uncommon ambience

Snow and perceptual drift is this week’s show. This episode includes the heaviest moments of precipitation (for us, early in the morning 1/25), which dumped white stuff all over my backyard and 56.1% of the contiguous United States. We wound up with about 10 inches.
As I write this, I have just finished cursing about the school cancelling our last chance to push the kids out the door this week. It has been freezing and there’s snow everywhere — so I get it. However, the kids have been home starting fights and wanting Panera for lunch all week. I’m done.
And the constant melt and refreezing has left us gingerly moving about outside. I already slipped and fell off the back deck trying to wrestle with bins for trash pickup. I landed directly on my *** slid down a few steps and into hardened snow at the foot of the stairs. I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed. 
It’s embarrassing falling in front of people — over the summer, I hit a soft shoulder with my bike, trying to put my feet down to stop myself going down a hill toward the banks of a pond. I flipped head over heels into a barrel roll in front of no fewer than four people.
And I’m getting to the age where people aren’t saying, “Look at that doofus.” Literal Boy Scouts have tried to rescue me — like, guys, you can’t help me, I fall off of **** a lot. I fell off a moving train once.
So getting to the mailbox over the icy sidewalks has been a challenge.
Does anyone else rap to themselves when they are concentrating? Not freestyle — that would be absurd. No, calling upon the great verses of hip hop. I recite Inspectah Deck’s “Movin’ on a ***** with the speed of a centipede…” while surreptitiously eating candy with my kids in the other room.
There are verses in my brain I call upon when I especially need to concentrate. As with icy conditions, I recall one of the slowest, most pedestrian lines in hip hop: Eazy-E’s verse on Foe tha Love of $. And no shade to Eazy-E — he was a legend… who had a few pedestrian lines (I’m using pedestrian again, as I don’t want in on any rap beefs).
Eazy-E slowly raps, “So I dash, I duck, and I hide behind a tree,” to hide from the police (while working as a street pharmacist). It’s pretty simple stuff.
Look, I’m an Eazy-E fan. I played Merry Mutha******  Xmas every December on my college radio Christmas show in central Vermont. When Daz rapped, “**** B.G. Knocc Out and every ****** down with him,” I knew who B.G. Knocc Out was — I had B.G. Knocc Out (and Dresta’s) cassette; the duo were featured heavily on Eazy-E’s Str8 off tha Streetz of ************ Compton. And that album has “Just Tah Let U Know,” my fave Eazy track.
BTW: lewd — lots of swears, Mom (don’t click any links).

This week’s episode is based on the ⁠video game Dispatch⁠ (⁠ADHOC⁠) our first game homage at uncommon ambience.
Before each episode (level) of the game Dispatch there is a mildly animated ambient perspective. For instance, episode two of Dispatch shows a lobby, a mostly static scene, and you have buttons for “Play,” “Settings,” “Extras,” and “Exit Game” at the bottom.
The ambient experience for each episode is what I live for — a liminal space to inhabit (that loops seamlessly every few minutes). Recently, I used the late-night office start screen for sleep (episode 3). Probably not ideal for my Steam Deck working all night as a noise maker.
So here is the value proposition: I can make the ambient experience longer and in podcast form (with my own sounds; this is homage, not theft).
If you are not familiar, Dispatch is an absolutely charming (lewd) gamified choose-your-adventure cartoon with occasional button-mashing. Set in a despotic Los Angele-ish world of superheroes and supervillains. The heroing comes with a price tag for the powerless. If you need rescuing or have a donut shop to protect, ⁠you better have a subscription with SDN⁠ (Superhero Dispatch Network).
And that’s how we get to “Dispatch.” In the game, you are a beaten hero forced to serve as a team leader in an emergency call center. Instead of calling 911 for fire or public safety, civillians call superheroes with capes or an angsty invisible lady who can seriously throw hands.
To have a subscription to a superhero service in a world of war crimes and masked men kidnapping people off our streets — well, that would be amazing. I would love to task the Blonde Bomber with chucking a few doofuses into orbit.
But ⁠Alan Moore might caution⁠ my bringing fantasy with me into the real world — pretending I have Professor X mind melting rays for that ******* who ran the red, might deliver a brief (meaningless) sensation of victory. It’s less than self-indulgence.
Moore spoke about the dangers of grown folks watching Batman films — a just crusader swooping in with morals and a Batarang, delivering accountability to the powerful. The danger is we accept these fantasies, of independent-actors fixing systemic problems and not interrogate our responsibilities in an unfair world. 
But ****, I wouldn’t look askance if the future handed us comic book technology, especially if it comes with ⁠Scud the Disposable Assassin vending machines⁠. I would go for the “Scud Lite” version, the robot that only beats the ⁠“**** out of somebody.”⁠ Ahhh, escapism.
BTW, I don’t know how Alan Moore would take Dispatch. Dispatch was released as a game and comic book, at the same time.
Superheroes existing in a more realistic universe was Moore's lane (⁠Watchmen⁠, ⁠V for Vendetta⁠), but he wasn’t fond of comics being made into films, especially his. He wanted to show off what comics could do that films can’t. 
I would love to know Moore’s thoughts on Zack Snyder’s ⁠chorus of the Aquaman⁠.
This is where I’m ending it.
I had a bunch more paragraphs that built from a “If safe were profitable we would already be safe” — and join me on the tambourine line!
That somehow led to my praising the LL Cool J ⁠Mr. Smith album⁠ which has been unfairly eclipsed by ⁠one of its singles⁠, to landing on the track ⁠“Life As…”⁠ being on both Mr. Smith and the Street Fighter soundtrack, and finally to a Street Fighter advertisement from ⁠The Source Magazine (April ’95)⁠ featuring a comic that concedes the movie is ****, but the album is dope (plus ⁠MC Hammer / Deion Sanders⁠).
AND… Tell Tale Walking Dead… I was ruthlessly mocked by coworkers in 2013 for saving Doug over Carley the TV Reporter and that I somehow had a grudge against news people. Gawd Doug sucked, but he looked to be closer to immediate peril — Carley had a gun! How was I supposed to know Carley was out of ammo.
Shoehorned it, baby!
[[episode graphic made in photoshop]]

