Testaments to the Boom Times to Come

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

soundingonlyatnightasyousleep replied to your post “Few things make me feel that my liberal arts education and overall…”

…So what is Judge John Hodgman? All I know is that The Adventure Zone (podcast where a coupla dudes make dumb jokes

*while playing an increasingly elaborate game of D&D) did a parody where it was a tiny robot who incinerated people who couldn’t answer its trivia questions

I’m familiar with The Adventure Zone! I’ve never actually listened to it but I listen to a few other McElroy shows, so it’s quite literally of the family.

Anyhow! Judge John Hodgman is a fairly recent addition to my podcast queue — I think I picked it up sometime last year? The conceit is that people out in the world submit ~cases~ to John Hodgman’s court, basically arguments that they just want someone else to decide for them so they can put this thing to bed. The majority of the litigants are married or couples, which I probably don’t even need to say. 

The draw is two-fold. One: getting a glimpse into the weirdo lives of other people with all their hangups and preferences. Two: John Hodgman, who is basically the embodiment of what I’m gonna try to describe as like, this self-aware erudite neuroticism that I find particularly…New England. Actually if you want to know who John Hodgman is and simultaneously why I adore him, I’d recommend listening to a table read of the un-produced pilot of a tv show he wrote about growing up as an only child in Brookline, Massachusetts.

As for the Judge John Hodgman podcast itself, as an intro I think I’d actually recommend this episode of a live show he did in Brooklyn, which also features some fantastic musical guests.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Few things make me feel that my liberal arts education and overall intellectual dilettante lifestyle have been worth it than the times I have correctly guessed the Obscure Cultural Reference at the opening of an episode of the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

Related, few things are more indicative of my New England liberal arts education and intellectual dilettante lifestyle than the fact that I listen to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[theinvisiblemonsters]

apparently there was a telephone booth in the middle of the mojave desert originally meant to service miners and a guy claiming to be sent on a mission from god camped out in it for a month and answered over 500 phone calls, including one from the pentagon, and if that isn’t the most southwestern gothic shit i have ever heard then i will eat the entire mojave desert

[katherinebarlow]

http://articles.latimes.com/print/1999/sep/18/news/mn-11495

[wellntruly]

And more in our continuing feature: wellntruly reblogs a post with a neat story to add a link to an entire episode of 99% Invisible about it

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

Two soundbites I heard in the ‘American Icons’ promo package at the end of an episode of Studio 360 that made me laugh so hard that it was a real good thing I was stopped at a red light:

“The can was, for Andy [Warhol], rough trade. You know, like a sailor.”

and

“Frank Lloyd Wright was known to wander around his studio with a fly swatter. And before killing flies, he would name them. Gropius, Corbusier, Mies. Whack whack whack!”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

• Jefferson Reid: Misters Roosevelt, Churchill, and de Gaulle would like a few words with you. In English, English, and French.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

[hodgman]

Some time ago, I was hired to write a pilot for a comedy by a cable TV network.

The pilot was called ONLY CHILD, and it was about my life as a weirdo only child living in a big house with my mom and dad and a bunch of borders in the 1980s.

The gimmick was that I was to play myself as a 15 year old, thus emphasizing my essential otherness and loathsome pretensions to adulthood (based on real life).

All my school friends would be played by children, while my parents and other adults would be played by adults. I wanted Sam Bee and Jason Jones to play my mom and dad.

Unfortunately, the cable network did not want to make this into a TV show, and the script was never filmed. These things happen, and that’s OK.

(Plus, Jason and Sam are on to MUCH BETTER AND MORE ESSENTIAL CULTURE now, specifically: FULL FRONTAL with Samantha Bee: http://www.tbs.com/shows/full-frontal-with-samantha-bee.html and THE DETOUR starring Jason Jones: http://www.tbs.com/shows/the-detour.html)

IN THE MEANTIME, though, your Thrilling Adventure friend Ben Blacker and seasoned TV impresario Andrew Reich have created a new podcast on the Maximum Fun Network called DEAD PILOT’S SOCIETY.

