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In this episode, we stumble back to our mics with October rants and delights. After a somewhat sticky start, we launch into a topic-packed hour of just the sort of loosely-connected content you all haven’t been missing. We are here now. Are you? After William donates to a mystery candidate, he unlocks The Age of Emails and searches for a way to unsubscribe to the election. Scott battles with a lower-than-Eliza-level (look it up, nerds) personal assistant who ironically doesn’t understand the concept of mobile devices. Shorn T., Phone Home! We agree that nobody ordered iMessage a la modal. Heck, we don’t even have time to fade in. William has gone far Beyond the Porch and back and shares his thoughts on his recent trip to Hawaii. It’s all about sunscreen, crafty mosquitoes, introverted snorkeling and some isolated yak shaving in a bitchin’ Camaro drop-top “upgrade”. Join Diabetic Gecko and their opening band Live Liquid Lava for a tropical tour of the Big Island. The walk alone might kill you. Music in Rearview is next as we dig deep into the music bucket and find the curiously-titled “Octoberfest – Octoberfest (Octoberfest)” by Octoberfest on Octoberfest Records straight from the high-energy and over-hyphenated Germans (of which I appear to be one). Weasels are shot. Tens are zoomed. Alex Lifeson pops in to screw up the tempo. Languages are not translated well. Oompahs are all over the place before we are done. Now THAT’S a drunken autumnal party! After we discover that all the October holidays are screwed up, Scott leaves on a quest for the Andes, William gives up and turns nasty, and we glide to the end with a 20-minute post-credit bonus segment on television horror porn masquerading as drama for some reason. That’ll teach ya!

Links:
Eliza
Oktoberfest – Oktoberfest: So singt’s und klingt’s auf der Wies’n
The Walking Dead Quitters Club

Photo Courtesy

Photo Courtesy Kurt Magoon

Try as you might, there’s just no escaping this episode! We begin with some breaking (baking?) potato news that proves you can have your cake and not eat it too. Scott is three-sheds to the wind as a powerful sheddiction takes hold of his family. Will Santa’s little helper win the battle of rooftop décor? Who will be forced to live above Mr. C’s garage? I shedder to think of it. We shed just move on. William gets some much needed advice on the art of taking vacations from the irreplaceable Master we’d all love to replace. We rant about the latest harbinger of the End of Days – the Amazon DASH button and find that we have more questions than answers. William shares a story of not escaping an escape room, which prompts Scott to up the ante in a NSFER way before suggesting an idea that hits a bit too close to home. Turns out there’s no escaping the enigma of parenthood. We end with Music in Rearview as we visit with the Sith Lord Roy Clark (Darth Fingers) for 37 minutes of pleasure wrapped up in a 36.73-minute shell. All this for under a buck! Impressive. Most impressive. We delve into the mystery that is Hee-Haw and the mystery that is Roy Clark’s impending non-death before William has some kind of podcasting meltdown and we decide to get out while the getting is good.

Links:
Locurio – The Vanishing Act
Roy Clark – Yesterday, When I Was Young
Roy Clark discography

Courtesy Jon Dawson

Courtesy Jon Dawson

In this episode, we return to play with our extremities. After our Sabbatical respite of tacit ablutions, it’s time to get down to the business of casting our pods. William is in the eye of the summer chaos storm where he faces both faulty layovers and an excess of planning. Could a clothing-optional puddle-jumper be in his future? As a 138-year-old-man, Scott reminisces about a past escape from Jekyll Island and shares his One Rule to Vacation Them All. We find common ground in our Great Expectations and agree that in the end, fun is fun, but home is where it is at. As we slowly ramble into our main topic, we discover that somebody is taking our mediocre ideas and running with them, which means we have at least one listener left. Turns out the secret is us! Then it is time for our Word(s) of the Week. Everything is amped up these days which causes us to muse on the topics of the casual and the extreme, the doing versus the experiencing. Our message is one of stillness and slowness. Don’t push that envelope all the time. Even the messiah birds know that. Our meandering path takes us to the Olympics where we investigate the changing levels of competition and our limits as humans before ending up where we always end up, with flexible women shooting arrows with their feet. Jealous much? Full of hot air, we drone onward towards the familiar shores of Music in Rearview. Hurrah! Fresh off the Goodwill rack, Len Krisson stops by with his extreme volume pedal and tomorrow’s organ today. We drop the needle and see where Mr. Dynamic Range takes us. And where he takes us is on a Moonlit journey of curious musical choices until we finally have to speed things along. Yes, it’s time to take our secret notes and find a nice, low hill to roll down… To the extreme!

Links:
Jekyll Island
Olympic Vault 1950’s vs now
Shooting Arrows with your Feet
Organ Moods with Len Krisson

Did you know that this podcast existed before this podcast started? Well, it’s true. As we continue our vacations, both actually and mentally, feast your ears back to the final part of the final episode of the podcast that turned into this podcast before it was a podcast. (Checking his notes)… Eh, it’s all very timey-wimey. Just try to keep up. (Throws his notes away). Yes, it’s a pre-show spectacular, a lifting of the curtain, a peek behind-the-scenes, a scrap under the table, but mainly a cheap way for us to get away with posting something quickly while we drink wine coolers and check on our tans. There’s no other way to describe it. Honestly. I’ve listened to it three times and still don’t know what I’m listening to. Enjoy.

In this episode, we go on vacation! Things get squirrelly, random, off-kilter and weird at Up And Overcast Central as we give over to the powers of summer and all the delightful chaos it can bring. But don’t worry. This mini-episode is packed full of podcasting flavor and there’s much more Amateur Hour to come! After all, what’s better than a full episode of our show? HALF an episode! We begin as we usually do with some follow-up. William finds that OS stands for Oh Sh*t as Apple once again crashes his world around him. Time to install a new William. Then it’s the return of the crowd-pleasing, highly-rated Varmint News as the war against Scott’s remaining vehicles heats up and he is forced to take a particularly odiferous response against possible Vanhogs. Beyond the Porch brings the visceral slaughter that is crab fest as William has flashbacks to 2015’s messy Crustacean Operation by Milton Crabley. But wait! The unthinkable has happened! Jo gets on a literal roll with a pallino and a bocce Cinderella story while also managing to save her job. It’s a nerd dream nearly come true, which is good enough in our book. Not to be outdone, William takes on a squat-thrust challenge masquerading as a bocce official. It’s an old pattern that Scott can identify with if he can figure out the right direction to run. Let’s not get Physical. Physical. Scott looks forward to the Wide Gamut of Terror Machines as he plans for a day at Cedar Point with the family amid a plethora of bruising amusement devices. But what’s a summer without the Columbia Record Club Special? Not a summer I want to be a part of. Music in Rearview brings us the Go-Gos and their mystery keyboardist, which causes William to realize that he doesn’t really understand how rock bands work and as a result he goes a bit staccato. As Scott ponders his Dab Smack Go-Gos farewell tour dilemma, things go from weird to weirder and we quickly ride off into the Venus-level heat of August. Lactation… err… Vacation Ho!

In this episode, we are not nurtured by nature. After a long week with a summer cold and the working man blues, William is rebooted to find himself recording a podcast again. Is this thing still on? We go full nerd alert to discover that Agile is less than agile at 1am, get distracted by abstracting abstractions, and find that in the end everything new is old again. Or maybe new dogs have the same old tricks. Nevertheless, our radical old ideas may mean the end of the tech book business if that’s still a thing the kids are into. Not wanting to incur the wrath of Big Book, we move on. Let the Graybeards sort it out if you can find one. Scott scores an achievement by unlocking his apnea solution but needs an emergency social media intervention. With all this Horrible News from the World Wide World, phones become a pellet-providing lab experiment of endless-loop reward-seeking. William is definitely lured in by the hit as well, and we figure out an answer of sorts that may involve podcasting forever. And yes we talk about Pokemon Go again. We try not to. Honestly. But come on. Then it’s time to visit the Raccoon News Desk for a breaking beastie bulletin! Did I mention that the raccoons are revolting? We have more proof as Scott goes to war with a masked trash addict who has an expensive penchant for the taste of wiring and plastic. Sometimes nature has an abhorrent lack of healthy boundaries. Time for Scott to add some spice to that relationship. William has been there as well and shares a story of the time his attempts at pest eradication may have accidentally spawned an army of super squirrels. Groundhogs are battling rabbits. Coyote pee is everywhere. Honestly, nature is a mess. And what happened to that pesky raccoon? Scott is a legitimate businessman. I’m sure he knows nothing about it. Bada Bing. Enough said. Feel like protesting what you’ve just heard? Well, you are in luck. Scott is also riled up and needs some protest music of his own. The answer is found in an unlikely source as we once again attempt to legitimize Rush for the masses. If you think of them as a band you can smoke dope to, or libertarian whackjobs (or both), there’s much more to them than that. Music in Rearview brings you two songs from the album “Snakes and Arrows” that illustrate we live as we are shown, that what we’re shown is how we behave, and that what we teach affects the world profoundly. That is the way the wind blows. And for us, it blows towards the future where Geddy and the boys have already been and are waiting for us to catch up. Take care, nude listeners! Whackadoodle, indeed!

In this episode, we keep on persevering. As the saying goes, “When life gives you lemons, you skip a podcast.” And such it was for us. A hard-hitting week behind us, we get right to it with an exposé on the purpling of mountains – only to realize that it is all fruitless. Scott experiences a Narcolapse and struggles to remain standing. William ends his lactose-intolerance denial by cutting the cheese. There’s a cow joke in there but I don’t feel like milking this topic any further. We discuss the execution of summer with a trip to a delicious-sounding desert valley, get confused by a full Trump-country moon and wonder why people are bringing their own soundtracks into nature. Could it be that William is a large and threatening predator? We reflect on our Independence Day experiences and a fireworks kerfuffle that may be part of a vast local news conspiracy. There’s smoke on the water… and fire also on the water. Pokemon? No! Seriously. Stop it. What is behind our reaction to this viral, anti-clique phenomenon? Is it justified or are we yelling at people to get off our Pokelawns? Thankfully, we have more important things to talk about. Word of the Week returns (amazingly, there are a ton of words left) with “Perseverance”. We enjoy a far-reaching conversation on how to deal with recent national and international events as the world continues to buffet us all. As problem solvers facing a problem that cannot be easily solved, we land on the only side possible. Don’t give up. Somewhere in the bit between 0 and 1 is the answer. The topic strays to the Brexit Hot Potato, then to the challenges of working in the heart of a loopy convention rock-and-roll town, and ends with words of wisdom from somebody’s aunt… or perhaps the Talmud. But wait! There’s more show! Music in Rearview deals with a musical bug in Scott’s ear that is causing some theater tech trauma. A visit from some truly bad “Company” is not going to help. Turns out a pastor won’t either. Hopefully, Hamilton will bring the subject to a close. Finally, even though we lack the proper gene it’s time to rap things up. Stay strong and if you need something to collect, listen to our past episodes! Got to catch them all! (Disclaimer: They are not rare and also not very good in a fight)

Photo credit: James Hall (https://www.flickr.com/photos/seattleye/)

Photo credit: James Hall (https://www.flickr.com/photos/seattleye/)

