Episode 57: The Spirit Of Christmas by Rish Outfield & Big Anklevich
The Dunesteef saves Christmas. Something has happened to the little town of Hawk Creek. Overnight, literally from one minute to the next, their Christmas spirit fled. What can Dale Cooper do to bring it back?
Afterwards, Rish and Big do a self-indulgently extended author’s note. It’s really pretty sad how much these guys are in love with themselves.
Special thanks to Julie Hoverson, Liz Mierzejewski and Norm Sherman for lending their voices to this episode. Bloopers
Right click HERE to download the episode, select Save Link As, and save the file to your hard drive.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/dunesteef/Dunesteef_56_The_Spirit_Of_Christmas_by_Rish_Outfield_And_Big_Anklevich.mp3%20For special fun with blocks, click on the picture.
Related Links:
19 Nocturne Boulevard
The Drabblecast
Music by Hairy Larry and Frozen Silence and Jennifer Avalon.
Some sound effects were used from Freesound.org.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine 
December 25, 2009 at 7:17 pm
You guys did a good job. A little predictable, but it still made me smile. I would say that your collaboration was a success. The cast was awesome. And I downloaded it just in time for Christmas! It was the first podcast I listened to on my new IPod. It will never be the same again.
December 25, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I heard it too! On Christmas Day! but I think my iPod is broken now.
Rish and Big display a nice taste in Christmas music. Also, I was afraid Dale would buy a new plate, and the story would turn into the Gift of the Magi, but it didn’t. I was glad.
Collaboration. What will they think of next?
December 26, 2009 at 12:19 pm
I don’t know about the story being predictable, but that Barbie commercial . . .
I totally knew she was gonna turn the tables on those nasty euro terrorists. Damn action movies, they’re all the same.
December 26, 2009 at 5:01 pm
One of my favorte Dunesteef episodes this week.
Great perfomaces, and production, but how dare you mock Canada Day. How dare you.
But really, best episode this year…and week.
December 26, 2009 at 7:12 pm
You guys really rang the big bell on this story. I give The Spirit of Christmas 12 stars—the best story of the year :-)
December 27, 2009 at 12:45 am
I got this just in time for Christmas. Laughed a lot; loved it! The faux commercials are especially awesome, and you guys are really good at magical realism. Collaboration = complete success!
December 27, 2009 at 10:47 am
“He’s wearing pants!”
December 29, 2009 at 7:49 am
I found this story to be fairly amusing in the later parts. It really got funny toward the end. Big’s kids, as usual, did an awesome job.
I really expected that Dale had just lost his job in the beginning — you kind of put a gun on the mantelpiece with the money issue, but just left it there behind the diplomas. Also, I think the middle part (between plate-breakage and plate-fixage) stretched a little too far.
My friend Brian and I had this idea to collaborate on a murder mystery set on a space station. (Obviously this was right around the time Deep Space Nine premiered, us being ginormous Star Trek nerds.) He wrote about a 20-page handwritten treatment, and then gave it to me.
I did nothing with it.
We did the same thing for a vampire novel. I got three chapters in, but didn’t really like how it was going. Now, vampires are passe.
Writing is hard, and it takes a long time… unless you have a really great idea you’re really excited about. Yesterday, on my lunch break, I watched some YouTube videos of Mega Man levels and bosses (I am, as previously noted, a mega-nerd), and instantly had the inspiration to write the next in my series of video game retellings. It took me about three hours to crank out 3500 words, and now the story is ready for me to edit. Similar things happened with “27 Jennifers” (heard the song, five hours later there was a first draft), “Amid the Steep Sky’s Commotion” (written over the course of three days), a few chapters of my novel (each one 4000-9000 words), and my steampunk mystery novella (17,000 words in about eleven nonconsecutive hours).
But for every “ZOMG WRITING-GASM!”, there’s ten stories that take me weeks or months (or years) to finish and edit. Writing-gasms are abnormal, so I cherish every single one.
December 29, 2009 at 9:15 am
I heard it on Christmas too. Great!!! That was wonderful.
And yes, Big’s kids are the best. Something about their accents or elocution made all of their lines sound both cuter and funnier.
I thought that story was hilarious. And there was still a vaguely scary element in there. When the protagonist is asking about the meaning of a plate reading ‘The Spirit of Christmas’. There is something a bit ominous there. It was perfect.
This definitely made Christmas better.
January 1, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Just heard Rish’s Drabble on the Drabble Cast. Funny. And Congrats! You finally made it!
January 1, 2010 at 9:09 pm
Just want to really say thank you for posting an episode at Christmas. You would have had every excuse not to. There’s obviously a tremendous amount of work that goes into producing podcasts like this and the Drabblecast and so on. I’ve reflected on this and I can only think that these are examples of what creative people sometimes say about being compelled to create. I’m grateful to be benefiting from it.
I hope that at some point sleazy financiers or ultra-wealthy software developers will number among your fans, so you can be properly financially rewarded for your work. On the other hand, they may insist on flying you out to their offshore island studios where you would be forced to produce daily podcasts only for them (and their more valued employees).
That would be a downer.
[A: ‘Great ‘cast, guys! How about working jokes about Cher or RuPaul into the next episode. It’s the CEO’s birthday! That’ll be ready for tomorrow, right?’
B: ‘Please can we go home?’]
Hopefully enough of us will keep giving enough donations to protect against that eventuality.
Happy New Year!
Nigel
January 5, 2010 at 11:17 am
OMG – I can’t believe I didn’t catch the bit of in-joke int he character names until I heard them…. Jacobi? Dale Cooper? Laura?
OUCH!!!!!
Sorry – someone had to say it.
July 1, 2012 at 7:31 pm
Loved this story guys, I know it’s friggin July 3 years after you put ths up there, but i wanted to say how awesome it was. I loved all the jokes, especially this kinda inside ones, it just really felt like an easter egg for the fans of your great podcast. I especially loved the “The Outfields have a blowup lady”
“Look away kids…”
Cracked me up!