uncommon ambience

Sink back into ten hours of uninterrupted lo-fi ambience featuring summer sounds, drifting melodies, soft textures, and nostalgic vinyl pops. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure lo-fi relaxation. Ignore the world.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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OK, so this week we are packaging unheard summer sounds (mostly recorded on Martha’s Vineyard) into a lo-fi, crackly reframe. But I wouldn’t call the sounds leftovers—and this isn’t a podcast equivalent of a clip show. I’d prefer thinking of this episode as a new contextualization of unused summer elements.

While it may be fall (ish), there are no iconic fall sounds occurring outside yet—it’s still hot AF in the Mid-Atlantic.

There’s another reason; this is the time of year (in the 90s) when I would engorge on new hiphop. 

Wait, what—

Lace up your acceptable amount of beat-up Air Force Ones and let’s walk back through the 90s. Back on a college campus, eating junk food and shooting the **** with friends. One lady kicked me in the face with some Air Max 96s… wonderful times the 90s.

Anyway, early fall was when I swapped summertime DJ mixtapes with friends. So, a Clue Summertime Shootout for a Premiere Crooklyn Cuts, an Air Alertfor a Kool Kirk, DJ EV/ Stretch Armstrong for Ron G, et al.

These mixtapes were flush with new tracks—sometimes weeks before they blew up on hiphop radio (which we didn't have in Vermont anyway). Often our favorite artists (Method Man, Busta Rhymes...) would be included, giving DJ shoutouts—or better yet, exclusive freestyles.

Swifties, imagine grabbing a tape from a laundry spot or streetwear place—let’s say it is Country Master Flex’s new mixtape. And that tape has new and exclusive Swift material scratched and chopped and sold on a TDK cassette. That sounds fire, right?

Mixtape DJs sprinkled their cassettes with turntable skill, iconic shouting, and particular charms. DJ Premier was scratch-heavy (deftly so) and often historical in his framing, one mix included the first recorded emcee battle—Kool Moe Dee v. Busy Bee (the link is for Primos portion of 5 Deadly Venoms a mixtape that is absolutely worthy of its hype).

Other DJs had their thing—Tony Touch was the exclusive freestyles guy, DJ Clue had charisma and the hottest new tracks.

And at the start of a college semester: fresh Wu-Wear tee and Fubu jeans, flush with that new summer hiphop in a fall reality... I felt like a fresh collegiate Aristotle (only stupid).

Finally, i would like to apologize to the DJs who spun on 90.9 FM WCDB Friday nights in the late 90s. I hated on y'all at times.

To me y'all could get too excited about the "Chikka-chikka"—making an absolute meal out of every verse. Sometimes microscopic scratch-rewinds highlighting bare syllables.

Example: There was a track by Frankie Cutlass featuring Keith Murraywhere Murray spits, “from the Secaucus Mountains to the African Sea, not near ************ want to **** with me.” And one WCDB DJ played with that line forever. It was Secaucus Mountains for three solid minutes. Sometimes letting the song wander in a minute, then a splashy backspin would deposit us back at “the Secaucus Mountains.” My gawd man! Play the track!

I tried to look up the Secaucus Mountains in an encyclopedia (book, it was the 90s, no Google) just so I could cast some damnation at what I thought were actual New Jersey mountains... Is it a New Jersey inside joke? (I did not plan to slander Jersey two weeks in a row)—

...and I would listen to the **** out of a 1990s WCDB DJ now. If anyone knows of any old WCDB DJs who recorded their sets, please send links. I was wrong!

We're giving Roscoff, France a microphone on a summer afternoon. Enjoy French traffic, French talking! French birds! Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No commercials, no interruptions—just Rue Amiral Réveillère. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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You will hear local birds, traffic, voices, and other sounds from Mid-Afternoon Rue Amiral Réveillère (the primary central street in the old port district of Roscoff, France). Thanks to my twin for recording during a recent research trip to the Brittany region of France. She stayed at an inn a short walk from Roscoff’s port and, while out, left a microphone in the window.

Because my twin was a short walk from the Vieux Port de Roscoff, which serves Île de Batz, you will hear extra activity affected by ferry schedules. As an aside—to grab the ferry you have to take a long footbridge that leads directly into the Atlantic, no platform, just a ramp that deposits you directly into the ocean.

What to do for Episode description this week? Like I could try to retell the entire Roscoff history or write something silly. 

And so I looked at a map—my eyes immediately darted east to Jersey (the British Crown Dependency Island off the coast of NW France).

I salivated over the easy writing assignment of taking shots at something with "Jersey" in its title. Because of course Jersey, we talked about Jersey in the White Castle episode (NEW Jersey). North Atlantic (USA) mockery of New Jersey is low-hanging fruit and I enjoy an easy time tapping out a banal missive. So I searched online like: "hey, did anything strange happen on that island called Jersey?"—OMGWTFNVM—

Let's talk Roscoff—There’s a famous French onion, Oignon de Roscoff—an onion that purportedly arrived to the region by way of a traveling Capuchin monk named Brother Cyril. He was returning from Lisbon and probably had the seed in his pocket—I’m positive monks had pockets in 1647.

Ok, I looked it up, there is evidence of a handmade fanny pack 6000 years ago—being worn by some prehistoric guy named “The Iceman.” (To be a known person of history that lived over half a decamillennium ago and still get the moniker “The Iceman...” So cool. You know some men and women live forever in infamy—this pre-Austrian gentleman had a fanny pack and is known as “The Iceman.”)

Pouches started being woven into clothing more recently (within a few centuries) because fanny packs were noticeable targets for thieves. I’m imagining Peaky Blinders versus the ****** Iceman. The Iceman had a bone awl in his fanny pack—think of an icepick carved from animal bone. “You want my dried tinder fungus you weird (but stylish) hat mother*******?! Talk to bone awl!!!” Ba-BLOW

And voilà, Brother Cyril could have had a pocket with an onion seed ultimately leading to the culinarily significant Oignon de Roscoff.  (Maybe he had a suitcase... When were suitcases invented?)

And that is where I will stop trying to parse agricultural history—I am unequipped for onion significances. I did find a blog of a lady who shouts “bonjour” at Roscoff residents to get candid photos (and has an Oignon de Roscoff recipe that looks delicious) — she speaks highly of Roscoff onions.

My best onion take is that red onions are vastly overrated. Like you’re not getting points with me because you’re usually in every hoagie I love and you’re the sexiest element in an Olive Garden salad.

Night-time insects of late summer with some added texture and sporadic notes. Spend the night in the backyard! Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just late summer bug chatter. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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It’s our third installment of late summer sounds from my backyard. The main audio was recorded over the last weekend in August. As this episode is the third installment of “A Dying Summer’s Suburban slumber,” I’ve gone rogue and added some texture and other elements. I’ve got a bunch of naked night bug episodes—as in no sound (this is a family show).

To me the bugs are always more fun when the temperatures get lower and affect the frequency over the night. With the weather as warm as it has been, the bugs are naked and loud.

Speaking of naked, I have been thinking of Lee Iacocca—look, I probably needed two more paragraphs to segue between nude insects and the former businessman (and Snoop Dogg commercial co-host—**** that could have been my segue).

What would Lee Iacocca make of our current world? No, kidding WGAS—sing out loud “Lee Iacocca… made some cars” to the tune of “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam and now you have the same tic as me!

“Jay-EE-AR Tolkien, wrote some books” also works.

Gawd, I had to read Lee Iacocca in high school… I skimmed about as much as I could stand, and bull****ed my way through the report. Iacocca’s book cover(swagger) was presented to empty Chick-O-Stick wrappers and the other gunk at the bottom of my book bag most of the time it was in my possession.

And to continue the household brand name theme— I don’t give a **** about transitioning properly! Let me tell you about one of the first internet fandom-fueled movements I remember.

It was late 1996 and I was a college dip****. Sophomore year, Redman’s Muddy Waters forever in my cassette player. Slothing around a snowy Vermont campus in baggy jeans, XXL Pure Playaz t-shirts. It was almost time to return home for Christmas—my dad cryptically mentions over the phone that he would be sending me back after the holiday with enough breakfast for the final semester.

“What?”

Dad explained he was in possession of a multitude of Unfrosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts value packs. And I would be inheriting most of them. “Awesome.”

My father fluctuated between bemused and proud of my sister's advocacy—while lording over a stockpile of breakfast sweets. Apparently, my younger sister had been part of SOS, a group of online Sailor Moon fans not happy with Sailor Moon syndication time slots in the United States. The distributor planned to shutter production (adaptation and dubbing for American audiences) because the show wasn’t performing well.

And the SOS decided rather than boycott something to save their new favorite show, SOS would stage a procott on a day in December 1996 to display their purchasing power. They chose Unfrosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts and the campaign made waves. 

I don’t know the ramifications of what SOS accomplished overall, but Sailor Moon is still in the zeitgeist and I got a lot of Pop-Tarts.

PS: Homage cover art this week inspired by Iron Nest, a video game that gives you the keys to an early 1900s Metal Gear with Myst vibes and a fantastic liminal space to inhabit. Plus, their cover art rocks—not an ad, just fanboy ****. PPS: It is a game about a fictional war, and while war runs counter to the philosophy of this podcast... I haven’t felt like I was back in Myst since Riven, and I stunk at Riven.

A liminal breakfast adventure, a happy smiling bacon morning. This week is all about the sizzle, morning birds and a dash of drift. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just jolly breakfast vibes. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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And the bacon doesn’t need to be pork. It could be turkey, tofu—do they make chicken bacon? Whatever, it’s your pan frying for ten hours. Actually, let’s not think about fire hazards. Let’s think of a magic space where cooking times are extended and you are presumably not hoping to eat anytime soon. A place that hovers with promise and good vibes. It’s a happy smiling bacon morning.

And that’s all I got! Oh—you will no doubt remember that over the last month I made the decision to call myself “Mr. Ambience” and changed my creator name to “Mr. Ambience.” Then, a few days later, I checked online to see if anyone else had staked out that name. To think of all the words I typed about longing for “Mr. Ambience” when I could have done a cursory search. Like when you squeeze an avocado and it just feels right. “Mr. Ambience” felt ripe…

I feel like I should punish myself by taking a cold shower or signing up for a local Glass Clinkers public speaking event. I forget that group’s name—actually, if it’s a cult, never mind my bringing it up.

Look, when you squeeze a metaphorical avocado and the metaphorical avocado is like: “Mr. Ambience, is peak.” That’s a phrase, right? I feel like I heard my kid say that about avocados in salads.

So I quickly shifted to something else I know: military school. I was a lieutenant in charge of the laundry room at my military school (because I was unsat and my parents spent a lot of money at that school). Lieutenant Ambience. It’s not a full avocado squeeze or anything… yet it might be something Forest Gump would say before pitching himself off a boat.

Then I asked myself, do I really want to be the private of the officer class? I might not be a “General Ambience,” but I’m sure as **** at least a colonel of ambience. So I spent a day as “Colonel Ambience.”

A buddy messaged me, “the name is silly, for sure. And I doubt anyone would claim an ambience channel was stealing valor.” And so “Kernel Ambience” it is! It gives my creator name a sheen of authority while not being authoritative… Which… is still hinting at possibly stealing valor (with popcorn). I could probably fight it out over Lieutenant Ambience—they gave me a sword! I commanded a laundry room!

What about Doctor? I am not a doctor—closest I came to medicine doer was when I tried to use a chisel without a hammer. Don’t use a chisel with just your weight, and don’t have your other hand in the path your trying to make…

But I could still be Dr. Ambience, right? I mean, don’t tell me you forgot about Dre?

PS: Quick housekeeping—next week we will have our annual “Dying Summer Suburban Slumber” episode, featuring an evening/night suburban backyard recording that includes the denizens of late-summer critter noise. Last year, we were in Central Ohio.

I extended the basketball episode (2024). It is one of my favorite episodes for sleep. However, the issue was that I would fall asleep, and due to episode length, I would wake up in a thunderstorm episode.

If y’all have any other shorter episodes you’d like to see extended, let me know.

Mars Rover adventure! Take a long-distance journey over a smooth-ish Martian terrain with a lovable Mars Rover. This week’s episode uses some real Martian Rover sounds (and some simulated) with wind, static, and interplanetary drift. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just red planet vibes. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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For this week’s episode, we will (fictionally) tap into the microphones of a Mars Rover and listen in as it takes a long journey across the surface of the planet named after the Roman god of war. And I can tell by that wind-up that this episode description is going to get daff. Save yourselves.

Ooph, before I continue, I know I have been going on and on about renaming myself Mr. Ambience the last two weeks—I did rename myself Mr. Ambience, much to my wife’s chagrin. Then I did a search for “Mr. Ambience,” and some person has already staked out that name… Which will make my wife laugh because she thought the name was ridiculous.

I thought maybe I could try “Not Mr. Ambience,” but that reads agro to my ears. Dr. Ambience would be great… unfortunately, I am not a doctor. I did assist a professor once by helping them move into a new apartment—does Assistant Professor Ambience sound feasible? I should workshop this offline—

Because the fabulously windy and otherworldly red surface calls to us. So we must rove. It’ll be the great American road movie, just not a film and not in America or on the planet.

Look, I (conveniently) chose fictionalized Mars Rover movements. This allows me to play with sounds that would be inaudible on the surface of Mars (at least distant sounds, more below) and add boops and beeps (because people love that ****). It also allows me to do something more fun with the metal wheels. You can hear them in the Perseverance Rover driving highlights from NASA (imagine rocks rolling in lobster pots).

I included the actual Mars Rover sounds (NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/ISAE-SUPAERO) in this ambient construction, but they are mostly dialed back.

I want to mention that sound works differently on Mars because of a range of factors. And you shouldn’t trust me to be right about that; I was a communication major.

Ambient audio on Mars behaves differently because of the planet's extremely thin, cold atmosphere and its composition. Lower frequencies travel farther, while high frequencies dissipate more quickly.

I point this out so you know I held this reality while designing this week’s episode, and (thoughtfully) breached the ****. I don’t know why I feel like Carl Sagan would want to get me for being wrong. Honestly, whenever I’m talking about space with my kids, in the back of my mind Carl Sagan is disapproving. Look at me mentioning Carl Sagan more in this week’s episode than our episode about the Golden Records (shout out to Carl Sagan).

…And so, to deflect from my uncomfortability with trying to explain science in the first place—I am now definitively saying that low frequency is KING on Mars. For the Elysium Planitia music festival I’m planning [airhorn], there will be no Captain & Tennille or Jeffrey Osborne (bc no one would hear anything).

So... introducing the 2027 Elysium Bass Festival (we’ll be using influencers but not Ja Rule): 95 South, the Quad City DJs, and DJ Magic Mike is the headliner.

Episode cover includes an image from NASA.

Sit in an enclosed bathroom for ten hours. It’s just you in a tiny room with a bath, the fan, and some drift. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure bath in its own tiny bathroom vibe. Ignore the world.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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So, for my wife’s birthday, I took her to a boutique hotel with a small, fancy room with a bath inside of the overall bathroom so she could read and enjoy the quiet. I did not record during that time. We went downstairs to the restaurant, and that is when I set up the mic in the fancy little bathroom inside the bigger bathroom. (Also, I don’t want to ruin any illusion in regards to this episode—but no water was wasted.)

Speaking of my wife—I told her that in last week’s episode description I jokingly referred to myself as “Mr. Ambience.” And she was like, “That’s stupid.”

It started as a throwaway line and meandered into my heart.

Oh, while we’re on last week’s episode, which is awesome and you should pop over here. But we were talking about Pat Conroy, and I got to thinking: in another universe, Pat Conroy could have wound up in the NBA. He was a talented baller (and even once shared the court with Mr. NBA Logo Silhouette, Jerry West) if he hadn’t been moved around so much as a kid (see his also very good book My Losing Season).

Mr. Ambience. I like it. Makes me feel like I have a walking cane and a monocle—that I’m some kind of dapper son of a *****. That is Mr. Ambience. I bet if I were strolling the boutique hotel, swinging around a walking stick like I didn’t need it, focusing my monocle on railroad stocks and chatting aloud about my cottage on Lake Conemaugh, the staff would call me Mr. Ambience.

Oh, I (Mr. Ambience) have a quandary this week. I know I can’t be the only person who, sans any floss, got a piece of fingernail stuck between their teeth because, yeah, no dental floss. And you go from uncomfortable with food particle pressure and wedge a ****** fingernail in there too.

POP OFF ten hours of uninterrupted bubbles and assorted popping. Chill vinyl pops, soda pops, popcorn, bubbles, and a dash of drift. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure poppin' vibes. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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As I was working on the title for this week’s episode, I kept thinking of a comedic moment from media that I couldn't place... maybe cartoons? Where a doofus character keeps obnoxiously shouting “POP OFF!”

Oh, where are my manners? Welcome back to the section no one pays attention to. The uncommon ambience episode description! I am Mr. Ambience.

