I want to give a special thanks to everyone who appeared in Season 1 of This Podcast Is… Uncalled For, whether as an interviewee or as part of the archival footage used in the podcast.
Host: Mike Czerniewski
Interviewees/Live Participants (in alphabetical order):
Tim Crippen
BriAnne Friesen
Ty Gephardt
Chris Hurt
Chip Karger (apologies if this is misspelled)
Pat Lamb
Trevor Martin
Adam McKeith
Nancy Powell
Adam Sadiq
Matt Sewell
DaVaun Williams
Daniel Yung
Appearing in Archival Footage (in alphabetical order):
Ai Vy Bui
Ellyn Calvert
George M. Dean
Ray Domino
Chris Fiedler
Kyle Russell
Jeff Stalnaker
EJ Tangonan
Megan Tripp
Scott Vancil
Ksenya Vorobyeva
Free Use Narration: Chiquito Crasto
Computer Voicing: FromTextToSpeech.com (sadly now defunct at of 9/11/2019)
In recent months, some fools (likely MLS/USL sycophants) took to Wikipedia and started outright deleting Wikipedia entries for America’s lower league clubs.
Other clubs with pages so far include: AFC Mobile, Kingston Stockade (notable co-plaintiffs with Miami FC in their #ProRelForUSA case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport), OKC 1889 FC, and Wanderers’ former UPSL rival Bugeaters FC.
Granted, he can’t eat it all the time, but if he could, he would. It is literally the food of the gods.
Mmm, Mongolian barbecue. Aaaagh!!!
Ski’s Mongolian barbecue of choice: BD’s Mongolian Grill. There are 2 in the Kansas City area – one in Overland Park, right across the street from Oak Park Mall; one in Independence, down the street from the Independence arena (itself across the interstate from Independence Center Mall).
Here is the recipe for Ski approved Mongolian barbecue:
Canton noodles (the really thick noodles)
Chicken
Shrimp
Beef (optional)
Green bell peppers
Onions
Broccoli
Pineapple
Sauce
Cilantro
2 parts teriyaki sauce
1 part lemon sauce
Spices: seasoned salt, black pepper, lemon pepper, garlic powder
Add 1 dash of A1 steak sauce
Best served with a side of white rice and using chopsticks.
KCKASL just finished their 2019 regular season and will be starting playoffs this weekend. The final first division table:
Santa Fe Wanderers, 31 points, +34 GD
United KC Lions, 26 points, +14 GD
Queso Blanco, 26 points, 0 GD
El Momento, 20 points, +12 GD
United KC Bears, 19 points, -3 GD
Barilleros, 19 points, -13 GD
Barcelona, 16 points, -8 GD
Juventus, 13 points, -10 GD
Deportivo El Parque, 10 points, -16 GD
Focus FC, 8 points, -10 GD
Clubs of note in the first division (and Mike’s thoughts):
Barilleros FC also participated in UPSL in 2018. They are a team of the Spanish-speaking community – their Twitter is entirely in Spanish, and their logo is a stylized version of the Mexican flag. (By the way, if you are curious about what a Barillero is: it is the Spanish word for “rod sellers.”) Their rivalry with Wanderers is known as the Batalla del Barrio.
Queso Blanco are a phoenix club of Quinto Elemento, which also played in UPSL in 2018 before folding in the offseason. They really could have come up with a better name than “white cheese” in Spanish.
United KC – which fields two teams in the first division – are a really good club. In fact, all 3 of the league games Mike was able to attend this year featured a United KC side. Their players and supporters are very nice guys.
Today’s episode of the podcast is rather… fringe-y.
Mike has been a volunteer at the Kansas City Fringe Festival every year since 2011, first as an usher, then one year as a photographer (actually, it was video, but as we discussed with Pat Lamb they’re basically the same thing), and most often as a house manager (which was rebranded this year as the very confusing “venue ambassador”). Also, making buttons.
Today’s episode features three brief interviews with fellow Fringe volunteers.
You may recall from our discussion with Trevor Martin that Mike’s friend and film mentor Dave Berry passed away in May 2018 from stage 4 lung cancer.
You may also recall from our discussion with Matt Sewell that Mike’s high school football coach Steve Shelton has been fighting the disease – and is presently cured.
Mike will be helping his old coach out in memory of his late friend. Click on the link below to see how you can help out.
This calls back to our Smash Up Playthrough episode, and the fact that Mike did complete a 100 game challenge with this very game.
Thanks to the Smash Up Reddit community, combined with a really cool website and Mike’s game data, we have Mike’s definitive rankings of the Smash Up factions.
Factions are sorted by the following rating system: number of games each faction was featured in the challenge divided by number of wins said faction had in the challenge, regardless of pairing. The lower the number, the better.
Please note that this only accounts for factions used in the 100 game challenge – which is pretty much the first 50 factions. Everything that was released after What Were We Thinking? did not make the cut – something that can be remedied by adding games to the challenge. This also means that the factions that retroactively received Titans were played without said Titans as they were not available at the time.
Also note that most of the factions not ranked are factions Mike helped playtest.
Tier D (8.00-9.99): Innsmouth*, Warriors, Shapeshifters
Tier F (10.00 and above): Super Spies*, Star Roamers, Time Travelers*, Wizards*
Unrated (did not feature in the challenge): Smash Up All-Stars, Itty Critters, Kaiju, Magical Girls, Mega Troopers, Sheep, Disco Dancers, Kung Fu Fighters, Truckers, Vigilantes, Ancient Egyptians, Cowboys, Samurai, Vikings, Luchadores, Mounties, Musketeers, Sumo Wrestlers, Penguins#, Anansi Tales#, Ancient Incas#, Grimms’ Fairy Tales#, Polynesian Voyagers#, Russian Fairy Tales#
Notes: * indicates factions that retroactively received Titans, and # indicates factions not yet available for purchase at the time of this post.
This Podcast Is... Uncalled For 