comedy4cast #838

Odd News PAC for August 11, 2025

"The Long Rest"

Written by

Clinton Alvord

CAST

(in order of appearance, where possible, otherwise by actor)

ID ANNOUNCER.......................COMPUTER
CLINTON

DERRICK

RORY............................CLINTON ALVORD

INTRO: COMEDY4CAST STUDIO

MUSIC: COMEDY4CAST NETWORK ID STING

ID ANNOUNCER

The comedy4cast network. Let's dog ear that for now.

MUSIC: ID MUSIC UP AND OUT.

MUSIC: OPENING THEME MUSIC IN AND UNDER.

CLINTON

It's time, once again, for the Dog Days of Podcasting, a call for podcasters to try to put out a podcast every day in August. For more information and to hear all the shows, go to dogdaysofpodcasting.com.

We always take this month to provide you with some interesting, yet totally useless Odd News. And this year, to celebrate the Platinum Anniversary of comedy4cast, or PAC for short, we'll end each Dog Days episode with part of a classic comedy4cast episode. So, let's get started with "Odd News PAC"!

MUSIC: THEME MUSIC UP AND OUT.

SFX: TRANSITION WHOOSH.

STORY: SOUND OFF!

CLINTON

It's always important to make a packing list before you take a trip. And an itinerary. And a detailed spreadsheet. And a to-do list. And a checklist of all the lists you need to create.

But all of that is no use if you forget to look at your lists. Which is something a Parisian man should have done on a recent family car trip between Paris and Morocco -- a distance of about 2,000 kilometers or just a little over twelve hundred miles.

Traveling with his wife and 22-year-old daughter, the man was making good time on his trip, aside from several stops at service stations along the way. Sometimes the stops were even to get gasoline.

However, about three and a half hours after one of the stops, he had a sudden realization. His daughter was in the car, but his wife was not! It was then that he realized what had happened.

Huge echo added to voice for the following line.

CLINTON (cont'd)

She had been abducted by aliens!

MUSIC: DRAMATIC STING.

CLINTON (cont'd)

Oh, sorry. That's my head canon. He realized that he had accidentally left her behind at one of the service station stops. But which one?

Which one?!? How many stops did this guy make? Apparently enough to know he was going to need some help.

He called the authorities around 8:30am to explain the situation. The Gendarmerie were sympathetic to his story, and also a little suspicious. The man said he no longer remembered where he had stopped. Or when. But did mention that he recalled stopping for a break near Orleans, France. Local authorities were dispatched. But they could find no indication of the wife at any of the rest areas. They widened their search to multiple locations along the motorway, but still, no sign of the missing woman.

Police were growing increasingly suspicious that the 62-year-old man had forgotten his wife on purpose.

By now you might be thinking. Wait. What about the daughter? She was in the car. She must know where they stopped. And you would be right. Except, she had been asleep, possibly dreaming of taking a motor trip somewhere without her parents. Regardless, she had no idea where her mother might have been left behind.

Luckily, the police were able to locate the missing woman with the help of a mobile network operator by tracking her phone. She was at a service station in Deux-Sèvres, about 300 miles from where her husband had realized she was missing. That had happened at 4:30am and the woman hadn't moved from the spot in over five hours, waiting for her family to return.

And now, I know you're wondering, "Wait. If the woman had a phone, why didn't she just call her husband, or her daughter?" I don't know for sure, but I think that after she was mistakenly left behind...at a service station...at 4:30am...with nothing to do but sit and wait, her mind was preoccupied with what she was going to say to her husband when he came back.

Meanwhile, their daughter was probably thinking.

Extra echo added to the following line.

CLINTON (cont'd)

"Next Summer, I'm going solo."

SFX: TRANSITION WHOOSH.

CLIP: THE ANDROID PHONE

CLINTON

And now, let's celebrate 20 years of comedy4cast with this classic clip!

In this clip from February of 2011, Derrick is downloading an app on his new Android phone and Rory has questions. We join the confusion, already in progress.

SFX: TRANSITION WHOOSH.

DERRICK

Now, the newest version of Android is Honeycomb.

RORY

Uh, that means either it's full of holes or it stays crispy in milk.

DERRICK

Neither.

After a pause.

RORY

Neither.

DERRICK

It's optimized for use on tablets.

RORY

That's funny. I pronounce it tableau.

DERRICK

No, I mean tablet computers.

RORY

And?

DERRICK

A tablet computer is a device that falls somewhere between a laptop computer and a smartphone.

RORY

Well, what falls between a smartphone and a tablet computer?

DERRICK

I don't know.

RORY

Ooh, I think I found a niche, and it needs to be scratched.

SFX: ELECTRONIC CHIRPING.

DERRICK

Looks like my app has finished downloading.

RORY

And what is this app of which you speak? Is it short for Appetite? For FroYo?

DERRICK

No, that's short for application.

RORY

So they're applications that fall a bit short?

DERRICK

They're small applications.

RORY

Like widgets?

DERRICK

Sort of, but bigger.

RORY

So they fall between widgets and applications, huh? Boy, there sure are a lot of high-tech things that fall between other things. It's like the space between the cushions on the big comfy couch of consumerism. Loose change! Dust bunnies!

DERRICK

It doesn't sound like you're too thrilled with Android phones.

RORY

Well, that depends. I mean, do they obey Asimov's three laws of robotics?

DERRICK

I don't know.

RORY

Well, there you go. I'm not going to wake up dead one morning in the middle of the night because my phone thought its self-preservation was more important than mine.

DERRICK

Well, that's too bad. They were having a two-for-one sale, so I picked one up for you.

RORY

Oh, cool.

DERRICK

But what about all that talk?

RORY

Well, listen, if worse comes to worse and this thing attacks me, at least I know I have a smartphone right there so I can dial for help.

DERRICK

As always, your logic is impeccable, Captain.

OUTRO: COMEDY4CAST STUDIO

MUSIC: 'END THEME'

CLINTON

That about wraps it up for today's Odd News PAC. But first, a shout-out to the comedy4cast Patreon patrons, including our producer-level patrons, Paul Barrie, from the A Window to the Magic podcast and Kirby Bartlett-Sloan from the 20 Megabyte Doctor Who podcast. You too can support comedy4cast and get episodes before everyone else for as little as $2 a month. Just search for comedy4cast, all one word with the number 4, on patreon.com.

Script, voices and original music by me, Clinton Alvord, Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.

Talk to you again next time! But for now, that's it. We're done, done, done, done, done. Bye bye!

MUSIC: 'END THEME' UP AND OUT.

-- THE END --