Up and Overcast

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!

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.

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!

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)

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!

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.”

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!