There are moments when you are aware of a gestalt reality, but unaware of the specifics of what is at play. One of these moments came when Keith arrived at my door, hailed my dogs with his customary greeting of intoning, “WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU? WHAT HAVE THEY DOOOOOONE?” and began speaking to me.
I knew only that something was amiss, something was off, something was different. I did not know what the something was. It itched at me, tickled like a sneeze that threatened, but refused to arrive. His face was his face, but it was also somehow, in some fundamental way, NOT his face.
Then it hit me.
He had no eyebrows.
This is the story of how that came to pass. And also the story of old arcade games, what they once represented and now represent, and the vast chasm between those two meanings.
Here’s what I think is important about this episode, in a “One to grow on” kind of way.
In a time of instantly mobilized outrage on the left and right, where disagreement equals offense,and the idea that someone may hold thoughts, sensibilities, world-views and perspectives in their head that do not comport with yours is considered painful and hurtful, this conversation stands as testament to a completely opposite idea. The idea that friends– real friends, who love and care about each other– can honestly hold totally different viewpoints, and not be friends *despite* this, but in many ways, because of it.
There’s a childish, parochial stance, spread like contagion on social media, that those who don’t instantly tow whatever line you hold must be THE ENEMY and mocked, meme’d, blocked, called out, unfriended and all that. It’s an 8th grade lunchroom clique mentality. We at The Time Has Come don’t subscribe to it.
Conversation and debate and exchange of views is what people do.
So long as they agree on the essential, fundamentals in life: That when you encounter a lolling eyed crazy mogwai, you MUST snap the little thing’s neck.
Easter! A time for rebirth, renewal, and awakening. Spring has sprung and chocolate-y eggs dot the newly green grass. That which once was dormant and seemingly gone from the Earth wakes anew and blossoms! But what if it wakes up… different this time?
Poetry gets a bad rep as a thing for sissies and flopsy sleeved dandies. But there’s much to learn from it. In the often quoted Yeats poem “The Second Coming,” he writes:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
It is a sexy passage: the rise of something hideous and monstrous, now arriving. He’s talking about the rise of the Anti-Good, the time when everything that held together instead now falls apart. Same poem has in it a less quoted part, which is maybe more fitting to the topic at hand in today’s podcast: The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
See? In four short lines, William Butler Yeats has summed up what we take two hours to do: Describe how fucking horrible BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN was, and why it is a crime and a travesty. Poetry has value. Yeats called it in 1916, a full 100 years before this cinematic abortion was splatted onto the screens and consciousnesses of the American people.
ALSO this episode: Easter! The inconsistent nature of the Easter Bunny mythos and Keith’s… peculiar take on it. Josh’s mother in law’s unpredictable but always perfect responses. And, while we’re at it, mannequins.
But the real meat here is the death of the ideas and ideals of heroism. The mannequins? That’s just our draw.
There is a certain convention of naming that is often seen in cartoons, wherein the big fat guy who pilots the main vehicle is called “Tiny.”A comedic inversion of the reality by plainly stating the converse as simple fact.
That principle MAY be in play with the use of the word “fun” in the title of this episode of The Time Has Come, as it relates to relatives, and relating to them in this modern world of social media and shared virtual spaces.
Learn the secrets of Keith’s sum total of experience in computer programming! See as Josh and Keith try to put the FUN in “dysFUNctional family” with a tale of woe and jockeys. Well, “see” is kind of the wrong verb, as it is all audio.SEE WITH YOUR MIND’S EYE. You know what we mean.
Like any given week on BLOSSOM, this is a *very special episode” of TTHC.
“It’s sick out there and getting sicker,” was the catchphrase of radio curmudgeon Bob Grant. An apt summation of this week’s theme: Josh recalls a hospital tale, with all-too-close proximity to a dying German man and his shrewish wife, Keith recounts a story of a dare that would have been wiser not to have been taken concerning the consumption of an entire bottle of maple syrup, and we learn the dread secret ingredient necessary to spark life back into a senile and wasting old pensioner at a rehabilitation facility.
