There’s some pleasures that are guilty and some you don’t even bother apologizing for. Josh and Keith explore the world of crap they know is crap, but have loved through the ages.

ALSO (and perhaps more importantly): Learn the secret of the most powerful snacking acronym ever: TWC. Your life *will* change upon unlocking its power.  And the boys introduce you to  a new and fun game for you to play when alone in your car or shopping.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 048: For the Love of Crap [ 2:23:23 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (26)

Spring! When a young man’s fancy turns to love. Only it usually isn’t really love, but the fairy-gold version of it: The crush. The everywhere-ache of heart and gut that leaves one breathless and frazzled.

Josh and Keith talk about what is is to be crushed in such a fashion: Cartoon crushes from childhood, TV crushes, real-life schoolyard ones and beyond.

Learn of the mannish schoolmarm teacher who won a young Keith Field’s heart by her Tolkien posters. Josh’s free-giveaway phone fiasco and how it nearly undid him. The lengths to which young boys go for no reason when in dread service to the whims of the crush! All this and more. Crazy Grandma-Field stories of racism and sumo, too.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 047: Babycakes and the 600 Pound Crush [ 2:49:40 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (72)

“Shall we play a game?” intoned the robotic 1980s computer-generated JOSHUA computer voice to a zitty young and innocent Matthew Broderick who had yet to be seduced by the horse-faced Sarah Jessica Parker.  That conversation nearly destroyed the world in a rain of nuclear fire.

So too with this one.

Josh and Keith talk about games and the playing of games; of what games mean and what games meant. Board games and the ritual of gathering they entail: Dare you learn the dread secret of the Inscrutable Mr. Hat(TM), The World’s Most Notorious And Mysterious Man? (Hint: It involves Keith cheating shamelessly at MONOPOLY) Find out how a young Josh invented both the cause and cure for OCD over one too many games of PERFECTION.  The hidden-mini-game of managing Keith’s unstable  cousin during family board game sessions… Keith’s broken compact with Old Scratch, and how Josh has misremembered Philip-K.-Dick-False-memory-style the key player of a story for over 25 years.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 046: The Games People Play [ 3:18:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (87)

“I like to read books about ROBOTS and SPACEMEN!” is something an enthusiastic young boy might exclaim.  Keith would most likely hit that child.

This episode is all about sci-fi heresies; stuff you’d expect Josh and Keith to love, but will be SHOCKED AND AMAZED that they don’t.  Find out Keith’s loathing for all things STAR TREK, Josh’s loathing for all things STAR TREK post 1969, Keith’s inhuman loathing for the humanity of E.T. and much, much more.

Also in this episode: The weird lies of Cage-Head through the years, the suicide of TV game show host Ray Combs and the strange and terrible connection he, Meatloaf and Gary Collins have with the Field/Brown/Raimondi fusion household.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 045: Robots and Spacemen [ 2:50:47 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (71)

The epic struggle and eternal conflict. Will and intention versus the implacable and unstoppable press of the world and life in its non-human forms.

In this episode: Josh is humbled by a mountain that he cannot tame. And a hat he should not wear. Keith’s lunatic grandmother attempts to tame the wild using mad potions, poisons and a Blair-Witch-style series of rock walls. Keith’s cute rivalry with a bat, and Josh’s shameful and gruesome one.  The premium put on “playing outside” and how it vexed a young Keith Field and caused him many anxious moments. The return of Speech-Impediment-Timmy.

Kiddie pools and  rampaging horses await your ears.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 044: Man Vs. Nature [ 3:06:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (110)

Laverne and Shirley, Kip and Henry, Lenny and Squiggy. They all lied to us from the TV screen. Roommate situations don’t always create true and lasting bonds of camaraderie and friendship to stand the test of the ages and teach us all a little something about life and love.

Sometimes, they just end in stewing pots of resentment and create pockets of pus-filled rage in the skin of our lives, waiting to be lanced and erupt their foul ichor onto whomever squeezes too hard on the memory.  Learn of secrets of a girl Keith refers only to as “Chainmail Coif,” and how her sound of distress can still summon righteous rage in him so many years later. Find out about the dirty business of Josh’s football playing roommates and their very gay obsession with not being gay, by doing very gay things with one another.

But most of all, find out about the arrogant Israeli who condescended to EVERYONE (but especially Keith) and stole Keith’s porn.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Podcast 043: Roommate. Room Hate. [ 2:07:24 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (90)

The world is more interesting and a better place for having had Roger Ebert, his voice and identity in it and a little less wonderful for losing the same. This episode, Josh and Keith look back at “At The Movies” as a character in their lives, and how an ongoing “relationship” with Roger Ebert over the course of a lifetime informed them on issues of art, humanity, friendship, purpose and perspective.

