Finding Favorites with Leah Jones

Laurel Snyder, an Atlanta-based author, joined Leah to talk about the music and marriage of Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires. From Jason's early career in the Drive By Truckers to current collaborations with his wife Amanda Shires, their music was the soundtrack to Laurel's pandemic life. Laurel's new book The Witch of Woodland is available for pre-order now and is a perfect gift for tweens preparing to prepare for their b'nai mitzvah. Keep up with Laurel on LaurelSnyder.com Show Notes Little Shop of Stories (order signed books) https://18doors.org/JasonIsbell.comAmandaShiresMusic.comTiny Desk ConcertThe Nashville SoundAmanda Shires YoutubeJason Isbell InstagramAmanda Shires InstagramHope the High RoadElephantSomething More than FreeJeff Tweedy and Ezra KleinThe Triggering Town

Abby Stewart, a Bay Area author, loves artists journals and queso. She joined Leah fresh from AWP in Seattle to talk about her new novel Foundations, writing and publishing during lockdown, and her love of diaries and journals written by artists. We also talk about the best ways to improve Velveeta queso dip. Keep up with Abby online HelloAbigailStewart.com Twitter @abby_writes Instagram @abby_cake Whiskey Tit The Drowned WomanFoundations   Show Notes AWPSunset MagazinePiper Cub Forum: Leah JonesLeah Jones (piper cub)The Folded ClockDaybook: The Journal of an ArtistAnne TruittSelf Portrait by Celia PaulNo 91/92Jenny LawsonDiary of a Provincial ladyThe Forbidden NotebookMy Faraway One (selected letters from Georgia O'Keefe)What are hatch green chiles?Queso Blanco with roasted corn15 Veggies to mix into your queso

Leah was sick with COVID this week, which meant no energy for new interviews. However, mountains of Candy Chat Chicago epsiodes were in the hopper waiting to be edited and it happens to be Jocelyn's birthday. So happy birthday Jocelyn, here is a crossover episode of Candy Chat Chicago!

Jesse Dukes, co-host of the podcast Upper Middlebrow, loves the Richard Lester movies from 1973 and 1974: The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers.  We also talk about the Neal Stephenson deep dive on Upper Middlebrow. Follow Jesse online @CuriousDukes UpperMiddlebrow.com Show Notes Blank Check PodcastStrange DaysThe Hunt for Red OctoberM3ganKlara and the Sun HerCurious CityThree MusketeersThe Four MusketeersSword Stuff with Sean EllisPirates of the Caribbean After 3 years of successful pandemic mitigation, COVID has come home to roost. This episode is brought to you by Paxlovid, Advil and five pounds of cough drops

Cameron MacKenzie returns to talk about places that feel like home that aren't home and we try to find the thread that connects Kamakura in Japan, The Nation in Washington DC, The Presidio and Washington Square Park in San Francisco, and Fergies Bar in Philadelphia. CameronMacKenzie.orgFacebookRiver Weather stories Show Notes The Nation in DCReddit thread - do you remember Nation Night Club?That 90s Show - RaveTrainspotting SoundtracksTrainspotting on Blank Check with Griffin and DavidKamakura, JapanGuide to KamakuraStorytelling Traditions in JapanHow to deal with Culture ShockFergie's in Philly Fergie's eventsLive in the PresidioWashington SquareTony NiksDurango DinerWhy Smells Trigger Such Vivid Memories

Marty Beckerman, an LA-based author, comedian and new dad, is on the podcast this week to celebrate the launch of his new book The Time Meowchine: A Talking Cat’s Y2K Quest to Save the World and talk about the 90s. The 1990s, that is. We talk about how he started going to the gym as a joke and accidentally got swole, legally being able to tell dad jokes, and the 1990s. Keep up with Marty online and buy his books! MartyBeckerman.com MartyBeckerman.com/#books  The Time Meowchine: A Talking Cat’s Y2K Quest to Save the World Show Links What is a borg?High and Mighty: Being Fat with Mike Mitchell90s Con9/11Alternative HistoriesIraq WarWeapons of mass destructionMan in the High CastleGore vs Bush debate, 2000 ----more----   Marty  00:00 Hi, my name is Marty Beckerman. And my favorite thing is the 1990s.   Announcer  00:04 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:16 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things and get recommendations without using an algorithm. I'm here today with Marty Beckerman. Marty and I, I believe met on a trip to Israel when you booked the hostel first, and I followed your lead, I think, correct me if I'm wrong. But Marty is here to celebrate the launch of his newest novel. Marty, how are you doing today?   Marty  00:47 I am doing fantastic. How are you?   Leah Jones  00:49 I'm good. We were maybe in a Facebook group and I feel you booked the Gordon beach hostel. And I was Marty says it's fine, I'll go there, too.   Marty  01:02 I was smoking so much hash, I don't know who booked what. I stayed at that hostel and some guy, I wouldn't even know where to buy hash. But he had a bunch of hash and he's going to go to the beach and smoke some hash. And the entire next week, I was just smoking hash on the beach with this guy all day long, just super high all the time. And this week, I'm like dude, what's your name?!   Marty  01:34 [Not audible [00:01:34]] That's the way to start an interview. I haven't smoked any hash today, I'm a new dad.   Leah Jones  01:44 You're emotionally there!   Marty  01:47 I live in California, but I haven't enjoyed any cannabis since the baby was born. Because, you got to be present. You got to wake up in the middle of the night I would have in Dakota fall asleep. I'm not even that much of a stoner. I sound like Seth Rogen and I'm not even that much of a stoner. But you can't wake up in the middle of night with a crying baby and you're still kind of high and the goal is to not drop a baby.   Leah Jones  02:17 That's a solid goal. Don't drop the baby. Don't shake the baby. Those are the top two. Feed the baby.   Marty  02:25 I could be wrong, but I feel like hash would increase the odds of dropping the baby.   Leah Jones  02:31 I feel like it would be bad.   Marty  02:35 I'm clean and sober now. My only drug is protein powder these days and Celsius. I load up on Celsius before the gym, that stuff's the best energy drink.   Leah Jones  02:49 Oh, it's an energy drink? It’s not a spiked seltzer?   Marty  02:55 No. Celsius is it's just caffeine and a bunch of B vitamins and Waratah and a bunch of I don't know what they put in it, but it's I work out harder... One of my coworkers was telling me about him it can't be that good and then I had it and I'm like it's pretty great.   Leah Jones  03:12 So I saw a TikTok this morning about how Gen Z on college campuses now make something called Borg. They go to parties and they carry gallon jugs of their own punch that they've mixed themselves. And which is like great. It means you're not dipping into a trash can of jungle juice that's the roof ease.   Marty  03:36 I thought Gen Z didn't drink though.   Leah Jones  03:39 I don't know. This is a new thing. I think Gen Z in the south still drink.   Marty  03:44 Okay, because I have some Gen Z friends who actually do kind of drink, but I went from what everything I've heard they're the more into like psychedelics, vaping and Adderall.   Leah Jones  04:01 I saw this TikTok it was a snow day at UT Austin and this girl was showing how to make a good Borg. And it was half a gallon of water, a third of a bottle of Tito's, a bottle of Meo drops for flavoring and then a packet of liquid IV and then she poured a celsius in and I thought it was a white claw. But this is more like so she doesn't get hung over and it's like a Red Bull and vodka, half gallon drink or a gallon drink?   Marty  04:33 Yeah, I don't really drink too much anymore. I drank way too much in my 20s but as you probably observed a few times.  My personal theories you can't be an alcoholic in your 20s, because I think the entire test of are you an alcoholic is when you hit 30 you still drink like you're in your 20s. And I hit 30 and I'm like this doesn't feel good in the morning anymore. I'm going to tone it down. But with Gen Z, I actually really like Gen Z, everywhere I meet from Gen Z seems like they have a better head on their shoulders than younger millennials, I think. But sometimes it's difficult because I'll be talking about stuff MySpace, versus Facebook. Well, at least MySpace never destabilize society, and they're like, dude, when MySpace was a thing, I was like a baby. And what am I supposed to say to that? So that we were playing a cards against humanity and one of the cards was AJ Slater. And one of my Gen Z friends said, what's an AJ Slater? And I said, “Oh, my god, someday you'll be playing this with people younger than you and one of them will say, what's a Billy Eilish?   Leah Jones  05:56 What's an AJ Slater? You know him as Mario Lopez from “The Midnight”, The New Year's Eve, Rocking New Year's Eve show. He’s, their Dick Clark. Is Mario Lopez, kind of a Dick Clark now?   Marty  06:18 Is Ryan Seacrest was trying to fill that role?   Leah Jones  06:22 So all right, Marty. In the last three weeks you turned 40 became a dad and launched a new novel. At what point did you realize everything was going to hit at the same time?   Marty  06:38 I also delayed my paternity leave at work and went straight back to work. I was like, I can handle this. I can do it. Why not? And now I'm just, I don't know what day it is. I don't think I have I showered this week. But it's being a dad is cool. I like being a dad. I've been practicing dad jokes my entire life. My friends were the most dad joke guy, who isn't a dad yet. So as ready, they're actually in the hospital, the baby was losing too much weight. Or if the baby loses 10% of his body weight after being born, it's an emergency. And so for the first two days of the baby's life, the nurses just furiously feeding the baby milk. Around the clock, desperately trying to get the baby's weight back up. And my wife was pumping constantly, and I was bottle feeding and you couldn't even do the bottle the first day because that'd be a syringe. So I'm just putting a syringe in the baby's mouth round the clock every 20-30 minutes. We had to wake up there was no sleep. I mean, really one of the most intense psychological and physical experiences of our lives. Just constantly feeding this baby milk for two days straight. And we got her way to a good place. And by the end, I'm exhausted, my wife's exhausted. Neither one of us has had any personal hygiene during this time. And we're just slumped over and I'm like, “darling, you're utterly amazing”. Oh, utterly with two Ds. And my wife did not laugh. My wife did not laugh at all. And the nurse the nurse laughed, at least the nurse pretended to laugh. And she's like, “oh, dad joke, your first dad joke”. She was delighted but my wife was not.   Leah Jones  08:41 Maybe she will have been blacked out from the exhaustion and won't remember.   Marty  08:49 Ah, no, she remembers that one because I tell everybody that story.   Leah Jones  08:55 And then you just went right back to work.   Marty  08:59 Yeah, well, I had to. I delayed my paternity leave because I didn't realize in California and maybe this is a nationally, but especially in LA, apparently, you're supposed to sign up for daycare before you conceive. The wait lists are just a year long. We didn't start looking into daycare to midway through the second trimester was a mistake. So I was like, yeah, I'm going to have to delay my going back to work. So yeah, I became a dad and launched a book and went back to work and had this. I actually wasn't that emotional about turning 40, a little.   Leah Jones  09:38 Yeah,.   Marty  09:42 Part of it I remember turning 30 and I complained to everybody who would listen. I whined and whined about turning 30, I'm not my 20s anymore, I'm so old. And now it's I would do unspeakable unholy things to be 30 again, And I was even like that at 20. I have turned 20 and I'm not a teenager anymore. Who am I?! And it's like, nobody wants to hear it. One of my friends once told me there's things you can say that make you older than you are. And I feel that's one of those things complaining about a new decade. So I also prefer being an early something than a late something.  I like being my early 20s not in my late 20s, I like being my early 30s more than my late 30s. So once you cross that bridge.   Leah Jones  10:38 And now you're early 40s.   Marty  10:41 Yeah, my wife was like you're in LA 40.  I'm in the best shape of my life. Well, not anymore. Since we had the baby a month ago, I put on 10 pounds. When you are in LA 40, but I think in LA 50 is just a plastic surgery disaster. I'm already getting Facebook ads, or Botox, and in various injections, and…   Leah Jones  11:06 But when you moved out to LA, you did like the Marvel diet. You did the Marvel body thing, right?   Marty  11:15 Here's what happened with that. I was in New York for 10 years. In New York, exercise is just going anywhere. I mean you're just on your feet all the time. But I moved out here, and I'm sitting in my car all the time. But all my friends were like, oh, you're going to move to LA and you're going to become a complete douchebag. And you're going to be a completely different person, you're just going to talk about your green juice and your yoga and try to become a fitness influencer. And so as a joke they started as a joke, and I somewhere got lost in it. As a joke I started putting on my social media, I was at the gym, I do a gym selfie, or #fitnessjourney, #Mondayinspiration. It's just trolling because I'm a lifelong troll. And I think trolling has become something maybe more cruel and vicious now. But trolling used to be a little more lighthearted. I think, I'm a troll for good. I just started doing all this dumb, hashtag and annoying gym selfies. And then I was like, well, this is fun. I'm just going to start doing it all the time. I'm just going to start going to the gym every day and troll some more. And I started to notice, I can see some abs. I guess the first two the upper two come in first. It's like, what is that? I've never seen that before! As part of the trolling, I'm looking into diet. You're supposed to have x grams of protein for every pound of bodyweight. Because it's not enough to work out, you got to load up on protein to do muscle synthesis and grow new muscles. And I started just going down this rabbit hole and the inner row bodybuilder sites and how to basically get swole. And there's so many male body issues, now. There were always women body issues. And now because of the Marvel movies, guys have this; young guys especially. I've never touched steroids are any of that stuff. But apparently, that's a huge thing is they all feel really insecure, because they're all trying to look like Chris Pratt and Chris Hemsworth. And it's not achievable naturally unless you have genetics. Who knows how many of those superhero actors achieve that naturally, that's a big conversation here.   Leah Jones  13:56 I don't think any of them achieve it naturally.   Marty  14:01 Right, because you look at action stars. You look at action stars in the 80s or even the 90s they look that's the most if you went to the gym naturally, every day you could probably look like that now. They don't look that buff now. But the action stars now they're on allegedly the stuff they give to cows. I mean, the hormones they give it to cows to make them more muscular and leaner for their meat. I never did that stuff. But I got about as far as you can get, naturally. I was just spending hours in the gym every day. And like I said, it started out as a joke, and then it turned into this. The sick obsession where people were, oh, your wife must be so attracted to you. And I'm like, no, she's never been less attracted me in her life. Because no woman wants to hear about macros. I was having protein shakes for dinner and she's feeling guilty for having pasta. She's a goddess! I think at one point at the absolute peak of it, I was an actual professional athlete shape in my late 30s. And it's like what is the point of this?! My friends give me like, what is the point of this?! Because it's not funny anymore. And it's not funny to me anymore. After why it wasn't even enough for me. I pinch my stomach it became this kind of sickness. And I kind of backed off it a little.   Leah Jones  15:55 You did some articles. You sold some pieces about it.   Marty  16:05 Well, no, I never sold a piece but I did actually book a professional photo shoot on a gay erotica Instagram. Where it was going to be speedos and stuff. Speedos sort of X rated, pretty spicy stuff. I followed this protocol for doing a photo shoot, which is what all the A list actors do anytime they have a shirtless scene. So basically, there's a week where you are trying to overload your body with water and flush out all the salts in your body. You don't have any carbs. You're basically trying to deprive your body of a ton of nutrients and get all the salt out. And then at the last minute, you have a crazy amount of carbs. And so all the salts out of your body, you're trying to dehydrate and you have a bunch of carbs and it's just supposed to blow your muscles up. And that's how you get that crazy, shrink wrap look. But my body couldn't handle it. And I was just throwing up the morning I had the photoshoot book. I was in the best. This was right before my 30th birthday. I'm in the best shape ever. I'm just throwing up and hurling everywhere that this is when I peek. I became a dad a week later.   Leah Jones  17:39 No.   Marty  17:41 I'm never going to have time to do this again. And I'm just hurling a horrible headache and I have to cancel my gay erotica photoshoot. I think that's the myth of Icarus. I think that's the story of Icarus too close to the sun. This is becoming entire interview. I'm not sure anybody wants to hear. Well.   Leah Jones  18:06 Let's talk about the book. Because I will say there's this week the episode of high and mighty John Gabriel. I don't know if you'll listen to that podcast.   Marty  18:18 Oh, he used to be on, I used to work for Guy Code on MTV he is one of the comedians on there. The show will get cancelled in 10 seconds today.   Leah Jones  18:27 But it would not survive today.   Marty  18:29 Maybe zero code.   Leah Jones  18:30 Gabriel, every year around New Year's does an episode with Mike Mitchell, called the fat episode where they talk about their bodies and exercise and their goals for the year. And I think what you said where there's a lot of men are starting to have the body issues that women have laid claim to for centuries. I think it’s really true. And you hear when I listen on podcast, and I hear comedians talking about intermittent fasting or that's an eating disorder. It's real close, but the ways that men frame it because it's the Marvel movies and the new body of the action star. Occasionally one of them will admit, well to be shirtless in that scene. I had to do all the stuff you're talking about for a week, and that lasts for one hour. I gotta shoot all those scenes immediately.   Marty  19:35 The funny thing was the reactions from my guy friends versus my female friends. My guy friends were so supportive. So they're this is awesome. You're so jacked, you're ripped. Oh my god, you're an inspiration. Some of them are telling me how to do this. They got in great shape. And I actually was becoming a fitness symbol. I took a couple of them to the gym and showed them my routine. I was actually their personal trainer Guys were super supportive. My lady friends were what is supposed to be my reaction to this? Ooh la la What are you? Actually one of them was you're going to trigger eating disorders and people. They were kind of more critical, either ambivalent or confused or I just say the enthusiasm definitely came more from my guy friends who are probably maybe feeling inadequate compared to the rocker Zack Brodeur.   Leah Jones  20:48 All right, let's talk about The Time Meowchine: A Talking Cat’s Y2K Quest to Save the World. It's your new novel. It's a time travel novel about, well, why don't you tell me?   Marty  21:04 Sure. So here would be the pitch that I could have sold out. In the distant future, not too distant but it's the worst-case scenario for global warming. The oceans can't support life anymore. There's no more rain. The biosphere has decayed. Life on Earth is dying out, humans are dying out. And so a brilliant scientist looks back at where did history go wrong? Where can we fix this? And pinpoints the 2000 election, when Al Gore, the environmentalist lost by 300 votes in Florida. And she as a teenage girl actually campaigned for Ralph Nader in Florida. So she has to go back and stop her younger self from screwing Al Gore out of the election. dooming the human race. That's the version that could have sold. My agent took this manuscript to 40 editors, who are all like, okay, I love the outdoor time travel idea, the outdoor Save The World Time Travel idea. Why does it star a talking cat? How am I supposed to market this shit? Okay, so here's the version I actually wrote. As I alluded to a second ago. The version that I actually wrote because I tried to write the first version for a year and it just felt it felt preachy. It felt liberal wish fulfillment, it felt kind of democratic propaganda. First off half the country, they're going to write this off the second they hear Al Gore. And even for myself, I'm just art isn't supposed to be partisan, it felt. Even though I actually genuinely think I was living in the timeline where Al Gore won. I think about that, probably more than is healthy. Even for me, as the writer writing it, I just felt this is partisan. It doesn't feel fun and this sucks, and I couldn't make it work. Then I had the scientists in the future, she had a cat. And I guess getting back to the marijuana, hashish portion of our conversation. I had a week of sitting on my couch and it just hit me like lighting. What if the cat's the main character? I wrote it down in my notes. I woke up the next morning. I'm like, huh, and I'm like, okay, what if the cat, I mean, this is the future, so we have brain chips at this point. And I have a brilliant adventure scientist in the story, one of the inventor scientists have created an AI algorithm that can read animal brains and translate their thoughts in English or any language? And what if the cat can talk. And we're telling the story from the cat's perspective. The cat doesn't know who Al Gore is. The cat doesn't know Ralph Nader is. Basically basing it on my cat who is an idiot. So it's like a super smart cat in the sense that it can talk, but it's kind of an idiot because it's Mike. But yeah, it's not this character is much closer. We're talking about mice now, which is the opposite of cats, but it's much more like Pinky than the brain. If I can pull it a night. It just clicked and I wrote 65,000 words over the next few months and just in this trance, I had never been in such a creative flow like this. Since I was a teenager and was really first discovering writing, and I was also at the beginning of COVID, during the most intense lockdown portion when nobody was seeing anyone. So I had no distractions. I was totally in the zone. And it just worked. The Al Gore time travel story worked with a cat and it didn't work with humans as the main character. I can't explain it. So like I said it took me a while to find an agent who would represent this. I had an agent before and they were like, I don't get this one. I finally found one who got it. And he took it everywhere, every publishing house and again, they were like Al Gore time travel story – great; a cat story?! How am I supposed to market this shit. I believe in this, I'm going to put it on the Kindle store and see how it does. And I was warned, that was bad idea. But I had already done this once before with my Hemingway book 10 years ago. And look, I don't know if I can get Lightning in a Bottle twice. But for years, I wanted to do a Guide to Masculinity, based on the life and works of Ernest Hemingway. And the 50th Anniversary of Hemingway's death was coming up. And I thought this is going to be the most amazing time to market this book. 50 years since Hemingway and my agent at the time did the same thing took it to every publishing house, every editor and they were first off, nobody your age knows who Hemingway is. I was 25 at the time. So I guess it was back in 2007 or so when I think I had that pitch. And I was I think they do know who he is because they know that Dos Equis guy. The Dos Equis is most interesting man in the world. That's Hemingway, actually I met that guy met the actor at a party. What's the Jonathan gold, something Juhi gold standard though. And I asked him this, you're doing anyway. He's, yeah, I'm doing anyway. And anyway, they get the most interesting man in the world thing. I think they're going to get the ironic over the top, Guide to masculine ego, going to war and slaughtering 1000s of animals to prove, how hairy your chest as they'll get it. And it was just rejected everywhere. And so I just put it on the Kindle store. My agent at that time told me, this will be the end of your career, so publishing after you've been traditionally published. But I believe in this. I really believe...   Leah Jones  27:42 The timing was right. It was you weren't going to wait another 25 years for a major anniversary of his death?   Marty  27:48 Well, yeah. So there's 50 years, but will people even be talking about it? Well, it turned out USA Today picked it up. They called the book a laugh out loud parody. It was in the LA Times. The New York Times asked me to write something. MSNBC asked me to come on and talk about I was on National Television talking about a self-published book. It was amazing. Hit number one on Amazon for parity. This sounds like bragging it paid for a month of rent don't get it wrong.   Leah Jones  28:29 But you were still in New York at the time.   Marty  28:31 Yeah, but then one of the major publishers came back and we're okay, let's do a second edition. Let's expand it a little and we'll put it in bookstores for real. It sold decently. I think that was just a case where, when you have an idea that you really believe in, and now there's the technology to distribute it. I think things will find their audience. Or at least they have a chance to now. So I'm taking a chance on this cat Al Gore.   Leah Jones  29:02 I love it.   Marty  29:03 This one might be too weird. I don't know. But there's a lot of cat people out there on the internet. So if you love cats, and Y2K nostalgia, which is super-hot right now. The let me tell you this is the book for you.   Leah Jones  29:19 Awesome. I will have it linked in the show notes. People can go pick it up, they should review it, they should share it with their friends. I am someone who carries deep guilt and shame for voting for Ralph Nader in 2000.   Marty  29:36 I was 17 so I couldn't vote. But if I could have voted, I would have voted for Ralph Nader. And I'll tell you, I was in such a… we talk about echo chambers now with social media. But I was in such an echo chamber then that I thought Ralph Nader had a shot at winning because all my friends loved Ralph Nader. It didn't hit me that only 3% of the electorate was going to vote for him, because everyone I knew was is this purist. Al Gore is the corporate sellout and Ralph Nader is the pure thing. And he's the one who's really fighting for what's good and right and just just those 300 votes made the difference between… I mean, look, would we be living in a utopia now, if Al Gore had won! Probably not. It's not like other countries necessarily would have changed their policies. But the United States, if we had gotten off oil 15 years ago if we had invested in electric vehicles, and renewables. I went back and for this book, I watched 2000 debates, and Al Gore is saying we need to invest in renewables, and electric technologies, battery powered cars, we can do these things. And then George W. Bush says we got a lot of coal, and we got to go after it before it's too late. We got to compete in coal. We got to get the coal out. He was an oil guy. We absolutely did see the EPA got it. And we I think we would be living in a somewhat different and better world. It might not be Utopia, but I was always fascinated by… and then aside from just the environmental stuff you get, actually this is a question the book kind of really delves into would 9/11 had happened under Gore, would the recession have, maybe – maybe not. And there's a lot of debate about that. I'm really fascinated by alternate history. I love those things like the Man in the High Castle and that Stephen King book about going back and saving JFK. Which is funny, because I guess it’s a spoiler alert. Did you read that one? Or watch the show?   Leah Jones  32:08 I watched Man in the High Castle the first season, but I didn't watch the one about JFK. Spoil it. It won’t bother me.   Marty  32:13 Okay. Spoiler alert for anyone watching! I mean, the books been out for like 10-15 years. The main character saves JFK. But then it actually leads to new nightmare future where the world winds up in a nuclear war and he actually has to go back and undo saving JFK.   Leah Jones  32:42 People underestimate how much LBJ got done.   Marty  32:46 Yeah, except for civil rights.     Leah Jones  32:49 Civil rights act, voting rights act. He was son of a bitch. He helped legislate ground things that did change the course of our country for 50 years, until they were all completely gutted in the last five.   Marty  33:06 Well, I'm totally fascinated by alternate history, like I said. I couldn't find anybody doing the Al Gore winning story. So I thought, I should do it. I should do the Sci Fi time travel version. I actually think somebody did a short story. That was just the alternate history wasn't the science fiction time travel version. And I thought, I'm sort of fascinated by sci fi. I've always loved sci fi and time travel stories. And just it seemed this was if no one else was going to do it. Dammit, I was going to do it. And I did it my way. And that involves a talking cat.   Leah Jones  33:46 Outstanding! And what is the talking cat's name?   Marty  33:50 Blink, he is named after Blink 182 who is our protagonist’s favorite band?   Leah Jones  33:55 Nice. Your protagonist is the elder millennial.   Marty  34:02 As I put it in this future, all Millennials are now elder millennials. But I do feel as an elder millennial, I'm really half Gen X. I'm half Gen X and half millennial. I personally relate to the Gen X side of me more, I think. But I don't really like Gen Z. Gen Z reminds me of Gen X in a lot of ways.   Leah Jones  34:25 Yeah. Because Gen Z was raised by Gen X.   Marty  34:29 They have the ironic sense of humor. Younger millennials they don't have any sense. I don't want to cast; everyone talks in these gigantic generational stereotypes. And look, everyone's an individual. I actually didn't just going to promote all my things promoted. I had a book called Kill videos about a generation war between baby boomers and millennials and Gen Z. A civil war along generational lines that I wrote not long after the 2016 election, because it really felt like older people were going more conservative and younger people were going very, very liberal. But then Charlottesville happened at Charlottesville was all these 1920-year-olds out with their tiki torches. And it was like, oh, maybe it's not so simple is old, conservative, young, liberal, maybe there's every generation has individuals in it, and has a spectrum of thought. So whether that thought is for good or for ill. So I think that was a learning moment in terms of judging people just by purely generations.   Leah Jones  35:44 I'm a big fan of the Gen Z kids that I know and young adults. I mean, it's wild to me that my youngest nephew is 13. I don't know if he'll ultimately be considered Gen Z or not. But I work with some 23–24-year-olds. They're fantastic. They are funny. They are digitally savvy. They are hard workers.   Marty  36:10 Yeah, they all have the terrible anxiety disorders. They're very nice. They're very kind people in my experience, funny, and they're growing up the thing that I'll get into this in the Time Machine a lot. And it's very much been my experience, talking with them as an elder millennial. We grew up, everybody thought the future would just keep getting better. This was a very pre 9/11 view. There were all these peace treaties, we had won the Cold War, peace in the Middle East, peace in Ireland, the Internet was young, all this amazing new technology. It just seemed like things lifespans were increasing. We had mapped the human genome. All this incredible stuff was happening and everybody everybody's wrong way to phrase it. Because, there were people out there who were obviously for gay people, there was still a lot of the marriage wasn't legal yet. And things weren't perfect. But I think that wildly, there was a sense that we're increasing rights, increasing peace, economic prosperity. And everybody's a lot in life was just keep getting a little bit better every year. And then somewhere, I guess there was 9/11, there was the recession, COVID. And like I said, I started this book at the beginning of COVID, when it just truly felt like the world was falling apart. There were all these fires in California. You remember that? In San Francisco, there was those images where the sky was just blood red?! Do you remember that?! The Charlottesville and Nazis marching in the streets. And then all these…   Leah Jones  38:08 [Not Audible [0038:08]] shooting, the Tree of Life synagogue, in South Carolina   Marty  38:12 …shooting. And I mean, even on the other side of the political aisle. I had friends, some of whom have very respectable jobs, that major corporation saying, peaceful protests didn't work so violence is okay, now. Martin Luther King was wrong. Violent protest is okay because the peaceful way didn't pan out. And I was that feels to me crazy! I'm a hippie at heart. I mean politically I'm more of a moderate, but I'm a hippie at heart. I would say, my problem is I have kind of a liberal heart and a conservative head, which I think Obama describing so close to that one time. I'm just comparing myself to Obama and Martin Luther King!   Leah Jones  39:07 I will use that for the promo clip,   Marty  39:09 Marty - he's just like Martin Luther King and Obama, except Jewish. Wow! Sometimes the depth of my narcissism even shocks me. There are moments of clarity that hey…  The point I'm getting to is on the right everyone was there was January 6, and there were these riots and then on the left, I was hearing more and more from my friend’s violence is okay. And we have to go all out with some of those things. And I just felt horrified. I felt like the center was not holding. And that's where I really got obsessed with this Al Gore alternate timeline where things had kept getting better instead of getting worse. That really was a central theme of the book.   Leah Jones  40:02 Yeah   Leah Jones  40:16 Well, let's get into the 90s, early 2000s the Y2K's, your favorite years. The decade, the era you have been obsessed with before it was cool to be obsessed with.   Marty  40:32 Yeah, I remember in the early 2000s in my dorm room, I would still be listening to SKA music. And people were it's  2002, what are you…? Everyone's into Interpol now. And the high was, why are you still listening to the mighty fish and Goldfinger. And that had totally gone out of style. I was into the 90s nostalgia, as soon as the 90s ended, and it's so super fascinating to watch about almost 10 years ago now. I think when it really started coming back. But now you go into stores, and it's all the retro clothes and everything's baggy. And now we're getting a bit into early Y2K nostalgia where we're kind of looking at those 2000-2003 years, it's super interesting that people that weren't alive for that are so fascinated by it and kind of the way that we look at the Beatles, they look at Nirvana. Because it's the same time cycle. They look at Kurt Cobain, the way we looked at John Lennon. This guy who we never really knew in our lifetimes, but was our parents all looked up to and…   Leah Jones  42:06 [Not audible [00:42:06]] genius of our parents’ generation.   Marty  42:09 I guess they look at Dave Grohl. It's kind of the McCartney who's still hanging around.   Leah Jones  42:15 I graduated high school in 95 and college in 99. I've got a couple years on you. When I realized, when I had the moment of  in 1989, I was in sixth grade. It's 20th anniversary of Woodstock. That's when peace signs and stuff started getting really popular when I was a kid. Late 60s Fashion came back. So I remember painting peace signs on my…  I had like five different pairs of painted jeans. My parents didn't have much in the way of clothes leftover for us to take but they would they're just kind of shake their heads that we were stealing their fashion. And then this realization of, oh, my God, I am now the adult that my sister's kids are thrilled when they can find my sister and mine vintage T-shirts from high school. When they can find vintage treasure in my parents’ house in the attic and it's just weird to be on the other side of the culture as fashion. It's just like, don't bring back, don't over pluck your eyebrows. Don't do what we did!   Marty  43:40 I looked back at my pictures with the bleached hair, the frosted tail. I don't think that looks good in retrospect on me.   Leah Jones  43:47 It didn't look good. Wasn't good for anyone.   Marty  43:54 I know you worked on Billy Joe from Green Day. But not on me. It's super fascinating and especially now that they're getting to 2001-2003 fashion those weren't, I don't remember those were very happy years. I mean, a rack and I was in DC so there were all these anthrax poisonings and the sniper who was going around. That that might have been DC specific. Who was on the national news though. You couldn't get on an airplane without worrying about your life and they wouldn't let you stand up in the airplane for the first 30 minutes so the flight originally was… you couldn't get up at all. You couldn't go to the bathroom. They were just like, nobody's going to the bathroom on any flight! I don't know if people were wearing adult diapers or what but and that was the first 30 minutes you couldn't get up but everywhere at least see something say something announcements and people were just angry people wanted revenge. I don't want to get too much into politics again. But, even the most liberal people you knew just about wanted revenge. It was very angry time. But interestingly, the art of that time, the music, and the movies are very party heavy. The music is all club stuff and grinding, sexy, bringing sexy back and dirty party time. That I think that's what's sort of maybe attracting, I think we're kind of coming out of a little bit of a puritanical era and people are wanting to have fun, and especially with the lock downs, nobody was having any fun. So maybe that's the attraction to this kind of dirty party time. But I think part of that, coming out of we were all scared of our lives, scared out of our minds, there's sort of a desperation to some of that.   Leah Jones  45:58 Oh, I was living in Durango, Colorado on 9/11. So southwest corner of Colorado. At the time I worked at Walmart was one of my three jobs. I was working 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. on 911 and at a Walmart in the rural Colorado, where when you work at a 24-hour store; there is a point where you have to shut down all the registers for like two minutes to close the books for the day and start them again. And people were hoarding people have two or three carts, buying everything on the shelves, terrified of what was going to come next and this is in Southwestern Colorado; like nothing was going to happen to us, but we didn't know that. And when we went to shut the registers down for just to close the books on the day,

