18. Yelling Sweater

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February 24th, 2020

1 hr 20 secs

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james jay

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Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Your co-host not saying his last name so you're not sure whether he knows how to pronounce it.
  • Sometimes working in the same room and sometimes getting coffee together.
  • Living in Germany and not being able to not bring it up.
  • Trying to enjoy topical comedy from decades ago.
  • Trying to enjoy topical comedy from centuries ago and having to rely on footnotes.
  • Jokes that are so dated nobody even perceives them as a joke.
  • Liking a joke better before you get it.
  • Translating a text that is full of French puns into English puns.
  • A police officer yelling "sweater" at a lady driving down the road.
  • Trying to find an authoritative answer but only finding answers.yahoo.com.
  • Parsons being so ubiquitous that everyone must know a "Parson Brown."
  • Your four year old niece asking you what a Lego is and it probably being a part of a wing from a Toy Story kit or something.
  • A four year old wanting answers and older people having all the answers.
  • A giraffe staying forever in a park because you surrounded the park with a fence and it's a happy giraffe.
  • Playing with Legos with your uncle but not really wanting to build anything and just wanting your uncle to tell you a story about something that already exists.
  • Trying to evoke a feeling by doing the thing that did it thirty years ago.
  • Being inspired to try exciting new creative tools but as soon as you get in there it just immediately feels like work.
  • Games that you need to read a textbook to be able to enjoy.
  • Seeing something happen once and assuming it's going to happen that way every time.
  • A baby throwing a cup on the ground over and over again to make sure it falls downwards every time.
  • Most people having a much higher drive to be cool than you do.
  • A nu-metal punk sitting at a piano and talking about jazz chords.
  • Being surprised when people who look fashionable are also skilled.
  • Having being in your early teens when Grunge hit and that affecting your fashion sense for your entire life.
  • A photo of your nu-metal phase somehow not ending up in Hypnospace Outlaw.
  • Finding dorky button up shirts some Silicon Valley folks would've worn in the late 90s and making that be just your fashion sense.
  • Method acting but for video games.
  • Billy Idol insisting that interviewers need to have read Neuromancer but not having read it himself.
  • Not having time to read so insisting that interviewers read a book for you and tell you about it while they interview you.
  • The note getting louder when you squeeze the face.
  • Thinking an effect is a digital filter but it turns out to just be the mouth opening and closing.
  • When you put your thumb over the Game Boy speaker and slowly peel it off.
  • Just sticking the head of a plunger into your trumpet.
  • Getting a reed instrument for Christmas and not being able to make it make anything that sounds like a note before your mouth gets tired of vibrating.
  • Learning to hit those high notes because it's cool, not because it's particularly musically useful.
  • Being obsessed with claves because of Brian Eno's "St. Elmo's Fire," but not being sure how to pronounce "claves."
  • Finding a melodica in your wife's parents' basement.
  • Most dogs just looking at your hand but this one bringing its entire jaw over your arm sideways.
  • Noisebridge being an anarchist collective where anything can happen.
  • Laughing when your kid does stuff you really ought to be discouraging.
  • Accidentally teaching a small child to call people fat.
  • Your kid calling a Wal*Mart customer "fat" and trying to pretend he meant "hat" because she's wearing a hat and the kid emphatically clarifying that no, he meant she's super fat.
  • Writing in your first-grade journal that you don't like when your parents take you to "the dark place."
  • Writing in your first-grade journal that "on 911 a fire happens" with an illustration of a burning building but you just meant the TV show "911" about emergency responders.
  • The borrowed tribal iconography mixed with tech themes that Internet companies to show a new era of togetherness and communication.
  • Finding beauty in a Geocities web page with random animated images everywhere and a tiled background.
  • Immersing yourself in an aesthetic until you like it.
  • Art getting way better when the image links start breaking.
  • Your sense of aesthetics being your only guide for knowing how to make something.
  • Slowly learning to trust your sense of aesthetics when people like your work.
  • Not trusting your own sense of aesthetics and turning to philosophy to come up with interesting aesthetic rules to follow instead.
  • Trying a new pixel art aesthetic that's even more rectangular than before.
  • The threshold between mere aesthetic weirdness and people immediately dismissing a work as ugly.
  • Deliberately choosing your system palette in the way that 8-bit microcomputers and early consoles did not.
  • Considering yourself done after the first draft of an idea if the idea is difficult and complicated to implement, but iterating if it's simple.
  • Having an aesthetic plan for growing old.
  • Doing a cursory Google search before giving up on your dreams.
  • Not trusting cheapcpapsupplies.com because they probably just want to sell you their CPAP supplies -- but at least it's cheap.
  • Instagram figuring out that you have sleep apnea.
  • The potions master brewing up a snoring solution as a punishment.
  • Dressing up like disguised Santa and if a kid finds out you're santa, pulling open your trench coat to reveal the S emblazoned on your chest.
  • Having a distinctive laugh for when you're firing your longbow extremely rapidly.
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