Latest / My Favorite Things / My Favorite Things Episode 22: Woodworker, Artist, and Art Handler Derik Penny

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My Favorite Things Episode 22: Woodworker, Artist, and Art Handler Derik Penny · My Favorite Things

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Derek Penny, thanks for being here.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: See you, bud.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell us a little bit about who you are in your life right now?
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say my buddy,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mike Howard,
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: gave me this button recently on an install we were doing,
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: and it said working artist.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I like that because I've always been a little bit more blue-collar.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say, yeah,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: woodworker and the strange niche group of art handlers that are out in the world.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's where I've been spending my time these days.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Can we talk just a little bit about what that's like on a daily basis for you or a weekly basis?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: What is that job?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's installing art or it's deinstalling art or it's packing art or moving art.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a really...
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I fell into it through fabrication and my buddy,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Mike Howard,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: who I just mentioned, got me this in at Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, yeah,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I fell into it and I had all these weird,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: through kind of treachery,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: all of these skills I learned from installing in a design build in
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: the commercial world,
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: building restaurants and small businesses and remodeling homes.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, oh my God.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Installing contemporary art is easy compared to dealing with angel investors in
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: the sushi restaurant.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been wild because you
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: confront headfirst,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: you confront whether or not you think the subjectivity of art is good or not.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like some of the stuff I've installed where I'm just like, hey, what are we doing today?
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: How many pounds of flour are we pouring on this gallery floor?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: But then I get a touch art from like the 1500s and I get
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: to install like last two weeks ago,
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ronald Real came and 3D printed an Adobe structure in the gallery.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, this guy's a genius.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like up and down, but it's been pretty cool.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Fabricating for some of the artists, installing with a lot of cool ones.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you get to meet the, like, problem childs of the art industry.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you're just like, your reputation precedes you so hard.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So is your woodworking not art then?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Or like, what's, how are you defining that?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's tricky.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've always thought it is, but it's always on the outskirts.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Industrial design and craft has always been,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: and folk art has always been on this outside of the commercial art world.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: But ever since I was a kid,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: every museum I've gone in has a furniture section,
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: and you just look at the most ornate,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: beautiful works of art that have outlasted generations,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: and it's It's always been beautiful to me.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then you start to find out who the real geniuses are in that field.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you see the magic of it all.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty inspiring still to this day.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: It strikes me as like one of the more functional pieces of art,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: like when I think about if you want to be an artist, you, uh,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: there's only so many people who have enough wall space to hang like an eight foot
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: by 10 foot canvas,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know, and not many people I know, but lots of people have room for a chair.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a necessity to it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh, Who's our local guy?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Vance Kirkland always said, every object in your life can be a work of art.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And why wouldn't you use that opportunity?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a docent at the Kirkland Museum told me that when I was like,
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was ogling over these typewriter collections he had.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he told me about that.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And he said he learned it when he learned about Kirkland's toothbrush collection.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, my guy.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I've never wanted to smoke, but I want all of these cigarette cases.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Should we get into your favorite things here?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: As you know, this podcast is called My Favorite Things.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: You gave me a list of six,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: so we're either going to cut one in the middle of this,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: which is going to be awkward,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: or we're just going to go through it all and try to make it under an hour.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have a way of making this first one a shoehorn freebie.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's your note.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: So this should be a freebie in the account, which is your first one is coffee.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, just, just go ahead.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: What, why do you think it's a freebie?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I wanted, I was doing my best to not have any duplicates from your past guests.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, who's, who's the Swedish author?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure I have a piece of mail from her sitting right here.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, um, I'm almost positive I read her book when I was in Craft Coffee.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure I read her Sprudge articles.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, I'm not going to duplicate this.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I met at a coffee shop and we talked about a lot of the things that are
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: on this list together in coffee at that coffee shop and continued
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: with our friendship after that.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like one of the few things,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: at least for me,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: that I have control over,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: which is My favorite ceremony and mornings have become so sacred to me
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: in this loud world where my brain is fuzzy and coffee makes me aware
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: of my brain waking up.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's just such a cool moment that I wouldn't trade.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: The creative aspect of coffee has been there from the jump for me.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I got insomnia when I was 17 and