Lyndsey Little, creator of OniGirl comic, joined Leah to talk about her love of monsters, the monster boarding school where her comic is set, and the best foods for nostalgia day! Support Lyndsey's kickstarter to bring glorious color to OniGirl Follow Lyndsey on Instagram and Tik Tok Show Notes Stories to Dismember podcastMost Oreo OreoGodzilla Movie Monster EvolutionBiblically Accurate AngelsRivkah Reyes on Friday Night Movie PodcastBeauty and the BeastTeenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesFrankensteinThe Blackcoat's Daughter ----more----   Lyndsey Little  00:00 Hello, my name is Lyndsey Little and my favorite thing is Monsters.   Announcer  00:05 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast, where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:18 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things and get recommendations without using an algorithm. This week, I am joined by Lyndsey Little. She is a cohost of the podcast "Stories to Dismember”, a horror movie review, and the author and artist and inker of OniGirl, which is a webcomic that is coming to life on Kickstarter. Lyndsey, how are you doing this morning?   Lyndsey Little  00:50 I'm so good. Thank you so much for having me, Leah. This is great.   Leah Jones  00:55 I'm so happy to actually get to talk to you with voices.   Lyndsey Little  00:59 Hmm, I know this is the first time we've actually communicated this way. But it doesn't really feel like it to me, if that makes sense.   Leah Jones  01:09 It makes 100% sense. So Lyndsey, you may recognize her voice from the Best of 2022 episode. She left a voicemail for it. But we are members of the DOS chord so we know each other through the Doughboys fan community. So we talk all the time on discord chat. And it does feel like those are real friendships. So I'm not even going to say, Oh, it feels like or it doesn't feel like because it feels like it because it is.   Lyndsey Little  01:40 And we have heard each other's voices we just haven't heard directly in the moment.   Leah Jones  01:45 Yes. We haven’t had synchronous communication.   Leah Jones  01:54 So how is this weekend kicking off for you?   Lyndsey Little  01:58 Oh, my gosh. Well, yesterday, my partner and I got our marriage certificate. So that's one step closer to the real thing. And for the most part, we just plan on having what we call a nostalgia day. Which is when we choose some of our favorite films or video games from childhood, grab some of our favorite snacks from childhood. And we'll literally just spend a majority of the weekend doing those things, having a whole complete marathon of nostalgia.   Leah Jones  02:34 That's a brilliant idea. I love it.   Lyndsey Little  02:35 It's so much fun.   Leah Jones  02:37 What are some of your go to snacks for nostalgia day?   Lyndsey Little  02:44 Grilled cheese is probably one of the more nostalgic snacks for me or foods I guess; or peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Just really keeping it simple. And as far as like prepackaged foods. Pop Tarts always come to mind. I feel like Oreos are kind of cheating because those are classic. I think those will always be popular. But I'm very tempted by those very recent; that recent drop of Oreos that has the cookies and cream filling. Stratton was tempted to buy those when he was at the grocery store earlier, and I wanted to say, Oh, get off… get them… get them… but we already had bought so many snacks.   Leah Jones  03:31 Given to the temptations?!   Lyndsey Little 03:33 Yes, I know.   Leah Jones  03:37 I haven't seen the cookies and creams. Well, I've seen, is it the super stuff? The ones that are like quadruple stuff that they have out right now, that are like hot. So sick.   Lyndsey Little 03:47 They already have really thick.   Leah Jones  03:51 Yeah, there's already double stuff regularly on the market. So I guess one of the main Oreo factories is in Illinois or used to be in Illinois. So we get all the flavors. All the special Oreo flavors come out and in Illinois first. And my sister, when she was at a smaller law firm would organize tastings anytime she found a new flavor.   Lyndsey Little  04:21 Ah, the dream. I'm so jealous!   Leah Jones  04:28 Yeah, so I might have to wander down to CVS and see if we've got the cookies and cream.   Lyndsey Little  04:34 Hmm. It must be good.   Leah Jones  04:37 I'm sure it is.   Lyndsey Little  04:39 Yeah, it's Oreo but with more Oreo!   Leah Jones  04:42 Right. It's like an Oreo with an Oreo filling. It's a very meta cream just to worry.   Lyndsey Little  04:47 Yes, exactly. Right. Sounds great.   Leah Jones  04:55 Yeah, and I hear you on the on a grilled cheese. That's good nostalgia food. Now when you're doing an nostalgia grilled cheese; is it margarine, white bread, craft slices or do you upgrade it for your adult sensibilities?   Lyndsey Little  05:16 It depends if this is specifically nostalgia day, it probably is more curated. It probably has smoked gouda on wheat bread and mayonnaise on the inside, because that's how I was taught to do it. Mayonnaise on the inside to make it extra creamy. And then butter on the outside fried that way on both sides.   Leah Jones  05:43 Okay.   Lyndsey Little  05:45 And then maybe some other stuff like a blackberry jam to go with or whatever jams in the fridge: strawberry jalapeno. But we've had many a grilled cheese in this household.   Leah Jones  06:00 Yeah. I've never heard the hack of putting mayonnaise on the inside. But as I'm thinking about it, it makes sense that it would just get make the cheese melt here. And especially if you're not using Kraft American slices, those are made for melting, all cheeses sadly are. So I could see that mayonnaise is also really a Gouda or a Cheddar, giving it a little bit more of that moisture.  That's really that's a good food hack. Yeah.   Lyndsey Little  06:33 And I think you can also fry a grilled cheese just with mayonnaise on the outside instead of butter, but I prefer butter. I'm from the South, so of course I love butter. So that's how I do it.   Leah Jones  06:46 Yeah, I typically use Country Crock for the outside. But that's because, I didn't grow up in a butter household. I grew up in a Country Crock household. And I buy butter now as an adult, and I appreciate it. But it's not enough of a part of my life to keep it outside of the fridge, so it's soft enough when I want a grilled cheese. My butter isn't always prepared to make bread. So I just revert to the Country Crock.   Lyndsey Little  07:24 Well, the Country Crock is nostalgic for me too. For some reason I forgot it existed until you said that. But now I'm just hit with a wave of nostalgia. And if you buy Country Crock, then you've just got free Tupperware along with your purchase.   Leah Jones  07:44 Where we are used to keep the green beans. And then if there's still a little butter in there, and then you throw the vegetables in while there's still country crock in and you get a little extra dressing. Great! You know the fancy pastas where they finish it and they've got the big Parmesan with a hole in it and they put the whole hot pasta in it to get it coated. I say that…   Lyndsey Little  08:10 I have never done like that before, but…   Leah Jones  08:12 What! I've done it once. Yeah, it was a buffet at a holiday party. And it was the risotto station. Because when they finished the risotto by just dumping your whole serving into a Parmesan wheel.   Lyndsey Little  08:34 Oh my gosh. For listeners, you can see why our connection is the dose scored because so far we've talked about Oreos, and Grilled Cheese and Pasta, and I love it.   Leah Jones  08:52 So Lyndsey, you are in addition to planning your wedding, you're also in the middle, you've got two weeks left on your Kickstarter for OniGirl for the first issue. This is an issue that you have fully drawn and written and the goal of this Kickstarter is to ink it right to do the color?   Lyndsey Little  09:17 Yes, to do the color for it because it is it is fully written and drawn. And you can also read it already if you wanted to. It's on Webtoon, if you just search O-N-I-G-I-R-L, you'd be able to find it there to read it for free. And it's already been published in black and white. But it takes so much time to create even a single page of a comic. I used to work on it while I had a full-time job so I would spend my evenings working on it and essentially, I would end up working about 70 hours a week with the edition of my comic. And it just takes so much time to do, so that's why this Kickstarter exists so that I can color these pages and make OniGirl be presented the way that I always really wanted it to be ¾ in Glorious Color. That's literally the title of the Kickstarter.   Leah Jones  10:24 Is OniGirl your first comic character?   Lyndsey Little  10:34 It’s kind of is. When I was a kid, I used to write little comics. But they were little hobbies that I had. I never really stuck with anything. And as an artist, I've always, possibly with undiagnosed ADHD, I've always had like different projects that I've started and stopped. But this is the only project I've ever had, where I've just stuck with it and been totally passionate about. And I could easily just do that for the rest of my life and be happy with it, because I enjoy it so much. And it's a comic that is so deeply a part of myself. There's just so many elements in it that draw from my own life and my own experiences, that are just so very raw and personal, that it just really means so much to me.   Leah Jones  11:39 So on the Kickstarter, you talk about how you first concepted OniGirl in 2015, but 2021 is when you started publishing that project. How many issues are out on Webtoons so far?   Lyndsey Little  11:56 So currently, it's up to Chapter Four. You can read four chapters on Webtoon. And essentially, that's also about the equivalent of four comic issues, like the little single floppies. But I already have so much of it written out in my head for future issues. So there will be a conclusion at some point that just is a matter of when I can do that.   Leah Jones  12:27 Yes. So we need people to come and fund this Kickstart. You are about halfway there. Oh, you're literally $12 short of being halfway there. I wish I'd seen that. You're like 50.01% of the way through your goal. The goal is $3,000, which as far as Kickstarter goes is a very reasonable project goal. Like some people come on and they're like it's a million dollars or $500,000. And the goal is so that, you can be paid to be an artist, right? Yeah, the goal   Lyndsey Little  13:13 It is! Because at the moment, I work as a Freelance Illustrator. And I do all kinds of things, I work on card games. I've illustrated a lot of card games. I've done some comic work for other people. But to be able to create my own work, it literally does take so much time! And the only way I'm able to create that work is if I have the time and money to work on it. And I know that there is an audience for it. I have 6000 readers on Webtoon. But Webtoon is a free platform. So it's really a matter of, do people want to see this project to fruition enough that they care to support it or to share it amongst other people that they know who might appreciate it. So I hope so. It's still a project that I'm going to continue on at some point whether or not this Kickstarter gets funded. But this Kickstarter being funded will allow me to continue to work on this passion project, but also continue to release those Chapters because I want to continue with the plotline from where it was left off. I want to get to Chapter Five.   Leah Jones  14:42 Yeah. That's great. And I hope I have said this explicitly on the podcast, but if I haven't; I believe that artists deserve to be paid for their work. And that's why I think a Kickstarter like this is important because you're saying, I need space to breathe. The only way I can work on my passion project is if I can also… you exist in a capitalist society so you and your partner have bills to pay and supplies to buy and so the only way to be able to continue creating art is to have patrons. And so this is a way that people can come in and support you so you can maybe dial down the hustle a lot as a freelancer and spend time that you would be marketing yourself or doing invoices to have some breathing room to make your art. I think that is really worthwhile. And people that are listening, you have two weeks. It closes on Valentine's Day. So you haven't till now…   Lyndsey Little  15:59 I know that wasn't a threat – you have two weeks!   Leah Jones  16:03 You have two weeks, people! Make it your Valentine's gift to me. The host of Finding Favorites, that you will go in and back OniGirl, so that the author can have the mental space to work on this project and bring it to color which will help her get more followers on Webtoons, which will get her the attention of a publisher that will treat her fairly and pay her fairly for her work.   Lyndsey Little  16:34 That would be amazing!   Leah Jones  16:38 So that's the goal. Is that a goal? Would you like to have a publisher and work full time as a comic book writer?   Lyndsey Little  16:46 That would be the dream; that would be so ideal. It's very difficult to make it in the comic industry. So I don't even have my expectations that high. That would be lovely. But I'm not getting my hopes up about. If I just had to essentially be my own publisher, and just sort of crowdsource the funds to continually make OniGirl pages and just have them posted on my own site. I would do that.   Leah Jones  17:12 Yep.   Lyndsey Little  17:15 But if a publisher was ever interested, that would be even better. Because honestly, I can be my own boss and crack the whip on myself, but it's so much more difficult. I'd much rather somebody else do that.   Leah Jones  17:32 I 1,000% understand.   Leah Jones  17:48 So Lyndsey, I know we could talk OniGirl for the full hour. But we're also here to talk about Monsters. Question mark!   Lyndsey Little  18:00 Yes, so it is sort of, it is related in a way because I don't think it was mentioned but OniGirl is about a school full of monsters. Specifically, it's about a school of monster children, who go to this school not just to learn the normal subjects that we learn in real life, but also how to assimilate the behavior and appearance of humans. So that when they graduate from the school, they can go on to live in human society. Because it takes place in a human dominated world, where people don't believe monsters exist or the few that do; don't want them to exist. So you can draw from a lot of parallels in real life with…   Leah Jones  18:48 It's not subtle.   Lyndsey Little  18:51 No. And that's why I love monsters. And that's why I wanted to talk about monsters because they make for such a good allegory for people who are disenfranchised. Anyone who's in the LGBTQ community, person of color, disabled or differently bodied, I should say, or anyone who's ever just felt like another. Like I grew up in a horrible environment for a kid, like I grew up in an abusive environment. And I always felt like another because I was treated so badly. I felt like a monster basically. And I just I grew up loving monsters. But it wasn't until an adult that I could appreciate monsters because of that symbolism that they hold so frequently. Beauty and the Beast, the Beast is a character of redemption. He's a monster, essentially, but he redeems himself. He shows that inside he's more than what his appearance is. And I love that so much. Phantom of the Opera is a more extreme example of a monster. He literally kills people. But to some degree, you have empathy for him. There's just a variety of what a monster is in media. But there's just so many instances of it where you can just appreciate them on that deeper surface level.   Leah Jones  20:51 So you mentioned Beauty and the Beast.   Lyndsey Little  20:55 My favorite fairy tale and Disney film.   Leah Jones  20:59 Oh, is it? When you think of my first monster; is the beast or is it Monsters Inc or Frankenstein? Who's your origin story monster?   Lyndsey Little  21:17 The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.   Leah Jones  21:23 Are they monsters?   Lyndsey Little  21:24 In my heart, I consider them sort of like monsters. They're not monsters in the traditional sense, but they're still in other because they do their best to fight crime, but they still have to live in the sewers away from people. They can't reveal themselves to people. So there is that desire to do good, but knowing that they're another. So I love that. It's just another facet of that whole thing.   Leah Jones  21:57 In which Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were your first turtles? Or were they like Teenage-Mutant-Ninja-Turtles-He-Was-In-A-Half-Shell ¾ was it that type of ninja turtle? Or was it the grittier comic book? Or was it the live action? Was there a live action movie?   Lyndsey Little  22:15 There was? Yeah   Leah Jones  22:16 Live action movie. So what turtles are your turtles?   Lyndsey Little  22:20 So I did grow up a little around the cartoon. I think the cartoon was slightly before my time. So I was aware of it and I had seen some of it. But the movies came out when I was a toddler. And that is what I was obsessed with. I grew up with the first in the second film, and they're more meant for adults really. There's some cursing and there's a little bit of adult themes in there. But my dad would get me to sleep by watching those. I was a toddler and they would pop those into the VHS, that's how I would wind-down in the at night until I went to sleep. And my dad says he has stories of me when I was little when he would be sleeping in his own room and he would hear me going “Yeaaahhhhh” from the living room or Whoaa…...   Leah Jones  23:34 SDd you ask for pizza for every meal?   Lyndsey Little  23:42 Yeah, but I just sort of feel like, that's how most people are right?   Leah Jones  23:48 I think with or without the Ninja Turtles you want pizza?   Lyndsey Little  23:51 The pizza, it does look especially delicious in a Ninja Turtles adaptation.   Leah Jones  23:58 So you start with the Ninja Turtles is your first monster. Is there one kind of OG monster for you, that more people recognize as monsters?   Lyndsey Little  24:13 Godzilla? Godzilla looks like a monster.   Leah Jones  24:18 Godzilla, I think is doesn't have a copyright on it. So it's like an open, it's not called Open Source. What's it? What's the copyright word for any Sherlock Holmes Sellers; is available to anyone who wants to write Sherlock Holmes stories.   Lyndsey Little  24:39 I'm really not sure about that with Godzilla.   Leah Jones  24:46 All I'm trying to say is there's lots of Godzilla story. Which Godzilla got to you, got to baby Lyndsey?   Lyndsey Little  24:56 I don't remember, somebody could probably correct me on this; but I don't know if it's the original Godzilla – the very first Godzilla and black and white. But that's primarily what I would watch with my little brother. But the Godzilla that I love the most is what my partner Stretton calls the cat mouth – the Godzilla. Because it's still an early Godzilla, but he just has these big, bulging eyes! And a literal cat shaped mouth, and it's to me is the cutest iteration of Godzilla.   Leah Jones  25:41 I am just really quickly looking on Google images. I'm going to just see if I can find. Alright, let me try – Classic Godzilla.   Lyndsey Little  25:56 If he ever talked to Prince sloth? I don't usually call him that. That was weird. If you ever talked to Stretton, he wouldn't be able to rattle. The different Godzilla is off to you because he's the one who really introduced me more into the whole world of Godzilla.   Leah Jones  26:16 Yeah, it's wild when you just search Godzilla classic. Just how many versions of Godzilla there have been over the years.   Lyndsey Little  26:27 I could just ask him really quick.   Leah Jones  26:30 Oh, wait, I have found USA Today. The 60-year evolution of Godzilla. Cat face Godzilla is your favorite than Godzilla. Was that another one that like your family had recorded. You had the tape of it and you would rewatch it? Or did you catch it on TV?   Lyndsey Little  26:50 Yeah, that was a VHS tape that my brother and I had. We had a few of the Godzillas – Godzilla and King Kong. Oh, I was just going to say I think that's why I like Godzilla more than King Kong, because he seems more like a monster than King Kong does. Like King Kong obviously is not a normal gorilla but he's still just a big gorilla.   Leah Jones  27:17 He's a big gorilla.   Lyndsey Little  27:19 Somebody King Kong fans are going to get mad at me now.   Leah Jones  27:23 But his origin story is just like he's a big gorilla that people caught right. He's not a big gorilla who got… I don't know much about King Kong. He doesn't have like a nuclear meltdown background. He wasn't created in a lab. It's not like the Planet of the Apes who were lab... the apes are us. But they come out of a lab. They come out of like a failed human experiment on monkeys and gorillas versus I think King Kong is just like… big! Is Godzilla lab creation or outer [Not Audible [00:28:12]] monster?   Lyndsey Little  28:13 I think originally he was a dormant creature who…  oh, gosh... See, I'm not even an expert enough that I can get my facts straight. Godzilla, a giant monster spawned from the waste of nuclear tests, is discovered in the sea and rises to threaten Japan. And I like this a little bit. The only hope of stopping Godzilla is the Oxygen Destroyer - a weapon as deadly and as morally troubling as the atomic bombs that created the monster. So there's even political commentary when it comes to Godzilla because that was the whole inspiration for Godzilla.   Leah Jones  29:07 [Not Audible [00:29:09]] to Japan.  America created Godzilla. America, by releasing the nuclear bombs. I know exactly it’s a nuclear waste.   Lyndsey Little  29:22 Absolutely. And that's the whole reason for Godzilla skin texture because it's based on the scars that the Hiroshima victims had. There is just so much you can appreciate monster media at a surface level easily, but when you when you just get deeper into the reasoning behind film, why they exist, it's just so good. I just I love being able to connect, I guess with people on a human level through monsters. That's just my favorite thing. I'm so glad that we're talking about this on this podcast because I do think that's my favorite thing.     Leah Jones  30:29 If you were Professor Little, and you were going to write a syllabus – a monster syllabus! But let's just say it's like a winter term, it's just a six-week class. So you don't have to do a whole 20-week semester. Let's say you are going to do a six-week class on monsters. What are some items, movies, books, essays, what are things that go with your curriculum? Or what are ways that you would want people to explore monsters this can be a comic, this can be an illustration class, it can be a watch and discuss class; it can be whatever you want. But if you had six weeks to teach adults about monsters; what are some of the tools, the questions, the activities that you think you would do?   Lyndsey Little  31:22 That's really fun. I feel like it would be interesting for people to do a deep dive research into some of the earliest monsters, even maybe biblically or from any other culture really. Just bring out monsters that you don't really hear discussed nowadays, but are still part of the culture. Because even biblically, I think angels are kind of monsters, the way that they're described. And yet, at the same time, when they appear to people and they hide away their 100 eyes, or whatever. This is purely from a Christian point of view. I guess. I'm not a Christian, but I used to be. But I feel like that's something that's not really discussed, even amongst Christians. And I think that would be really interesting is how we have come to accept angels as being these humanoid creatures that are meant to be beautiful and angelic! That's a little too on the nose. But in reality, they were wild. They had 100 eyes or they were shaped like a wheel with 100 eyes and flames and I don't know 100 heads... I don't remember it.   Leah Jones  33:09 Yeah, there's been kind of a funny meme; it's not really a meme going around. But this Halloween, I saw a number of costumes. My friends who have maybe returned to church as adults, but have reconstructed their relationship with Christianity. They're like, “Oh! Well, if you’re going to be literal about Leviticus, I’m going to be literal about angels.” And a friend who made a costume. She was like, “I'm going as what the Bible says an angel is.”  And so she just bought like a ton of googly eyes. And she was is it a seraphim? Is that the word there?   Lyndsey Little  33:54 That is it.   Leah Jones  33:58 From the Bible,   Lyndsey Little  33:59 Seraphim it is. And there's like –  [sings] seraphim. Yes.   Lyndsey Little  34:14 Oh, but there's four and it lines up with the Jewish tradition, according to this. Well, point being is that there's some wild stuff, not just in the Bible but in many other like ancient religions with monsters. So it'd be interesting not just to draw from that, but also see how they have evolved over time, how we see them in media. Or even newer monsters like what are some new monsters that have been invented? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is certainly one. But maybe there's something in there about mutation because that's what they are. It's literally in to name, they are mutants.   Leah Jones  35:01 And I think you could do a whole class called Marvel and monsters. Is that it [Not Audible [00:35:15]]?   Lyndsey Little  35:14 That's the question, isn't it?   Leah Jones  35:18 Are the Guardians of Galaxies monsters or superheroes? What are they?   Lyndsey Little  35:21 Oh my gosh! I'm getting chills because I love this question. And that's kind of a little bit what my comic is about, too! Because most of the monsters in my story, they can pass for human or they're right on the edge of passing for human. They just need to figure out what more they can do to safely live amongst humans. And it's just kind of ridiculous for my characters, because if it weren't for their appearance, they probably could live amongst humans. But it's just a commentary on our society as well, because we as humans don't always treat each other the way that we should. And it's purely based on superficial things. It's completely unreasonable.   Leah Jones  36:25 Yeah, I mean, a lot of that makes me think about… I'm on Tik Tok. And my algorithm has a lot of content about autism and ADHD, and masking and people starting to unmask since the pandemic, and trying to be their true selves and people learning more about stemming and learning more about what their bodies need to stay regulated. And how so much of the last 20 years of pedagogy or the last 100 years of pedagogy have been about teaching, forcing children, who maybe need a little bit of movement in their life, to be still and to suppress that and to keep it inside; until they're having meltdowns at the end of the day or when they get home because they've spent all of their energy trying to keep their autism or ADHD hidden. So that's what I heard when you said this is a school for monsters to learn how to hide; hide their true self so they can exist in human society.   Lyndsey Little  37:53 I love that you said that.   Leah Jones  37:56 But isn't it also white standards of beauty. It's black women having to straighten their hair, or have weaves that look like white hair. It's women in India, buying skin bleach to appear lighter. So there's just so much but when you put the frame of monster over it, it's a mirror people can look at.   Lyndsey Little  38:31 Yeah, exactly.   Leah Jones  38:34 And they can't quite look at their own society and their own systems. But they can start by having empathy for the monsters.   Lyndsey Little  38:46 Exactly. totally nailed it.   Leah Jones  38:52 What response do you have to people who think it's this great gotcha when they're like, “Haha, Frankenstein is not the monster, he's the doctor”.  We all remember the name Frankenstein; because Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one other than the Bible. She helps bring us science fiction as a genre. And I think modern monsters maybe don't start with Mary Shelley, but Frankenstein's monster. So I just think it's interesting that we associate the name of the creator with the monster and not the monsters’ own name.   Lyndsey Little  39:43 Yeah, well, I think it goes to the way that different people consume different kinds of media, what they're getting out of it. Because even with horror films, you have people who appreciate them on a superficial level; who only watched them for the monsters or for the blood or the violence. And on the other hand, you have people who are looking at what these films are actually about. And usually it's about the human condition. And you can appreciate both. But some people don't even see those underlying themes when it comes to horror movies, or monster movies, or any kind of media with monsters. And I think it's a missed opportunity to not just understand the medium or whatever it is that you're consuming, but also yourself. Because I feel it's a great opportunity for growth, when you sit down and try to analyze these kinds of things.   Leah Jones  41:17 So in OniGirl, the students are all monsters. Is it a world where they grew up in Monster families, and their parents are like, “Hey, this is just part of it, you're going to have to go to Monster School? So that's my first question. And my second question is, are they all the same? Do they all have the same monster traits? Or do they go to school and find out what their monster traits are, and then get specialized classes on overcoming that particular monster trait?   Lyndsey Little  41:50 I love this question. That's it. I love that so much. So in my world, different monsters come from different upbringings. I have some monsters who have human parents that adopted them, and who have sent them to the school because these parents are not equipped to actually deal with them. And I have human parents who don't want to deal with their monster children, and send them off to this school so somebody else can deal with them. And then I have empathetic human parents who just want to find help for their children, and I have monster parents as well. And I like exploring all of the different relationships that can be had between half monsters who are struggling with their identity, like my main character, my protagonist, and other monsters who can pass very well. But they let it go to their head a little too much. And they don't accept the privilege that they have. It's sort of what we were touching on earlier when it comes to people who have white privilege or pretty privilege. There are people who will step over others as long as they can succeed in society. So I really am trying to explore every facet that I can about human society with my monsters. And I forgot what the other question was.   Leah Jones  43:50 Yeah, I should have not asked them back-to-back because they're a big meaty question. Do all the kids who come to school have the same monster traits like, does everyone have a tail, but some people have a short tail, so they can wear skinny jeans? I don't know. Does everybody have the same monster traits? Is it a monster spectrum? Or is it a little bit more of a Frankenstein, you're a little bit more of a Godzilla. What is Monster Me? Not me, so it sounds like it's not like... how do they qualify? Maybe how do they qualify or like because in Monsters Inc, which is a very bad example! The monsters and Monsters Inc. have all different body types. It sounds like your monsters are maybe are all in different emotional states but are their bodies look like human bodies? And they're working on their monster emotional state? Or do some of them have leather print, leopard spots, and they also need to learn makeup?   Lyndsey Little  45:12 This is a great question too. There's a very big range with monsters physically as well. This school, of course, is meant for monsters who have a chance of passing more as humans. But there's also that question of, is that even okay to do to just completely wipe away the identity that they have just to be able to survive? There is that question. But putting that aside, they do, for the most part, have more human like qualities. But then they might have horns sticking out of their head, which my protagonist does. And she hides it with different hats and things. But there's other monsters that have more to hide. I literally have a couple of slime characters in the story. How do you hide that? And I did introduce a lizard character like a humanoid lizard type of character. That is basically like an anthro-type character, where they literally have the skin, the tail, everything that would point to them being a lizard. But I explain how a monster of that degree can still live amongst human society. Those are other things that I tried to explore in this.   Leah Jones  47:07 Where's the boarding school?   Lyndsey Little  47:12 It's a fictional island. Initially, I had named it Comishima. But then I learned that, that is an actual place and I didn't want to appropriate this real place. So I renamed it to Yokaijima, which basically means spirit aisle, and that doesn't exist, I don't think. So I think I'm safe. So that is that is where the school is located. And it's very heavily influenced by Japanese culture. And just the appearance and setting of it is very Japanese. But I don't really want to culturally appropriate from anybody. So, the world I'm building is sort of a mishmash of different cultures and even the monsters. They pull them from different kinds of cultures. I have a Gorgon type character so you've got Greek mythology in there. I have lots of Japanese monsters, of course. But I even have a monster that I'm trying to insert into my comic at some point that literally draws from the region I grew up in, which was Appalachia in rural Georgia. The Tailee pole is where that originates from. And I'm trying so hard to find a place where I can insert this type of monster just to have a little bit of my own personal nostalgia inserted in there. So yeah, I do try to have a mishmash of monsters from different cultures in my story. But because it's a modern setting and these are monsters that have evolved over time, so that they look more human; it's my way of being respectful of all of these different cultures while also making it my own by saying, well, so much time has passed that these monsters only resemble what they previously were ages ago.   Leah Jones  49:49 So it's like kind of an international boarding school of all these descendants of different Classic Monsters that were more identifiable as monster. And over time monster society has put together some of these safeguards where it's like let's get our kids off to boarding school and help them learn to be more human so they can be more successful than we were.   Lyndsey Little  50:19 Exactly.   Leah Jones  50:22 Or the human parents who accidentally adopted a monster! There's a lot there!   Lyndsey Little  50:34 There's so much that to play with in this. There's so much to talk about.   Leah Jones  50:39 Do they have movie nights? Do you imagine that they watch monster movies? Or do they watch like fairy tales? And what did they do on their student movie nights? What do you think movies they watch?   Lyndsey Little  50:54 I haven't explored that a whole lot. But I will say, the very first chapter of my comic does have repeated references to a game that's very popular amongst the students. And it's

