After a quick conversation on the need for branding, and how to address those needs without sounding like a self-involved prick, The show dives DEEP into personal histories of antagonism, and the darker natures that both Dawn and Bobby are constantly struggling to dismantle. These are the confessions of people who know how to be mean, but are trying to be better. Reflections of self-doubt, fights won, fights lost, fights better left unfought, the thrill of sour victories, and the agony of opportunities lost before they were ever offered to you. A circular, show about misunderstandings blending with the best of intentions.

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Once upon a time there was a little girl named Dawn who carried around an ugly red monkey with no ears, and she liked that monkey and she played with it until she got older, and now she realizes why she liked the monkey, and how great it is that monkeys don’t care if they get unfollowed on twitter or defriended on Facebook, and monkeys don’t worry about whether they’re being funny enough or clever enough, and monkeys don’t suck at email and get screwed by multimedia corporations sticking them for unlimited text plans. They just swing through trees and throw poop at stupid things. But they don’t get to watch things like Downton Abbey and Justified, and they don’t get to go to awesome baby showers or eat applesauce and pork chops, and they’re kinda dumb, too. So as with most Ham-Fisted Radio episodes, it’s all about finding balance between the neurotic mess we often are, and the little red monkey we could be.

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Dawn, coming off the couch a couple days late after being laid low with some flu-ish thing, makes up for lost time with an extra-long episode fueled by cold medicine and the need to figure out how to best fit herself into what she wants to be. It’s way easier said than done, and the show is largely about previous (and failed) attempts, both of the philosophical and the fashionable variety. Why do we look the way we do, why do we act the way we do, and what caused us to finally get poured into the forms we take today? The answers include fashion faux-pas of the 90s, Poodle Hair of the late 80s, and the joy a woman feels when she finally finds a bra that fits just right.

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Sometimes the best place to get away is inside your own head: How Dawn is pursuing the art of being Zen in her uncertain present, how Taquitos and Tequila and a good magazine keep her feeling centered, and how the cracks in a friendship don’t need to become fissures, so long as you fill them in with trust, and understanding, and some of the best mashed potatoes. An extra-long episode of Ham-Fisted, with more almost-endings than an interrogation by Columbo.

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Dawn is laid low over the weekend by a stomach illness, which is perfect timing for a woman trying to lay out the pieces of her life and build interesting machines from them. The show delves into the mind of the duplicitous nerd, trying to discern why they lie, and why they assign importance to things that should be superficial at best, and from there, goes toodling through some musings on the egalitarian nature of art, and where “making a living” should rate on the “I want to be a podcaster” scale of desires. Also, some discussion on the television programs Being Human, Private Practice, Gossip Girl, and the disappointment of being Jamie Kennedy.

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Sometimes we look at our own lives through the prism of pop-culture, and that’s the overriding theme of today’s show. Why Dawn and Patrick persist in trying to educate each other on their favorite bands even though they KNOW it’s a lost cause, why sometimes rooting for the good guys is the worst thing that can happen in a TV show, How both Dawn and Bobby tend to ride to the rescue of shows they have no ownership over, Why Friday Night Lights works in much the same ways the best Science Fiction works, and how the cliche about critics and frustrated artists is mostly dead-on.

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So, what’s changed? Something has to have changed. You can’t go through what Dawn and Patrick went through and not be changed somehow. And if you listen to only the first 15 minutes of this episode – you’d be wrong. Because Dawn and Bobby spend most of that time talking about Gabe Kaplan, Poker, and sweater choices. But inevitably, discussion swings to how Dawn is surviving the ongoing aftermath of Patrick’s health crises, and how they’re both learning to move forward. It’s a little easier for Patrick, because he slept through most of it. Dawn was wide awake for almost all of it, and she discusses all the horrifying, scary, sad, and often funny moments that she went through, just in time to get back to work and find out work was going away. Yeah, things have changed, but its still Ham-Fisted Radio, alright.

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Monday evening, January 9th 2012. Talk to you then.

A holiday tradition here at Ham-Fisted Radio, Dawn Taylor provides a curated score for your holiday celebrations. So download and enjoy Ham-Fisted Christmas 2011 playing in the background as you do all the Christmas-y things you do every holiday season, be it decorating, drinking, drinking & decorating, arguing, cooking, arguing about cooking, laughing, loving, and enjoying what is best in life.

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We’ve talked before on this show about how we really like donations, even if we consistently forget to ask for them.

Well, we’re remembering now. Just in time for holiday season. Just after Patrick, already undergoing dialysis for the rest of his life (unless someone wants to cough up a free kidney? Anyone?) also underwent open heart surgery to repair a torn aorta.

