Saturday, June 17, 2017

A Conversation with Barry Blaustein About "Beyond the Mat", Professional Wrestling, Donald Trump, and Eddie Murphy

The Chauncey DeVega Show is a labor of love. It is also very time intensive. Each weekly episode takes an average of 7 hours to produce. Twice a year--once in June and once in December--I push out the old begging bowl in the form of an online fundraiser to support the podcast and my other projects. If you value the podcast as well as my writing--and are able--please click on the right hand side of the screen at chaunceydevega.com on the Paypal link and throw in some silver, gold, pennies or paper. The monies will go towards the video podcast series that I am still developing (it is more expensive than I originally thought) and to help finance an additional project that is in its early stages.

The Chauncey DeVega Show has featured some amazing guests including Van Jones, Timothy Snyder, Sheldon Solomon, Bandy Lee, Tim Wise, Cornell Belcher, Malcolm Nance, Naveed Jamali, Philip Zimbardo and so many others as part of my effort to help the public understand the threat to American democracy and the world posed by Donald Trump and his regime. I have received a good number of offers to advertise on the podcast as well as on my site Indomitable but have always refused them. I can do this in part because of the kind donations that good folks such as yourself offer up during the twice a year fundraiser. I set a fixed amount for the fundraisers in June and December and then conclude them once that goal is reached. We are about 65 percent of the way there. With some kind donations from just a few of the many thousands of people who listen to each podcast episode and read my essays online each month, I hope we can reach our goal. 


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Writer, movie producer, and director Barry Blaustein is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. Barry is the writer of such classic comedies as Coming to America, The Nutty Professor, and Boomerang. Barry also helped to write Eddie Murphy's legendary skits on the TV show Saturday Night Live. And of course, Barry Blaustein narrated and produced the amazing documentary about professional wrestling Beyond the Mat

During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Barry and Chauncey discuss their shared love of professional wrestling, how Donald Trump is a performance artist, how he made Beyond the Mat, what it was like trying to tell the true life behind the scenes stories of the (then) World Wrestling Federation, talk about Jake "the Snake" Roberts, and some of the "good" and "bad" things about professional wrestling today. Barry also shares some stories about working with and writing for Eddie Murphy as well as the challenge of being creative for a living. 

Jared Yates Sexton is also a guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a journalist and writer who has extensively covered Donald Trump's campaign and now presidency. This is the third time that Jared has stopped by the virtual bar and salon and he has some great stories to tell about how Trump and the Right-wing media are causing violence and other problems within families and communities, offers some thoughts about Trump and the Russia scandal, and ponders how Trump's regime may end. Jared also loves professional wrestling, so of course, he and Chauncey have to talk about the WWE and Brock Lesnar's upcoming battle with Samoa Joe. 

In this week's episode Chauncey DeVega shares some insights about a crazy week that included an attack on a Republican congressional baseball game in Alexandria, violence by conservatives against Democrats, liberals, and their other enemies, and how a racist thug cop got away with the de facto lynching of Philando Castile. 

At the end of this week's episode of the podcast, Chauncey shares a story about gun violence and other foolishness at Chuck E. Cheese restaurants in Chicago. 

This episode with Barry Blaustein and Jared Yates Sexton can be downloaded from Libysn and also listened to here.

The Chauncey DeVega Show is available on Itunes, Spotify and at Stitcher.

The Chauncey DeVega Show can now be found on iHeartRadio.

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