– by William Cooper

R2-D2 was my favorite robot when I was a kid, even though I obviously knew he is a droid and NOT a robot. I won’t bore you with an explanation as to the difference, but suffice it to say, nerds everywhere were just jolted awake in a cold, confused sweat by my mere typing of that sentence and are even now grasping for inhalers and lunging toward their keyboards. Stand down, brothers. My favorite robot was R2-D2 simply because I didn’t have many quality candidates to pick from. Robbie? Get lost. Mr. Roboto? No thank you very much.

Okay, maybe my favorite robot was also Mechagodzilla, but isn’t everyone’s?

Who is Mechagodzilla, I hear you barely asking? Though he took many forms and picked many sides throughout the years, he was best known as Godzilla’s nearly 400-foot tall automaton nemesis in the 1974 film, “Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla,” and was the first giant robot I’d ever seen. I was a huge Godzilla fan and followed his strange, twisting history from Tokyo enemy to Tokyo defender to environmental warrior to the father of Godzuki, the Scrappy-Doo of the kaiju, the giant monsters of the Japanese islands. I knew every character by heart and every film to the letter. The Godzilla movies had everything for me as a young boy – destruction, pre-teen pathos, destruction, smog monsters, destruction, and the Mothra twins who I was desperately, tragically in love with.

In looking up robots for this post, however, I discovered that I had many more to pick from than I had imagined. For instance, The Greek inventor of mechanics, Archytas of Tarentum is said to have created a steam-powered dove that could fly for distances of up to 200 meters and later became the model for Bubo, the mechanical owl in “Clash of the Titans.” Then there was Eric Robot, a suit of armor with lightbulb eyes and belt-and-pulley guts who wowed crowds in 1920s London with his robotic shenanigans and who later went on a world comedy tour with some seriously corny material. There was also Ajeeb, a New York chess-playing automaton made of wax and paper-maché with a penchant for getting stabbed by those he defeated. And finally, there was Fedo, Teddy Roosevelt’s mechanical badger who would famously attack his Senate opponents when prompted by a short tweet from a silver whistle.

To be fair, Eric and Ajeeb were later found out to be men in costume. And I made Fedo up entirely. But still, you get my point.

When I think of the same question now, though, I look around my room. My Tivo, remembering which shows I like to watch, is recording multiple channels simultaneously, having downloaded and updated itself with the latest television schedules. There’s a process running on my laptop that is monitoring my files and backing them up to the Cloud whenever something has changed. My phone is alerting me with reminders based on the calendar it is keeping for me. I can talk to my car, my tablet, and my Xbox, which, by the way, knows what I look like and greets me each time it sees me. Friends of ours have their lights, heat and maybe even oxygen supply controlled by a small device that sits on their bookshelf.

So I guess the real question these days is… which humans are the robots’ favorites? Hopefully, I’m one of them.

