An unspooled cassette tape. 3D art by Jeff Emtman

Searching for something to do during government-mandated social distancing, Here Be Monsters host Jeff Emtman recently digitized his cassette collection, and re-edited them into blackout poems and proverbs.

Content Note: Language

While in the process of doing this, Jeff re-discovered a mixtape he made in 1999, the product of endless hours of waiting by the boombox in the basement with a hand hovering over the 🔴 button. And on this old mixtape, a 10 year Jeff attempted to make a fancy edit: swapping out the intro of one song for another’s. It didn’t sound good at all, but it may have actually been Jeff’s first ever audio cut, predating the start of HBM by over a decade.

On this episode, Jeff shares a couple dozen of his recent blackout proverbs and short poems, made from a variety of bootlegged self-help audiobooks found in the thrift stores of New England.

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: The Black Spot, August Blicher Friis

Jeff’s author headshot from a short book about aardvarks that he wrote for an assignment in third grade, circa 1997.