Episode 2118 - Geek Culture Meets Fine Wine

Tired of the same old wine pairings? Wondering what to sip while you're battling dragons or binging your favorite anime? Get ready to raise a glass (and a controller!) because Colby Elliott has the answers you've been waiting for.

An "old-school nerd" with a taste for fine wine and epic stories, Elliott is an award-winning narrator and audiobook producer who's bringing his two passions together in a brand new, must-listen audiobook.

Geekery and Wine: The First Case is your hilarious, warm, and witty guide to the intersection of geek culture, Gen-X nostalgia, and a good bottle of vino. This isn't just a book—it’s an adventure through the worlds of video games, D&D, comic cons, and the craft of audiobook narration.

"I wrote this collection to share my journey through fatherhood, audiobooks, geek and nerd culture, and, of course, wine," Elliott says. "This is something different, something subtle and happy. Consume responsibly!"

Whether you're an amateur sommelier or a seasoned gamer, this audiobook is the perfect blend of entertainment and insight. So, grab your Dr. Who t-shirt, pour a glass of Barolo, and join Colby Elliott on an epic quest through nerd pastures, wine country, and audiobook wizardry.

About the Author

Colby Elliott is an award-winning audiobook narrator and producer, known for over 60 titles. A frequent presenter at comic-cons, he was recently awarded a Gold Medal by the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY's) for his narration of Betty and Veronica: The Leading Ladies of Riverdale.

For more information, visit www.lastwordaudio.com and https://geekeryandwine.blogspo... />
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
What it is, what ado is cyber World, It is
your girl, the one and only Ash Brown, and this
is the Ash said It show. Over twenty one hundred
episodes since twenty fourteen, half a million plus streams later.
None of this is possible without you, guys, So thank you,

(00:21):
so so very much, all the shares, all the cares.
It makes a huge difference. Today we have the multifaceted
talent with us. Today we've got Kolbe Elliott is here
to talk about his new book and everything else in between.
What's up, Kobe, how are you doing that?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I'm really excited.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
No, thank you, yes, thank you so much for joining us.
And I mean, we've got so many angles, so many
things to talk about, Kobe. But to start things off,
I want to talk about this new book, all right,
Geekory and Wine. The first k and your book beautifully
blends two seemingly different worlds. So geek culture fine Wine.

(01:10):
What was your aha moment that made you realize that
these two passions could coexist with each other?

Speaker 3 (01:19):
So I started out and I was I've been narrating
audiobooks for a number of years, and I went to
this Narrator's Retreat, which was like a sleepaway camp for
audiobook narrators. We go there and we get like training
and talk about the profession and it's really great. And
I had a chance to sit down with one of

(01:39):
the instructors there and we started chatting about the stuff
that was interesting to us, and I think I just
kind of he said, you know, what do you want
to talk about? You know? And I said, you know,
I really love I love the geek and nerd world,
and I love wines. Like what if compared a bottle
of wine with like a comic book or a computer game.

(02:01):
And he said, you know what, I'd really like to
hear that. And then I started doing a written blog.
And then after a while I went, well, you know,
if I did the written blog, I could narrate it
just as easily in my studio, and that became a podcast,
and after I got twelve of them done, I went, well,
that's the case of wine right there. But I also
felt like it needed like a little something more. So

(02:25):
I started doing like old fashioned liner notes for all
the audio books that i'd done, starting at the beginning,
and talking about what I did, well, what I thought
I could do better the lessons that I learned, you
know why some stuff didn't work out quite the way
I wanted. And so it became like this thing that
was stories about wine, stories about nerd stuff, and then

(02:46):
stories about audio books. And then one I decided to
come out with the whole the book itself. I wanted
to add one more thing, and I talked about some
of my I wrote some essays in between that I
call palette cleansers that just talk about some of the
adventures that I had in the audiobook world, like going
to that Narrator's Retreat, going to the Audiobook Publishers Association,

(03:10):
and meeting some of the narrators that I had looked
up to for so long and listened to, you know,
for more than ten years, and it was just you know,
a lot of that stuff ended up being this wonderful
kind of combination of stories that turned into a book.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Wow, that is incredible. No, I had no idea about
the narrator's Retreat. I got to look that up. I
got looked that up. I go to one.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well, I mean, you have a background in radio too,
so you know, narrating audio books. That could be.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Something that sounds like it sounds like maybe we're making
a connection here, Calb.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
We won't.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
We'll see about that. But but back to you, as
an award winning audiobook narrator, you have such a unique
person ective on storytelling. How did your experience with producing
and narrating audio books influence the way that you structured
this new book.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Well, that's an excellent question. If I go back to,
like the very beginning with my love of audio books,
with a gentleman by the name of Roscoe Lee Brown,
and he narrated the story of Star Wars on a
big LP back in nineteen seventy seven, and I listened