Shai Korman, co-host of the Friday Night Movie Podcast, is back and we are talking about music movie moments. Opening and closing credits, soundtracks, movies about bands and more. https://www.frinightmovie.com/  Follow Shai on Twitter and Instagram Show Notes Signal Awards for ExcellenceWhat Does It Eat Bandcamp Fridays for 2023The Wrong Cat DiedMonkeesThe REM song inspired by the MonkeesThe CommitmentsThat Thing You DoThat Thing You DoWhen Harry Met SallyTrainspottingHerEurovision Song Contest Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of SoulsPeacemaker Opening CreditsMy Best Friend's Wedding (opening credits)Sholay (RRR closing credits)Drew Carey Show - 5 o'clockBuckaroo Bonzai (closing credits)My Best Friend's Wedding (karaoke scene)My Best Friend's Wedding (Restaurant singalong)Reservoir Dogs (opening walk)Lost & Found lQUrljyCoimXdK9Z8cKu lQUrljyCoimXdK9Z8cKu ----more----     Shai  00:00 Hi, my name is Shai Korman. And my favorite thing is, music movies or movies with musical moments, especially really cool movie music and credits or beginning credit scenes.   Announcer  00:14 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:26 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things and get recommendations without using an algorithm. We're back with a third time guest, but also someone who has been a guest host three times. And that is Shai Korman from the Signal Award Winning Podcast, Friday Night Movie podcast. Shai Korman and his sisters recently won an award and be Conan O'Brien and the Chill Chums. That is so amazing. And I'm so proud of you. And you work so hard, just secure the votes. Shai, how are you doing?   Shai  01:14 Thank you, first of all, thank you. I feel like you are a kindred spirit to me in our commitment to indie podcast hood, in the punk rock nature of being a podcaster that is totally DIY. So while it was exciting, and amazing and fun to have that victory, I feel, like I was pushing for all of us who do the editing ourselves, and no one knows who we are by name, unless they already listened to the show. It's really special. It was really special to do with my sisters and after five years of doing the show really nice to be validated by her peers. But the validation I really need is, being invited back on Finding Favorites.   Leah Jones  02:02 It's a new year. And we got new favorites to talk about.   Shai  02:06 Oh, yeah. If there's one thing an ally, my wife will always, it's what do they call it? It's a compliment. It's not really backhanded compliment. But you will see you have so many interests. But it's not 100% a compliment. But there's a lot of favorite things, I have. On this show, I've done Cereal/Serial and just the movie Cats, as a guest.   Leah Jones  02:29 You recently went to see Cats again with the host or the same night as the host of the Wrong Cat died?   Shai  02:42 The Wrong Cat Died, hosted by Mike Abrams, another great podcast on the Broadway Podcast Network. Mike Abrams was going to do a bit with the Cat and he has this amazing thing coming out. It's very funny thing that he did with all the Cat members. And we our family bought tickets for the same night of one of the nights he was going, so we got to hang out. That was another great like Potter and family moment.   Leah Jones  03:08 That's fantastic. What else has been keeping you busy? You seem to be busy from the internet.   Shai  03:18 I like in my approach to what some people how they approach their iPhone battery. I'm going to run it down until it crashes. And then I'm going to have to plug it in and it's not even going to charge right away because it's got to do that thing where it just shows you the side and that's what I just going to continue operating that way. When we were doing the podcast released an album with Howie, my lifelong musical partner. The band is, “What Does It Eat” and the album is called Scraps and our first music video that we released from it is all of footage of people's dogs that they said because Scraps is about a dog. So that's it. There's been a lot cooking, how are you?   Leah Jones  04:07 I'm doing good. This is, I think, Episode 135 of the podcast. It's January of 2023, which feels completely insane.   Shai  04:19 I know, there's a bit of a time travel element to all this 133 episodes. It's a huge accomplishment. That's an awesome way to go.   Leah Jones  04:26 Thank you. And it was and I've written about this on Facebook that this is the week that's the anniversary of finishing Chemotherapy for breast cancer. So I've been, “Oh cowboy! I was so mean”.   Shai  04:41 That was the Cat. That's not the actual thing. You've been expressing Chemotherapy. That was great the way that, I've been feeling, “Oh, cowboy!” Someone who didn't know, it'd be like, “Oh, is that like a thing people say on their anniversary?”   Leah Jones  04:59 It is same people saying, the breast cancer community is, ”Oh, cowboy”. I would wear that shirt before I'd wear a big pink ribbon honestly. So it's just been weird, because I also finished Chemo last year. My last month Chemo is when you and Amy Guth were guest hosting for me. Because that's when I was just completely out of juice. That's when my battery was asked to do that. It was great. You're always invited back, if there's someone that you can get on to talk about a favorites. The people that you think you could get on an episode of Finding Favorites that you can't quite get on a Friday Night Movie. The episodes are always available.   Shai  05:42 That is how I used it to. I got my dream guests, that I wasn't sure if they would buy what Friday movie was selling, but they loved Finding Favorites.   Leah Jones  05:53 So the end of my Chemo hat was pretty. I went in on week 12, which was supposed to be the final week. And that's when they were like, you're actually too sick for your final Chemo. And there's the damage Chemotherapy is doing to you, currently is no longer worth the benefits, it'll give you in the future. Because my lungs at that point, like I could barely breathe. I was using a wheelchair in the hospital. Now I realized, I was very sick at the end of Chemo. Because I wasn't nauseous, and because I still had my appetite. It just didn't register to me as being very sick. They're like, we're going to give you today's infusion of your immunotherapy but surprise Chemo ended a week ago. For me the anniversary hard to remember because I was a little bit disappointed that they took the last chemo away from me. But also, I would have been so sick, if they had done the final Chemo.   Shai  07:03 A year later you look fabulous. I got to see you in person and give you a hug in person. This is our first time recording since we went to see without each other. It was also amazing. It's great to see you at the spring back in your step.   Leah Jones  07:17 It's great to have it back.   Shai  07:19 I wish you the [Foreign Language Unclear [07:25]] like a real Hebrew.   Leah Jones  07:42 Friday Night Movie podcast is all about pop culture but specifically movies. And we were kicking around what are other favorites you could talk about? And you decided movies and music.   Shai  07:58 Movies and music, it's one of my favorite topics. I've been just waiting a long time a spin off podcast about this topic alone. You know one podcast is a lot of work is you know you do too.   Leah Jones  08:11 Well because the second one barely happens.   Shai  08:14 That's what usually happens. I love music. I am a musician of sorts. But music is just been a happy place for me since I was 13 around. I was even younger but when I was in my Bar Mitzvah and I first started having agency over what I could pick when I got my first gift certificates. Discus and ANE music, those are both music stores in Montreal. Pre HMV taking over everything. I still remember some of the first CDs I got but having agency over my own music was just such an amazing experience, getting my CDs and needles in my room and I make mixes on tapes and I bring them in the car and then an argue with my dad over my music. I don't know, if kids today will have the same thing because they don't get to own music the same way. They don't have a music collection, they have Spotify. I buy my kid CDs they don't you know that listen to them a little bit.   Leah Jones  09:16 Henry, my sister's oldest was up recently and we were driving. We were coming to my house from the United Center. Ronnie was driving in his Tesla to show off his Tesla. And Henry, we were like what music do you want us to look like what the soundtrack to this drive on the highway in this fancy car be. Henry logged into his Spotify in Ronnie's car to then be able to DJ from his iPhone to the car.   Shai  09:52 There was no eight-chord going from an iPod into that thing that looked like a cassette tape. How that even was, who figured that technology out? What an amazing piece of technology. We'll get a wire and something that looks like a tape. It will just jam it in that tape.   Leah Jones  10:09 A couple weeks ago, I had Michael Shelley on a DJ on WFMU  and a musician, who I have a CD of his that I've been listening to since 1999.   Shai  10:23 A mix or his own music?    Leah Jones  10:27 His own music. He opened for They Might Be Giants, on my college campus in 1999. I bought his CD. They Might Be Giants were really rude to the student volunteers and so I've written, They Might Be Giants off.   Shai  10:38 Wow, that's surprises me because they seem like such nice dudes.   Leah Jones  10:43 The backstage crew are their roadies ate the food. And then there wasn't food for They Might Be Giants and they yelled at the student volunteers. But it was like the behavior of the people on the road with them. It wasn't college students didn't eat the food. It was like their crew ate the food. Which means their writer didn't have enough food information on it. Not enough peeled M&Ms. I don't remember who they yelled at. I don't remember. I don't even know, who was true. I don't, in fact check it. I have just written off, They Might Be Giants, since 1999, for one rumor I heard.  Michael Shelley, I have listened to his CD ever since. And he sent me a care package of six CDs this week, which I added to my car CD collection, which is four CDs from you, mix CDs from you and now, six Michael Shelly contributions.   Shai  11:48 That's great. I love car CDs, so great. There's something so secure about putting a CD in and it beginning like it's contained. You don't have to worry about internet. It's just there beginning to end. And in new cars, no CD players period. They don't exist. There is no CD players in the cars at all.   Leah Jones  12:17 I don't like that. That's super weird.   Shai  12:21 Total strange. You buy a CD, you can't pop it into your car.   Leah Jones  12:26 You can only put it in your DVD player.   Shai  12:29 Does your car have a DVD player?   Leah Jones  12:32 No. But in your house, your DVD player will play CDs.   Shai  12:35 That's a good point. Well, I still have CD players. I still have. I'll show you this. You've seen my office, That's just the stuff that's allowed on display. There’re boxes of unholy amount of CDs, and the floor is covered in them. I actually have admitted that I have to dial it back and I am. I still buy my music. In fact, people should buy if you have the opportunity to buy music from someone, buy on Bandcamp because the money actually goes to the artists. The people whose music you need to buy most are the ones you should be buying for Bandcamp. Particularly, if there's a Bandcamp Friday, which are these days where Bandcamp gives a bonus, they give all of the money, they don't take a cut or they don't take a cut at all. I'm committing to buying some more stuff digitally, but I still buy my music, even though I pay for Spotify to. I love owning. And that dates back to that Bar mitzvah. I love owning right and making the choice that I'm investing in this record.   Leah Jones  13:43 For you, it's your Bar mitzvah, that's when you start getting agency over music. And when does the music in movies? Or how do you define? How are you defining the topic that we're going to dive into?   Shai  14:00 There’s three key categories. Of course there's a lot of categories we talked about. There’re three categories we're going to talk about. We're not going to touch concert films, documentaries. So no The Last Waltz today, none under the rock [Not understandable [00:14:14]] I could do those forever, too. But so we're going to talk about music is part of narrative on screen is really where we're going to dig into. And there's my favorite music movies or music and there's going to be some fudging of that. Because of where this all starts. There's some music moments in movies because I think about that all the time, where there's a moment where a song is used and just moved and it captures everything or it plays with the meaning of the song or it's some kind of absurd use, or it's just the perfect use or tension. And then one of my favorite subjects is the use of music in Credits – Opening or closing credits. I have a few weird ones to talk about. But let it start on screen for me, with the Monkees.   Leah Jones  15:11 Yes.   Shai  15:12 Do you remember, Naked Night? Was it Naked Night or whenever it was when they were rerunning the Monkees in the 80s on either.   Leah Jones  15:20 I was obsessed. I was obsessed with Davy Jones. I was like, “Oh, I'm way more than monkees over the Beatles. I thought the Monkees, were so much better than the Beatles.   Shai  15:31 So my favorite band of all time, REM. Michael Stipe has said that before. I don't know, if they were serious about it or not. But the Monkees was definitely a huge influence on REM. They used to cover stepping stone and all that. So I think there are a lot of people who liked the [Not clearly audible [00:15:30]]   Leah Jones  15:50 It  was a [Not clearly audible [00:15:55]] sitcom kind of Beach Blanket Bingo. [Not clearly audible [00:15:59]] sitcom . But there was always at least one and then they're like playing at the cafe. We watched the Monkees TV show all the time.   Shai  16:13 If there was a time like I wanted to be a rock star. At first, my first obsession with the Monkees was Peter Dark. I thought Peter Dark was the coolest guy. And then I would go on to truly settle into loving Micky Dolenz is my favorite Monkees. I remember being at the beach one summer at Cape May with my friend Aaron Davis, lifelong friend, and we listened to the theme song from the monkeys a lot. I just loved. I just love this idea of and I wanted to be a rock star because of them. So this would start there. And that mix of humor and rock stardom and not taking yourself too seriously. Rock stardom has always been a part of my love of music. And so that's why it begins with Monkees.   Leah Jones  17:03 And even though the Monkees are the show was zany and, in my head, I put them in a category with weird owl. Accomplish music like they were good musicians, which is something I can appreciate as an adult that I don't think I appreciated it as a kid. Because it seemed like they were a parody of a band.   Shai  17:24 They didn't write most of their songs that were famous. Diamond and other people because they were a corporate credit creation.   Leah Jones  17:34 Yeah, but isn't that okay, like, [Not clearly audible [00:17:35]]   Shai  17:38 No, it's totally fine. And Mike Nesmith was already a very accomplished musician. And then they go on to be. I've seen them play, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz, I saw those two. They were great. And they learned. They actually might have learned a lot of their instruments as part of the process, but that's fine. They were playing characters, they are still saying. No one's asking, Ariana Grande amazing singer, if she's playing keyboard on the album. She writes the songs. But so I think they're songwriters working with her.   Leah Jones  18:14 I think they're songwriters. And I think that's fine.   Shai  18:17 Totally. Elvis didn't write his songs, regardless of what the credits say.   Leah Jones  18:24 All right. So it starts with a Monkees. You're like, I want to be a rock star. Do you envision yourself as a rock star with a TV show and a band? Is that what rock star means to you at the time?   Shai  18:36 I don't know, if I even made that kind of connection. I just love the idea of playing music on stage. And I still I mean, I'm not a rockstar, but playing music on stage for a crowd is the best.   Leah Jones  18:46 Agreed. I feel the same way about comedy about doing even though I'm a failed standup comic. Like I love being on a stage. Let me emcee an event. Let me get a giggle. Let me get an applause. It's getting that energy is really fun.   Shai  19:08 Tension working for it. All of that. Although I think standup comedy is, thousand times harder than music. A thousand times more precise, complex.   Leah Jones  19:18 It's more like jazz than other types of music. I'm deeply involved in the Doughboy fan community.   Shai  19:34 Is that your Doughboy shirt?   Leah Jones  19:35 It is. It's the one, I wear to your house. It's my avatar on this recording website, I'm using. It's my favorite sweatshirt right now. At the beginning of every mainline episode, there's a drop, which is a radio drop. It's a fan edit. A 30 seconds fan edit joke at the beginning. I've submitted a few, one has been used so far. And last night, someone on the Dough’s courts said, “Can anyone help me? I need some samples of someone singing? Can anyone help?” And I was like, I can try. So he was like, “Can you sing this word?” This one word, and all of the notes of a scale, like, Do Re Mi Fa Sol. And so I did it. But I did the non-parody version, and did a really good job. And I sent it to him. And I was like, Oh, my God, I didn't even say the word you wanted. So then I do it again. I sent him the correct word. And he's like, ”This is amazing. Do you think you could record it and be like, a little shoutty here? And do a chromatic scale?” I like the white and the black keys.   Shai  21:07 I'm a musician, but I got it chromatic. I'm a drummer. And we don't have scales of anything.   Leah Jones  21:12 Every note of the octave. And I sent him a 10 minute audio clip of me, finding YouTube videos, trying to sing along with them, failing miserably. And I would sing like four notes. And I'd be like, I'm singing the same note. I'm like, the note is not changing. It's hilarious. And it did make me think maybe going and getting voice lessons as an adult, would be a fun thing to do.   Shai  21:42 That's fun, I can't hear, I can't make pitch and might hear it and make my voice land in the same place. Not a natural ability of mine. You could do that already with this video that you made, that's incredible.   Leah Jones  21:56 Well it turns out, I can do a C major scale only. When I tried to add in the flats and sharps in the middle, it was …   Shai  22:07 There are many devices that can help with that. That's amazing.   Leah Jones  22:14 So it starts with the Monkees. They'll start essentially the Monkees.   Shai  22:17 Start with the Monkees and then as time goes on the as I talk about music movies, movies, where music is central to the story where musicians are often central to the story. I have a few other moments. One of them is well, there's Spinal Tap, which was a huge part of growing up as a musician. Howie and I, we'd watch Spinal Tap over and over and over again, as everyone did growing up, and we did it. There's no musician that can't speak in up to 11. It's just part of the… and then Mr. Holland's Opus was a really big one for me,   Leah Jones  23:01 That's about a high school orchestra director, finishing his opus, finishing his grand work and having the orchestra play it.   Shai  23:11 Yeah. Although you go back, there's a little bit of creepy. There's one creepy plotline in that movie. It's about him struggling, he has a deaf son. So it also it is part of what he's dealing with is the unrealized dreams of making the symphony and not settling, but appreciating and being grateful for the symphony of his life. I didn't appreciate that message as much. I just appreciated this journey that he went on in. The music of the end made me cry and a few times, I've cried in the movie. But when you think about life, you think about what you set out to do, and appreciating it and liking your life, at the same level like not having regrets. I think that's one of the things about that character that he has to learn to really embrace and love his life and, in some ways, he spends a lot of time not being happy because he doesn't. So anyways, Mr. Holland's Opus, the music in it and his love for music is so beautiful. But then, where a spinal tap was a funny band and Monkees are a parody band. These are two parody bands. The first band movie that just blew my mind, was The Commitments. Have you ever seen the Commitments?   Leah Jones  24:40 Just a viral fact about that movie about like whoever wrote the leads, the main song?   Shai  24:48 Well, The Commitments, a lot of the songs were on it.   Leah Jones  24:51 This is Tom Hanks in it?   Shai  24:52 No, that's the thing, you do. Unfortunately, Adam Schlesinger, who wrote, That Thing You Do, died of COVID, was terrible heartbreaking. A Tom Hanks also covered up but Adam Schlesinger, what an incredible musician! The Commitments is about a working-class band in Ireland that decides to be a soul band and play the music of Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. It's about the manager putting together the band. It's about the very quick rise and fall. It's a movie a lot like the Full Monty. These like British or in this case Irish for Americans working class.   Leah Jones  25:37 Who was that Prime Minister, the woman …   Shai  25:43 Margaret Thatcher. It's a delightful, gritty movie where there are scenes of just them playing the songs of these folks from Ireland. I think it captures something, how people overseas embrace and love American soul music.   Shai  26:09 It has some really funny, quirky internal band politics. There's a hilarious bit about the drummer in it, where the drummer essentially gets switched out halfway through. It's just a great band movie. And it's funny and it's got heart and that's great. The idea of band movies really peaks. There's a lot of other bands related movies around. Star with Marky Mark and things like that. I think band movies really peak with That Thing You Do. 1997, Tom Hanks directed it. It was a movie; he'd always wanted to make. Tom Everett Scott plays the Tom Hanks avatar in that movie. Guy Patterson, the drummer which again, as a drummer, I love that the drummer is the main character. Tom Hanks is in it as Mr. White who's the businessman. He's not bad or good, but he's the music business guy.   Leah Jones  27:10 Wasn't he also the music business guy in Elvis?     Shai  27:14 He was Colonel Tom Parker. Colonel Tom Parker is a malevolent character. Mr. White is more just, he is what he says he is. If you don't do what he says that those are the breaks. One wonders come and go. He's very practical. But he also does a great thing with them. And he has respect for guy. And he has a sense of anyway, so but yes, that is interesting to Tom Hanks for that.   Leah Jones  27:47 Two pieces of trivia that were going around on Twitter recently for this.  Were that Tom Hanks wrote the script while doing the promo tour for Forest Gump. Because he was so bored with the same interview questions being asked. So he just wrote a screenplay. And then Adams Schlesinger, who was the bass player for Fountains of Wayne, wrote the title song in response to a contest being held by the studio, because they were trying to find a song that could be, you had to have a believable pop song.   Shai  28:26 It had to play. I remember the interviews about that movie. You have to have a song that you are willing to hear and want to hear over and over and over again, as long as it. Adam Schlesinger, the things he's given us, so the Musical Fountain of Wayne, the music of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, he’s the key author. He co authored lots of different pieces of it with Rachel bloom and other folks, but he's the guy behind that. And then a bunch of other things. Josie the Pussycats, there's a lot of movies where if you go and you look at and see his death, such a terrible loss.   Shai  29:07 So that thing you do, I think that picks band movies. And then the next segment into my other theme, which is music Movie Moments. I love this question. One of my favorite questions to ask people is what's your favorite music movie moment? I asked that question to you. But mine will always be the moment where they first hear their song on the radio, and they are running through the streets. They gather at the appliance store. They’re dancing around and Steve's on grabs the cardboard cutout of the woman and he's dancing with there and it just moves into this fervor of optimism and possibility of rock and roll, breaking against what the hard working parents were trying to do. Everything about it is so great. For me also, then there's a different other than music movies about music, then there are moments that are just magical. And that to me is the number one.     Leah Jones  30:12 I loved Harry Connick Jr. before I saw, When Harry Met Sally. I didn't see, When Harry Met Sally, until my freshman year of college. Then it rocketed up to being one of my number one favorite movies. Recently, I realized I am 15 years older than they are at the oldest in the movie. Isn't that weird?     Shai  30:38 Is Billy Crystal ever believable? Is he supposed to be in his 20s in that movie? Was Billy Crystal ever really 20, other than on soap dish?   Leah Jones  30:49 They're basically from college graduation. So it's like 21-22, over the course it to 32.   Shai  30:55 I don't know, Billy Crystal will never be in his 20s as far as I'm concerned. He's always in his 40s.   Leah Jones  31:00 But that Harry Connick soundtrack to When Harry Met Sally is phenomenal. I love the movie and the music in that. But that's not necessarily a moment.   Shai  31:12 Well, the whole thing can be a moment.   Leah Jones  31:14 The whole thing. But then it also makes me think of, did you see the movie, Her?   Shai  31:24 I did not. That's the Scarlett Johansson is the voice of the AI that becomes friends with Joaquin Phoenix. That's not, I've not ever. I'm sure it's great. But I have not ever like wanted to see it.   Leah Jones  31:39 It's really the sound design is really interesting. I don't think there's a song in the movie. There's not a soundtrack because he's constantly wearing ear pods with noise cancellation. So the whole movie is very quiet. And it is the opposite. And when I left, I don't think, I liked it. I didn't like, how there was like nothing. The sound design was so crisp, and noise cancelled until the last minute when she leaves them. Sorry, spoiler alert for if I continue.   Shai  32:17 I really don't want to see it. The robot leaves him?   Leah Jones  32:20 The robot voice, the AI. His Alexa leaves him, falls in love with someone else. Then he takes the air pods out and you hear like birds and cars driving by and it's the first time in the whole movie you've heard.   Shai  32:35 That's a cool move. That's brilliant filmmaking. I love what you're describing. I just think the whole thing will give me anxiety.   Leah Jones  32:42 Don't watch the movie.   Shai  32:45 But I love that that's a great choice for you that the absence and the tension from that is awesome.   Leah Jones  32:49 I noticed it; I was like, what is wrong with this movie? I was like, ”oh, there is no soundtrack”. There is no music it is just zipped. I'm not interested in that. I want a needle drop, manipulate me with your music, Hollywood.   Shai  33:10 I would love to share some of my favorite music moments in movies. Some of them are like recent ones. They're not because like music moments and movies go like way back. There’re obvious ones like Rocky, Steps. Well, pretty much anytime the score in Indiana Jones or Star Wars kicks in. Those things are the classic among classics. I have some weird ones to pick here. This one is going to really skeeve out my sisters. This movie that we just saw called X, is horror comedy but it stars Brittany Snow,  Mia Goth, who has gotten a lot of praise for her two roles in this film. I'm not going to get into the details of it but I would say in a sense, its body horror. But anyways, there is a scene in the film, where Brittany Snow who was in pitch perfect and all this and she plays very against that type, in this usually plays a pretty buttoned up character. And in this she plays a porn star. And there's a scene where she is singing Landslide, Stephanie Nick’s Landslide. And it's juxtaposed with the scene of this older woman because what's really interesting about X is the quote unquote body horror is really just aging. It's just the idea of people facing the idea of sexualizing old people. And that's part of what makes this. It's also like a gruesome horror movie. But what I found really fascinating about X is that element of it. It’s like, ”are you scared of this?” Because it's a horror movie, “Are you scared of this?” Old people make you feel gross. That's like a really interesting part of this movie. And you have Brittany Snow, who is very classically beautiful person, playing this very adult person singing Landslide. And it's juxtaposed with the old lady. I think like, putting makeup on herself into a truly disturbing way. And to me, it captures the theme and what this movie is trying to say to perfection with a song that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. But I bet, it's never been displayed this way before.   Leah Jones  35:51 And it's so interesting.   Shai  35:53 And so for me. Recently, that's probably my favorite music moment, and it is truly unsettling.   Leah Jones  36:03 And I will not be watching that.   Shai  36:05 That is not. I can't recommend that movie. It's part of a trilogy with two parts of come out at once a prequel and a sequel. And I really, I'm fascinated by what they've done here and I really want to see more. Then in, Eurovision: the story of fire saga, which is Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams, it's about the Eurovision contest. I love it. Also it has a cameo of Netta Barzilai, who is the Israeli one. The final song, Husavik (My Hometown), which is sung by Will Ferrell and the vocals are actually done by a woman named by Marianne, who I think is a Scandinavian singer. Rachel McAdams sells it. I thought Rachel McAdams is so moving. I get close to tears every time, I see it. I make my kids did not like this movie, and I make them listen to this song all the time.   Leah Jones  37:01 I haven't watched it yet. It was a COVID release. Right?   Shai  37:06 It was a COVID release. And it was a perfect COVID movie. But I love it. Love it. Love it.   Leah Jones  37:10 And they filmed a bunch of it, at the real Eurovision. Right?   Shai  37:13 Did they? I don't know, how they made it.   Leah Jones  37:15 But I guess, I thought they were. For some reason, I thought they were on site and filmed it there.   Shai  37:23 There's a 90-minute movie. It's like a two-hour movie. There's a 90-minute movie in there, I think would also be great. It takes some really strange asides. Particularly in playing around with Nordic cultures, relationship with things likes elves and things, that sort of superstitions. It's just so funny. It could have been in like an open and shut music competition movie. Just an edge of weird that is so awesome. I love it. I love that movie. So Husavik though, is like, so here you are in the silly movie. But I might as well up every time, when you get to the end of that movie. And then I just watched this movie, last night, as part of the Sundance. You can order online some of the movies from Sundance, which I did not know until this year.   Leah Jones  38:16 It's new. It’s not even that you've been missing out. It's a COVID. They did it. I talked to Liz Nord recently.   Shai  38:26 Who I refer to always as the great Liz Nord and I just quoted her on our last episode of the podcast.   Leah Jones  38:34 During COVID, they think, Sundance 2020 would have been the last normal events because in South, it got canceled. So then they made a push online and now they have much more online access and they have captioning access. It is a much more accessible festival now.   Shai  39:01 Sundance, this platform was once I was watching the movie, once it started, they have a bunch of preamble things that you watch. It was lovely. By the way, doing this, the film festivals, I don't know what the economics of it are, but these are very expensive things to attend. Like these big ones. Sundance, the South by Southwest, these are not normal people. What a great way to get your movie out and have people also participate in the festival. So I watched this film because an actor that I follow Rivkah Reyes. They put on their Instagram, a reference to this film they had been called, Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls. Now already with a name like that and because I know Rivkah, seems to have a great dark sense of humor. And that Rivkah was in it. So I'm excited to see it. The title though, speaks to me, I'm like, this sounds like Horror comedy. Right away. I love her comedy. I watched this film last night. I can describe it as Napoleon Dynamite meets Rocky Horror Picture Show. That's how I describe it. Very funny, very odd, but that sweetness to it. The heart and sweetness to it. There is a couple of musical moments. But there is a brief musical quote of "Somewhere Out There" from American Tail. A straight up performance of, I would do anything for love, but I won't do that for me love. In this film about five people going to find their devil worshipping, mastering and help with a ritual after winning an online contest. And it also was Charlie in the Chocolate Factory vibes because there's like five people are going to be. Anyways, I thought this movie was so for me. But I didn't know anything about it, but the way it used music and the way it used the meatloaf thing because they foreshadow a little bit and then livered it. It just blew me away. Then I can't talk about music and movies without talking about RRR.   Leah Jones  41:30 Okay, good. I was like, are we gonna talk about Natu, natu or not?   Shai  41:33 Well, natu, natu, first of all, I have this new attitude towards Oscars, which is that everyone who is nominated, deserves to be nominated. It's hard to make a movie. These are very talented people. Like yes, there are snubs. It really shouldn't take away from the nominees. But I do have lists of people that I think are on equal footing and could win and RRR to me, should have been nominated as Best Picture. It's on Netflix renewing, should have been Nominated Best Picture. It absolutely should win for Natu Natu the song, it