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Denny's coffee was,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: I thought,
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: the coolest, like,
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Kerouac thing I could do from,
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know, 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. at a Denny's, ordering fries and drinking coffee.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then you go into craft coffee scene,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: a decade later,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: and
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: my best friend Breezy Sanchez is giving me lessons on palate tasting
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: with sliced apples, different variables.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I could learn how to, you know, find those notes in coffee.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: She did it with dark chocolate too.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just like,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: it can be so creative and it can be so vast as like one of the oldest,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: best trades in the world.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So your mornings now,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: are you doing like tasting notes in the morning or what is your... Fuck no.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my God.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Are you sitting with a notebook?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Are you like doing a... What's going on?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Are you making a pour over and then you're just like staring out the window
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: or what do you do in the mornings now?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about this.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: My brother-in-law was getting into pour overs and I was like,
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: The thousands of pour overs I've made in my life,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: both like in a commercial coffee shop and at home.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So my method has always been pour over with like the occasional,
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: um, arrow press or French press.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so probably 300 plus days a year I'm making a V60 pour over.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: the only thing I stopped using timers,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: but the only thing I do is I still measure out my coffee on a scale.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I do my little ritual and, you know, it's nice to focus on it.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice to do that repetitive action.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I sit with my coffee, turn on our local classical station.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Shout out to Cave and Thomas, this new DJ who's so sweet.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I try to read or if that's not working, I get out the journal.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're not catching up on your like sports betting stuff.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I try to stay away from real world for as long as I can.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: the second you open the door,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: it's like a barrage of,
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: media onslaught,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: onslaught of information and tension grabbing stuff that's out there.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's usually when like my coffee kicks in.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let me time this so it hits right at the point of where I'm generating anxiety.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Huh.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm like trying to think like how many days when you do open your phone,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: does something like actually improve it?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, oh yeah, I'll just start this right now.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the first thing I saw this morning was the smoke forecast and like how bad
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: the air quality was.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: and they just set the tone.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: I still check the weather in bed and I never thought that would be like a cause
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: for dread is just seeing what the temperature is going to be today.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, I was a biker.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was a biker every day of the year.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I would always be, like, close to wear in the morning, close to pack on the way out.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm just, like, UV index, air quality.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was 103 here yesterday.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I was, like, okay.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole thing.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's safe?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: What are your safe apps to look at?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Basically just photos is where I'm at at this point.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's good.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's your photo album.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, I could talk this whole hour.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: It could be coffee.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I just wanted to put that out there that it brought you and I together.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we talked about hip-hop, baseball, books.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fortunate enough to have that many hours with you when I was behind a counter.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an easy bridge for so many things.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's so great.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's one of the only...
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: R.I.P.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Denver Bicycle Cafe.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: But, like, it was one of the only places I was ever a real regular,
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: you know?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a few other places,
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: but you could go in there often enough where you actually had rapport.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I wasn't spending that much money in,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: like, a restaurant where I was going every, you know, two, three days a week.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: But, yeah, that was – what a great time that was.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, like,
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: perfect era of Denver where right before – You know,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: you are,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: one of two or three remote workers in there on occasion and a whole cafe is,
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So number two out of six,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: if we go to six,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: this is going to, this film came out in 2004, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: How old are you in 2004 when you first see this?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And did you see it in a theater or do you remember how it came in?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually one of, there's only two of these that I remember.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like the first time they came into my life.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 04, I was 18.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: 18.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And no, yeah, 18.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I went with high school friends who wanted to see Jim Carrey the Clown.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I sat through the dark.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I sat through the dark, really heavy, you know, Michelle Gondry, Vessel.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was speechless at the end.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I was so inspired by it.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember the isolation I felt.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think we went to Wendy's afterwards when they were like,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: that's the worst movie I've ever seen.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't funny at all.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was like all of this talk and I was silent, looking at everybody.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh man, I...