In this episode, we travel through a maze of anxiety in order to reach a garden of melancholy. We begin with a long follow-up section wherein we discover that we may be wrong. No surprise there. Luckily, our journey is blessed by some extra English light as Miss Moral High Ground (Jo) stops by to set us straight with some jolly good thoughts on the previously-discussed differently-abled parking situation. Narrow views are opened wide. Points are clarified. Examples are concreted. However, there’s a skeptical and quite grabby invisible point system game out there that we are clearly not winning. Meanwhile, Jo is confounded by the backwards driving rules in this country and adds her own annoyances into last week’s consciousness mix. Green means stop? Red means go? Is there a point? It would be a first for us. Is Jo even right? Wait, who will correct the corrector? It’s an Inception-infused perpetual correcting machine! Maybe the people beeping behind her to move have some ideas. After showing the colonists a thing or two about the right side of the street on which to drive, Jo takes us on a deep, deep dive into Seattle traffic patterns as she addresses the pink elephant on the road – the fact that being a good citizen is a thankless job. Or maybe being confused citizens is our favorite job, because we are all quickly lost in diagramming the problem. Time to take this podcast on the road! Could it be that Miss Moral High Ground is the bad person here? Lawful good, or awful bad? If only there was a clarification coming later in this podcast. Whatever the case, the point is that it’s hard to cooperate alone. This world is block or be blocked, but at least we can all agree on the value of just staying home. Long live the Introvert Party! After 12 hours of traffic talk, we find ourselves in the very middle of our two-ended performance anxiety. Jo has had enough and makes a Joxit – a very slow, measured and polite storming off. Alone again, we turn to more follow-up as we learn how crows incubate and perhaps overstay their scientifically-defined outrage periods, that Daisy Ridley is no longer Daisy-Colored, and that while Steve Winwood and Steely Dan are reeling in the years, they are not reeling in our interest. Good news is that they are easy to miss. Bad news is that Google is listening to us right now. Then, Beyond the Porch returns for a new extended run with Summer Performance Anxiety. We must rush! We must prepare! Summer is a chaotic, limited quantity stress-ball! We pause briefly with breaking news that Miss Moral High Ground may be vindicated, but then it’s back into the thick of wild-haired, last-minute vacation planning and the lingering question – is this enough? Spoiler alert – it is. Fear of future regret grasps William. A pending clover judgement grasps Scott. As always the answer for both of us is to relax. This is where we are. Finally, it’s time for Nap Theory with William – psych! Say no more! It’s actually time for Music in Rearview and another lesson in music appreciation. We pay our first mutual visit to Uriah Heep, both the ancient ancestor on the family tree of rock and progressive gateway drug to our beloved Canadian power trios. We explore selections from Wonderworld which resonate with strange familiarities and echoing similarities before ending up at the promised Rush Garden which throws William off the deep… or is it heep… end. And with that, the ballad of our podcast comes to a close. I hope you learned something. We did. No? Oh. Well then be sure to listen after the outro music for the continuing tale of Miss Moral High Ground and the One-Way Street!

Links:
Oh the Traffic Places We’ll Go!
The American Crow
Steve Winwood on Tour
Uriah Heep – Wonderworld on Wikipedia
Rush – The Garden

In this episode, we traffic in Consciousness. Your cheery podcast kind-of-friends would love to explain why we are a week late, but there’s no unpacking to see here. Kindly move along to our low-energy Overview wherein Scott seeks an ancient, rare bulb unknown to humankind, enjoys some filterless cabin smoke, and battles a bad seal and a floaty rear-end. Every Murdervan is different, but it’s nothing that chemistry can’t try to fix. Fry up some toast! William is nest-adjacent to a patrolling, paroling, thwack-crazy corvid with boundary issues. Whose house IS this anyway? It may be good theater, but that equal-opportunity thwacker has us considering some wacky solutions. These head games are definitely a Caws for Alarm. Daisy Ridley seems to be feeling a bit yellow. Costa Rican skin graft? Jaundiced Jedi? Whatever the case, the turmeric is strong with this one. We’ll provide pertinent particularization on her pasty poultice post-haste! Then it’s back to square zero with Word of the Week as we explore the art of being conscient, um, conscious, wait, have a conscience (that’s it!) while you are out among the other humans. Our discussion ranges from handicapped parking space conspiracy theories to unwanted bathroom gifts to stall choice selection for Advanced Sociopaths. After considering the roaming habits of wild, free-ranging shopping carts, we end up with a traffic trilogy: “No Sense about Sensors,” “How to Passively-Aggressively Direct a Four-way Stop,” and “Go-Round-The-Wrong-Way-About: A Story of Cutting Corners.” Are shopping malls screwing it up for all of us? Will self-driving cars solve our ills? Is stopping in the wrong place the new unnamable sin? Tune in to two quality bitchers and find out! Just remember to leave a buffer stall or suffer the wrath of Scott’s scalding “I see you” glare! Finally, it’s on to Music in Rearview as we are visited by the 67 members of Traffic in their empty pimp suits. Our expectations are shattered by this down-mood jam band as we listen to Stairway to Rivendell and other jazzy, Genesisy, Phishy tunes. This IS your father’s Steve Winwood! But who is that cute girl in the video? As we sign off, we urge you to consider that other humans are not obstacles. Be mindful and provide a positive or net-zero effect. You aren’t a sucker by giving. That’s not losing. In the words of Daisy Ridley, “Do. Or do not. There is no dye.”

Links:
Is Daisy Ridley Okay?
Traffic – Empty Pimp Suits on the Cover
Traffic on Wikipedia

– By William Cooper

Our little podcast is 26 weeks old today. Seems like yesterday that it looked up at us with those big, blue eyes and gurgled and garbled something at length that nobody really understood. Not much has changed. A week of podcast life is worth a year of human life, so it got me thinking about my 26th year on this crazy planet.

In 1992, I ended a long-term relationship, ready for the wilds of dating and single life. Little did I know this was the beginning of my Seven Sexless years of Solitude, which is quite a sad alliteration. It was also the beginning of my Seven Sexless years of rediscovering booze, which I’m sure is not related at all.

In 1992, I took a job at CompuServe and fell face-first into the world of Internet technology at a time when Al Gore was just beginning to consider inventing it. Twenty-four years later, I’m still battling code and browsers and fixing Things That Should Work But Don’t with twine, gum, and shoe polish.

In 1992, I was given a Ford Tempo, a beautiful beast of a compact that would become my best friend in those years of solitude, a comfortable hood for nights under the stars after long days of server juggling, and ultimately an escape hatch. It was this car that I took across the country in 1997, fleeing my old life and Columbus for good.

So, little podcast, here’s to your future, whatever it may hold. May it be as full of adventure and surprise as mine has been.

In this episode, we celebrate our half-year anniversary with too many brownies and just enough Murder Vans. Scott appears from the future with morbid first-hand knowledge and many adjectives to describe his levels of piss and vinegar. With Benders of Action afoot and rubbery goo at the ready, he attempts a last-ditch effort to revive the Murder Van. Sadly, chemicals are never the answer. Long live the junker jalopies! William presents a Train Pain Bonus Track that features urination targeting and multiple contusions in a tiny, lurching torture box. Can you hear me, Major Cooper? She Knows! Then the Murder Van returns to the sound of Whaaaaaaat!? It’s Manic Solutioneering with Scott Horn as he replaces ALL THE PARTS! Who needs sensibility, anyway? The phones are ringing off the hook as we raffle a lightly-killed vehicle and consider just how far Scott will go to extend a joke. Turns out he’s done this kind of thing before. With limited purchasing options, Scott solves our podcast’s recent loss by inheriting somebody else’s problems. To think, all this could have been avoided with precision editing. Congratulations, listener! William brings the Word of the Week, a Beyond the Porch sandwich, and pronoun trouble out of the queueueueue as we focus our attention on the notion of Birthdays. A brownie snafu has William texting for help and negotiating loan interest rates on dessert. Who doesn’t love big piles of sugar and frosting? Answer: Everyone over 40. Damn you, aging, healthy stomachs! Is this what regret tastes like? Then it’s time for a birthday retrospective as William learns about the long downward slide of forced married couple celebrations, Scott forgets how old he is, we reflect on an out-of-control mother-in-law fiction at the Cooper Family Christmas, and everyone eventually gets what they want – unless it’s young Scott who is out pimping hats or young, sociopathic William who finds other children disgusting. We bond over a two-year Walkie Talkie project and cry foul at Tandy toy substitutions. Never trust purple. Finally, a seamless segueway launches us into Music in Rearview. Is it word salad? What’s this magic mouth doing in the sun? How shapeless is my shoe? IS it the night? All these questions and more are answered with a green-field, genre-straddling, 1980s-iconic, deep-cut The Cars extravaganza, which you absolutely are required to enjoy. As William plays sponsorship matchmaker and Scott plays the electronic air drums, we end our podcast with a visit from an alliterative Jerry Lewis and decide that while we may not be creating art, it’s close enough for government work. Until next time, relax and and beware the egg salad!

Links:
The Cars – Since I Held You (Candy-O, 1979)
The Cars – It’s Not the Night (Heartbeat City, 1984)
The Cars – Gimme Some Slack (Panorama, 1980)
The Cars – Cruiser (Shake It Up, 1981)

– by William Cooper

If you choose to listen to this episode of Up and Overcast, and honestly why shouldn’t you, you’ll hear me tell a story of a sleepless night on a cramped, fast-moving train. As a bear-sized individual, fitting into small spaces has always been challenging. Eating airline food on tiny trays involves a series of minute, precise contortions that cause watchmakers to weep with envy. Taking off my coat in a restaurant requires me to dislocate both my arms so as not to accidentally crush any normal-sized humans at the tables next to me. I’ve gotten stuck in lawn chairs and worn them around like suits of armor rather than call attention to my struggles to escape.

In short, any form of public transportation, or as I read back on the last paragraph, public seating, usually holds some kind of challenge for me. I don’t like challenge when it comes to travel, or food, or social interactions or sleep. And that’s, in short, one of the many reasons despite all my yearnings and dreams about being a travel writer that I’ve realized I could never be one.

As a kid at a state fair, I once rode an elephant. After riding that elephant, swaying from side to side with nothing to hang onto but very elephant-smelling elephant skin, always at the point of nearly toppling off the beastly business end and into steaming piles of elephant leavings, I decided that elephant riding was not something I was going to do again. A travel writer would decide that riding an elephant was so uncomfortable that they should try riding an ostrich because it’s bound to be worse and will make a great story. They decide that the night on the train was so disruptive that they should try sleeping on an ostrich, because apparently ostriches factor into travel writing quite a bit more than you’d imagine.

You only live twice, or so it seems, once for yourself and once for your dreams. So, I’ll let that dream part of me fly to distant lands, battle pirates off the coast of Whassit, eat fried Whangdoodle soup, befriend large flightless birds on the savannah, and have all the hilarious conflicts that make for a good travel story. Me, the real me, will stay here. Like a bear, I have simple needs. Give me a salmon, some berries, a warm spot to sleep in, and a good book and I’m happy. Stay downwind and don’t startle me and you will be too.