In this extra-extended, robot-charged episode, we make with the Mecha! As always, we start with a kidney-pleasing pre-show stretch before powering up our podcasting exoskeletons. How does the Electric Company generate all that energy? Who is the mystery woman William’s parents paid off each week? Why is money so heavy? We answer all of these questions and still have room for Ramen Noodles and water, before we are brought to a sudden halt by the memory-straining case of Kristy McNichol and the Show Note Elves. We continue our dubious guessing about things of which we know nothing by reminiscing about Battle of the Network Stars wherein we consider the athletic capabilities of Gabe Kaplan and celebrate a scandalous Baio/Diller romance. Dubiouser and Dubiouser! William reveals that his wife is having an affair with a dishwasher, which causes us to discover that the cure for sickness is a healthy dose of nursing annoyance. Scott then takes on the mantle of Mister Snake as he greets a newly-identified, mouse-hugging resident to Horn Acres. Turns out Scott has been many former people, from copperhead-leaper to tractor-caster. But wait, there’s more show! Scott finally finds his TV obsession and it’s not what either of us expected. We dive deep into anime, where skirts are raised uncomfortably, the origins of Brony culture is hypothesized, and Subbed vs. Dubbed is debated as 1970s animation co-ops an entire culture. We play the Imaging Game with anime’s version of Game of Thrones and determine that it’s as real as it needs to be. Neal Stephenson has had enough, so it’s on to the thing William did out where the things are. William celebrates progress and rediscovers comic books all in one trip to the data-driven Amazon store, now with extra cables! Thanks, data mining! Then, in hour 200, we finally turn to Music in Rearview. Brian May and friends have something to share, and it’s not good. But hey, we forced his hand, I guess. Old for any age, we endure the iconic 1983 sound of the Starfleet Project. Cheesy, badly-sung cover of a crappy TV show nobody watched? Sign me up! It’s no Triumph in any sense of the word. Finally, there’s Prince, another otherworldly, supposedly immortal artist picked off cruelly by 2016. We pay our respects to an amazing, talented musician who held to a different metric. Please, stop this segment. We don’t want to do it again. After William’s quick 7-Zark-7 flip flop, we tap into the Aldnoah Drive and head back to Terra where there’s always room for some T&A!

Links:
The clumsy Sesame Street baker
Battle of the Network Stars – Gabe Kaplan
Battle of the Network Stars – Tug of War!
Battle of the Network Stars – Dunk Tank!
Eastern Milk Snake
Tractor Cast
Aldnoah.Zero
Brian May and Friends – Star Fleet Project on Wikipedia
Brian May – Star Fleet Promo Video on YouTube
Prince – Kiss (on iTunes)

– by William Cooper

I grew up in the age of Analog. When it came to entertainment, there was no on-demand. You had to wait for the movie theaters to re-release the thing you wanted to see again or catch it on TV, heavily-edited and gutted by commercials, hoping and praying that you didn’t accidentally miss it or that the power didn’t go out in the middle of it. Otherwise, you had no choice but to rely on the ole pencil and paper game to capture and replay your nerdy memories. Unfortunately, the only objects I could draw were X-wing fighters, TIE fighters, Snoopy sleeping on his back on a doghouse, and the planet Saturn.

Peanuts characters and Star Wars vessels, I get. But Saturn, as the only non-pop-culture icon in my repertoire stands alone, or gently spins alone as the case may be. It’s not even the easiest planet to draw, so where was the attraction? Maybe kids like me loved it because it was so unexpected and comical. It’s an outer space rebel, a loner that does things its own way, a hula-hoop rock star of the gassy outer realms.

Whatever the reason, Saturn appeared on everything, over and over again until my counsellors started to look at me sideways and I decided that drawing wasn’t my forte and writing was. I left behind piles of paper with undecipherable scribblings on them. As the world changed, I became an early adoptor and fell in love with digital and never looked back. Now I stream everything, movies and music and TV and podcasts like this. Heck I’d even stream a stream if I could figure out how to it without getting my bytes wet.

But there is one holdover, one last analog bastion and it is in front of me now, filled with pages of bad penmanship, underlines, exclamation points and doodles that somehow describe the episode you are about to listen to and from which I will pull my summary blurb in less than one paragraph. Because when it comes to figuring something out, lists, straggling ideas, calculations, measurements and general noodling about, I put away my laptop and my high-speed connection and I turn to my small pad and my pencil. Each day, I again leave in my wake piles of paper with undecipherable scribblings on them.

So you see, not much has changed. Oh, the pencil may be a mechanical one and the pads of paper may be ordered from Amazon and delivered to my door within two days, but by the 62 moons of Saturn, the spirit of analog is alive and well!