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can't believe how differently I feel about this film and everything
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: about it visually was inspiring.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: The writing was so personal and vulnerable and it was a science fiction at the same time.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it was devastating in all the best ways.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a two hour long version of that one song that makes you cry all the time.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Where the whole time you're just like,
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: this feels horrible and I will never want to leave this blanket of sadness ever.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on with you in life where you think it affected you
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: and it didn't affect your friends who were expecting a comedy at that age at 18?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: See, my dad had just passed.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was trying to process it all on my own without any tools to process it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was headed to film school, or at least that was my plan.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah,
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I just remember it coming from all angles,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: like story screenwriting, the visual and emotional.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was even the soundtrack is like so cleverly like cued and devastating.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I just, I don't know.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think like maybe I was just, and my insomnia just started.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I was like, It was like a lightning rod for that movie with no expectations.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So you were having like the film school reaction to it and your friends are like,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: we wanted to see Tommy Boy
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: or whatever.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember, were you in touch?
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Are you still friends with any of those people?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's, it's a sweet there.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: I always say that they're lucky that Arrested Development is giving them a, Nice padded life.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I see them, it's the same.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not to speak ill of my childhood friends.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: But they have a very good routine, comfortable life.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: But they're not seeking out sad movies or complex sad movies.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it took a while for me to find my tribe in that sense of you watch things
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: that aren't always going to be easy or you consume books that are...
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting way to put it.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you go back to this movie?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have you in the last few years?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Or have you gone back to it multiple times?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen it a dozen times?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: This might be this and Paul Newman's The Hustler might be the two films I've seen the most.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: The beauty of this and the main reason I put it on is that.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the movie came out.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: It became my favorite film.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's in camera.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like an art masterpiece.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's...
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's stunning.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I meet Gina, my wife.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I meet her working at the Esquire.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we have this constant competition of she shows up with an Eternal Sunshine tattooed sleeve.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like,
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: it's hard for me to say it's my favorite movie
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: when I'm meeting this Intimidating New York girl with a sleeve of my favorite movie.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is, of course, before we dated.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, for sure, going to stay away from her.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: She's too much.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we worked together and we do a screening of the movie at the Esquire, like on film.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the first time I had seen a theater since 2004.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe it was 2007.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, still is good.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then It's been constant in Gina and I's life to the fact where we had
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: to like take a break because it was too heavy to watch.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like we felt all of these old feelings and now there's new feelings because it's
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: a new watch, but we screened it during COVID.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: She was,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: she was doing operations,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: overseeing operations at a local film house and it was,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: it hit like a brand new movie in 2020.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like,
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's this gift.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: The reward,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: in most of Gondry's work is in the rewatch where you're just like,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: did Jim Carrey just do that whole scene in one take by himself?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he did.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: The power of that just to keep watching something and getting new things out
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: of it is such an interesting thing.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: I do the same thing with Die Hard every Christmas for like 25 years now,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: but I wouldn't say it has the depth.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's more just a repetition.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a member.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a member of the Church of McLean.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know that.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, do I have a book for you this Christmas, buddy.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's an argument I get into with Gina's brother who loves to rile me up telling me
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: that it's not a Christmas movie.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, Run DMC is the opening song.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Also, what does it matter?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's literally one of the greatest action movies ever made.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's just watch it once a year, and that seems like a good time to watch it.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even listen to that argument.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I don't care.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Don't try to convince me of anything.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Same.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Number three.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Essex County Trilogy.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to ask you to describe this as the graphic novel because I'm pretty light
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: on graphic novels.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've probably read three or four total.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I have no experience with this.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, as a cartoonist, as a visual artist, yeah.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm waiting for your graphic novel.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's a stretch, buddy.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: I have a few of your cartoon books that are like Close, there's a narrative.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, graphic novels,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: I put this on there, yeah,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: I put it on there because I just read Jeff Lemire's,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: he just released an autobiography called 10,000 Ink Stains,
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: and I read it,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: and I was like,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: his visual style and his writing is so unique,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: but he's had this insane career already,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: you know, that's like really inspiring, but I don't know.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: His claim to fame, I would say, is Underwater Welder.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's where he was like finding his style and the way he illustrates.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: But Essex County was so personal feeling that I could tell it.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: It must have been autobiographical in a sense.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you find out he's from a small rural town in Canada and he loved hockey.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he wrote it as like,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: some hockey themes and,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: um, But it's so not plot-driven, it's character-driven, and it's heartbreaking.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he uses very little dialogue,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: which is really hard to do in graphic novels, especially with a visual style of his.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: He dips a calligraphy pen in ink and then turns it upside down so it bleeds out while he draws.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so everything is so messy.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it has this really heavy sense of...
