It’s been a long time since I decided to write an entry.  We have been very busy working on the show and company.  Recently we had the pleasure of attending the Marijuana FIlm Festival in Upper Lake, California.  We met many other folks in the industry.  Another great event we were involved in recently was with Bobby Black who held a press conference for Norml in our studios.

Also, enjoy the picture gallery from our day with Bobby Black.  The air smelled right.  We really enjoyed ourselves.
  
Thank you to everyone who came out and saw a really fun and unique time materialize.  We were very pleased to see that the day went off and was an excellent success.  The mp3 includes the entire press conference recording and it’s worth a listen.  

- 05/20/2008

Watch the video that accompanies Bobby Black’s visit to our studio.

Take a look at the picture gallery from the Marijuana Film Festival.

Watch out for a video feature about our trip to California in coming weeks!  This was an outrageous smokefest!

We wound up smoking ‘more than ever’ in our lives, and the video footage we got is excellent and should tell a good story from this event.  Unfortunately, I smoked so much that I was literally passed out for the musical performances.  However, we still managed to meet many great folks and have an amazing time.

[Show as slideshow]

1234...222324►

 

We had an excellent cabin to stay in courtesy of Apothecary Travel.  We are insanely grateful.

We also got to interview and hang out with Ponyboy from Los Marijuanos a bit!  Check back to see the video from the festival! 

Recently has been the absoulte ‘best’ that Marijuana Radio has ever been.  The new crew has simply been amazing and we’re really exited about many doors opening up to us in the industry.  I hope you’ll all visit MarijuanaRadio.com and enjoy the super time we’re having.

Become a part of the juggernaut and experience it first hand!

Peace!

Join the forums!

Check out our greatest work to date!

This time around we worked our hardest to produce something very special. Marijuana Back in Time is a story of time travel and follows two Cavemen, Panka and Danka as they jockey for the affections of Kahna. Join them for a special day where they all discover the amazing power of marijuana. This plays more like a short film. It was partly inspired by the 80s film ‘Caveman.’ So, adults, sit back, light up a fat one, pack a bowl, or however you do it, and enjoy Marijuana Back In Time. It is our greatest and proudest work to date. I don’t know how or if it’s possible, but please request that YouTube feature this video. This video is intended for viewers over the age of 18. Enjoy!

Check out our sponsors
Monster Smoke Shop
BC Northernlights
Click to Subscribe to MRTV in ITUNES!

I’ve been asked if I have short videos that I would like people to view at a local film screening, and we plan to submit this piece to another local film festival at a charming local art hub called the Bug Theatre.

As of today, the rough cut for the new ‘Marijuana Radio Back in Time’ video is approximately 4 minutes 20 seconds(no joke), but will wind up a few minutes longer.

Yesterday I spent many hours for another round of video editing, and came up with something that’s interesting to watch.

It has been a maddening process for a host of reasons. I often wind up at the end of an editing project pleased with how it turns out, and in many ways, this new video is no exception thus far. The video feels like a creative step up with the collaborative help of a very creative crew, but it still feel like the production end of things is not being executed well enough.

I can’t help but anguish when things are not perfect. I will often stomp around the studio screaming when video isn’t shot properly. To me no frame should ever be throw away.

In mastering this process, I am trying to learn a system for storyboarding that will greatly enhance the outcome of the final project. I find that when I’m in front of the camera, I can’t concentrate because my mind is on so many other things. Instead of being in front of the camera, I want more often to be behind it.

One of the most positive experiences doing this new video was that both Dan-K and McKenna have a natural ability for acting. Dan-k can best be described as a cult of personality, and working with him in front of the camera has been a blast. My wife and I noticed right away that McKenna has the most distinguishable expressions on her face. I feel like this crew has strong potential and I hope we’ll get more time to see how far Marijuana Radio can go.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am thrilled to be doing the things that I am for a career, it’s just that I have an obsessive drive for perfection. I want this drive to push me all the way to making a full feature film.

I feel like the number one thing standing between me and bringing my media to a new level is money. Of course my biggest problem is money, because I would otherwise hire a dozen people and rent out new office space right away. I am not just thinking of this in terms of media production either, I have had a developer lust to make a special website for a long time. I have been going over an idea in my head and the time is ripe. I’m looking for the benjamins.

