the magical tomorrows for tango lessons. Featuring David Ossman and Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre and a full cast.

A veritable cornucopia of silliness and misinformation, Jokes in Space will give you the latest on abandoned warehouses, dead tribbles, interstellar disasters, Internet get-rich scams, and tips to sell your planet in today's competitive marketplace. Jokes in Space was performed before a live audience, and the listener is assured that no plots were used or harmed during the making of this production.

Permafrost, MN is an audio serial in 13 three-minute episodes about the people who live and work in the town. Together they tell about one important event in the history of the town, and each episode tells a part of this tale with a short story of its own. You'll meet Finch Shelmerdine and her parents, who run the Frozen Filet Cafe. You'll hear from Bux Hootkins, who lives in Permafrost but has a place in Texas that he visits in the summer because he likes the extremes.

David Ossman of the Firesign Theatre returns one last time to the live, raucous stage to play Cyber Bob, who leaves his position as cart wrangler at the Mart to lead a digital expedition into the digital glade in search of the beautiful yet elusive Digital Nymph. There's a history between the two, and they aren't playing...well, they are playing games. And when the Nymph asks if Cyber Bob wants to "take the leap", there's only one answer for the old campaigner.

Cyber Bob is the ultimate old-school computer pro. There isn't a system out there that he can't hack with just a couple of punch cards, so he's ideally suited to answer the question the Silicon Kid and Nadia, the most super of all supermodels, want answered: Is the Kid a boy or just another $200 billion android?

The Ramon Raquello Orchestra was supposed to get their big break that night in 1938, on Orson Welles' Mercury Theater show, but they kept getting cut off. The rest of that program became famous. Still is. But what happened to the band? We join them many years later at a reunion, and it seems that they can't seem to escape the influence of the Martians.

Linda Kim Shelmerdine discovered her considerable powers during her hormonal years (the Sun was having similar problems then). But she read the superheroes' guidebooks, and her years in 4-H helped too. Now 59, SpaceGirl is somewhat disillusioned with the way superheroism is viewed these days, both by the public and by other superheroes. But she takes her job seriously and enjoys the occasional vacations at her crater-side retreat on the moon.

Treasure hunters board a 300-year-old generation starship, the Professor Irwin Corey, in search of legendary jewels. As usual they find pirates, adventures, adorable children, and plenty of squeaky toys.

What does it take to jump-start an economy? Why, consumers! So what do politicians do to jump-start an economy? They create millions of new consumers by emancipating creatures and monsters, real and fictional. But is the public ready to accept creature-made entertainment features? What do politicians care?