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: You have to be so simple in your lines, and what he pulls off is so good.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You can see life in the eyes of these characters.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But Essex County is a trilogy,
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: and it takes place in,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: I want to say farm town outside of Ontario,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: but it's rural,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: follows a retired hockey player,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: follows a farmer,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: follows a kid who just lost parents,
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: and just the weight of it with very little dialogue is a So good.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: I brought it visual,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: but I wanted,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have a bookmark where I wanted to show you like,
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: this is what most of the book looks like.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: just these heavy dark contrast lines of very little dialogue
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: and it just packs a punch.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is,
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: people will always associate graphic novels with comic books,
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: comic books that were written,
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: you know, 30s through 50s were for kids and Grant Morrison came into the scene
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: and started writing and Alan Moore started writing very very heavy themed comics
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: and sort of dawned this age of who our audience could be for comics because the kids
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: from the 30s through 60s are growing up so they still want to get that audience
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: and I think that Jeff is a offspring of that
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: so he's like our generation's He's writing for Marvel and DC.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're called the Big Two, but he's also doing these independents that are mind-blowing.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: You should read Underwater Welder because it's about a father,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: which is, you know, classic Disney theme where they daddy issues.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it's my vehicle that I try to, I think it's easy to consume even though it's big.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's what I hand to people to tell them.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's an independent, Side and art side of graphic novels.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's this whole other genre,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: which is,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's a really easy discussion point,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: which is always like,
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: my thing is always to try to give approachable paths to really good art.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Accessible.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Accessible.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good term.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And even with heavy term, heavy, heavy themes.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember how you encountered this in the first place?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Or did you say you encountered Underwater Welder first?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Was that right?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Underwater Welder came after this, and that's what got him a lot of success.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this award got in Canada, but I think I got the first book.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I just,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I used to get things on like, you know, you purchase on cover in a bookshop.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe Maybe somewhere down on Broadway here in Denver.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just picked it up and I was hooked.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: I always liked the idea,
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: just like you or Frank Miller,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: like author written and illustrated is always like a little pipe,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: a little dream in mind where you're like,
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: you can make this stuff just by yourself without,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know, being, yeah, without this team that's inaccessible to a lot of people.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I just love it.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Were you into comic books or are you still?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a, I love the visual storytelling.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was awesome.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a really underrated form of art because it's this relationship
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: between art and author where so much has to be told in such a unique way.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I love, I think it's a, I think it's so good.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's essentially like how movies are made with screenplays and,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: you can,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Fill these gaps between panels in your head and movement and hidden agendas,
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: hidden themes is so cool.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to send you this book.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not baseball, but I'm going to send you this one.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Outside the rules of our baseball book club.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: One of the reasons it was so chaotic was that they didn't have a script.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: He's crazy.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to get the number wrong,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: but in one of the various ways that they formulated the idea behind this was
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: that they hired basically a comic book artist
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: to storyboard what they thought was going to happen in this film.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: If I remember this right,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: they just had this office in L.A.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: somewhere where the guy had like,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: it was like,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: 4,000 or 10,000 just images of just storyboard.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't, so none of the actors had any lines, any of that stuff.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And like,
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: this is how they shot it,
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: which is why part of the reason it was so stressful for everyone involved,
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: but it comes from that.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you say that's how movies are made,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: it's like, yeah, that's literally how they made that movie.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: They hired a comic book artist to be like, okay,