Also! The first (but certainly not last) fleeting glimpse at a place and an idea that has haunted Keith’s imagination for quite some time: feel the warm breeze upon your cheek and straighten your bow tie, and join us in the parlor of the pleasant manse known to man and beast alike as PARMALEE HILL, there to discuss matters of the day in most genteel fashion.
Author Stephen King is incredibly important to both Josh and Keith, for similar reasons. This podcast explores the intersection of King’s works with their lives, explores what King means to the world and to the idea of ideas, and also features some VERY DISTURBING MENTAL IMAGERY about popcorn, and the consumption thereof.
Also in this episode: Truck Zoo’s bitter vow of vengeance for the knock-off bootleg SHARK TANK funded copy of its core ideas and concept, and the rankings and virtues of various gravies.
Myths, legends, folklore. Where do they come from, and from what circumstances do they arise? Figures who exist in equal parts fantasy and history have been shared dreams of humanity since civilization began, since tales were first told to circles huddled around the flickering orange-yellow light of campfires.
Robin Hood, Arthur and his knights, the giant Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe… To the Asiatic Balkans and in the dark forests of Mother Russia, fables are whispered of the dread old force for destruction and gain, Baba Yaga, the witch grandmother who will as soon make your fortune as she will grind your bones for her meal.
NOW, the time has come for a new figure, a new legend. Now, with your successful completion of listening to today’s audio podcast, you will know the LEGEND OF THE SPOTTED EEL.
And you won’t be able to *un*know it, failing some kind of ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND memory wiping procedure, which you may well wish for when all is said and done.
Riddle us this, Podcast-consumer. In what other show, across all manner of media, might you find a single broadcast that encompasses such topics as shoplifting, abusive relationships, Chewbacca, snuff films, Arrow and the Flash, and the nature of that which is transgressive and forbidden weighed against societal law and one’s one personal moral compass… And have the defining moment of said discussion be the tale of a young man who looked like a grandmother?
NOWHERE. Nowhere else.
Perhaps there’s a reason for that. Only time will tell. Enjoy this very special episode of The Time Has Come, and draw your own conclusion.
Take a tour of the messy playroom that serves as the headquarters and studio of The Time Has Come Podcast Enterprises. In this episode, learn the sinister plans of meteor-based wooing that Keith harbors. Although they are often political and alignment-based opposites, Keith and Josh join forces to champion TEAM HUMAN when it comes to matters of sides and attachments. What it is to be human and be in concert with and a part of the grander cycle of sentience and life and death on Earth, and why we shouldn’t feel so guilty about taming elephants.
Many things take place this episode. Birthday parties for dogs, the role and bane of nostalgia, THE SIMPSONS and their filthy place in the world of internet vis a vis “RULE 34,” impromptu puppet shows, a vast cardboard city constructed amidst the tension of a newly strained friendship… But all of those things service the larger and more important boon this podcast now brings to your life. An idea, an initiative, a force of nature for righteousness, healing, and goodness, a force that can only be known as PATTERNS: PATTERNS FOR LIVING.
Approach the loom. Don’t be fearful. There is no fear here, no judgment; only a sewing together of that which was separate, but together, becomes a warming and life-embracing quilt, crafted with the thread of time, sewn with the patches of experience. A life-stitch is about to be added to your quilt. Patterns. Patterns for living.
It’s Garbage Day! A time for celebration, and a time for remembrance.
Learn all about Little Boy Keith Field and his adventures in the time before the DumpSTAIR. (Spoilers: It ends in tears, as all stories about Little Boy Keith Field tend to do.) Josh does battle with a Crazy Old Man(TM) and immortalizes him in song, while Keith sees a hidden truth lurking behind the seeming madness. Keith reveals the secret origin and backstory of the mysterious character at the Widget Factory known only as “The Ninja.”