In this episode we return to our analog roots. After being singled out by the state of Texas, William considers setting up a podcasting hospitality suite in his basement while Scott provides a much-needed After Swirl. Now that’s a REAL podcast! Then we leap into some serious nerding about, digging through the media strata that stretches from a simpler, analog time to the present golden era of digital, stopping frequently at all the crap in-between. William finds some equipment that definitely isn’t cutting age, and shares a story from the archives of his complicated dating life. Or maybe it’s just a story about a temp job as a service animal. It’s all the same to him. Scott provides a media storage history lesson and ponders the ant-like task of continually pushing our content up the hill of changing formats until we break through the Cloud. William does a 720 after Scott brings up his podcasting boyfriend, and before you know it, we shoot for the stars. Scott traces the path of a truck-load of filing cabinets of ancient, unique, suddenly sought-after scientific data on a knee-shattering, Herculean journey that ends at his shed. Are there planets in there? Maybe! Whatever the case, it’s a question of potentially universal, naming-rights significance! William admits that he failed to properly grasp the gravity of the situation, but at least, thanks to some Idle worship, he passed his Astronomy exam. SETI? Folding? Too much Nerding? How about MORE nerding with Sounds from Spaaaace? We pay homage to a reclusive performer known as Dr. Shorn with some contemplative heavy breathing and a visit from the always sexy Cassini spacecraft. Can you say pia07966? Turns out other people could too, but don’t tell Dr. Shorn. Take a trip to Shed Planet with us, we’ve got Aimee Mann on MiniDisc!

Links:
Universe Song
SETI @ Home
Folding @ Home
Cassini Spacecraft
NASA / Cassini – pia07966
Dr Shorn – pia07966 on SoundCloud

– By William Cooper

I have what is referred to in my household as a Hero Complex. Oh, I don’t go about saving kittens from burning buildings or rescuing old ladies from the tops of trees with the irresistible lure of a saucer of milk. No, I work from the shadows, you know, like Batman.

Unlike Batman, I have no gadgets, no ability to fight crime, and no real money to speak of. Instead, I am what you might call The Dark Knight of the Mundane. For instance, I am the guy who discovers and then disposes of amazing archaeological finds in public restroom toilets, left behind by some ancient people who had not yet evolved the ability to press a button. I’m also the guy who picks up the paper towels left in the middle of the same restroom after their users were obviously struck dumb by the mesmerizing, disorienting whirr of the hand dryers and fled screaming out the door.

Beyond my bathroom domain, I am frequently called upon to clean up the consequences of grocery store Rapture, wherein everyday shoppers are lifted up and out of their lives in the middle of gathering their goods. I line up lonely shopping carts abandoned in the produce aisle, often just a few agonizing feet away from the bay of other shopping carts. I stack baskets left in mysterious formations of various, puzzling orientations by those that have moved on to a better existence. I even venture further afield to chase down escaping, rolling death machines that aim for car doors, block parking spaces, or try to escape entirely for a life on the run.

I toss trash into the can that somebody could not be bothered to retrieve. I salt the front steps and walkways of our apartment complex in winter, change the shared porch light, and bring lazily mis-delivered packages to the proper doorways.

Yes, the true saint of mundanity never sleeps.

But there is a dark side to all of this. I hear, surprisingly, that even Batman has a dark side. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a roller derby bout at a local skating rink. Afterwards the rink held a public skate, which my wife joined, decked out in full elbow and knee pads and with a flowery, pink helmet. I watched her glide away from me into the throng, and then a while later, witnessed her slowly inching her way back on one foot, grimacing painfully. In a bizarre set of circumstances, she had taken a fall and had somehow hurt herself so badly that she couldn’t walk.

So, I did what any hero would do. I picked her up and carried her out of the rink the long way round, then through an entire bowling alley and across half a parking lot before placing her into our car. Now I am no muscle-bound caveman, nor does my wife weigh ten pounds. About a fourth of the way into the journey, I knew I was in trouble and yet I kept pushing past my limit, propelled by my misplaced sense of duty.