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to go ahead and, you know, like here's the story, you know, make it.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and they just drew it.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And, um, That's crazy.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Also, totally makes sense that they're like, there's a guy in red pajamas with a flame guitar.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, that's a comic book author.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you know, you know, be awesome here.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Flame throwing guitar guy in these old, old man pajamas.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Doof warrior.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that guitar weighed like 140 pounds or something like it's just like the whole thing is.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: The whole thing.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's an incredible book, man.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: He's absurd.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's crazy that him and his wife have had a career just like doing that.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's so crazy.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just like, build me these cars.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to the desert.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then it gets canceled.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: They have to film it somewhere else.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, all right, throw away those cars.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to build other cars.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he, he also used to,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: it's a super hard left turn for somebody who was a, literally a medical doctor.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was his, he's a doctor and he became this director.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's wild.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Number four, bad, bad,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: not good's album,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sour Soul, which I believe came out in 2015. Who, who introduced you to this album?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: So this is,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: this is the beauty of coffee shops again,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: but I was working with a, um,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: Young guy, Noah Wills, who's a brilliant musician, but he was 16, 17 at the time.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a closing shift on Wednesdays, which is a nice, slow end of a day.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he was who introduced me to new hip hop.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we always had the bond of hip hop.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that was at the time when most coffee shops were playing like Golden Era,
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: like Tribe and every coffee shop.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: But he would introduce me to these albums at the end of the shift and Uh,
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know, Odyssey and, uh, all of these great artists.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: This, he just put this, um, he just put this on and I love, you know, Wu Tang is huge for me.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: so sour soul,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: this album is, um,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: a Canadian jazz group backing ghost face killer,
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: um, which is a crazy combination already.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Three white guys out of Ontario.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Toronto, Ontario.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: And man, it's so good.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you know,
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: when you hear something,
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: it makes you give like that,
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: like sour face or like the stank face where you're just like,
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, this is amazing that this album has so many moments like that.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's an amazing jazz group and Ghostface,
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: his lyrics and his style are so strong and it's like such a crazy combination.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: It works so well.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a moment for him and I where I love Wu-Tang and he was like,
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: then you might like this album that just came out.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, this is insane.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the kids are all right simultaneously, that feeling?
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he was the golden standard for that.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every day I'd be like, you're an old soul.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: His first album he gave me, it was a cassette tape.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: With a disposable camera photo and the negative of that photo
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: and he handed me his album, I was like, do you even understand what this is?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so good.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, how old are you?
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that somebody from my generation would need to come up with how cool this is.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you when you were working with this kid who was 16?
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: How old were you?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: You were 16, 10 years ago, 30.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: How did it feel to get these recommendations?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: As a 30-year-old, you're almost kind of an old guy at that point.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: How did it feel to have a 16-year-old letting you in and being like,
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, here's some cool stuff I listen to.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: You might like it too.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I always had older friends and I was always cool with younger.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's this nice...
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, imaginary thread between generations as the artist community happens,
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: where you can always, like, connect on a lot of things.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I always tried to not be the guy who stopped listening to new music
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: because it happened so easily.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I would say I don't understand a lot of the music that's coming out now,
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: especially in the hip-hop and rap world.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, there's still artists that break that, like...
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we'll always be timeless.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, it felt cool.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it was cool to like that he could introduce things,
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: which I think is really important as you're coming up to be able
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: to like be validated by what you think is cool and to introduce things.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: I never did it in a superficial way,
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: but found out so much so many cool artists from him.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: Number five, Ishitani Furniture by way of George and Mira Nakashima.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain, can you just explain what this is first?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So as a woodworker,
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: I came up through,
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: rough carpentry,
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: finished carpentry,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: learning quick American,
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: like chop saw out in the field, table saw, like rough, rough carpentry.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you could get really good at that and that could be it for your whole career as a carpenter.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember...