(04:35):
to that thing so many times before I went and
saw the original Star Wars, and I loved his narration,
the sound of his voice, and I think that hooked
me right then. And I started listening to, you know,
my Sony Walkman and going to the spindle that we
had in my local library and getting all those ziploc bags,
and it was it just kind of became this sort

(04:57):
of love that I had with audio books, and my
perspective on this became with last word audio. I wanted
things that people hadn't heard yet, things that might have
been passed over things that weren't as important to people,
or people whose voices weren't heard as much.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
And so that's why.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
I called the company Last Word Audio, because it was
the last word on some of the subjects. So I
found an author that wrote a book about hacking computer
hacking in the late eighties early nineties, and I did
the book and I sent it to them and I said, hey,
what do you guys think. Do you want to try

(05:38):
and see if we can sell this? And that was
my first one, was called Masters of Deception, the Gang
that ruled Cyberspace, and they liked it, and it just
kind of built on itself, and I kept finding things.
I'm like, I really want to talk about this because
I don't see people talking a lot about this. And
I started talking about pop culster things like comic books
and comic cons and things like that. And then later

(06:01):
on I kind of said to myself, you know, the
whole reason why I love making audio books is because
I sat down at a table when I was ten
years old and played Dungeons and Dragons and I sat around,
you know, and I played all these different role playing
games and it was just fantastic. I loved it. I
loved it.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
I was able to sit around and make.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Funny voices and do different characters. And I think if.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
I hadn't done that when I was ten, I.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
Never would have done audio books later on. And so
I started doing these self help books for game masters.
So if I have one called Robin's Laws of Good
Game Mastering, it talks about how to have your players,
how to help them have a good time at the
table and develop their stories and tell the stories that
they want to tell. And yeah, that kind of thing

(06:50):
just informed that. And then I looked for things that
I knew people who weren't getting heard a friend of
mine who's a screenwriter for television named Pavier Grigial Marx Watch,
and he's this wonderful guy. He wrote for Lost, and
he wrote for The Dark Crystal, Age of Resistance and
the live action version of Cowboy Bebop. Well, he's been

(07:12):
writing essays for a long time and he's got this
wonderful take on pop culture. And so I found him
at San Diego Comic on one year and I said, hey,
do you want to take your essays and maybe make
it into a book. And that was more than ten
years ago, and we've gotten to be friends. I emailed
with him a lot, and you know, do all of

(07:33):
his books, and his voice wasn't getting heard, and then
I found other books. You know, there was a book
about Gilmore Girls that I thought was really interesting. Yeah,
and I adored Gilmore Girls when it first came out.
My wife and I we watched it as the episodes
came out, and then later on with my kids, rewatched

(07:55):
it again. And then later on we moved to Massachusetts
and I lived in this New England, this cute New
England town.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
And it felt like I would complay inside Gilmore Girl.
It was so cool.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
I loved it, and it was just yeah, that was
kind of like all that sort of informed the directions
that I went, and but each one of them was
kind of like an artistic period that you would have
in your life, Like you look at like an artist
and they have like Picasso had, like the blue period
and the cubest period. I had, like a pop culture
period and a comic book period, and you know, all

(08:28):
those different things that would kind of I go and
sort of pursue that for a while while it feels
real and vivid to me, and then once that starts
to wear off, I find something else that kind of
lights my fire, but I still come back and do
occasional ones and those old things as they as things
come around that inspire me.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
I love that you were cosplaying, Gilmore Gus. I don't
think I've ever heard everyone tell me about that cosplay.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Hell.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yeah, that sounds like talking, you know, speaking of cosplay.
We were talking before, you talking earlier about convention. So
I want to hear convention stories like what is your
what is your top convention that you cannot miss any year?

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Oh man, they are just they're so different, you know.
Like I first went to San Diego Comic Con, and
that was like it was like going to Mecca, you know.
It was it was Christmas and my birthday and summer
vacation all rolled up into this one beautiful thing. And
I got to go one year with my son as

(09:32):
his high school graduation president, and he just had a
wonderful time and we just had a great experience. And
then I got to take my youngest to gen Con
in Indianapolis and play role playing games together. We got
to sit at the table and have this great experience
and that was so wonderful. And you know, your local

(09:52):
conventions are where you where you see the people that
you know from around town. The people are like your
local gamer comic shops.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
You get to see them and talk to them. So
the local cons means a lot too.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Like for me, that's Ringcon and Tissan Comic Con. I
love both of those. Most of the most recent one
I went to is Origins. Game Player had their fiftieth
anniversary in Columbus, and it was wonderful. They had like
stand up comedians that did like nerdy stuff and it
was it was just so great. And it's impossible if

(10:23):
they could kind of choose between them, because you've got
the pop the pop culture cons where you get a
chance like I got a chance one year to shake
hands with Sam who played Flash Gordon in the In
the In the Old, the Old movie that you know
Queen did the soundtrack for. And then I saw him
another con like two years later, and he remembered my name.