In this episode, transportation gets the better of us. As we recover from our respective weekends, we establish some clear friendship roles before launching into our surprising 25th podcast outing. The Bad Parenting Series continues as Scott’s duplicate daughter loses a fight with a pizza crust. Vigorous chewer or magical twin teeth connection? Whatever the case, she’s a chip off the old tooth. Then, we receive an actual email with an offer that seems too good to be true, mainly for our listeners. If only we had eight bucks! Send your money orders to podcast@upandovercast.com and we promise less of us. Scott brings us a sorry tale of ignorance as the beloved Murder Van meets a slow, drippy death. It’s a swan song full of smells, noises, liquids and a last heroic journey to a four-digit fatality. The omens were there if only he could have remembered what he already knows. William commiserates with a mouthful of poison and in turn forgets what is already his nose. Looks like it’s finally the end of the Murder Van, kids… or is it? Beyond the Porch returns as William takes an ill-fated train journey to Middle Earth over Memorial Day, or was it Labor Day? William’s lack of calendar-sense once again sends Luke Pez over the edge. Listen as a romantic trip in a sleeper car turns into a 600-mile, slip-sliding, whistle-blowing, urine-holding dark night of the micro-hotel rocket sled. Duck Dynasty turned friendly but grizzled country folk, smallest closet in the universe, a bare bottom, and some shaky security prison mattresses are only a few of the stops. And what’s all this about time zones, anyway? They are always one step ahead! Luckily Jo knows how to build a proper pyramid. After his Apollo 13 capsule experiment and with a new nickname, William enters a vast, stunning, mountainous world of beauty and wildlife on a no-expectations weekend that may have changed him and his wife forever. Keep Manhattan, just give him that countryside! We end with a musical palate cleanser as Soft Cell goes inside the Soul – a bit TOO far inside the Soul as William’s flashbacks can attest to. Thankfully, it’s nothing that a decent Bond song cover and a good wiping won’t fix. Not as good as Razzle Deathgrip and the Coolant Raccoons, but what is? Not this mint, I can guarantee you that.

Links:
Soft Cell – Soul Inside on Discogs
Soul Inside on iTunes
You Only Live Twice on iTunes

Photos:

Montana - The Road Ahead

Montana – The Road Ahead

Montana - Rainbow

Montana – Rainbow

Montana - Mountains

Montana – Mountains

Montana - Bison Refuge

Montana – Bison Refuge

– by William Cooper

When I was a kid, my friends and I made up a game called “The Blanket Wanderer.” In this game, you, the blanket wanderer, were covered in a blanket or bedspread, spun in circles and shoved into a murky, unknown world – large complicated spaces like basements, yards and parks – where you would walk and stumble and bump into things on your way to nowhere. Vague shadows as seen through thick wool and polyester were your only guideposts and you could feel nothing but what your fingers encountered as they curiously searched the greyness in front of you. With outstretched hands you entwined serrated blades of grass, shivered at the coldness of oak wood tables and marble countertops, traced the gentle curves of chair backs or low-hanging branches, sifted pebbles and gravel and mulch, pressed into the cracks of asphalt or sank into shag carpet underfoot. What you thought you were experiencing made up your reality. What you remembered of your surroundings shaped your expectations.

And when you were ready, you were allowed to lift the blanket. Mostly you were where you imagined yourself to be, doing what you had figured you had been doing. But there were times – magical times – when the world slowly took form in front of your blinking eyes and you felt a sickening lurch in your stomach as you realized that everything you had believed was completely and utterly wrong, that you were not where you imagined yourself to be, that you were not doing what you were sure you had been doing. Everything you had experienced during the game, the unshakable and certain truth of place and time were revealed as false.

I loved this feeling. There was nothing like losing myself fully in an egoless state, melding into the background sensory landscape so that time, space and context became mist and fell away. And the moment when I got to experience everything ordinary as if it was new, watch the strange building blocks of reality flit one-by-one into a mysterious, alien whole that became familiar the instant it was complete, feeling the lingering aftereffect of the wormhole shift as it echoed in smaller and smaller circles until it was gone – it was like a drug.

Maybe this is birth. Maybe it is also death. For me, it was an early indication that things are not as solid as we’d like them to be, and that our understanding of our lives and our existence is subjective. The truth is changeable, everything can shift, your perception of reality is fluid, and sometimes disorientation is a powerful teacher, as long as you don’t wander into traffic.

In this episode, we become more disoriented than usual. Spring has arrived – for real this time – and what better way to celebrate than with the annual weighing of potatoes? Keep those russets lean, everyone! Full of a fail whale’s worth of carbros, William applauds the turning of the Earth and avoids discovering the wonders of speech-to-text. Meanwhile, down there, over here, or out there, Scott endures a clipping-heavy two-cut week. Fresh off the giddy highs of weather talk, we move into a discussion of dental hygiene. William’s MoldPik is a horror show cautionary tale that proves gravity always wins – and so might peroxide. Scott shares how a fateful trip to the dentist as a teenager in the seatbeltless 70s combined with a spit bowl’s worth of parental-provided free will gave him the power to confidently blunder. He’s faking it until the day he hopefully makes it, or dies. Luckily, he turned things around after only a few enameled casualties but still managed to pass on his dental-damaged legacy to his children. Don’t worry Mom, it all worked out! William has a similar story, which makes us wonder about parenting styles and whether our experiences with dental care were not so unusual after all. Spoiler alert; no. Should have listened more in 6th grade. William complains about the plethora of daily routines that are meant to counteract the plethora of nasty ways we mistreat our bodies in the age of computer crab people. Don’t Blink, Doctor? Got that covered. No, fellow travelers, I’m just fine… twitch. And then the podcast begins. Something happened outside! Must be time for Beyond the Porch! William heads to Microsoft for some COM-PU-TER training, attends disorientation, and suffers at the hands of a bait-and-switch mug of knowledge game that nobody wants to play. At least they fed him well. Eventually he learns to relax and let it happen to him, until what happens to him is a bit further south than desired. (No-one must know my secret). Scott heads to the Dayton Hamvention where the merchandise is about as useful as his ticket. After some quick data-gathering and general disorientation, he extrapolates disinterest and determines that this Hardware-Heavy Hobby is a non-starter. Sample the frequency spectrum kids, the world has moved on. Spring returns (how many times is this going to happen?) with Music in Rearview as we partake in yet another of the seemingly endless Columbia Special Product records, this time for Scott’s lawn care products. Yes, it’s Music of Spring, Volume 2 which comes without a timestamp on it and also, mysteriously, without Volume 1. We turn up the schmaltz levels as Tony Bennet plays a parody version of himself in real life with a wonderful song written by a wonderful person. We don’t feel okay about the tiny composite rabbit or the poppy-field child on the cover, and from the sound of it, Bobby Hackett isn’t okay either. The Eddie Van Halen of the cornet-trombone seems to be suffering from Cherry Blossom Pink narcolepsy. Not feeling as invigorated by the spring breeze as promised, we decide it’s time to stop this nonsense and make a plea for somebody to take control of this podcast and tell us what to talk about. If not, you only have yourselves to blame. There’s a fire in the data center, Bob, I gotta go! It’s my signature movement!

Links:
Hamvention
Music Of Spring Volume 2 on Discogs

I have a mythic tale that if you know me for more than two minutes, you’ll probably hear me mention at least once. In September of 1997, I sold everything I owned, except for a carload of essentials, and drove alone across the country from Columbus, Ohio to Seattle, Washington to seek a new life. I’d like to say that I blogged this journey, but in 1997 there was no such thing. Open Diary started in 1998. Blogger and Live Journal followed in 1999. What I did instead was write a series of posts in chronological order on my website that captured my thoughts and experiences. Had I decided that I should develop this idea and bring it to others, or had I monetized another idea of mine that people should be able to rent a car for an hour and get into it whenever they wanted and leave it wherever they wanted for the next person, well, I would have considerably more money than I do now.

My departure from Columbus was a severe act of simplifying. The car became a mini-house with various corners designated for various objects and activities, dividers strung between “rooms,” and everything positioned so that they could be retrieved with a quick, blind reach-around while driving. It was a model of efficiency and function, populated only with needs and the occasional small luxury.

At the last minute, however, because “less is more” could be argued to mean that “more is more more,” I was persuaded by some nagging voice in my head to pack a large, black canvass bag with things I didn’t need. Since there was no room in the car for it, it was bungeed and strapped and otherwise fastened to the roof of my Ford Tempo with an intricate array of cables.

The only place that it would attach was right inside the door, against the little metal bar that lays underneath the weather stripping. By snagging the hooks on the metal bar and slamming the door, a secure bond was formed as the hooks were pressed tightly against the frame. Now, weather stripping’s purpose is to make a seal of the door to the car to prevent heat and cold from escaping, or perhaps rain from getting in the windows. This all works well unless the weather stripping were to be pulled away from the window by, for instance, little, metal hooks. That would defeat the entire purpose. Savvy?

And so, when it rained in the mountains, water poured in through the cracks above the hooks and there was a flood in the car. When the wind blew on the plains, the oddly-weight-distributed, soft-sided nature of the bag caused the car to swerve violently on the road. Squashed insects from the grasslands plastered its front side, creating a fluorescent yellow Jason Pollack painting of goop and antennae. The cold rusted the zippers closed. The heat baked everything inside. I worried about it constantly.

To this day, I can tell you everything I had in that car. I cannot tell you a single thing I had in that bag. Wants can be very heavy. Don’t take them along for the ride.

In this episode, two simpletons simplify. But first, the weather. It’s snowing in Columbus. It’s swinging wildly between lava melt and ice age in Seattle. What did Al Gore fail to mention? William is grumpy about an upcoming journey into the Heart of Innovation, tries to get a sandwich, and serves up a carafe of whine until Luke Pez has had enough and attempts to end it all. Scott heads to the Deep South of Kentucky to steal William’s thunder, or maybe his sandwich. We rant about the AOL of social media as William tries to bring things into focus and Scott finally becomes friends with his family. Scott won’t easily escape now, and neither will the Flash! After a prom fashion tangent, we put on our clean jeans and head to the dance. Unfortunately, the dance is the “Update Office Every Three-and-a-Half Minutes Shuffle,” which has William facing the cold, hard fact that he’s renting his entire life. As the demons pour from the Whitening, we both realize that you can’t even trust water. Our Two Topic Episode™ begins in earnest as the TV Freight Train known as Scott incubates his Silicon Valley watching into fully-funded completeness. We discuss shake weights, startup bubbles, horse sex, and nerd archetypes until we settle on a mutual love for Big Head while playing “What Silicon Valley Character Are You?” (Hint. All of them). As William finds movie scripts at the bottom of the barrel, Angle-shape approves and we all move on to Word of the Week, which is “simplify.” As William shreds all the paper in the world, he wants somebody to take his basement… please! Scott attempts to save the U.S. Postal Service only to fall victim to his “To Be Filed” pile and the curse of a null modem cable. Luckily, he has a basement dragon. It’s all about what you need to survive, and 40 gallons of cables, a SCSI bin, a milk crate of broken tools, and a ten-percent dent won’t cut it. But a knife and a shovel might. Stuff is heavy, especially if you have to bug-out to the z-axis. Scott’s house becomes a library and he considers a unique daddy master class. William becomes a cloud app for his wife, but is still looking for that sandwich. We decide, at last, that this whole digital thing is here to stay and we’re gonna need a bigger shredder. Maybe it’s time for 1952 instead. Yes, Music in Rearview is here to help as 1973’s 1952 becomes a hookup and PUA-cultured time-warped 21st anniversary for Park Davis’ Myadec High-Potency vitamins, now at popular prices! Turns out 1952 was quite the Boom-Boom era as Rosemary Clooney goes Rosemary Looney and Botches everyone in sight. What is IN that vitamin!? That’s a whole lot of Yadda Yadda Yadda! Then we visit Doris Day who cheerily tells us that a Guy is a Creep and spins a stalkery tale of, well, let’s just leave it there. Don’t follow us inside, even if you do look familiar – and do NOT finish that song! So, with a licka-licka stamp, William visits a few days into the future where hopefully we will have this whole thing figured out. Clutch those PDFs, Grandpa.  Everything must go, save the iTarp!

