Changes coming in 2022 + January Schedule (Patreon)

Hey all!

I will announce all this on the podcast soon, but since you guys are essentially producers of the podcast, I wanted to fill you in first. If you have any questions, thoughts, etc., please post them here! 

"This is going to take a long time, so you may want to get some snacks..."

There are gonna be some changes to the podcast and Patreon in 2022. 

We will do our regular deep dives every Monday of the month except for the last Monday of the month. That last Monday of the month will be filled with two things: 

The free feed will have a community/news/etc episode called "Community Jiggle" (the name will make sense when you hear the theme song, lol) where I'll touch on some Aqua Teen stuff, plans for the podcast that month, what I've been up to that month, and anything you guys are up to that you send my way. Simple stuff. Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy. 

"That sounds lame as hell, ya dummy! I'm not paying you for that shit!" you might be thinking. Well keep reading, goddammit! 

Here on the Patreon, I will begin to go thru the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. I will tackle it in about 10 minute segments (of the film) until we finish it up. So each podcast episode should be around 45 minutes, I'd imagine. Maybe longer, we'll see! That should give us enough to talk about until the 2022 film comes out, and then we'll dive into that!

Months with 4 Mondays will have 3 deep dives, and months with 5 Mondays will have 4. Every month will end with a community episode, and a Patreon-only ATHF film episode. This way, you guys will still be getting an ATHF episode every week!

Please note, however, January will look a little different due to our Season 1 recap.

(Also note that this is subject to change once AquaDonk Side Pieces drops...)

Here is what January will look like:

• 3rd - Season 1 Recap
• 10th - Super Birthday Snake
• 17th - Super Hero
• 24th - Super Bowl
• 31st - (Free Feed) Community Jiggle for January / (Patreon) ATHFCMFfT Coverage 

I'm unsure if the first ATHFCMFfT coverage episode will be jumping right into the film, or giving background info on it first... totally depends on how much background info I can find / if its worth dedicating an entire Patreon episode to it. I'll start work on this in the middle of January, so I'll give you a heads up when I know more!

What does this mean for the Patreon-only Dancing Is Permitted [adult swim] deep dives? I don't know. I love doing them, and would like to continue to, but I don't know if the time it takes to make them is equal to your interest in them. I figure giving you Aqua Teen content on this feed would be more bang for your buck, since that's why you started listening to the pod. I'm not gonna say Dancing Is Permitted is cancelled, I just can't guarantee we will do them every single month. (If you guys love them and want me to keep doing them, let me know! I'm here to serve, master!) 

To compensate for the potential lack of reward for $10 patrons (since the only perk in that tier was voting rights for DiP), for now I plan to start thanking the $10 patrons individually at the end of every episode. Hopefully I can figure out other rewards, too! 

There are a few intertwining reasons on why I'm making these changes, and I hope y'all understand where I'm coming from. 

First reason being, I've been dropping the (meat)ball when it comes to promoting the show and what not. I'm sure you guys have noticed how some weeks I post a ton of screenshots for the ATHF episode on my socials, then other weeks I don't post any. This is a simple and easy way to promote the show and even that I've been struggling with, time-wise. I underestimated how difficult juggling making the podcast, promoting the podcast, my personal life, my day job, and to a lesser extent, the Patreon would be. And I ain't no juggler. Shake never sold me to the circus so I never learned :( 

Side-note, I realize it's been 3 months since Leah Means reached out to me to get Carey (voice of Frylock) on the show, and I haven't really had much time at all to work towards that, which stinks. That will take some time since I want the interview to be good!

Second reason being, finishing Season 1 as quickly as we did was a huge realization of how fast this podcast will fly by. Season 1 is the second longest season of Aqua Teen. And given we only have so much ATHF content to talk about (~136 episodes, now ~118), I don't want to burn thru it all as quickly as possible. One Monday off a month of the deep-dives will prolong the podcast and allow us to do more in the ATHF space, in terms of potentially getting guests, etc. 

Replacing one of the deep-dives + Dancing Is Permitted episodes with a Patreon ATHF episode will free up more time on my end to do other things for the podcast. None of this is stemming from a desire to work less on the show (infact I wanna work MORE on it!), it's just to give me time to do other things for it that I didn't think about when I started it. Promoting the show moves us closer to me being able to work more on the show.

"Wow you only care about promotion, what do you wanna be a Hollywood actor or something??" While I wouldn't mind sharing the silver screen with a hunk like DiCaprio, the reason I care at all about promotion RIGHT NOW is due to the limited nature of this podcast. Unless they continue to make ATHF content after 2022, Dancing Is Forbidden kind of has a limited lifespan. So I want to do as much as possible with the show while I'm able to make it. If I was covering Days of our Lives or something with a billion episodes then I wouldn't care. But we've already covered 12% of all the episodes in just a few months. And those 12% are some of the most popular episodes. Yeah. 

"B-but senpai, will you ever go back to a deep dive every Monday?" Sure, I'd love to! But... you guys are already doing the very thing that will lead to more episodes... supporting the show. The more Patrons we get, the closer I can come to dropping down another day at Target, which means more time to dedicate to the pod.

HOWEVER... all of this is subject to change. Like I said in the past, in mid-January I'll have time off from work to work ahead on the podcast, so that we don't miss episodes going forward. Also, for Christmas my fiancée helped me buy a laptop FOR THE PODCAST, which will allow me to do research/promote/take notes while at my day-job. Additionally, as I work more on the pod, I'm getting more efficient, which I'd like to think means I can do things more quickly going forward. So all of this combined, hopefully we can go back to more episodes every month. That would be 2 wycked. 

Anyways, now that you've made your way through my novel, I wanna give all of you a sincere THANK YOU for supporting the show this year. You're the Meatwad to the Danger Cart that is this podcast. It kills me that the past month has been so inconsistent-- with getting sick for a week, being out of state for two weekends, Christmas, having a friend visit this coming week, etc., it's been crazy and finding time to work on the show has been difficult. (Normally I don't do shit so it's no biggie.) But I want you guys to know that the only reason anything has been released this hectic month has been because of YOU. For real

I love making this podcast, and I especially love getting to know you guys. Making the pod is the highlight of my week, and I really do appreciate you all believing in the podcast enough to support it financially.

Here's to 2022, both in terms of the podcast AND new Aqua Teen content!

-Big Ron