Drive Hard

You’ve probably already heard a lot about the Max Fun Drive, but we promise that if you read this to the end, you’ll be rewarded with a music video featuring Dan and his cats.

It may not surprise you to learn that asking for money isn’t the MOST comfortable thing for us (as a socially-repressed Midwesterner, I would personally prefer that anything involving money be handled old-fashioned-pornography-style — delivered in a plain brown wrapper and never spoken about). So sometimes the drive can feel awkward. Imagine if your paycheck was dependent on you going to your boss and making the case for why you should get any money at all, and you’ll get the idea.

That said, over the years my feelings about the Max Fun model — give you all of our episodes up front and trust that enough people value the show enough to tip us — have evolved from “oh, that’s a nice, non-evil way to sustain ourselves” to something that feels… well… kind of essential in this day and age?

These days, the idea of creators being able to profit from their work, and for creators and workers being able to make a living in independent media — organizations not beholden to the whims of large companies or even prevailing political power, but dependent only on listeners — well, it kind of feels nothing short of unicorn-miraculous. I don’t want to make our silly little bad movie show seem more important than it is, but I do believe it’s one drop in a bucket worth filling. The more we turn our backs on the anti-artist, anti-human stuff out there, in favor of supporting good things… well, the more good things we’ll HAVE in the world. We really appreciate how all of you have helped keep this tiny patch of the world a little kinder and more welcoming. Thank you.

Enough High-Minded Talk. GIFTS!

Sure, it’s great to fight the ever-darkening media landscape, but can I lie on that at the beach? Well, you can with one of the many Max Fun Drive thank you gifts this year. We’ll highlight a few, but you can check out all the tiers here.

At the $5/month level, you get access to not only all the bonus episodes The Flop House have contributed over the years, but all the bonus episodes ALL of the Max Fun Podcasts have done over the years — approximately 275 hours of audio — but here at The Flop House we like talking about ourselves, so we’ll highlight some of the stuff we’ve got in bonus content: live shows, like SPAWN and BATTLEFIELD EARTH; a 3-film retrospective of good-bad director Greydon Clark (of Joysticks fame); DVD commentaries for movies like CATS, BRATZ, and THE COUNTRY BEARS; episodes on bad television like STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP and SMALL WONDER; a whole episode that’s just “Radio Zork;” and a bunch more.

The MOST popular bonus content has been the “FlopTales” series of roleplaying episodes, game-mastered by Stuart. They started in the world of the Adventure Zone, then genre-hopped to stuff like 30’s weird noir and animated dog movie. This year’s “SlopTales” bonus episodes are more like workplace sitcoms, as Dan, Elliott, and Zhubin play the staff of a beachfront restaurant, during the busy summer season!

At the $10 a month level, you can choose an enamel pin from the show of your choice.

Our pin is featured in the second picture, but if you’re supporting the network, we won’t get mad at you for getting some other show’s pin. They’re all great! But if you want extras, there will be a charity pin sale for two weeks after MaxFunDrive, with proceeds for that going to Transgender Law Center.

Look, if you wanna play it safe, there’s a nice bucket hat at the $20/month level, but really… if I was gonna choose? I’m all about this nutty (literally) beach towel. It looks like someone spilled a blacklight poster on a tween girl’s notebook, in the best possible way.

All of the thank-you gifts stack (if you support at a higher level, you also get the gifts from the lower levels, and there’s a bunch of other wonderful stuff at the even higher levels (including a personalized “mixtape” that comes with its own cassette player!), but you can check those out for yourselves. We appreciate any level of support our listeners are able to provide, even if that level is “telling friends to listen to the show.” We take none of it for granted, and we’re so grateful for y’all.

You Made it to the End!

As promised…