Author Chelsea Stickle picked up embroidery as a hobby to channel her rage and has been poking fabric with sharp needles ever since. You can order her newest chapbook Everything's Changing from Thirty West Publishing House - it is a collection of surreal micro-fiction and flash fiction rooted in the chaos of the last few years. Follow Chelsea online ChelseaStickle.comTwitter @Chelsea_StickleEverything's ChangingAITA for falling apart at a dinner partyShow notesSashikoEtsy @GrandmaBeWildinCrochet a tiny fox Cross stitch fabricMorton Salt Spill in Chicago (2014)Blackwork EmbroideryADHD symptoms in womenBias about ADHD leaves many women with a late diagnosis

Michael Shelly, a music maker and WFMU DJ, joined Leah to talk about a few of his favorite things including the music of NRBQ (New Rhythm and Blues Quartet), the classic comic strip Nancy, and eating good food on the road. We also chat about WFMU and how Michael met They Might Be Giants, which lead him to one show at Millikin in the 90s. Keep up with Michael Twitter @wfmumichael WFMU ArchivesWFMU Juniper - She Steals Candy Show Notes Chirp Radio Chicago NRBQNRBQ Wikipedia Nick LoweNancyErnie BushmillerTwitter accout of classic NancyRoadFood.comRoadfood the bookLou Mitchell’s in Chicago Galatoires in NOLAZahav in PhillyGallaghers New York Steak HouseThe Flat Five (Chicago musicians)

Author, podcaster and journalist Dan Kois joined Leah to kick-off the new year to explore the classic children's book Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton. Dan's first novel Vintage Contemporaries is available on January 17, 2023 and can be pre-ordered now from Bookshop.org. Follow Dan on Twitter and check his website for updates about the launch events for Vintage Contemporaries. Parents, you need Narcan Show Notes SandraBoynton.comSandra Boynton's official YouTubeMars Cheese CastleBikeAidTina BrownChucks from Northshore Care Aden and Anais muslin swaddles Llama Llama Red Pajama by ANNA DEWDNEY Bonus Best of 2022 Patty MorrisseyDay BreakerThe Lost Connections