Links:
Silicon Valley
The… The TETRIS… Movie?
Botch-a-Me (Ba-Ba-Baciami Piccina) on Wikipedia
Rosemary Clooney – Botch-A-Me (Ba-Ba-Baciami Piccina) on iTunes
Doris Day – A Guy is a Guy on iTunes

– by William Cooper

Every child is an inventor at heart, and I was no different. I was an expert in toy mashups, modifying one toy with parts from another to make some new hideous nightmarish creation nobody ever wanted to play with. I didn’t have a clue how to put devices back together again once I had feverishly disassembled then, leaving piles of gears, springs, screws and bits of plastic behind in my wake. I built a number of complicated Rube Goldberg machines, like the one that – using a system of pulleys and ropes – was designed to turn off my bedroom lamp while I lay comfortably in my bed. It hardly ever worked, eventually broke the lamp, and nearly gave me a concussion when the whole contraption fell on me in my sleep. Okay, maybe every child is a top-notch inventor at heart, but I will bet most are pretty lousy inventors in practice.

Reluctantly, I left behind the exciting entrepreneurial world of inventing for a much safer dual career as a problem-solver who also fancies himself somewhat of a performer. But that path had its challenges as well. Picture a school lunch cafeteria, where my very urgent, nearly blinding problem was how to make girls laugh and therefore notice me. Since I was also infusing myself heavily with every single Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope movie ever made, the answer was clear, and that answer was to act out this extremely dated material in public, sometimes word-for-word to a captive audience. We all know how much 7th grade girls love spot-on impressions of Bob Hope, right? If adult professional actresses laughed at this shtick in the 1940s and 1950s, imagine how it played in late 1970s Ohio to 12 year olds!

I idolized Hope. “My Favorite Spy” was one of my top movies as a kid. How can you beat Old Ski Nose and the gorgeous Heddy Lamarr in a slapstick espionage caper about mistaken identities? Imagine my surprise then, after a quick search for famous inventors pulled up among the Edisons and Fords my old crush Miss Lamarr. Turns out she invented Spread Spectrum Technology, a system of manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception. This system formed an unbreakable code that helped defeat the Nazis in World War 2.

It’s not quite the same thing as spending twenty minutes trying to turn off your lamp from a few feet away using the belt from your bathrobe and some bent coat hangers, but it’s pretty darned close.

In this “inventive” episode, Special Guest and Honorary Producer Jo joins us in the magical podcasting shack. After two mistakes in a row, Scott suffers a painful injury; but don’t worry… it’ll all work out okay in the knee. He’ll kneed some help, but luckily there are Robot Nazis to look to as role models. Everyone is coming up William as he shares a story of how a past girlfriend curried favor with a horse using an ancient shark attack remedy that now has Jo considering her options. Whatever they are, they won’t involve female welders… or is that plumbers? It’s important to get these things right. William and Jo and 38,000 Seattleites lose sleep thanks to a substation raccoon transforming into a very special conductor, if it even happened at all. Surrounded by white noise, Jo’s dreams aren’t so sure. Waiting for hyperspace, William’s dreams let the monsters run free. And what is going on with the fan!? Then it’s on to more TV talk as Jo pitches Silicon Valley, Scott builds a pool table in a Man Lab, a crazy ex-girlfriend goes Conchording, and Nick Schmidt gets some New Glue Girl. We move on to Beyond the… Nerd Alert with an in-depth look at how the future is here today, featuring Elon Musk, the Human Capability Inflection Point, and the return of a mid-century podcast. We begin with voice recognition software, which has us astounded. If only it understood William’s special brand of whale-humping suaveness. He’s a melodious, mellifluous, maleficent mess. Stupid 4-year olds. VIV AI turns our intelligence into some tasty open-API utility. Self-driving and self-parking cars have us looking for road beacons and finding none, doing drugs on automotive trains, and waiting eagerly for whatever surprise Elon Musk will slip into our operating systems. Software updates! What CAN’T they do!? Even though we are screwed in Seattle, it’s still all magic and unicorns. As if. Solar City has us marveling over shrewd business models and lowered emissions while we consider the true power of snowballs, overcast panels and Power Walls, which are not just a song by Oasis. We hope it’s not too late. We return to the Falcon with talk of Space X’s reusable spacecraft and the joys of rocket shopping. Mars is the Plan B, and Elon has us covered. Is he crackpot or genius? We still don’t know. Duly inspired, William and Jo look at men’s cycling bibs that might actually be testes-loaded outer space slingshots. Scott brags about self-wearing T-Shirts. Elon takes his rocket and goes home to the moon while Scott does the same in his bathroom. Then it’s all Hawaiian pod people, introvert troubles, and dubious tacos until – with Jo’s finger hovering over the checkout button for ludicrous speed – we move on to Music in Rearview. Our music tonight Sounds Fantastic and so does baby William. It’s time for some jaunty fun while selling Slimline portable RCA record players. Chet Atkins writes the soundtrack for the country of Scott as we discuss intertwined layers of musical relationships. As the Musk Falls to Earth, we too return to our normal lives. Reverse the Polarity, the devices have awoken and the chickens are revolting!

Links:
Electric Raccoon
Silicon Valley
James May’s Man Lab
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
New Girl
Amazon Echo
VIV AI
Tesla Autopilot
Solar City
Tesla PowerWall
SpaceX Planning Mars Mission in 2018
Elon Musk
Hawai’ian Domes
Sounds Fantastic! (1966) on Discogs

– By William Cooper

Who is the Marlboro Man? I wanted to pull up a stump, kick off my boots, and spin a yarn out here in the back 40 that explained to our younger listeners the origins and the meaningfulness of this mythical figure. In researching him, however, I discovered that his advertisements were still running in 1999, making his story relatively recent and not appealingly old-tymey at all. Then I realized that 1999 was actually 17 years ago, and I had to go have a drink or three to recover. I’ve returned now, a bit dizzier, to tell you that the Marlboro Man was a chain-smoking cowboy who sold Marlboro cigarettes, of all things, in campaigns beginning in 1954 and spanning the next 45 years. He was a rugged, hard-working westerner who paused in the midst of his wrangling, or not-being-fenced-inning, or general poking of cows to suck down the cool, refreshing taste of a nice smoke and then probably start a bush fire or two with his discarded, smoldering butts.

Despite the obvious and chilling outcome, a 300 percent rise in profits for Phillip Morris, the campaign also managed to completely enthrall a young, Man-With-No-Name-obsessed boy and got him thinking about hitching his wagon to a star and heading out west. That boy was, of course, me and when I finally did so, my wagon was a sedan, the star was a continuous supply of fast food and the west was the hippie northwest. Manly!

On a particular summer trip when I was a kid, we traveled off the main roads, as my father was wont to do, and passed a sign pointing to the township of Marlboro, Ohio. I imagined that there was a cowboy just over the horizon, tanning his rawhide, while staring steely-eyed out on the prairie of Flavor Country. We didn’t take the exit. My father had more important things to do, and ignored my protestations, and so I was left to ponder the unknown.

Turns out, Marlboro is a tiny township in Ohio with no cowboys, despite the alluring, but sadly irrelevant connotations. You just can’t trust place names to accurately describe what you might find there.

Except for Licking County of course. That’s a whole other thing.

In this episode, we ponder modern “manliness”. But first, when it comes to weather, William runs hot and cold and hot.. and cold and finally looks for help underwater. Too bad he picked a fight with his inner narrator. I always win. Go drink a lady, William. Meanwhile, Scott throws up his arms and hulks out with grass grumpiness. We discover that Prince has returned to our galaxyhood and is dancing around a dwarf with his Princely berries on display. If only somebody would freeze us so we could be that cool! William updates the index on his Aldnoah review, which only makes Scott hunger for more content. Awkwardness and Discomfort is on the menu, but he can’t get a good latch on any of it. It’s a high-intrigue endurance contest of murder and boobs that may be warping William’s already-malleable brain. The word of the week is “manly” or maybe it is “useful”. Whatever the case, we go on a rip-roaring, gender-role-exploring, philosophical adventure together. After some reluctant screws, William ends up at the hardware store with his spurs clicking and ready for M4, 20-gauge fun with cabinets full of confusion and unknown dimensions. It’s as disorienting as a baseball to the chest! Scott has Wild Ass Guesses, a cunning approach, and his own rules for success. That’s why they give him multiple degrees in Things. We can’t ford a mountain pass or knit a canoe, but we CAN claim this nerdy, outlying subclass as our new model. Expand, Abandon, Eliminate! In the 700 years since 1970, at last we’ve become useful, and just in time too. Steve Martin stops by to end our segment, as with checks colliding, we wonder aloud who is paying whom in this friendship anyway. Music in Rearview flows from one thing into the same thing as we begin Episode 1 of our Special Products Series, sponsored by Malboro Country. Elmer Bernstein brings us every style of music about the number 7, if every style is one style and every song is the same song. Steak is what’s for dinner, and for some reason, xylophones are what’s for the Wild West. As the sun goes down over the horizon, we get our long little doggies and ride off with Clint and Burt to a confused ending. Yee haw! Grab your Langstrom 7-inch gangly wrench and head for the nearest Sprocket, Pardner!

Links:
Three Earth-like Planets Discovered Orbiting Dwarf Star
Aldnoah.Zero
Steve Martin and the Plumbers
The Music from Marlboro Country on Discogs

– by William Cooper

R2-D2 was my favorite robot when I was a kid, even though I obviously knew he is a droid and NOT a robot. I won’t bore you with an explanation as to the difference, but suffice it to say, nerds everywhere were just jolted awake in a cold, confused sweat by my mere typing of that sentence and are even now grasping for inhalers and lunging toward their keyboards. Stand down, brothers. My favorite robot was R2-D2 simply because I didn’t have many quality candidates to pick from. Robbie? Get lost. Mr. Roboto? No thank you very much.

Okay, maybe my favorite robot was also Mechagodzilla, but isn’t everyone’s?

Who is Mechagodzilla, I hear you barely asking? Though he took many forms and picked many sides throughout the years, he was best known as Godzilla’s nearly 400-foot tall automaton nemesis in the 1974 film, “Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla,” and was the first giant robot I’d ever seen. I was a huge Godzilla fan and followed his strange, twisting history from Tokyo enemy to Tokyo defender to environmental warrior to the father of Godzuki, the Scrappy-Doo of the kaiju, the giant monsters of the Japanese islands. I knew every character by heart and every film to the letter. The Godzilla movies had everything for me as a young boy – destruction, pre-teen pathos, destruction, smog monsters, destruction, and the Mothra twins who I was desperately, tragically in love with.

In looking up robots for this post, however, I discovered that I had many more to pick from than I had imagined. For instance, The Greek inventor of mechanics, Archytas of Tarentum is said to have created a steam-powered dove that could fly for distances of up to 200 meters and later became the model for Bubo, the mechanical owl in “Clash of the Titans.” Then there was Eric Robot, a suit of armor with lightbulb eyes and belt-and-pulley guts who wowed crowds in 1920s London with his robotic shenanigans and who later went on a world comedy tour with some seriously corny material. There was also Ajeeb, a New York chess-playing automaton made of wax and paper-maché with a penchant for getting stabbed by those he defeated. And finally, there was Fedo, Teddy Roosevelt’s mechanical badger who would famously attack his Senate opponents when prompted by a short tweet from a silver whistle.

To be fair, Eric and Ajeeb were later found out to be men in costume. And I made Fedo up entirely. But still, you get my point.

When I think of the same question now, though, I look around my room. My Tivo, remembering which shows I like to watch, is recording multiple channels simultaneously, having downloaded and updated itself with the latest television schedules. There’s a process running on my laptop that is monitoring my files and backing them up to the Cloud whenever something has changed. My phone is alerting me with reminders based on the calendar it is keeping for me. I can talk to my car, my tablet, and my Xbox, which, by the way, knows what I look like and greets me each time it sees me. Friends of ours have their lights, heat and maybe even oxygen supply controlled by a small device that sits on their bookshelf.

