1: Chronicle TV critic's new podcast

The very first "TV Talk Machine" podcast lumbered out of the garage late last night. I think it still might be running without brakes. I was joined by Chronicle media writer Joe Garofoli who played the part of Question Boy. And he did it with aplomb. Joe does a superb Ed McMahon, which we might bust out next week. He's also a master at Bill Walton. We may do an entire podcast with our Bill Walton voices in the future. Or we might actually invite Bill on the show to see what the Big Man knows about TV. On second thought, that kind of defeats the purpose of doing the voices. We might also add puppets. Or mimes. It's a first class operation. We took e-mail questions. I'm not sure I answered any of them, but I had fun. We talked about the best comedies and dramas in the last 30 years; desert island DVDs; way too much tech stuff and some general nonsense. We'll do it again next week, but I'm also going to interview filmmaker Ken Burns separately so there may be two podcasts. One stupid, one informative. It's a great country.