Friends and guests of Finding Favorites are back to tell us about their favorite things from 2022. This is a clip show with SO many great recomendations, most of which are in the show notes below. This includes clips from How Did This Get Made (Leah asking a question at the Stone Cold live show in LA) and Doughboys (Burger King 6 with Jon Gabrus and Adam Pally) Leah Intro 1 - best movies of 2022 Steroid SaturdaysEverything, Everywhere, All at onceRRR4DX theaters   Liz Nord Pennyworth on HBO Max  Steve Higgins Everything, Everywhere, All at OnceStrange Loop (Broadway)Eight Billion Genies (Comic book)   Mark Smithivas Only Murders in the Building, HuluWakanda Forever Leah intro 2: The return of Live Shows with Friends Boston for a cancelled Doughboys show How Did This Get Made in LA with Esther and SusanReturn to Boston for Doughboys and introducing Ronnie to the Doughboys in MilwaukeeHow Did This Get Made in  Chicago with Jocelyn over halloweenLetterKenny live with Amy Guth and Kevin AlvesHadestown with Rob Going to Weird Al with Shai Korman’s family in DC Esther Kustanowitz, The Bagel Report The Ringer-Verse Podcast  Shai Korman, The Friday Night Movie Podcast Weird Al at the Kennedy Center Pam Rose Stranger Things, HuluSeverance, Apple TV Tehran, Apple TVPachinko, Apple TVKelsea BalleriniTate McRaeMimi WebbTaylor SwiftLove after Lockup, TV Rob Schulte Dark Web Comic BooksHis dog ElvisBug Con (Bugmane event) Doin’ it with Mike Sacks (Podcast) How Did This Get Made clip: Leah is the person in the audience. Episode is Stone Cold, recorded live at Largo Leah Intro 3: Cancer Stuff Finishing chemo, radiation and immunotherapy Celebrated with my trip to Boston after chemo and a trip to LA after RadiationGot a sparkly caftan for my radiation gongThree trips to the Mayo clinic Returning to Israel COVID Bivalent Booster, Flu Shot and the Pneumonia vaccine Cameron MacKenzie Premier League Football Jason Mathes Inside Job on NetflixGravity Falls on Disney Caroline Berkowitz UnoGo FishTaco Cat Go Cheese PizzaScrabble SlamSETSleeping QueensSkipBoMonopoly DealYahtzeeYam SlamTroublePhase 10 Monica Reida Pentament (Xbox, PC video game)Crimes of the Future (movie) Leah Intro 4 101 Places to Party Before You DieJackass ForeverMike Nichols, A Life by Mark HarrisArt by Phineas Jones aka Octophant Lyndsey Little DoughscordStories to Dismember PodcastLove on NetflixDoughboys Podcast Doughboys clip from Burger King 6 with guests Adam Pally and Jon Gabrus. Leah created the drop that Mitch plays towards the end of the clip. Robert Persinger BostonMilwaukeeGreat people Keidra Chaney Southside on HBO MaxBunny instagramRed Door Shelter Jocelyn Geboy Candy Chat Chicago101 Places to Party Before You DieAvett BrothersThe DiffsFirepitsHow Did This Get MadeJo Wash your hands, wear your mask, get your booster and keep enjoying your favorite things.   Transcript 1:12:55   Zoom Bomb  00:00 Hello, hello. Hello. Hi. What's good? [Switches to German]   Announcer  00:08 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:20 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. It's that time of year, which is the last day of the year. And that means the Call-In Show, the best of 2022 is back. This is the second time I'm doing it. So that might mean it's a tradition. Check back in 12 months and see if that's true. Right now I've got clips about 10 clips. As I'm recording this intro, I might have more by the time I finish recording. But I'm going to break my favorite things of the year into three chunks. It'll be me a few clips me a few clips.   Without further ado, I wanted to kick off my best of ‘22 with my top movie theater experiences of the year. The year started, and I was finishing chemo, which meant that Ronnie and I were still celebrating what we lovingly called Steroid Saturdays, which is when I would get chemo, I would get steroids along with my chemo infusion. And then I would be wired on steroids. And the amount of time that I had energy from the steroids got smaller and smaller over the course of the three months of chemo. But what we did was every almost every Saturday morning, after I would get chemo on Fridays, we would go and see a matinee. And so I saw a lot of movies in the theater over the winter of 21 and 22. But my top three movie going experiences were not on Steroid Saturdays. it was seeing Everything Everywhere, All At Once, in a packed movie theater. This was the first time I had been in a packed movie theater part of going of the Steroid Saturdays, The MO was we went to matinees of things that have been open for more than one or two weeks. So generally, we went to private, we created private screenings for ourselves.   Everything, Everywhere, All At Once was at the theater on Diversey and Surf. So it was an it was a sold out theater. It was jam packed. There were not assigned seats. But seeing that movie, in a theater full of people was outstanding. It was such a great experience. And only topped by at the end of the year going to a sold out show at the music box. In a theater that holds 700 people to see the Indian movie, RRR. RRR was a movie I'd heard about on podcasts, where people were just like, don't know anything, go in blind and watch it. I watched it at home alone really enjoyed it. But getting to go with three of my friends to see our RRR in a movie theater where people cheered, booed, clapped along, plus the director was there in from Tollywood to answer questions. And that was very, very cool. Seeing an Indian movie in a packed house of people cheering for these historical revolutionaries set into magical realism. It was amazing.  And finally, I have to give a shout out to 4DX. Like I said, on previous episodes, I saw Wakanda Forever 3D 4DX. It’s the fourth dimension. The chair is essentially a roller coaster through the whole movie. I'm still talking about it. It's been a month later. Don't see a movie in 40x If you want to experience emotions, other than the hysteria that comes from being on a roller coaster. So you're going to hear some people talk about Wakanda Forever because it was an outstanding movie. I did not connect to it emotionally because my chair kept making me laugh. That's all I can say.   Coming up in this first block. We've got a filmmaker Liz Nord is back. You just met her last week. So Liz Nord is back. Steve Higgins who has been on the podcast twice is back with his favorite movie Broadway show and comic book of the year. And then Mark Smithivas, who I've known on since the earliest days on Twitter and who has been the person… Probably the person I know into audio the longest of anyone I've known. He joins with a TV show and a movie recommendation. Without further ado, here are Liz, Steve and Mark   Liz Nord  05:32 Hi, I'm Liz Nord. I was just on the last episode of the show talking about my love for documentary films. But I watch a lot of other stuff too. And my guilty pleasures are the comic book sci fi supernatural TV series, usually aimed at young adults. My favorite discovery from this past year is probably Pennyworth. on HBO max is the origin story of Batman's infamous butler Alfred Pennyworth. In 1960s, London, we also meet a young Thomas Wayne and Martha Kane, the future parents of Bruce Wayne, aka Batman. No one has any superpowers in this show. They're just regular people in extraordinary circumstances. And that is part of what makes it so fun. It's funny and stylish and cheeky. And over the top. There are three seasons so far. The first one is probably the best because it doesn't try to be anything it's not. The show is a total romp. But note to parents, it's definitely not kid friendly. Enjoy and Happy New Year. Hello,   Steve  06:29 I am Steve Higgins. And I am here to talk about three of my favorite things of 2022. First, I want to talk about my favorite movie of 2022. I actually got to the theater quite a bit more this year than in the past two years, obviously, because of the pandemic. And one of the movies that I saw in theaters this year that absolutely blew me away. It made it shot to the top of my list. The second that I saw it, and it never left even though it was pretty early in the year and never left that top spot. And that is Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. I remember first seeing trailers for the movie and hearing the premise that it was kind of about alternate realities. And just how visually stunning the trailers were. And I was pretty interested. But then I heard that the directors of the film The Daniels, Daniel Kwan, Daniel shiner. Were also the directors of Swiss Army Man, that was a movie that I saw in theaters back in 2016. And I absolutely loved I thought it was brilliant. And so to find out that they had done this film as well, I was sold, I absolutely had to see it as soon as I could. You know, the the premise of it is very sci fi but I like to tell people it's sci fi like Slaughterhouse Five is sci fi it's it uses a science fiction premise, in order to explor human themes. You know, it's really about our hopes and dreams and desires in life and who we want to be who we wish we had been the regrets of choices that we made. The great what if what if I had done my life differently? So it's very much the road not taken. I think the premise then getting at the heart of it is yes. To story about, you can jump from one alternate reality to another and you can grab the skills of a different version of yourself from a different reality. But really, it's about people and connections and relationships. And how would you feel if somebody came to you and said to you, alternate realities are real there's a multiverse and in all the different versions of you that exist out there, you the version you are right here right now are the worst. You're the worst version of yourself that you could be and how, how hard that is. It's a movie that has a lot of heart. A lot of soul searching, the acting is fantastic. Michel Yao, Ki Quan, and Stephanie Chu is kind of the core family of Evelyn Waymond and joy are amazing. You feel like their family dynamic is real. And it's it's a really powerful film because of that dynamic. It's It's hilarious. It's got great action sequences. It's visually stunning. It's high concept. And it's, it's moving. It's incredibly, incredibly moving. And I think this film is not only my number one movie of this year, but might be, you know, the best movie that I've seen in In the past five or 10 years, probably barn on an amazing, amazing film.   Steve  10:07  I also got to go to the theater a little bit this year to see some live theater, took a trip to New York in June and saw some Broadway plays. And so my favorite experience with the live theater this year was seeing A Strange Loop. I saw it about three days before it ended up winning the Tony for Best Musical. And it was an amazing experience. I it's it's been a, it's been a work that I have had trouble recommending to people, because I feel like the soundtrack doesn't quite do it justice. The songs are good and powerful but it doesn't have the same gravitas to it as when you see it live. And you can see the the actors performing on stage and you can see the sets and you can you can be there. Unfortunately, it is wrapping up its Broadway production on January 15. I'm very hopeful that that means they're going to move it to another city. I'm really hopeful that that city in Chicago because I will absolutely drive up to Chicago to see it again. It was it was an amazing work. Now it being wards and all kind of portrait of a black gay man in New York City.   Steve  11:39 In the modern era, it is not a film. Sorry, it's not a play, that I would recommend to anybody. We actually had a friend of ours, who was going to New York with their teenage son and asked him he really wants to see this. Should we let him go see it? No, you absolutely shouldn't. It is. It is not appropriate for young audiences. There's a lot of very frank discussion of the realities of relationships and gay sex and things that you probably don't want your teenage son to hear.   Steve  12:30 But if that sounds like a thing that you might be interested in, you know, seeing a creative person floundering, not feeling like they're able to live up to their full potential, and not just creatively but also romantically also just in life. And see them kind of come to terms with that seems to be a bit of a theme between my film in my and my play that I chose, but I would recommend at least giving the soundtrack a listen. And if you think after you hear the soundtrack that interested me, then if you can get a chance to see it live, it will take it to the next level.   And then finally, I want to recommend a comic I'm a big comic fan comic reader read a lot of great comics this year, but one that really blew me away the most is a eight issue miniseries from Image Comics, written by Charles Soule, illustrated by Ryan Brown, it's called 8 Billion Genies. And the basic premise of this comic is that, at the same instant, every single person in the world is given a genie. And given one wish that they can make and how those wishes change the world for the worse unfolds over the course of the eight issues. The first issue is the first eight seconds. Second issue is the first eight minutes third issue is the first eight hours, and so on. Up to now only the first six issues have come out. Issue seven and eight are coming in January and February respectively. And that's the first eight decades and the first eight centuries to show how this world gets changed by the introduction of everyone suddenly getting one wish that they could make anything come true. How would that play out and people being people? It doesn't play out well, but the basic premise is the the our main characters are in a bar. And there's only a handful of people in the bar and the second that this happens, the bartender slash owner of this bar makes his wish that all of the effects of everybody else's will issues in the world will not affect what happens in the walls of this bar. So this bar becomes a safe haven, from all the craziness and chaos that goes on outside. It's beautifully drawn by Ryan Brown, who makes the characters seem real. And the fantasy elements are jarring, obviously, with the reality of the world, but in a way that it's cohesive, if that makes any kind of sense. It's a cohesive narrative, I should say. And again, the high concept from Charles Sol is just just brilliant. It's an absolutely great comic. If you only read one comic, check out 8 billion genies by Image Comics. So those are my three favorite things of 2022. The film, everything everywhere all at once. The play musical, a strange loop, and the comic, 8 billion genies. Hope you check them out. Hope you dig them. Thanks for having me back on the show.   Mark Smithivas  16:09 Hi, Leah, this is Mike Smithivas. I hope you're having a great end to the Year. Happy New Year. And my favorites that I wanted to let you know about is the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building. I really loved this series with Steve Martin. It just had a level of sharpness to its writing, and the cast was top notch. And I like to say that it's a great achievement when you have a series that tries to parody something, in this case, True Crime podcasts while managing to also be what it's parodying. Meaning that I was kept guessing until the very end of who the murderer was. So I would highly recommend binge watching it. There's two seasons to it. Both seasons are really good in my opinion. And if you love that kind of New York, character actor, type of vibe, there are there are many veteran actors who are in that series. What else I just watched with my family, Black Panther to Wakanda Forever. And I was truly surprised that a movie could a Marvel movie could be something more than just your standard superhero movie. I know it had big shoes to fill, trying to be the sequel to an amazing breakthrough movie like Black Panther. But in this one, I think they managed to be poetic, while also celebrating or memorializing the death of Chadwick Boseman. And also highlighting a lot of strong black female characters. So I think it set the bar pretty high for what a Marvel superhero movie could be. And I'm hoping to see more of that in the in the future with other Marvel franchises. I think I'll stop there. I hope you have a happy new year again, and we'll catch up to you and 2023.   Leah Jones  19:00 All right, thank you, Liz, Steve, and Mark for your recommendations. All right, so in 2022, we were vaccinated. And for me, that meant the return of live shows and seeing live shows with friends. Again, a lot of my year was overshadowed by my treatment for breast cancer and a long slow recovery. That in part because I had an undiagnosed chronic illness on top of the cancer. A lot of my live shows were on my calendar as the emotional carrot to get through a part of cancer treatment. The first thing I looked forward to all through chemotherapy was going to Boston to see the Doughboys it was a doubleheader in January of 2022. And it got canceled because COVID was too high. I think that was the Omicron. It might have been Delta, like I don't even remember anymore. But their winter tour got cancelled. But I could not give up emotionally kind of could not give up the trip. So I went to Boston, I met a few people who also kept their trips. And so we hung out. And the week before the Boston trip, there was a Chicago show that got canceled. But people still came into into Chicago. So two weeks in a row, I got to hang out with my friend Geno, and then see other Doughmies in Chicago and Boston. And then other friends who aren't into the Doughboys but do live in Boston. So it was sort of like come hell or high water. I am marking the end of chemotherapy with Boston. And so I went to Boston in January, it was very cold. I slept a lot. I was very weak. But it was such a good trip.   A week, like a week after I finished radiation. I got on a plane again. I went to LA and that time it was for How Did This Get Made live show. It was right after my birthday. I stayed with my friend Esther. But this time I took… Esther and I have a mutual friend Susan, who is as into How Did This Get Made? Like we're both huge fans of it. And we have both gone to shows at the Largo and taken Esther and Esther is always a very willing guest. But this time Susan and I went together. And then when we got done with the show, Esther surprised me with a birthday charcuterie… a chocolate… a plate of chocolate for my birthday. And that was a fantastic trip.   Then Doughboys got rescheduled. So I went back to Boston again. And they had so I went to Boston and shot saw two shows in Boston. absolute blast. And then I got to take Ronnie up to Milwaukee to see the Doughboys live in Milwaukee, which I was just like, “your opinion of me might change a lot when you see the experience the live show of one of my favorite podcasts.” Introducing him to Doughboys at a live show was great seeing some Doughmies and Milwaukee. Having it was just a really fun trip.   And then Halloween I got to introduce Jocelyn, my co-host of Candy Chat Chicago to How Did This Get Made at the Chicago Theater. Again, this was one that had been in the summer got rescheduled pushed to October. I have talked about this show ad nauseam, especially on my interview with Kevin Alvis. So needless to say, this is the show. It was Morbius it's coming out next week finally, and this was the one where I realized that Jason Mantzoukas now knows who I am, which is mortifying and, but was wonderful. I got to see Letterkenny live this year with Amy Guth. That's also how I met Kevin Alves. My friend Rob and I, we went to see a ton… I would get Broadway in Chicago season tickets and Rob was my standing plus-one for a few years. Broadway in Chicago was back a highlight this year was seeing Hadestown. And finally, I went to Washington DC to meet up with Shai Korman and his family. Shai is from Friday Night Movie Podcast. And I got to go with his family to see Weird Al at the Kennedy Center, which was just the coolest venue and such a great group of people. So in this section, these are people that I have been to live events with or know through podcasts community. So we've got Esther Kustanowitz from the bagel report. Shai Korman from Friday Night Movie podcast. Pam Rose, who I know through How Did This Get Made? And Rob Schulte who I know through the Doughboys community.   Esther Kustanowitz  24:31 Hi, this is Esther Kustanowitz from The Bagel Report Podcast among other places. Leah Jones has been so instrumental in my own online development from blogging to Twitter to podcasting and I'm just thrilled to be able to continue in this tech meets pop culture dialogue that we have going on. So I have loved all of the pop culture this year except for Kanye obviously, not cool, but there was so much especially Within my chosen primary category of Jewish TV that I could talk about, but since I've already done an episode of finding favorites about that, I figured I'd focus on one of the other pod things that I loved the most this year, which was continuing to make the river ringer verse podcast part of my week.  I love a lot of other Ringer network podcasts with special shout outs to The Rewatchables, The Big Picuture as well as a lot of their other pop culture podcasts. But the Ringer-verse! they're my people. There are like two main teams and they're so dynamic and passionate about fandom. They're absolutely unapologetic about how nerdy they get about popular culture, sci fi, fantasy, etc. They totally like an every second of their recordings, they revel in how nerdy it is, and how intertextual it is, and how they know the comic books did this. And the previous movies did that. And I love the individual personalities that that are involved in recording this show and how they interrelate. And even when they disagree, and they sometimes really, really disagree, they all come back to the love they have for each other and for the primary cultural product. So I love that they can have a three hour discussion about a two hour movie, and they bring in experts to explain the lore, which helps me put things in a greater context. So being a regular listener has changed how I react to the pop culture that I consume. Because more often than not, I'll hear a phrase or a see a scene that I'll file away in my memory bank know just know somewhere in my like cells that the ringer verse team is probably going to talk about and love and criticize and contextualize and obsess over it. And I really just loved being able to partake in their conversational experience, even though it's really one sided, because I'm pretty sure they don't listen to the bagel report podcast, although, obviously they should. And I just had a guest spot on Jews on film podcast, where we talked about the fable mins for two hours so I'm honing my skills should they ever require an expert on Jewish content, I'm hoping that the reverse will give me a buzz. So if you are a fan of Star Wars or DC or Marvel properties or the Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones or anything else that kind of hits the the pop culture with a little bit of a sci fi fantasy heroes comic book infused element, the wringer versus a must listen. Thanks and have a great 2023 everyone.   Shai Korman  27:52 Hey there, Leah. This is Shai calling from the Friday Night Movie Podcast and my favorite of the year that I want to talk about is getting to go see the great Weird Al Yankovic at the Kennedy Center with none other than Leah Jones, host of Finding Favorites and Candy Chat Chicago because getting to see Weird Al with Leah Jones is one of the all time favorites that any person could experience. And I hope we get to do it again soon. And I love finding favorites and keep making this amazing show.   Pam Rose  28:35 Hi, this is Pam Rose. You may remember me from a previous episode talking about my love of one Jason Mantzoukas and How Did This Get Made. But right now I'm here to talk about things that I loved in 2022   Well, some of them at least in Number One on The List: Vechna from Stranger Things. Stranger Things came back with a vengeance this season. Epic epic episodes and at the center was the big bad vechna He was mean he was evil. He had the cutest bomb in the world and I want to be his best friend. So yeah, Batman. And speaking of TV and awesome TV, Apple TV continues to crush with its original programming. My number one favorite show of the year severance. Severance is so good if you haven't seen Severance please watch Severance. I was in California and vacation the night of the finale and my brother and I both put our headphones in and our beds. We watched the finale because I could not wait. I didn't want to get spoiled. But people talk about severance. We know how good it is.   But what about other shows on Apple TV? How about Tehran? Have you seen this show? Because it's awesome. If you'd like homeland, which is one of the all time greatest shows of all time, you might like Tehran it's got the same feel. Season two was stellar. Glenn Close was on season two she started speaking Farsi at one point what was happening, so 10 Iran I recommend it. Also, I'm not a girl who's into epic things, but let me tell you, Pachinko. Oh my god. So good apparently is based on a book. I don't have time for that. But I do have time for the TV adaptation of it and Pachinko is so good. It's multigenerational story about a family in Japan, Korea. I learned all kinds of things about history, but also so engrossing loved it so Pachinko check those things on an Apple TV if you have Apple TV if you don't get a trial of it, and you can watch these things. You could thank me later. On the music side. Kelsea Ballerini came out with a new album this year and it's her best one yet highly recommend it. We all know Taylor Swift killed it with her new album. Lavender haze midnight Rain Come on. Take McRae's debut album was awesome every track a banger and Mimi Webb continues to put out song after song. Never skip on any other things and I get to see her live twice this year. I was the oldest person there by about 20 years but that girl can sing her ass off. So watch out for that little 21 year old British girl because she's coming for you. She's putting out her first full length album next year. And don't sleep on it because she's great. And then if you need something trashy to get you through 2023 may recommend love after lockup. And I wish I was kidding. But really, it's so addictive. It's so trashy. We get love during lockup now. We get life after lockup. But love after lockup, we TV, you can catch the episodes once you watch one you're gonna get hooked. You're gonna say why am I watching this? What is happening? But then you'll keep watching, but it is that good. So anyway, those are some of the things that I loved. Yeah, here's to a great 2023 with awesome TV, music and movies. Let's do it. And also fellas, if you're single, I'm on Instagram hamster. Pam, come find me. Have a great 2023 guys.   Rob Schulte  32:09 Hey, Finding Favorites listeners. This is Rob Schulte. And I want to list off some of my favorite things of 2022. The Dark Web series of comic books. That's been fun. My dog Elvis, he's at the top of the list almost every single year. Bug Con, that was great. And let's see here is working on new episodes of Doing It with Mike Sacks. That has been a lot of fun. I think he was on his podcast as well. Great episode. Well, here's to you, 2022. And looking forward to 2023.   Clip from HDTGM: Stone Cold   Paul Scheer  32:52 Let me go to the audience here for a second. If you have any questions. You're in a beautiful shirt. It's like a baseball shirt. HDTGM shirt. I love this. Not one that we sell, but it's a great looking shirt. Okay, yes.   Leah Jones  33:10 So you mentioned before William Forsythe was also in Raising Arizona?   Jason Mantzoukas  33:13 Yes.   Leah Jones  33:14 So was Sam McMurry who played Lance the FBI agent.   Jason Mantzoukas  33:16 Yes.   Leah Jones  33:17 So my question is, who would you like Red Rover called over from Raising Arizona?   Jason Mantzoukas  33:22 Nicolas Cage.   Paul Scheer  33:23 Well, let me let me repeat the let me repeat these so I can make sure. So two of the actors in this film, the FBI agent and of course our second baddie, William Forsythe, were in Raising Arizona.  would there be anybody that we would call over from Raising Arizona?   June Diane  33:41 Imagine Holly Hunter as Nancy it's and it would be different and interesting. And they'd have to do something different   Jason Mantzoukas  33:50 Nicolas Cage as part of Boz.   Paul Scheer  33:54 Really? John Goodman as Ice   Jason Mantzoukas  34:04 I also think you could have John Goodman as the whip. [audience reaction] Guys. Cool. Cool. Okay. I know it's been a while but everybody be cool.   Paul Scheer  34:19 Great question. Great question. Great shirt.   Jason Mantzoukas  34:22 Great. Oh, so much overlap. Raising Arizona also because of the supermarket scene. I was thinking about Raising Arizona a lot during this movie. And I'm like, Oh, I gotta rewatch Ray's It's a great movie   Leah Jones  34:47 Awesome, thank you. Now you have got a lot of music to listen to and TV to watch podcasts to listen to. Here's my third chunk of things that my favorite things this year, which have to do with cancer, even though my treatments ended in March-ish, that's not true. Radiation finished in March. I was getting immunotherapy until October. But I had a really hard recovery from chemotherapy. And to get to the bottom of it, I wound up going to the Mayo Clinic this summer I drove up to the Mayo Clinic three different times. Each of those was a very fun road trip with a different friend and found out that there's a lot of good food in Rochester, Minnesota. There's a lot of good bartenders in Rochester, Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic for me was an outstanding experience. But finishing chemo in January and hitting the gong in March of '22. was incredible. And then finally getting a sarcoidosis diagnosis. And at the very end of the year starting treatment for sarcoidosis, starting my hormone therapy to gobble up all the estrogen in my body. I am finally walking without a cane. Breathing without coughing and feeling pretty good. I'm gonna put into this block.   In September I went to Israel went back to Israel hadn't been since 2019, which is a long gap for me. And with this incoming government, I'm not sure when I'll go back on that trip. I my goals were simple. At that point, I was still using a cane. Although it was getting stronger, I was still using a cane. So my goals were to have a hotel breakfast buffet every day and see a friend every day, which I did. There were some things that were really physically challenging about the trip emotionally challenging about the trip. But ultimately, I went to a beautiful breakfast buffet every morning. So at least one friend a day had ice cream had a few really amazing dinners laughed a lot, gotten the ocean. And it was a wonderful trip. So it was good to have to return to Israel, even if I don't know how to change a flight without accidentally getting charged $3,000. And finally I am going to give it up to science for the COVID boat bivalent booster, the flu shot and 15-20 years early I also have the pneumonia vaccine. So in this next block of people, we have Cameron MacKenzie, my friend Jason Mathes, my friend Caroline, get your pencils ready because she is recommending a dozen card games to play with your family. And Monica Reida is back with her favorite video game and movie of the year. Thank you to everyone who joined me on this clip show. And I'm sure I'll be back one more time for the last-minute clips that I have been asking people for.   Cameron MacKenzie  38:25 Hello, my name is Cameron MacKenzie. I had a book come out this year called River Weather from Alternating Current Press. And I wanted to talk about my favorite thing of 2020 to 2022 I think was really the year that I got into Premier League football. I'm gonna call it soccer for the sake of this conversation. Because the reason I got into Premier League football was that I got burnt out on American football, I grew up playing football. When I quit playing football, I started to watch it. But over the years, I just got ground down by the narrative of whatever Tom Brady is doing or the desire to buy Ford trucks or drink Budweiser beer. It's just sort of a constant loop and I couldn't take it anymore. My oldest boy is eight years old and he started playing soccer. And I realized I knew nothing about soccer. So I couldn't tell him what was good, what was bad what to do how to do it. So I started watching Premier League and I was blown a way the games are beautiful and exciting. The players are absolutely incandescent, the teams themselves. There's so much history to these teams and the fan bases are rabid. You if you're born in these places, you can't really choose what team you're going to watch. It's sort of handed down to you like a heritage or lineage. So if you're going to start watching Premier League, you got to choose a team and you got to stick with that team through the ups and through the downs through the good and Through the bad, the only thing I would compare it to in America maybe is college football, that sort of level of passion. But if you find yourself getting bored of the US sports landscape, give Premier League a try, you will not be disappointed. Just be sure that you choose team before you start. No arsenal.   Caroline  40:23 So I saw this tweet that said, a great alternative to screen time is playing cards as a family, so many learning opportunities. I taught my kids that there's no such thing as family while playing uno, and then I'll play I'll put a draw for down on a kindergartener and cackle like a swamp which, because I did not come to lose.   My name is Carolyn Musin Berkowitz, and I love playing cards with my family. So in my family, we play tons of card games, usually one or two per night. We started with uno, which is why I particularly like that tweet, but we've moved on a bit. Here are some of our favorites. We really like playing Go Fish. We even have a set of cards with fish on them. It's a nice easy one. It's how my little one learn to read. Sort of, we like Taco Pet goat Cheese Pizza, which is really funny to say and it's a quick game. And also, you might get your knuckles smashed. So buyer beware. Scrabble Slam is a super game that I found at Walgreens, by the way amazing games that you can find in the toy area at Walgreens. And it is a game where you make a four letter word, not one of those but whatever. And then you put other cards on top to make new words. Great way to teach your children spelling also, we have set my game of SET is probably from when I was a kid when I was a teen, and it is a math and

