Episode 063: Patterns. Patterns for Living.

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.

Episode 062: Baby Gorilla Requests Billy Joel

We’re back from Christmas break to ring in the new year. And we’re taking requests. But not taking too kindly to them, really.

This episode: Star Wars, and the ponderous nature of speaking about Star Wars, improvisation mishaps, Keith’s spooky inability to remember or connect to song lyrics or music, DISCO SUCKS and Mods vs. Rockers, and yes, as a special request from our biggest fan: we talk about Billy Joel. Sorta.

Episode 061: Animals Part 2… Sorta

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.

And somewhere, somehow… animals!

Episode 060: You Filthy Animals!

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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Episode 059: We’re Baaaaack

Episode 059 Banner: We're Baaaack

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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BONUS CONTENT: Josh Live in Hartford- Accidents of Fate

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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Episode 058: Christmas Greetings From Skynet

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!

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.

Episode 057: A Drive to Idlewild

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.

Episode 056: How to Save a Life

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!

Episode 055: Photographic Memories

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.

 

Episode 054: Fame and Fortune. And Pens.

What makes Keith Field tick, you ask? Then you ask the wrong question. The proper question is what makes Keith Field TAP. And the answer is a pen. A special kind of pen. A TAPPY PEN.

Learn its dread origin, understand its purpose, fear its power.

Then Josh and Keith discuss fame and celebrity, and why feels important to know people who other people know. All this and much 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  you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 053: Brand Loyal

Begin year two! The grand and (probably ultimately tragic) saga of TRUCK ZOO continues on apace, and is filled with backstabbing, betrayal and internecine warfare among its ruling cabal. Which is, we guess, as it should be.

In this episode, Josh and Keith discuss the oddness that is loyalty to a “brand,” and how ideas of identity and such are crafted from it. Which is mostly an excuse to talk about Nintendo, Hostess, Marvel and DC, and Jell-O. Which they do.

Delight in the tales of a young Keith at a Star Trek Convention in both the distant past and recent present, and of a long-ago brand-loyalty enforcement by way of an evil teacher Josh suffered under as a small child.

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  you can subscribe (for free) by clicking the Audio Mp3 rectangle to the right.

Episode 052: Happy Anniversary, Happy Anniversary!

The Time Has Come is a year old! Much like a baby, we’re often cranky and the the contents of our pants are questionable.

In this celebratory milestone episode: TRUCK ZOO keeps rolling. (Now with more Spanish-Speaking Wizards.)  Fireworks and Keith’s history as a pyromancer. Twilight Zone marathons. The bittersweet beauty of passing eras, along with ill-advised tattoos.

And a harrowing tale of a nightmare bridge. All this and so much more; Happy anniversary to us and you!

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 051: Superman? More Like Pooperman.

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a joyless a-hole who is going to crash into your building, seemingly unaware or unconcerned with your safety, or the countless thousands around you!

The Man of Steel movie disappoints a crest-fallen Josh, who must eat humble pie… and, at some point, due to the lost wager, the grey-beef slop of Hometown Buffet. Keith’s box-office predictions and sooth-saying remain spitefully accurate.

Also! Happenings in the world of TRUCK ZOO.  Now, in the sober light of day, Keith makes a hostile takeover of the Truck Zoo intellectual property. Emphasis on hostile. And also, takeover.

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.

BONUS CONTENT: Father’s Day At the Mark Twain House

Father’s Day, June 16, 2013, I got a chance to speak at a story-telling event at the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, put on by NPR’s Chion Wolf and featuring Colin McEnroe, of the Colin McEnroe Show.

I got to stand in front of an audience and tell them a Joel Dobbin story. Here is my portion of the event, where I got to talk about what it was to have Joel Dobbin as a father.

I hope you enjoy it, and if you knew him, I hope it brings him back for a moment to you and if you did not, I hope it puts the idea of him in your head and you begin to understand what it might have been to have known and loved him.

I most certainly did, and still do.

-Josh 

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 050: Say It Ain’t So, Joe

“A hero ain’t nothing but a sandwich.” At least so says the title of a 1973 book about heroin in the ghetto. In this episode, there are no heroes to be found in sandwich shops. Only lies.

Find out that it’s all happening at the zoo; at the zoo, at the zoo. But what kind of zoo, you ask? Oh. You will find out.

This week’s episode was recorded late at night, so it is shorter than most, but as an added bonus, it features the full version of our “outro” song: I Am The Man by The Red Zoids,  fronted by friend-of-the-podcast, gentleman, scholar, wizard and scoundrel Jimi Odell.

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 049: Mysteries of the Unknown!

Ancient and powerful secrets, hidden from view by Secret Chiefs; wheels which spin within wheels: mysterious cabals of Illuminated Seers, creatures or entities from beyond space or time. Psychic phenomenon, remote vision, telekinesis, and the persistence of ectoplasmic energy in the material plane….

All a bunch of hooey, most likely. But it does not stop Josh or Keith from talking about it. Along the way: Misheard song lyrics, urine-soaked pants and water-slides, and the real-life PSYCHIC HIT declared on a 3 year old Josh Dobbin’s very life in the 1970s by the famous hoaxter/grifter couple Ed and Lorraine Warren.

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

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.