What? Do you want me to write up some immersive episode description? I have assembled a collection of popping sounds for ten hours—I don’t think anyone wants to read an old doofus' poetic affectation. "You are in a null space and in front of you is a soda bottle, if you drink it you will float..."

I would rather be inane in here. When I turned 23, I decided my ultimate mission on earth was to achieve the pinnacle of dumb. Not stupid, I like dumb. Dumb is low stakes—simultaneously funny and unfunny. The Tao of Dumb—thats what I wanted and still strive for. And that’s not to say I like that 23-year-old me. I’ve seen postings on LinkedIn, “I wish I had a Time Machine to go back and tell my younger self, you're ok…” Like that might work for virtuous people—if I had access to my younger self, I would slap the **** out of me. It’d be Looper without murder or hovering motorcycles.

“POP OFF!” What cartoon or movie was that from? And then it came to me—like seeing someone pushing an expensive stroller, and you peek in for the cuteness and there’s a ****** dog. Or a plastic baby.

I’m thinking of Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline.

“POP OFF” was what the cadre shouted at freshmen when they wanted freshmen to speak... while hazing them at the Carolina Military Institute.

If you want to read a visceral horror novel masked as a not particularly compelling mystery (Conroy tells us about the guy who would have evidence on “the ten” early in the book and only a betrayal would force the main character to seek it, mystery solved)—read The Lords of Discipline. And I don’t want to undersell the mystery aspect of the book, because it isn't the star. The institution is the star (and i suspect a trauma dump from the author).

If Anton Chigurh was an institution of higher learning...

The Carolina Military Institute lashes out at those who question it. In the story, the protagonist recalls approaching his dorm during his freshman year, where his orientation leaders are waiting for him at a table. He’s a new student and has some questions about what to do after checking in—and is punched for asking.

It’s a horror novel. Imagine enrolling in a 1970s-era South Carolina military college (that’s just getting around to integration) and the ruthless hazing that awaits. This is old school military school terror.

Conroy is a favorite author of mine. He gives such a lush rendering to his scenes. The spaces he describes are immersive, making it all the more jarring when transitioning from the opulence and architectural beauty of South of Broad to the engulfing ick of hazing in a scalding-hot shower room.

We’re heading into spooky season, so if you want to be traumatized this fall, pick up The Lords of Discipline.(A better title would have been, Don't Tell Mom the Institute Murdered Me).

PS: If you’re looking for a tenuous 90’s hiphop connection to this week’s episode (that’s fun and won’t traumatize you) check out Bubblin’ by CRU.

7/28 Thunder! Pack your umbrella for ten hours of uninterrupted severe weather (with drift and drums). So if you dig rain, percussion, thunder, a little bit of vinyl hiss paired with wind, this episode is for you. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure summer storm energy. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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And just FYI, this one starts quiet and builds to the deluge. I toned down the thunder, so it's all rumbles—no jump-scare stuff. This Mid-Atlantic thunderstorm was recorded on 7/28 in my thunderstorm recording studio (my dreadful, much-repeated dad term for "shed").

As with many people, I have a personal relationship with severe weather. Gawd, what a terrible sentence. Why does everything need a setup? I mean, we do this: "Hark, I have poetry in my setup, and now I may list my bonafides." Can't just start listing a bunch of named storms and then, "I was there, man."

I have some experience with Mother Nature's power. Hurricane Hugo in Camden, SC (1989), Hurricane Bob in Edgartown(1991), and Snowmageddon on a D.C.-area highway. Snowmageddon, for me, was eight hours to get from Rosslyn to Ashburn, and around the halfway point I got out on the toll road and took a pee in front of everyone.

Hell, I was even in a derecho, and WTOP retweeted a few of my photos (so exciting). I like severe weather.

Actually, I like the moments leading up to severe weather. It's like the lift hill of a roller coaster—it builds excitement (and is my favorite part because it's slow).

When I got a weather alert on my phone telling me to take shelter... I didn't do that. I ran to the shed with a microphone.

Then I came back into the house and took a shower.

No, I'm kidding. Yeesh, now that I look it up on Reddit... taking a shower during a thunderstorm could be a bad idea. Apparently some dude was zapped unconscious while showering in a golf clubhouse.

Quint's lament. This week we have ten hours of uninterrupted waves from Menemsha (recorded here), with Jaws vibes. I imagined the fictional Amity fishing community coming to grips with the unfortunate events of 51 years ago (and how that would audibly work out as a soundscape). So: mild melancholy and chill thrills.

This immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure Menemsha waves, familiar note combinations, and drift. Ignore the world.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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I spotted candy corns for sale at my local grocer. I’m calling it—summer is over. I said something to that effect to my wife on a recent trip to the supermarket. Her look was incredulous, with a hint of middle finger. “It’s July.”

“Sure… late July,” I corrected. “Very late.” (I left unsaid, "Eggnog will be on sale soon.")

My wife was wearing her Quint-themed baseball T-shirt we picked up last year while watching the MV Sharks versus the North Shore Navigators. It was the Jaws 50th Anniversary game—the teams had been renamed for the promotion: the Amity Sharks versus the Quint Navigators. And, as with the film, the Quint Navigators went down swinging (they lost).

Look—I’m trying to explain how I decided to use my Menemsha beach recording from this year. I had my 3 a.m. waves a few weeks back, but folks didn’t seem too jazzed on just waves. So I got the idea in the supermarket pasta aisle to add some Jaws homage to the composition. After all, I have recordings from Quint’s base of operations.

Menemsha is a real fishing village and looks so convincingly fisherman that all the movie needed to do was aim a camera at it to establish Quint’s fisherman bona fides.

My wife loves Quint; her "movie character" crush. And I get it, the character is Charles Bronson of the ocean.

If the Gorton’s Fisherman was Matlock, Quint would be Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (if Ace Ventura had survived a horrific shark attack in the Pacific).

PS: I wrote this after a very long day... And this is our second Jaws themed episode. Also the Gorton’s Fisherman can go hard AF.

Appledore 2 (Van Damme queued)! This week we have ten hours of uninterrupted small-island ocean vibes from off the coast of northern New England. Distant calm waves, birds, and buoys. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure island isolation. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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Special thanks to my twin for capturing this audio. The recording took place on a June afternoon earlier this year. And a note to the kids out there: if you do science stuff, you get to go to cool places. My sister has parlayed her marine ecology career into research trips overseas—to a ton of Europe, Central and South America, and Appledore.

Appledore is a tiny Maine island off the coast of New Hampshire. It’s Maine because the state line follows the Piscataqua River into the ocean and splits the island group between the two states. So New Hampshire has Star Island and White Island. And Maine has Cedar, Appledore, and (grizzly axe murders) Smuttynose.

It’s difficult to separate Smuttynose from its history. So I would suggest getting the history from J. Dennis Robinson’s book Mystery on the Isle of Shoals. It's a Smuttynose historian’s view of the island. (The book begins hundreds of millions of years ago and quickly leads to the events of March 5, 1873.)

The motivation of Robinson's book feels less like, "Here is some history of an island and its terrible events," and more like someone needs to correct the record after a novelist flipped the history to exonerate the axe murderer and blame the woman who survived the attack (in the fictional book—and later film—The Weight of Water).

Interestingly, John Wilkes Booth’s brother, Edwin Booth, has a cameo in Isle of Shoals history. He showed up on Star Island a few years after the Smuttynose murders (and after his brother murdered Lincoln) to stay at the (then) new Oceanic Hotel. Edwin had nothing to do with the Smuttynose murders—but if I wrote The Weight of Water 2, I’d pin the **** on that dude.

Pieces of Gold! Ten hours of uninterrupted sounds featuring "pieces" of the Golden Record, a floating time capsule carrying evidence that Earth existed. Included in this episode are Greetings from Earth (sans Waldheim), Sounds of Earth, Ann Druyan’s brain waves, and space-age drifts and notes. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure interstellar relaxation. Ignore the World. (And subscribe to uncommon ambience!)

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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Ok, so I’m not a St. Patrick’s guy. I lived in Boston and once got talked into doing it “the Boston way”—actually, I’m sure I imposed myself, whatever. “The Boston Way” was billed to me as “Christmas for adults.” So I took the day off with a bunch of other marginally Irish folks and wound up in a line at 9 a.m. That’s the majority of what I remember, as I awoke the next afternoon on a wood-paneled floor, my shoe as a pillow. Apparently I tapped out earlier than everyone else. Some had capped the night at a Chinese restaurant that served tea that wasn’t actually tea—it was just more beer.

All of which is to say, now that I drink NA stuff, I’m no longer wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. (I still think the Irish are cool.)

It's the same with our most recent holiday. There are things I love about my home on this planet, but I’m not going to make a big deal about them because a holiday insists. I wore a RZA T-shirt to watch the fireworks.

Look, maybe we had an episode last week that didn’t properly revere America... That doesn’t mean we don’t love any Americana. The hot dog, maple syrup, Waffle House, South Carolina hash and rice (obviously writing this while hungry), the #2 pencil, baseball caps, and the Wu-Tang Clan, to name a few.

And one of my favorite pieces of Americana is an obscure record produced by Timothy Ferris (and team). A record that is not on our planet and is only getting farther and farther away: the Golden Records affixed to the Voyager satellites.

(Just ordered a pizza, if anyone is wondering... And I plan to dip that **** in ranch...)

I’ve wanted to do a Golden Record episode for a while. My hope was to loop the beach moments and create a nice intergalactic day at the beach, because summer (HUZZAH). Yet the Sounds of Earth follow a brisk pace of interweaving—I think the beach scene is only 5–10 seconds. (A loop like that could earn me a one-star—Btw, 5 us!)

So I decided to extend the brainwave portion as a base and weave in the entire run length of Greetings from Earth and Sounds of Earth.

I left out the music stuff so as not to get into any terrestrial copyright trouble. I mean, they gave the universe free access...

Shout out to Chuck Berry—I know he was a guitar god, but his voice was one of my favorite attributes. And I think his inclusion as an emissary of our planet (on the Golden Record) is deserved.

And as usual with me there’s a hip-hop origin to this week's episode, which was inspired by the podcast Pieces of Sound Pieces from Stones Throw Records.

Low frequency ferry! Climb aboard the Islanderfor ten hours of uninterrupted sounds recorded in the belly of a Steamship Authority ferry on the way to one of the islands. Included are low-frequency hums, waves, non-obtrusive announcements, some hopeful seagulls (more on the gulls below) and drifting notes and sounds. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure ferry relaxation. Ignore the World.

If you want an audio experience that's more true to life check out last year's ferry episode. And like and follow and all that too!

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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Vineyarders or Nantucketers might notice the Islander chugging across this week's episode cover. We’re pulling the beloved Steamship Authority ferry out of retirement (I don’t want to look at the photos from the Staten Island ship graveyard, thanks) for a magical journey across Vineyard Sound. The Islanderabathtub-shaped vessel designed specifically for passage between Woods Hole and the islands was taken out of service in 2007. (This week’s episode uses recordings from within the Island Homebut shhh we're pretending.)

Also on the cover are a smattering of seagulls chasing the ferry and, a once-easy food source. I won't admit to ever tossing crackers or French fries off the stern to watch birds dive for the morsel before it hit the water. Yet it was common enough that you would see hundreds of birds trailing any ferry with a galley. The birds knew not to chase the "freighters"—at best, the freight ships had a soda machine and one urinal.

"'Ay Chief, don't feed the birds,'" became a more prevalent message in the aughts—or at least that was the first time I remember hearing it. A shiphand was shouting at a dad holding his kid, and the kid had a fat Cheeto outstretched toward a bird hovering in to snatch it from between those small fingers.

We humans love feeding small animals from our hands, amirite? But not people in need—ooph... no, we're not going there on a holiday (imperial holiday). I'm kidding. We're kidding. I'm kicking away the soapbox (turn off commercial news, commercial news lies).

It is a holiday in the States. And, to be serious for a moment, not everyone has a swell time when the sky lights up with merry-colored explosions. If you haven't guessed—we're back at the fireworks holiday. And while a night of fireworks means fun with beer, hot dogs, and brightly colored booms, for others it can trigger negative physical or psychological effects. (Also, I've heard we have some dog listeners, which are also affected by 4TH celebrations. So shout-out to any doggo listeners, enjoy a chill ferry ride.)

This isn't about any lost love of country—not everyone appreciates a blackened sky invaded by rings of light and screamers. One good friend who experienced combat described his neighborhood's personal fireworks displays as "thunderstorms on crack."

So if you're apt to pull your shades and pump up some sounds, may I suggest a long, low-frequency trip in the bowels of a magical ship on the way to paradise.

PS: The Steamship Authority ferries are a fave microphone spot for me. I've used their sounds in many of my otherworldly episodes, including as the foundation for the Starship Enterpriseand a Star Destroyer.

Gentle Lapping 3 A.M. Waves! Wade into ten hours of uninterrupted lapping harbor waves, a few chatty birds, distant boat creaks, and sparse human-made noises. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure early morning beach relaxation. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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Vineyard Haven has been a newer development for me. It's where we stay when we visit. The motel we like has its own beach on the harbor, so it's an easy place to put the kids when we're not on Circuit or in Menemsha. Vineyard Haven was not a favorite place growing up (outside of visiting Brickman’s toy department). When I was a kid, Vineyard Haven meant back to reality—the place that stuffed you into a steamship to deposit you back on the mainland.

I wanted to be in Katama (right fork), it’s where my family had a place. I could bike to the fun beach or hitchhike into Edgartown for work. One of those summers I was a mechanic’s helper at Old Colony Service, basically the shop's "gofer." I ran around cleaning bathrooms, cars, and the showroom, shuttling customers, etc. 

And gawd, I was such a naive doofus back then. One day a Wrangler rolled into a bay with a broken window, and I asked the mechanic, "What happened?"

He gestured to the Jeep. "What do you think happened?"

I peered through the broken window and noticed the radio was missing. "Oh... the driver got mad at his car radio and threw it through out the window."

There was an older gentleman named Doug, in my imagining the shop's Yoda (with some Danny DeVito energy). He was older and knew his ****.

Example: one morning a mechanic was wrestling with an engine that would only produce a "NE-YAYAYAYAYA... CLICK." And the mechanic was getting audibly annoyed and swearing and such. Doug wandered over, fiddled with a few things, and a couple of minutes later the car was coaxed back to life. 

I think the mechanic wanted to get that turnover on his own, but was appreciative of the assist. "Thanks, Doug," he said.

And Doug returned to his station with, "Yap!"

Of all the words he shared with me, "Yap" was the most frequent. I liked him, I thought he was a cool dude. One Friday at closing he dropped a cooler of beers in the middle of the shop. I reached for a beer, and he laughed and pointed me toward the soft drinks. (Some might see that as square-*** parental behavior. I haven't imbibed in 10 years for a reason, so I see the wisdom.)

Anyway, one morning he barked at me, "Kid—put this in the lot," and tossed me the keys. "It's Walter Cronkite's, so don't mess it up."

I sat idling for a few seconds after parking, just taking it all in. Wait until I tell everyone at school (who, no doubt, had no clue who Walter Cronkite was) about this. Mr. Spaceship Earth—I was sitting in his car.

I was 16 or 17 and way too shy to ask for an autograph— but felt like I must. Doug would've frowned on that **** for sure.

So, I took his vehicle registration.

MVY Waves! Surf into ten hours of uninterrupted ocean waves, hints of 808, drifting sounds, wind, and a bird chilling amidst the dunes of Aquinnah. Mellow beats, ocean waves, nature, some distant human machines, and chords. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure beach relaxation and meandering sounds. Ignore the World.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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So the backbone of this episode was recorded on the footpath, about 40 feet from the surf of Gay Head Town Beach (Moshup Beach) on Martha’s Vineyard. It was recorded last week (as of this episode’s release) while vacationing in my favorite place on Earth—with more episodes from MVY on the way (stay tuned).

Anyway, why is it “Gay Head Town Beach” when the town is Aquinnah? Shortest possible answer: the island was taken from the Wampanoag by settlers and, as with the United States mainland, the tribe was pushed further and further westward into a place we incorporated as “Gay Head.” The tribe had nowhere else to go but the sea... (And I know that ellipsis is doing a lot of work.)

So in 1997, by popular vote, residents changed the town name from Gay Head to Aquinnah, or “land under the hill,” which alludes to the clay cliffs and some of the taller elevations on the island. The cliffs really are remarkable—I’ve visited them almost every year of my life—they don’t get old.

But settler colonialism isn’t much of a chill ambient podcast subject, so I’ll save the bitter pills for more historically focussed channels. (Or consider surfing over to the Aquinnah Cultural Center.) 

It’s summer after all (huzzah), so let’s wade into less heady waters. Something got stuck in my craw over vacation that I had to yank out. Have y’all ever pondered how musical artists sound more native in specific formats? (And forgive me if music folks already pondered this, I didn't look bc I don't want to get rid of what I've written so far.)