New York-based filmmaker Liz Nord joined Leah to run down a list of documentaries for watching during winter break. Liz also talked to Leah about how she became a documentary filmmaker and obsessed with the art form. Follow Liz online to find out when her documentary is streaming. https://www.liznord.com/Instagram @LizFilm Show Notes Music Box Theatre ChicagoTrembling Before G-dSupersize MeStreet Level TVClosed Captions at Sundance NowShort of the WeekOmeletoOp DocsAlbert and David MayslesThe Truffle HuntersThe Eagle HuntressNo Film School interview about The Eagle Huntress The Mole AgentBad Axe (shortlisted for Oscars)https://www.almaharel.com/film/bombaybeachI Am Not Your NegroBetsy West and Julie CohenSummer of Soul Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah. Wash your hands, wear your mask, get your booster and keep enjoying your favorite thing.   Liz Nord Documentaries_mixdown 1:17:42 SPEAKERS Announcer, Leah Jones, Liz Nord   Liz Nord 00:00 Hi, my name is Liz Nord, and my Favorite Things are documentary films.   Announcer  00:05 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:18 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things without using an algorithm. I'm so excited this afternoon I am with one of my OG go into Israel friends. I'm here today with Liz Nord. She is an Executive Producer, who started in the news and documentaries. She makes documentaries, podcasts, multimedia online content. Most recently, Liz worked at Sundance, and she's here today with us on finding favorites. Liz, how are you?   Liz Nord 00:58 Hi, Leah Jones. I'm so excited to be here.   Leah Jones  01:01 It's so good to be catching up with you. I was so thrilled when you send me your email. I'm like, How have I not had Liz on yet? You had a podcast before almost anyone I knew. And yeah, you I hadn't I didn't ask you to be on. That's on me.   Liz Nord 01:17 Well, yeah. So that your listeners know I literally I asked, I requested to be on the podcast. I'm a fan of both Leah and of the podcast. And I was like, I have favorite things. So here we are.   Leah Jones  01:32 I'm so happy. So we were doing a little catching up before I hit record. And just reflecting a little bit we met in I think the summer of 2007 at a conference in Israel. Is that right? Is it like did you go in 2007?   Liz Nord 01:48 Did you know I think I was like the year after you. It might have been 2008. So it's been a while.   Leah Jones  01:57 And at the time, your documentary age, were you still working on Jericho’s Echo in 2008? Or was it just   Liz Nord 02:05 No it has been out in world, which I think is why I was invited to this conference with Jewish artists and Jewish innovators people creating Jewish things in the world. And my film Jericho’s Echo was not specifically Jewish, but it was about Israeli punk rockers. And so it fit the bill.   Leah Jones  02:27 Yeah. So we met then we see each other at conferences. We see each other at conferences, weddings, funeral when   Liz Nord 02:38 Your dad has art shows in New York.   Leah Jones  02:40 When my dad has art shows in New York. Yes. We've got to get you guys out to Chicago.   Liz Nord 02:47 Absolutely. I really want to go to the Chicago Museum is the contemporary art museum. The one that's right downtown. I've been once before and I loved it so much.   Leah Jones  02:57 The Art Institute of Chicago, which is the mass of everything one.   Liz Nord 03:01 Like near the bean.   Leah Jones  03:05 And then there's also a Museum of Contemporary Art, which is stunning. But the Art Institute of Chicago is the one it's got, I always just got everything.   Liz Nord 03:18 Yeah, I was amazed by that museum. And I live in New York, it's not like I don't have access to culture. But yeah, love to come back. Also good food.   Leah Jones  03:26 We've got very good food in Chicago.   Liz Nord 03:29 Just like this season. Like coming in spring.   Leah Jones  03:33 Yeah. No, don't come in the winter. Don't come in the winter. It's a great spring summer visit, absolutely. No spoilers but we're going to be talking documentaries. But I'm curious as we head into winter, and this will most likely be a Christmas episode. Do you have any winter repeat movies? Like any winter traditions that that are movie related?   Liz Nord 04:01 Oh, I love that question. I mean, winter is like primetime for movies. And obviously often like holiday stuff comes out on the big screen, which I will say that everything, all the recommendations I'm going to make today I know we're gonna get to talk about some films, I tried to find things that are very contemporary and all available on streaming. But I still believe in person in theater, film going experience, especially for the blockbusters. So I usually do try to get to some of the like ones that come out between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year to have that communal big screen, big audio experience. So this year, it was Wakanda Forever, the New Black Panther film and I feel like the Black Panther cannon as it grows will be an annual viewing because they're just so lush, and beautiful. They're not really your typical comic book movies and they have kind of a deeper meaning. But I love all that stuff. And I will say that the Harry Potter films always make a good seasonal, you can watch several. They all have, almost all of them have a Christmas scene or a winter season because they go through the school year. So those are always fun. And I'm a total Star Wars geek. So I'll revisit the films. Have to say not like loving all the series so much, even though I'm excited that they exist in the world. But I will always go back to the films, especially the originals.   Leah Jones  05:38 Yeah. I'll tell you. I saw Wakanda Forever a couple weeks ago. And I went and saw it in 4DX. Have you done that?   Liz Nord 05:52 What even is that?   Leah Jones  05:54 So 3D, right, three dimensions. 4D fourth dimension. It's the fourth-dimension experience. The chair is a roller coaster. Every four chairs are connected. And they tilt forward and back side-to-side. They vibrate. There's like a fan behind you. So if there's a breeze going through the jungle, it's a little breeze on your neck. If a bullet goes by your face, they do this like really quick puff of air past your neck. So you feel the bullet go by.  I went with my friend Ronnie, we had never gone before. We really didn't look into too much what 4DX was about. And we laughed hysterically through the whole movie, but the chairs….   Liz Nord 06:44 I feel like I'd be laughing the whole time. I wouldn't even be able to like..   Leah Jones  06:49 Don't do for the extra movie you want to emotionally connect to. So we felt very self-conscious being two white people in the middle of Black Panther : Wakanda Forever in Chicago as our chairs kept jolting us.   Liz Nord 07:06 Oh my god, you couldn't have been the only one’s, people must have been laughing.   Leah Jones  07:09 Luckily, it was a Tuesday or Thursday night. And it was it was there were only 10 of us maybe in the theater. And so we were all having our reactions. But I am very excited to see Avatar in 4DX themselves.   Liz Nord 07:24 That sounds like a good move for Avatar. For people that haven't seen Wakanda Forever is surprisingly emotional for a comic movie. Particularly because it's lead. The original Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, passed away between the first and second films and they honor him and his contribution to the film's right from the beginning. I mean, people in the theater when I thought were crying,   Leah Jones  07:52 Right, which is the appropriate emotion. But as his sister walks through the lab, and that first scene and your chair goes kaboom, kaboom with her steps. And your chair is moving with her steps. And you just start laughing from then. And it's not a laughing scene.   Liz Nord 08:12 No, I also feel not a great situation to have like popcorn on your lap.   Leah Jones  08:18 No, we did not. Thankfully, we did not get popcorn. There were people behind us who had like a soda. And I'm not kidding when I say I had to hold on for dear life to not get thrown out of the chairs at times.   Liz Nord 08:32 Oh my god. I don’t think, that's for me.   Leah Jones  08:36 I wish they would make like a 45-minute 4DX experience that was Star Wars battles.   Liz Nord 08:47 Like made for it that makes more sense. How they used to make films for the IMAX and they were so incredible in that environment. Now they just show regular films on IMAX, which always feels kind of weird to me.   Leah Jones  08:59 Yeah. So I'm not looking forward. That's how we're gonna see Avatar because otherwise I don't really care about seeing Avatar. But I have to say the 3D trailer for it before Wakanda Forever, it was a stunning use of 3D.   Liz Nord 09:16 I mean, that sounds pretty cool. And it's funny because like, we're talking about documentaries today. So I'm thinking about, what does this mean for a documentary? And I think what the documentaries that I really love are immersive, what they call immersive when you find yourself in this other world. But I don't know that like in a doc, you'd want to be as immersed as a 4DX experience. It's a funny to think about.   Leah Jones  09:42 I need more people to go, so I can talk to more people about how insane… I mean, you know the big fight on top of the ship in Wakanda Forever.  Your chair punches you in the back. As they're like fighting on top, feeling fists in your back.   Liz Nord 10:00 Yeah, I feel like goodbye unless it's like a massage. But you know…   Leah Jones  10:04 It's more like a sharper image massage chair, but it's happening as punches are landing on the screen.   Liz Nord 10:13 Oh my gosh.   Leah Jones  10:15 So I need more people to go talk to me about this ridiculous. I don't think you need a chair that moves as a reason to go to the theater. I think you need to be with people. Like I think the value of…   Liz Nord 10:31 I like the comfy chairs now that we back there's a lot to be said for it.   Leah Jones  10:38 Yeah. I mean, I went and saw Jackass Forever in theaters twice. Just to make sure I see it but with people,   Liz Nord 10:46 I would like to maybe unpack that with you another time.   Leah Jones  10:48 Yeah. What I'll say about Jackass is that, it is possibly one of the greatest documentaries about male friendship ever made. How about that?   Liz Nord 10:59 That is not what I ever would have expected you to say so. I'm color me intrigued!   Leah Jones  11:03 That they are, I think it's especially Jackass Forever because at this point, they've been doing it for 20 years. Everyone involved in the fourth movie, the Jackass guys, if they weren't sober, they weren't invited back like band's not there because bands not sober. And they've supported each other through sobriety, and through finding other businesses, through starting families. And, and there's, I mean, there are there's drinking on it because there's younger people. But there's really you don't often see on film, men who have been friends with each other for 20 years, working and laughing together, punching each other in the nuts and hugging it out. Like I felt like it was a really positive portrayal of an evolved male friendship.   Liz Nord 12:05 That is really cool. I love hearing that. And like note to self, definitely don't see that movie in 4DX.   Leah Jones  12:14 Absolutely not.   Liz Nord 12:15 Not my nuts punched?   Leah Jones  12:18 No. So when you come to Chicago, I'll take you to a movie at the music box. Which is one of our house. Amazing theaters still has an organ player, so there's organs. Organ player before the Saturday matinees. And I went, it's 700 people in the house. So I went there sold out for RRR.   Liz Nord 12:43 Oh, I've heard such good things about that movie. It's like on the list. It’s on my Winter list.   Leah Jones  12:49 Yeah. So I think it was the most incredible, probably live theater experience I've ever had in my whole life.   Liz Nord 12:58 Wow. Because people were so into it.   Leah Jones  13:01 People were cheering, clapping. I would say that and everything everywhere all at once. Which I also saw in a big theater sold out.   Liz Nord 13:10 That was a great one to see in the theater. So wild. Those guys, the Daniels, the filmmakers are really interesting. I interviewed them once. I used to run a website called No Film School, like by filmmakers, for filmmakers, and so interviewed lots of filmmakers. And those guys, the directors are these kind of young goofy guys. And they've done amazing work. Always pushing the envelope like they did with this film. And yeah, it's always nice when  filmmakers who seem good people are also doing well in the world, and their films are getting traction.   Leah Jones  13:48 Yeah, I'm glad to see that one getting the nominations. I think it deserved.   Liz Nord 13:53 Also, like Michelle Yeoh, she's just so rad. And the fact that she's now having big sort of second coming, even though she's been in the industry for what, like 40 years. Yeah, I mean, what a badass. I love her.   Leah Jones  14:06 Yeah, she's phenomenal. Yeah, I think our winter film traditions. Well, I'm Jewish. I'm the only converted, so my family is not Jewish. So when we go to my sister's home for Christmas, we watch Bad Santa, we watch elf Christmas vacation.   Liz Nord 14:31 I mean, I've seen them all. When you grow up Jewish in this country, you can't avoid Christmas. And some of them are really fun. I love I have a weak spot for Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas.   Leah Jones  14:41 Yes. Yeah.   Liz Nord 14:43 I love Muppets.   Leah Jones  14:44 Yeah. And then my sister will play, she's gotten a really good Pandora station of like jazzy Christmas tune.   Liz Nord 14:54 Oh, can you send that to me?   Leah Jones  14:56 I will. Yeah.   Liz Nord 14:57 Do you love Christmas music as well? Much of what It was written by Jews. There's a documentary about it.   Leah Jones  15:02 Oh!   Leah Jones  15:16 Okay, Liz, as promised, we're here to talk about documentaries. But I wanted, and I know you have lots of great recommendations, which I am so excited for. But my first question is why documentaries? Do you remember seeing your first documentary? Or do you remember the first documentary that really punched you in the gut? And you're like, I got to know more about this?   Liz Nord 15:45 Oh, that's such a great question. I think like most people, although documentaries are much more prominent and available on all the streamers now.  When I was a kid, I never would have told you, Oh, I want to grow up and go into documentary because I thought documentaries were historical, boring things on PBS, or like nature docs, which are fun to watch, but not a career path for me. And then it's just like true crime, none of that really appealed to me. But the idea of documentary filmmaking and filmmaking was always exciting. Or actually, the idea of filmmaking itself was exciting. And that's what I originally went to undergrad for. I ended up leaving that major, and funnily enough, like I said, later, running a website called No Film School, and I'm still No Film School. But it was a strong interest. And then I ended up becoming a graphic designer, and then came back to filmmaking. But part of what got me back to it was that I am one of those people that other people just talk to, like strangers all the time, tell me their stories. So there was this one moment, I remember pretty clearly on the bus in San Francisco, where I used to live and where I started my doc career. I was in my early 20s and this woman on the bus who I did not make eye contact with, really had no reason to talk to me. But sat next to me and started telling me in detail about her recent divorce. I thought, I need to do something with this. This happens to me all the time, enough that I should go some direction. I mean, clearly, there's some kind of calling, Even when I'm not trying, people are divulging their lives to me. So yeah, I guess I could have gone toward like sociology or therapy, psychiatry. But I was already in the media making business. And it was wait a minute what makes sense. Let’s put all this together. Let people talk to me. I'll just turn on a camera. And that's kind of really how I became a documentary filmmaker. And of course, once I started learning more about the practice, I also watched tons of films, and learned, Oh, my God, there's this whole massive world of independent documentary films that I have not had much access to previously. And I was like, oh, this is something really different! These are emotionally resonant, relevant, beautiful films that aren't formulaic historical docs, and I don't need to be dissing historical docs. I actually think, especially now, there's historical docs or docs that cover historical topics that are really fascinating. But I think it's not this male narrator are telling you, blah… blah… blah… you feel like your history class.   Leah Jones  18:51 I would say that women of our age, we're women in our40s.   Liz Nord 18:57 Wow, I didn't know you were going to be divulging our age.   Leah Jones  19:03 Yeah, unless we are plus or minus 10 years.   Liz Nord 19:06 Yes. Right. Yep. Women in are 30s or 40s.   Leah Jones  19:10 As women in are 40s. We were primed for that stretch of PBS where a documentary was the Ken Burns multipart sepia tone documentary.   Liz Nord 19:24 100%. That's what I'm talking about.   Leah Jones  19:28 And that's all we knew . So absolutely. Like once you learn there's more than Ken Burns, there's a whole world of more than him.   Liz Nord 19:36 A massive world. And so people who might not be as familiar with the field, understand kind of generally what I'm talking about is that when I say an independent film. There's this independent space where an independent filmmaker, meaning they're not necessarily tied to a studio, or anything like that. They've raised their own money or they've gotten financing outside of a streamer or studio so that they can follow their own whims and storytelling instincts.  That's where a lot of films that I'm interested in, the people that I cover and work with, and promote and everything. But that's the space that we live in. And to go back to your other questions. So I started exploring the field, I took a couple of classes in San Francisco, at a place that no longer exists. But it was a wonderful organization called the Film Arts Foundation, where you could just show up and learn to use a camera without having to go to graduate school or anything. I started attending, getting involved in the local film scene in San Francisco, which was pretty robust at the time, and starting to attend the festivals. And a couple that do stand out in those early years, in terms of film experiences, where I was like, I want to do this. One was at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, probably in 2004ish. I made my first film in 2005. There was a film called Trembling Before God, which someone who's now a good friend Sandy Loski made and was pivotal doc about Orthodox Jews who are gay, coming out and/or figuring out how to navigate their worlds where that wasn't as acceptable of a lifestyle or wasn't acceptable at all. And I saw the film live with an audience at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. And in the film, itself one of the characters face is blurred, you can't see them, because it would be dangerous or uncomfortable. They couldn't really be on film recognizably. So we saw the film, it was really moving. And then that character, came out on stage first time publicly, showing her face and saying, I'm gay. And the audience went freaking bananas, understandably. And it was so moving. And so like, oh, this is what a documentary can be and can do. And I want to be part of that.   Leah Jones  22:07 And that it can be contemporary. It can be things of the moment, and not just 100 plus years ago, piecing together through archival footage,   Liz Nord 22:19 And that film followed these it's protagonists in their daily life, it's very present, very of the moment. So that was really cool. And other one was at South by Southwest, which became kind of my annual pilgrimage after the first year I went, which probably was 2005ish. And then I went 10, or somewhere between 10 and 15 more years after that. But the first year I was like this is so cool! Because I went and declared, I'm a filmmaker.  I went to this film festival, film and media and everything festival and I was like, I too am a filmmaker. And I saw the premiere of Morgan Spurlock Super Size Me. I mean, the film is fine. It's debatable. People love it, they hate it. That festival happens in Austin, Texas. The crowds are super enthusiastic. They screen at this really cool movie theater called the Alamo Drafthouse that serves beer and everything while you're watching the films. And again the beauty of going to film festivals is that often the filmmaker is there. So saw the film, Morgan Spurlock shows up. Since then he's become very famous. But this was his first documentary of note. Again, audience was so wild. And that Austin crowd is so enthusiastic. And I just thought, wasn't as much about the content of the film. But I was like, oh, this is the rock star I want to be. I don't want to be I've never aspired to be in a band or whatever. But that's the Rockstar, I want to be. The one that shows their film to this rapidly enthusiastic crowd and gets to talk about it. And that film will then live on and have its own life and trajectory and influence in the world. That was super exciting to me.   Leah Jones  24:11 Wow. Those are two…. Somebody's ringing my doorbell.   Liz Nord 24:20 Like I heard a doorbell. Okay, so you were saying those are two, we talked about Super Size Me for that. And you said those are two really?   Leah Jones  24:30 Yeah. And then the doorbell rang and my brain went.. boom! I'm just thinking about I have also gotten to meet Sandy from Trembling Before God. I think I met him at maybe at the conversation. So we're Facebook friends, we're acquaintances, we're not friends. But certainly that piece resonated through the Jewish community continues to resonate. And then Morgan Spurlock Super Size Me, it was such a massive global sensation.   Liz Nord 25:02 That's one of the ones that kind of put more modern documentaries on the map.   Leah Jones  25:05 Yeah. There's still a role for sometimes investigative, sometimes experiential, documentary making. But I don't know, I just love that those were theater experiences for you.   Liz Nord 25:24 Yeah. And also what I thought you were gonna say, when you said, when you were coming to films is that I think it also kind of proves my point, even though I do want to talk about more modern films. But just like those are part of a modern wave. And they're two totally different films in tone, in style and structure. And neither of them is what one might have historically expected when they heard the word documentary.   Leah Jones  25:48 So you go to South by Southwest, you stake your claim, I am a filmmaker. And then you make your first you are your first director, the first producer. Are you like on the crew have a document I know. I said, I wasn't gonna make you talk about your career the whole time. But I guess I've never gotten to ask you some of these questions. We've known each other so long, but I've never said, because I remember you literally carrying a camera. Wasn't the exact Zachary Tim, was he your camera guy on one of your Jerusalem movies?   Liz Nord 26:29 Oh, no, we never worked together. But we had people in common. And when I moved to New York, he was one of the first people that helped me get into the New York Film Scene as part of a collective called the Film Shop. But I don't think that's that relevant. But I was filming in Jerusalem, another project in Jerusalem, a few years later when we might have seen each other at the Union. So early in my career, I was taking those classes in San Francisco, I decided instead of going to grad school, I would buy a camera and make myself into a filmmaker. I always tell people this, because there's so much about believing and putting out there that you are doing this thing, whatever it is and echo have created a lot. And at that South by Southwest, I had already started making Derrick Rose Echo. So I really was in the process of making a film, but I made myself a business card. We used to do that. And it said, Liz Nord Filmmaker, and as soon as I put it on paper, and told people, it felt real and it became more real which is pretty cool. And I still need to remind myself of that. Sometimes 20 years into my career, I still get impostor syndrome. It happens. But when I really started before making a feature documentary, I was doing what is called Video Activism. So kind of documenting stuff that is happening in the community, was sort of an activist bent. And around that time was when the Iraq war was starting. And I lived in San Francisco, which is a very progressive place. And so we were doing, I was part of a group called Street Level TV. And we had a show on the cable access in San Francisco. I would go and film Iraq war protests, and things of that nature. So I started out pretty scrappy right out there, literally in the streets.   Leah Jones  28:33 I really didn’t know that. That's so cool.   Liz Nord 28:37 It was cool. Looking back on it. Yeah, it was a moment for sure. I think what's important to notice that it just wasn't so common then. You don't really need video activists anymore because everybody has a camera and is documenting whatever is going on around them. Thank goodness that, for example, police brutality has now come much more to light because people with cell phones have just exposed that. But at that time, cell phones didn't even have video cameras. It's amazing, because not that long ago. But so it took people like us to actually go out there with cameras and make sure to be noting this stuff.   Leah Jones  29:22 It was really important. Because everybody couldn't document. It's wild. Things have changed so much.   Liz Nord 29:31 And that's part of what's been so exciting about being in this field, is that it has just changed so rapidly and documentaries have become so much more ubiquitous and your listeners can go see all sorts of fascinating stuff that wasn't really out there before. If you didn't go to the art house or you weren't part of an educational institution that had a DVD. It's amazing.   Leah Jones  29:58 So I want to ask you about if you're going to a film festival, which I know you often do. How are you approaching the documentary slate? Assuming you're not a judge, are you looking for topics that you like? Are you looking for filmmakers you've heard of? How do you start to prioritize a festival slate?   Liz Nord 30:23 Well, that's a great question because I've been as an audience, and I've also been as press. And so it really had to study the programs and figure that out, how to navigate all that. But when I'm not going as press which of course, most people wouldn't be going, I actually love to be surprised. SAnd that's one of the amazing things, especially going to a festival like Sundance. Because Sundance happens in January. And that means eat, of course, it's the head of the year, it's also the head of the film gear. And it requires not all festivals do of course, but Sundance requires that you're having your films premiere. So that means if your film has played anywhere else, but at least in North America, it wouldn't be eligible for Sundance. So that means as audiences, you have this real gift of going to see films that you just haven't heard much about yet. And so I usually do a combination of at this point, I know so many filmmakers, which is another just great privilege. So I'll try to see films by people I know and to support them. And sometimes I just go blind, whatever let's just give this a shot. That's why we're here. And that's always really fun. And then I like to kind of look outside the box. There are some films that you know when you go to a festival are going to have distribution, or they're already, for example, a Netflix film. So you know it's going to be on Netflix, or it's such a big-name director that it'll definitely get out there to the public. So often look for the films by say a first-time filmmaker or just something slightly less obscure or that hasn't secured distribution yet. So that I can make sure to try to see that film when I get the chance.   Leah Jones  32:23 Because you're trying to see the things that you might not have another opportunity in theater to see.   Liz Nord 32:30 That's right. And while this whole conversation might not feel like super relevant to everyone because you can't necessarily go to film festivals, I would highly recommend that people seek out festivals in their area. Because film festivals are so ubiquitous now that there's often small local film festivals, almost everywhere. And especially because of the pandemic, a lot of the big festivals are now making some of the films available streaming. So Sundance this year, which is coming up in January, you can buy tickets to some of the premieres online, which is pretty freaking cool. If you're sitting in Idaho and would never get yourself to Sundance actually, it isn't that far from Sundance. But if you're sitting in Maine, and I couldn't get yourself to Sundance or didn't have really a reason to go to Sundance, you can see some of these films, which I think is really one of the silver linings, I guess of the pandemic. Obviously, I rather would have not had the pandemic but this is one of those outgrowths that is positive.   Leah Jones  33:34 Yeah, that some things have become more accessible.   Liz Nord 33:40 Yes, and literally more accessible. For example, Sundance again, never did closed captioning on the live screenings. So it cut out a whole audience that required a deaf audience, for example, that would require closed captioning. And now you can stream with closed captioning for premiere, which is pretty special.   Leah Jones  34:02 That is really special. Wow!   Leah Jones  34:17 Well, let's get into some of your recommendations. I know you've been working on the list. So when you started thinking about, I want to tell people to watch these documentaries. How do you categorize documentaries? Are you like these are shorts, these are long, these are men, these are like, how do you categorize it? Or are you just this is what I'm loving right now.   Liz Nord 34:45 That is a great question. I'm a category person, a kind of list organizing person. I guess that comes from my producing background. So I do categorize and I will say I'm glad you brought up shorts because I did not really include shorts on this list. Let me tell you, this is finding favorites right, so it's so hard to find my favorites. Guys I've seen like 9 billion documentaries and so already narrowing down Long's as I love that you say Long's, I think the appropriate term is feature length but long is awesome. I'm used to it from now on. So my list that I really came up with to talk about today are Long's, but I think shorts are a really fun way to get into doc's if you're listening to this, and you're, oh, yeah, I was one of those people that thought documentaries we're boring. Shorts are such a great way in and I really actually think it's kind of the golden age of the short documentary. And people can see shorts, of course online. And if you want things more curated, there are a lot of ways to see shorts that someone else has already gone through. And the great thing about a short is, if you don't like it, like it's going to be over soon. So there's sites, for example, New York Times Op Docs. I mean, that's so well curated. There's some that are less well known, like one called Short of the Week. It's a website and another one called Leto. I'll send you the links to share with everybody. But there's some amazing places where you can watch really high-quality documentary shorts, online.   Leah Jones  36:21 Cool. I know that sometimes in festivals, well, I don't think there's a sometimes because it's hard to move people. Moving bodies is complicated. They'll do a shorts block. So you'll go in and you'll watch 3 to 10 shorts.   Liz Nord 36:40 Yeah, that’s very common. And there's usually several blocks. I mean, imagine this, I know I keep talking about Sundance, but it's because that's where most recently I worked for the past four years. But they saw the shorts programmers there. They say that they watch every single submission, which is an incredible feat. Because there are almost 10,000 Short submissions a year. So that the ones that get through that gate, or whatever are like going to be pretty strong. But there's this kind of way I say it's a golden age of shorts, because there's just so many people making shorts now that the gear and the analogy is so much more accessible. That means there's a lot more crap out there. But it also means there's a lot greater stuff. And I'll make one other note too, because I think this episode is going to come out soon.   Leah Jones  37:32 Christmas morning. People will unwrap this on Christmas morning.   Liz Nord 37:39 So it's a perfect time to mention that also every year, the Oscars puts in I don't know who actually makes it but somebody makes on behalf of the Oscars, the Oscar nominated shorts programs in theaters across the country. I always have so much fun watching those. And then when you watch the Oscars, you actually know what the shorts are. So I would recommend that folks look in their local theaters for the Oscar nominated shorts programs. And there's usually the documentary one has its own screening. I love going to the best animated shorts nominations and the best live action shorts, as well. So that's always a fun thing to do in January and early February.   Leah Jones  38:23 Those are for sure available in Chicago. And you don't have to be in a major city. You just have to be in a town with a theater with somebody who loves movies, and still loves movies, and you'll get the chance to see.   Liz Nord 38:36 So to get back to your question.   Leah Jones  38:39 Tell me about your Longs.   Liz Nord 38:41 Yes, my Longs. So the way that I thought about categories was almost in opposition to the categories that we talked about earlier like the typical categories of historical, animal, true crime, those are categories, but there's all these other categories. And of course you could split out by gender, country, whatever, that's also really interesting. But my categories are and I think some of them are accepted in the industry as categories. So I ended coming up with a bunch of categories. I'm trying to figure out how to even narrow down to share with everyone because this could take all day. So I'm gonna start and we'll see where we get. But because we had talked about Trembling Before God and Super Size Me earlier, maybe I'll bring us up-to-date on some more kind of contemporary doc's that are in those general categories. So for example, Trembling Before God, it might feel all into the modern like observational or cinema verité category, and or the character centered doc, there's a lot of overlap between the two of those. But like cinema verité is the classic documentary mode if folks have heard of Albert Maysles, and the Maysles brothers and other really famous longtime documentarian, that's this idea of the quote unquote, Fly On The Wall. But more contemporary filmmakers have acknowledged that you're not really a Fly On The Wall. But being

Terry Gant, Chicago-based comic bookstore owner, joined Leah to talk about hospital husbands, Twitter and Prog Rock. He prescribes the musical journey for someone new to Prog Rock and ready to get a feel for symphonic Swedish death metal. See Terry speaking at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on Monday, December 19th, 2022, at the event Spiritual Awakenings. Shop at Third Coast Comics online or in person. Show Notes Dream TheaterKing's XGalactic Cowboys The Pineapple ThiefNightwishRiverside Dark TranquillityKamelot Send in your best of 2022 voice memos to leahj77[@]gmail.com by December 30 to be included in the New Year's episode about the best of 2022!

