Hoytus Interruptus

The idea for this episode came to Jeff in the middle of a recent recording session, when his client on the other end of the line heard a strange sound and asked about it. From there, the episode morphs into a story about the imaginary worlds we conjure in our childhood imagination. For Jeff, he usually found himself standing on the pitcher's mound of his mind, conjuring a tough situation late...

Jeff was recently reminded of this 20-year-old Hoytus episode while officiating a wedding with a warm Joshua Tree desert wind starting to have its way with the perfectly-coiffed hair of the assembled friends and family. By the time everyone got to the reception, the wind was blowing at a steady 20-25 miles per hour and all that perfect hair wound up every which way. For Jeff, his relationship with...

Jeff has been thinking about trees lately (and Kahlil Gibran quotes, judging from the title of this episode). The beautiful maple that Jeff has been staring at from his studio window for a quarter century started dying in recent years. The whole trauma of cutting back his favorite tree led to a flood of memories about all the other oaks, pines, cherries and maples that have played a role in Jeff’s...

In this episode, Jeff laments the demise of the comedy album. Once upon a time, they were huge sellers. No longer, though. This fact did not , however, dissuade Jeff from joining a collective of Seattle writers, actors, and sound designers to make a rather dark and edgy comedy album some thirty plus years ago. This week, Jeff digs through a bit of comedy history before pulling his friends' pr...

Two decades ago on this very podcast, Jeff told the story of an orphaned baby orca named Springer that got separated from its family, forcing volunteers to attempt a daring rescue, rehabilitation and reunification with the whale’s family. Such a thing had never been pulled off before and while hopes were high, orcas in the Pacific Northwest were already stressed and swimming against a variety of m...

Jeff’s parents passed just two years apart during the first week of April back in the late 90's. He and his sisters still refer to those seven days as “Death Week.” And it’s a clue into how the Hoyt family does death. Here on the doorstep of their 30th Death Week, Jeff revisits a funnier-than-you'd-expect staged account of each of his parents’ final days.

The Hoytus Interruptus Apology Tour continues with three stories from when Jeff was just twelve years old. He could have listened to the voice in his head trying to steer him clear of doing stupid shit. But for Jeff, twelve was the age when bad decisions that he’d later regret appeared to be somewhat baked in.

Global tourism has more than made up for time lost to the pandemic. The hot spots are teeming with record crowds these days and the pushback from the locals is starting to get ugly. Here in America, some of our national parks have even had to resort to timed entry reservation systems. For a peek into why, Jeff tells three short stories of national park visits that came face-to-face with critical m...

Every now and again, Jeff breaks away from telling his own stories to tell someone else’s. In this episode, you'll hear from former Presidents of the USA front man Chris Ballew. Interwoven with music from all three phases of his long career, Chris tells of his early rock star days, an encounter with the biggest pop star in the world, and a close call that might have prevented him from getting...

Jeff Hoyt has never met a darkened theater in which he couldn’t fall asleep. For whatever reason, live theater makes his lids grow heavy. It’s usually only for a few minutes, which is fine when you’re ten rows back. But then there was the time Jeff and his teenage daughter found themselves way too close to the action, forcing Jeff to make this episode his first stop on this season’s Hoytus Interru...

If there’s one thing about young love, the time spent apart can be excruciating. It’s really hard to go your separate ways when you’re only just getting started. So, when Jeff & Cindy started dating over fifty years ago, their first summer apart was a particularly tough one for Jeff. But then, along came music to save the day! A progressive, symphonic rock band from England gave Jeff something...

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...

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...

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 mor...

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 o...

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 "Sampl...

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...

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 & F...

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...

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...

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...

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.