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing Nakashima's furniture in an art book and it's live edge slab work
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: with butterflies, like butterfly keys.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he would just make furniture based on these beautiful slabs of wood
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: and his career's unbelievable path.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that really started getting me thinking about like elevating my skill,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: which was hard and My brother,
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: who's a brilliant woodworker,
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: he taught me a lot when I was just wanting to grow a little bit outside
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: of Finnish carpentry.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was like this perfect storm of finding out about George Nakashima
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: and his daughter Mira,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: who's still running the show,
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: and learning these skills and knowing that I'll never be It's just
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: an endless pursuit.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think everything I make every single time is garbage,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: but then I compare it to something like two years ago,
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: and it's like I can see my growth.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: But this guy started doing YouTube videos of his work,
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: and I think his name's Natsuki Ishitani,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: and his wife,
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: he just filmed silent,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: no dialogue,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: just shop sound videos of him making unbelievably crafted furniture,
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: and It's kind of like hybrid,
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: so he uses old hand tools and he uses the old machines,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: but you can see him using his computer to design.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it was just this moment where I'd get completely hypnotized by these short 20
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: or 30-minute videos of him making a chair or table or desk and just being
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: so inspired, seeing his process, seeing how calm he could do it.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he's a made-to-order woodworker, which is every woodworker's dream.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: To, like,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: have the time to do it right is just such a romantic thought to me
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: that I'll always chase.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, somebody give me a year to make you a table, please.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, just give me some time and I'll make something beautiful.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: But here in this system, it's like, man, really hard.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really hard carrot to chase.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: because you have done quite a bit of stuff that is visible in the city of Denver,
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: correct?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: What are some pieces people would have seen that they don't know are your work?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Where would they be?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, man.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: To share something that I'm not embarrassed of now.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Me and the owner of Finn's Manor,
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Tom Taylor,
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Redid his bar top and he had a really ambitious idea for a bar top and it was,
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: lots of glue ups of walnut and maple
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: with these intricate exotic wood butterfly inlay joints on the,
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: on these huge miters.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was, and you know, he,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: he's one of the people that knows like this could be impactful
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: and However long it takes to do it right.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like, you know, a nice breath of fresh air to do it.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's some oak work I did at a restaurant that closed,
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: but the new restaurant kept it, which is a cool feeling.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like, huge live edge white oak slab.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: I work on 12th and Madison.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sushi restaurant now.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, smallest furniture commissions.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: I always preface all of my work with...
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: This work will outlast me.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's a Nakashima quote.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: He says it was his duty to create work that outlasted its author.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like,
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: When you say you're like embarrassed of the old stuff,
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: I really, that's like, what if people really love that piece?
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, ah, it's a piece of trash.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: I could do so much better.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: But like their relationship with it is like, it's the coolest thing they've ever seen.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, that's like vaguely insulting to them, I think, don't you?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like to their taste.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you should give yourself some more credit.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is why you're a good friend
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: because you can you combat my my recovering Catholic shame at every angle.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, also, dude, I just don't.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like when I look at your stuff and I'm like, oh, this guy knows how to play the trumpet.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like,
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I can I can blow out a few notes,
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: maybe, you know, like, I don't know, like I made a chair.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: You can sit on it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't fall apart.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's great.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Check out the shelf.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the beauty.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: The beauty and utility of furniture is like it is like a melting pot of skill and purpose.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it can get ornate, which can be eye-rolly and offensive.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or it can just be like, you know, I needed a shop stool and I had these three pieces of wood.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like drive yourself really nuts for like a long time.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, months.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, that sounds really good.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's the dream.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: He reminds me that it's possible that the romance hasn't left.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he creates a peaceful shop and he takes time designing and his layout,
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: even his layout looks like pleasant.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And surfacing wood is, ugh, I don't know.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent eight hours in a shop.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Planing down White Oak where it's the heaviest wood you've ever touched.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's the loudest the machines have ever been.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you're just like, this is hell.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then you see him do it and you're like, wait, what did I do wrong?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's interesting.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: Probably perspective, right?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Always.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why wood as a medium for you?
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Probably a family curse.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a construction carpenter, like rough framer.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, to feed us.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh, I had a, I think it was my grandfather did some finished carpentry in New York city.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the museums, like, you know, carpentry has been in, in the veins.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And, uh,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: I remember making a wood chime with my dad out of copper plumbing pipes and PVC or,
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: uh, plywood circles.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that hitting me pretty strong and, uh, tech ed and,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Junior high and high school was always speaking to me.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's got its hooks in me.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I've tried to leave it, but it's something.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: A personal project will always bring me back and be like, do I like this?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do I like it enough?