Jen Michalski returns with a new short fiction collection (available for pre-order now) and how she found Outsiders by S.E. Hinton for the first time. We talk about S.E. Hinton's YA ouvre, the movies she inspired and the Outsider House Museum in Oklahoma. Keep up with Jen Michalski online http://jenmichalski.com/ https://twitter.com/MichalskiJen https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/ https://twitter.com/jmwwjournal Pre-order The Company of Strangers Show Notes Whoopi Goldberg Original Broadway Show Recording Jackie and Laurie ShowThe We Came to the End Why middle grades still love The OutsidersRob Lowe on Armchair Expert (lots of Outsider talk)Bright Lights, Big CitySEHinton.com/books S.E. Hinton and the YA Debate (The New Yorker)The Enduring Spell of ‘The Outsiders’ - The New York Times (nytimes.com)Why The Outsiders still matters 50 years later (Rolling Stone)Alternate titles proposed for S.E. Hinton's novel The Outsiders. (slate.com)Exclusive interview with S.E. Hinton - The Outsiders Fan Club (weebly.com)The Outsider HouseWall of VoodooBetta FishHonoring teens sexual reality - Judy BlumeDebs FoundationPoe House in Baltimorehttps://www.hemingwayhome.com/our-catshttps://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com/Our Cancers Dan O'brienMike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris   S.E. Hinton with Jen Michalski_mixdown 1:09:19 SPEAKERS Announcer, Leah Jones, Jen Michalski   Jen Michalski 00:00 Hello, my name is Jen Michalski. And my favorite thing is S.E. Hinton.   Announcer  00:05 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast. Where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:18 Hello and Welcome, to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things without using an algorithm. I am very excited tonight; Jen Michalski is back and she is the reason I have authors on this podcast. She changed the whole trajectory of finding favorites. And I'm thrilled that you're back. Jen, how are you doing?   Jen Michalski 00:46 Great. I'm so thrilled to be back as well. I've been waiting for weeks to do this. I'm so excited.   Leah Jones  00:51 And you're back because you have another book coming out.   Jen Michalski 00:55 I do. Yes.   Leah Jones  00:56 The Company Of Strangers.   Jen Michalski 00:59 It'll be out January 10th with Braddock Avenue Books, and it's a collection of short fiction.   Leah Jones  01:05 So they're short fiction, is it? Is it all COVID era writing, or is it like expand your career?   Jen Michalski 01:15 It's a mix. I mean, I actually I moved to Southern California three years ago, which spans the time I was last on your podcast, but some of that a few of the short stories in this collection were written here. Most of them were written in Baltimore, though. But the cover is really great. It's a cover of some surfers standing in front of a California sunset, and it was so weird, like we live, I guess about it's a 10-minute drive from the beach. We were coming home from the grocery store we were at a traffic light I just looked over, and these surfers were sitting there, kind of chatting. There was this beautiful sunset behind them. I just took the picture from the car and it turned out so good that I just wanted to be the book cover, even though, not all the stories were set in this area. I just felt like, because they were all just kind of standing in their own little thoughts. They weren't exactly talking to each other; they were all holding the boards, it kind of reminded me of a lot of the stories how people that we know are strangers, but then we also have these intimate connections with people we don't know! Our whole life is just sort of not really quite knowing what another person is thinking.   Leah Jones  02:30 When did this book become a sparkle in your eye?   Jen Michalski 02:37 Well, it makes short story collections, they take a long time to build because you just have to collect so many stories. And I think they started to play around with a collection even before I left Baltimore. They were different titles, and it just never felt quite cohesive. So you just put it aside, actually wrote a novel while we were here in Carlsbad during COVID. I'm still finalizing the draft of that to start sending out. But, I did finally write the last story in this collection is a Novella, and I wrote it here. It just felt like the right piece for this collection. The title came from one of the stories in the collection. I don't know, there's something that you finally know when you have the right combination of stories. But it does take several years to come about. So, a lot of this is pre COVID. But I was very active during COVID. Because we just didn't go anywhere for two years and we just moved here, so we had no friend bubble either. So we were it was just me and my partner and our dog. The perfect time to have your own writing residency. It's definitely changed a lot of how marketing has been, still everything's kind of online. I don't have as many I have yet to build, it took 10 – 12 years to build the connections. I had the writing community in Baltimore, and it's coming about even slower here because things are still not quite back to normal. But I think every industry has been changed by it. It's just something you have to go with the flow and that's life.   Leah Jones  04:29 Yeah, I think we've seen a significantly from… I mean, My day job is marketing and financial services, and very few of our teams are back to in person conferences. It's still a lot of webinars, a lot of the meetings that used to be required to be in person are all on Zoom. People aren't getting on planes anymore like they used to. So I see it in work, I see it at my synagogue; just  where we've had people who when I understand haven't felt comfortable to come back in person or liked the balance that attending online events brought to their life without the commute in the city. Because of Chicago, the effort to get somewhere in Chicago sometimes can be 30 to 60 minutes to get somewhere in the city. I just seen people clinging and now that it's cold and the sunset today is at 4:19 p.m. The people ran outside during the summer and now they're coming back to online events.   Jen Michalski 05:46 Yeah, it's a strange thing, though. I joined a library book group here in Carlsbad when we moved here and we've been online the whole time. We actually met the other night and it's like this, is anyone interested in just not doing a meeting in person, but just meeting in person? Because I actually have never met any of you outside of these little squares, and you probably live 10 minutes away. And then some people were like ‘yeah’, and some people were like ‘uh’. I know that attendance to the book club is skyrocketed because people can just get on their computer in their pajamas and they don't have to. It can be a pain in the butt after work, make sure you're still dressed or take a shower or comb your hair and go out to talk about a book that you may not have finished reading, even an hour.  So I get it. But it just felt weird, and I know people younger than us, their whole lives have been brought up this way. It's really just a little old, so we're just like, “Oh, my God, no everything is...”. I mean, I know, we've been sort of preparing for it with social media. But I just think about the old days when you're bowling league was social media, you'd go out once a week and that's how you get information and gossip and connection.   Leah Jones  07:04 Yeah, I've talked to friends about a friend of mine whose dad has passed away. But when her dad was alive, he was the one that would take her mom and they would go to the bar in a small-town Wisconsin, because that is where they saw their people, they caught up with people and how much of her mom's social life has suffered. Because she was never the one who had to take the initiative to go to the bar, because her husband would come home and say, “Alright, now let's go here, let's go there”, and how hard that can be to maintain.   Jen Michalski 07:42 Yeah, I love that story, though, that's great.   Leah Jones  07:45 You really have to think about is this activity outside of my home, worth the risk, worth the healthcare risk? Or the benefits I'm gonna get for it? The social benefits, which I think are significant. I think the benefits of seeing people in person are significant. Is that more important? Or how do I balance that with the risk to my physical health? I wish I could time travel 50 years and see the research about what this time did for us.   Jen Michalski 08:27 Hopefully we're still alive and 20 more, and we'll have some linking of how it's working out.   Leah Jones  08:34 For the launch of this collection will you have an opportunity to go back to Baltimore and celebrate with your folks in Baltimore? Or is it going to be mostly online events? How are you thinking about rolling things out?   Jen Michalski 08:50 It's mostly online last year, I went back to Baltimore, when “You'll Be Fine” came out. I am not doing it this year. Like I said, I've done a lot of just more interviews and I've written essays and done podcasts and things like that. It's actually felt really comfortable to me. This is someone who I used to host a reading series in Baltimore for many years and co-hosted one for years before that, so very accustomed to being on stage and being with people. But I don't know, I just as I've gotten older, the energy has gotten less for me to be able to get out and do that. Maybe that's why I identified with S.E. Hidden history because she's very reclusive and she never goes out and does any sort of events now. And part of it was she said, there was an article online about someone was like her handler when she was in Texas to do a book festival or something. She's just like because basically, I get asked the same four questions every time, so I can imagine there's this in their system. I love music and I was listening to Aisles a Mile (based on Google search it is Miles of Aisles), Joni Mitchell live album, because I just started collecting Vinyl a year ago. So I've just been on this spree. And I got that I was listening to it, and she was talking about how weird it is to play your greatest hits at these concerts. Because, if you are an artist, no one ever says to Vincent van Gogh to paint “The Starry Night”, again. I mean, sure, some people will do. But it's that we're so bound by what we've already done.  Even when you see dance, if I'm going to see a band in concert, I'm going to see “X” this month, at the [Not audible[00:10:41]]. And so on a beach and I don't want to hear, I haven't even listened to their new album yet. But I definitely want to hear Los Angeles. I get it as bands, whatever entry point the fan has to your body of work as an artist, is what's important to them. And that your whole career usually.   Leah Jones  11:05 One of the podcasts I listen to is The Jackie and Laurie Show. It's Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin. They're both women in their mid-50s, who have been standup road comics for 30 plus years. And Laurie did monologue jokes for Conan O'Brien. But they have both been on the road for 30 years. And they talk about the business, the business of standup comedy, how the business of standup Comedy has changed for women over the last 30 years. And they talk a lot about the churn of comedy albums. How like first standup comic, it takes you, 8 to 10 years to have enough jokes for your first album. But then the culture and comedy are, once you've recorded an album, that's all trash, and you can't ever perform it live again. So by the time it goes on your album, it is the best, it's the best written, it's you've got the timing down, it's the best it could be. But then, because people can hear it whenever they want; comics believe well, then that's done, I can never perform it again. And it is the opposite of bands. And then they talk about how sometimes people will try to request their favorite jokes. And they're like, well, maybe people do want to hear the jokes they know. And that debate about like, do you want to always hear something new and unknown, and surprising, or sometimes you want to hear the greatest hits. I think it's interesting how it's different between mediums, media.   Jen Michalski 12:49 I would love to hear a comedian do their own. I mean, because there was certain comedy albums I listened to growing up like Whoopi Goldberg’s album, and I remember the characters she did like Fontaine and I listened to it so much, I could do the Fontaine or Joan Rivers, and I would actually be disappointed if I didn't get to hear some of those jokes; just because I grew up with them. But I totally get that and I remember a period where I went to see a lot of Lloyd Cole concerts and there was always a guy there was always request, Mr. Wrong, Mr. wrong and I couldn't see this falling boy call like I am, and requesting this song that I wonder how Lloyd felt about it because he never actually played the song   Leah Jones  13:51 So you brought her up, let's get into it. This time, the favorite thing that you want to talk about or one of your favorites is the author S.E. Hinton.   Jen Michalski 14:01 Yeah, it's funny because it's like a no, no. And writing books is to make your author or your character an author. And I've already done that in one book. And now I'm going to talk about authors on the podcast.   Leah Jones  14:13 I didn't know it was the rule.   Jen Michalski 14:15 Yeah, there was sort of an unspoken like, don't use writers in your writing because it's kind of Gaucher or whatever. But you know, they also tell you to write about what you know, so   Leah Jones  14:28 Right, we can't have both.   Jen Michalski 14:30 But yeah, S.E. Hinton was my first, I wouldn't say, literary an author, but she was like my gateway to writing novels or having feeling like an adult novel, adult age novel could appeal. To me, I just remember I guess it was like 82 or 83 and going into the North-Point library, every Saturday with my grandfather and we would just go to the white section I would read everything that was there like Lois, Duncan and Lois Lowry and read the whole Row of Nancy and yearbooks on summer, I have collected them over the years again. And I remember picking up this. I'm pretty sure I've read the book first before I saw it in 16 Magazine, because I was a huge consumer of teen magazines at that age as well.   Leah Jones  15:19 16 young and modern   Jen Michalski 15:23 So, Bob later, and I read the book, and I was thinking I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Baltimore. They weren't exactly great creatures. But there was definitely a subset of kids that were jean jackets, and smoked after school and rode their BMX bikes, and they were all tough.   Leah Jones  15:48 And the book is outsiders. Yeah, just checking.   Jen Michalski 15:54 And they were just like, I don't know, there was just this picture of, and I sent you the picture of the cover that I was in my library, to link to the podcast, but that cover, and this boy is looking so tough. And I guess I could just relate to Ponyboy he was thoughtful and literate, but also an outsider. It was we were definitely in a neighborhood that was blue collar middle class. So I felt like, there was something, there was still like a glimmer of like a romantic hope that you could be this thoughtful character in an area that was always just very coarse. For me, it was just getting called a lot of names a lot of fat names, or which names or this and that, and for someone who is overweight and questioning their sexuality in the 80s. It wasn't like, something I wanted to deal with. But I felt like I could relate to these characters. And I, it's interesting, because, well, apparently the book is based on a true story, S.E. Hinton when she went to high school in Tulsa, there were there were Greasers and socialism. A boy she was friends with him and he was a greaser gotten beaten up while he was walking home from school. And she was upset about it. And she went home and just started writing. And that was it. That became like the first or second chapter of the book when they get jumped later in the book. But yeah, it was marketed as an adult novel. There wasn't like a young adult market like there is today. The market is huge. Middle aged, middle grade, and you just have your own Barnes and Noble, right. So it wasn't selling but there was this like sub market that it was selling, and it was to kids, because teachers were teaching it in schools. And I wondered, what made teachers decide to teach it in schools other than the fact maybe there weren't books that really spoke to other.  I don't know if they read The Catcher in the Rye, back then in the 60s. But I mean, we did in high school. To Kill a Mockingbird, but maybe they hadn't become what they were at that point in 1967, that they were in like the 80s and 90s when we read them. Tthat's actually how the movie was made. In 1980, the movie version of The Outsiders. In 1980, there was a librarian at the Lone Star school in Fresno. She wrote, the director, Francis Ford Coppola of all people, on behalf of her seventh and eighth grade students about adapting the outsiders. It was like 100 kids who have cosigned to this letter, and he was so touching. I have to do this for them. This is Francis Ford Coppola; this isn't some starting out director or this is a big deal. And I thought it was so cool that he just says, yeah, we got to do this. We got to find in a lot of the guys who were casted in The Outsiders, it was one of their first films.  It was their springboard for greater fame, and you think about who was cast in The Outsiders movie?   Leah Jones  19:20 It’s really a who's who?   Jen Michalski 19:23 Yeah, of 80s. Matt Dillon and Patrick Swayze, Ralph Michihiro (on Google I could find Ralph Macchio), Rob Lowe. Oh, my God! Even Top Gun. Tom Cruise. Emilio Estevez. It was just huge. All of the guys that were and see Thomas how C. Thomas Howell was his debut role. I was reading back then they would all stay in the same hotel, but to get them in their roles like Francis Ford Coppola would give the guys who were playing the socials are the more of the upper, the better rooms. And they just try to create a sense of resentment or on cloud that he did that sort of method acting for them.   Leah Jones  20:17 I need to look for the show notes. I think it was Rob Lowe. It was either his interview on like Andy Richter’s three questions (as per Google Search, The Three Questions with Andy Richter)or Armchair Expert, where he talked about, because they are high school students, for the most par. Some of them knew each other, from the scene in LA, from the acting scene, and the stories from that set are phenomenal. Sometimes some camaraderie, some competition, and then they just all go on to have these incredible careers.   Jen Michalski 21:03 The staying power is amazing to me. Because I even bought the idea because it was recently on TCM and HBO Max is one of the movies to watch. And I was afraid to rewatch it. So it was not a lot of his age gracefully from our game. He didn't want to, and I was surprised that it's still stood up. And it took itself seriously, it wasn't corny. And I could see there was a lot of natural tension in the book, and Sen knew how to write a compelling scene that made you want to find out what happened to these boys and care about them. And then there's continued conflict. So it was really a good primer on how to write a novel. I don't think it's not like she went to a writing program, we were so inundated with Emma phase and this and that. But I mean, she really was able to find a natural piecing and conflict. And it just worked so well as I was impressed. And what I thought was funny is that, it seemed like the one of the most gut wrenching or just difficult parts was figuring out what to title it. I read an article in Slate, because I just thought she came up with The Outsiders. But she actually had called it a different sense of that was the original title. And that, I don't mind that, but it doesn't say it doesn't just off on the shelf, reading the spine doesn't really jump out to you. But some of the titles that the editors had suggested to her during this process were. And they have some copies, if you go to the Slate article, they have some copies of the letters correspondence between him or her editors. Some of the alternate titles were Northern Division Street, which that sounds it's very West Side Story sounding. The long-haired boys, very descriptive. The boys in blue jeans, and the leather jackets was another one. So at the last minute she came up with The Outsiders and that worked.   Leah Jones  23:27 Yeah. It's hard to imagine it under any of those names.   Jen Michalski 23:32 Yeah, I think I would just completely date itself and be irrelevant.  So but yeah, I just thought it was going back to the movie watching that, and the title, I just felt like she was definitely influenced by products of her time to like rebel without a cause. So you probably were watching and West Side Story. And I think about that too, in my own writing. So I think about the things that influenced me when I was 13 or 14 in writing and when I was coming up in that age in at 45. Just starting to read more mature works, but also reading Sweet Valley High still because everyone likes that saccharin in their life. But I just remember the big authors then we're again the literary Brat Pack.  So it was Bret Easton Ellis and Jamie Kinder, Kinder Nene. So Less Than Zero and Bright Lights, Big City. And I didn't know much about writing that and I just took this as gospel and I spent a little too many years writing books in first person and in second person and just these very bare deadpan observations, thinking that was the way to write. It wasn't until getting to college later and reading more widely that I was able to put that away. Although I actually just read an essay recently that will be out in the Cincinnati review because it just stuck with me. Reading Bright Lights Big City that young, I was talking to someone about my collection, and they made the observation and five of the stories a good third of the book had stories and second person. And how that's also sort of a no, no, like when you're writing. It just people don't really gravitate to it much. But I apparently have gravitated to it a lot.   Leah Jones  25:36 So first person is “I”, it's the voice is the point of view. Third person we know from Seinfeld is an omnipotent observer describing everything. Wait a second, I don't remember what second person narration…   Jen Michalski 25:59 Second person is when you get up in the morning, you don't or like the first line of Bright Lights Big City, you're not the type of guy who would find yourself in a place like this. I had written, like a bunch of stories like that. But I had to think on it for a while other than being influenced by this particular book, when I was growing up is this that. I guess just being like, a queer writer, was an interesting time in history and coming up in 2006 and 2007, there wasn't a lot of queer writing, and then it suddenly exploded especially in YA Middle grade. And all of a sudden, I'm 50 years old, and I never felt there was any wave to ride. Like it, somehow passed me over, because by the time it became sought after it was a little older and out of the crucial market, I don't know. But I still felt like the need to write second person, so people could see my side of the story, I guess.  I guess you're so used to reading third person and first person and perspectives that aren't your own. For me, it was a way of easing people into a character that maybe we're all the sudden, you can't escape, because you're them.   Leah Jones  27:29 Second person can be so powerful.  Somewhere behind me on my bookshelf it's a book about someone who survives round after round of layoffs at a marketing agency in the crash in 2002. Or in 2001-2002, the first, or the tech bubble crash 1999. Who knows which crash it was?! And I read that book. And at the time, I was nearing the end of my career at my first marketing agency. I was reading the book, it made me really envious of everybody in the book. The protagonist was surviving the layoffs. And I was feeling envy for the people in the book who were losing their jobs. And I was like, Oh, that's a hint that my job is not good for me. If reading this book and being put into the space of somebody in a place where everybody's losing their jobs, it makes me want to quit. I then took that advice forward. So I can see what you're saying that by easing people, in with second person and helping them try on an identity and live in a story as someone who is not themselves. Because I had a reaction so visceral that I resigned and started my own company. From One Night, One Novel.   Jen Michalski 29:08 Please, put that that novel title in the Book Notes as well, so I can…   Leah Jones  29:12 I will. I know it's five feet behind me, but I don't want to. I will put it in, it'll be in the notes. So is your essay coming out about writing in the SEC? Is it you reflecting on writing in the second person?   Jen Michalski 29:26 Yes. And yeah, it was just a lot of the issues we just discussed. And part of it was our Springboard was those influences, those inciting incidents you had as an impressionable young person. It really depends on what around and for me this particular books were on the table.  B Dalton, I remember the Less Than Zero Hardback, How to Ever be with the Elvis Costello trust glasses with the red and blue lenses and I was taken by that. And that was part of the reason why I got the book.  So with S.E. Hinton, probably being a zeitgeist of her time and just what was going on around her. But, she didn't always write about Greece Susan socials though, or socials. When I was a child, I thought it meant that I was reading it in the book, and I thought it was Socs, S. O. C. S.  It's good to see the movie and ironed that out. So I was one of those kids had a big vocabulary, but had no idea how to pronounce the words because they just read them, and it's still to this day, sometimes if I'm going to talk, and I want to use a big word. I will go to Google and Google and listen to how it's pronounced just to make sure because I know I've mangled so many words in my life just by seeing on the page and learning them that way.   Leah Jones  31:02 I feel a lot of college was finding out what words I had been saying wrong in my head for my whole life at that point. Absolutely.   Jen Michalski 31:11 Yeah. And I had a roommate who pointed out every single one.   Leah Jones  31:17 That's exhausting.   Jen Michalski 31:18 Yeah, she also wrote a book called Tex, which was about a boy and I think also in Tulsa, who lives with his brother, there's a real absence of parents. Her books that I've discovered, she wrote that was then this is now which I think was the last of the four that she wrote for people and that was in maybe 71, or 72. But there was some drug use and that it's in psychedelics. And I was a little too young to understand identify or actually scared me a little bit. It was like, Go Ask Alice which scared the crap out of me. It did its job until I got to college and tried all those drugs. But, for a while I was definitely afraid of psychedelics and any sort of drug. She also wrote Rumble Fish, which was sort of like the outsiders also, a boy and his brother.  She had this great thing with nicknames because in Rumble Fish, the main character is Ricky and his brother was the Motorcycle Boy, and The Outsiders, Ponyboy, Soda Pop. So there were some great names that she had. Rumble Fish was also directed by Francis Ford Coppola. It was really arthouse film. I remember seeing it in the 80s when it came out and it came it was in black and white, except for there were some Siamese fighting fish – betta fish in a pet store late and then the movie. And the only thing in color in the whole movie, these fish which is kind of wild. I think the brother is colorblind.   Leah Jones  33:09 I know I saw The Outsiders. I know I read it. But I don't think in Rumble Fish I was aware of, but I don't think I ever saw it or read it.   Jen Michalski 33:20 Well, it's probably one of those that will come out again and TCM like I said, it's a Coppola film. And it is very artsy. It was probably a little more than it needed to be.  It was very high art. But it was also this, I think about all the things I was introduced to from other things like I knew that Stan Ridgway, Wall Obudu did the soundtrack or the title song for Rumble Fish. So I kind of got into him and his music through The Outsiders. I discovered who Robert Frost was and got to read his poems and I did buy a Betta fish after Rumble Fish. We had some in the household for many years. I remember discovering Oscar Wilde through Morrissey. So it's funny just how that sort of crossover either like you'd read about bands and music and books or you read about author, learn about authors through song lyrics. Was there anything that you were introduced to a band or a book when you were growing up that just ran with it and it just became part of your identity.   Leah Jones  34:37 I was given for my high school graduation, one of my close friends in high school was the Sunday night DJ on the college radio station. And he gave me a copy of The Stranger by Camus for graduation of a particular translation of it was like a new modern translation of The Stranger. And I do have gone on to collect translations of The Stranger. Because it's a pretty, it's a globally published book. So I have a few different English translations. One that I bought the Shakespeare book company in Paris, I bought a copy of The Stranger. But then I also bought a copy of it in French, from a random guy selling books on the banks of this Sand River in Paris. And I bought it in a copy in Argentina, a friend who went home to China bought me a copy of it. So that's kind of a book that I have a long relationship with.   Jen Michalski 35:49 So how many copies do you have now?   Leah Jones  35:52 Seven or eight?   Jen Michalski 35:53 Wow. Well, if I see any of my troubles, I'm going to send you.   Leah Jones  36:00 What I still need for all the times I've been to Israel; I haven't bought a copy of it yet in Hebrew. So that is high on my list. But I'm sure there are. I was very confused when my period started because pads in the 80s didn't have like a belt. And are you there? God, it's me, Margaret. She had the pads with a belt. I was very mentally prepared for the belt. And then there wasn't one. So I remember just like not being prepared because of what I had read in the book so many times. But Judy Blume actually went back and she has continuously revised the technology. And are you there? God, it's me, Margaret, to be like, what was actually available.   Jen Michalski 36:58 We're gonna have to do some research on that. I just remember that terrifying me reading about I was why is this happening? And then I think I got this the nine or the 311 school from a guy and my brother's friend, Paul; because my mother took me aside one Saturday morning. She's like, I want to talk about something. And I was okay, and she's like, I heard you talking to your brother. Wow, this is so dated. I heard you talking to your brother while you're playing Atari this morning. And you told him that when you got your period, it's when you peed red blood, as if there's any other color. If he peed red blood when he had a baby. And first I was I don't know, I didn't say that. And I still have no recollection of saying that. And then I knew she make it up. Because I couldn't see her making up something like that. But in your teen, you have these blackouts or something because you just do not remember things you said and I didn't say that. But, probably said all kinds of shit. We were playing Atari. I do not remember because and then she sat me down and told me how it really worked. And then a week later, I got it. I was like, God, she cursed me!   Leah Jones  38:16 She jinxed you!   Jen Michalski 38:19 Didn't she like it? But I got scared.  I'm kinda can't imagine growing up in a family where he didn't talk about it at all. I've heard so many stories of girls they started bleeding all day, and I thought they were dying. I mean, can you imagine it. I'm glad for this public service that Judy Blume has done, but it just scared the crap out of me when I read it. But I think it's because we're probably both precocious and you're reading above our grade level. And we're probably reading things that we should have still been reading fifth grade, whatever.   Leah Jones  38:54 Once I started reading, my sister was a stronger reader earlier than I was. And then I might have told you this story on our last interview. I want a copy of Stuart Little as a prize for something at school and my twin sister read it first. She read it before me and I was like that is the last time you're reading one of my books before me. And then from then on, then really until the start of COVID, I was a reader. And then COVID broke my brain.   Jen Michalski 39:26 Does your sister collects any books?   Leah Jones  39:34 She reads a ton still. She reads a lot on the Libby app now. I did get her a copy of, they did a 50th anniversary release of Bunnicula. And it's like a red velvet cover. So I got her a copy of that. I don't know if she has other books she collects, but she'll text me when she hears this.   Jen Michalski 40:07 Yeah, because I want to know, I'm gonna put that in your notes too. The books that your sister may be collecting.   Leah Jones  40:13 Yeah   Leah Jones  40:27 And Then We Came To The End, that is the book about losing your job by Joshua Ferris.   Jen Michalski 40:39 Okay, I'm gonna look that up. I mean, look it up on living. That's the first place I'm going to look. Great, it's a great app. Yeah, I'm just so amazed that going back to The Outsiders that it just has so much cultural staying power. Because, I'm sure kids are reading it now have no idea what Greasers and socials are and I think I had some awareness just because in the 70s, when I was a child the 50s were seeing such a huge resurgence. So it was exposed to American Graffiti and Shannon on Happy Days, whereas kids are just, what's happy days? What's a greasy?   Leah Jones  41:15 Well in episode two of one division?   Jen Michalski 41:18 Oh, yeah, I guess they do kind of get sneak it in there. Right.   Leah Jones  41:22 They sneak it in there a little bit. Yeah.   Jen Michalski 41:25 I don't know if there's still reading it now. But I do know that you can there's merch that still on the internet that you can get stay gold Ponyboy. But then there are some people that really work were introduced to it late and it was surprising. I was reading, there's an article I think in the New York Times or New Yorker from Lena Durham, who was, I didn't learn about this book until I was in college. And it's because someone in one of my classes that I had a crush on told me to Stay Gold. But you can buy sweatshirts and T-shirts that have Stay Gold on them. And all these online Cafe press like stores. The coolest thing that I discovered about The Outsiders is that the house that they filmed in the movie, that the Curtis Brothers lived in. It's now a museum.  It’s The Outsiders house in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So I knew we were talking about bucket list earlier. And this is actually would be something on my bucket list. Because I think I've driven through Oklahoma was unremarkable on the way here to the West Coast. But if I ever get back, I'd like to stop and see The Outsiders house. There's

Kevin Alves, a Chicago-based podcaster, performer and producer, joined Leah to talk about the Canadian shows Letterkenny with Shoresy before a deep dive into pirates. Kevin also turns the table and gets Leah to tell the whole story of how Jason Mantzoukas recommended Finding Favorites to everyone at the Chicago Theater on erev Halloween. Follow Kevin and Big Talk Podcasts online. BigTalkChicago.comInstagram Big Talk Podcasts Show Notes SquirmlesLetterkennyShoresy Scooby-Doo! really did have a thing for piratesGooniesPirateSurgeon.com/Pirate movie locationsDoughboys: Pirates Dinner AdventureTreasure Island Pirate Battles in VegasSterling FestivalThe Pirates book series!History of punchPirate health insurance The Treachery of Leeks tote bag is now available, if you like niche fandom tote bags. The West Wing Weekly PodcastFronds with Benefits: Jason Mantzoukas on Home CookingHDTGMAll of Hrishi Hirway's links

Two guests for one topic - Monica Reida returns and John Morrison joins for the first time to talk with Leah about their shared love of Twitter. We talk about weird Twitter, Colonel Tribune Tweet-ups, Black Lives Matter, romance and so much more. As of today, Twitter still exists. Part 1: Monica Reida Elf YourselfDavid CarrMagic the GatheringGapersblock Jewish Jerk of the Wrestling WorldTelevision Without PityAbbott ElementarySeveranceArcaneTwitter @monica_reida Pillowfort   Mastodon @SentientCabbage@eldritch.cafe Part 2: John Morrison (aka Local Celebrity) Twitter is Ruling SXSWFlickr Chicago TweetupsChicagoNow is Chicago historyMatt Ryd Jess GodwinLindsay EllisBest Day on the InternetSpiderman Turn Off the DarkTwitter @spideyonbwaySubism.com/links

Jasmine Davila is back and she's ready to talk about things to do inside during winter in Chicago. We talk about special movie events at the Music Box, jousting in the suburbs and vaginal steams at Korean spas. Follow Jasmine online https://twitter.com/jasminedhttps://www.instagram.com/jasmined/ Show Notes Music Box Theatrethe Logan Theatre Medieval TimesMedieval Times union efforts Namit Cafe King SpaAireInterview with director of RRRRRR

