After fighting a long, drawn-out battle to some stubborn window blinds, I give in and just get on with the show. Starting with listener comments about their absolute worst job interviews. Then an update on my continuing job hunt gets me thinking about how my lifestyle lately is fitting for these palindrome days of May — the same forwards and backwards: Drinking coffee, job hunting, delivering food, job hunting, drinking coffee.
Also: thoughts on the new “Mission: Impossible” (Spoiler-free because the plot’s too complicated to spoil)…and how my dad and I came close to being pariahs in the theater for ratting out a lady and her granddaughter.
Then we wrap up the show by watching an instructional video telling us all how to talk cool in the 90’s, and read some more listener comments about Tetraphobia. A true palindrome experience. Sit back and listen with your favorite after-dark drink — but be careful not to get bucked, y’all!
This week: some audience participation! What was your worst job interview ever? For me, it was that time I got detained for peddling coupon books in a federal building. I should’ve done more to heed the number 4, a bad sign for good fortune.
The interviews lately haven’t been that bad on my most recent run of unemployment. I mean, there’s no job yet, but at least no police have been called.
Meanwhile, I keep on yo-yoing around town, delivering food for food, and doing the best at it I can, despite, well… Let’s just say that when you make house calls, ordinary customers are not ordinary people.
Also, thanks to audience participation, I find a likely answer to why there’s no 4th floor at the university hospital. In true click bait fashion, it’s not what you think!
Join Mike on a rainy night in the suburbs of Birmingham, AL, as he sits in his parents’ garage, freshly unemployed, and ponders the next big move.
Really, instead of making any definite decisions, I get hung up on spotting “The Club” security bar on the steering wheel of somebody’s late model POS in a Walgreens parking lot — probably the first time I’ve seen one since the 90’s. Gets me thinking about why they stopped making them, or why they apparently still do, given their inherent security flaws — like, for instance, being ridiculously visible.
Also, didn’t Heather Graham have a Club in that movie Swingers? I investigate.
Join Mike in the studio for another late night ramble.
Tonight, we explore life after the rat race in Margaritaville, FLA, where a flock of 55-and-up Parrot Heads and coastal grandmothers are wastin’ away in an oasis by the sea. Also, Katy Perry and Gayle King go to space, and to all our chagrin, come back; meanwhile, back on Earth, I pay my taxes and cause a car accident, consider taking a job teaching homeschool for a Christian company that sounds like a soap opera, and check out the upcoming Thomas Pynchon novel, “Shadow Ticket”, which sends me further into the bottomless pit of trying to understand postmodernism.
Listen on Spotify and Apple Music: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast…
Watch Video of this episode over at Youtube | @the_themidnightcitizenpodcast
…and be sure to join the Facebook page and find me on Instagram! … “You got your Tony Lama’s on/your jeans pressed tight/You take a few tokes make you feel alright/Rockin’ and a rollin’ on a Livingston Saturday Night”…
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike US License. Attribution by Mike Boody. Released April 2025 on mikesbonfire.substack.com and The Overnightscape Underground.
Join Mike in the studio for another late night ramble.
Tonight, it’s all about looking for a new business to get into, like maybe buyin’ a drone and selling my services as a “droneprenuer”. It seems to work for all those folks on Youtube infomercials, and as far as shady enterprise goes, it’s really no more sketchy than any other classified ad on LinkedIn.
Later, I have a religious epiphany over a box of frozen ravioli, give my final thoughts on “The White Lotus”, and play you a clip of a white nationalist who sounds like Ned Flanders. It’s boss-diddly-oss!
Join Mike in the studio late at night for a free-flowing ramble.
On this episode, he recounts the Friday night scramble of his first job — racing to close down the dollar theater lobby in time to make it to the video store before they locked the gates. Thankfully, Christy, the night manager, would keep the lights on just a little longer, giving rise to their own unofficial after hours film society.
Also: Irishing up my coffee to make a toast to Val Kilmer, browsing the classifieds again in my ongoing job search saga, and just when you thought Pulp Fiction had given up all its secrets… new theories emerge…
Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he recounts how he visited a place from his distant childhood this week — the atrium lobby of his dad’s old office building from the 80’s. Not having been there in nearly 40 years, he was prepared to receive nothing but warm, nostalgic vibes, but instead suffered the wrath of a hangry woman in scrubs.
Later, I spend some time looking for a job in the jungle scam market of LinkedIn, check out the new trailer for “One Battle After Another,” ostensibly based on the Thomas Pynchon novel, “Vineland”, and consider buying Signal stock…now that it’s the official texting app of political perverts.
Join Mike back in the studio late at night, where he goes for a long memory jog trying to remember what that Disney movie “The Shaggy DA” was about. He could just Google it, but doesn’t want to farm out his memory to the phone. It’s something we should all resist.
Later, I ask if there’s a statute of limitations on synchronicity. I wonder this as I drink a toast to George Foreman, who died Friday at 76, a few hours after my mom asked me if I wanted a Lean, Mean Fat Grilling Machine she had lying around.
Also: should I change the name of this show? I talk about why I picked THE MIDNIGHT CITIZEN as a title 15 years ago, standing in line at a Spirit of Halloween store after a car accident. And let’s talk about “The White Lotus”. Why are people dumping on Season 3?
Join Mike outside late at night, where he’s stunned to discover that they finally caught Jack the Ripper…like, a month ago. Isn’t anyone on the same news cycle anymore? Anyway, he’s devastated to learn that the truth of Saucy Jack’s real identity is much dumber than any theory has ever suggested, which reinforces his Rule for Life #2: Never Solve Your Mysteries.
Also, other rules for life, like Never Meet Your Heroes and Never Do Again What You Did Well 40 Years Ago, as demonstrated by Lucille Ball in her last sitcom “Life With Lucy”, but hopefully, will perhaps not be shown in “Spinal Tap 2”.
Join Mike in the studio late at night, where he asks why he was such an a-hole to a nice young Mormon on his own turf. This snark-by-default has deep roots, perhaps, in growing up in the Southern Baptist MLM groove, where every interaction was a sales pitch, a chance to earn posthumous perks.
Hear about what it was like growing up a Jesus Brat; how it was so hard to sell salvation in the South — a territory that had already been covered long before you got there. Also, why “cool” Jesus was another reason it was terrible to grow up in the 90’s, and how prayer protocol — or a lack thereof — continues to inflame my OCD to this very day, long after I stopped doing it.
Music for Tonight’s Episode: “The Stevie Shuffle” by Mr. Smith; “Beer Blues” by Koi Discovery | These two tracks were played under a Creative Commons License (Attribution, noncommercial, no derivatives) and are available at the Freemusicarchive.org. | All other backing tracks copy-free