But not before Keith explains how he made a Red Robin restaurant even REDDER with copious amounts of his own blood, the sleep-deprived and chemically induced visions he had of golden feces and Josh unveils his not-quite-ready for prime time impression of handsome actor John Hamm.

Thumbs up (and fists sheltered) for this, our Ebert tribute.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 042: Thumbs Up For Ebert [ 2:07:51 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (169)

The Time Has Come turns 40…episodes long. Winter gives way to spring and Josh and Keith look back at a season’s full of episodes and explore the topics of the last few months for stories we didn’t get around to telling.

In this episode: Church ladies vs. Keith’s foam rubber vegetables. Learn the secret origin of the dial-up internet’s very first “Catfish.” The never-ending game of GAUNTLET that won back Keith’s honor from a kid who beat him up.  Josh and Keith’s magical video store, and History’s Greatest Villain: a long ago boy named Tony. The snowy day when all of America mourned the Space Shuttle– all save two little boys who would grow up to be podcasters. Josh’s incomprehensible rival and the time Keith kicked a strange child in the ass in a toy store.  And much, much more. BABIES AND TURTLES.

A lot of ground is covered and recovered in this, the 40th episode of THE TIME HAS COME.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 040: Changing Seasons- A Look Back [ 3:09:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (182)

A special The Time Has Come podcast, taped live before a studio audience. If one define’s “studio” as “Josh’s dining room.”

Super-fans and super-friends Rich Johnson and Gordon LeVasseur sit in on this week’s podcast, taped directly from the cake-eating at the mini-surprise birthday party thrown for your Pope of Anubis (TM), Keith Field.

In this episode: Keith’s cake becomes his child. Who he eats a lot of. Birthdays present and past; Keith’s young career as a would-be villain of birthday exclusion, and Josh’s shameful long history of abusing clowns. Also! Keith’s “Sweet 16.” Celebrate with us, as Keith enters a brave new decade. Birthday spankings for everyone.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 039: Pope Cake! A Celebration of Birthdays [ 2:07:52 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (149)

Keith has close encounters of the dork kind at a gaming shop and is three times rejected by the nerdiest of all nerds. Exploding nazi balloons.  The strange and terrible saga of the most wretched hive of villainy and scum this side of the Mos Eisley cantina: The Hometown Buffet and the worst/best wedding ever. One legged Irish tenors. Butter loving trolls! All this and more in only the preamble of this week’s podcast.

Then Josh and Keith talk about movies; going to the movies, what the act and ritual means and has meant through the years.  The time has come for you to listen in once more!

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 038: Let's All Go to the Lobby to Get Ourselves a Treat [ 2:50:33 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (218)

A panorama of love-filled magic for your ears and heart: Learn the three magic words crazy Grandma Field once scrawled across an official paper that changed the world of media as we know it. Discover Keith’s history as an avant garde artist. Keith and Josh explore the strange reality-bending power the podcast has seemed to evidence and it culminates in long-dead serial killers and real life comic book villains meeting and joining forces.

THEN! The true and extended story of love and squalor that is the boys’ storied history with Live Action Roleplaying (LARPing.) Follow it from its humble, pre-internet beginnings to its terrible and muddy end, in duct tape and tears.

And along the way, learn a little bit about love, life, and humanity. And how Keith once slept the night in a car with a farting stranger.  All this and so much more, in an episode we can only call: “Of Boffer Swords and Broken Dreams.”

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 037: Boffer Swords and Broken Dreams [ 3:24:27 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (262)

Special Bonus: Josh appeared as a featured storyteller at a Connecticut version of THE MOTH RADIO HOUR (kinda; it was an NPR event, but the actual MOTH people turned out to be dicks. So they inserted a “u” in and made it their own.
From Josh’s site:

Being February and close to Valentine’s day, the organizing theme for this, the inaugural kick-off of “The MOuTH” in Hartford, Connecticut, at the amazing Twain House and Museum auditorium, was “stories about love.”

I told the best story about love I know. I hope you all enjoy it.

What you need to know going in: For the first 30 seconds, I make reference to a quotation that was carved into the wall behind me, as a kind of  communication to the audience of “Hey, don’t worry– I’m quick on my feet; look, this observation could not have been pre-planned, so relax a little, secure in the knowledge that the guy with the mic is going to be funny and listen-able to.” The quotation is “There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.” But there’s an accidental line through an S in “Persuasive.”

BONUS CONTENT: Josh Live in Hartford [ 25:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (200)

Josh and Keith talk about the history of moving; what is is to shift from house to house growing up and the attendant excitement, fear, wonder– and, all too often, horror that new spaces bring.

