About Us

Paul Menzel

Paul has always known that he was destined for a life of comedy. And people have been laughing at him ever since. Shortly after graduating from college in 1968, he joined an improvisational comedy troupe called Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis. For the next eight years, he directed and performed in their comedy revues. During that time, the group was featured weekly in satirical pieces for “All Things Considered” on the National Public Radio Network.

In 1977, Paul moved to Houston to open a comedy club. One room featured improvisational comedy revues and a separate room featured young comedians. Over the next 12 years, the Comedy Workshop provided a home for untried actors, writers and comedians....and a lot of bad behavior. Notable alums include Brett Butler, Sam Kinison, Thea Vidale, Janeane Garofalo and Bill Hicks.

In addition to running the Comedy Workshop, he was busy as an actor in commercials, industrial films, and a couple dozen forgettable movies. He still gets residual payments from some of that work – only now the checks are in cents rather than dollars. He framed one check for 2 cents – a reminder of the lasting value of his on-camera work.

At the beginning of 1990, Paul closed down the Comedy Workshop when he realized that he didn’t like being the only adult on the playground. Since that time, he has combined work as an actor, writer, video producer and instructional designer. Along the way he added a Master’s Degree in Training and Development and certification as a Ropes facilitator, family mediator and life coach. Don’t ask – somehow it all fits together. After he hit 65, he scaled back his contract work to focus on writing and acting. Creating the Old Dogs Podcast with Jim Conlan has been a great way to draw on the life experiences of the last seven decades.

Paul has been married to Susan Huff, a video producer, for over 30 years. They have a daughter, Savanna. Paul also has a son, Andrew, and three grandkids that live in Houston. It’s always interesting being a parent and grandparent at the same time.

Jim Conlan (“James” to his close friends) is a multitalented guy with multi-multi talents (he says). Known as a child for his extremely loud voice, he was often thrust on-stage to make announcements at class assemblies. From this he developed a powerful yen to be entertaining. Some day.

Between then and now Jim has howled at many moons. He has a degree in painting. He was in the Peace Corps. He was a national director of the Beyond War Foundation. He was a director of the Carl Jung Educational Center of Houston, including four years as President. And for years you could hear Jim's jazz trio around town until even the small audience for jazz dried up. Jim refuses to speculate on the likelihood that his playing in part contributed to the situation.

Over a long and varied career in advertising Jim has collected hundreds of local, regional and national awards, mostly for extremely funny radio commercials. Coincidentally, many of them featured Paul's voice. If you still bother to listen to the radio, you may remember Jim’s long-running campaign for Jimmy John’s. Jim’s talent for directing may become evident whenever he asks Paul to rephrase something. Or stop snoring.

Jim is also a voice actor with over four decades of experience. Hundreds of clients have hired Jim for thousands of commercial and non-commercial projects, from humorous to hard-sell, Voice of God to Guy Next Door, narration, industrial, inspirational, and matter-of-fact. This may well be why 3 out of 4 of our listeners (Benny, Shirley and Max) prefer Jim’s voice to Paul’s.

You may also be aware of Jim’s work as an audio-book narrator. If you’re not, you can find him on Audible.com under the name “James Conlan.” He has narrated over 90 titles so far, from Moby-Dick to books you probably never heard of.

A native Michiganian, Jim now lives in Houston with his wife of 50 plus years (who, with good reason, prefers to remain anonymous), two grown children, and three un-grown grandchildren.

Jim Conlan

Kathleen O'Brien

Kathleen is our Chief Aging Officer and regular contributor. In this capacity, Kathleen serves as the Adult in the Room, frequently called on to break up fistfights between Jim and Paul ("He started it!).

The author of Reclaim Your Right to Grow Old, she has researched aging for over 13 years and teaches classes on her aging philosophy through the University of Denver’s continuing education program.

She began her career as an advertising copywriter at a large agency, working on national accounts (the first woman hired to write radio, TV and print on the Chrysler account). She was a television broadcaster in three major markets and owned her own video production company serving Fortune 100 companies. Kathleen also taught media relations at the University of Michigan and Indiana University graduate schools of business.

She lives in Denver with her husband, a retired physician, and writes regular blogs on her ground-breaking blueprint for aging at growoldbehappy.com.