Also this episode! B-movie figure Ray Dennis Steckler’s RAT FINK A BOO BOO, the 1950s sublimation of homoerotic urges in young men’s dimestore adventure paperbacks and how it gave the world the cinematic gem GYMKATA, and ladies in witch hats doing unspeakable things.
Nature red in tooth and claw; the savage and the untamed beasts of the wild… and our desire to make them pets. These are only some of the things talked about in this episode. Learn the stunning saga of Keith Field, Widget-Packer, and his Schindler-like saving of a skulk of foxes from a disturbed co-worker who wished them only ill. Discover the tale of a real life FACE/OFF when a chimp goes ape, and the awful realities of reconstructive surgery.
Also discussed: Turkish ET, Keith’s continued disgust with Josh’s wall of DVDs, and a small boy’s impossible dream to ride a triceratops. And Cecil the Lion! Remember Cecil the Lion? Of course you don’t; you’ve moved on to the thirteenth next bunch of daily outrages.
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You can’t keep a good podcast down. Or this one, for that matter. Josh and Keith shake off the dust and, like the Blues Brothers before them, get the band back together. Also, much like those selfsame Blues Brothers, it is a mission from god.
Rosaries, heads dashed open on concrete, the ritual destruction of one man’s porn-horde, the disappointments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the death of physical media, the evil of Jared Fogel, and a host of other things, all for your listening pleasure. The ongoing conversation goes on! The time has come again.
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The Mark Twain House storytelling event “The MOuTH” invited Josh back to an evening themed around the idea of accidents.
A story about being an accidental American and not a particularly good Jew leads, improbably, to computers, circuses, and grand theft pizza.
The featured author-speaker that night told a story about her criminal father, a deaf man, and a group of people from a deaf organization was present. This meant that an ASL translator was close by, trying desperately to keep up with Josh’s tendency to string impossibly long sentences together, linked by made up words like “Rube-Goldbergian.” At some point, we’re pretty sure the translator gave up.
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The Time Has Come rides again! Like a forgotten Christmas present, fallen behind the tree and only discovered after the inevitable holiday drear of bagging up torn wrapping paper and suffering through a never ending series of twist-tie-downs to free action figures and dolls from their moorings in the boxes, we arrive late on Christmas Day!
Josh and Keith return to talk of Christmas, drones, Skynet, malls, shopping, duck-murdering homophobes, media madness and the hurling of babies like bowling balls. Among other things! Merry Christmas to all, and a happy new year!
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There exists a new America. A different America. An America not quite real, not quite yet, but that lies in waiting, if you are brave and bold enough to walk toward it. An America in potential.
Keith Field’s America. Part plan part vision; is it a mirage on the distant sands to vanish upon fixing on it, like a half-remembered waking dream? Or is it an oasis and a paradise that will become real if only you believe?
This episode of The Time Has Come offers no answers. It only poses the question, and asks you to draw your own conclusion.
This episode: Keith is inadvertently slandered and written out of the book of Life by the press.
And finally, a Twilight-Zone-like true life story. A tale of deception, intrigue, crime and passion we can only call…. A DRIVE TO IDLEWILD.
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 you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.
In which Josh and Keith catch up over the few podcast-less weeks. Keith declares a death-feud on Josh for his dismissal of the talents of John C. Riley.
Learn about the best restaurant encounter EVER; there has been Godzilla vs. Mecha-Godzilla, there has been Cain vs. Abel, there has Freddy vs. Jason. Now there is Ayash vs. Vige.
A giving of gifts and a tale of moral instruction by way of sibling blood sacrifice. The time has come!
The press of a finger, the flash of a light, and we have conquered Time itself; frozen it in its never-ending motion and transformed it from a fluid verb into a concrete noun: a photograph.
Josh and Keith talk about pictures and their taking, what it can and can’t mean, and definitely what it SHOULDN’T be about.
In this episode: Farting Karate. Orangutan Bob almost has a human moment. Keith’s terrible “celebration dinner” after a bad photo op. Magic and wonder! Listen in.
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 you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.