But before that, there’s Oscars and celebrity culture, there’s the stunning reveal of Keith’s utopian form of polygamy he plans in his head for his ideal future life (it involves cages and, at one point in time, it involved star of stage and screen Mecedes Ruehl) and a host of other things.

This episode: Swim in the deeper waters of Keith’s not-cute-crazy-but-CRAZY-crazy grandmother as he takes you on  a journey that begins by living in her house and finds its way back, the wiffleball-bat beatings he endured at the hands of the local children when he went out to play and of a sinister pack of hillbilly villains who were led by a charismatic bearded lady whose will to power and control made her a dark force in Keith’s life, and how it led to the worst $175 he ever earned.

Josh tells stories of moves that were both ill advised and magical and the secret origin of his scarred hand.

A fine time for all.
(Note: This episode clocks in at over 3 hours. In editing it, it became impossible to open and merge the “Walrus and Carpenter” theme song that you have grown accustomed to hearing, so it begins with more of a “cold open.”) 

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 036: Howdy, Neighbor! [ 3:16:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (202)

You’ve heard our opening theme song. “The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of other things– of shoes and ships and sealing wax; of cabbages and kings!”

Well, that’s kind of where this episode ended up going. We went in with the idea of talking about field trips or road trips, but took several detours along the way. First off, Keith’s papacy continues on and he lacks the fezes (fezii? Multiple instances of a fez) sent in tribute to him as per his demands.  There’s a lot of talk of DIE HARD and what makes DIE HARD feel like DIE HARD and what doesn’t. You will learn the dread secrets of the Real-Life-Baby-Doll-enthusiasts. You will come to know of a boy named Herman who was not actually named Herman.  You will experience the raw and powerful hate a young (and apparently, still, an older) Keith Field felt for a group of schoolmates he referred to only as “The Bibliophiles.”

Also, somewhere in there: Field Trips.

Enjoy!

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 034: To Talk of Other Things. Also Field Trips. [ 2:53:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (250)

In a world blanketed by snow and confusion, the Pope abandons his post, leaving doubt and an uncertain future on the horizon. One man rises up to claim what has always been his destiny: Your new Pope, Keith Field. It’s a different kind of papacy.

In this episode, Josh and Keith talk about snow, snow days, winter’s chill and the frigid wastelands of South Dakota and their shadowy pizza franchise/Book-of-Revelations Ministry combination enterprises and Keith’s mad plans and pontifications for a bold new style of pontiff.

Apologies to Turkey.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 033: A Winter's Tale of Snow and Pope [ 2:43:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (212)

Like Paul McCartney and Wings once sung:

“Magneto said “Now The Time Has Come
To gather our forces and run!!!”
Oh no . . . . . .
This can’t be so . . . . . .”

But it is so. Josh and Keith talk comic books: What drew them into the world of collecting them, the universes they represented, and what that world and those universes meant.  Also: The boys get OWS on Richie Rich,  Josh SHAMES himself (and the Shaolin Temple) by forgetting Captain America’s secret identity, the SECRET ORIGIN of his ancestral love of superheroes, Keith’s discovery of bootleg Jessica Rabbit German pornography at a comic book convention, and the best hero you never heard of.  And his girlfriend named Bernie.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 032: Talkin' Bout Funnybooks [ 1:51:28 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (216)

The thrill of sport; for the love of the game. Or not. Josh and Keith exchange war stories of being on the outs from organized sporting and the disastrous attempts to get in.

Learn how a strike-out rule had to be invented for Keith’s T-Ball attempts. Josh’s too-new glove and the concentration-camp survivor who despised him for it.  How Josh’s loss at a karate tournament was the biggest win he ever got. Keith’s hapless little brother and his transformation into CAGE-HEAD at the cruel hands of the Little League.  Let the games begin!

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 031:Sports: Everybody's All American [ 2:26:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (234)

They say you’re never supposed to talk about religion or politics. Well, “they” can go pound sand and/or tell it to Sweeney. Because we talk religion this episode.

Tales of how our lives intersected with and were affected by churches, temples, ceremonies and the like. But, you know, THE TIME HAS COME style, so there are stories of farting in pews and childhood disaster preparedness for vampire attack and the like. Learn how Keith was banished from church and told never to return. The amazing and true story of the most insane funeral ever. Good stuff.

To listen in your browser, click the Play triangle or choose “play in pop-up.” If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can always subscribe (for free) by clicking the purple iTunes button to the right. If you have an RSS reader (Google Reader, etc.) you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 030: That's Me In The Spotlight, Losin' My Religion [ 3:04:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (245)