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.”

Links:
Is Daisy Ridley Okay?
Traffic – Empty Pimp Suits on the Cover
Traffic on Wikipedia

– By William Cooper

Our little podcast is 26 weeks old today. Seems like yesterday that it looked up at us with those big, blue eyes and gurgled and garbled something at length that nobody really understood. Not much has changed. A week of podcast life is worth a year of human life, so it got me thinking about my 26th year on this crazy planet.

In 1992, I ended a long-term relationship, ready for the wilds of dating and single life. Little did I know this was the beginning of my Seven Sexless years of Solitude, which is quite a sad alliteration. It was also the beginning of my Seven Sexless years of rediscovering booze, which I’m sure is not related at all.

In 1992, I took a job at CompuServe and fell face-first into the world of Internet technology at a time when Al Gore was just beginning to consider inventing it. Twenty-four years later, I’m still battling code and browsers and fixing Things That Should Work But Don’t with twine, gum, and shoe polish.

In 1992, I was given a Ford Tempo, a beautiful beast of a compact that would become my best friend in those years of solitude, a comfortable hood for nights under the stars after long days of server juggling, and ultimately an escape hatch. It was this car that I took across the country in 1997, fleeing my old life and Columbus for good.

So, little podcast, here’s to your future, whatever it may hold. May it be as full of adventure and surprise as mine has been.

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!

Links:
The Cars – Since I Held You (Candy-O, 1979)
The Cars – It’s Not the Night (Heartbeat City, 1984)
The Cars – Gimme Some Slack (Panorama, 1980)
The Cars – Cruiser (Shake It Up, 1981)

– by William Cooper

If you choose to listen to this episode of Up and Overcast, and honestly why shouldn’t you, you’ll hear me tell a story of a sleepless night on a cramped, fast-moving train. As a bear-sized individual, fitting into small spaces has always been challenging. Eating airline food on tiny trays involves a series of minute, precise contortions that cause watchmakers to weep with envy. Taking off my coat in a restaurant requires me to dislocate both my arms so as not to accidentally crush any normal-sized humans at the tables next to me. I’ve gotten stuck in lawn chairs and worn them around like suits of armor rather than call attention to my struggles to escape.

In short, any form of public transportation, or as I read back on the last paragraph, public seating, usually holds some kind of challenge for me. I don’t like challenge when it comes to travel, or food, or social interactions or sleep. And that’s, in short, one of the many reasons despite all my yearnings and dreams about being a travel writer that I’ve realized I could never be one.

As a kid at a state fair, I once rode an elephant. After riding that elephant, swaying from side to side with nothing to hang onto but very elephant-smelling elephant skin, always at the point of nearly toppling off the beastly business end and into steaming piles of elephant leavings, I decided that elephant riding was not something I was going to do again. A travel writer would decide that riding an elephant was so uncomfortable that they should try riding an ostrich because it’s bound to be worse and will make a great story. They decide that the night on the train was so disruptive that they should try sleeping on an ostrich, because apparently ostriches factor into travel writing quite a bit more than you’d imagine.

You only live twice, or so it seems, once for yourself and once for your dreams. So, I’ll let that dream part of me fly to distant lands, battle pirates off the coast of Whassit, eat fried Whangdoodle soup, befriend large flightless birds on the savannah, and have all the hilarious conflicts that make for a good travel story. Me, the real me, will stay here. Like a bear, I have simple needs. Give me a salmon, some berries, a warm spot to sleep in, and a good book and I’m happy. Stay downwind and don’t startle me and you will be too.

In this episode, transportation gets the better of us. As we recover from our respective weekends, we establish some clear friendship roles before launching into our surprising 25th podcast outing. The Bad Parenting Series continues as Scott’s duplicate daughter loses a fight with a pizza crust. Vigorous chewer or magical twin teeth connection? Whatever the case, she’s a chip off the old tooth. Then, we receive an actual email with an offer that seems too good to be true, mainly for our listeners. If only we had eight bucks! Send your money orders to podcast@upandovercast.com and we promise less of us. Scott brings us a sorry tale of ignorance as the beloved Murder Van meets a slow, drippy death. It’s a swan song full of smells, noises, liquids and a last heroic journey to a four-digit fatality. The omens were there if only he could have remembered what he already knows. William commiserates with a mouthful of poison and in turn forgets what is already his nose. Looks like it’s finally the end of the Murder Van, kids… or is it? Beyond the Porch returns as William takes an ill-fated train journey to Middle Earth over Memorial Day, or was it Labor Day? William’s lack of calendar-sense once again sends Luke Pez over the edge. Listen as a romantic trip in a sleeper car turns into a 600-mile, slip-sliding, whistle-blowing, urine-holding dark night of the micro-hotel rocket sled. Duck Dynasty turned friendly but grizzled country folk, smallest closet in the universe, a bare bottom, and some shaky security prison mattresses are only a few of the stops. And what’s all this about time zones, anyway? They are always one step ahead! Luckily Jo knows how to build a proper pyramid. After his Apollo 13 capsule experiment and with a new nickname, William enters a vast, stunning, mountainous world of beauty and wildlife on a no-expectations weekend that may have changed him and his wife forever. Keep Manhattan, just give him that countryside! We end with a musical palate cleanser as Soft Cell goes inside the Soul – a bit TOO far inside the Soul as William’s flashbacks can attest to. Thankfully, it’s nothing that a decent Bond song cover and a good wiping won’t fix. Not as good as Razzle Deathgrip and the Coolant Raccoons, but what is? Not this mint, I can guarantee you that.

Links:
Soft Cell – Soul Inside on Discogs
Soul Inside on iTunes
You Only Live Twice on iTunes

Photos:

Montana – The Road Ahead

Montana – Rainbow

Montana – Mountains

Montana – Bison Refuge