I invite my son onto the podcast and he gives me a run for my money when it comes to rambling about stuff that only people who really understand the topic at hand will get. As I type this, he's offering me a very deep history of Fortnite. It's really incredible.

My daughter, Addison, recently underwent a dual-stage spinal fusion surgery to correct her congenital scoliosis. Due to the severity of her spine's curvature, she first had to be in halo gravity traction for 6 weeks. During the course of her 8-week inpatient stay at Shriners Hospital for Children in St. Louis, Addison received countless cards, notes, and gifts from her friends and family, with many coming from total strangers.

In this episode, we discuss some of the details of her stay and how she felt during and after surgery. Addison talks about what she missed the most about being away from home and what things are like for her now that she's back.

This is my first episode in quite a while, several months at least, so I'm back with someone cool. With baseball on lockdown, I caught up with Cubs righty Alec Mills to talk about how he's keeping in shape during the downtime. We also discussed the work he's doing with his two-seam and the filthy slow curve that is making hitters look silly. 

The audio wasn't great but I took the time to transcribe a lot of the interview for an article on CubsInsider.com.

In this episode, I talk about Avengers: Endgame in light of my love of the movie-going experience and watching with my kids. I also relate the last two Avengers movies to the Cubs.

Our fourth episode finds us with our first guest, Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter. If it seems weird that an born-and-raised IU fan would reach out to a Boilermaker, there's good reason. Coach Painter is a big Cubs fan, so when I heard him taking time during a radio interview about Purdue's tourney prep to talk about the Cubs' spring training results, I knew I had to secure an interview. Well, sure I did, and here are the results.

Spoiler-free reviews of Us and The Dirt, followed by a firsthand retelling of the legend of Shrimp Dick. He may not have been as famous as the other stars of the Sunset Strip, but the unfortunate hero of a messy episode at Pinches Tacos will live forever. At least in my memory.

In the second episode of DLL, I talk about my love of movies and give a rambling review of Captain Marvel. Then I tell stories about getting into concerts for free, including the Hard Knock Life Tour, the tale of which involves the infamous "Should I show her my hole?" incident. I neglected to edit out my daughter coming in to tell me my son is puking, then realized at the end of the pod that I was not actually recording with my external mic, but with my standard laptop mic. Par for the course.

In this roughshod first episode, Evan Altman flies solo with a rambling explanation of the pod's name. Then he gets into some talk about The 'Burbs, one of the greatest films ever produced, followed by a little Wu-Tang Clan talk. There's music at the beginning but not the end because he couldn't figure out the mixer.