We drove home. Ignoring my own pain, I carried her into the house, and then squirreled her away where we tended to her sprained ankle for several weeks until we discovered that it was a broken heel and probably should have been seen to earlier. I, in turn, nursed my thrown-out back and sore muscles, which didn’t do anybody any good whatsoever. I never asked for help, which eventually brought me into the arms of a cardiologist for anxiety-produced palpations. It was a winter to celebrate, that’s for certain. It put the Ass into Avengers ASSemble.

But that’s the flip side of this hero business. The rink was full of people, most of them with vast experience in injuries of this nature. There was a drugstore not too far away that sold crutches. There was probably some kind of medical person in the crowd as well. The point is, there were many options that night and yet I chose to see only one, the one where I sacrificed myself to do something I was convinced nobody else could do, or nobody could do better, or do the way I needed it to be done in the moment. I closed myself off from everything and with a narrow focus, ignored all but what I wanted to and needed to see.

When you are a hero, you spend your life trying to make the world a better place. But at the same time, it’s easy to make that world smaller and more constrained and yourself more isolated, trapped and more heavy with burden. There is giving, and there is sacrifice, and there is seizing control, and often it’s hard to figure out which way your cape blows.

I try now to be less superhero and more mild-mannered civilian, certainly no Bruce Wayne, but maybe an older, crankier Peter Parker. At the end of the day, there’s a big, old world out there full of choices and options, and none of us are alone in it. I don’t have to do everything. I’ll leave some of it for you. It’s a much better and more balanced life that way.

Take it from your Friendly Neighborhood Podcaster.

In this episode, we look for options in our closed systems. We begin with a phlegmy, loopy, tinkly opening that heralds the arrival of the inappropriately-titled Nut Brown Maiden. Scott gives props to the amazing Murdervan who saved the Horns from certain doom, but may have had a hand in causing it. William announces that our pinup career is off to a rousing, pinching, scuttling start, if being the poster boys of Happy, Introverted and Dorky is a thing. Naked and Afraid? Why not? Scott has the alphabetized ass for it. Then we both freak-out with a serious discussion of anxiety, depression, options, and regrets which leads to the story of William’s initial Seattle migration and closet-living hermitage and Scott’s recent scheduling struggles that again sees the return of the Murdervan, this time as a mobile work studio that may be more enabling than helpful. Finally, somebody is sending William very bossy notifications. Turns out it is past William, that jerk! Who will win this epic battle of Wills? Then it’s time for Music in Rearview, where the theme is one of musical crushes. Scott’s heart is like a Linda Rondstadt-shaped wheel and he shares both his early-onset empathy and his creative, clinical and very specific pornography solution in the pre-Internet age. For William it was all about Tori Amos who has the power to both move you and serve as an early-warning alarm. Scott wonders what’s up with that log in the woods. William shops for Jewels with his groin. Things get antsy quickly. Everyone take a breath. Everything is okay. Away, bounding boxes!

Links:
Nut Brown Maiden (Sheet Music ‘Performed’ in the show)
Nut Brown Maiden (A Completely Different Irish Folk Song)
Naked and Afraid
Linda Ronstadt Heart Like a Wheel on iTunes
The Parent Trap – with Haley Mills
Valerie Bertinelli on One Day at a Time
Kristy McNichol DESTROYS Melissa Gilbert
Tori Amos Little Earthquakes on iTunes

– By William Cooper

My father was a believer in simple and unchanging things – strong coffee, burnt toast, steak and potatoes, the security of keys in your pocket, local news, and inexpensive and reasonable family vacations to relatively nearby historical places.

Vacations for us meant a mad scramble to overpack as much crap as we could into bulging suitcases as my father sat impatiently in the driveway, beeping his horn. He believed that the car horn was a singular, infallible remedy for whatever temporary stupor we’d found ourselves in, a way to shock us back from the brink of our idleness and listless wandering into the real world of Things to Be Done and Ways to Do Them Quickly. There was beeping when we lingered too long in a restaurant, when we weren’t walking fast enough from school, and often when one of us was trying to remember if we’d forgotten anything before we left the house. Nobody was spared this treatment, for there was always a place to be and barely enough time to get there.

