Been a while since one of these dropped. I’ve been busy over at DADLAND, so this edition of the TBH Podcast is full of the new stories from there.

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Here’s what you can expect from this batch:

The Swearing Game (8:08) kicked things off back in June. My kids are both horrified and deeply amused by my poor language. Now it’s getting weird.

Blood On The Diamond (12:17) gives you a window into my hopeless inability to cope with my son’s hopeless Little League baseball team. Things only got worse in the playoffs, but at least no one got hurt again.

When a persistent shoulder injury led to surgery, Ken Burns’ Hemingway documentary seemed like the perfect six-hour-plus distraction. Alas, his detailed dive into Poor Old Papa’s (22:27) life only left me feeling more sad and nauseous.

Do You Think About Moving? (31:42) is a question I hear way to much, thanks to Team Trump. The recent immigration raids in Los Angeles have only made that question ring louder in my life. I don’t, yet, and here’s why.

Lastly, I love nothing more than a nice cold beer. But drinking gets more challenging with kids and age. It was time to sort the wheat (and hops) from the chaff! So for fun I decided to do Dad Beers Ranked (36:05).

Enjoy the show and again, please move over to where the action is right now and subscribe to my series DADLAND. It’s free!

Toby

Only 2 stories published this month. I talk a little about why, and drop them here for you to enjoy, read by me. Not AI. Never AI.

I also vent about how and why TV is annoying me, and reminding me a little too much of other dark forces in our broader media lives.

The first story is a rant about men my age and beyond recklessly and needlessly dyeing their hair. It’s gotta stop. Then something much more meditative about my long journey to kid-of-learn the banjo.

Thanks for reading and listening!

Toby

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February… the hard to spell, quick month. Done. Just like that. Robbed a few precious days, it always feels.

It kicked off with a sporting coup here in Los Angeles. Former Dallas superstar basketball player Luka Dončić became a Laker. Right at the beginning of a big rec league season for my son. I saw some parallels. I wrote about them (10:37).

Rain came to LA, not that long after the fire. Which had me thinking about the everywhere James Taylor song “Fire and Rain” (21:38). I hadn’t given it much thought previously, or more than a cursory listen. Though it is in an excellent episode of The Simpsons. Anyway, it’s okay. Hopefully you are, too.

We’re making some updates at the house. I went online to find a fridge and was unexpectedly made to reckon with the shameful disaster that sits quietly in our kitchen (25:06).

Speaking of the improvements, the men working on our garage got me thinking about my days of laboring jobs and the feeling of being connected to one’s work, without being connected to the rest of the planet online. A sacred space (28:14).

I hope you enjoyed the month’s stories. Thanks so much for reading and listening. Please subscribe to everything. Make comments. Push like thingies. It all helps support in obvious and secret webland ways.

- Toby

Thanks for reading TBH with Toby B. Hemingway! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

What a crazy way to start the year… in specific, with the Los Angeles fires. A tragedy which began as fear that people you know were in danger and that it could quickly spread anywhere, from any direction; settled into a deep and ongoing sense of city-wide grief, over all that had been lost. I talk more about it all to start this episode, and somehow I cranked out five stories this chaotic month:

I had started off the year here on a more positive note, in Reflections In The Rearview (12:52). Talking about how the year had ended and in hope that in 2025 we were due for a better one. Guess it’s easy on January 1st.

By the time of my second story for the month, Fire, Fire Everywhere (16:31), we were around 24 hours in to what would be a series of smoky, uncertain days, but I could never have predicted just how long we’d be in this mess.

In Feeling Good When Times Are Bad (19:33) I was already beginning to think about how we all might be able to help each other and what it means to feel like a good person. Particularly when others are suffering.

The loss of David Lynch was another sad note to start the year. But it did give me a chance to celebrate my favorite of his works, in Give It To Me Straight (22:30). What a fascinating man and one-of-a-kind artist he really was.

To round out the month I found myself writing about our gardener. A man who came with the house, I seem incapable of firing, who often brings two ear-splitting leaf blowers to the house, and yet I find myself completely charmed by. Somehow that gets me onto the scourge of 6-dollar donuts, in Blowing Up (26:51).

That’s enough from me. Thanks for taking the time.

