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The Twist Podcast #300: Fireworks, Jumbotrons, Birthday Wishes, Zachary James Interview and So Much More
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we throw a studio party for our 300th episode. We started The Twist in 2018 and we’re as irreverent as ever. They’ll never paint over our rainbow lives or our sparkly podcast, as we enjoy a PBS review from Emma, Rick’s interview with Zachary James, and an up-and-personal chat with Jo Klett, whose wisdom and humor offer a balm for these chaotic times.
This Week’s Survey Results
If you could master one thing instantly what would it be?
Playing an instrument 65 percent
Speaking multiple languages 47.06
Cooking like a super chef 5.88
Painting or drawing 23.53
Other – what would it be? 5.88COMMENTS:
- Any and all! I always dreamed of being able to speak and understand whatever language of the country i was visiting, instantly and without study. That would be my superpower!
- Spanish and French so I can speak with my friends in Europe in their language
- Piano
- spanish, Portuguese
- understanding and predicting stock market fluctuations
- Ukulele
- Spanish and/or Portuguese, since we might end up moving to a place where that’s the primary language.
- Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic. Not French tho- I already speak the language of love bahahahahahaha!
- Singing
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Book Club Event a Success with Talk and Dinner
My book ‘Open Secrets: A Maggie Dahl Mystery‘ was chosen by a local book club several months ago. This past Thursday I was invited to their monthly get-together at a restaurant in Glen Gardner, NJ, where they meet for a meal and discussion. I was treated to dinner and talked about the book and about writing. What a treat!
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New Workshop Starting in September! Autobiographical Writing at the Hunterdon Co. Main Library
I’m very excited to be starting a new monthly autobiographical writing workshop on the second Friday of each month, starting September 12, from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm. The location will be the main Hunterdon County Library. You can register at the library’s website once they’ added it to their calendar.
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One Thing or Another Column: Comparatively Speaking
Narration provided by Wondervox
By Mark McNease
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Five years after writing this, it’s still true that so many of the conversations I have with friends and peers is about comparing—not so much to one-up each other with our aches, pains, and fears about our future health issues, but to simply share these things we have in common. Perhaps ‘age is just a number,’ as the platitude insists, but the body has a different opinion.
What is it about aging that has so many of us comparing aches and pains, as if we’re war veterans comforted by knowing we’re not the only ones wounded? Life can feel like combat when you’ve survived enough of it, and maybe the time simply comes when the scars we show each other are the result of putting so many decades behind us.
I remember hearing people my age talk about knee stiffness, back pain, inflamed joints, and the malaise that comes from knowing you won’t die young. “It’s better than the alternative,” we say, assuming the alternative is a cemetery plot or an urn from the local crematorium. We console ourselves with having outlasted and outlived so much, but the body knows better the prices we pay. Friends long gone. Parents a memory that somehow becomes more cherished with the erosion of time. The increasing effort needed to get into a car, climb a staircase, and some days just get out of bed.
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A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due – Chapter 5 (Audio)
CHAPTER 5
Welcome to the episodic audio edition of A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due. Fasten your headphones and enjoy one new chapter each week. You can find all the episodes here.
A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due picks up where A House in the Woods left off. Laurel Calloway is still in the mysterious town of Strickland, New Jersey, where nothing is as it appears to be. Two years have gone by, and they’ve been good to the Calloways. Laurel and her husband Jeremy have a new house, and a new family with baby Isabel about to celebrate her first birthday. Everything seems perfect, until Laurel begins to have dreams. Bad dreams. Something tells her these dreams could really be memories. But of what? Of whom, and of when?
Did she really run over a woman in the road at night? Had they once had a dog? Why are these things trying so hard to surface, swimming slowly up from her subconscious? The more she begins to tell the people around her about these dreams, the more convinced she is that they’re part of it, and that these nightmares aren’t really dreams at all. Page after page, the pace escalates as Laurel begins to learn the truth and plot her escape. But will she succeed? The Devil is in the details.
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The Twist Podcast Turns 300! Take the Survey
Help Mark and Rick Rose celebrate our 300th episode of The Twist Podcast on July 25! Take our weekly survey and be part of the show. You can also send listener pix and facts to: TheTwistPocast @ gmail. com. This week’s survey: What skill would you master instantly if you could?
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The Twist Podcast #299: Disappearing Client Lists, New Wisdom of Jo Audio, and Emma Zoe Lyons Reviews HBO’s ‘Enigma’
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we hunt for Jeffrey Epstein’s mysteriously vanishing client list, share more fan facts and photos, dig the Wisdom of Jo in her own words, and enjoy Emma Zoe Lyons’ review of HBO’s ‘Enigma.’
Last Week’s Survey Results
If you could be one of these things, what would you be?
Thinner 18.75 percent
Younter 31.25 percent
Richer 18.75 percent
Kinder 31.25 percentTwo ‘others’:
“Only if I could also still have all my experiential wisdom from 86 years.”
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The Twist Podcast #298: Big Monstrous Bill, ‘Poop Cruise’ Movie Review, Fan Photos, and a Rick Rose Chat with Adele George
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we choke on the Big Ugly Bill, take our wins where we can get them, learn about the ‘Poop Cruise’ from Emma Zoe Lyons, and enjoy Rick’s conversation with author Adele George. Plus our weekly survey and new fan photos!
This Week’s Survey
New weekly survey! Only ONE answer preferred this time. Would you be thinner, younger, richer, kinder? Or something else.
