Tomorrow, July 1, at 12 noon, marks the launch of the newly re-designed Minnesota Fringe Festival website. This is a pretty cool thing unto itself, but what makes it even cooler is that along with the launch comes the first ever Fringe Podcast – the same Fringe Podcast for which I make my public debut as the official Voice of the Fringe. Now this official “Voice” stuff is only an announcer-type gig, not a Carl Rove-type gig – I will not strategize with other hateful mongerish types and feed Cooper specific vocabulary to justify stupid preemptive wars that the Fringe starts in the name of saving poor, oppressed artists from juried festivals. For one thing, Cooper is a genius and doesn’t need anyone to cook up talking points for her; Secondly, war is stupid.

So anyway, within the last few weeks I’ve recorded some of Foster’s beautifully written openings/news tidbits, interviewed about twenty performers, had a Terri Gross/Fresh Air Moment with a super-insightful question about a performer’s relationship with his father, and floundered for the longest five minutes of my life in what I will heretofore call The Worst Interview Ever.

Before three weeks ago, the only people I had ever interviewed were Grandma and Grandpa Horton for a grade-school project on heritage – now I’ve not only administered interviews, I’ve administered them in front of a live audience. While I’m proud, I’m also freaked out – I can’t believe I did that and didn’t completely suck 100 percent of the time. To be fair, I’d give it more of a 40/60 sucking-to-not ratio. Download the podcast tomorrow afternoon and hear for yourself – and just when you start to think, “…hey! - that wasn’t that bad!,” remember the benefits of editing.