This is obviously putting a huge strain on our heroes Dawn & Patrick. So if you’d like to help in any way, please visit the link below.

Patrick’s Evil Kidney

We’ll talk to you soon. Promise.

Well, there wasn’t anything exactly planned for the 100th episode, but this episode pretty much encapsulates what made the previous 99 work the way they did: Special Guest Jaime Kirk of PDX Yar tells the tale of how he started out a sad tuba player and ended up a stage combat supervisor responsible for choreographing Trek in the Park and building a working pirate ship all in the same summer. Along the way, Dawn, Jaime and Fatboy get REAL introspective, looking back on the past 100 shows, their own past, and the act of chasing their adolescence into their 40′s, and the voices nagging in the back of their heads: Whose voices are they, really, and how much attention are they worth? There are fights, there are knives, there are jokes, there are screw-ups, mistakes, pressures, crying jags, a pile of pills and a bottle of whiskey. And that’s probably how the 100th episode of Ham-Fisted Radio should go

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Dawn explores the link between ritual and satisfaction when it comes to food. The show is all about food, and science, and whether there can be such a thing as a $100 turkey, whether it could really taste that much better, how pet food marketing is geared towards selling beef leavings and reconstituted grain towards the humans and not the animals, varying theories as to why spicy foods got that way, how much childhood memories affect how food tastes, and the alchemy involved in taking tomatoes and beef and creating the best chili possible.

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An act as small as turning the heat on launches Dawn into a world where fistfuls of guff are given to many who deserve it. Guff for those who mock those sensitive to cold weather, Guff for those who place their cold extremities on their spouse’s toasty warm and sleeping bodies, Guff for those who channel all their productive energies into largely frivolous endeavors, and Guff for those who consider such endeavors frivolous for arbitrary reasons. Plus – cookies!

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Dawn Taylor has triumphed over a lot of things in the almost 2 years of this show. But the only thing that could stop her from doing a full show today? A locked door. This on the day that Dave Helfrey returns to Hamfisted to talk about the latest edition of Fright Town, what kind of craziness he’s up to this year (Monkeys with Knives and Werepugs) the Human Centipede part 2 is actually seen and reviewed by Mr. Helfrey, the human instinct to throw your loved ones to the monsters, and a quick bit of lamentation about the memery that has turned Silence of the Lambs into a comedy for a large number of people. 60 minutes worth of show in 40 minutes – dig in.

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It is pretty important that you pick the right movie for your first date. You could end up having to deal with the drama of Dawn and Patrick’s first date night – it involves Short People with Napoleon Syndrome, extreme unpleasantness, and Donald Sutherland. Luckily, Patrick has methods that most normal men don’t have access to. Methods involving sexy laundry and trustful napping. Once again, Dawn points out how when it comes to relationships, unorthodox is sometimes better than the tried and true. Other topics include Breaking Bad’s season finale, a Voigt-Kampff test is performed live on air, and the opening credits to Parks and Recreation are ruined for everyone.

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How in the hell does a man like Hugh Jackman fight robots and sing showtunes while pounding as many beers as he does? Andrew Hill of Caveman Medicine thinks he has the answers, and it has a lot to do with calorie management, moderation, and a lot of things that neither Dawn nor Fatboy have all that much experience with. Dawn, after giving a glowing review to the sloppy-but-cute Real Steel, leads a discussion with Andrew about what the hell we put in our bodies, and why it does the weird things to us that they do. Whiskey, Honey, Sugar, Salt, Pickle Juice and Karaoke Treadmills, the Road to Wellville now cuts through Hamfisted territory.

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There are battles that go on in everybody’s head – quiet, fierce battles over the many decisions we have to make every day. And those battles get more contentious when the head in question belongs to a smartass like Dawn Taylor, or Fatboy Roberts. Their adventures on the tightrope of inappropriate statements, how best to deal with Dawn in public (Bring Bourbon) and then there’s a sidetrack into a different sort of battle: The kind of battle that involves rapping, and Fantastic Fest. Plus a bonus battle called “Dawn vs. The Therapist,” and the difference between addiction and a lack of self-control. There IS a difference. Find out inside.

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Some say rage fuels the internet, but that’s not the case. It’s narcissism. It’s the reason “social media” has essentially just become how people socialize, period – people sharing things that likely would never have been shared 20 years ago, because there weren’t the means, and because nobody would have known what to do with it. But now, everyone has a dedicated studio audience hanging on their words. Dawn studies 4 different examples of narcissism unchained, 2 of which are overwhelmingly negative, and two of which are actually helpful and positive, one of which involves a strange tale from Dawn’s own past. A reality show is invented, youtube superstars are exposed, and we learn that maybe sometimes, while fishing for attention is typically a negative trait, sometimes it can actually help others. Or at least that’s how we justify all this podcasting.