So I guess the real question these days is… which humans are the robots’ favorites? Hopefully, I’m one of them.

In this extra-extended, robot-charged episode, we make with the Mecha! As always, we start with a kidney-pleasing pre-show stretch before powering up our podcasting exoskeletons. How does the Electric Company generate all that energy? Who is the mystery woman William’s parents paid off each week? Why is money so heavy? We answer all of these questions and still have room for Ramen Noodles and water, before we are brought to a sudden halt by the memory-straining case of Kristy McNichol and the Show Note Elves. We continue our dubious guessing about things of which we know nothing by reminiscing about Battle of the Network Stars wherein we consider the athletic capabilities of Gabe Kaplan and celebrate a scandalous Baio/Diller romance. Dubiouser and Dubiouser! William reveals that his wife is having an affair with a dishwasher, which causes us to discover that the cure for sickness is a healthy dose of nursing annoyance. Scott then takes on the mantle of Mister Snake as he greets a newly-identified, mouse-hugging resident to Horn Acres. Turns out Scott has been many former people, from copperhead-leaper to tractor-caster. But wait, there’s more show! Scott finally finds his TV obsession and it’s not what either of us expected. We dive deep into anime, where skirts are raised uncomfortably, the origins of Brony culture is hypothesized, and Subbed vs. Dubbed is debated as 1970s animation co-ops an entire culture. We play the Imaging Game with anime’s version of Game of Thrones and determine that it’s as real as it needs to be. Neal Stephenson has had enough, so it’s on to the thing William did out where the things are. William celebrates progress and rediscovers comic books all in one trip to the data-driven Amazon store, now with extra cables! Thanks, data mining! Then, in hour 200, we finally turn to Music in Rearview. Brian May and friends have something to share, and it’s not good. But hey, we forced his hand, I guess. Old for any age, we endure the iconic 1983 sound of the Starfleet Project. Cheesy, badly-sung cover of a crappy TV show nobody watched? Sign me up! It’s no Triumph in any sense of the word. Finally, there’s Prince, another otherworldly, supposedly immortal artist picked off cruelly by 2016. We pay our respects to an amazing, talented musician who held to a different metric. Please, stop this segment. We don’t want to do it again. After William’s quick 7-Zark-7 flip flop, we tap into the Aldnoah Drive and head back to Terra where there’s always room for some T&A!

Links:
The clumsy Sesame Street baker
Battle of the Network Stars – Gabe Kaplan
Battle of the Network Stars – Tug of War!
Battle of the Network Stars – Dunk Tank!
Eastern Milk Snake
Tractor Cast
Aldnoah.Zero
Brian May and Friends – Star Fleet Project on Wikipedia
Brian May – Star Fleet Promo Video on YouTube
Prince – Kiss (on iTunes)

– by William Cooper

I grew up in the age of Analog. When it came to entertainment, there was no on-demand. You had to wait for the movie theaters to re-release the thing you wanted to see again or catch it on TV, heavily-edited and gutted by commercials, hoping and praying that you didn’t accidentally miss it or that the power didn’t go out in the middle of it. Otherwise, you had no choice but to rely on the ole pencil and paper game to capture and replay your nerdy memories. Unfortunately, the only objects I could draw were X-wing fighters, TIE fighters, Snoopy sleeping on his back on a doghouse, and the planet Saturn.

Peanuts characters and Star Wars vessels, I get. But Saturn, as the only non-pop-culture icon in my repertoire stands alone, or gently spins alone as the case may be. It’s not even the easiest planet to draw, so where was the attraction? Maybe kids like me loved it because it was so unexpected and comical. It’s an outer space rebel, a loner that does things its own way, a hula-hoop rock star of the gassy outer realms.

Whatever the reason, Saturn appeared on everything, over and over again until my counsellors started to look at me sideways and I decided that drawing wasn’t my forte and writing was. I left behind piles of paper with undecipherable scribblings on them. As the world changed, I became an early adoptor and fell in love with digital and never looked back. Now I stream everything, movies and music and TV and podcasts like this. Heck I’d even stream a stream if I could figure out how to it without getting my bytes wet.

But there is one holdover, one last analog bastion and it is in front of me now, filled with pages of bad penmanship, underlines, exclamation points and doodles that somehow describe the episode you are about to listen to and from which I will pull my summary blurb in less than one paragraph. Because when it comes to figuring something out, lists, straggling ideas, calculations, measurements and general noodling about, I put away my laptop and my high-speed connection and I turn to my small pad and my pencil. Each day, I again leave in my wake piles of paper with undecipherable scribblings on them.

So you see, not much has changed. Oh, the pencil may be a mechanical one and the pads of paper may be ordered from Amazon and delivered to my door within two days, but by the 62 moons of Saturn, the spirit of analog is alive and well!

In this episode we return to our analog roots. After being singled out by the state of Texas, William considers setting up a podcasting hospitality suite in his basement while Scott provides a much-needed After Swirl. Now that’s a REAL podcast! Then we leap into some serious nerding about, digging through the media strata that stretches from a simpler, analog time to the present golden era of digital, stopping frequently at all the crap in-between. William finds some equipment that definitely isn’t cutting age, and shares a story from the archives of his complicated dating life. Or maybe it’s just a story about a temp job as a service animal. It’s all the same to him. Scott provides a media storage history lesson and ponders the ant-like task of continually pushing our content up the hill of changing formats until we break through the Cloud. William does a 720 after Scott brings up his podcasting boyfriend, and before you know it, we shoot for the stars. Scott traces the path of a truck-load of filing cabinets of ancient, unique, suddenly sought-after scientific data on a knee-shattering, Herculean journey that ends at his shed. Are there planets in there? Maybe! Whatever the case, it’s a question of potentially universal, naming-rights significance! William admits that he failed to properly grasp the gravity of the situation, but at least, thanks to some Idle worship, he passed his Astronomy exam. SETI? Folding? Too much Nerding? How about MORE nerding with Sounds from Spaaaace? We pay homage to a reclusive performer known as Dr. Shorn with some contemplative heavy breathing and a visit from the always sexy Cassini spacecraft. Can you say pia07966? Turns out other people could too, but don’t tell Dr. Shorn. Take a trip to Shed Planet with us, we’ve got Aimee Mann on MiniDisc!

Links:
Universe Song
SETI @ Home
Folding @ Home
Cassini Spacecraft
NASA / Cassini – pia07966
Dr Shorn – pia07966 on SoundCloud

– By William Cooper

I have what is referred to in my household as a Hero Complex. Oh, I don’t go about saving kittens from burning buildings or rescuing old ladies from the tops of trees with the irresistible lure of a saucer of milk. No, I work from the shadows, you know, like Batman.

Unlike Batman, I have no gadgets, no ability to fight crime, and no real money to speak of. Instead, I am what you might call The Dark Knight of the Mundane. For instance, I am the guy who discovers and then disposes of amazing archaeological finds in public restroom toilets, left behind by some ancient people who had not yet evolved the ability to press a button. I’m also the guy who picks up the paper towels left in the middle of the same restroom after their users were obviously struck dumb by the mesmerizing, disorienting whirr of the hand dryers and fled screaming out the door.

Beyond my bathroom domain, I am frequently called upon to clean up the consequences of grocery store Rapture, wherein everyday shoppers are lifted up and out of their lives in the middle of gathering their goods. I line up lonely shopping carts abandoned in the produce aisle, often just a few agonizing feet away from the bay of other shopping carts. I stack baskets left in mysterious formations of various, puzzling orientations by those that have moved on to a better existence. I even venture further afield to chase down escaping, rolling death machines that aim for car doors, block parking spaces, or try to escape entirely for a life on the run.

I toss trash into the can that somebody could not be bothered to retrieve. I salt the front steps and walkways of our apartment complex in winter, change the shared porch light, and bring lazily mis-delivered packages to the proper doorways.

Yes, the true saint of mundanity never sleeps.

But there is a dark side to all of this. I hear, surprisingly, that even Batman has a dark side. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a roller derby bout at a local skating rink. Afterwards the rink held a public skate, which my wife joined, decked out in full elbow and knee pads and with a flowery, pink helmet. I watched her glide away from me into the throng, and then a while later, witnessed her slowly inching her way back on one foot, grimacing painfully. In a bizarre set of circumstances, she had taken a fall and had somehow hurt herself so badly that she couldn’t walk.

So, I did what any hero would do. I picked her up and carried her out of the rink the long way round, then through an entire bowling alley and across half a parking lot before placing her into our car. Now I am no muscle-bound caveman, nor does my wife weigh ten pounds. About a fourth of the way into the journey, I knew I was in trouble and yet I kept pushing past my limit, propelled by my misplaced sense of duty.

We drove home. Ignoring my own pain, I carried her into the house, and then squirreled her away where we tended to her sprained ankle for several weeks until we discovered that it was a broken heel and probably should have been seen to earlier. I, in turn, nursed my thrown-out back and sore muscles, which didn’t do anybody any good whatsoever. I never asked for help, which eventually brought me into the arms of a cardiologist for anxiety-produced palpations. It was a winter to celebrate, that’s for certain. It put the Ass into Avengers ASSemble.

But that’s the flip side of this hero business. The rink was full of people, most of them with vast experience in injuries of this nature. There was a drugstore not too far away that sold crutches. There was probably some kind of medical person in the crowd as well. The point is, there were many options that night and yet I chose to see only one, the one where I sacrificed myself to do something I was convinced nobody else could do, or nobody could do better, or do the way I needed it to be done in the moment. I closed myself off from everything and with a narrow focus, ignored all but what I wanted to and needed to see.

When you are a hero, you spend your life trying to make the world a better place. But at the same time, it’s easy to make that world smaller and more constrained and yourself more isolated, trapped and more heavy with burden. There is giving, and there is sacrifice, and there is seizing control, and often it’s hard to figure out which way your cape blows.

I try now to be less superhero and more mild-mannered civilian, certainly no Bruce Wayne, but maybe an older, crankier Peter Parker. At the end of the day, there’s a big, old world out there full of choices and options, and none of us are alone in it. I don’t have to do everything. I’ll leave some of it for you. It’s a much better and more balanced life that way.

Take it from your Friendly Neighborhood Podcaster.

In this episode, we look for options in our closed systems. We begin with a phlegmy, loopy, tinkly opening that heralds the arrival of the inappropriately-titled Nut Brown Maiden. Scott gives props to the amazing Murdervan who saved the Horns from certain doom, but may have had a hand in causing it. William announces that our pinup career is off to a rousing, pinching, scuttling start, if being the poster boys of Happy, Introverted and Dorky is a thing. Naked and Afraid? Why not? Scott has the alphabetized ass for it. Then we both freak-out with a serious discussion of anxiety, depression, options, and regrets which leads to the story of William’s initial Seattle migration and closet-living hermitage and Scott’s recent scheduling struggles that again sees the return of the Murdervan, this time as a mobile work studio that may be more enabling than helpful. Finally, somebody is sending William very bossy notifications. Turns out it is past William, that jerk! Who will win this epic battle of Wills? Then it’s time for Music in Rearview, where the theme is one of musical crushes. Scott’s heart is like a Linda Rondstadt-shaped wheel and he shares both his early-onset empathy and his creative, clinical and very specific pornography solution in the pre-Internet age. For William it was all about Tori Amos who has the power to both move you and serve as an early-warning alarm. Scott wonders what’s up with that log in the woods. William shops for Jewels with his groin. Things get antsy quickly. Everyone take a breath. Everything is okay. Away, bounding boxes!