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Could I do this?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for a living.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: The way I want to do it,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: which is always like a mean joke that Capitalism has played on me,
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: or consumerism for that matter,
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: because I get these commission requests and they want it next month.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I don't have the tenacity or knowledge to teach value of things.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know with your projects,
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know the value of how long things take, even building your office.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like what's your bandwidth and the – I don't know.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: I guess like if somebody wants it fast or they want it in a different way
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: and it's just like, well, there's other people that can do that.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: But not beating yourself up too much about being like – I wish things were different.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: I could do that work.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, maybe you didn't want it.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when they're like, oh, that much money?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just have an intern do it.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, you should do that then if that's what you want.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you think that's what will work for you.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's the approach I need to take.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: I need to think about that more.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: When they tell you how cheap they can get it or how fast they can get it,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: I need to not be like,
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you understand why and how you're getting that so fast and so cheap?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or just being comfortable,
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: not even needing to educate people, just being like, yeah, well, that's cool.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: I do a different thing than they do.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want that, then we can talk, but it needs to be a
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: different timeline.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, yeah, that's a whole business thing.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: I look at wood and I assume, I'm just like, well, I think it's probably easier than welding.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: But that's probably not true either.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every welder will tell you, like,
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: I would rather have this nasty greased up metal tube that I can fuck up
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: with like welds and then grind it out later than to like have this one shot at
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: a piece of cherry.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's forgiveness in wood that I like that a welder wouldn't see.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: A welder can be like, I messed up that weld that angle.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do it again.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: But to me, there's a conversation that you can have with.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: One of my mentors said,
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: it's not how good you get, it's how good you get at hiding your mistakes.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: And brother, wise words.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still hiding.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: I hide them in museums now.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: No one knows except you.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it turns out we have time for your sixth one, which is great.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: So this book is called The Utility of Boredom by Andrew Forbes,
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: which I'm so glad you put this on this list because I bought this book for you
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: because I saw it in a bookstore in Asheville,
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: North Carolina and picked it up in 2018 or 2019, I think.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 2019 and read it and was like, this is just
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to talk about it anymore.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: You should talk about why you like it.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I sent you a copy because we kind of go back and forth with baseball books.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is the coolest club I'm in.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite tradition that we have.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've sent books back and forth like fun baseball.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: You and I share a love for baseball and you and I aren't baseballs.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Ideal audience,
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: like creative types that aren't going to spend a thousand dollars on jerseys
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: or whatever they want from us.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I see the nostalgia and all the right things in it that I love.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you sent me this book and it was like he snuck behind enemy lines.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: He like he got us like he got the feelers.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: He got the feelers and I was every,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: when you read a book and they put something so well,
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: you like put the book down and you're like,
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, yeah, of course, obviously that's how I think about this.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't know how to say it.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he, I mean, every,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: every short story,
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's on this third or fourth baseball book and it's just like mind blowing.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's been great.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I use it to explain how baseball can be amazing to a lot of people.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I've bought it off of his publisher, off of eBay, Thrift.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Anytime I find it, I buy it and I give it out.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: I actually brought this.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is the second one that you also sent me.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a Kinko's on the way to meet a friend at a Rockies game
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: to photocopy this passage about
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote that the world's always been ending since he was a kid.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read this really quick if that's okay.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is from The Only Way is the Steady Way.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is his second
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: sophomore that my boy Brandon Leonard wrote the blurb in it.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I kind of weaseled my way into having him let me write a blurb for it,
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: which was wonderful.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, the passage.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it's just he,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: so he prefaced this in the story Love and Time of,
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: he prefaces it with the opening line is,
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: when I was eight years old, I was convinced I would die in a nuclear holocaust.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is a book about baseball.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then he writes for six or eight paragraphs about how Vietnam War was raging on
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: and this guy was having the best season of his life or when Truman Capote died,
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: this was happening and this was happening between the Yankees.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then he talks about the guilt of feeling happiness by watching baseball.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says all this stuff is happening.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: He says,
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: we're in the upteenth week of COVID lockdown,
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm dreaming of sitting in an Applebee's in suburban Syracuse,
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: watching Sox Yanks,
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: sitting at a bar, drinking watery domestic beer, happy as a clam.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: This can't be right.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so he writes all this,
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: but he ends it with,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_00: he quotes one of my other favorite authors,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Michael Chabon,
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: talking about how hard and depressing the world is,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: and he says, But he said, art makes the whole depressing thing more bearable.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Agreed, I thought.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd add baseball to round out that sediment.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe I would call baseball art.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Just put the book down.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Andrew Forbes.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think he just gets like it's like you don't have to know statistics or names or anything.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he just like gets it right about like what what it feels like to be a fan.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a story in that book.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: The only way is the steady way where he talks about just like stopping to watch like
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: a maybe high school baseball game with his two kids for like three innings
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: while they're walking home from something else and just captures it so well.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he just loves it.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you can tell.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's I think that's what's so beautiful about it.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, can you, can you tell there's a story about the utility of boredom?