- Toby

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Well, I got the Holiday Cold, and I husk my way through this month’s episode. Why did I start doing voiceovers? This is a little late as a result, sorry. Anyway, a kind of lengthy little chat with you up front here, then we move on to the final stories of 2024!

First up for December I wrote about my love of a Charles Bukowski poem and how it still affects me, whenever I drive by For Rent signs. Of all things. Why? I try to explain in My Railroad Yard (12:00).

Next was a quick wrap up of some of my travels in 2024 and the stories that came from them. Some for other publications — One More Time With Feeling (16:49). This was on the eve of my final trip, to Asheville, NC. More on that later.

Finally I get all preachy about my choice not to do any Year End list type stuff, in I Have Decided To Spare You My Year End List (20:48). More importantly though, other peoples’ lists (which I often can’t help but read) led me to a really bland Nick Cave record, vaulting me down an AI path I hadn’t yet considered.

Thanks for all your support this year. Share all this with your friends and pretend online friends, please! It really helps.

Happy New Year!

- Toby

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November was the month that the USA stumbled into a new political reality. Or a revived one, anyway. I was pleased to stop thinking about, and writing about, the election season. But the result was a little shocking, too.

So much so I couldn’t write at first, or at least, didn’t see the point. So I recorded a post-election voice memo titled No Words (6:28) instead.

I took a week off after that, spent some time with my wife and no kids. Then wrote about avoiding the news, focussing on other things for a while. News Fasting, I called it (13:03).

Lastly, right before Thanksgiving, I dug up a fun old story about my first experience of the holiday, at a Shoney’s All You Can Eat in Memphis, TN, with my older brothers, at the ripe old age of 18. It got me thinking about turkey dinners and what they mean (17:02).

Thanks for reading, listening and following along. Till next month!

- Toby

P.S. To support what I do, PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to the podcast on your favorite service. Or write a review, too. For links, see the tabs to the right on desktop, or in the More Options section above on your phone. It all really helps. Thank you!

For October I continued my Electionland 2024 series. Man, why did I take on writing about this stuff? No one forced me, obviously. I should have guessed I’d just wind up writing about bloody Donald a lot.

Still.. there’s some good stories for you, I think. Not too long. Not too bleak. Except for the Nazi part… that felt a bit bleak.

Saved that spooky bit for last on Halloween (18:31). I kick off with a trip to my favorite local dive bar, to watch the Vice Presidential Debate (5:37). There’s a quick check-in from my rental car in Oklahoma City, where I visited the American Banjo Museum and more (11:42). Also, what happens when a clown walks into a McDonald’s Drive-Thru (13:43)?

Thanks for reading, listening and following along. Till next month!

- Toby

P.S. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE to the podcast on your favorite service. For links, see the tabs to the right on desktop, or in the More Options section above on your phone. It all really helps. Thank you!

September marked two whole years of the TBH with Toby B. Hemingway Substack and I wrote about getting mistaken for an Italian, for some reason. I also watched the Presidential debate with my two kids and enjoyed their random reactions very much.

My daughter has taken to walking to school like she’s boarding a plane, which is funny. Also the month saw the first of my Electionland 2024 stories, which you can also hear here! This one’s about lawn signs. It’s election season and they’re sprouting again.

Thanks for reading, listening and following along. Till next month!

- Toby

What’s the most annoying car on the road? How does it feel to rewatch a TV series you loved decades ago? Why are AI-generated digital radio stations so annoying and what’s the worst song ever written?

This month’s stories managed to incorporate annoying Teslas, the return of Northern Exposure to TV, Bad Company’s most gross song, a John Mayer stinker, and more! All in three newsletters, with a couple of weeks off in-between, keeping the kids occupied.

Thanks for listening! Please tell your friends. See you in your inbox next month.

- TBH

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This month’s TBH with Toby B. Hemingway stories on Substack turned a little political. The 4th of July, a past President nearly assassinated and our current Commander In Chief bowing out of the game will do that, I suppose.

Life goes on, but you can’t escape the news and it finds a way into your life, sometimes in the least expected ways. This May marked 25 years since I first moved to the US from Australia. I’m still equally in love with, and confounded by, the place. Maybe you are too?

Listen to all the month’s stories, plus I read a short piece from my recent collection Red Sun, Dandelions & Other Stories.

Thanks for listening! Please tell your friends. See you in your inbox next month.

- TBH

Thanks for reading TBH with Toby B. Hemingway! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.