1990s Vermont college party ambience. So we have our first PG-13 episode — for mild/simulated drug and alcohol use. Nothing harder than flowers or bottles of malt liquor. Also no foul language, fisticuffs, or flirts. 
Vermont makes for a comfy place to get crunk. It might be instructive if you think of our mildly lawless parties in the Green Mountain State as equal parts trap house and ski lodge. There would be a bong going just feet from a quaint crackling fire, with typically someone knitting a scarf between ⁠hits⁠. Flannel everywhere.
I recognize that there are folks out there in recovery, and y’all should maybe skip this week’s episode. I haven’t had anything to drink in a decade this April, so I feel far enough away from that dragon to reminisce somewhat fondly on those off-campus winter get-togethers. (But subscribe before you move on so you can still follow our regularly scheduled cozy chaos).
Quick aside on the more mature ambient swing — if you remember back to the aughts, Marvel Studios cracked the formula of comic book movies in their first swing, Iron Man. The formula of adhering to a rigid three-act structure while always employing two bad guys and having our favorite actors and actresses play the superheroes.
At about the same time, Lionsgate was releasing Punisher: War Zone, a super-violent movie that plays like unironic McBain. And what separated the opulent violence of Iron Man from the Punisher’s financially stable man’s views of street justice was a Marvel Knights banner. 
Gawd, now I have to explain Marvel Knights… look, it’s classic 1980s-era anti-hero vibe ****. And a paromasia — the phonetic side of “knight” leading us into imaginings of dark and grimy spaces, and the proper definition of armored soldier also being applicable. Exactly the kind of word play Stan Lee et al got out of the bed in the morning for.
Marvel Knights on the comic side was the gritty, ostensibly more realistic take on crime fighting in the mean streets. Helmed in part by Joe Quesada (a hero of mine from his Ash comic days, which portrays a fireman crimefighter)… I should stop. Oh no — real quick I posted an early promotion for Marvel Knights in Wizard Magazine co 1999, check it out!
Anyway, all of this to say, I toyed with making a new graphic banner for this episode along the lines of “uncommon ambience Knights.”
BOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Ooph, that was a long walk to get to a thing I almost did. Look, I’m not looking to lose any of my nature-ambience-loving folks by ambushing them with some debaucherous ****. I’m just going to drop a PG-13 on the cover and cross my fingers no one calls me a dork.
For this week’s episode, I’m remembering my buddy’s party magnet on the outskirts of town. It had steam pipe heat and a fireplace, something I had never experienced (most steam heating I dealt with was in apartment buildings or my military school, and never combined with a fireplace). 
Electronic music could be heard droning in the background though not as loud as the police scanner my buddy insisted be monitored. Cops did stop by occasionally though no one ever heard they were on Winch Hill Rd before they showed up.
It was an old house on a hill, prone to howling winds that blasted over the mounds of snow, carving frozen waves and snapping weak tree limbs.
On my way up to the front porch, I would plant my surplus beer into the snowpack near the door. Punching the bottles into a frigid cocoon. I never stuck it in the fridge — it’d become communal; I’d be sharing.
Front door was never locked; you just walked in and made yourself known. Or not — there was frequently a random dude (wearing flannel) passed out on the floor that no one recognized.
Episode cover uses a photo by Yusuf.