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Dawn has decided that it’s time to make a change. The catalyst? A bunch of pictures surfaced on facebook that caused Dawn to realize that her outward appearance didn’t accurately reflect her inward state-of-mind. And so a discussion broke out on the realities of NEEDING a personal sense of style, no matter how superficial it may seem. Talk of losing weight, struggles against obesity won and lost, and the thin line between armor and costume were discussed before moving onto the main point of the show: Dawn breaks down, thoroughly, some simple rules of theater etiquette, made as plain and clear as possible so people who might not even know they’re in violation may learn from their mistakes. Also discussed – the science behind the Velveteen Rabbit, and how you can turn it to your benefit.

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If you aren’t comfy with the ideas of germs and microbes, then this episode might induce a severe case of heebie-jeebies. Dawn saw Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion,” and it made her want to dive into a pool made of Purell. From there, a list of past maladies was shared, and a variety of remedies (home-spun, pharmaceutical, alcoholic and otherwise) were recommended before the subject turned towards something a little more dirty – Cloo. Cloo is an iPhone app that would allow you to rent out your personal bathroom to strangers for a small fee. The politics of pooping leads to a conversation about more generalized social awkwardness, the signs to help you spot when you’re screwing up, and how Deadwood could be the remedy to all our conversational ails.

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Returning from a week of trials and tribulations, Dawn speaks on the changes that Patrick has gone through in the last 2 weeks, including some sexy scruff and a nougat gland. Well, he’s working on the 2nd part, along with not frustrating the hell out of Dawn, and vice/versa. A follow up to a previous show in which the secrets to married life were revealed, but this time the secrets are seen via Patrick’s perspective. And then the meat of today’s show is cooked up – getting paid for your work, getting what you’re worth for it, what that actually means, and what that SHOULD mean. It begs a question that nobody of the current generation really wants to answer: Is settling the evil that we’ve been told it is? The dangers of not knowing your limits are explored.

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It’s another primarily pop-culture focused episode of Ham-Fisted, as the Breaking Bad discussion that’s been threatening to break out finally bubbles over like a poorly cooked batch of crystal. Dawn examines what makes Walter White tick, and why he’s maybe the most fascinating anti-hero on television. From there, we delve into the ever tumbling trainwreck that is Torchwood, and discuss whether or not Doctor Who has effectively outgrown its knee-jerk description as a children’s show. Finally, Dawn reviews “Fright Night,” and this is yet another summer remake that shouldn’t have worked, yet is better than most could have imagined, thanks to a return to form by former Buffy mastermind Marti Noxon.

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After a quick recap/gloat session regarding Geek Trivia, Dawn and Fatboy slide sideways into a discussion about how they make their respective relationships work, and the answer includes lots of good-natured verbal abuse, mutual insanity and tons and tons of patience and acceptance. Also discussed: Fatboy’s wife is scared of being on Rick Emerson’s talkshow, Dawn thinks she’s being primed for an on-air blowup, and Fatboy has a minor neurotic breakdown on the ride into the show.

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Dawn went and saw a movie about super-intelligent apes who get pissed off at humans and, apparently, they RISE up. Fatboy noted that titling this film (which isn’t a documentary at all, unfortunately) “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” sorta gives away a significant element of the story, and that observation leads to a discussion on movie trailers, and why it feels like a lot of the complaining about how trailers give everything away seems almost knee-jerk as opposed to well thought-out: How important is the element of surprise to a viewer as opposed to quality of story being told? Why do people tend to value the former much more than they value the latter, and how important does staying “Spoiler-Free” matter when most of the films people watch/buy, are films that have the element of surprise completely stripped away? It’s been awhile since an episode of Ham-Fisted Radio was so thoroughly film-related, so if you enjoy that sort of thing, here’s about an hour of review, analysis, arguing and other fun stuff.

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A gourmet episode of Ham-Fisted Radio today, and not just because Dawn and Fatboy have their NPR voices on – the entire show is all about people of low-budget means fumbling towards more sophisticated tastes, and why that seems to threaten the hell out of people. It seems strange that developing a taste for wine and chocolate should become some sort of existential meditation on identity and class pressures, but that’s sort of what happens, with of course the typical comedic tales of awkwardness and pop-culture lessons we should have learned by now. With a bonus story about the homicidal elderly!

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