Links:
Nut Brown Maiden (Sheet Music ‘Performed’ in the show)
Nut Brown Maiden (A Completely Different Irish Folk Song)
Naked and Afraid
Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel on iTunes
The Parent Trap – with Haley Mills
Valerie Bertinelli on One Day at a Time
Kristy McNichol DESTROYS Melissa Gilbert
Tori Amos Little Earthquakes on iTunes

– By William Cooper

My father was a believer in simple and unchanging things – strong coffee, burnt toast, steak and potatoes, the security of keys in your pocket, local news, and inexpensive and reasonable family vacations to relatively nearby historical places.

Vacations for us meant a mad scramble to overpack as much crap as we could into bulging suitcases as my father sat impatiently in the driveway, beeping his horn. He believed that the car horn was a singular, infallible remedy for whatever temporary stupor we’d found ourselves in, a way to shock us back from the brink of our idleness and listless wandering into the real world of Things to Be Done and Ways to Do Them Quickly. There was beeping when we lingered too long in a restaurant, when we weren’t walking fast enough from school, and often when one of us was trying to remember if we’d forgotten anything before we left the house. Nobody was spared this treatment, for there was always a place to be and barely enough time to get there.

And this is how, one year, we left on vacation with a trunk, yes an actual trunk, strapped to the roof of our Impala that my father had forgotten to latch closed. Halfway between Columbus and Sandusky, Ohio, the lid flipped open, spilling all our belongings one-by-one along the highway. It is also how somebody finally beeped at my dad – the car behind him with paper plates plastered to its windshield, swerving back and forth across the lanes.

Nobody was injured in this event, luckily. We bought all new crap, secured the trunk, and continued on our journey, causing my dad to excitedly exclaim, “No matter what we do, we still come out smelling like shit!” My mother, knowing that he really meant “roses,” said nothing, as she’d long ago given up on this kind of fiasco, and simply returned to her crosswords.

Many years later, after I had moved to and settled in Seattle, a major Earthquake struck in the early hours of the work day. After carefully reviewing everything I’d ever read about how to survive quakes, I knew what had to be done. I mentally shred the documents in my brain, shrieked, and ran. I stumbled down the rolling hallway, down the swaying, creaking and disturbingly popping stairway, and out onto the undulating lawn where the earth was grass pudding. I wrapped both my legs around a small tree about half my size and hung on for dear life. I did not break my ankle, as I probably should have, and I was wearing pants, which I realize now would not have stopped me were I not. So everyone around me won that day.

When I told my Californian friend about this, she replied, “Ah, ‘twas a roller then, not a shaker” in the kind of way a weathered, grizzled sea captain discusses the strength of a Nor’easter. “Shouldn’t have run, you know.” And yet, there was no way not to. Had I not been stopped by the fact that the earth had turned sideways, I would still be running today.

What’s the point of all this? If you count up all the events in your life that were near-disasters, you’ll be amazed at how any of us manage to get out of this life intact, how many of them we cause or worsen ourselves, and how little we know about how to handle them when they occur. Also, if you beep at a growing teenager each time he takes too long to urinate, he may end up battling a shy bladder later in life. I mean, hypothetically of course.

In this episode, we are confronted by a tapestry of disaster. William motorboats through a disaster of an opening segment, as Scott, juiced on java bean elixir, patiently explains the finer points of multi-track editing. William plays “Shoot Right for the Dumb” with a rant about underhanded Discovery Channel tactics before we dive headfirst into a discussion of our staggering Wendy Carlos ignorance. Moral of the story? We are the ones who are out of potatoes. We break the stupid loop of perpetual correction by checking in on the hairstylings of the local delousing treatment center, the amazing word technology that is “Carplay”, and William’s misguided plans to bulk purchase Tesla automobiles. Goodbye, combustion engine! You were a gas! Then, surprisingly, we go beyond the porch as the Horns set their cat alarm and take a Family Duty Spring Break at a state park lodge that promises all the dry snack food you can eat, wandering hallway moose, and a very shaky notion of fire safety. As the howling wind and darkness force the Horns into the cold, we all know this can only be William’s fault. Time to find Someplace Interesting. In a full-blown potluck panic, William faces an intense obligation to supply a Midwestern-sized feast, the sickening potential of cod roe, and the desire to attempt a daring IKEA meatball heist. At least he beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game. Scott isn’t worried. He’s a potluck wizard, and sounds the whooo alarm to begin Music in Rearview. Disaster abounds with the soundtrack of Airport. Also abounding, much illicit sexy times, Oscar-winning stowaways, and a shortage of track-naming ideas. We end as we began, with Scott patiently explaining the concept of two-dimensional media, and with a disaster of a close as William forgets where he is and what is is doing. Sound the Klaxons, Moneypenny, and join us for Up And Cumberbach! Who’s the Dope Now?

Links:
Wendy Carlos (again)
Weird Al on Peter and the Wolf
2017 Subaru Impreza
Tesla Model 3
Airport – Original Soundtrack Album on iTunes
Herbie the Love Bug featuring Helen Hayes

– By William Cooper

When I was 16, my father decided he was going to teach me how to drive. Using some old orange-painted broomsticks stuck into cement-filled milk jugs, he set up a parallel parking course in the parking lot of a local church. Back then, everyone seemed to have cement lying around for some reason in case, I don’t know, the Kaiser came back. It was a different time.

I felt supremely confident in my mastery of all things mechanical, as only a 16-year old can, until one day a carload of Japanese tourists squealed around the corner and began taking photos of us, then drove off as mysteriously as they had arrived. I should have recognized this as an omen, because that same afternoon, a squirrel ran in front of our car and I panicked and swerved, hit the gas and drove up into the middle of somebody’s yard. Not surprisingly, that was also the last driving lesson my father offered before turning me over to the professionals.

After my unscheduled trip to my neighbor’s hydrangeas, it took me years before I gained enough control of a car to be granted a license. The memory of that fluffed-up tail, the WHUMP of the curb, and the act of staring out of my window into the dining room window of one of our neighbors’ houses put a serious damper on my interest and my efforts. I never saw the Japanese tourists again, but am convinced they were time travelers working for some great Squirrel Nation in the far future.

In my college years, squirrels found me once again on the quad, where I had developed something of an understanding with Sciurus carolinensis. I gave them food and allowed them to sit on my shoulder or my head to eat, and as a result, I received a write up and a photo spread in the local paper as the Squirrel Man of Ohio State University who had Tamed the Midwestern Wilds and So Lived in Harmony with The Beasts of the Field.

The squirrels on campus eventually became more aggressive and one ripped a glove off my finger (and nearly rippled my finger off with the glove) during the peak months of winter. While I was chasing him down, his buddies ransacked and destroyed my backpack and most of its belongings.

That’s the thing about control. It’s elusive. You think you have it, then you don’t have it, and then you run it down and think you snag it, and then the huge, massive world of endless, expansive, ridiculously random possibilities comes along and reminds you that it’s all really an illusion and actual control doesn’t exist. We keep trying to make the world smaller and more manageable, but the joke is on us, isn’t it?

Like rambling podcasts, things tend to run away on us the more we hold them down. And then it all gets confusing – the break pedal looks like the gas pedal, and one of our hands is suddenly colder than the other and our text book is chewed into little bits with hardly a thank you very much. It’s nuts, I tell you, but maybe that’s just the squirrel in me talking.

In this episode, we face the big, confusing world and try to gain some control over it. William shares a very narrow and obscure superpower as Scott seeks Spinal Tap clarification but perhaps achieves only obfuscation. We travel beyond the porch where William visits the World’s Tiniest Wetlands and assists a Great Blue Herring in some social observation and chicken frightening while Scott laments his past ousting from his Childhood Retention Cave by some do-gooder nephews and a rogue water heater. William endures caucus chaos in a low-rent Breakfast Club where meaningless neighborhood lines are hotly contested while Scott discovers he’s in a low-rent Speed where his listening retention depends directly on his GPS movements. William then heads to the symphony and Scott to the doctor’s office where we find out how to composersplain, the art of loud but complimentary elder marriages, and finally who Susan REALLY is. Scott says goodbye to both the segment and his hair by refusing to play along with the baldness cover-up orchestrated by Big Barbershop. Set it on Number Two, Number One! If that wasn’t enough, and honestly it probably should have been, we see what ridiculous musical act Scott has invented this week. Turns out, it is Walter Carlos of early electronic music fame. After a quick test-tone balancing for maximum enjoyment, we are off into the wonders of the synthesizer in the pre-sequencer age where we discover that electronic music actually is rocket science, that Eric Idle loves to photobomb, and that Walter not only has a well-tempered synthesizer but a much more interesting life and discography than either of us imagined. This one goes to 11!

Links:
Spinal Tap
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
Spinal Tap: Big Bottom
Walter Carlos and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer
Walter (Wendy) Carlos

– By William Cooper

I recently stumbled upon more proof that throughout history, humans have always had great goals and clever ideas, but often lack proper follow through.

Numbers from one to ten are uniquely named, mainly because of how special our ancient digits were to us as our first wearable technology. And then you reach eleven and twelve. What’s up with that? There’s a hot and searing debate in the etymological community about those numbers. I won’t say how hot and searing, but suffice it to say, it’s not a topic of conversation you should raise during your next etymology dinner party. Words like “discredited” are bandied about in haughty English accents by eyebrow-raising academics in smoking jackets.

At any rate, allow me to summarize a conglomeration of leading theories. When primitive human counted to ten and noticed there was still counting to be done, there arose a real Y(-2)K situation. “I’ve counted ten,” says primitive human, “but I haven’t counted all of what I have!”. So some early nerd came up with a system hack. Eleven is “one left” after ten. Twelve is “two left” after ten. Fantastic. Seems like you might have a system that would last you quite a while, primitive human.

But then things get lazy. The theory goes that primitive human barely counted over twelve. But why? Lack of follow through. Anything over twelve was considered “many” with a wave of the “I can’t be bothered with this anymore because I have some mammoth thighs to chew on” primitive hand. Much later, somebody applied a patch to the system that was called “teens,” a barely-thought-out, slacker kludge that is also characteristic of most teens I know today.

Sharp readers might notice that this is the same approach taken with months. You get all the way to August and things are rosy, creativity just oozing out of every Greek and Roman pore. But then, it’s time for arguing with Plato or sticking a feather down your throat, and we end up with the “ember” months. “Yawn, where did we stop?… Sigh. I don’t care, just fill out the rest however you want, how about Number and then… dunno… Ember?” Just lazy if you ask me.

Our episode this week is about dreams. What? Yes, the previous story has nothing to do with dreams – I just wanted to keep you engaged for a while to illustrate a point. Follow me here. The average person has three to five dreams a night. Let’s say that half of the world slept as you took the time to appreciate this post, more of course if you yourself fell asleep during it and just woke up. That’s around 3.7 billion people. But hey, maybe some of them couldn’t sleep, or maybe they work the night shift, or maybe they woke up to get a drink of water. Cut that conservatively in half again, round it up a bit, and you get 2 billion people. How many of them were dreaming during this? Let’s say a fourth.

So while you read my post, five hundred million dreams were being dreamt, five hundred million dreamscapes were being created and played out across the mind, five hundred million unique experiences were scripted by the unconscious or the subconscious or by whatever dreaming force is responsible for scheduling such performances. It’s an endless system of creation that has continued from the first time primitive human dozed off during counting.