Stay tuned for more updates and photos about our production process. Keep your eye out for this short film at the end of January.

Tonight, with Dan-K and Paul the Producer in tow, McKenna successfully hosted the show all by her lonesome self . We blasted off the starting line by talking to Marco Renda, publisher of Treating Yourself Magazine. Later on Clarke, the creator of Pothedz Couch came on to talk to us about his hilarious program. Also on tap was a grow tip from Roger the Intern, the Celebrity Stoner Update, and more. Stay tuned to the very end to hear Paul the Producer’s outrageous rap about Dan-K. Register for the forums and get involved in the community!

Check out the latest episode of MJR!

Marco Renda - Treating Yourself Magazine
Clarke - PothedzCouch.com
- 01/08/2008
ITUNES - subscribe on ipod

Tonight we return for a live show after a two week holiday break.

We’ve been busy with a new video project called ‘The History of Pot.’ All of us went up to a campground in the dead of winter to film a stoner caveman epic. We FROZE but came out with some interesting video footage. Dan-K was only wearing sneakers with NO socks! Why? I don’t know.

A much more detailed HSC entry will be coming soon. I am very busy producing this new video, revamping the show, websites, filing my ASCAP report etc. Many things are on tap in business and for the show this year.

Thank you to everyone who continues to appreciate the program. It really means allot to me.

We did our first XMas Comedy Special!

Tis the season to be funny, so here’s a special radio show that we’re sure will make you laugh. Mckenna, Dan-K, and Paul the Producer were joined on the mic by three singular Denver comedians. Ben Kronberg, Sam Tallent and Dick Black brought fine wit and good laughs to the first ever Christmas Comedy Special. There was not the smell of pine trees, but the air wreaked properly to make this vintage Marijuana Radio. Stay tuned! 2008 shall be a supreme year of creative curveballs. Happy Holidays, everybody!

Ben Kronberg - Comedian
Sam Tallent - Comedian
Dick Black - Comedian
ITUNES - subscribe on ipod
- 12/25/2007

Also, check out Santa-K at the Kottonmouth Kings concert! What a great way to end this year’s videos! Stay tuned for the year of the curveball!

Enjoy Dan-K as the star in ‘How to Roll a Joint.’ Expect the unexpected.

Or enjoy episode #46 Marijuana Radio!
- CLICK TO PLAY Marijuana Radio Episode 46

Please go to the YouTube URL and rate this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX0t2dcw81A

Or enjoy the last three radio episodes of Marijuana Radio!
- CLICK TO PLAY Marijuana Radio Episode 45
- CLICK TO PLAY Marijuana Radio Episode 44
- CLICK TO PLAY Marijuana Radio Episode 43

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

If I write down my honest feelings at this moment, it’s hard not to mention the abominable dread that I feel. Sometimes the necessary things are happening to become successful with my business, and then there are days when I’m more full of doubt. I sometimes ask myself if I got in way over my head. Some people think that I did, but I really hope that the systems we’re working out for our business eventually pay off.

Am I just too ‘creatively high’ on my own media?

It’s easy to ‘produce’ the media that I am compared to making a functioning business model around it, especially when that business model is so in need of mass exposing this media as a vital component. We’re an ‘indie mom and pop’ media outlet that is hoping we can grow a bigger voice with much more media offered all the time. All the meanwhile, we’re calculating our steps in hopes that we can help build the businesses who support our media as sponsors. I believe that the more successful Marijuana Radio becomes, the more successful most of the businesses working with us will become.

When I gain my perspective after fleeting moments of gloom and doom, I usually realize that perhaps one day I’ll feel truly successful. I get frustrated when people congratulate me on my success. Should I feel good that I seem successful to others? Or should I still feel this huge motivation to really succeed? I try to put a successful image out there, but feeling personally successful, or being successful in a financial sense are all different things. You could say I’m a success based upon my level of enjoyment, but that enjoyment is not enough to indefinitely sustain the company in the real world, or my constant appetite for more production gear, which I always associate with a higher level of potential success.

I’m not yet successful in business, and at times it feels that the whole operation for one reason or another hangs in the balance. Of course my biggest concern with making this company function is generating enough revenue to make it possible to self perpetuate.

