It’s 5am, maybe 5:30. I’m lying in bed; it’s twilight outside and raining. The alarm is set for 6:25, and when it chimes I jump out of bed, not enthusiastic, just not wasting a second. I’ve got forty minutes to get breakfast and get ready for work. That’s about the amount of time it takes, with few fripperies. I maybe watch the last night’s Orioles condensed game whilst I eat breakfast, but nothing else is superfluous. Except downloading the Pro Version.

For those who don’t know, Hollywood Handbook: Pro Version is a spin-off from the regular Hollywood Handbook podcast. For those who don’t know, the regular podcast is an ever mutating, originally insiders guide to Hollywood, now anything and everything, comedy podcast featuring Sean Clements and Hayes Davenport (the boys) as two inconceivably self-important Hollywood douchebags, who are actually nice and sweet, a performance swaddled in fifteen different layers of irony and in-jokes. It’s brilliant.

So I load the Stitcher app on my phone and browse to the Pro Version to check if it’s downloaded. If it hasn’t, I’ll save the episode to download, giving myself half-an-hour of fun and funniness to speed part of my commute to work.

I glance at the episode title: “THE 11 HOUR PRO VERSION.”

Oh, OK. They’ve recorded this very recently, right up against the wire to get an episode ou… WAIT.

The eleven hour pro version. Not eleventh hour, an eleven hour podcast.

Everything falls immediately in to place. I have ten hours between leaving for work and returning home. I can listen to the episode on my commute, at my desk, at lunch, only occasionally taking my earphones out to actually interact with the people I work with. I’ll listen to one podcast, just the boys, all day leaving just a little for Thursday.

It’s 7:03am, I leave for work, walking to the bus stop to get my 7:21am bus. The familiar drums of the theme song kick in as I walk down the steps outside my flat and out the front gate to find that the rain, drizzling as I ate breakfast, had stopped altogether. Walking down City Road in Cardiff as I do every morning, I ponder what this insane podcast episode will be.

Some context again. The previous Monday I also had an extremely long podcast to listen to. Ten hours of Comedy Bang Bang, marking that shows 10th Anniversary. It was a fun episode, and it felt like a real achievement to listen to over two days. So of course, the next week, the boys had to continue their ongoing theme of being jealous of CBB, and make an eleven hour episode.

Everything goes as usual for the first thirty minutes, the boys announce their intention to do an eleven hour podcast, that they were going to do it already, and that they don’t really care about it, and that it has nothing to do with Comedy Bang Bang. There are bits aplenty, they order some food to keep them going through the podcast, discuss the Sonic controversy, and talk about how since getting older they need to sleep and eat now.

Then… they fall asleep. Just a one minute nap they say. Sean has a spoon in his hand which will drop on to the hard floor and wake them in one minute.

The snoring sounds commence, they start talking in their sleep. I sit on the bus listening to it. The bus was late and if it had been a normal half-hour pro version episode it’d be over by now and I’d be barely a third of the way to work. But it’s not, and the snoring sounds, and the sleep-talking (Sean “Hey, HEY, hey get out of that basket you kid”, Hayes “For me? Thaaaank you”) keep going. After a minute or two it’s clear that they’re being looped.

I sit on the bus, this whole little world in my ears. Should I skip forward and see how long this loop goes on for? Can I listen to it all? Should I? In the end, the question to ask is: Why wouldn’t I?

The snores go on, lulling me through my day. I get off the bus and walk towards work as Hayes and Sean mumble and sleep-shout and fake snore and grunt and make all kinds of weird mouth sounds, over and over again, looped over and over, the same minute of audio looped for what should seem like an eternity but just feels like the soundtrack to my life now.

I get in to work, I sit at my desk, I do the same boring, pointless job that I do every day. Hollywood Handbook usually helps me through my work day. We’ve had three months when headphones at desks were banned, but two weeks ago on a trial basis we’ve been allowed them again. Just in time.

Is this the whole eleven hours? I don’t think I’d mind if it was. 8am goes by, and so does 9am, I sit at my desk content in my safe little world. Nobody else knows what I’m listening to and they’d think I’m insane if they did, but this is just right.

It’s nearing 10am, I’m well over two hours in and nothing has changed for an hour and a half, and I’m OK with that.