Billerica, Massachusetts Hotel PTAC ambience. Enjoy hours of gushing hot air on a cold winter night in your Boston-area hotel room. The TV is off, so no local TV news to slog through. 
I used to watch local news in this area. Mostly the NBC station, back in the aughts. Their promotions featured station characters referring to themselves as “the neeeews station.”
I also worked nearly two decades in local news. Take it from me: you could give up commercial local TV entirely and not miss a beat.
Aside from what you think of Ralph Nader from a political perspective, he had the commercial news industry dead to rights in the summer of 2000: “Look at your late-evening news… It's 30 minutes. Nine minutes of ads; three minutes of street crime right at the beginning, never corporate crime, very superficially covered; one minute of impromptu chit-chat between the anchors; four minutes of weather; four minutes of sports — and that's what happens in your town tonight.”
Nader didn’t mention that our weather studios were named after local florists, and sports were “powered” by local Toyota dealerships.
At one job, a befuddled new anchor approached me in the hall.
“Do you know where the ‘Terrorism Desk is?”
“Oh, for sure,” I said. “You want the lobby.”
The lobby had an open window to the station’s master control setup, flashing with over thirty monitors showing color bars, live cams, satellite feeds, and other inputs (looks impressive). And that camera station had other monikers: the “Breaking News Desk,” “Hurricane Whomever Desk,” and “We Have a New Baseball Team in Town Desk.”
Still just the lobby.
Nader also didn’t mention sweeps week, the designated ratings period when stations try to attract the largest possible audience. Viewership is collected from a small sample of homes with Nielsen boxes — sometimes just hundreds — that determine a region’s TV habits. Sweeps weeks set advertising rates, deciding how much a law firm or Buffalo Wild Wings has to pay to appear in a commercial break.
Sweeps week is also a time of intrigue, danger, and sensationalized threats — online predators, out-of-control crime, spikes of spammers. I’m not being facetious: in Albany, I saw a promo claiming drinking water could be dangerous (the water is piped in from the Helderbergs, some of the cleanest water a small city could hope to access — you could eat off the floor in the Helderbergs).
Sweeps week is also when favorite network TV characters die. J.R. was shot during sweeps. Brad Pitt showed up on Friends during sweeps.
At one station, a producer said, “If Oprah has a Dancing with the Palins…” we’d beat our rival in the 5pm slot. It was the last day of sweeps, Oprah had Bristol and Sarah Palin gab it up on her program. We did hit #1 for the 11 that sweeps period due to the Bristol Palin-led Dancing with the Stars. 
Sweeps also judge station performance. If you watch local television and see a “We’re #1 in something” ad, that’s what that is all about. Those ads are specifically for station management, no one else gives a ****.
Speaking of — once, walking into a station bathroom, I heard a toilet flush, and a colleague walks out of the stall holding his bag of Chipotle. 
These are folks you could stand to listen to less, is all I’m saying.
Postscript-ish story: when I worked for a station that shared a newsroom with Politico.
One morning, I’m walking into my department through the Politico sales area, gabbing with an awesome lady I worked with. Because I’m a stupid klutz, my hand bangs the side of a desk and dislodges my lunch. Which was soup in a Tupperware bowl. And it didn't just spill — it exploded.
Clam fragments and sad potatoes amongst a red ooze splashed and soaked into the carpet (which, I’m not embellishing here, was new and cream-colored).
I don’t know what smells pleasing to you at 8:57 AM — I’m positive it isn’t canned Manhattan Clam Chowder hit with 27 spluts of Tabasco.
Awesome lady grabs my elbow and is like, “Go, go, go, go.”

A tambouras is running through the river… ambience. 

I don’t have much this week. The magic of the holiday passed pretty quickly as the news kicked back on with the new thing to worry about. Only they don’t seem too worried about it, which really worries me.

Honestly, just turn off the TV. **** them. Listen to this week’s episode, which is an earlier recording of Vermont’s Mad River and a buzzing tambouras (and a distant drum). Ignore the world.

Or turn on a semi-autobiographical film about two brothers in Montana who like to fly-fish the crap out of a river with their dad while speaking earnestly, often. The movie A River Runs Through It is the inspiration for this week’s title (and more, if I fished around for a deep, dangling metaphor or something).

I saw the film when I was 16 and would have preferred to be next door for the screening of Under Siege. I could just make out the muffled screams of slaughtered bad guys booming from the speakers in the auditorium to my right. I agreed to A River Runs Through It because my sister was bringing a friend I thought was cute.