On a more philosophical note, I’ve come to the conclusion that I put way too much pressure on myself personally to succeed, perhaps to the detriment of my health and productivity. I also frequently feel frustrated with the slow day to day progress in business, while feeling more satisfied when I look back after time at how things went.

One thing that is causing me paramount frustration lately is timeline pressures. More specifically, the videos that I’m editing, though I really enjoy them as a creative outlet, they are incredibly hard to produce. However, despite that, I’m pleased that we’ve had sponsors supporting them, which helps me justify the enormous amount of time I’m putting into producing them. Of course people seeing them justifies making the videos as well. Both making money and an audience are integral parts of this brainstorming process every time we come up with a video concept. We literally ask ourselves, ‘will this concept appeal specifically to any particular sponsors?’

I admit that am a potential sellout. When the time comes, I hope that I can let all of this go with a hefty reward, and a successful company to hand off. I would start focusing on producing music full time, and I’m not even necessarily talking about producing music to sell it. I just want to make music for strictly artistic reasons. There are no guarantees in life that this opportunity will materialize. I’m still full of musical ideas and yet there’s something killing my ability to follow through with a more refined and finished album project, that something is FUCKING TIME coupled with business responsibility.

I have a constant fantasy that I can just ‘pause’ time and take a breather to recover my energy, OR have endless amounts of time to work more and get ahead without actual time passing. I really have in this stupid fantasy in my mind, and then I will cast it away in frustration because I’m being overly ideal, and I’m practically obsessive about it. It’s comparable to a feeling of nostalgia that I have in which I want to go back in time someday to fix mistakes that I’ve made in my love life. I know this is ridiculous, but I indulge in these fantasies sometimes. It’s both frustrating and at times a form of escapism, as if I might truly travel back in time by happenstance while imagining it in my head, or as if I may get to return in the future to a renewed situation to make things right. Dwelling really isn’t an escape. It’s rather a wish for something impossible which is a fruitless pursuit in the end. I’m purposefully being vague when I’d like nothing more than to get specific and say precisely what I’m thinking.

Often it’s music, specifically my own music that I’ve made and still make that perpetuates this unending nostalgic feeling of wanting to return to the past. I hear my own feelings and remember where I was very clearly in almost every recording that I have made. It’s as if I’m viewing audio in a time capsule when I hear my music. The feelings present in the music rush back to me, as if it was literally yesterday. This summer I’ve been pouring over many old recordings and I’ve been stuck in a nostalgic loop. I find myself writing new music about the same exact things. It’s also why I’ve had a hard time getting my hands around music professionally. I have a huge archive of musical demos that are quite good, but the thought of rerecording them from an artistic standpoint for commercial purposes does not appeal to me. I expect that I will be publishing a myspace page after not long where you’ll be able to hear samples of my music. I have three songs in mind that I would like to put out there. They’ll all be from different periods in the last 7 years.

I say that I’m a sellout, but since I can’t imagine the future, I have to admit that if the opportunity materializes, I may still find myself still personally tied to what’s going on. So who knows? This is my thought for the future in terms of being this successful someday, but it may or may not be the requiem of events yet to come. I can only hope. It’s hard not to tie in the hopelessness of the world gone mad around me and trying to be successful in business. We can never know all of the future.

Life can change. Situations change. I started this whole company based upon doing a radio show called Barefoot Radio which has moved into the background while Marijuana Radio has become my professional focus. I think it will evolve into much more than the simple media we’re producing today. Did I say that the media I’m producing is simple? It’s not simple, but it’s simple compared to what I aspire to do someday. I’m perpetually unsatisfied and always want to get to the next step and level.

I’m pleased that I’m not faced with the reality of ‘giving up’ Marijuana Radio at this point. It has opened bigger and better doors than anything else. If the right investor comes along, our team of people is instantly going to grow. Productivity is going to skyrocket. Why would a podcast stay only a mere podcast when it can become something so much more?

I’m facing the future with cautious courage. I have all of these visions for the company and wonder if they’ll come true. The things I’m doing now with media I was only speaking about five or six years ago. It took that long to finally land in a place where I’m actually producing the media I knew that I would one day produce. One of my biggest frustrations is trying to do these grandiose perspective type videos all alone. I need help. I need others who can help kick these elements up to a new level of gripping, relevant, entertaining media.