(10:45):
It's like, oh man, it was so cool.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
It's like I walked up the stair and says, hey, Cooby,
how you doing. But oh my gosh, Flash Gordon remember
my name? Was like so cool, And each one of
them just have these.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
Wonderful memories and stuff, but I'm always open to doing
a new one or a for one. There's other ones
that I've been kind of hoping to target, you know.
Of course, I went to dragon Con, you know, your
local con, which was that was wonderful and got to
take some amazing like writing courses. They had some authors
that offered writing courses, and that was a whole different

(11:15):
experience too, And each one of them are just so
different and so fun and a chance to talk with
people who are just as passionate about those things that
you love as you are, and also people who are
passionate about other things that could be your next favorite thing,
which I absolutely love.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yes, and I mean that you said a whole bunch.
And first I definitely want to say, like, me and
my friends are Jem girls.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Jem. Jem's my name.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Oh my gosh. I was obsessed with Jem in the eighties.
Gem was my That was my girl. Oh my gosh.
That was a jam Yes, I mean that was that
was the thing, Oh my gosh. And so gem Con
is definitely on my radar. Now that I'm like back
to Georgia, I'm back in a stable situation. I have

(12:05):
to make it to gem Con. I've actually in my
twenty one hundred episodes, I actually did interview Samantha Newark.
I had her on the show one time. It was
so she was so sweet. Oh my gosh, I was
totally fangirling the whole episode, like just cheesing from me
here that that's my girl. Dragon Con. Yes, you know.

(12:26):
As far as like local Georgia esque cons, dragon Con
is definitely a go to convention Labor Day weekend. They
always take over the whole city. And also I want
to put another one on your radar, Momo Con. Momo
Con happens every Memorial Day weekend and that is another

(12:47):
one of my favorite cons to attend every single year.
Definitely very cool.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
My favorite, my favorite fan moment at dragon Con is
I would standing in line for coffee next to the
Gigi Edgeley from Farscape and she was so nice. And
this was when she was doing she was the host
for Jim Henson's Creature Toop Challenge, and so we were talking.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
About the show and all the different creatures that.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Everybody made and it was just so amazing and she
was so nice and just a wonderful person. I love
talking to her.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
Oh my gosh, anything Jim Henson like, I'm already on board.
I'm like, do you even miss anything else? I'm like,
Jim Henson absolute genius, left us with so many just
gemstones of just my childhood essentially and beyond. So I
love everything Jim Henson and the Jim Henson Foundation. So
they're amazing, great, great work me too. I really really

(13:46):
love that. Ye all right, so let me let me
get back on to task here our colbek because I
can clearly, I can clearly fall off the rails talking
about gem and Convention is going to be a first.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Six hour podcast episode here. It's going to be.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Gadd We're going to have to have a director cut
that release the ASD cut, but couldn't be amazing.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Hilarious.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Okay, Now back to geekery and why all right, so
I want to hear about some of these pairings. What
are what are some of the pairings that people will
see in the book.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
So some of the pairings that I will talk, like
specifically about a wine that is linked up to a
very specific story. So there was one that I had.
I had a group of friends that were coming over
to play. We're playing Pathfinder at the time, and I
was like, I said, you know, I am tired of
this of mountain dew and cheeto fingers. This is all

(14:52):
adults going to be playing this game.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
So what we're going to do is we are going
to have wine and.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Maybe we're going to do a little bit of cheese,
cool stuff like that. And so I had Pathfinder on there.
We were talking about role playing games like those. And
then there was a bottle of wine that I had.
It was a piano and Nora called French press, and
I thought, oh, this is going to be great because

(15:18):
where my friends brought it. But it was one of
the first times that I ever encountered a corked bottle
of wine, which is when like some a little bit
of bacteria gets into the cork and it spoils it basically,
and it kind of tastes like wet cardboard. And so
that one was actually about a wine that that wasn't great,
but that wasn't a true reflection of what that piano

(15:39):
nor tasted like. It was a It was a kind
of a bad example. So but that kind of pairing
was absolutely just seared into my memory because it was
there at the table with my friends. We talked about it,
and I had another friend of mine who said, hey,
I want you to officiate my wedding, and I went, oh, okay,
And when we went to his bachelor party, we went

(16:03):
to a steakhouse and I found another pin on war
called Seven Terraces, and we talked about, you know, what
we were going to say at the wedding and all
that kind of stuff, and that particular wine is geared
towards that particular instance, that particular memory that I have,
and so some of them I'll put together. But some

(16:24):
of them actually came up to be really fun in
that you could say, oh, this wine that I'm drinking
this month was actually produced in the same year as
this anime.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
So there was the year that.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
You know, Death Note first came out, and.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
I found an amazing wine that.