GUESS WHAT? It takes pilots that were never filmed and produces staged readings of them with your favorite comedic actors like JANET VARNEY and PAUL F TOMPKINS.

And DOUBLE GUESS WHAT? We recorded ONLY CHILD last January at SF Sketchfest, and that recording drops TODAY,  THURSDAY right here at http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/dead-pilots-society

This reading was one of the favorite days of my life. The cast is tremendous (Josh Malina, the aforementioned Varney, John Roderick, Adam Savage, John Ross Bowie, and more!) 

And per my orders, all of the kids were actually played by local kids*: Abe Chabon, Sage Ryan, Samantha Sadoff, and Abby Wait. They were truly amazing.

I am very very proud of this script and this day, and it would mean a lot to me if you cared to listen to it, and if you liked it, to tell other people about it.

*ONE NOTE of warning: this was written for cable and uses some curse words and in particular some anti-gay slurs that were unfortunately in common currency among teenagers in the 1980s. I think it is clear that the script is not sympathetic to the characters who use this language, but I did want to give you this alert.

ONE SECOND NOTE: I don’t know if they ended up using my proposed theme song in the podcast, but if they didn’t, you can listen to it here. It is by the weird genius Ivor Cutler, and it is the song of my life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKnnAK7E-U&sns=gp

I hope you enjoy the show. That is all.

(*Except for the bully, who was played by Ben Acker, a huge child.)

[neil-gaiman]

I want to see this. I also want to live in the alternate universe in which it ran for several seasons.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

nerdist.com

Nerdist Writers Panel #129: Bryan Fuller | Nerdist

The creator of Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, and Dead Like Me discusses his work habits, putting a philosophy in every scene, death, collaboration, Star Trek, and lots more. Recorded January 19, 2014.

Somehow it only just came together for me that I could listen to Bryan Fuller talk to Ben Blacker about writing television for an hour and a half, and I could not believe I hadn’t done that yet. Have you done this yet? Because let me tell ya, it is hilarious and illuminating from top to bottom. If you are interested in any of Fuller’s shows, or TV production in general, or just working as a creative, or working with creatives, or simply fascinated by the personal history of Bryan Fuller, A Brilliant Candid Weirdo — you should super get in here.

Also, as a conversation recorded back in January of 2014, it’s remarkably… prescient? It almost reads like a three-part primer on the current state of Hannibal, with some on-point speculation about the presidential election to boot.

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS I’VE HAD A BRILLIANT THOUGHT

[sofriel]

Imagine the #overlyhonestmethods posts from Carlos’s team of scientists.

[sofriel]

“This paper is shorter than normal due to the primary researcher turning into a tree before she could finish it.”

“Test subjects were selected randomly by loitering outside Big Rico’s and offering illicit bread crust for all participants.”

“Experiment time intervals were carefully chosen so that Carlos would actually be on time for his date for once.”

“Potential errors include time loss from that cancelled Wednesday, the fact that the local government legally forbid us from mentioning the source of the data, and the loss of a substantial amount of recorded notes that were replaced with dead silence and the smell of vanilla.”

“Some results were altered to sound more normal so we don’t get our funding revoked.”

[Testaments to the Boom Times to Come]

99percentinvisible.org

Future Screens are Mostly Blue - 99% Invisible

We have seen the future, and the future is mostly blue.

So I changed most of the sounds my cell phone makes to various communicator chirps and intercom whistles from Star Trek: TOS because Live Your Life™, and it is unbelievable how right they feel? Even my non-Trekkie roommates were making these pleased little noises when I was testing them.

Which means I’ve been thinking a lot lately about one of my FAVE EVER episodes of 99% Invisible. If you too are way interested in how the design of fantastic made-up gadgetry in Star Trek has taught our collective nerdmind what technology should be like, and so we just make it that way, oh man, give this a listen. Also discussed: the imaginative fun to be had, and the practical lessons to be learned, from coming up with design apologetics for sci-fi movies. I love this game too, Roman Mars.