In this episode, we dream a little dream called podcast. Still feeling the sting of our Twitter-bot smack down, we lament the bizarre narrowcasting that we’ve come to as a society in the Age of Correction, and then immediately yearn for the Twitter-bot-bump. It’s a complicated relationship. The Mound of Doom takes revenge on Scott with an itching, burning plaque of “poison something” while William expresses sympathy with a story of his own backwoods betrayal. We greet a new listener baby, who arrives in this world with an entourage of community-sponsored dinners, which is enough to set William’s stomach scheming. William then takes on the mantle of Mr. Raw Deal, first losing a battle of common sense with his wife, and then at the Edge of Disaster, gaining moral superiority with Apple as level-1 support turns out to be as level-1 as you might expect. Dreams are next as William rearranges his into neatly-aligned packages, while being chased by jaguars. Brain-fed by podcasts (the natural sleep aid), Scott executes a unique body subroutine that is responsible for saving many a dream child. William shares his experiments in lucid dreaming, which are actually twisted sleep studies in repeated lucid wakings. Is NyQuil actually peyote? Do cats dream of coyotes? Why is William screaming? Why is Scott falling down? This whole sleep thing is dangerous. We take welcome refuge in the familiar musical arms of Stereophonic Sound with Sugar, Spice and Rudolph Friml and the world’s first stereo-scored orchestra, complete with a Westrex cutter head system with a scully lathe! We demonstrate our expert foreign language skills, debate cheesecake and beefcake, and through the waterfall of entwining lines of sound, visit both Julie Newmar and Nigel Tufnel. Luxury!

Links:
Far Cry Primal
Silent LucidityDiscogs: 101 Strings Play The Sugar And Spice Of Rudolph Friml – 1959
eBay: LP – Rare Julie Newmar Cheesecake Cover
Julie Newmar
Rudolf Friml
Nigel Tufnel

– By William Cooper

For those of you over the age of, let’s say 35, you should ask yourself, now… yes, put down your soup for a moment… what it means that you are no longer a spring chicken. I’ll tell you what it means. It means that your meat is no longer as tender and attractive to some nameless carnivore (mountain lion), and so you are less likely to be suddenly eaten by something higher than you on the food chain. Springers are chickens clucked, er, plucked from chicken life shortly after being hatched, broiled in the fires of hell, and served up in various sauces probably for pudgy tourists to slaver over as they finger glossy travel brochures with their pudgy, greasy fingers. What a way to go. One moment you are scratching at the ground and wondering about the meaning of it all, and the next moment you are tits up next to a potato.

This is, therefore, a public service announcement. Be proud that you are now less likely to end up on somebody’s plate tomorrow and more likely to live until you slip into an endless sleep while sitting atop your egg.

The idea of Spring means different things to different people. Here in Seattle, one of the things it means is the start of the annual crow dive-bombing convention. I have a front-row seat from my window at work, which is also my window at home, and look forward to this competition every year. The rules are simple. Unsuspecting person walks down the street, ignoring all of the corvid cacophony because crows are experts in being so prominent that they end up being ignored. Some magical boundary is crossed. There’s a blur of black wings and the top of said person’s head is lopped clean off. Okay, maybe it’s not that extreme, but it certainly puts the sudden fear of aerial attack into those hapless humans who squawk and flail their arms and run, alarmed that they’ve been betrayed by the normally passive Z-axis.

A few years back, hikers were warned at this time of the year to keep off a certain hiking trail because a solitary owl had taken a particular interest in stealing hats. The official story was that from the air, the hats looked like small, tasty animals, but I don’t buy it. I think there’s a sub-Reddit somewhere where the finer points of cranial attacks are discussed by users like ImNotABirdReally32 and OwlBeTakingYourHat65.

To sum up, welcome to spring, be glad you aren’t a chicken, and for the love of Pete, watch your heads our there.

In this episode Spring has sproinged for both of us. William celebrates hawt toilet paper couture with a hefty deposit to his Daylight Savings Account, and then reveals that he was the classic-computer-using prodigy behind some of the most inane afternoon television promos of the early 1980s. Scott confirms the clueless husband bias, even if you happen to be Jack Ryan, and provides some much-needed wife-annoyance advice. Then it is time for comparative bird studies featuring the noisy bird brigade of Washington versus the elusive red-winged blackbirds of Ohio, who we are pretty sure have been hired as the muscle in a protection racket (rabbit). Bitten by the seasonal clearing bug, Scott heads JUST beyond the porch to the Mound of Doom, which claims the life of a hedge trimmer, but yields an important archaeological discovery. It’s a real bonfire of the Insanities. Buoyed up by his success, Scott takes a trip to a flea market, which as it turns out is named exactly for what you’d think it would be named for, but holds many priceless treasures of a long-forgotten age, all for under two dollars admission. We end with a visit to an Irish Spring as the Skip Jacks tell us how things are in Glocca Mora. Turns out, things are full of Stereophonic sound dating back to the 1880s and heavily researched by Googling. But wait, there’s more. What begins as a Skippy Jacky ditty turns into an in-depth literally critique of a Longfellow poem. Who could see that coming? Bells are Ringing for both Dean Martin and Bing Crosby, who as it turns out, are not the same person. Sweet? Hot? Blue? Triple check!

The MOUND of DOOM:

Links:
The Apple Lisa
Patriot Games Movie Clip
Spring Birds
The Skip-Jacks – Sweet, Hot and Blue
How are Things in Glocca Morra?
The Courtship of Miles Standish – Longfellow

– By William Cooper

My father was a died-in-the wool, WW2-vet patriot who used to get me out of bed at the crack of dawn on national holidays to help him hang the flag outside our house. With his guidance, I’d sleepily lean over and steady Old Glory into one of those aluminum holsters that was attached to our aluminum-siding-covered residence. Aluminum was all the rage and my father probably owned half of the country’s stock.

This whole waking me up nonsense had started at a young age when in 1969, three years since I had been thrust into this bright, new world, I was torn from my drooly slumber and propped up in front of the television to watch Apollo 11’s Eagle land on the moon.

I have no actual memory of this event. I say no actual memory because the story of my father and the moon landing was a story that was told and retold in my family for so may years that I think I have acquired a second-hand memory of it.

Point is, I didn’t sleep much as a child. I’m making up for it now.

Regardless of the toll on my REM states, I believe this event raised in me a certain fascination or maybe just a deep, deep respect for space and space travel. What little kid doesn’t want to become an astronaut? Sadly, this was not to be the case for me. I have horrid eyesight. My endurance is not, what you might call, endurant. And the thought of going into space fills me with the urge to defecate and throw up in equal and perhaps alternating measures.

What I did want to be and could have been was a technician at NASA, one of those guys who fiddle with knobs and get to say “Go!” or “No Go!” very confidently at certain times. I followed this dream for about as long as a teenager follows anything, probably until I found out I’d have to move to Florida (had I done a bit more research and discovered JPL, things may have turned out differently). Then girls came along, and then video games, and the rest is history.

Instead, I became a podcaster, which honestly is about the same thing, right? And even though I don’t wake up now until noon on national holidays, I still try to watch every spacecraft’s launch and landing.

In this episode we get the GO for manned podcast flight. William blasts off into a hair-singeing story of his burning undercarriage, explains the convoluted and time-intensive process of quality podcasting, and learns the hard truth about husbands. Scott reveals the identity of a hardcore fan who leaves us our first Fanbook facepost. Then we slingshot around the topic of Mythbusters and edutainment programs as William struggles with denial and endings and Scott rankles at rusted logos and announcersplaining. We settle in for a long orbit around the Word of the Week of “hobbies,” covering the distance from the world’s hardest card game to slot cars dreams and hot wheel afternoons to the inevitable avocation vocation. Then it’s suddenly all about sine waves, meter bands, and megahertzes as, armed with an ancient Radio Shack instructional clay tablet, Scott plans his trip to Hamvention, with acres of tables of old computer crap and vintage video games. At the end of our journey, we do reach the moon – “Music Out of the Moon,” to be exact, a 1957 gem that served as Neil Armstrong’s road trip mix tape and sneakily introduced the Theremin to the wider populace, whether they wanted it or not. FIDO! It’s a Go No!

Links:
The Glory of Love
Mythbusters
Flying Wild Alaska
Hamvention
Music Out of the Moon

– By William Cooper

I was pretty blasé about the darkness and the night until a singular momentous event in a parking lot in Morgantown, West Virginia. As I sat there after a long drive, getting ready to go inside and greet my friends, a mountain lion walked in front of my car, gave me a sidelong glance and then slowly crept into the bushes. I’d still be in that car now were it not for my need to urinate. What is the line between fear and bodily evacuation, you ask? Make sure you can run before your bladder gives out is the answer.

I was lucky that night in both my ninja-like speed and my iron urethra.

But this is not that story. This is the story of two sleepy guys with no power outs who would be fat and juicy targets for any large predatory cat. Yes, I realize I just brought it back to the mountain lion, but I’m a bit freaked out now. For all I know, that thing has followed me waiting for JUST the right moment. I’ll let it go now, I promise.

Anymeow, the reoccurring theme of this episode is darkness. We hope you enjoy it, if you can see it. Listen with a nightlight. You’ll thank me later.

In this episode, we fight off sleep by delving into some dark areas at the edge of the map. After some late night galumphing, William discovers a possible intruder and he and his wife find that they have very different views on how to resolve the situation. We discuss security and the effectiveness of flashing criminals your naughty bits as a means of determent. Scott, on the other hand, is busy serving other people’s agendas from dawn to dusk while mulling over how to avoid becoming physiologically damaged by any and all levels of parenting quality. Somebody needs some ShornTime™, stat! Then it’s back into the darkness as William is obligated to have a “unique dining experience” by dim candlelight with a GPS-tagged wait staff, some blunt instruments and some questionable traditions. We venture into the strange, shadowy past of bands who make movies, save theme parks, and star in video games, struggle with our own relevant knowledge of music, and then quickly turn to horror as a last resort. Yes, it’s Five Nights at Freddie’s and the FNAF fan music, which brings us murderous robot bears, dubious advice for both today’s youth and the impressionable William and a visit from some old friends. William is a delicate flower. Scott is already asleep. Get listening before the sun comes up!

Links:
Being a Good Parent will Physiologically Destroy You
Eyebrow Fashion Trends
HELP! – The Beatles
Kiss meets the Phantom of the Park
Journey video game (1983)
Die In a Fire (feat. EileMonty & Orko) The Living Tombstone Die In a Fire – Single
It’s Been So Long The Living Tombstone It’s Been So Long – Single
Our Little Horror Story Aviators Flying Under the Radar: The Singles
You Kill Me with Silence Duran Duran Paper Gods

– By William Cooper

This is an episode largely about video games, but also not about video games. It’s actually an episode about how we spend our time and the ways that our time is both valuable to us, and also up for sale. Everything is monetized these days. Efficiency is time. Time is money. Money is more money. And with more money, you can buy more efficiency. And so it goes.

When it comes to selling your time, there’s always a hook, and once you bite that hook, you are just a fish on the highway of life. Except that I guess you can’t breathe out of water. Maybe it’s more the river of life. Somebody has a boat. There’s probably a cooler full of beer involved and some nice sandwiches, and a hat and some sunscreen, because you can’t be too careful.

Point is, despite how busy we are, and how creatively and constructively we use up the time left over after jobs, families, and the routine of living takes its share, there’s still often some excess. We work hard to one day get more of that excess. And that excess is up for grabs.

And who grabs our excess time? Well you’ll have to spend 45 minutes or so of your own time listening to find out.

See what I did there?