A View from Our Listeners
These are pix of your co-hosts Mark and Rick with fans of the Twist.Send us your photo(s) and a line or two to: TheTwistPodcast AT gmail.com
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A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due – Chapter 4 (Audio)
CHAPTER 4
Welcome to the episodic audio edition of A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due. Fasten your headphones and enjoy one new chapter each week. You can find all the episodes here.
A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due picks up where A House in the Woods left off. Laurel Calloway is still in the mysterious town of Strickland, New Jersey, where nothing is as it appears to be. Two years have gone by, and they’ve been good to the Calloways. Laurel and her husband Jeremy have a new house, and a new family with baby Isabel about to celebrate her first birthday. Everything seems perfect, until Laurel begins to have dreams. Bad dreams. Something tells her these dreams could really be memories. But of what? Of whom, and of when?
Did she really run over a woman in the road at night? Had they once had a dog? Why are these things trying so hard to surface, swimming slowly up from her subconscious? The more she begins to tell the people around her about these dreams, the more convinced she is that they’re part of it, and that these nightmares aren’t really dreams at all. Page after page, the pace escalates as Laurel begins to learn the truth and plot her escape. But will she succeed? The Devil is in the details.
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One Thing or Another Column: It’s About Time
Narration provided by Wondevox
By Mark McNease
Time is not so much an arrow as a comet we ride, streaking across the sky.
You can tell from the first sentence I was 62 when I wrote this. Five years later my perspective on the fleeting nature of time hasn’t changed. I’ve long said that “time is a non-renewable resource,” and I still believe that. The older we get, the less of it we have. That’s not maudlin, it’s just true. As yet another friend died recently, it seemed like a good time to revisit the subject. Pun intended.
The good news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. The bad news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. When I was twenty, I never imagined being forty. It seemed so far away from that youthful ground I stood upon with naive bravado. Then when I hit forty, I thought fifty would be the last milestone to publicly mark, quietly retiring birthday observations with the exception of a few close friends and family. And finally, when I approached the age when referring to oneself as a senior becomes culturally appropriate, I decided I could at minimum look forward to collecting a monthly stipend for my troubles. We should all be paid for getting old, at least those of us lucky enough to live that long.
I was a wild child in many ways, defiant to a fault. I became a teenager whose rebellion was sometimes life threatening, and eventually I grew into a man with the sorts of weaknesses and appetites that make it slightly remarkable I’m still here. So seeing a direct deposit into my checking account every month from the Social Security Administration is a reminder that a lot of people don’t survive to collect this modest reward. Cancer gets them, or leukemia, or car accidents, or sudden organ failure. A thousand different ways to end this train ride called life before it gets to the last few stations. Friends I lost to HIV are long dead, and memories I have of them are flashcards of much younger men. Were they to stand in front of me again, I may recognize them, but they probably would not recognize me forty years later.
Time is not so much an arrow as a comet we ride, streaking across the sky. We only think it drags because we’re on it, like riders saddling imaginary horses that stand stock still while the ground moves beneath us. We experience time when it is behind us or in front of us, but seldom when it is right where we are. And so it seems to move slowly or quickly, its speed determined by our anticipation of something not yet occurred, or our disbelief at how much is behind us.
It’s only fitting we be paid while we’re still young enough to benefit from it. It’s the least society can do to compensate us for our patience. It seems time really is money, and just as fleeting. We may not spend either of them all in one place, but we will certainly spend them all in one lifetime.
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A Smashing Smashwords Summer Sale! All My eBooks Free for July
Another summer, another sale at Smashwords. Talk about freedom! You can download all (that’s ALL) my eBooks for free through the month of July.
You can also find dozens and dozens of other free and discounted books by your favorite authors, and ones who’ll soon join your list of must-reads.
FIND MY BOOKS HERE (be sure to click on each one for the freebie) or just go to Smashwords summer sale page and start browsing. Hot reading fun in the summer time!
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The Twist Podcast #297: Creepy Daddy Fantasies, Earth Quake in New York, and an Interview with Author Christopher A. Micklos
Join co-hosts Mark McNease and Rick Rose as we analyze MAGA’s creepy daddy fetish, applaud democracy in New York City while it’s still a thing, and enjoy a new Rick Rose interview with author Christopher A. Micklos.
THIS WEEK’S SURVEY
What’s your favorite time of day? TAKE THE SURVEY HERE.
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A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due – Chapter 3 (Audio)
CHAPTER 3
Welcome to the episodic audio edition of A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due. Fasten your headphones and enjoy one new chapter each week. You can find all the episodes here.
A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due picks up where A House in the Woods left off. Laurel Calloway is still in the mysterious town of Strickland, New Jersey, where nothing is as it appears to be. Two years have gone by, and they’ve been good to the Calloways. Laurel and her husband Jeremy have a new house, and a new family with baby Isabel about to celebrate her first birthday. Everything seems perfect, until Laurel begins to have dreams. Bad dreams. Something tells her these dreams could really be memories. But of what? Of whom, and of when?
Did she really run over a woman in the road at night? Had they once had a dog? Why are these things trying so hard to surface, swimming slowly up from her subconscious? The more she begins to tell the people around her about these dreams, the more convinced she is that they’re part of it, and that these nightmares aren’t really dreams at all. Page after page, the pace escalates as Laurel begins to learn the truth and plot her escape. But will she succeed? The Devil is in the details.