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Cause there's a misprint on the spine of the book,
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: but it also has to do with a wedding gift you received.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, can you kind of tell that story and how those two things relate?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's funny, you, you got me the misprint, right?
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Of Utility Boredom.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think in with one of your semirad postcards,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: you were talking about how this could be like a famous misprint of there's
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: a baseball card that came out for a photo of just Bill Rude.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: They put that in the book when they printed because they printed off so many copies
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: with the misprint.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: They put the little note in there.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was from the publisher.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so Billy Ripken is just posing for his photo for his baseball card.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: That year it was like less action shots, more like pregame or during practice.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: There was a photographer just taking
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: wholesome photos.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: And his teammates,
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: so he says his teammates,
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: wrote on the bottom of his bat where you normally write either your number
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: in Sharpie or...
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Your last name or your initials so you can just pull the bat out of the bat,
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: the upside down bat bin.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody on his team wrote Fuckface on the bat's bottom.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he posed with it.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: So Fuckface is in beautiful, bold, crisp print on this.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a Topps card.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, he says he wasn't aware.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the lore came out that he was aware and they were trying
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: to sneak it in and They couldn't pull him back.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: In the right direction.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he turned it.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: So for anybody listening to this, look it up.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the best little slip-in Easter eggs in baseball history.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they say that in this little note.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: You'll notice that the utility of boredom, the word utility is spelled wrong.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: So consider this like the Billy Ripken baseball card.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was rare at the time.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: I remember I was collecting baseball cards that year, and nobody I knew had one.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: But they later came out with a different one where they had either put a black dot
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: over it or a white dot or something so you couldn't see it.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, that was the whole thing.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you put this on Instagram, though.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I read the first thing.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I went and got my Billy Ripken card, and I either tagged you in it, like, thanks for the gift.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the famous card.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: One of my cherished possessions.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll leave it to your kid in my will.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't somebody give you the card as a wedding gift?
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Am I making that up?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Brian Poskin,
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: just this great Chicago barber who shares our love for baseball in all
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: the right ways, got me that card.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you can only give it to a few people in your life.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: That gift lands so well.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: Same with this book that I've given to a dozen people.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: I had the same thing.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I've got to get you this book.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like,
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: it has to be the exact right person because you don't want to waste it on somebody.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think I gave away one of the misprinted versions to a friend who never gave it back.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh no, I gave him the wrong one.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to rebuy it.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I rebought a bunch of used copies of it so I could get the misprinted version.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: I had a couple more, but yeah, just phenomenal.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like you said, when he puts it in words and you kind of set the book down and say, yeah, me too.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly how I feel.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that's just the goal of writing in the first place.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: But if you do that, then you've connected with people.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: Man, this has been awesome.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: We are almost at an
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: hour, so I'm going to just close it out here.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have Coffee,
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: the Essex County Trilogy,
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: Bad Bad Not Goods,
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: Album Sour Soul, Ishitani Furniture, and The Utility of Boredom by Andrew Forbes.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Man, this is so much fun.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for letting me slide six in there.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: I knew we could do it.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime, dude.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, buddy.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.