If you’re serious and in business, step forward. I’m looking for the business partners in life that want to create a massively successful company. I need the help of key others to be successful. Who are you? Say howdy.

I need to stay focused. I need to be a healthier person mentally and physically. I feel myself again at a crossroads in life, and there’s tons of pressure and twisted irony in my reality.

Time + $ + Hard Work + Luck + People + Goals +/- Health +OTHERS + X + Y + Z = Success

WTF are X, Y and Z? Are they luck too?

Prolific personalities and producers, say hello so that we may grow something special to a whole new level. It’s no secret that we want Marijuana Radio broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio.

- CLICK TO PLAY Marijuana Radio Episode 45
- CLICK TO PLAY Marijuana Radio Episode 44
- CLICK TO PLAY Marijuana Radio Episode 43

I am exhausted, and yet I can’t stop working.

We went to the Hempfest in Seattle this past weekend. While there, I observed amazing culture during a festival unlike any I have ever seen in the United States. We had the privilege of all access to this event and it was a bird’s eye view into an amazing culture, and a peaceful gathering full of people freely expressing their marijuana lifestyle.

Rarely does my critical tongue go and commend authority, but I found the Seattle Police’s tolerance for the smokers to be very respectful, and hopefully a guiding light for future states to give up the aggressive enforcement of marijuana policy. Sincerely, without sarcasm, I appreciate how civil and respectful the whole event was with regard to Police presence and attendees. If we’re lucky, a new law will be passed that proposes Denver make marijuana enforcement the Denver Police Department’s lowest priority.

Interestingly, there was no beer or alcohol of any kind available on the festival grounds. I couldn’t find ANY alcohol, and would have been drinking had the opportunity been there. However, I understand that the absence of alcohol was probably not a coincidence. In fact, I can see why it’s a good idea to keep it peaceful and also make a well defined statement about how masses of people involved in a weed fest behave properly. The same size event would be riddled with far more violence if booze were in the mix. How do I know? I don’t know, this is just what I suppose.

I barely witnessed any disturbances at Hempfest over a two day period. I only saw one occasion when a man was stopped by police for shoplifting, and another when attendants were arguing with a religious protester picketing the event. I never once saw police giving anyone a hard time, and this is fascinating, and dare I say, the way things should be in more of the United States.

I also learned a ton about business at Hempfest. We had the chance to observe a multitude of company owners who are working hard to build a brand and an identity. We’re looking at an array of products that are unique to start out our own online store. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to go back next year with a bigger marketing plan in place, perhaps even produce some live media and broadcasting from Hempfest itself, and this same plan, we hope to implement at other types of festivals.

I really can’t believe all the different hats I’m wearing in my professional life. I’ve had to learn a plethora of skills to make my business work the way it’s starting to work. I’ve by happenstance fallen into doing many things professionally. I have managed to have built a rather respectable book of photography with the access we’re getting. To go along with this new found profession, I’ve started learning much more about digital photography so that my skill can continue to grow. The same can be said about shooting video. I’ve fallen into this role of producing, and doing so has forced me to set the bar high. I can’t understate my ‘hatred’ for my current video camera. It’s makes me want to throw an artistic temper tantrum. I should go sell my car tomorrow and buy a new one. I hate my video camera. How many times do I have to say it? I hate it.

The core pieces of a starting company are vital. I am really working hard on so many things that it’s hard to break it all down to make sense. I need a Production Assistant, I need some help with much more sophisticated web development, and we’re going to get another part time sales person, a marketing person, and search for more talent to fill up will hopefully be a partly live internet tv station 24/7.

I have a handful of things that I can’t bring up yet. I’m really exited about them and hope that they come to fruition soon so I can announce what’s going on.

Marijuana Radio was nominated for best ‘Mature’ podcast in the Podcast Awards, but lost out to a seasoned Keith and the Girl. It was pretty groovy to get the nod. The biggest reason I’d like to win is to thank the people who deserve to be thanked for helping us get where we are.

I’m trying to make better working relationships with various businesses to grow in a direction where we get to make more content, and also capitalize in different areas.

I’m sleepy and I’m going to go to bed. I’m practically sure that nobody reads this. But does someone?

Thank you to Ken for the custom glass pipe! It’s totally rad!
Dragon By JW