And this is how, one year, we left on vacation with a trunk, yes an actual trunk, strapped to the roof of our Impala that my father had forgotten to latch closed. Halfway between Columbus and Sandusky, Ohio, the lid flipped open, spilling all our belongings one-by-one along the highway. It is also how somebody finally beeped at my dad – the car behind him with paper plates plastered to its windshield, swerving back and forth across the lanes.

Nobody was injured in this event, luckily. We bought all new crap, secured the trunk, and continued on our journey, causing my dad to excitedly exclaim, “No matter what we do, we still come out smelling like shit!” My mother, knowing that he really meant “roses,” said nothing, as she’d long ago given up on this kind of fiasco, and simply returned to her crosswords.

Many years later, after I had moved to and settled in Seattle, a major Earthquake struck in the early hours of the work day. After carefully reviewing everything I’d ever read about how to survive quakes, I knew what had to be done. I mentally shred the documents in my brain, shrieked, and ran. I stumbled down the rolling hallway, down the swaying, creaking and disturbingly popping stairway, and out onto the undulating lawn where the earth was grass pudding. I wrapped both my legs around a small tree about half my size and hung on for dear life. I did not break my ankle, as I probably should have, and I was wearing pants, which I realize now would not have stopped me were I not. So everyone around me won that day.

When I told my Californian friend about this, she replied, “Ah, ‘twas a roller then, not a shaker” in the kind of way a weathered, grizzled sea captain discusses the strength of a Nor’easter. “Shouldn’t have run, you know.” And yet, there was no way not to. Had I not been stopped by the fact that the earth had turned sideways, I would still be running today.

What’s the point of all this? If you count up all the events in your life that were near-disasters, you’ll be amazed at how any of us manage to get out of this life intact, how many of them we cause or worsen ourselves, and how little we know about how to handle them when they occur. Also, if you beep at a growing teenager each time he takes too long to urinate, he may end up battling a shy bladder later in life. I mean, hypothetically of course.

In this episode, we are confronted by a tapestry of disaster. William motorboats through a disaster of an opening segment, as Scott, juiced on java bean elixir, patiently explains the finer points of multi-track editing. William plays “Shoot Right for the Dumb” with a rant about underhanded Discovery Channel tactics before we dive headfirst into a discussion of our staggering Wendy Carlos ignorance. Moral of the story? We are the ones who are out of potatoes. We break the stupid loop of perpetual correction by checking in on the hairstylings of the local delousing treatment center, the amazing word technology that is “Carplay”, and William’s misguided plans to bulk purchase Tesla automobiles. Goodbye, combustion engine! You were a gas! Then, surprisingly, we go beyond the porch as the Horns set their cat alarm and take a Family Duty Spring Break at a state park lodge that promises all the dry snack food you can eat, wandering hallway moose, and a very shaky notion of fire safety. As the howling wind and darkness force the Horns into the cold, we all know this can only be William’s fault. Time to find Someplace Interesting. In a full-blown potluck panic, William faces an intense obligation to supply a Midwestern-sized feast, the sickening potential of cod roe, and the desire to attempt a daring IKEA meatball heist. At least he beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game. Scott isn’t worried. He’s a potluck wizard, and sounds the whooo alarm to begin Music in Rearview. Disaster abounds with the soundtrack of Airport. Also abounding, much illicit sexy times, Oscar-winning stowaways, and a shortage of track-naming ideas. We end as we began, with Scott patiently explaining the concept of two-dimensional media, and with a disaster of a close as William forgets where he is and what is is doing. Sound the Klaxons, Moneypenny, and join us for Up And Cumberbach! Who’s the Dope Now?

