One of Happy Hour’s happiest features is that it brings together random strangers with nothing in common … who often end up having some pretty crazy things in common. Today’s Venn diagram overlaps at enchanted forests, trains, and…sperm donation. Andrew Duhon is back on the pod and the amazing Andrew Ward guest-hosts for Grant.

 Andrew Larimer has a lot going on: he is the original artistic director of The NOLA Project theatre company, he owns the local web-content production company FatHappy Media, and his historical play about the City Park train opens next month … as an outdoor musical IN City Park! But – as became evident from about a nanosecond into the podcast – the most exciting thing in Andrew’s life right now is his enchanted-forest engagement at last weekend’s Renaissance Fair outside Austin to (one-time Happy Hour guest) Taylor Richardson. Andrew’s delightful story of the event recounts what must be one of the loveliest, nerdiest proposals ever, complete with a jousting injury (fortunately not his) and a surprise scroll. 

If Abby Isaacson had to label herself she would say she’s a dilettante: she’s a standup comedian, a criminal -defense paralegal, a single mom of 4 kids, and as she discovered last year…a Viking. You’d think Abby might have felt out of place growing up Jewish in Dutch-Amish country, but the feeling was compounded by her “Aryan nation” physical features: tall and blond, she suspected at least a recessive gene. When she eventually learned her parents had availed themselves of a sperm donor, Abby joined 23 and Me – and when she signed up for the Viking push-notifications, she discovered her sperm-donor dad was Sven IV – making for a far better back-story than if bio-dad had been the Harvard med student her parents had been promised.

 Frequent guest Andrew Ward sits in the host chair today and has his own sperm-donor story – his report that he got $150 a pop in the mid-2000s gave Andrew Latimer an idea: after all, someone’s gotta pay for this wedding.

At the center of the concentric circles is Andrew Duhon, who on April 29 is hosting A Needle Falls in the Forest, a (vinyl!) listening event somewhere in City Park for his new album False River. He plays a song from the album, as well as a song he co-wrote… about a train. With forests and trains covered, tune in to hear Andrew’s comparison of solo-songwriting to masturbation – providing the sperm-donor component and there you are: it’s Happy Hour!

Photos at Wayfare  by Alison Moon.