In this episode, we grapple time and things that devour time. William discovers that his wife is the next Bill Gates and reacts to Getting Things Done by running and screaming to the safe havens of paper, pencil, and plausible deniability. Scott first breaks the laws of the State of Ohio to celebrate a positive life change with the good folks at the BMV and then honors the laws of math with a slight correction. From there we launch into the heady world of in-app purchases. William feeds fake food to fake cats for real money, battles Tubbs, and tries to achieve 100 percent cats before he achieves 100 percent broke. Inspired by the Daytona 500, Scott drives his Gambling Addiction Training Program to virtual glory and starts on his 480-hour journey to racing domination or in-app whale status, whatever comes first. Finally, after William’s harrowing tale of accidental multi-player abuse, we experience the DNA echoes of Rush’s Hemispheres with a part of a part of of a prelude to other parts, which still takes us most of the month to hear (and we don’t complain about it a bit).

Links:
Getting Things Done
Neko Atsume
Real Racing 3
Rush: Hemispheres Picture Disc

– by William Cooper

Ten episodes. A momentous achievement, if you ask me… until you realize that the only reason the number ten has any weight at all is that it’s as far as most of us can count on our fingers without taking our shoes and socks off. Somewhere there is a dimension where people have eight fingers. I have it on good authority that we are astonishingly popular there. The frequency of our combined voices reaches a particular and unique vibration, allowing our podcast and our podcast alone to pass through the trans-dimensional barrier, meaning we are the only game in town.

But I digress.

In that dimension, the seminal episode was a few back. There were parades. No, really. I know a guy.

On the other hand, there’s probably also a dimension where people have sixteen fingers. Glove production is a high-tech industry. It’s literally impossible not to give someone the finger. In that dimension, they aren’t impressed with our progress so far. People are probably too busy trying to figure out how to make chopsticks work.

Point is, it’s all in how you look at things. And sometimes it makes sense to look at them again, just to make sure.

In this episode, we revisit familiar ground to take another look. We begin with a catalog of corrections wherein we celebrate our first listener email (text), Scott reveals he retroactively invented the sleep button, and things get very heavy (water). From there, it’s back to the movies where Deadpool’s origin story surprises the parents of a 6-year old, causes Scott to question his own parenting, and threatens to influence William’s drive home. We discuss whether seeing movies in public is really worth the hassle and William’s awkwardness with strangers, before Scott is bequeathed with a truly valuable inheritance. Then we all climb into Scott’s van for an update on VanCam180(squared). But wait! Turns out, Scott’s van has it’s own origin story, and it’s one about a plucky, dented vehicle with stained, mismatched interior and an attitude that would have killed Scott were it not for his Scotty-sense™ (insert bumper). We finish with the precocious and talented 8-year-old musician, Angelina Jordan, who calms our nerves… until we discover the endorsements she attracts.

Links:
The Heavy Water War on Netflix
Manhattan TV Series
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
VanCam 1802
Angelina Jordan, Unchained Melody, on NRK talk show Lindmo

– By William Cooper

In 1995, I was working at CompuServe as a liaison to its various international offices. This meant having a few early morning conversations with said office managers about things I could not change or affect, followed by some afternoon conversations with local co-workers who had the power to change things but would not, followed by the occasional late night conversation with my mate in Australia about how much I wanted to quit, sell all my belongs, and go on a walkabout with him to some faraway, remote corner of the continent.

Eventually, the company decided it would be best to send me abroad to train three offices in some ridiculous tool that they did not want. My first stop was Munich.

The German office was famous for a few things. They passionately hated the English office (the Brits thought this had something to do with WW2), they passionately hated the American office (too many rules they didn’t want to follow), and they really knew how to drink.

I was young, sheltered, and alone in a country whose language I couldn’t even pretend to speak. The Munich staff was sometimes kind, but mainly confrontational and worked me harder than necessary or even normal, late into many evenings well past the drinking hour. I felt shell-shocked, jet-lagged, minuscule, and pretty scared of life.

I did, however, find comfort in two things. Every night, I would eat this amazingly delicious chocolate bar left on my pillow by the hotel staff. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I’d come back mid-day and have an extra one. I also became enamored with a TV station from Denmark, which made no sense to me at all, but at least was warm and flickering and somewhat familiar (and not German).

So, there I lay each snowy evening in a farmhouse converted to a hotel, watching Danish people go about their Danish lives, while feeding my maw with fine German chocolates. These were my refuges in the unknown. Even today, images on a small screen and unfortunate food choices are my go-tos.

When I came back from my trip, I was pulled into the HR office and asked why I had spent 50 dollars on chocolate in my one-week stay. Guess I don’t know how to say “complimentary” in German.

In this episode, we fall back into our comfort zones. Unshaven and alone, William gorges himself on nuts and stoner movies. Overscheduled and overworked, Scott tries to resist the lure of the Great American Pastime known as eating fast food in a parking lot, and eventually discovers the true value of this podcast. But then, the train to Norway arrives, which sends us on an engrossing, virtual journey to small, snowy cities and sprawling mountain vistas. As we consider our relocation options, Scott hatches a plan that involves confusing fellow drivers and enclosing visitors in an especially creepy van-shaped box in his basement. We end our brief European trip with a visit from Max Helmut Wessels and a rare German record that just may prove to be the answer to both our dreams.

Links:
Seth Rogen
Netflix socks
BergensBanen minutt for minutt HD – 7 hours and 14 minutes of heaven
Max Helmut Wessels
Standard Phono Corp on Discogs

– By William Cooper

It wasn’t too long after I had stepped from the plane in Hawai’i, my soft, bright white body blinding passers-by as parts of me that hadn’t been exposed to the elements in ten years slowly started to cook, that I found myself on the rock. The rock was near the shore at the end of a small walk from the parking lot. My friends had taken me there because of the tremendous snorkeling opportunities promised by the locals, a spot not in any guidebook or on any map. As somebody who had only ever snorkeled in Lake Erie in about 2 inches of water while watching goldfish as large as manatees nibble on any part of me that looked like a weed, I was both excited and trepidatious.

But I could not let it happen. I could not let go. I was left on the rock, wearing my flippers and mask, stomach plunging into my colon. The waves were strong and the undertow caressed my toes. My heart pounded. Every fear I could imagine surfaced. The razor-sharp edges of the rock cut away at my fingers.

I took a breath to steady myself, and then gracefully fell, slipping off both ledges on my ass and into the water with a panicked flailing. I pushed hard with both feet, launching myself from the coral and into a world of clear blue.

In the first few seconds, I heard it, a rapid seesawing somewhere above me. The more I listened to it, the more I realized that it was me, me panting, me about to hyperventilate.

As I looked down, trying to relax, fish of all colors and shapes flitted against the black lava and the entire world was luminescent blue. The universe opened up and I was weightless. My breathing slowed to a regular pace, and I turned.

The turtle was inches from me and turned as well to stare me in the eye. We both stopped swimming.

The plating on his head, various shades of green and blue, shone in the diffused late day sunlight. His wide, watery eyes rolled their gaze slowly across my face. And he hung there, suspended in fluid, flipper-fin-feet in motion contrary to the rolling tide. His carapace glistened against the dark crevasses of hidden fish heads and rock eels below. We stared at each other and then, wordlessly, we both started swimming.

In that moment, I lost all fear, all fear of anything and everything. We swam side-by-side around the reef, and I was a different person from any person I had ever known myself to be. I was fully the person I had ever dreamed myself to be. I had left my comfort zone far behind. I was free.

In this episode, we venture out of our comfort zones and dream about island living. After a hearty, rousing tale of food poisoning, William conquers his social anxiety to play a game where no winner is the winner, and then sets sail to a more northerly exposure where horses are horses and septic tanks are mystical. After being awarded a merit badge for hunger at an badly-planned “business meeting”, Scott gets quite drangry and fantasizes about moving to a volcanic paradise where entrees are plentiful and the only hot air being spewed his way comes from a mountain. We end up enjoying a trio of tropical tunes, which becomes quite personal for William, but in the end is just the warm, soothing breeze we both desperately need. Don HO!

Links
Vashon Island
Left, Right, Center
Girl Drink Drunk
Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean – RCA – 1957
The Polynesians – Hawaiian Wedding Song – Crown Records – 1978
Don Ho Greatest Hits! – Reprise – 1969

By William Cooper

Back in the mid-70s, I was in my early tens. Three major events were colliding in my life. I was in my first serious relationship with the girl across the street. The Captain and Tennille were hitting the charts in a big way with their unique brand of lounge-schmaltz. And the 1975 and 1976 Cincinnati Reds were in the middle of clenching two back-to-back World Series wins.

It was almost more than a young man could take. The girl had kissed me in the bushes, so it was obvious this was going to last forever. The music was some of the first “relevant” music I had been into and some of the first pop albums I had ever owned. And baseball was a passion I shared with my father, which involved such things as learning by heart the scoring notations, meeting both Johnny Bench and Pete Rose, and taking routine drives down south to Three Rivers Stadium to watch them play live.

I must have felt that I needed to combine all these things together in order to deal with them. So, like the Captain, I began wearing a Reds cap that I refused to take off. And that cap became part of my smooth operator operations in continuing to woo this older, sophisticated sixth grader. The two of us took photos with it, of it, around it. I must have worn that thing ragged for a solid year.

Eventually, the Reds stopped winning. Pete Rose fell into his own problems. My girlfriend moved on from my amazing wiles. And Captain and Tennille faded away to be replaced by Cheap Trick. But what of my hat, you ask? I’m not sure what ever happened to it. I like to think that perhaps it gained sentience and is off somewhere even now, bringing romantic confidence to some other hapless fifth-grader.

In this episode, we confront our own cheesy haplessness. We begin by battling basement and house clutter and move quickly into a rambling discourse on living the single life while married and strange ways our parents tried to alternately shelter us or prepare us for the world (and sometimes both at the same time). We end up taking on a three-cheese medley of music together, which transports us into the land of the bicentennial, the dubious plethora of variety shows in that era, and and the unsolved mystery of what William was doing locked in a closet in music class singing to the Bay City Rollers. Nibble on bacon and chew on cheese with us podcasting muskrats this week!

Links:
KC and the Sunshine Band, Keep it Comin’ Love
Bay City Rollers, Saturday Night
Captain & Tennille, Shop Around

by William Cooper

There are moments that are stuck in time. As you move away from them, the details obscure, the story blurs, structure slips away and what you are left with is emotion, colors brightening, senses sharpening, the core meaning resonating out to overwhelm memory.

In this moment, I am at the Ohio State Fair in summer. I remember a long day, a crazy amount of fried food substances and processed sugars, wary avoidance of what they used to call the “freak show,” and for some reason a series of prolonged visits with sheep, goats and cows. I do not recall any other circumstances of my fairgoing adventure, or the influencing particulars of, what I realize now, were my mid-teen years.

The ride was called The Himayala and featured a serpentine train car that traveled at speed in loops around a short, rising and falling track while pop music blared through every speaker. I’d reached it at the end of my day, and it was the last thing I was going to do before going home.

As I settled into my seat and the bar locked into place, the train jolting into life, things shifted. Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” started playing and something about the combination of momement, the hot summer night air, and that jangly song brought me out of myself. As I sped around the track, I started singing along and I felt something rise. I left myself behind, became larger than I was, and surrendered to sound, motion and wind. I was happy. I was experiencing life through my own lens, light and of the present.

In this episode, we let it all loose. We debate whether William’s continuing cold or his recently-learned fetus fact is more disgusting all while listening carefully for Mug Sign™, have a return visit from Jo as she provides a retraction and a promise of retracting her retraction later in ever-widening circles of clarification, yell at our devices and wonder why they don’t understand (NOTHING is hovering!), and end up in the land of proto-uber-neo-eurogirlpop with color commentary and real-time German translations from the Sniffling Googler.

Links

Alexa
“Hover”board
Kim Wilde, Tuning in Tuning on
Nena, 99 Luftballons
Kate Bush, Rocket’s Tail