Links:
Wendy Carlos (again)
Weird Al on Peter and the Wolf
2017 Subaru Impreza
Tesla Model 3
Airport – Original Soundtrack Album on iTunes
Herbie the Love Bug featuring Helen Hayes

– By William Cooper

When I was 16, my father decided he was going to teach me how to drive. Using some old orange-painted broomsticks stuck into cement-filled milk jugs, he set up a parallel parking course in the parking lot of a local church. Back then, everyone seemed to have cement lying around for some reason in case, I don’t know, the Kaiser came back. It was a different time.

I felt supremely confident in my mastery of all things mechanical, as only a 16-year old can, until one day a carload of Japanese tourists squealed around the corner and began taking photos of us, then drove off as mysteriously as they had arrived. I should have recognized this as an omen, because that same afternoon, a squirrel ran in front of our car and I panicked and swerved, hit the gas and drove up into the middle of somebody’s yard. Not surprisingly, that was also the last driving lesson my father offered before turning me over to the professionals.

After my unscheduled trip to my neighbor’s hydrangeas, it took me years before I gained enough control of a car to be granted a license. The memory of that fluffed-up tail, the WHUMP of the curb, and the act of staring out of my window into the dining room window of one of our neighbors’ houses put a serious damper on my interest and my efforts. I never saw the Japanese tourists again, but am convinced they were time travelers working for some great Squirrel Nation in the far future.

In my college years, squirrels found me once again on the quad, where I had developed something of an understanding with Sciurus carolinensis. I gave them food and allowed them to sit on my shoulder or my head to eat, and as a result, I received a write up and a photo spread in the local paper as the Squirrel Man of Ohio State University who had Tamed the Midwestern Wilds and So Lived in Harmony with The Beasts of the Field.

The squirrels on campus eventually became more aggressive and one ripped a glove off my finger (and nearly rippled my finger off with the glove) during the peak months of winter. While I was chasing him down, his buddies ransacked and destroyed my backpack and most of its belongings.

That’s the thing about control. It’s elusive. You think you have it, then you don’t have it, and then you run it down and think you snag it, and then the huge, massive world of endless, expansive, ridiculously random possibilities comes along and reminds you that it’s all really an illusion and actual control doesn’t exist. We keep trying to make the world smaller and more manageable, but the joke is on us, isn’t it?

Like rambling podcasts, things tend to run away on us the more we hold them down. And then it all gets confusing – the break pedal looks like the gas pedal, and one of our hands is suddenly colder than the other and our text book is chewed into little bits with hardly a thank you very much. It’s nuts, I tell you, but maybe that’s just the squirrel in me talking.

In this episode, we face the big, confusing world and try to gain some control over it. William shares a very narrow and obscure superpower as Scott seeks Spinal Tap clarification but perhaps achieves only obfuscation. We travel beyond the porch where William visits the World’s Tiniest Wetlands and assists a Great Blue Herring in some social observation and chicken frightening while Scott laments his past ousting from his Childhood Retention Cave by some do-gooder nephews and a rogue water heater. William endures caucus chaos in a low-rent Breakfast Club where meaningless neighborhood lines are hotly contested while Scott discovers he’s in a low-rent Speed where his listening retention depends directly on his GPS movements. William then heads to the symphony and Scott to the doctor’s office where we find out how to composersplain, the art of loud but complimentary elder marriages, and finally who Susan REALLY is. Scott says goodbye to both the segment and his hair by refusing to play along with the baldness cover-up orchestrated by Big Barbershop. Set it on Number Two, Number One! If that wasn’t enough, and honestly it probably should have been, we see what ridiculous musical act Scott has invented this week. Turns out, it is Walter Carlos of early electronic music fame. After a quick test-tone balancing for maximum enjoyment, we are off into the wonders of the synthesizer in the pre-sequencer age where we discover that electronic music actually is rocket science, that Eric Idle loves to photobomb, and that Walter not only has a well-tempered synthesizer but a much more interesting life and discography than either of us imagined. This one goes to 11!

Links:
Spinal Tap
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade
Spinal Tap: Big Bottom
Walter Carlos and The Well-Tempered Synthesizer
Walter (Wendy) Carlos