uncommon ambience

We’re back in the old movie house for a vintage alt-Valentines romcom. Arrive early for the trailers — what I would play at some alt-Valentines film festival. Plus, decades-old Valentines‑flavored messaging it's going to be grand.

Look, my daughter asked if I was doing a special episode for the upcoming "holiday," and I was like, "What holiday?"

"Valentines, did you get mom something."

“I am now,” Valentine’s… aka **** Halloween. Another holiday to unleash sugar onto our loved ones and watch them climb the ceiling...

Our feature film is His Girl Friday, which stars Cary Grant as ruthless newspaper editor Walter Burns. You are already familiar with Grant's character as the “Get Out” meme.

Rosalind Russell, the pride of Waterbury, CT, plays Hildy Johnson, star journalist. And I need to pause for a second — the movie is based on the play The Front Page, which has two male leads. In His Girl Friday Russell plays that lead and walks out of production for defining the cinematic accomplished female journalist (think Margot Kidder as Lois Lane).

So if Russell is not the pride of Waterbury, CT, she should be.

And for heaven’s sake, don’t try to figure out what the deal is with the giant cross marking the eastern side of the Brass City skyline (do you imagine a knee-high ghost town might creep you out)?

From Waterbury, let’s take I‑84 west and then north on the Thruway (or the Taconic Parkway if you’re in the mood for beauty and can drive 55) to Albany, the pride of New York. Heh — I’m still a 518-er by heart. Long live Fish Fry spots and Altamont Fair.

Any movie where Albany, NY, figures prominently is my kind of movie. In His Girl Friday, Albany winds up being the destination all along. Walter Burns’ motivations in the movie are to rescue Hildy Johnson from a languished life in Albany, NY. And after winning Hildy back, Walter immediately takes her to Albany for their honeymoon. The film is fast-paced and even breaks the fourth wall a few times. Good stuff — two Ironweeds up.

In the spirit of tough ladies (but unfortunately not Albany-centric), we have our first trailer for Some Kind of Wonderful: “…this is 1987. Did you know that a girl can be whatever she wants to be?” Mary Stuart Masterson’s character asks, as she deals with some doofus named Ray. Gawd, I had such a crush on that character growing up — Stoltz, you idiot.

And as mentioned at the top, a slew of other trailers I would consider alt-love stuff (in one case, explicitly because of the soundtrack). And, of course, I’m alt-signaling. I loathe Valentine’s Day. Besides selling chocolate and flowers, the holiday seems designed to exasperate loneliness and force wide one’s wallet.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’m still wrestling with the debt of the trinity of expensive American holidays just last year. Did that giant turkey dinner or flat screen under a gayly lit fake tree not say, "I love you?"

PS: Hamilton needs more Albany — Alexander married in with the Schuylers. The Burr “Dangerous Man” letter that boiled over the Burr feud was printed in the Albany Register — a ****** Van Rensselaer is mentioned in that letter. You couldn't get more Albany without a beaver and Henry Hudson.

Bleh — Albany should steal the logo of Alexander Hamilton doing the “Oh, oh, oh, what a feeling” Toyota jump off the top of the Hamilton star. Put it on the welcome to Albany sign with: "actually we killed Alexander Hamilton."

Bomb cyclone over North Carolina… Ambience. This week’s episode covers the major coastal storm as heard from the coastal plains Carolina (i.e., my twin’s house). Her recording (thank you!) captured wind, snow, and birds sheltering nearby. I also filled out the recording with added notes and sounds (I’m really into ambience with non-music motifs).
And as everyone who has followed this podcast should know, I am a fan of fans. (We’re starting with fans?) One distant summer night in Myrtle Beach, I sat bolt upright fast enough to catch the sound of an explosion in its negative phase. Light-headed and feeling each beat of my heart pulsating through my eyes and ears, my brain trying to re-engage consciousness.  
I looked around in the dark. Ghostly echoes of thunder washed over me. The wind picked up and lashed raindrops into the window. A flash of light ignited the room, and I was staring into the pale visage of a little girl’s face, wide-eyed.
I screamed.
This was the thunderstorm that ruined me for thunderstorms. I experienced the eye of Hurricane Hugo (Kershaw County, not Charleston), and my memories aren’t as vivid of that hurricane as they are of that brief, terrifying Myrtle storm. I can remember everything from the moment I was ripped from my dreams to my father plugging in a large box fan next to my bed.
After recovering from the face-flashing jumpscare, it was my twin staring at me—we summoned the courage to wander down the hall of the efficiency motel room to where my parents slept. We ripped them out of their sleep and beckoned them to look out the windows. 
The sheer unsettlement of the night sky—Do something.
A blinding flash enveloped us in white. And just before the collection of sounds that make up thunder hit my ear, I swear I heard a sizzle rip by first. Sparks fell across the street from a power line. I backed away from the windows, reeling—the room’s oven flashed and sparked with small tendrils of electricity.
I shouted, “The oven’s on fire,” because I had no idea how to describe what I was seeing.
“The oven is not on fire,” my mother said, furious. And I can understand why; if she were writing this podcast description about the experience, it would be: waking to children screaming, a massive white light filling the room, a shattering thunderclap, and her son shouting “fire!”
“Sometimes lightning can sneak in through the wires,” my father explained after sorting out what I had seen. And I was like, “Wait—it can get inside?!” urgently gesticulating toward the windows and the flashing forks of electric death.
This is why I sleep with noise at night—preferably rushing wind, whether electric or naturally created. To drown out the possibility of hearing thunder.
Essentially, all of what I have written so far can be boiled down to my trying to conjure a title for this week’s episode. I wanted to offer howling winds as anxiety relief. And my beloved wife interjected that I should offer calm winds for anxiety, as people might not feel calmed by rushing wind. And I was like, “CALM WINDS DON’T CALM ME!”
The argument eventually ended with accusations that I never do the dishes. Happy Valentine’s Day! (Oh no wait that’s next week)

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.