I’ll stick to what I know—90s-era hip-hop—to demonstrate. And it’s very Vineyard for me, as my obsession with hip-hop bloomed in the summers of the ’90s. So while I was folding T-shirts at Island Breeze or washing cars at Old Colony Service, I was making paychecks disappear at Aboveground Records (and Al’s Package Store, but that’s a different tale).

Cassette is easy: nothing sounds more cassette-native than DJ Shadow, Black Moon, or the Beastie Boys. The griminess of backpack and alternative hip-hop belongs in analog.

And while I'd put Raekwon in the vinyl format camp—he did release “the purple tape.” (which I purchased at the music store in Vineyard Haven—think it’s a paint store now.) Just slip “Glaciers of Ice” onto your turntable and you will understand why. Maybe just buy the purple tape and display it.

Definitely CD for CRU’s Da Dirty 30; a very solid project that plays best uninterrupted—while being able to exit tracks quickly to skip intros that didn’t age well. Also, one of the tracks, “Da Dirty 29,” pretends to be a damaged section of the physical media, complete with medium-specific error sounds. So if you play it on CD, you’ll hear skipping. Basically, it’s much easier to realize that the damaged sounds are an intentional artistic choice on CD.

On the cassette side of "Da Dirty 29" it plays as if the tape is being eaten to mush by grinding gears. Look, find some Gen X ******* and ask them how it felt when their favorite cassette started making a grinding sound. You could even drop a cherry on it with, “think of the film clenched in your teeth while the dentist has that nuke-cannon X-ray machine aimed an inch from your face.”

That was the sound of your favorite cassette dying.

Sink into ten hours of uninterrupted lo-fi ambience featuring mellow beats, ocean waves, drifting melodies, soft textures, and nostalgic vinyl pops. Whether you're studying, working, reading, sleeping, or unwinding after a long day, this immersive ambient soundscape provides the perfect background soundtrack. No talking, no interruptions—just pure lo-fi relaxation and meandering sounds.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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Going to be on vacation, so I have premade and scheduled this post. So as you read this, I am hopefully on a beach staring toward the horizon, thinking of the Spanish Navy captain whose ship was ambushed by pirates and sunk. The captain survived ten days underwater.

The year was 1634, February 13th, a day before Valentine's—but Captain Ortega was from Spain, so they wouldn’t be celebrating Valentine's Day yet. To him, it was just a Wednesday. Captain Ortega, a youthful Santa Claus-looking dude, parked his tall ship behind a barrier reef for the night.

The pirates snuck in on a sloop and blasted Ortega’s ship with cannons. There was a terrific fire that crippled the ship and plunged her into the depths.

Ten days later, Ortega was found sprawled out on a beach, clutching his logbook. He eventually described how he survived the attack and was rescued by brightly colored sea Smurfs called Snorks. They were no bigger than his thumb, he relayed, and he was not believed. The historical record notes that Ortega had delirium.

Fast forward to the 1980s: a man has found Captain Ortega's logbook in a monastery overlooking the sea. The man who found the logbook is also (ostensibly) a sea captain—he's wearing a sea captain's hat like that dude from Captain & Tennille. I guess that makes him... Captain. Another captain...

Anyway, the Captain & Tennille-looking captain from the 1980s believes what he has read in Captain Ortega’s logbook. “There’s something about Captain Ortega’s story that makes me believe it’s true.”

Now I’ve told you the whole story. See it here if you don’t believe me. Do the Snorks exist? Or was Captain Ortega drunk-driving his tall ship?

Also, I watched all the seasons of Snorks, and humans never show up. The Captain & Tennille-looking captain’s story ends in the Season 1 Snorks cartoon intro. We never get a resolution, never see another human again in the show.

Moreover, we're talking 1664, and Captain Ortega is not in Spain. What were you up to, Ortega?

This week we are waiting on a flight in some Mid-Major airport. A nice liminal space to relax or sleep with. 10 hours of airport sounds including muffled announcements, large room air-conditioning, timely takeoffs, airport denizens, and drift.

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We’re waiting for a late-night flight to somewhere awesome, tucked into a dark corner with a view of the runway fading into the milky darkness beyond. Vehicle lights twinkle. The runway blazes with multicolored bulbs. And my favorite person, the waving double-flashlight dude (I always wondered if these folks ever pretended to be Jedis). Planes speed down the runway in the distance, like racing Christmas trees.

In the 90s I had the perfect spot at Atlanta airport near my favorite eatery, Gyro Wrap (you fostered my love of the gyro, thank you Gyro Wrap). I loved watching the nighttime choreography of massive flying machines and service vehicles while awaiting that late connection to Columbia, SC, and back to my military school bunk by midnight.

One trip nearly ended with me joining the Army by accident. A very stern-looking dude from the U.S. Army (reception cadre) double timed over to me as I headed for the Taxi stand of the Columbia Airport. “No gum. The hell are you chewing gum for? Take those headphones off when I’m speaking to you.”

I’m like, “Uhm.”

He starts laying into my posture. I wasn’t standing straight. Gum out right now. Hand outstretched to a line of people in the distance. “Eyes straight. Let’s go.” And I see a line of dudes rigid with fear. “You made all of us late—“

I jumped in, “sir, I’m sorry, I didn’t join the Army. I’m in military school. I have to catch a cab.”

His eyes widened at my interruption, then his expression softened into something much friendlier—even jocular. “Ya—! Ooooh… I was about to put you on the bus.”

He asked how long I had been in military school and I was like, “Six years.”

“Six years? Do they not teach posture? Chest up, shoulders back…” And he clapped me on the back, "See you in a few months."

I wanted to do add a "sorry but I will be attending another military school in a few months." But he was back to his charges telling them the wait would continue.

Speaking of airport nostalgia, this week’s episode cover is a homage to the stellar Catch Me If You Can opening credits. Which is itself a nostalgic, Saul Bass–ish 1960s film opening. I’ve never seen Catch Me If You Can, but the credit sequence was formative in inspiring where I wanted to take my career. I should leave out that my mantra became “I will only work on documentaries or major motion picture credit sequences” (and whatever job I could get at MTV, I’ll mop the TRL studios).

The Catch Me If You Can credit sequence by Kuntzel + Deygas is unassailable. And middling designers (such as myself) will make any excuse to play with others’ wonderful work and call it homage. (See my recent Matrix episode for more).

I mean, it is self-gratification. Can I say that? And leave aside the vulgar common understanding—it would be like my buying a home-run baseball on eBay. Some other person caught the ball, or ripped it from a child’s hands, put it in a box, slapped on some stamps, and shipped it across multiple states. Now I’m holding up that baseball as if I accomplished something.

Then again, it was fun to make.

This week we have a Summertime Vibe, a bright nostalgic front-yard audio space.

10 hours of summer sounds: sprinklers, birds, lawn mowing, some drift and sounds inspired by the heard but never seen ice cream truck. (Anyone have kids? My kids never hear "do the dishes," but they can geolocate an ice cream truck 3 neighborhoods away based on the jingle volume).

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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Summertime! Throw on Dove Shack or a summertime mix by Jazzy Jeff and Mick Boogie (after listening to this week’s ambience). Or everything at once with Peruvian takeout and a karate kick to that rotten bastard who cut you off in traffic. Huzzah! Summertime!

I hope everyone has a safe and memorable season. Maybe let the outside world do what it does and embrace some selective apathy. Take some time for yourself and those who are important to you. 

One easy step: turn off cable and commercial news. 

Cable news is a for-profit industry staffed by people who fill on-air time with content intended to hold eyeballs hostage so they can expose viewers to commercials of erectile dysfunction pills. Pretty easy task—just stage an on-air Chuck E. Cheese fight. 

Cable news producers invite hacks and debate freaks willing to put their reputations on the line to mock victims of war or shout at each other. “Get your ******* hand out of my face!” is a much simpler way to stack the ENPS rundown of their show than gather or vet stories.

Has anyone ever sidled up to you with erectile medications during a restaurant fight? Maybe they should? In the real world, shouting “Bro, eat my fist!” is going to grab a lot of eyeballs—you could then conceivably sell stuff. 

Give it a try: initiate a ridiculous argument over at the Skee-ball machine. Then switch to, “Everyone! All of you should buy my **** pills!” 

No one would be okay with that.

Look, when you flip your TV to cable news channels, you are not witnessing anything. They are actively taking your eyes through cringe and anger before mushing your face into banking ads and mounds of fast-food meat. 

And you still won’t know what is actually happening in the world.

**** them, it’s summertime.

Magical Big Ben belfry ambience for fighting off procrastination or for mechanically induced focus. 10 hours of Big Ben, clock innards, musical plucks, London street ambience, and classic British broadcasting.

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If I were to quickly pitch the episode ingredients: we have a sprinkling of Big Ben, London street ambience, and a 60-year-old BBC episode I found online. Tossed together with all sorts of clocks and drifty stuff. I imagine we are amongst the bells of the belfry with an FM Radio. Enjoying whatever magical clock-mechanic sounds happen all around. (I envision the magic fits between Tinker Bell and Rube Goldberg.)

All of the above is meant for procrastination thumping sounds, get a bunch of work done!

Ok, so lately I’ve been listening to What's All This Then, a delightful podcast hosted by two British expats and a guest covering British minutiae. So like beans on toast, why British folks don’t rinse their dishes after lathering them in bubbles, et al. During a recent episode, a host mentioned that if you were to stand at the base of the Elizabeth Tower — or, as yanks know it, “Big Ben” and listen to BBC Radio 4, you will hear the live recording of the bell before the sound can travel down from the heights. Radio signals travel faster than sound waves.

And that was all I needed to spiral into a manic mini-obsession over Big Ben... Also Big Ben is just the bell?

I listened myself to BBC 4—the bell's gong plays at the top of the hour and the ringing is live.

I also learned Humpty Dumpty wasn’t a cannon(?)

I did my best to explain all of the above to my wife over dinner, including the Humpty bit, and she was like, “I thought Humpty was an egg?”

Also, I was like, “Hon — did you know A1 is not American? And they’ve got this whole other brown meat sauce!”

She's like, “This is the most boring conversation I’ve ever had.”

I reminded her that she regularly shares the contents of her dreams during meals. The night before, she recounted Six Flags opening a location in our basement and the cat got lost down there. You want to talk boring? Recounting efforts to rescue a cat out of a dream-basement tilt-a-whirl.

PS: Nerd stuff — if you guessed that I positioned the hands of the... Big Ben clock(?) to 7:30 as an homage to the late great emcee Big L (from his track Criminal Slang)—you would be correct. "If you 7:30, that mean you crazy..." And the title is referencing a super nerdy mash-up of DJ eccentrics and jazz/funk drummers.

Have a nice weekend!

Projection fan ambience for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 10 hours of smooth fan. No talking just continuous ambient sound. 

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I’ve had a complicated relationship with overhead projectors. One aughts summer, my brother-in-law borrowed one from the school district, and we broadcast Rogue Squadron 2on the side of his house. The Battle of Endor played extra big. It was awesome.

Typically, overhead projectors haunted my high school experience (I was a terrible student). A distinctly smooth gray-noise machine aimed blurry equations, history, language, and science principles onto a pull-down screen at the front of class. Screens that were only fun going away, as a tug initiated a spring to wheel the screen back into a roll with a “clap, clap, clap.”

One projector was wheeled into ninth-grade biology before the final dissection of the trimester: a pig heart. And the class needed to take note of how we were to cut the pickled organ.

It was to be my first dissection of the year—the other two times I had gotten a pass with a “because my religion” excuse (it was the ’90s, I went to a southern military school with its own church on campus).

The "my religion" excuse failed the third attempt after my teacher asked, “What is your religion?” And I was like, “eh... Lutheran?”

“Lutherans have a problem with dissection?”

“I think?”

The teacher called my parents and asked if they were comfortable with my cutting up a pig heart, and found out my mother was a cardiologist.

Conference buffet kitchen prep for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 10 hours of distant sales talk over kitchen prep. No surprises—just continuous ambient sounds.

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Because there’s too much stimulation, too much feverishness, and too many dastardly individuals transmitted into our handhelds. Private spaces invaded by tense horse****.

And learn how to ****** swear in print, Variety. Their headline: “Robert Downey Jr. Says ‘It’s Absolute Horses—’ to Declare That Social Media Influencers Are the ‘Stars of the Future'" caught many off guard. All yesterday I was sitting on the s—ter, amused by folks dunking on “horses—” as if it could be a synonym for “golly jeepers” or some s—.

And no shade to Doctor Doom; I am a big fan of “horses—.” “Bulls—” is shopworn… To me, the animals— rankings would be:

​Bats—​Horses—​Chickens—

What were we talking about? Ah, villainy… awful people who won’t settle for just control; they want their touchdown dance and an audience for it. As if Neil Armstrong were to land on the moon’s surface and radio back, “That’s one small step for man, one giant f— you!!”

That’s why this week we are aiming for mild horses—. A boring gathering at the third-best hotel in your city for conferences (and fourth for weddings). Where the speeches drone and the Chicken à la King swims in chafing dishes warmed over for lunchtime.

PS it would be goldfishs— if you didn't follow us on your favorite podcast provider.

And hi, moms! HMD

Game Boy video gaming on an airplane ambience with drift for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 10 hours of 8-bit gaming ambience featuring chill gaming thrills, enveloped in high-altitude air travel. No talking—just continuous ambient sounds.

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This is a sequel of sorts to ourGame Boy on an airplane episode from a couple years back. In this episode, we’ll be focusing on the imagined gameplay. The game occurring here is a sneaky espionage mission—but with space aliens, or something less currently happening in the world right now ****. Pew-pew extraterrestrial stuff, and if we have any subscribers on Orion, forgive me.

And follow us on your podcast platform for more episodes like this!

Mid-aughts late night office ambience with drift for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 10 hours of office ambience featuring printers, typing, sparse notes, drift, and high rise building tone. No talking, just continuous ambient sound. And follow us in your podcast platform for more episodes like this.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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So this week’s episode cover image pays homage to Saul Bass’ opening sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest.

Do I really need to shout out Saul Bass as the inspiration for this week’s episode cover? Check out the clumsy Photoshop composition I made of a master’s work featured in another master’s work.

And next I will impart to you a moral principle from childhood I subscribe to… “Do unto others.” Which was said by—

Heavens, I just had an intrusive memory that is quasi related to the opening sequences of movies. Bluh. So when I was graduating from college I had “like totally mastered” Avid Media Composer. I was using the 90s-era titling tool in AMC to make rudimentary cartoons and was convinced I was the ****.

So when I started applying to jobs, I was applying to the big guys, and to stand out I was trying to be super creative. So when I sent a 30-minute-long collection of my Avid Media Composer title-tool cartoons on VHS to Imaginary Forces—

THE Imaginary Forces, the folks that pre-horrified the movie Se7en. They pre-excitemented the Raiden Metal Gear. And later did movie logo opens for Marvel and DC Comics…

And I just packaged up a resume and demo tape and sent it addressed to one of the top people. And to extra stand out: I printed personalized notes about my short history on fortune-cookie-sized paper and stuffed them into an envelope to bursting. I think I used four different fonts on that resume… Ooph if someone opened that demo envelope, it probably made a mess.

Underwater ambience with whale sounds for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 9 hours of ocean ambience featuring whale song, submarine engine noise, sonar pings, drift, and gentle water movement. No talking, just continuous ambient sound. Also follow us in your podcast platform for more episodes like this.

Enjoying the sounds? Tap the 5-star rating button on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to help support this independent show

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A little underwater odyssey beneath the waves for relaxation, or a break from the bickering “brolitics” of the creatures living above sea level. 

And let me save you the time James Cameron, I am positive if we fastened a microphone outside of a jolly ****** submarine it wouldn’t sound like this. I am not an oceanographer (well spaced clapping hand emojis). I went to school hoping I would be a radio disc jockey…

When my biology professor sister casually dropped, yeah, when whales die they just sink to the bottom of the ocean. I was honestly flabbergasted, I didn’t assume whale hearses were a thing, I just—I don’t know what I thought… 

Speaking of odysseys, I was at the movies with my wife this week, and there’s just a slew of trailers featuring the awesome power of man. Antiquity inspired long-haired dudes with pythons for arms and giant mythological weaponry clasped in catcher-glove-sized hands. Magic pew-pew-pewing all around... One was He-Man, one was some assassin—the trailers are all The Northmannow.

And I’m in my wife’s ear like, “We dudes love fantasies where we’re awkward twerps as children, go away for years, and come back home as gods.” 

And she’s like, “What’d you say?” 

And then in the trailer I hear a character say, “Odysseus…”and I turn back to my wife like, “Never mind, I do want to see this movie.”

And she’s like, “Shut up, I’m trying to watch this.”

Star Trek TOS Enterprise bridge ambience at warp speed for sleep, study, and deep focus. 8 hours of continuous space ambience featuring engine hum, starfield visuals, and a steady bridge atmosphere.

Visual episode with no talking or interruptions.

Let’s get off-world again this week with a visual ambience bonus episode. In the spirit of the recent space news (the only non-horrifying news from last week)—the Artemis crew flying around the moon and giving us astounding images of Luna’s far side—let’s head to the bridge of Captain Kirk’s 1960s Enterprise and wander through space at warp speed.

Old TV static ambience for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 9 hours of channel surfing white noise with soft signal drift, static hiss, and subtle audio fluctuations. No talking, just continuous ambient sound.

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TV static and ambient drift is this week’s episode—the sound of no television signal, i.e., no channel transmitting.

I’m old (we’ve discussed this). I realize that TVs today just have a logo bouncing around the screen (yes, I'm thinking of the Office). In the old days, we would see static or “TV snow”—random electromagnetic noise displayed on screen (in the absence of A Current Affair). And that electromagnetic noise gets passed to the TV speaker—“you deal with it” and that sounded like “KSSSSSSSSSSSSSH.”

In the old days, when humans got mad at the TV, they had to stand, walk across a room, and turn a knob to change the channel. And many channels were unassigned, so we had to traverse multiple screens of “KSSSSSSSSSSSSSH” before seeing another human talking at us.

Speaking of changing the channel—modern cable news...

Cable news is essentially sports radio (they even offer betting now). Drive through any major media market (NY, LA, Philly—I love you, Philly! **** the haters) and listen to any sports radio station: bickering, crazy talk that all purports to lay the groundwork for fixing the home team’s problems. One subject that covers the entire day, ad infinitum.

There was a point in the ’90s–2000s when television leadership realized their anchor—a stiff doofus reading current events—wasn’t great for keeping eyeballs. And TV heads wanted audiences sticking around for twangy erectile dysfunction ads. Execs realized that arguing and debate among ***holes with insincere smiles and unearned gravitas equaled prolonged viewership.

The problem is that on-air talent often doesn’t know what the **** they’re talking about, especially when they drift from the teleprompter. I’ve worked in television (we’ve discussed this too) and have witnessed anchors interject into on-air time with riffing—saying profoundly incorrect ****.

One anchor claimed a local basketball phenom with size 18 feet wore bigger shoes “than even Shaq” (Shaq wears, like, size 22). Another anchor, during a breaking live takeover of the US Airways Flight 1549 (Hudson River landing), claimed that whatever caused the plane’s engine to fail must have occurred in Connecticut airspace, because “once you take off from Laguardia you are almost immediately over Connecticut." All you have to do is look at a map to refute that dumb ****... A third anchor notoriously killed whole segments of the 11 o’clock news to make room for ad-libs. How long the show floated unscripted depended on how many beers the anchor had with dinner.

Ok, maybe not profoundly incorrect examples... Like these idiot anchors and TV producers, I’m also a communications major, so my criticism is limited to the banal. Yet one needn’t give these TV screws the benefit of the doubt on more complex subjects if they can’t get Shaq’s shoe size right.

If you must watch the news, I would suggest you find an independent source you can trust. If I were to suggest guardrails, it would be: follow sources that tell you what’s happening rather than pitting opposing sides to argue about it. If the channel you’re watching brings up a two-box with a couple of ***holes about to square off on anything but Tom Brady—change the channel.

PS: Shaq had one of the last awesome Reebok basketball sneakers—the Shaqnosis… For me, it’d be third place to Dee Brown, second to Shaq, first to Allen Iverson’s The Question (honorable mention for John Wall’s weird-looking pair).

Spacecraft ambient noise for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 8 hours aboard Discovery-1 featuring steady engine hum, life support systems, and subtle mechanical drift. Visual bonus episode with no talking or interruptions.

Bonus episode this week to escape from the news of our own world. Take a break on mildly murderous Discovery-1 as it flies away from our planet.

Inspired by the interior sequences aboard Discovery-1 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Scene built in Photoshop and After Effects, with ambient design and orchestral elements put together in Premiere.

Say hi to Jupiter!

Box fan white noise for sleep, deep focus, and relaxation. 9 hours of steady ambient fan noise to block distractions and promote rest. No talking, no interruptions—just consistent sound.

I got a new box fan. And that is this week’s episode.

They don’t make box fans the way they used to (you are so old)—no, seriously, we had a Sears box fan that lasted like 40 years. She sounded great, but by the end of her life, you had to stack Encyclopaedia Britannicas on her to keep her from rattling.

As I’ve probably mentioned several times in many disjointed ways, this podcast can be traced back to a thunderstorm in early-1980s Columbia, Maryland. The first time my parents revealed they had a solution for thunderstorms: a giant Sears box fan. It didn’t entirely extinguish what I perceived as danger, but it drowned it out enough.

So this new box fan will be here for anyone needing a break from our ****** horse****.

PS: Columbia, Maryland, has some funny road names. I think we lived on “Best Time of the Day Road” or “Goodtime Afternoon Lane.”

Outdoor café ambience in France for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. Ambient sounds of a French street café with birds, light traffic, distant conversation, and everyday city calm. No talking, just continuous ambient sound.

Take a break from our miserable hellscape and press play on a quaintly less terrifying hellscape (last month)—BUT last month in France! L’oie a mis toutes mes affaires sur ma voiture et l’a incendiée.

Pretend it's February! February! February! That has to be the first February chant in history, man. It doesn’t chant well. The four syllables and it’s a terrible ****** month.

Whatever, we’re heading back to Sète! With a microphone situated between a road and an outdoor cafe. So we’ll hear traffic, birds, and folks enjoying un déjeuner en terrasse par cette belle journée. Just sit down nearby, open a newspaper or dip your baguette in olive oil.

It’s a mental break. Ignore the world.

1934 MLB All-Star Game vintage radio broadcast ambience for relaxation and focus. Historic baseball audio experience with crowd atmosphere, radio commentary, and 1930s-era stadium sound.

We are time-traveling back to 1934 to celebrate Baseball in Baltimore! Wait. Baltimore! Hometown of Spiro Agnew, Michael Phelps, and Spankrock. The place where Edgar Allen Poe disembarked a train and then died. 

Wait, stop — you don’t get to intro with this cute cultural smattering, "next we’ll visit Cleveland, Dreeeew Carey!" 

Cards out, I wanted to have a baseball game presented to an audience and have it be a historical setting. As if we were standing in the venue, time traveling dudes… and ladies. But I didn’t want the insane challenge of a baseball radio broadcast set in a historically accurate saloon. Vintage fans carrying on in historically accurate ways would be an extreme challenge and so I chose the 1934 All Star Game (in a wealthy person bar). 

Time travel? Baltimore? Baseball? Did the Orioles even exist at this point?

Ok so there was a minor league Orioles— oh! they had this pitcher Lefty Grove. A Marylander, (minor league) Oriole, Future Hall of Famer… Lefty was traded for an outfield fence in Martinsburg. Lefty Grove was very much a way I could have tied Baltimore to the 1934 All Star Game… if he was in that All Star game. ****. Lefty Grove was an All Star in ’33, ’35, ’36, ’37, ’38, ’39.  

I tried to find the 1933 All Star Game broadcast — a game which native son Babe Ruth clobbered a two run shot and Lefty Grove secured the save. That totally would have strengthened my case for presenting the All Star Game in Charm City...And I failed to find it in full.

So… 1934! Baltimore! Look I promise I found us a neat place to listen to the game. Behold, the structurally beautiful Hotel Rennert, one of the city’s early skyline darlings (now a parking lot). It was the place for area titans to smoke cigars and bro it up the super formal way dudes did back then.

Digging into the hotel’s history turned out to be as complicated as I should have anticipated. The Hotel Rennert’s fine dining reputation rested on chefs like Henry Cummings, a formerly enslaved man who moved to Baltimore and became a fixture as chef and caterer. He was an “expert in the preparation of terrapin… and all kinds of rare games in famous old Maryland style.”

I found some Hotel Rennert menus (lunch and dinner) with plans to make a lazy inflationary joke (¢15 lobster?!) until I read on the back: “…From the very inception of the hostelry in 1885 it has employed only colored chefs and colored waiters." And being way out of my depth, I wondered how to digest that. Everything has been silly and light so far.  Do I ignore and move on? 

So Old Line Plate, a blog of Maryland culinary history, helped shed some light on why a place like Hotel Rennert might advertise its employment practices on the menu. Old Line Plate cites Afro-American’s December 1915 edition: “The French chef has been tried in the south, but, except in a few rare instances, they have failed to satisfy the peculiar demands of the southern epicure or even of the tourist who, coming south, expects dishes peculiarly southern... The demand for capable colored cooks is greater than the supply." 

Smithsonian Magazine detailed how American recipes in the 1800s shifted from “puddings, pies, and roasted meats” to include dishes like “pepper pot, okra stew, gumbo, and jambalaya” as African foodways were woven into American cuisine.

Was this about serving better food, or were there broader forces at play? This is 1934—thirteen years before Jackie Robinson. We will only hear the All Stars that were allowed to play (IE: no Willie Wells, Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson). 

Tom Manning, Ford Bond and Graham McNameehad the call for NBC. McName got his start in radio announcing by walking into a radio station and asking if anyone needed an opera singer. 

ps: Go O's.

Parked car ambience in heavy rain for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 9 hours of interior rain sounds with soft windshield drips, distant thunder, and subtle cabin drift ambience. No talking, just continuous rain and white noise-style audio.

Interior of a new (preowned) Chevy Spark during heavy rain and wind. With a composite of nautical weather forecasts, engine tone, and drifty notes.

And I don't have much else… Oh yo, if I had a time machine I would go back to 1989 and ask Debbie Gibson out for dinner somewhere; an extremely professional dinner… I’m married (although technically, if I went back to 1989, I would be in a space before I was married, technically). And I would be kind of famous myself as Mr. Time Traveller. But yeah, married, and no chace anything other than a meeting with an ’80s pop icon (I could tell her who shot JR).

Regardless… When was the Cheesecake Factory founded? I could’ve been like, “Don’t worry, I know a good spot, Ms. Gibson. The original ****** Cheesecake Factory. It’s huge where I come from in 2026. There’s an everyday brunch menu. Every day.”

Also, the future isn’t “Electric Youth”; the future is unfortunately an abundance of war crimes. But… try the Chocolate Tuxedo Cream Cheesecake—it’s amazing and probably 7000 calories.

"Out of the Blue is your magnum opus" I would say, "it's not the flashiness of Electric Youth." And my hands would be gesticulating wildly because I would be ****** nervous. "Every Out of the Blue song would win the six-man award if they could play elite basketball and were in the NBA. Excellent songs, without the max contracts—" actually let's cut this short as it's getting weird.

Instead, let's just focus on the Cheesecake Factory, my near-ish location has weird fused glass plates affixed to towering wooden beams that split the booth tables. And the glass looks like the Eye of Sauron. So you walk in and there are like fifty Eyes of Sauron staring at you. And you pass throngs of people to exchange your name with the wait staff for a brick-sized pager coated in ancient soda syrup grime. And while you wait the forty-five minutes for a table, you take in the decor—this ancient pastiche of columns fused with cherub faces and flamingos. It’s as if the designer was tasked with imagining what an Applebee’s might look like on the island of Dr. Moreau.

Speaking of waking nightmares... the present—and look, I won't tell you where to get your news, but if a pillow or military subcontractor or pharmaceutical commercial runs between programming, skip that garbage. Listen to the rain... the rain won't lie to you.

Hotel ambience and coastal night sounds from Sète, France for sleep, relaxation, and deep focus. 9 hours of French hotel white noise (air conditioning “la clim”), distant street ambience, and soft seaside town nighttime atmosphere. No talking, just continuous ambient sound.

We’re headed overseas to Sète a small coastal town in the South of France, “the Little Venice of Languedoc.” A ville known for Octopus Pie, Georges Brassens, and some interesting history (pretty famous anarchist lived there) for such a young European town. My hometown of Albany, NY (1686) is nearly as old as Sète (1666). Very neat.

So my twin was recently in Sète and was wonderful enough to bring my microphone (my mic has now been to cooler places than me). The microphone was positioned just outside of her hotel room window and takes in the quiet coastal surroundings with intermittent fan noises. I guess over there they call their HVAC “la clim” — essentially a PTAC (I think? I don’t know much about HVAC).

You don't know how geeked I am for French fans! I hope y'all enjoy and maybe find some peace (if only for a few). 

There's a lot of news to take a break from — so another visual ambience bonus. Get up in the clouds and look how manageable things look from up here.

This week’s episode includes rain recorded from the center of a lean-to with some added drift. A lean-to is structure some folks park cars under, or picnic tables. Basically it protects people and things from airborne elements (not asteroids).

Does anyone remember the aughts? Fat Joe had a really popular song that I assumed was about the Rockaway Peninsula, but maybe not. I always assumed it was a Fat Joe beach-adventure thing where he leans back in his car, lowers the boom on the sound system, and strokes his chin like he’s assessing upcoming chess moves as he weaves through traffic on the BQE. (Directed by Hype Williams)

So, one New Year’s Eve in Burlington, VT I got completely wasted at Rasputin’s, and in the car ride back to our spot I shouted at pedestrians, “DO THE ROCKAWAY!” And more than one yelled back, “**** you!” And I was like, “Yo, you say that **** to Fat Joe’s face!”

Bluh, I'm struggling here folks...

At least hints of warmer weather are in the air — actually strike that, I don’t know why I need to attempt some poetic horse****. "Hints...” I should just—guys, there was a warm day last week with rain and I recorded some of it. And I added some drift because it feels nice to have a hobby.

Spring! Tune out, ignore the commercial news, and for heaven's sake do the Rockaway.

Also subscribe (and share)! We have a historical major league baseball episode opening day!

Want some visual ambience? Well — "Buckle your seatbelt, Dorothy, 'cause Kansas is going bye-bye." And we're back in the movie world for this visual ambience. The 1999 sci fi/ neo noir classic the Matrix. BTW — has there been another actor so tormented by **** lines in movies like Joe Pantoliano? ("You're gonna' be retired soon like Michael Jordan!!" — that was Matrix right?)

Digital rain made in after effects, The digital green Matrix text melted a lot of graphic designer brains in the 90s... So if you know a Gen X designer — that person has at least attempted the Matrix text effect several times.

This is my seventh iteration of the “Matrix text” (made entirely in after effects with no weird filters or presets, ty).

Vintage vacuum drift — bright, faster-paced, optimistic, with occasional doubt (and some coffee breaks).

I was thinking of a busy morning cleaning hotel rooms. The folks — or can I say? — usually women. Always friendly, always moving about the hall with a giant cart and a few cute tchotchkes. I can count on one finger the number of times I’ve seen a gentleman cleaner. I want to be as specific as possible because these ladies (and the gentleman) rarely get the appreciation they deserve.

Do you remember those dreaded Saturday morning chores, when a parent handed you a broom and just pointed? How aggrieved did we feel about making the bed? (Had to make mine with the hospital tuck — it absolutely sucked).

And housekeeping does it everyday — everyday is Saturday chores. So tip housekeeping before checkout, folks.

I don't know what else to say. It's tough out there right now. And hopefully ambience provides a small distraction.

Also, good news! I’ve been working on an upcoming episode featuring a 90 year old baseball broadcast. The broadcast will play as if in a bar from history (it's a parking lot now). The aim is to release near Opening Day.

Until then, turn off the commercial news. Celebrate the small wins and go O's.

Overnight snow storm composite — my a.m. recording of the massive ⁠January 23–27 storm⁠ with some notes and late 70s radio blizzard coverage.

Speaking of storms of yore, do y’all remember the email storm? They’re the Mona Lisa of human/ tech pratfalls. An email storm, or replyallcalypse, is when a surge of emails is exchanged as users continually “reply all” to the original message.

Modern inboxes have safeguards to prevent email storms — which is a shame, as I'm positive humans are still willing to ensnare themselves.

I witnessed an impressive email storm in the mid-aughts while working for Newscorp. So, twenty years ago — second Bush administration — think Wii Bowlingand High School Musical. I was at a Fox owned-and-operated station in Philadelphia… it was Newscorp (boo, amirite), but also one of the favorite places I’ve worked (colleagues were cool, and it was a paid TV gig in an actually awesome city, Jim'swas within lunchtime walking distance). But seriously — commercial television news: don’t watch it. You don’t need it.

Look — picture the aughts, the golden age of the mobile phone. A cellphone store felt like sticking your face into the 2005 movie Robots. Different sizes, colors, shapes, personalities. They flipped, had tactile keyboards, and looked fab in a holster. My cellphone was a Nokia N-Gage QD (so sick).

I worked the morning show (4 a.m. start), graphics. So, on the Fox Email Storm morning, I wandered by Independence Hall and fragments of Benjamin Franklin’s former home. I buzzed into the lobby and was immediately intercepted by a PA.

“Do not respond to the email.”

And I was like, “What?”

“There are emails. Delete them and don’t respond.”

“Which email? What?”

“You’ll know,” she said, already rushing to the next person. “Do not respond to the email.”

The IT guy caught me getting off the elevator on the second floor. “Do not reply to the email or you will be ******* fired.” And he smiled to soften the threat, but I was sure he wasn’t kidding.

Ooph — intrusive memory. That was the same elevator where I once felt alone enough to stop fighting a fart… and then a ringed hand reached in to stop the door from shutting. In walked the traffic reporter, dressed like an adult. And I was wearing a comic book t-shirt in a cloud of my own gas. Bluh. Never assume your elevator journey will be solitary just because you got on alone.

Where was I — email storm, Fox News. So some Detroit station intern sent a very late-night email to all. Everybody got it. Brit Hume, Sheppard Smith, Hannity, Colmes, the pride of Bethlehem High School, Megyn Kelly, corporate leadership, Geraldo, me and everybody else.

Not only did some intern obtain an email address that pinged company-wide, the dude emailed that address. Praising the president and scooping on some vanilla jingoism. I was like, this is the dangerous email? You’re from Detroit, man — at least invoke Oliver Hazard Perry.

Whatever — my inbox was flooded with assenting voices — cheering it on, remixing the messaging from Detroit. I searched through the wreckage for any specialty graphic orders and then dumped the day's emails. Went to grab some coffee.

I returned to another pile with more popping in. Notification chimes, “12 new emails,” it was astounding.

The messages were transitioning now to “Unsubscribe.” I heard running in the hallways. A new larger wave of emails asked to be removed from the list. People were shouting in all caps. I started to imagine these voices were yelling at me — “TAKE ME THE **** OFF THIS LIST!” Senders that brandished titles like “Head of This” and “Department Lead” in their email signatures. 

A new wave of earlier assenters began desperately rescinding their messages by sending even more messages. One user feebly wrote [[UNSEND]].

It went on a bit longer before finally petering out — great day at work. I think I even splurged on an extra slice at Gianfranco.

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 FridayRussell 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.

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.

We’re ending the year in a wonderfully bleak Vermont valley, already covered in snow and taking on more. Spend the night listening as the small flakes pile up around you and the winds howl over the peaks.

The holidays are gone, we flip the calendar back to the beginning with a new number to reign over it all. January, 2026. Ensconced in winter’s tomb until mid-April. But it sure looks pretty. The slight nighttime glow of Vermont’s small giants, the Green Mountains, covered in white, can make even the dullest early months feel magical. 

Just don’t forget to silence your phone — while we may be near South Royalton and far enough from everywhere else — the 5G will still bring in the incessant pocket buzzing of your phone (This is Vermont not the Oort cloud. You can get NYE messaging here).

Look, I’m pretty sure many of the other New Year’s–adjacent uncommon ambience posts are painted with personal feelings about my least favorite holiday. I’m not here to rain on anyone’s ball droppings — I’ve done that enough already. 

This is the day we celebrate “new beginnings” while our health care costs reset, local governments enact unpopular new rules, and we stand in front of couches or bar stools toasting “my year!”

And all night, messages and group chat alerts from all the people in our lives.

The cinephile friends continuing their NYE phone-buzzing group chat that you somehow got added to. Tonight they started a movie together at an exact time so the Statue of Liberty smashes the roof of the Manhattan Museum of Artat exactly midnight.

And you know damn well why you were added to that group — it was that movie take you absentmindedly assented that got you added to that group chat. Something about Rachel Dawes being swapped with Ellie Burr without changing either movie. It was a crowded party. A buddy was dangling on a trembling limb of being labeled “weird,” and so you swooped in with a reflexive “totally agree.”

Now you’re in a movie-people chat. Tonight they’re watching Ghostbusters II, randomly dealing out their dark-horse New Year’s movies, when — guys — you won. We’ve ceded Die Hard to Christmas. We don’t need to do that with every holiday.

There will be folks accounting for an earlier wave of pocket buzzing — the folks who don’t salute any dropping ball and want that known. Sending out all flavors of “in bed at 8 p.m., ttyl!”

Also, the post-midnight flurry of photos: sleeping children. They almost made it! Oh, how wholesome. You knew Anderson Cooper and platform-specific lip-synching wasn’t going to keep your kids awake.

The counter-culture folks still picking up Animal Crossing New Leaffor their long abandoned town’s celebration — 

And… I’m mocking NYE again — probably for the third year in a row.

Maybe spend a quiet evening amongst the snow of Southern Vermont. It’ll work great at counteracting whatever fireworks your neighbor saved from the 4th of July and is definitely setting off tonight. Nighttime winter Southern Vermont snow. Wind over the Green Mountains, falling snow, and quiet rural winter sounds. An ambient sound podcast episode for sleep, focus, and relaxation (trying some SEO suggestions from a pal as I typically use this entire text block to rant — I wouldn’t need to do this if y’all felt like subscribing to uncommon ambience).

Make it your New Year’s resolution to subscribe to the scrappy little sound podcast that only wants success for you in the new year — unless you’re evil.

Episode art made in photoshop.

White Castle steam-griddle station... ambience.

The perspective of this week’s episode is near the burger steaming station (if you’re curious how that operation goes, let Double Dare’s Marc Summers walk you through it). And not to worry — you can sleep at this steaming station; no one is worried about what you’re doing.

And BTW, this isn’t sanctioned or intended to be an ad. I’m just a fan and would love to imagine myself within arm’s length of those steamy sliders. I have a bit of a White Castle problem: I have the White Castle Pumas, I’m usually a sack of ten and a Cherry Coke (no fries) — if I were hungry enough to add fries at any other fast-food spot, I’m spending that hunger on another sack of ten.

And as a programming note: if the White Castle Corporation sends me a cease-and-desist, this description will instead be geared toward the oddly shaped meatloaf burgers my father would make, stuffed with Bac-Os, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, and onions. The patties were so oddly shaped, if they were in orbit they would be confused with Saturn's moon, Hyperion.

One of the most notorious of these family “burger nights” ended with us watching a VHS of my mother at work in the cath lab. Had to wait until the end because she said something funny. Aside from the occasional flying streams of blood, it was hella boring.

So watch this space!

Until then — we are boosting the Castle for free. And I have to think that the oft-trod subject of “Where the hell are they?” adds to their nostalgic appeal — at least for those of us who know there are a bunch in New Jersey, but we’re not quite sure where. I swear the White Castles of New Jersey operate in the Doctor Who universe. White Castles only ever appear like, “Surprise *****! I’m in Ledgewood now!” And then maybe it’s not there next time because… TARDIS perception filter.

And I haven’t seen the Dude, Where’s My White Castle? movie, so I could just be describing the plot of that. It’s a thread that runs through all of us. No matter where we as a species go — like, we could be going into space — we still somehow need to drive through New Jersey first (and hopefully near a food exit with a Castle logo).

I was on a road trip with a buddy in ’09, and White Castle was the “food exit” around Perth Amboy. I nudged him: “White Castle, man — let’s go.”

“Nah, man,” he said. “There’ll be one up there. Don’t worry.” My buddy never liked leaving the highways in NJ for local roads. I suspected the lack of legal left turns spited him somehow.

But I countered with a pre-I-told-you-so — like, “If you see a White Castle, even if you’re not hungry, you go. It doesn’t matter how New Jersey you think your destination in New Jersey is — you can’t count on White Castle being there.”

Parsippany burned us, and we ate Burger King or some ****.

Tonight we have a Christmas-themed triple feature of public-domain movies as heard from the projection booth: The Star of Bethlehem (1950), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer(1948), and Scrooge(1935).

We’ll also be running trailers from three really bad Christmas movies: Die Hard 2, Santa Conquers the Martians, andSanta Claus(1985). Plus one trailer for a really good Christmas movie, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Rounding things out will be favorite 1980s-ish Christmas commercials and other vintage theater messaging (and a random appliance warehouse ad bc I want it stuck in everyone else's head too).

So — The Star of Bethlehem was the only work I was familiar with before beginning this week’s episode. It’s inclusion is a shout-out to my late father, for his insistence that we make it to the midnight service to hear this story told again and again and again. Miss you, Dad.

Religiosity aside, it’s an astonishingly beautiful work. I have a computer, and I couldn’t dream of producing something this wonderful. If you gave me a time machine to the 1950s, my MacBook, and pitted me against the creative team of Lotte Reiniger and Carl Koch, I would lose every time.

Reiniger created articulated paper figures from spare cardboard and other materials, and the team animated them on glass over painted backgrounds. (Preservationists studying her paper figures believe they can tell what she was eating during production, based on what material ended up in the dolls.) One of their rigs also looked like the best bunk bed ever — photo on wiki. Honestly, give me a time machine just so I can hang out with this crew, they seem cool.

Rudolph (1948) feels lower-budget by comparison. This is not Rankin/Bass Rudolph, man. It’s based on Robert L. May’s 1939 story, not the song. And to steal an internet meme: this is Zack Snyder Rudolph. Hard times — you can feel them oozing out of that steely, cold color palette. Which makes sense: World War II had just ended when production began.

Going further back in time brings us to our feature film Scrooge (1935). The acting is solid and includes an Ebenezer expert (Seymour Hicks) as the lead. Variety, literally said Hicks could play Ebenezer upside down in its December 11, 1935 issue. And that Hicks played Scrooge for more than a quarter century both onstage and in two films including a silent Scrooge in 1913.

As for trailers:

Die Hard 2 — which is just Die Hard with the melodrama turned all the way up and relocated to an airport. Also, I’m positive the airplane-eject scene for John McClane was later pilfered by the GoldenEye folks… and it’s nowhere near as cool.

Santa Conquers the Martians, which I briefly toyed with making the feature; is awful.

And Santa Claus (1985)... Last year my family stumbled onto a smart tv Christmas-movie list, and I saw Santa ’85 and said, “Hon, I have a movie that will blow your ****** mind. It’s like Superman meets Kris Kringle and is still earnest. Everyone is acting out of their brains. It’s like Shakespeare. Like if Frank Miller did Shakespeare doing Superman.”And then I hit play like I was firing a heat-seeking photon torpedo at General Chang.

Three minutes later, we’re watching Santa drown in snow. A few minutes after that: bizarre McDonald’s product placement. A scene of people merrily eating Quarter Pounders while, through the window, an unhoused and hungry child stares lustfully at the food consumption. His face framed by the Golden Arches.

The movie is bad. But awesome bad. See it for John Lithgow, as an evil toymaker who excels at selling extremely dangerous **** to children. And Dudley Moore is a charming mutinous elf that tries to outdo Santa by creating candy canes that make children float. Definitely see it.

And happy holidays, y'all.

PS: If you’re looking for an uncommon ambience episode with a more modern Scrooge, check out last year's ⁠The Night the Reindeer Died⁠: Christmas Workshop Ambience. "Yule love it."

Zen Fidget Board… Ambience — As of late I’ve been hoping to create an audio space that has several things going on at once (that behave, hopefully).

I see this space as a listener drifting into a Matrix-ish Construct room(load room), yet instead of rushing racks of rifles or Morpheus alongside a small-market TV executive’s desk, we drift inside the gelatinous mass of a lesser-defined composition of sounds.

I usually have better sleep success with envelopes of sound that have smaller things going on. And as the episode title and cover implies, there are several things in here to follow while the envelope takes over.

My favorite episode for this is the basketball episode—I love the engulfing fans with the small bounces and squeaks of play. I should make that episode longer, as I’m waking up in the test-taking episode that stresses me out (I went to Military School). Some folks like dry sounds—I won’t knock it.

Also give us a follow on your pod-player!

A small New England college nestled in the Green Mountains during snowfall, ambience. It’s the holidays, 1968; the chorus of Norwich University and Vermont College readies for their performance of Winter Songs. And you are invited. 

Well somewhat invited — obviously the 60’s are long gone, man. And the perspective for this performance will play outside of Plumley Armory pattering with falling snow.Passing traffic on snowy South Main — yes I’m being an ****** on purpose it’s Christmas — into charming (blue collar AF and I say that with admiration) Northfield, Vermont.  

I hope everyone enjoys the holidays this year, whether you celebrate or not. Seriously, enjoy the holidays; now go away. 

I don’t want to give up too much on how the sausage is made for the folks who just read a few lines and bounce. Just a couple more sentences and those people will disappear. What did y’all think of the Steam cube? 

OK, I feel like we’ve shaken off the normies — I found an obscure vinyl recording of a 1968 choral performance (no background sounds those were added) by Norwich University and Vermont College.

I’m not entirely sure what part of the year this recording coincided. With several invocations of the Devine I assumed the original recording must be Christmas. And I definitely wanted to imagine there was snow coming down for this performance (which could have been Spring, it snows like hell some Springs up there).

I’m positive divinity and salvation were pretty evergreen in 1968 for military college students on the precipice of graduation and probably the Vietnam War soon after.

I have to think more than one voice in this recording will be silenced by that war. Not to dampen spirits, I think we could hold on to that in a world ravaged by basic human instincts. There’s a lot of “that” to hold on to this holiday season. 

Maybe that’s why we sing?

Rainy thanksgiving drive ambience! Buckle up for a chilly November Eastern Seaboard Highway tour as we audibly make our way North. The only heat provided by an obscure cassette of 1970s dancehall music.

We'll do the driving you just relax. Mic perspective from the backseat.

Thanksgiving, the forced pilgrimage to see family. Cramped, perpetually seated and needing to pee — which… we can have wifi in our cars but not a catheter? 

The weird limited edition Mountain Dew only making matters worse. The Swedish Fish nearly gone after the first traffic light.

“Hopefully traffic is ok” the oft uttered intention that goes kaput once outside of the neighborhood. I live in the DMV and the folks that traverse this unique area are the absolute worst drivers on the planet.

The Baltimore tunnels will be a mess. And stay away from any rest area crab cake sandwiches unless you want to add three more unplanned stops to your trip. 

And **** you, Delaware. If we get hit by a meteor I hope it first hits that Newark toll centered on that tiny bit of I95 that can back up traffic to the breakaway point coming from Baltimore.

Also don’t forget to gas up before New Jersey — I got yelled at near Carney’s Point once for trying to fill my own gas tank, “you know you could mess **** up.” Frankly just stay out of New Jersey, backups can be expected any place that skirts the heliopause of NYC traffic.

And happy Turkey day (to our international listeners I hope y’all have a happy Thursday). 

Oh and my threat of ambience from my sister’s chicken coupe still stands for the folks out there who are regulars that are not subscribed. Subscribe before I unleash a fussy fowl firestorm on this channel. We love you, love us back, or else. Also postscript — if you noticed I totally ripped off the New Jersey Drive poster (IE: you recognize it) welcome fellow traveller, can we chat about how fantastic the soundtracks are? “Suweeeeee, either want a Benz or a Beamer”

Mostly Heaven ambience.

Shepherdstown, West Virginia — a favorite recording place of mine. But this time, with a twist: we’re adding the “almost” to the “heaven” this week with the help of some pink noise, cymbals, and synth. Or the “heaven” to the “almost.”

My daughter and I went to Handmade Christmas in Shepherdstown, WV, and she said to the festive hot-chocolate guy, “You look like you really love Christmas.” And we got doubles and some Reindeer Munch at the local popcorn place. It was just me and the youngest this weekend on a mission to treat the weekend like a ****** sleepover. 

I also wanted to show support for a favorite business after a congressional rug-pull this week. If I could call forth one fictional lunatic to fight the overbearing bureaucratic nonsense of today, it would be Timothy Hutton’s character in Turk 182. But let’s face it — The Turk 182 guy would be ineffective in today’s realities. No one is going to care if you spray some sick graffiti on the mayor’s van. No one is going to pay attention if you send up a banner plane to shame a bureaucrat with a seven character sky note. However, Turk 182 guy is persistent and unhinged, and he would unleash wacky havoc.

You’re thinking, “I didn’t come to a sound podcast to read about politics.” And so I will not descend into cloud-shouting toward political tight-assed villainy hence forth. 

If you would rather be in Purgatorio, click here.

And if you like what you hear give me a follow on your podcast app! Otherwise the next episode is going to be from my sister's chicken coup and trust me that **** is not chill.

In this episode we say farewell to our summer friends as our unseasonably warm weather transitions into the blustery cold we expect from November.

Spend some time with the remaining stragglers of summer’s chorus from Halloween into November 1st (recording was between ~10 PM – 3 AM). You’ll hear our dwindling insect friends making last-ditch pleas for love or defending their turf. Look, I’m not a bug person, but from online reading, I gather that these insects hatched later and are still in their adult stage looking to mate or defend territory. 

I know a few scientific bug people personally, and they wouldn’t help me understand why these little bastards are still making noise. Science people who are quick to ask me for graphics help illustrating random insect **** but will not return my calls about the bug lifecycles in my backyard. Oh, my backyard insect questions too pedestrian for you?

Where was I? Yes, I’m not a bug person. I love how they sound outside and am positive they are extremely important to our world and human interests. However, I do not want these little creatures in my house. That’s why I like spiders — they play goalie, intercepting these freeloader ******* before they can get into the climate-controlled expanses of our home.

Similarly, I don’t like spiders when they are inside. And for the record, I’m mostly a catch-and-release person (vacuum and dump outside). Except when spiders land on me — I was working in the basement, a spider repelled on my head, and I started punching myself in the face.

Morning thunderstorm recorded inside a Buick — this falls into our annual and hopefully distracting series for Election Days or any other news you’re trying to avoid. Checkout last year and the year before for more.

And every year I also force the theme of “October Rain” — harkening to Use Your Illusion I, the yellow cover. In 1991 I asked Santa Claus for Use Your Illusion II, the blue cover. Which I wrote clearly on the wishlist my parents handed me in early December — we knew Santa wasn’t real but our youngest was still in the dark on that. On the wishlist I wrote “Guns N’ Roses, Use Your Illusion, ‘blue cover.’ And underlined blue a bunch of times to be sure. I wanted the mayhem of “You Could Be Mine” to power me through January in military school.

We were still in the age of the longbox format, the early 90s. A time when the mall music store clerks were still very serious and important people. And I’m not talking the drifter *** record store employee cliches I could heap upon you like a Flintstone rib. Yes let’s the envision vinyl salesperson still holding on to the seventies cursing this modern capalistic nightmare over a spinning plate — and they would be smoking Acapulco Gold and spinning The Raincoats, thumbing their hair behind their ears. I got news for you hippy, wait until 2025… where y’all are sorta experiencing a rebirth of popularity for your product, so never mind. 

Mall music stores in the 80s and early 90s felt important, before the Applebees enshittification of modern franchise decor — throw a bunch of **** on the walls with red lights everywhere and call it a day. For me Applebees franchise decor peaked in the late 90s with a restaurant called Bugaboo Creekwho programmed the enshitifcation on the walls to talk at patrons. And yet it still endures…).

The music stores of yore were sterile white and felt like a NoMad dispensary. Clerks dressed in company outfits, black pants and some muted coral shirt with collar. Something an HR department screw might wear while laboring on the Island of Dr Moreau. The CDs popped out of slots in the walls in long cardboard boxes with beautiful artwork matching the cover of whichever album — the wasteful yet coveted longbox format era… ( I so want to pay too much money for the Paula Abdul Shut Up and Dance longbox, it’s gorgeous). 

Anyway, Santa Claus brought me the yellow cover, Use Your Illusion I — ********… In the end I think Use your Illusion I is the superior Use Your Illusion so maybe the figment was doing me a favor. 

Ok, so after writing all of the above I realized the name of the song is “November Rain;” still Use Your Illusion I, yellow cover. And I know what you’re thinking — why didn’t I clean up the “October Rain” bit and just start as “Every year I force the theme to fit ‘November Rain…?’” This is a bit, isn’t it? 

I’ve triggered the part of your brain that wants to compose a “well actually” email. And for what? A long jaunt across vintage music stores and a ***** talking deer on the wall? 

Look, something tells me you need to be reading this, you need a few extra paragraphs that aren’t hosted by some stiff in a suit staring at you from a faraway TV studio. Or posts authored by ****** Ms. Johnson. The neighbor you friended on Facebook because she insisted, and now your feed is full of her bad advice and weird AI cats. 

And truth be told I realized my error after finishing my episode cover design and I didn’t feel like redoing it.

"From the top of the world — fabulous 1340 KAB, Antonio Bay!"

Hey, it’s Halloween, and we’re taking a whack at another ’80s horror favorite: John Carpenter’s “minor classic,” The Fog.

Specifically, that moment after the radio station fire, the inspiration for this week’s episode. I really wanted to perpetually capture that long piano note, with the wind and fog horns. Oh those gloomy piano keys and castrated foghorns (or maybe the deep fog horns are only an east coast thing).

I still love this movie for its sound design. The audible tension created by the film's sound-team feels just as threatening today as it was back then. The contrast between the oddly cheerful KAB radio IDs and the ominous water spillage from a doomed piece of wood is personal fave. That, mid-jingle, a garbled threat cuts through, muttering about “...albatrosses around necks" still takes my breath.

Maybe The Fog is one of the sillier ’80s horror films in terms of premise — but as a kid, the idea of murderous lepers traveling in a glowing mist like corpse-pirate ninjas seemed totally plausible. I was shook.

Basically, the movie could be summed up as “YOU ONLY MOVED THE HEADSTONES!”— but on water. Never mind that The Fog came out two years earlier than Poltergeist. Actually, no — let’s mind it. Maybe Spielberg watched The Fog and thought, “We’ll do The Fog on land — I already did a water horror movie.” 

Or stories of history-born revenge haunting the modern world are a classic trope (think The Turn of the Screw, Candyman, A Christmas Carol, etc.) Either way, both Poltergeist and The Fog deliver the murderous ghostly dead in strange costumes.

And that raises a question: if ghosts exist, are they doomed to wear the outfit they died in? Or can they rotate through their wardrobe from life? (Because honestly, I’d love to haunt people in my Nike Air Pegasus from ’91. So sick...)

PS: If you’re looking for more horror ambience vibes follow the links to check out our episodes for Poltergeist, the Excocist, the Shining, or Susperia.

Early AM submarine breakfast prep ambience.

I am obsessed with the minutia of submarine voyages and there’s no books out there that can slake my middle-aged hunger for non-Clancy submarine stories. I’m more interested in the banal, what is work like when you’re job puts you far underwater and beyond rescue.

I’m positive I would feel the need to constantly ask shipmates how "we’re doing." I’m not even talking mission — “how are we doing on food?” “Are we sure we've charted all the underwater mountains?”

Not even amusing questions to read in a podcast description let alone under staggering amounts of water pressure.

I feel like hypochondria would be a terrible attribute in a submariner. Like the type of hypochondria exacerbated by weekend afternoons watching mild freak show cable telivision about bizarre medical diagnosis. Silent heart attacks, fugues that strike while you bathe. People that probably believe actual murders are hosted by Keith Morrison. And John Quiñones might jump out from behind any counter when a suburban mom loses her **** on a barista.

I would be a worse candidate for a submarine than the guy tapping "I am U-571 destroy me" morse code in that Matthew McConaughey sub movie.

But, administer that submarine **** directly into my veins. I love it (If you have any books recommendations along the lines of Blind Man's Bluff, torpedo them over... via comment or email —

Look, I doubt the Navy lets folks set up microphones on modern vessels. Maybe if the Titanic guy promised to make Red October 2 or Das Boot 2 they would let him drop a zoom mic in a ship's galley. But for now we will be riding in a fictionalized submarine. During breakfast prep.

Autumnal Reverie… Ambeince —Fall winds, blowing leaves, bumbling brook. Look, I’m sorry this episode is late. I couldn’t figure out what to write in the episode description and while I’m positive no one reads any of this anyway; I still wanted to say something besides “Fall winds; blowing leaves.”

Does writer’s block apply to ****** writers? That’s what I have. ****** writer’s block. That it’s holding back an ambience episode is annoying. But my usual shtick of pasting tuna casserole recipes into the text field seems lazy. Boil water (or microwave if needed). Cook the pasta from the box until tender. Drain and return to the pot.

I could have called back to my New England college days where mountains surrounded my University on all sides in central Vermont (Disney World for the leaf people). Add the packet from the mac & cheese box plus the required butter and milk (or a splash of whatever you’ve got — even water works in a pinch). Stir until creamy. I had a window that opened directly on one mountain that I’m sure would have looked pretty if I had been awake during the day to look at them.

Bluh, does anyone else feel like they could limbo? Dump in the drained tuna. Like my gut tells me i would be good at limbo — even though i know i wouldn't be good at limbo. it's weird, there's an ember of “enter a limbo contest" in my bones. Bake at 350 °F (175 °C) for about 15–20 minutes, until hot and bubbly.

Run to Greet the Child of Morning… Sailing Ambience —Sailing Odyssey ambience. I’ve been thinking of sailing lately, no reason — maybe I’m just missing the Vineyard (check out our MVY Harbor and Steamship ambience from this summer) or maybe it’s still on my mind from this week.

The Mediterranean was mentioned in my Night of the Living Deadepisode from last week as well — a movie that was pushed in front of us on an AV Cart... we weren’t going to be finishing up with Polyphemus and heading back to sea with Odysseus. We were going to watch rural Pennsylvanians battle the undead.

We’re not doing either today—we’re justing going to sail without fear of interdiction from the sirens, the Laestrygonians, the lotus-eaters or worse.  

Let’s find Eos.

Night of the Living Dead from the projection booth, which includes lots of projector.

One of my teachers threw Night of the Living Dead on in middle school, and the chatter around the class was that the teacher was too lazy to get into anything. Which was probably true, but we were happy not to tackle more of Odysseus’ dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. Call me Outis.

Night of the Living Dead was my first true horror film.

The movie is groundbreaking, obviously, but not scary to modern eyes (even modern eyes in the early 90s when I saw it). The only truly frightening part happens in daylight at the end — the movie’s protagonist survives right up to the credits, then is shot unceremoniously by living men — authorities, ostensibly there to remedy the situation. The protagonist is then thrown into a bonfire with the undead he fought.

Which feels apt for this terrible world we’ve constructed for ourselves.

Rainy Night/ Highway Motel — spend a mid-90s motel overnight perched above a highway during a thunderstorm. 

So after graduating from military boarding school, I faced a nearly thousand-mile drive from deep in the Southeast to the Hudson Valley in New York. I believe we stopped to rest somewhere near Frackville, PA. It was late, and the skies were awash with rain and flashes of lightning. My father was exhausted, and he was almost immediately asleep after tossing the dust cover off the bed.

My heart was racing from the new freedoms I faced. No more reveille, no more taps; no more drill or retired military folks ordering me around. (I was a **** student who had to regularly navigate a retired Command Sergeant Major.) I was free—at least for a few months, before I would attempt another military school (college).

Whatever. That night I was free, old enough to try cigarettes or die in war. Mr. High School Graduate.

The summer felt like a budding verification of me. I had settled something, unshackled myself from societal expectations. I was going to be a big deal (oh, youth and your unobtainable optomism).

All of which is to say: I couldn’t sleep. I was excited. Also extremely bored. The motel room was stuffy. I couldn’t have the volume too high on the manual television—it would wake my father (not that there was anything on anyway). All my Wizard magazines and Mack Bolan novels were packed in the U-Haul box with wheels (the mid-90s being a decade or more before smartphones).

So I read Jonah in the room’s complimentary gold book… about a guy who refuses the Almighty and tries to escape across the Mediterranean. Jonah’s boat is hit with a giant storm, and the other folks on the boat are like, “**** you, dude,” and toss him into the sea. Where he’s eaten by a giant fish. And somehow lives half-a-week in a fish without a tv set.

I remember wishing I had packed Detroit Deathwatch in the car.

Missing the server room? Need someone to help with an offline printer? Spend eight hours among your favorite overly refrigerated colleagues.

Have you ever noticed how IT folks walk around with waiter eyes when they're outside their domain? You know, waiter eyes, like when you need a refill on your Mountain Dew and the dude or lady catches you in their peripheral… but just keeps walking?

And I get it. It’s lucky the people who make printers didn’t make Voyager, we’d have lost Voyager by the asteroid belt. You can just look at printer funny and it will go offline, but somehow just for your computer. And that's why IT is there right? Aside from guarding their overly air-conditioned domain.

Once, I had a manager ask an IT staffer to order him a new chair mat.

Usually, when I see IT roaming the office, I remember all those weird mouse issues I want answered. (Mac folks: have you noticed third-party Bluetooth mice acting up? Since updating to Sonoma, I’ve had nonstop issues with tracking speed resetting. And any time Bluetooth headphones are in use, it somehow causes lag in mouse movement. I’ve switched back to a wired mouse, for ****’s sake.)

So, I get why y'all hide in the server room.

Rainy Road to Reflect or Ruminate… Ambience

Sparse highway, light rain ambience. We are on the side of a small road just outside town. It’s night, and it’s raining. Imagine you’re a content Gene Kelly walking home after frolicking around main. Or Feel free to ruminate. 

That’s the general vibe around here. There’s a movie theater nearby showing cat videos (for a good cause) and it’s practically sold out. Catvideofest 2025 is repackaged cat timeline videos on a gigantic screen. And that it is pretty much sold out this weekend says something about our collective mood. 

Anyway, I did manage to get tickets and me my youngest will share an auditorium with a Spider-verse amount of other people.

That’s all from me — Oh, so if I controlled the universe for a day aside from solving every important global issue I would want to sneak a cameo of Ice Cube into that animated Will Smith fish movie that also stars Katie Couric as “Katie Current.” But I would add in Ice Cube so he could be like “even saw the lights of the Goodyear Blimp and it read ‘Ice Cube’s a shrimp.’” Which may occur in that movie, I haven’t seen it. 

New plan: I’m bringing back that short-lived trend from early-pandemic days that social media tried to cook up — shoe-kicking as greeting. I only saw people on my phone doing that dumb ****. I want to ingrain into humans that shoe-kicking is now retroactively high-five. Every famous high-five from history now feet kicking. From the business meetings to competitive sports. The mayhem.

PS: if you are interested in listening to cars pass but you would rather imagine yourself not being rained on -- check out last year's Vermont Route 100 episode recorded from the Mad River Valley.

Oh, My Neo Pleasant Purgatory… Ambience

Digital Purgatory—Neo-noir-ish but chill purgatory ambience, I was thinking of a (techy) modern island of Purgatorio mashed with elements from the Heavenly Kid and “Neo Bowser City” from Mario Kart.

Take a break on one of the rings as folks move about you, working out the flaws of their souls. I imagine mass transit and people movers nearby, working their way up to the next ring amongst stationary kiosks and sidewalk vendors.

But why purgatory? Global calamities have had me thinking more about the Inferno, and as summer loosens its grasp upon us and the morning chills of fall hint at the spooky season… It’s hard not to watch the television and be like, “I hope you go to hell.” (Preferably the one with her gate in Philadelphia).

Which is off-the-chain talk for a podcast meant to be chill.

How about purgatory? Talking purgatory won’t raise as many hackles (right?). So—I attended a religious military boarding school. My first course on Wednesday was Bible; during lights-out, a night guard would check to make sure I was in bed (and not setting fire to anything) and occasionally hand over a rapture comic book. All this is to say, even the underground thinking at school was, “there has to be an enchanted place to hold the so-so souls.”

So purgatory is accepted—just unloved, and underrepresented in popular culture. Aside from Purgatorio or Beetlejuice, there aren’t many mega-hits that focus on limbo. (And we covered Beetlejuice last year.)

I am an afterlife aficionado, and of the big three soul deposit locations, purgatory is represented the least in popular culture. (And I mean big three in the way that Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin could be counted as a big three of something. And purgatory would be Litecoin... also, I’m not equating the other two.)

There are notable purgatories to be found in pop culture. One deep-cut purgatory construction I’m fond of is from the 1985 movie The Heavenly Kid. The film’s afterlife layout is a mall hallway that leads to escalators carrying people into a blinding light, presumably heaven. It’s guarded by a couple of bouncers dressed like Vegas clergy, standing in front of an Applebee’s-looking “please wait to be seated” lectern.

Down a dark tunnel motorcycle ride is "Midtown" where an unhinged bar entertains unclaimed souls. The bar feels like a smokers-welcome 80s airport bar was smashed with Oscar's restaurant selection in Follow That Bird.

In the Heavenly Kid, a grizzled angel with probably an alcohol problem (portrayed by Richard Mulligan) drags the film’s hero into that unhinged bar. There’s a classic 80s “food is gross” buffet scene followed by a mission briefing. You, Heavenly Kid, are not quite good enough for paradise (because your a greaser). But if you can rescue this other downcast 80s kid—and turn him into a cool 80s greaser (take that almighty)—you will be cleared for the escalator.

The movie is garbage but contains one of my favorite purgatory moments in film. Have you ever feared an awful bar mirrorversewhere every exit is the entrance so when you try to escape you just keep ending up in the same ***** bar. (BTW the angel character is charming—I would describe his vibe as Doc Brown from Back to the Future but played by Gary Busey).

The film’s purgatory mission begins on an afterlife subway train taking our likable bumbling dummy, the heavenly kid, back to Earth. I should mention that he originally dies a cliff-chicken loser. Who is offered the chance to be the hero, to "rescue" a kid from making his exact same mistakes. And rescue kid makes the exact same cliff-chicken mistake with the heavenly kid in the car. The heavenly kid drives off two cliffs in this movie... And then is let into heaven.

We didn't have much else going on in the 80s so we watched it. WOLVERIIIINES!!!

PS: to the purgatory heads (hello!)_drop a popular fiction purgatory below!

A Dying Summer’s Suburban Slumber (part 2)... Ambience

Evening pool aerator/ lawn mowing/ bugs ambience. This recording plays in three acts, the first bit is all mowing, then mostly pool aerator and birds, then a curtain of night insects descend.

The kids are back in school, and our local department store has already put up Jack-o’-lanterns. Summer is over — dead. I found eggnog at the grocery store. The bugs you hear are just one frost from calling it an existence. It’s time to recapture the sounds of late summer (to maybe revisit during hollow, depressing February).

I can say it was exactly a year ago if it’s been 364 days, right? What’s one day between friends? I’m sure Neil deGrasse Tyson would be like, “Well, wait a minute…” But he’s not a friend. I don’t even know him.

So — exactly, precisely, literally one year ago — I published the first A Dying Summer’s Suburban Slumber, an audio portrait of late summer bugs and hums in a Northern Virginia backyard (complete with manmade sounds like cars and the low buzz of an Applebee’s sign in the distance).

One year ago today (in the strictest possible sense), we bring you the sequel — this time from the Buckeye State, land of Cornhenge, the Wright brothers, and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. #Ohio

Special thanks to the folks who let us record from their backyard — and to regular contributor Dr. April for capturing the sounds.

I was in the middle of folding my laundry when I heard a crackle of thunder — so I grabbed my microphone and ran out to the shed, pressed record, and dashed back to the house. My watch congratulated me for hitting my move goal.

My whole young life I had been naive to calamity, feeling the universe must revolve around me and thus of course I would be some famous screenwriter with a sports car and a mansion with like fifty hot tubs (hot tubs always being my barometer for success — ever since that childhood stay at a swank Courtyard by Marriott in Augusta, GA). 

My feeling of indestructibility never shifted into the realm of weather. I’m amazed I couldn’t use that reality to break my narcissism elesewhere.

Whatever, lightning; lightning scares the **** out of me. Whenever the sun is blotted out by a massive thunderstorm I am positive that any second I could be speared by Zeus.

I don’t know where I’m going with this other than “fear the sky;” so I’ll stop. And finish by saying the episode cover was a bit of fun in Photoshop. I wanted to visit an old muse, the Unholy Cumulus, a mischievous cloud that starred in a Nike Presto ad from the early aughts by my first production house crush, Shynola. When I saw the ad I was like, “that is the type of ‘what’ I want to do for a living.”

We're back in Appalachia! This recording captures about an hour on the banks of the New River in the southeastern part of West Virginia’s pan — you can call it a pan right? When I lived in Jefferson County folks to the west called us panhandlers.

You’ll hear Sandstone Falls, the calls of local birds and insects, and a couple of trains rumbling by (midway and end).

This week’s episode was recorded by regular uncommon ambience contributorDr. April Blakeslee (who is a researcher and associate professor of Biology at Eastern Carolina University).

Her travels brought her recently to New River Gorge and specifically the Sandstone Falls area. Thank you Dr. April!

(obviously the New Rive Gorge Bridge is twenty miles as the crow flies from the Sandstone Falls but as a bridge freak I couldn’t resist adding a fave bridge to my episode cover... and don't get me started about CBBT).

LOST EPISODE: Microphone Inside Domed Grill During a Thunderstorm... Ambien

“Look hon! I’m using the grill.” This is a thunderstorm recording from under the dome of my (Weber Original) grill. The grill she gifted me on Father’s Day and I promptly pushed to the back corner of our yard because I am terrible at it. 

Not as bad as the turkey scenes in Christmas Vacation,but close enough.The charred pieces are claimed by my wife (who likes overdone) and the rarer pieces get cut and passed to me (who only likes it that way) and the rest is disseminated amongst the kids.

Do I lose my man card for being terrible at grilling? Is that still a thing? I will never understand how outstanding outdoor cooks are maligned by some ridiculous notion that a man and grill will make magic sans practice. Perhaps that’s why all the grill masters I know won’t shut the **** up about grilling and how good they are at it. They must need to drown out the expectations that ordinary folks who can’t even cook inside will somehow be ****** Emeril Lagasse⁠ outside. 

And I’m not invoking Emeril because I wanted to link to his 90s cooking Tonight Show. That dude is from (viva) Fall River, Massachusetts where the undercurrent of Americana and revolution still flow out to sea under the Bragga Jr. bridge (which feels less sinister since the cooling towers came down). 

This slice of Southern New England paints visions of cannons being fired into bellies of British warships, “take that you ************* tax-loving sons of *******!”

Revolution! Americana! Visuals of a distressed eagle balancing arrows and olives as fireworks pop around it. Extruded stars and bunting and “**** yeah, dude!” 

We should ditch the olives at this point, because, who are we kidding? Our bird should clasp a grilled hot dog. Just not a hot dog I grilled. That’ll be charred and half-exploded.

--this is a lost episode in that it should've run a month ago — I had published a more relaxing episode for July 4 (to cover for folks who wanted counter-programming to all the explosions happening outside their homes) and totally forgot to run this episode (which was my original July 4th episode)... whatever happy August 4th.

For those Over-Watching Kpop Demon Hunters, have a Soda Machine… Ambience

Spend the night inside a soda machine. Think cold, refreshing thoughts — and dodge that audio-hyperglycemic earworm.

My youngest is all about the Saja Boys and “Soda Pop” is her song of the summer. Alexa even recognizes what she means when she’s like “Alexa, play 'Soda Pop.'” Alexa isn’t playing Robbie Williams. [Unearned quippy banter line, “has anyone seen the monkey movie?”] 

Speaking of movies the Saja Boys are characters in this entire summer's movie Kpop Demon Hunters (which is an amazing animated film and ****** charming). Our house has been filled with the animated band’s sugary suite ode to everyone’s favorite carbonated corn syrup water. Not even ten yet and she was able to figure out download and single-track repeat “Soda Pop” over an entire evening (I certainly didn’t teach her; not since showing her how to make the dryer chirp… which led to our dryer randomly singing in the middle of the night). 

Basically this is for you sweetie, a way to enjoy your soda pop without introducing that ear worm into my head. 

I'm a Fan of Fan; MD B&B Bathroom Fan... Ambience

Bed and Breakfast Bathroom Fan Ambience … This is the bathroom fan from our room in a quaint B&B near Antietam. Last week’s recording from the woods was from their property —thank you, Antietam Overlook Farm!

I have some more summer sounds on the way next week, but I wanted a fan break… We haven’t had a fan episode in awhile and as I’ve said before, “I’m a fan of fan” in Devil’s Advocate Al Pacino. 

Gawd I love that line, any time someone is screaming something I am so in — my idea of funny is pretty much Ace Ventura all around. I love screams. 

Except not the time I was in Philadelphia when chunks of ice were flying off the skyscrapers in the wind. Smashing all around us as we crossed the street. This lady in front of me turns, looks toward the top of the PSFS Tower and screams. And I braced for what I was sure was a ****** meteor sized chunk of ice about to destroy us all.

Overnight Appalachia Atop Antietam ... Ambience

Mountain forest late night into early morning Eld Ridge (10pm-2am), overlooking the Battlefields of Antietam.

A few days late this week as I was at the final Wu-Tang New York City show and then a stay near Antietam for my wife’s birthday (Happy birthday, hon!). 

My Wu-review contact-high influenced (no one tell my mom) and punctuative-free bluesky-cap is here (and give us a follow). Special thanks to my bff for inviting me along, the experience was transcendent (Big Daddy Kane showed up!).

Also I really tried to pick up some unique NYC sounds while I was there but there were no real good opportunities. You can walk around Gotham with a ****** film crew and no one bats an eye, but the minute you break out just a microphone everyone wants to know what the **** you’re doing. Bluh.

But! Antietam was just what the doctor ordered after shuffling through one of America’s busiest places. Wide open spaces, chatty bugs, and very few people. Spend the night.

Ferry carport parking and sail ambience... Park your hooptie and get ready to sail across the sound to Vineyard Haven.

The Steamship Authority has come a long way since its pre-2K promise of, “Get in the standby line before noon, and you’ll get on a boat to the Vineyard at some point today.” I often wonder: who was the madman behind that carmageddon inducing promise?

If you’ve been anywhere near Bourne, MA, in the summertime especially Friday rush, you know how much folks love their Cape Cod and ****** islands. For Mid-Atlantic folks, think of U.S. 50 traffic from Annapolis to the 301/50 split… for everyone else just imagine trying to exit a large parking lot on July 4th.

There’s no bridge to the islands, so anyone hoping to get their car over there collects in Woods Hole, in a parking lot the size of a small Walmart. This is the hub of: No bridge/ this is the only way to get your car over there.

So in the older times of madness, when just showing up at the Woods Hole Terminal before noon got you over to an island by the end of the day… congratulations. Now you’re stuck with 1980s or ’90s technology, it’s hot as ****, and your kids have been bored with travel Yahtzee since ****** Danbury. (I should mention there was the occasional dreaded Steamship employee blocking entry, waving a white handkerchief and shouting, “We’re full!”) 

Cars wrapped maddeningly around the old terminal. Station wagons and minivans rumbled, coughing black smoke. Wheels neared edges that dropped into the harbor. A bewildering ballet.

After an hour in standby your brain begins to decide you're starting to get close. Only to be quickly routed into a line snaking under the ****** bridge on the far end that surely would take four hours to return from.

And it amazingly it worked out pretty well for us standby folks.

Tempers occasionally spilled over. I saw one dude get a donut launched at him. A slew of “’Ay, chief!” were tossed between belligerents.

But mostly, folks smoked and talked sports cars. No smartphones then—so the most interesting thing you could access in the car was the radio and the hazard lights. Or Mom’s stash of nicotine gum…

Once, I saw a dude sleeping on top of a mini-bus, a cot stretched out over the roof. One hand palming a Corona he miraculously held on to, the other hanging limp, palm out. Dude smelled strange—and I thought of Jesus, weirdly.

So there's a rocky island off the coast of Maine that looks like Ireland in miniature. The island stands a few hundred feet from an⁠ infamous axe murder site⁠. And there are no cheap t-shirts or fudge joints (although I hear you can get Ice Cream a few islands over); this is a place where science is happening. The gull’s mate here during the summer months and the island becomes a battlefield for gull territory maintenance.

My sister, Dr April Blakeslee, is a faculty member at the Shoals Marine Laboratory during early summer. Her field of study is parasites in marine organisms, and a few hosts of these parasites reside on the island (I hope I’m describing that correctly, I feel like Gull **** is an important part of the parasitic lifecycle, and that’s gross…)

Dr. Blakeslee was gracious enough to plop my microphone down to record Appledore for us. I believe the microphone placement is in the central western area of the island. In this recording, you will hear birds (mostly marine, although I think I recognize a few from the mainland). There will be boat and air traffic. Insects, scientist walla, and a buoy.  

Martha's Vineyard; Nature's Yacht Rock... Ambience

Listen to the sounds of waves, the birds, sparse Beach Rd traffic, ferry and other nautical stuff from 11pm until dawn. The recording took place on a harbor beach, a few stone skips from the Black Dog Tavern (and you will find the perfect skipping stones down at the water's edge).

Let the waves calm you. Let your stress go the way I’m trying to let it go after experiencing my first time time trying to use the insurance I paid extra for at the Dick’s Sporting Goods for a bike. I remember all of those consumer times where I buy something, say no to the insurance and then get, “Well if you had bought the insurance we could help you.” But haha — This ************* time I bought the ****** insurance and have been on a three week experience of “Asurion needs more photos;” I take more photos of the bicycle and upload and wait three more business days for “Asurion needs you to fill out another form.” My first claim was denied because I wrote “Bike has flat tire.” NO, they don’t cover tires, what I should’ve written was my bike has a “flat tube.” Few business days. New forms. Photos. I get that Asurion was named to paint a word picture in folks head of assurance. And I’m sure that got some ****** high-fives in the boardroom, "it’s like insurance that's an assurance. Where’s the mirror?"

2025 Cape Cod Cicadas emergence … Ambience

Back from a well needed North-East holiday break. I had inadvertently stumbled upon what local papers are calling “The Great Cape Cod Cicada Comeback!” That's right cicadas have emerged.

And the voices (is it their voices making the noise or legs I have no idea) you are hearing were living in the ground for 17 years. So this journey for the Cape Cod cicadas began around the time “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay was #1 and Ed Norton was Bruce Banner.

Rain in car, plus: wipers, marimba and a pipa. "It's rain with feeling!" Look; I've been working on a new "At the..." ambience, that I wanted to release this week, but it's about a fictional dystopian California crime... And there's probably enough dystopia to go around fictional or otherwise. So... audible... the football audible not the books on tape for your phone Audible. Gawd, speaking of which... there was always that button on Playstation I would accidentally hit and "audible" would appear and the players would all change positions and I never knew what the play was so it would end in disaster and I would throw my controller and it would hit the cat and then the ****** cat would get pissed and tell all of his cat friends that I am a piece of **** which makes sense I just threw a controller at a cat I am a piece of **** but with a good excuse having accidentally dialed up some ****** option play that I run backwards for a loss and am treated to cut screens of some massive dude flexing and dunking on my 4th and like 50 and that's why I threw the ****** controller and the cat was in the way and now there is just angry cats and they have their paws around my neck

May 29th Thunderstorm in the Mid-Atlantic Thunderstorm — Anyone could use a mostly mild half-hour thunderstorm. Turn it on and think about cheese; or the worst salad dressing you ever had. 

Early morning (3-6am) bird chatter ambience — So I live in a metropolitan area within a town next to a highway… 

Actually let me start a different way; what we perceive individually as silence, is nowhere near reality. I’ve learned this having stupidly rushed to interesting natural sound-makers like brooks and falls, only to realize later these sound-maker’s proximity to vehicular traffic, tarnished my recordings.

When I recorded in the Mad River Valley (Vt) last year I found a few stunning waterfalls cascading delightfully. The bustling fall leaves and their aromas filling the air, the gushing of clean water moving naturally. I would embarrass myself on a naked and alone program, but I can still appreciate spaces like this. 

I recorded it all with my microphone. And when I listened later I was downcast, I never perceived the cars rushing by twenty feet away. RVs and motorcycles, and small trucks — they were loud as ******* hell. ****** us as a species--

All of this to say that I would love to hand you something that might have been recorded on the Sound of Music mountain with my Mid-Atlantic bird buddies, and only that. Alas, there will be some far off vehicular stuff joining our feathery friends (it’s not too bad I just wish this was more Jack London than Jack ****** Handey).

Speaking of Jack London, I’m not entirely sure what birds we are hearing. In recent days I have seen a red bird and then shouted “OMG, we have a Cardinal!” and days later saw a blue bird and “OMG, we have Blue Jays!” I saw a Robin too but didn’t shout “hey, everyone, the ubiquitous bird!”

Sound off in the comments if you are an ornithologist (Throw your hands in the sky!)! What are these birds? Have you ever set up a 50-foot-net? Do you make bank?  

Original Photo used in episode cover by Physical Pixel

Waterfall, pink noise, ambience. Go ahead and chase waterfalls for eight hours, you may feel better. You may feel better if — is irregardless a legit word? I had beans for breakfast.

Kitchen Dinner after Helicopter Attack; Godfather Part III… Ambience

Godfather 3 stormy kitchen ambience — “Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In!” We’re back at the movies and in a kitchen after a bloody helicopter attack. It’s stormy, and dinner is happening, and everything feels tense because everyone almost just died (this scene).

I am a Godfather 3 apologist. Aside from how awesome the sound design is in this and the other trilogy films, I love the exploration of a man who tries to emancipate himself from his own cruel and ruthless past. Especially when we are talking about a man who is one the of scarier characters in film.

Yes, Godfather Part III feels like the Godfather movie Brian De Palma secretly made… Yes it is a tremendous jump from the cold and cunning Michael to suburbanite-ish Michael. 

These movies are horror films, they invite us into some pretty grim places. A misstep in this world could lead to a grisly end. You might go for a fishing trip in the fading sunlight when a gun appears from off screen. Beautifully wrapped pastries are dangerous. Somehow toll booths can become more sinister. Someone in the trilogy winds up sleeping with a disembodied horse head.

Who do you even root for in the Altobello v. Connie v. cannoli?

Psh—I love Godfather Part IIIand not just because of that Mobb Deep banger.

This week I had my own “they’re pulling me back in” moment after having a copy/ paste issue between Premiere and After Effects (CC2025). Having long ago worked in tech support for non-linear editing compositors, I suddenly found myself back trying to diagnose my own issue. Because Adobe does not give a ****.

