CONRAD: Greetings and welcome to the premiere of the Never Rad Miscellany. My name is Conrad Miszuk and I am the director of this project. What you are about to see and/or hear is the finest surrealist and science fiction known to this arm of the galaxy. I know. I checked. It understandably took a little while. Some of you might consider that a waste of time, but I needed to do my due diligence. Someone might ask what about that other miscellany from the United States of Yurtis on Orlania 9? Huh? What about that? Then I can say, I checked. And it wasn’t as good.

This is a live recording. That means that all of you in this room are now being recorded. Hopefully that’s not a surprise for you. That means that we need each of you to silence your cellular devices and keep your talking to a minimum. Please laugh if you find something funny, please gasp if you find something ssurprising, but please refrain from explaining anything to your dense neighbor for the duration of the event. If I have to edit around any copyrighted ringtones or other obnoxious sounds, I will come after you. Everyone in this room is at most two degrees separated from me. I will find your home and I will commit a minor act of vandalism once I’m there.

Now, it doesn’t seem entirely fair to ask you to restrain your deep desires to scream out, so I am willing to take one especially good heckle here at the beginning of the show. It’s your freebie. Does someone have a good one? No slurs please. (Various heckles from the audience)

Audience: You own too many domain names.

Audience: Get a haircut.

Audience: Your other podcast’s better.

Audience: You sort of resemble Weird Al Yancovic.

Conrad: Those are some spicy heckles there, guys.

On your seats, you should have found a survey. This is a new project and we want to make sure we are best serving our community, so please take a moment to read the questions and keep them in mind as you listen to the Miscellany. Then fill out those cards and let us know how you like what we’re doing here. And then drop them off on the merch table when you go.

There is also a pin available for sale. We will have more merchandise in the coming months, but for now, we have a lovely pin. We will be happy to sell you that pin at intermission or after the show.

Thank you all for coming to this event. All of us here at the Miscellany believe that this is the start of something great, and we are so thankful and happy to have all of you with us. And now, we can move on with the show.