Please Listen to the Travolta/Cage Podcast. It is Good.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you know that a lot of what I do is promote the articles on this website and my books. I know a lot of people are put off by self-promotion, for very good reasons, but I aggressively publicize the Happy Place and its myriad literary spin-offs for a very good reason: I rely upon the income from my books and this website to support my family and myself, to keep a roof over our heads and food on our table. 

If I’m not perpetually alerting my twenty-seven thousand Twitter followers to the wonders of a website that at this point is pretty much my life, professionally at least, then the page-views fall and with them income that I desperately need just to get by. 

I know I’d have more Twitter followers if I didn’t promote the Happy Place and my books so aggressively but if I’m not selling this website, no one else would. Social media isn’t just the most effective way to attract attention to the site: at this point it’s pretty much the only way to publicize the Happy Place.

It might be different if I had a publicist, or someone to handle social media on my behalf but four years in, Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place remains a one-man operation, a mom and pop shop minus mom. 

There is, however, one aspect of this website and my career that I feel like I have done a bad job of promoting: the Travolta/Cage podcast, and The Travolta/Cage Project. 

I felt like I never quite cracked the code with the Happy Place’s first podcast, Nathan Rabin’s Happy Cast. I thought Clint did a great job as cohost and producer but I was not terribly confident in my abilities as a beginner podcaster and I felt like we needed a focus to set our podcast apart from every other one in which two white dudes talk about pop culture. 

With Travolta/Cage we found that focus: taking a deep dive into the complete filmographies of two of the most charismatic actors in film history, men whose legacies are deep and weird and complicated and amazing. 

The project has proven every bit as fascinating and fun as I had hoped. We’ve been honored with some incredible guests as well, people like Emily Vanderwerff, Josh Gondelman, Jordan Morris, Karina Longworth and Griffin Newman. 

From a creative standpoint, I’m very happy with how the podcast is doing but I can’t help but think that it would attract more attention, and by extension revenue, if I did better or more aggressive job of promoting it. 

It also probably couldn’t hurt to highlight the connection between the podcast and the column, so that even casual readers of this site get a sense of its size, scope and ambition. Then again, I don’t know if this site attracts any casual readers. I feel like you other love this site and feel a deep emotional connection to it, or you don’t know that it exists. 

I wonder sometimes if small fixes might make big, positive changes when it comes to the Happy Place and Travolta/Cage. If nothing else, it couldn’t hurt to run brief descriptions of the Travolta/Cage Project at the beginning of every article, something that I’ve begun doing with Windtalkers, the sixty-seventh entry in the series, not including a whole bunch of bonus articles on Travolta and Cage-related ephemera.

We’re about halfway through our epic journey through Travolta and Cage’s life’s work so I would like to cordially invite everyone to listen to the back catalog of Travolta/Cage. We’re got a lot of great episodes! About great movies! With great guests! 

It’s not just a podcast, it’s a years-long journey! 

And we’ve begun really committing ourselves to doing at least one patron-only episode per month, covering Travolta or Cage’s recent work. 

Every episode Clint humbly asks listeners to become patrons and every month we add zero new listeners or lose one. We began this marvelous journey with about 57 backers left over from Nathan Rabin’s Happy Cast. A year and a half later we’re seemingly permanently stuck at about 57 backers. So I implore you to pledge over at https://www.patreon.com/TravoltaCage. It would honestly mean the world to us!

We’ll even say your names and shit on air if you’d like! 

Honestly, if we had five new patrons pledging five dollars apiece it would make a huge difference! And you’d be supporting a worthwhile endeavor and getting access to exclusive shit. 

In conclusion, please listen to Travolta/Cage! It’s real good and it’s only getting better!  

Missed out on the Kickstarter campaign for The Weird A-Coloring to Al/The Weird A-Coloring to Al-Colored In Edition? You’re in luck, because you can still pre-order the books, and get all manner of nifty exclusives, by pledging over at https://the-weird-a-coloring-to-al-coloring-colored-in-books.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

AND of course you can also pledge to this site and help keep the lights on at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace

And support Travolta/Cage by pledging to our Patreon at https://patreon.com/travoltacage

Pre-order The Joy of Trash, the Happy Place’s upcoming book about the very best of the very worst and get instant access to all of the original pieces I’m writing for them AS I write them (there are five so far, including Shasta McNasty and the second season of Baywatch Nights) AND, as a bonus, monthly write-ups of the first season Baywatch Nights you can’t get anywhere else (other than my Patreon feed) at https://the-joy-of-trash.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders