Hoytus Interruptus

The Wikipedia page for Amanda Knox has 5,000 words devoted to the murder of her roommate Meredith Kercher, her subsequent wrongful incarceration and conviction, followed by her acquittal, release, re-conviction, and ultimate exoneration. As for Amanda's life since returning home from Italy a decade ago to live the rest of her life? Well, that gets just 216 words. Therein lies the yawning gap in her story that I try to fill during this extended conversation with Amanda, who still to this day deals with death threats and hateful attacks on social media. But she has also moved on to plant roots, build a family and fight the good fight on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. (And special thanks to Rob & Naomi of Moody Little Sister and to Pete Droge for the music heard in this episode!)

Between seasons of my podcast, I'm posting interesting conversations with fascinating people, starting with Amanda Knox. It's been a decade since Amanda came home to Seattle after serving 4 years of a 26-year prison sentence for a crime she did not commit. Putting down roots took some time but she went back to school, got married, had a child and now lives right here on our island. Here's a tiny slice of my hour-long conversation with Amanda that goes up on the interwebs this coming Tuesday. (Music in this trailer by Moody Little Sister - thanks Naomi & Rob!)

If there's any one thing that is certain about living on this island, it's that everyone has an interesting story about how they wound up here. To wrap up Season Two of Hoytus Interruptus, here's our Vashon origin story. Big thanks to our island friends Pete Droge and Elaine Summers for providing the music in this episode. Happy holidays to you and yours. I'll be back with more stories and new ways of telling them in Season Three sometime after the new year.

On this, the 80th anniversary of the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor, I'm putting up one of the most popular episodes of Hoytus Interruptus from its original incarnation as a podcast some 15 years ago. It's a story from my long-time friend (and sound design wizard) Jim Wilson about that fateful day in 1941 and his mother's struggle with Alzheimer's years later. Because of the music featured in this episode, I can only leave the link up for 72 hours.

This week's episode is embarrassing. (But don't those make the best stories?) It's a tale that includes illicit substances (or at least they were at the time), driving under the influence and a lovely smattering of additional cringe-worthy moments... ...all played out in the presence of a Future World Leader. For reasons about to become obvious, I didn't share this story with our kids for a time, at least not while they were immersed in their school's DARE program. Wouldn't have been a good parental look. Now that the statute of limitations has expired, and with permission from Brent (my good friend and former business partner), here's a story that's funny now... ...but was pretty dumb in the moment.

Here's a special Hoytus episode from years ago. I can only put it up for a couple of days but it's full of Thanksgiving memories from my childhood. Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

This episode marks a return to a style I employed about 15 years ago in the original iteration of Hoytus Interruptus. I call it "lyrical storytelling." The idea is to let the musical under-bed dictate pace and push, even re-writing the story as needed to bend it to the rhythm and feel of the music. Many thanks to good friend Chris Ballew for letting me poke around inside his "Sampladelic" collection to find just the right grooves for this story about communing with monkeys.

Today's story is for this year's small batch of friends who will watch their youngest child leave the nest a few months down the road. It's an emotionally-fraught moment that can temporarily obscure all the good stuff yet to come. With a snippet of end music by Toad the Wet Sprocket.

Whenever I talk to students who are stressed out and unsure about their ultimate career path, I generally respond with, "Good! You're not supposed to know yet." Clarity often doesn't come till later, sometimes much later. Years down the road, when you have a chance to look back at the forks in your road, you can usually point to at least a couple of people who nudged you along in the proper direction. This week's story is about two of the people who steered me right.

Here's a story that's not for the faint of stomach. It's about one of the more inevitably reliable hazards of travel and how one of us Hoyts almost always seems to escape the worst of it, able to nurse the other back to health. Except for that one time.

I've interviewed quite a few celebrities over the years, but I think I got my biggest personal thrill from talking to three legends from my childhood who largely toiled in obscurity. Such is often the life for voice actors in the field of animation. One day in 1978, I was lucky enough to gather the cast from Jay Ward's classic TV show "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle & Friends" on a single phone call. This is the story of how it came about, although all but a bit of the audio from that day is lost to history.

I'm not sure how it's possible to both love and hate a story at the same time, but that describes my relationship with this one. Act One is horrifying. Act Two provides a (very tiny) bit of comic relief. TRIGGER WARNING: If you have a checkered history with stinging insects, you might wanna pass on this one.

It seems that I've begun a pattern of telling a story about a hoofed animal every other week. (Who does that? Plus, I can't help wondering what two weeks from today will bring!) This week's story features...a deer that wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. Deer are a most common sight on my island. This is the time of year when the local hunters cull the herd a bit. Some fill their freezer with venison as a simple act of revenge for the damage the deer population wreaks on gardens, crops and landscaping.

Had the pleasure of spending a few days with our daughter last week. Seemed like a good time to roll out a favorite story that used to embarrass her when we told it to friends (thankfully, she's past that). I take you back to when our little girl was just four years old...and yet, even at such a young age, she stood ready to call out evil when she saw it. Big ups to the actor Jeff Kingsbury of Olympia, WA, who made this moment extra special for reasons that will soon become obvious.

Seeing the Seattle Mariners make a push for the playoffs in the final weeks of the regular season conjures memories of a magical 7-year stretch when they were in contention every year and drawing near-capacity crowds night after night. The team mascot was feeling the pressure to "keep it fresh," regularly inventing new comedy routines to perform for the fans between innings. This is the story of when I was tapped to play "comedy accomplice" to the Mariner Moose.

I try to look askance whenever the hype surrounding just about anything launches into overdrive. Pretty sure I get that from my journalist dad, who never met a sacred cow he couldn't poke and prod. So, when crass commercialization started creeping into my own personal Holy Land, my skeptic radar began to blink.

It's hard to woo a girl when you're driving the most uncool car on campus. Fortunately, the girl I was wooing could not have cared less about the wheels that got us from one place to the next. To kick off Season Two of guaranteed true stories from a life (mine), here's the story of "the one," a summer that couldn't end soon enough and the ugliest car on the planet.

Time to get back on the storytelling horse! Season 2 of Hoytus Interruptus kicks off next week with a portion of the Jeff and Cindy origin story. The weeks that follow will feature: The story about the little girl who asserted herself; planting seeds in New Age brains; a priceless moment with show biz legends; the teacher and the DJ who steered me right; my checkered history with bees; plus tales of humiliation before crowds ranging from 6 to 40,000...and many more. Please subscribe wherever the heck you get your podcasts. And many thanks to my friend Chris Ballew for the groovy, loopy trailer rhythms! Thanks for listening. -jeff

Chris Ballew's new solo record, "I Am Not Me," flies you deep inside an evolving creative arc for one of music's most interesting players. You'll hear elements of Chris' Presidents of the United States of America days coming through along with notes that remind you that he's made nearly 20 records for kids as Caspar Babypants. The totality of it is a groovy, abstract trip inside a record that begs to be your traveling companion: in your car, on a walk, in the kitchen or on the couch. I commandeered the radio for an hour to sit down with Chris for an extended Hoytus Interruption. We play a few tracks and talk about the record and what it was like to create during the height of the pandemic.

It's a special LIVE Hoytus Interruption Monday at 1pm Pacific as the former frontman for Presidents of the United States of America drops by to talk about his new solo record "I Am Not Me." Chris Ballew describes the music as "fuzzy and spacey with lyrics that are abstract and cosmic." I've listened and it is ALL OF THAT! I find the record to be a super-fun listen for whatever state of mind, work or relaxation I'm in at the moment. We'll also talk about what it was like for Chris to put away his Caspar Babypants alter-ego and show schedule to create something new during the pandemic. We'll explore how artists everywhere are approaching their craft in new ways after having more than a year to marinate in a kind of creative sensory deprivation chamber. Stream the conversation LIVE at 1pm Pacific at voiceofvashon.org. Then I'll put the whole hour up in this space for streaming at your leisure.