Speaker 3 (16:43):
Is in that same year, And I'll put them together
like that in the same year, and sometimes it's like
a similar experience or an element of wordplay that's in it.
It's really cool, and it's just kind of a fun
way to sort of jumble it all together and have
these link up. It's yeah, of course, I mean you
probably want to go back and say, could I get
like a nineteen seventy two bottle of something and match

(17:06):
it up with palm. Well, yeah, probably, but it's going to.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Cost you a lot money for that.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
Bottle of wine.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
I don't think the podcast, but.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, super fine, awesome, awesome, awesome. Okay, So you state
that geekery and wine is about finding joy and sharing
it with others in a world that often feels tense
and unpredictable and all the craziness is happening, right, Why

(17:42):
do you think that these small personal passions like a
good glass of wine are more important than ever?

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Now? You know? For me, I think you look at
how wine is this thing that makes you over time
and in a lot of ways. The person that you're
sitting at the table with sharing that glass of wine,
it could be a young wine that you're sharing with

(18:11):
someone that you don't know very well, and this is
how you get to know them, and it's a young wine,
it's a young it's a young friendship. And then you
have other people who you've known them for years and years.
You sit down with that bottle of wine and you
have this all these stories that you can put together,
and wine has depth in the same way that our

(18:32):
friendships have depth and the nerdly passions that we have
that we share with each other. Those are based on
shared moments that we have at you know, at a
role playing table with a glass of wine or just
you know. One of my best friends, we used to
go for walks in our old hometown and we would

(18:55):
walk around and just start talking. And after like fifteen
thirty minutes an hour, we look around and go where
are we were to get home? But we just start
talking about things, and that's kind of the way that happens.
And it's those it's the depth of those relationships, I think,

(19:16):
and those friendships that I keep coming back to, and
those are the ones I want to go back and
revisit in charge up again and find out what's going on.
And I have this kind of very silly thing that
I'll do if I go out on a walk, I'll
sometimes have my earbuds in and I'll do this thing

(19:38):
that I call and this is okay, it's really silly,
but it's called phone phon a homie. And I will
pick someone out of my call list that I haven't
talked to in years and just call them up randomly.
And sometimes I can actually walk and talk with them
for an hour and it will be like no time

(19:58):
has gone by. It's like haven't lived in the same
town for five years, and it'll be like we picked
up and just start talking again. And I just think
those relationships, those friendships, and.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
Even the ones that you haven't started yet.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
You know, it's it's never too late to start off
a new a new friendship and find a friend who
could be a really close friend. And yeah, I think
those the depth of those relationships are so important right now.
It's kindness, you know, it's kindness in your life, and
and it's it's really important.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree with you on that. Kindness
is good. The world needs more kindness, more love, all
that good stuff.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
It's the only thing that there's just too little love. Okay,
you know what the world needs.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Go ahead, and now we've reached the Curio Show.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
I'm telling you you are introducing all these new segments
I didn't even know exist to Kobe. I'm sorry, Hey
you guys, check out. It's a brand new show. We
got all new stuff coming up. It's a coolbe.

Speaker 3 (21:20):
Hour, fantastic. I love it.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Oh my goodness, Kobe, this has been a pleasure. Thank
you so much for coming through. Let everyone know the
best way that they can go ahead and get the
book and stay up to date with everything that you've
got going on.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
Sure, Well, the best way to find my audiobooks is
on audible and iTunes. Just type in my name Colby Elliott.
That's Colby like the cheese and Elliott with two l's
and two t's. Or you can go to last word
Audio dot com and that has all of my books
on it. Those are the two best ways to find me.
And yeah, that's that's the best way to to find

(22:00):
all of the audio goodness that you can with last
Word Audio and all my audiobooks.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
Sounds like the plan. Well call me, you've got to
come back. I know that there's a whole bunch of
stuff that you're cooking. I know there's stuff on the
stove cooking right now. We can talk about it today,
but you've got to come back. You've got to come
back and tell us about it. I want I want exclusives, Calby,
I'm putting it out there.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Oh absolutely, such. I've had such a good time with you.
Thank you so much for having me on the show.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Asp oh problem, thank you, and thank you to each
and every one of you guys listening. Thank you for
the shares, the cares. It makes a huge difference. Keep
in mind, anyone to tell you that you can't do
what you want to do, you look them square in
the face, you tell them, don't believe me. Just watch
watch what I do. Watch me make it happen, watch

(22:48):
me make history. That's what we're doing, this for the
history books. Social media is nice, but real life is
so much better. Until next time, you guys,