The spoon falls, “Spoon.” says Sean. Who knows what’s happening here? They’re awake again and asking Chef Kevin for a wet tissue. Kevin thinks it’s been eleven hours, Devin corrects him and says that it’s been two and a half — sidebar: the attention to detail to remember that and make sure it is around that time when they wake up is yet another layer of brilliance.

So they fall asleep again, just for 30 seconds, so Kevin can get a second wet tissue. So many questions. Will it be like this for the whole eleven hours? What’s the bit here? Of course, it’ll never be what you expect. There is new sleep talking (“Hey Sonic”, “I was raised by TV…you weren’t raised by TV, I was raised by TV”) new varied snorts and yawns. It continues.

Eight and a half hours remain, and as I continue my working day, they’re filled with some of the weirdest, trippiest bits of sound. Industrial noise begins to filter in about an hour later, at first quitely, almost imperceptibly under the snoring sounds. The sounds filter in and out for an hour or two, sometimes almost deafeningly loud, sometimes so quiet you wonder if they’re there or not. Industrial noises, things that sound like whale cries.

Slowly, things evolve through the hours, through the fourth and fifth hours the sounds begin to evolve into ambient music. I sit at my desk, unable to contain my smile at what’s happening. My work is boring, but all of life is in my head.

Lunchtime. Am I going to sit alone and listen to my podcast? Yes. If someone comes to sit with me and tries to talk to me am I going to be annoyed? Also yes.

Nobody does, I sit and eat and hear the repeated noise as it has overcome the snoring sounds. This is ambient music now, the deep sounds of the unconscious, Sean and Hayes are gone, buried deep in the mix. The ambient music shifts and evolves as it continues, underwater at times. I’m buried deep beneath this madness and I’m loving it.

At one point it surfaces. Nearly six hours in, it emerges from the deep. The boys do not say anything, but I think they are awake, just for a second. The noises change from the squishy, wet, howling, droning sounds from the deep; things feel human. I think I hear bird song, traffic, clanking, the hum of everyday life. Slowly, we descend back into the deep.

I’m back at work, not much time left in my work day. Into the seventh hour, Sean and Hayes begin to re-emerge from the deep. Their sleep talking and snoring and grunting rises, as the unconscious noise recedes.

Into the eighth hour, as I enter the final hour of my work day. My work is so far in the background it barely registers any more. Sean and Hayes are isolated, one at a time, the sound of the other echoing somewhere in the background. It’s quiet, quieter than it’s been for hours. I leave work and turn the volume up, trying to find a grip on it.

Waiting at the bus stop and my valiant bluetooth earphones give out, run out of battery. I’m exposed to the real world, and I don’t like it. Listening through shitty corded earphones on the bus, they slip out of the headphone jack over and over again, as the sleep becomes quieter and quieter and sometimes indistinguishable from my own technology failing. I finally abandon Hollywood Handbook for the day at eight and a half hours in.

It’s 6:25am, and as my alarm goes off I know I’ve got forty minutes to get breakfast and get ready for work. That’s about the amount of time it takes, with few fripperies. I maybe watch the last night’s Orioles condensed game whilst I eat breakfast, but nothing else is superfluous. Except for the excitement. What will be at the end?

Of course I’ve been on Reddit, so I know that there is one minute thirty seconds worth of Sean and Hayes talking at the end, but what do they say, what else is before that?

I leave the house at 7:05am. As the walk to the bus and the bus ride to work go on the snores start reversing, the loops become Lynchian. As I begin work we’re in to hour ten. The soundscape becomes cluttered, weird backwards talking, snoring, fades and sounds that could be anything at all. The ambient noise fades back in, any talking is low down in the mix, this is the time for noise.

It’s nearly time to wake up. We’re deep into hour eleven, the noise is dense, deep in my head. It’s nearly 10am on Thursday 9th May 2019, I’m at work and that none of those facts could matter less.

Everything from the last almost eleven hours is in the mix. Hayes and Sean are in there somewhere snoring and sleep talking, but who knows what else. The noise reaches a deafening volume, pure ambient noise reaching every corner of my brain, then… the spoon falls, Chef Kevin’s back with the tissue, I’m sitting at work and the 11 hours are over, let’s give the record to charity say the boys. Then Hayes says bye, they break down in laughter and I have to take a minute away from my desk to take in what I’ve listened to.