Adobe has created a bubble for themselves, they can make drastic changes in program behaviors, and unless you have some special tiered support package you will have no way of contacting these ******** but for a Lord of the Flies reddit wannabe where users answer questions for digital badges. I’m mixing my movie metaphors—Adobe Community… let the fans sort it out for themselves like Mary and Vincent? Actually strike that too. ZAAAAAASAAAAAA

Any Pot in a Storm... Ambience

Rain on a pot ambience — Ok so it got cloudy out and I checked my weather app — and that **** said rain and I wanted to try another pot in the yard experiment... So I put a microphone under a lobster pot and ran (because it was raining). So if you walked by my house the other day, that is why there was an upside-down lobster pot on the sidewalk.

The resulting sounds are pretty interesting, so much so that Spotify initially thought I was trying to sneak music onto their podcast app and smacked it with a violation. Fortunately after appeal we are back. (Also -- Spotify's customer service is astronomically better than adobe's — had to go through both this week)

Nobody tell my wife I put her pots in the backyard… rain ambience

“What’s this?!” She gestured widely to the sink stacked with most of our pots and pans.

“Oh, yeah…” I had awoken late having disabled my alarm for a laissez faire, let the Earth (or my bladder) wake me, morning. I hadn’t left a note and I can see now that I had inadvertently breached the dishes-need-to-be-done-now sink coverage.

“No wonder your daughter has been hiding in her room all morning,” she said, apparently realizing the same thing.  

“It was just an experiment, they’re not, too dirty.”

“An experiment? Then why didn’t you put them all back in the cabinet?”

“Well…” I obviously couldn’t tell the truth. There wasn’t a “sorry” powerful enough to follow explaining how all of her Williams-Sonoma were positioned in the mud and grass so I could set up my microphone to record the rain pattering all over them. “…just an experiment.”

“Were you cooking… pasta?” 

“No.”

“Then why is my new sauce pan dirty?”

“It’s…”

“When did we buy a wok?” 

I Can Stand the Rain... Ambience

With apologies to Ann Peebles and fellow Virginian Missy Elliot; I can stand the rain against my window, it does not haunt me. Get on my window oh moderate rain for eight hours.

Star Trek: The Original Series — we’re on TV this week and on our way to Sector Z-6 to breach the neutral zone and travel into the Romulan Star empire. But first we cruise… As we try not to think about someone possibly taking a dump on the other side of the view screen. (Whaaaat?)

So as I was doing research for building the TOS Enterprise bridge (Photoshop and After Effects) — I ran across a blog that ponders whether the bridge itself is rotated 36 degrees. So the folks on the bridge face 36 degrees port. What, why? 

The blog includes a blueprint of the Enterprise bridge that shows not only is the bridge looking to the port side of the Enterprise, there is a toilet just to the right of the view screen. If you’re sitting on the toilet you will be the only person facing the front of the ship.

Just process that, presumably someone was relieving themselves as the Enterprise initiated first visual contact with the Romulans. And that dude or lady was seated facing the actual front of the ship. Presumably when the Enterprise fights General Chang in the Battle of Khitomer, someone could have been relieving themselves as the ship was pummeled with torpedoes and Shakespeare. As the crew looked for signs of a cloaked ship in the view screen, someone just to the right could have been dropping off a ****. Amazing.

And I know the later example is a new Enterprise and maybe the powder room isn’t in the same spot. Let me have this. CRYHAVOOOOC

Theater projection booth ambience — the feature film is Five Minutes to Live from 1961 and starring Johnny Cash and Ron Howard. This episode also includes just about everything else I loved of that era in theater and film. There will be the pre-movie sirens call for Lobby refreshment and money back guarantees for those who have gotten too much suspense from Hitchcock’s Homicidal.And some Gregory Peck greats as we’re treated to trailers for Guns of Navarone and On the Beach(which still feels pretty fresh for our turbulent world, unfortunately).

Take a mental break in the projection booth… Just don’t forget to look out for the cue dots.

This episode’s cover uses an original photo by Diego Ramirez.

Check Out My New Wash!... Ambience

New washing machine, normal wash setting. And hey, this is a sequel of sorts to the ⁠infinity dryer episode a couple episodes ago.⁠ Our old washer/ dryer had to be replaced after a belt snapped. Our washer dry was so old it could remember when McDonald’s tried Pizza. There were only three Star Wars movies when our washer/ dryer were working on socks and sheets. 

I think I mentioned most of this in the last details. I’m really just typing until this episode description looks long enough to appear thoughtful. Your mind will just see these well fed paragraphs and be like this doofus is probably insightful but I’m not going to double check by reading anything. 

And what would there be to say aside from I stuck a microphone up to the washing machine window and pressed record? 

Oh! I do like the font, Capitana used on the episode cover, it has a really fun 80s feel that is really showcased in how it handles numerals — only other thing I have going on is the visual ambience channel on youtube (give us a subscribe)!

The Wet and Whirring Mystery Machine… Ambience

Watery whirring faucet machine — This week’s episode revolves around a mystery, but I promise it’s not made out of people. It’s just a whirring watery wonder.

I got a new dryer!… ambience

LG Dryer Cycle — A better title for this would be, "our dyer that dated back to the Clinton administration kicked the bucket."

We limped along for years with that thing whining. Literally, it needed a belt replacement and it was covid times and we were like… the squealing noises aren't that terrible…  

And last month the belt snapped and we sent that old pos to Valhalla.

Mild thunderstorm and a lot of rain — this recording begins Sunday night around 11-ish. And we got nowhere near the boomers our friends on the other side of the Appalachian Trail got. West Virginia looked like a sky disco for the most of the evening (from NOVA). But a thunderstorm is a thunderstorm and we break for thunderstorms here at uncommon ambience.

Rainy night/ car interior—There are two 80s songs that are my absolute nemesis. Songs dealt to me over the radio by guys like Casey Kasem and Rick Dees on our way to or back from church. (How Rick Dees survived the 90s and early aughts onslaught of “nuts” hurled at his name is beyond me).

Two songs appear in my head regularly and must be sung aloud to satisfy a tic.

“On the Wings of Love,” by Jeffrey Osborne inexplicably (I didn’t own the album) appears in my head daily. I only ever heard the song sandwiched between copy or commercials on Sunday mornings in 1982. I’m not sure “On the Wings of Love” ever peaked any top tens. Yet if my life were to be played off in my willing and unwilling musical obsessions, “On the Wings of Love” would be #1. Sigh.

Number two is “I Love a Rainy Night,” and that ***** hit #1 on those important top musical charts that I’m just realizing I have no idea how they’re measured. Okay, I’m looking at Billboard Hot 100 on Wikipediaand it says “rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), online streaming, and radio airplay in the U.S.” I feel like that could be juiced on the streaming and radio side to tilt numbers, right? Actually why am I conspiracy-ing this I have no idea what I’m talking about and who cares.

Why wouldn’t “I Love a Rainy Night” appear in my head every time it is both raining and nighttime? The song is literally about loving a crying night sky. And it’s snappy af.

I, too, love a rainy night.

Steam Radiator Ambience — I went to military school in South Carolina in the 90s, it was a bit like Harry Potter sans magic and the Forbidden Forest. We did have impossibly large roaches that appeared in our dorms and they would have befriended Hagrid.

Like Hogwarts, our school dorms were ancient, built before world wars. No air conditioning, and steam Radiators in every room. The radiators would come to life in the middle of the night hissing their parseltongues. And I got used to it.

I'm the First Person at Work... Ambience

Empty office ambience — I see this episode as like: you're in your crowded workspace and you want everyone to disappear.

Look, work isn't usually ever great — but being the first one to the Slack channels or the Powerpoint decks feel a little freeing when no one is looking over your ****** shoulders.

Or I think you could use this ambience while working from home; to get that cacophony of electric hums you might be missing. Oh, you could be a fan of that MAX Severance show (or HBO, whatever).

I guess you could sleep to office ambience... Just don't drag a cot into your workplace like a ****** lunatic.

Pink noise/ rain ambience — Look, this episode has nothing to do with creator of theBatdance. And yes I was hoping for an unearned second glance just by typing out “purple” and “rain” in a title bar.

Gawd I do love theBatman album (changes subject) and how it captures the expensive, unhinged feel of Gotham City. The best comic book movie soundtrack. TheI’m Breathless “soundtrack” comes close — but if it’s a bunch of inspired by, not in the movie it is not a soundtrack. (Yet also “Vogue” is on the album). 

Whatever. This week’s episode is pink noise and rain which I hope will be a relaxing combination of sounds that pair well with readinga long article about the Batman album or the dishes.

Star Wars/ Empire Strikes Back Ambience. This episode covers a regular day of work on a Star Destroyer. I have to imagine there were some less exciting days for the denizens of the futuristic space Harry Potter franchise, Star Wars. 

Empire screws had to dismount from their bunks and get to their boring jobs and hope not to piss off Vader or any other weird space wizards.

We’re back at the movies this week for Empire Strikes Back (1980, based on scenes like these). This episode is a flight before Empire figures out the Rebel Alliance are hiding on Hoth.

Your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker.

THEN I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL!

Welp, We Got More Snow and School Closures... Ambience

Snowfall from interior of car. It wasn't even a long storm... And it was three days ago... but they closed school anyway.

Doodle while the Driven Excel; Standardized Testing… Ambience

Writing/ classroom ambience. How do I say, "Enjoy 8 hours of testing ambience?" The thought of testing conjures up traumas of past educational failures. And I'm not talking about having the test slapped on the desktop before me with "F" scratched out in red marker.

I'm talking "permanent record" here. My invisible collection of abject failures that I was led to believe followed me everywhere. I imagined a shadow network that handed off my permanent record wherever I went. There would be a back room with a filing cabinet waiting to temporarily house it. Where it waited for me to screw up.

I still feel its presence today. There may be some backroom in my house my family hasn't warned me of. Perhaps the neighbors are some kind of "Adjustment Bureau" for my CATs, SATs, and ACTs.

So, yeah, no — this ambience isn't about a make or break test. Let's imagine we're in class, and everyone else is studious because they're so smug about going somewhere in this world. And we are at the back of the class drawing Too Much Coffee Man or writing an amazing short story while everyone is being ambitious. 

And for me, it wasn't an amazing short story. It was a **** short story that was only short because I couldn't figure out how to get my awesome Mack Bolan-esque character out from the clutches of the cartel's trap deep in a jungle. (Which was totally stolen from Clear and Present Danger).

"There's nowhere left to run, Blaze Tower," said the short man grasping a half-smoldered cigar. This was Blaze Tower's nemesis, a man everyone called Martillo (to be played by Miguel Sandoval in the inevitable movie). Martillo had been responsible for the death of Blaze's family; they had been bystanders in a park. A picnic turned to panic by errant crossfire and totally ripped off from Frank Castle's origin. (RIP my media diet in the 90s… I heard my parents regularly remark, "At least he's reading something.”)

Bluh—where were we? Oh yes... relaxing at the back of the class.

Original photo by Pixabay

Snowfall; that Closed Schools for a Week… Ambience

Snow and snow maintenance trucks ambience — This is the January 5,6 storm over Northern Virginia. Listen to the gut-punch storm that forced us to spend another week with our children. 

Yes, I know that sounds terrible, but we had already been back to work, and these little free-loaders were "bored." Never mind, they were somehow ****** bored the day after Santa Claus' capitalistic ride of philanthropy. 

And we had made it to the end. The children were going back to school in two days. 

And then the universe dumped an unimpressive amount of snow on us. I'm not sure you could impress a South Carolinian with 〜seven inches of snow. 

Look — obviously, I understand closing school Monday. I even got closing on Tuesday; we had freezing temperatures, and there were still ice patches. Wednesday, OK; take Wednesday too, for safety's sake, never mind that the roads were mostly clear. The kids were all figuring out new daredevil **** to do in the snow. I saw one kid jump off a roof.

I get it, school administrators. A snow day is an unexpected break from our rotten-*** children. But Thursday felt like payback for the last ten years of scant snow closures.

Mild fan ambience—Okay, so over the holidays, we escaped our beloved children. I picked up a night at my wife's favorite ⁠local B&B⁠, which put us far enough away from the bickering stemming from being home for ****** ever from school.

They were supposed to return to school tomorrow, but with a giant ****** snowstorm coming, they will probably be home for another week.

*Sleet and Ice ambience—Nature tossed an early morning meatball the day before Christmas. A steady fall of ice covered everything in a faux-white (the New England in me wouldn't grant this "White Christmas" status even if my kids were). 

And yet, my holiday mind flipped through the possibilities: "Am I dreaming of a white Christmas podcast?" My prior falling ice episode was well received; let's do it again.

But how? The Candy Canes were already moved to clearance aisles with the nearly-expired vitamins and other weird grocery **** like Pistachio butter or pickled cockles.

And not even the old-fashioned Candy Canes; it was the sale on Starburst or Skittle canes.

Any holiday podcast released on the doorstep of Christmas would feel stale.

After all, this is the time of year when I start embracing the bleakness of winter without twinkling lights. The Christmas Crunch cereal and tree-shaped Reese's are 75% off. And somehow, large sections in department stores are dedicated to Valentine's Day. 

This brief period of holiday hangover where every day feels like a Sunday, and most folks on social media are posting gym or business pics about "getting it" in the new year. As we stack all of our ab and financial aspirations onto a new calendar. Even though we did that last year.

Look, I didn't want another Holiday episode, not after the Greyhound Bus episode sent us on a highway of mirth and merriment to Mom and the rest of our ****** family members. There was no way to fit in another elf-ish episode or holiday box fan. 

Not while deductibles reset and the taxman looms. So… Happy New Year; enjoy some non-festive falling ice.

(I hope y'all had/ are having a lovely holiday).

Intercity bus/ highway ambience—A Christmas Eve decades ago, I found myself braving the Port Authority in Midtown, waiting for a Greyhound to Albany. While loading, I walked fast enough to stay ahead of the folks who might be at the overbooked point. Just that Thanksgiving, I had been dawdling at the end of the line and wound up with a "Sorry, pal. It looks like you're waiting for the next bus." 

That Greyhound Christmas Eve ride was years before cell phones had texting, apps, or anything resembling fun programmed into them. If you wanted to catch up on gossip or news, you had to hit the magazine stand before climbing aboard. If you were broke you were left with no shield against another passenger trying to strike up a conversation.

And I was broke, so I didn't want to be near the front of the bus, where the assertive clamored for seats near the driver. Assertive people like to talk. They want to tell you about famous nephews or how they know some obscure ass state representatives and… I don't care, man.

I want to be in the back where no one wants to be. No one is happy because you're closer to the toilet than the driver. At best, it smells like urinal cake. No one wants to open their mouths so much when it smells like urinal cake.

Back of the bus was also ideal because I had jammed a 40 ounce down my pants. I wasn't sure if someone would check my carry-on for alcohol, so I just shoved my Steel Reserve down my oversized Wu-Wear jeans. 

The guy beside me laughed while I pulled it out, and I cycled through some nervous ticks. Would he snitch? Did I open myself up to obligatory gabbing?  

He raised his hand, reached into his pocket, pulled out a nip of Jack Daniels, and raised it in the air… "Cheers." 

Episode image from Pixabay

The Jingle Bell box fan is back to make your holidays ****** jolly! This week’s episode is white noise but festive. It’ll make that Christmas dinner prep or tuning out the in-laws merry without a note from Mariah.

I have to come clean about something. I regularly use an extremely inexpensive aftershave balm that smells horrible. It smells like what a kid would probably think a man would smell like—the Worcestershire sauce of aftershaves. 

The inexpensive balm feels great splashed on shaved skin, but I don't know if it's worth smelling like this in public.

Santa workshop ambience (8 Hours). Oh boy, it's a Christmas movie episode! Well… we are focusing on a faux Christmas movie commercial that appears in an actual Christmas movie. This episode puts us into a busy Santa's Workshop (but does not include any terrorists or assault weapons and absolutely no harm to Reindeers). 

Look, at the very beginning of the movie Scrooged (1988), the camera flies us through a snowy wonderland into a busy Santa's workshop. The elves are making toys, and Mrs. Claus hands out cookies. Then, suddenly, the workshop is under siege as RPGs rain down on the workshop. Mrs. Claus unlocks a closet of assault rifles. "Seven o'clock. Pyschos seize Santa's Workshop. And Only Lee Majors can stop them," says the announcer.  

It is unhinged and my favorite start to a Christmas movie.  

So Scrooged is our Christmas Eve wrapping movie these days. We had been watching Die Hard (also 1988) because it was a nice violent break from the children's shows we had to endure when our kids were awake (the Wiggles, or Caillou, that whiny little *****). But the constant one-sided argument that "Die Hard is a Christmas movie" is a trend on social media every year—that no one argues against because arguing either way is stupid.  

Anyway, Scrooged is something; Bill Murray, Carol Kane, the Solid Gold Dancers, and a ton of other awesome folks are in this movie. Maybe give it a spin this holiday.

PS: If there are any Mack Bolan book cover fans out there, I was trying to catch that vibe for this week's episode cover.