Long Island-based author and humorist Matthew David Brozik is on Finding Favorites to talk about his favorite things - potato chips, sleeping and super heroes. More specifically, the last ten minutes of the 1992 movie Glengarry, Glen Ross. We also talk about REM, XTC and TMBG... and TLC. Matthew's new book Odder Space is available on Amazon in print and digital (though he'd really rather you choose the print copy). Odder Space is a humorous upper middle grade sci-fi novel with awe-inspiring spaceships, belligerent aliens, phlazer battles, pseudoscientific gobbledygook, and an artificial intelligence with a serious morale problem... but also spunk, heart, and some important life lessons. Mostly it’s just a lot of fun. Keep up with Matthew at IMDB.name Show Links Introduction to Finding Favorites for fans of Jason Mantzoukas@HrishiHirwayHDTGM PodcastHelix MattressThuma bed frameComphy SheetsBig Fig MattressMiddle Grade vs Young Adult18 Wheels on a Big Rig18 Wheels in Roman NumeralsGlengarry, Glen RossDavid MametThe Usual Suspects XTCTLCR U Talking REM to Me (podcast)     Matthew David Brozik_mixdown 1:25:24 SPEAKERS Announcer, Leah Jones, Matthew David Brozik   Matthew David 00:00 Hello, my name is Matthew David Brozik and my favorite thing is, Glengarry Glen Ross.   Announcer  00:06 Welcome to the Finding Favorites Podcast, where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.   Leah Jones  00:19 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. It is Sunday, November 6, 2022. In a couple hours, I'll be sitting down with Matthew David Brozik to interview him about his new book, Odder Space and his favorite things. But in order to get this episode out before midnight, I thought I would record my introduction first. So I don't know what Matthew and I will have talked about. What a week it's been!  Last Sunday, after I published my episode with Eden, I went to see; How Did This Get Made,  Live. I talked about that a lot in the upfront last week that it was, how did this get live was back at the Chicago theater that I had seen Hrishikesh Hirway, and Jenny Owen Youngs earlier in the week at sleeping village, the tote bag, that joke, my reverse merging two celebrity podcasters and straight up celebrities. And when Jocelyn and I went to How Did This Get Made? We were in the third row, even with Jason Mantzoukas. And throughout the show he talked to me a few times, and ended the show by asking me the name on my podcast and recommending it to everyone, who was left in the Chicago theater as the night wound down. And I've spent the whole week recovering from that it was really exciting. And I don't know, if he'd actually got the tote bag or not? I guess it means enough to me that he knows it exists and probably saw a picture from Hrishi. I did get it on stage, thanks to my friend Jocelyn. When you listen to the Morbius episode, maybe you'll hear a little bit of that interaction. But I doubt it. You might hear my question. I think my question will probably make the episode but that's about it. But it was just really cool. I've been a big fan of, How Did This Get Made, for many years now, five or six years. I just have a really clear memory of being at a happy hour, after a leadership retreat at a previous employer, before I was laid off, which would have made me, I think 39 or 40  at the time. It's such a weird, clear memory, explaining How Did This Get Made and who Jason Mantzoukas wasn't what they knew him from, which at the time was mostly the league. Anyway, that happened, that was huge. I finally got the results of my ADHD evaluation, which I will take to the rest of my medical team and see what we can do with it. Essentially, I would have ADHD exclamation point, if I hadn't had the last two years of cancer, and the sarcoidosis diagnosis, because they can never separate out the impact of sarcoidosis on my brain from my current cognitive functioning. But essentially all signs point to ADHD, except for that 4 MRIs of my brain that point to sarcoidosis. So hopefully, I will get to try. I'll start working specifically on some ADHD interventions and maybe try some medication. But it was frustrating. It's such a good professional that I worked with to get this evaluation. But I am very frustrated that I continue to be someone who is considered a complex patient with complex medical history. When I'm like no, no, no, I was really good until I was like 39 and then you know like it's just been a hard few years but that doesn't mean it's complex forever, but it kind of does. So that's just frustrating hard to come to terms with. He also recommended that I find a health psychologist somewhere to start working through the trauma of the cancer diagnosis, even though it was stage one and it was an “easy” (you know, quote unquote easy) treatment that I still like clearly have a lot of anxiety left over from as I come out of this year and a year half of cancer treatment. I am going to try and go vote midterms are on Tuesday. So I have gone through all of the election mailers in  my mailbox and found some of the most useful ones, made some notes on it. And I'm going to go vote in between recording this and then talking to Matthew later this afternoon. It was spring forward fall back. Most of the clocks in my house have changed. Some have not, some are now three hours off. I don't know, how they even got two hours off.  I mean, it's just been, what a huge week. It's just been a big week, but also feels kind of like nothing has happened. It is finally fall weather in Chicago. Climate change has kept it a very warm fall. We had beautiful colors but because of it but 70 degrees and November was unsettling. So the incredible winds that we get rains, we got this weekend felt a little bit more appropriate to the season. I don't know with that. I am buying myself another T-shirt quilt because I am also recovering from bronchitis this week. But as part of that, they put me on steroids. And so I suddenly have a lot of energy that I haven't had in months. And so, I tackled my out-of-control shelves and dug out 16 T-shirts to turn into a T-shirt quilt, which opens up room for more appropriate clothing that I need to wear this winter. So I'm sending off T-shirts to memory stitch again. And I don't know, I guess, it's not a nothing happened week. It's  a lot of things happen. With that, I hope that you get out and vote that you're voting for Democrats that you're voting in support of access to health care workers’ rights, unions, bodily autonomy, access to free devoting, access to the social safety net, increased taxes, wash your hands, wear your mask, get your booster, get your flu shot, and keep enjoying your favorite things.   Leah Jones  08:00 Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things and get recommendations without using an algorithm. Today, I am talking with Matthew David Brozik. Matthew and I have been online friends now for a very long time and have never actually spoken to each other. But we have a common, we've got one friend in common. I think only one. And that's how we know each other. But Dave, what Matthew? Are you doing this afternoon?   Matthew David 08:31 I'm doing very well. Thank you. I'm doing great. And I just want to mention that this is my first time as a podcast guest.   Leah Jones  08:40 What?   Matthew David 08:42 And yeah, I know. Can you believe that with a voice like this?     Leah Jones  08:43 Truly, with a voice like this. The Microphone?   Matthew David 08:47 Exactly. The microphone belongs to my wife. I had to dig it out of a closet. But where I put it, actually, I put it in the closet. So I was the only one, who knew where it was. And being very interesting, which…   Leah Jones  09:02 I will come to find out.  I know that you're interesting on Facebook. And I know that you have stayed friends with Ronnie for longer than anyone should. So I suspect, you're  funny and interesting.   Matthew David 09:17 I am, as is Ronnie and we'll talk about Ronnie in a minute because that's really, he's looking forward to that. It's not going to  be interesting to anybody else in the world, but  our mutual friends. So I just wanted to say because I've never been on a podcast and I assume this is going to be a nerve-racking experience. I poured myself a cocktail as one does, and I made sure to put in a generous amount of ice both so that I don't fall asleep in 20 minutes. And so that you hear the tinkling of ice cubes, right, but now I'm afraid, afraid might not be the word, concerned that the tinkling won't be sufficient, so please, would you add some ice tinkling in post. Just to make sure because that's the kind of podcast guest I want people to think of me as.   That sounds more like applause.   Leah Jones  10:12 That was applause.   Matthew David 10:14 That was applause.   Leah Jones  10:15 I have cheering, clapping, laughing, drum rolls.   Matthew David 10:18 But no ice tinkling?   Leah Jones  10:20 No Ice tinkling.     Matthew David 10:21 All right, well.   Leah Jones  10:22 So, I'll see, what I can find.   Matthew David 10:24 I'll send you something, if need be.   Leah Jones  10:22 A clean sample.     Matthew David 10:31 Yes. Actual ice tinkle. Yes, I will. You know, the last time I sent someone tinkle. The feds showed up at my... Okay, so we're talking about, oh, so here's the other reason that  I was nervous. I'm not actually but  as your audience knows, probably better than I do. This is a show about favorites. And the conceit is brilliant. It's somewhat reactionary to algorithms. And the idea is an interesting and or available person comes on and recommends, suggests things that they like, and I sent you an initial list of things that I like. And I was then embarrassed by my list because I realized that so many of the things that I like are things that people already know about, and I felt wow, this is  going to  be awful. If I just recommend things to people, do you like Ghostbusters? Have you ever heard of that? Because or like, oh, what's   Leah Jones  11:37 It’s an independent film from the 80s. You would really say that, New York is the character in the movie.   Matthew David 11:44 There are four or five, six main characters, but also Manhattan is as much of a character in Ghostbusters, as it is in such other films as say, Manhattan. But, we're just without the luxury. So I started thinking about things that I like, and I realized, I really like a lot of things that everybody also likes. And I thought, wow, what a terrific guest I would be, if I just start recommending things like Star War.   Leah Jones 12:19 The Avengers, Star Wars   Matthew David 12:20 Do you like Spiderman?   Leah Jones 12:23 Have you ever heard [Not audible [00:12:25]]?   Matthew David 12:25 And then because I have problems and everything is a joke to me. I started thinking, what if I came on and really committed to this bit, where I just recommended things like money or potato chips. And I like just sincerely suggested, hey, do you guys have you heard of sleeping? It's amazing at the end of the day.   Leah Jones  12:50 Yeah. I could straight up talk to you for an hour about sleeping because one; What sheets are you using these days?   Matthew David 12:57 I think, they're all cotton maybe bamboo or we have a wide variety, we have eight pillows, there's two of us. The Mrs. and I, we have eight pillows, so eight pillowcases because you know we [Not audible[00:13:10]]   Leah Jones  13:10 Are they [Not audible] or are they  acrylic like what like in Memory foam.   Matthew David 13:15 You know, it's I think we have one of everything.  Like we definitely have and this isn't necessarily a recommendation but [Not audible] I will recently bought. No we bought a Helix mattress and I assume; I'm allowed to name names because we're Finding Favorites and I do like it very much. I don't know that I go out of my way to recommend it because I don't sleep on that many different mattresses especially now that I'm married. So you know, stick to the one that we have. But we did upgrade recently from a spring mattress to whatever this other kind is considered just no springs.   Leah Jones  13:52 I just got, I have a totally Instagram bed now. So I have the Thuma bed frame, which I am obsessed with. It's the one that is essentially Lincoln Logs, but like it's Japanese engineering, adult tinker toys. There are two screws in the whole thing. It's just well for the joints. Beautiful. I have the Big Fig Mattress, which is specifically a mattress for heavier people. I am obsessed with sheets from a company called Comphy.  They make sheets for Spas. So it's meant to be like massage tables are meant to be washed all the time and every time you wash them they get softer.   Matthew David 14:41 Do you have a guest bedroom?   Leah Jones 14:42 Ideal.   Matthew David 14:43 Can I visit?   Leah Jones 14:44 You may.   Matthew David 14:45 Is it a fancy?  Like I realized, it's not going to be as nice?   Leah Jones  14:48 Not as nice but they are quality sheets. I upgraded to like a bamboo, a bamboo sheet for that. And then I've got a really nice T-shirt quilt with like fleece on one side and T-shirt, which I think is a perfect quilt.   Matthew David 15:02 That sounds  terrific. We don't have anything. This might be, why I don't sleep very well. And worrying about being interesting on a podcast.   Leah Jones  15:13 So I guess, what I'm saying is even if you'd come to me with sleep and potato chips, I have a potato chip, I tried last night. I think, I threw the bag away. But it is a new, it's Lay's. And it is the shape of a checks. But it is big.   Matthew David 15:32 It's like square? Like a pillow? Gotcha.   Leah Jones  15:36 A potato chip. So it's like a potato chip Poof. It's like only the ridges woven together into a salty poof. It is amazing.   Matthew David 15:45 Anyway, yeah. So it sounds like you live a very pillow rich life.   Leah Jones  15:50 Pillow rich life, snack rich life, Lot of candy. I do what I can.   Matthew David 15:56 You  like candy? And have you heard of Halloween?   Leah Jones  16:01 Do I have a second podcast called Candy Chat Chicago.   Matthew David 16:05 Oh, that's right. You know what, and Ronnie, who we still have not explained to anyone mentioned that to me when I told him. So as soon as you invited me. I immediately then emailed Ronnie. And you don't let's not tell anybody who Ronnie is. Let's just get go and just let them try to figure it out. And,  I said, oh, so Leah asked me to be on our podcast. And I'm really excited. And he said which one? And I was like, I Okay, you lost me. And  he said, I assume it's the Finding Favorites, unless it's the candy one. So that's how I immediately knew that you had a second podcast. I mean, most people, and I don't know, if you know this, but I did some research. Most people don't even have one podcast.  Although we're getting to that point where I guess on your typical person, does have one.   Leah Jones  16:57 You, typical person has a podcast that stops at six episodes.   Matthew David 17:02 What number is this? Seven?   Leah Jones  17:05 Seven.   Matthew David 17:06 Okay.   Leah Jones  17:08 Number Seven, 137 something like that. In the range.   Matthew David 17:13 That is impressive. I am impressed. Color me impressed.   Leah Jones  17:17 So Matthew, you have a book just launched?   Matthew David 17:22 I do under launch.   Leah Jones  17:23 Odder space.   Matthew David 17:23 I shouldn't talk over you.   Leah Jones  17:27 It's fine.   Matthew David 17:28 You're pushing my book, and I'm speaking over you.   Leah Jones  17:33 So you've just launched Odder Space. And it is an upper grade sci-fi adventure, upper middle grade. It’s different than, why?   Matthew David 17:43 It is. And maybe, I shouldn't confess that I'm fairly new to this age range. As far as writing, I'm not new to the actual age range, because I am in my late 40s. So I passed through these ages.   Leah Jones  17:56 You survived them.   Matthew David 17:57 I did.  But I used to, and still do write for adults, I don't write adult literature. But I didn't write for the younger set, as we might say. But a good friend of mine, who does write for middle grade students, twisted my arm and got me to start writing for younger readers. And so I learned very quickly what the gradations are there, and YA is probably what most people are most familiar with. Because the A and YA, obviously is adult and young adult novels are fairly popular with adult readers as well. And they tend to be at least one serious theme, whether it be death or disease or sexuality. And I have no interest in any of those things. I have no interest in death, or dying, or sexuality, just in my actual life, not just reading about them. So I aimed a little lower, not in terms of quality, clearly, well, not clearly. But in terms of grade and reading level, not coincidentally, because my daughter is now 10 and I wrote a first children's novel two years ago, and she was my main audience. So that was solidly middle grade, which is a little younger than YA and tends to be defined by not having anything serious, not  having any adult.   Leah Jones  19:34 Not having  a dark theme or heavy life lesson.   Matthew David 19:37 But they are chapter books that typically are geared toward the middle grade sets, a figure middle school or like fifth grade to seventh grade and then upper middle grade would be, just shift that up one or two years.  And the rule of thumb, which again, I learned a couple of years ago is that younger readers tend to prefer their protagonists about a year older than they are. So I didn't necessarily set out to write an upper middle grade novel with Odder Space, I think, I first decided the age of the protagonist. And he is a 13 year old boy. At this point, as we sit here, and I reminisce about the past couple of years of writing this book, I don't remember why I decided that he would be 13. But it seemed that I needed him to be in a certain place at a certain time, and the certain places outer space on a spaceship.   Leah Jones  20:45 In time reference     Matthew David 20:47 Exactly right. Yes, that, you know, that's what's missing. That'll be in the sequel. God willing. And so then once I determined that he was going to be 13, then I realized, okay, this is firmly upper middle grade. So I'm saying 9 to 13 is the audience but, most of my read, I mean, all of my first readers are adults. They're my friends, including Ronnie. The aforementioned and soon to be mentioned again, many times, Ronnie, who has read the book, at least twice. And so my readers have been, again, adults, but and then my daughter read a proof. And she stayed up reading it. She didn't originally find it very interesting in manuscript form. But then I got a proof of the book, asked her to read it, it felt like a book that may have made a difference, just the size, instead of reading a manuscript on 8 and a half by 11, cheap white paper, she was holding a paperback. And I was very flattered. When early the next morning, she burst into my bedroom, which we were talking about earlier, you and I, your audience will recall, there's a bed with sheets. And actually she burst into the room and she said, Dad, your book is great. And I said, get out of my room. I'm trying to sleep. And I said, No, thank you.  That's really wonderful, that means so much to me. I said, did you read the whole thing? She said, I couldn't put it down. I read the whole thing. I stayed up. And I read it. And I didn't even want to put it down to go to the bathroom. And I said being a good parent. I said, well, you know, you should put a book down and go to the bathroom if you need to. And she said, Oh, I went to the bathroom. I just took the book with me.   Leah Jones  22:48 That is the ultimate compliment.   Matthew David 22:51 It is.  It really is. And then I said okay, you hold on to that copy. And please, just don't put that on a shelf and put it back on the communal, don't put it back. Exactly. Keep that off the coffee table in the living room. So Odder Space is an upper middle grade sci-fi book. It's humorous. It is very much in the general Star Trek vein in that the all of the action or most of the action takes place on a spaceship. And we were joking earlier about the New York City being as much of a character and  as any Star Trek fan knows the Starship Enterprise or other ships are a character and Odder Space takes it a little further in that the ship called the Amity because the powers that be didn't want to call it the starship friendship, because that would sound ridiculous. So they called it the starship Amity has a personality. It has an artificial intelligence on board named MANI it's an acronym MANI - Mail Automated Networked Interface. And MANI is very much a character with a personality and a problem. Manny is very sad. So that was really the genesis of this book. I was thinking about classic science fiction adventures like Star Trek, like Star Wars, like Battlestar Galactica, like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I made a list of what made each of them unique. What was the driving force of each of them and they were all slightly different? And I realized that there was a sort of an opening for a different approach, which is, what if a crew were on a spaceship and the ship itself were their biggest problem? And that led me to the idea of an artificial intelligence that just doesn't want to do its job anymore? And I was thinking, why would that be? And I don't want to give anything away. And I'm not going to, but essentially, just before the opening of the book, there's a catastrophe that really depresses the AI on the ship. And that leads to, well, I want to say hilarity and also other things. And that's the premise of the book. And I decided to write it.   Leah Jones  25:14 It's an AI that has a different goals than How(couldn’t understand the movie name) from 2001?   Matthew David 25:20 Yes, in fact, again, without going into too much detail, you might even say a completely different goal, because How(couldn’t understand the movie name) entire goal was self-preservation.  And this is an AI that basically has given up and doesn't want to go on. He has suffered a loss, that only he really feels it in a way that none of the humans on board feel and he just doesn't want to go on. And, the only one who really connects with him is the main character Jeremy, who goes by his nickname Jerm, which is a bit ironic because his mother is the doctor on the ship. And just circling back to the Star Trek, I had an immediate reservation, of course, because the kid on Star Trek The Next Generation, Wesley Crusher, played by Wil Wheaton was the female ship doctor's son. And that's the exact scenario that we have here. And I wondered, hey, is that going to be to derivative? And then ultimately, I said, you know, what? It's fine. And chances are most 9 to 13 year old readers these days. We're not watching Star Trek The Next Generation, and just won't make the Westlake Crusher connection.   Leah Jones  26:46 And if their parents read it and catch a nod to it, great. Something they recognize.   Matthew David 26:52 And in fact, there are plenty of I don't want to say Easter Eggs, but there are plenty of nods to Star Trek and other classic sci-fi properties in there. There's a very central key piece of equipment onboard the Amity, called a spectrometer. And it's a mass spectrometer  and one of the problems is that they haven't worked out all the Kirk's in the mass spectrometer yet. So there's a  great deal of wordplay, that it's okay, if the primary audience isn't going to get but spell check certainly didn't  get the jokes. But the adults will and I encourage children of all ages, adults of all ages to read well, maybe not children of all ages, but anyone, eight, nine and up, I think they'll  get a real kick out of it. And I loved writing it. I'm extraordinarily proud of the book. And I'm excited. I really hope people get to read it. I hope they just do and love it as much as I do.   Leah Jones  28:01 Amazing. So it is available now. People can order it on Amazon. It's also available on Kindle, but they should order the print copy.   Matthew David 28:10 Oh, absolutely. I don't love eBooks. And I'm  very glad that Amazon's publishing platform allows now paperback books. And a lot of work went into the book not just writing it but the cover design. The interior was designed. It's a beautiful little book.   Leah Jones  28:32 What chapter headings, did you settle on. Ronnie and I were talking about.   Matthew David 28:37 Oh, numbers. So this was my daughter's actual contribution to the book. I had originally written them out as words, chapter one, chapter two all the way to chapter 20. And hadn't given that a lot of thought even though with each manuscript that I write, I do think about what kind of chapter headings I want. Sometimes they'll be actual names of chapters, sometimes it's just numbers. And this time I had written it out and I don't think I really thought about it until I got the first proof and thought this is an opportunity to maybe, Mary, the chapter headings a little bit more to the to the substance, especially because it was in a nicer font. And I realized, there's nothing special about just writing out Chapter 1, Chapter 20. So I noodle around and I asked my daughter, and I asked Ronnie and some other friends and we had almost settled on spelling out the word chapter and writing the number in numerals. And then my daughter, an actual certified genius. I certified her. I'm certified as a genius certifier. It's a kind of a loop, but she said well, why not just the numbers and is like giant embarrassing light bulb went off over my head and I was like, that is the way to go. But  01,…. So really emphasize that  binary computer. And speaking of binary, there was a moment where I very briefly considered putting the numbers in binary and just zeros and ones and then I realized this is that's a bridge too far. So I stopped that probably would have been off putting. There's a time and a place. Actually, Roman numerals would be hilarious. Just completely anachronistic. Just absurd.   Leah Jones  30:33 I inexplicably have you know that song, there's 123456 wheels on a big rig. And then it's like count by twos. There's 2 4 6 8 10 12   Matthew David 30:46 I do not know.   Leah Jones  30:50 So there's a verse of that song.   Matthew David 30:52 That's Pearl Jam?   Leah Jones  30:54 It's Pearl Jam. Covered also by the Beatles.   Matthew David 30:59 Pearl Jam covered by the Beatles. I don't like the way it usually goes. But okay.   Leah Jones  31:03 While it was interesting. And there's one verse of it. It's like Roman numerals. How many wheels on a big rig I IV, VI, VI, VI X X that like, and that is a how I can count to 18 in Roman numerals.   Matthew David 31:20 That's I'm going to have to look up that. So if you can write Beatles, how's that Spelled? B E A T. It's wordplay right?.   Leah Jones  31:31 B E E D Valley, the Beatles   Matthew David 31:35 I'll have to look up that song. See if you can find it and make it like the tag to this.   Leah Jones  31:43 So Odder space available now. People can find out more information on IMDB dot name.   31:50 Matthew David 31:49 Don't go to IMDB.com because I've never been in a movie  But with a voice like this. But yes, so IMDb dot name, my own personal and spend some time there, noodle around. There's all sorts of short story, short humor pieces, no videos of cats? I don't like that..   Leah Jones  32:12 Early when we like met, you had published a book called Taking IV Seriously, which you no longer make available?   Matthew David 32:20 Yes.   Leah Jones  32:23 Why?  Copyright problem?   Matthew David 32:25 No, it's entirely. [Not Audible] You know what I forgotten about?   Leah Jones  32:32 Honestly, My basic understanding of copyright. Copyright, Infringement, patent law comes from that book. In  a previous life, you were a copyright attorney, right?   Matthew David 32:45 Yes, I practiced for a decade and decided to then become a copywriter. Which is very confusing to people who meet me. And it's why I just don't  like meeting people anymore. Because I have to explain, because if they've heard even a little bit about me, then I'm already, we're already into deep. They say so you used to be a lawyer. And you did copyright law. And now you're a copywriter. And what's the difference? And I say, who looks really interesting, that guy over there. And when they when they look, I just  run usually toward  the bar. But yes, I published a novella, it was the first thing that I published. It was the first longer piece of fiction that I wrote, longer than any short story, but not quite novel length. And I like it very much. And it was something I labored on for about 10 years. And I had started, when I was in Law school. And I think, I never quite cracked it. I never quite solved it. And even though I released it, I reached a point or there came a time when it was no longer being purchased. And I think I released it maybe seven, eight years ago, I don't honestly don't remember at this point. And maybe even longer than that. It maybe, it was 10 years ago. But as was with most things that had a shelf life. And once it reached the point that whoever was going to buy it had bought it. I started thinking this is not necessarily what I want to be representing me anymore, because I had written more and better and longer things. And it bugged me a little bit that it wasn't quite as long as maybe it could or should have been. And I just figured you know, what I can because it was self-published, I can just sort of take it down. And I did and that's not to say that I wouldn't put it back at some point. But it just felt like okay, I'm better represented by everything that I've written and released since then, and there have been a few things. I think, I've got five or six books available. And one of which is a novella intentionally; Danger with a Hard G.   Leah Jones  35:18 Harrison Bennett Novella.   Matthew David 35:20 Yes. Harrison Bennett Novella, the main character is Harrison Dangar Bennett, hence the danger with a Hard G. Something else. Another thing I had a hell of a great time writing.   And, but that was intentionally a novella. I just wanted to write a short, tight, sort of comic, hardboiled mystery novel. And I did and there was never a battle for page length or word count. And I never felt like, oh, this is coming in too short. If anything, I tried very hard to keep it to novella length, just get in and get out, make the jokes, hit those beats. And I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of everything that I've released. But something about IV, I just figured you know, what, maybe I'd like to not take it back. If given the opportunity, I wouldn't go to people's homes and deleted off their Kindle. And that one, in fact, I only released as an eBook. There is no paperback version of that. So I would have to break into people's homes and access their devices. And that's time consuming, honestly.   Leah Jones  36:32 It is, but it gives you the chance to travel the country, travel the world,   Matthew David 36:36 The world? Exactly.   Leah Jones  36:40 According to my inbox that I apparently never clean out, taking IV seriously, was released on September 5, 2013.   Matthew David 36:49 Okay, so 50 years ago. What did you say? 2013?   Leah Jones  36:56 2013, Labor Day.   Matthew David 36:58 Life lifetime ago. That was like, I wasn't, still practicing Law. Maybe I was, I don't know. But at least for at least, four jobs ago. Four copywriting jobs ago.     Matthew David 37:26 So do you want to hear about any of my favorites?   Leah Jones  37:26 Yeah, I was just about to ask you.   Matthew David 37:29 I should let you be in charge. You drive this train.   Leah Jones  37:31 I will do the job of hosting. How about that? I just for the record, the first list you sent me was not like, so common. Words and writing, comedians and jokes. Glen Glengarry Glen Ross, Ecstasy the band and Back to the future. So, other than writing, writing has been pretty well covered because they do interview a lot of authors.   Matthew David 37:58 How dare you?   Leah Jones  37:59 I know. How dare, they're constantly be authors, with books to promote who also have favorite things they want to talk about. But then you're like, okay, in addition to boring things like Star Wars and Ghostbusters, you've got Jeeves and Wooster, The Adult Short Stories of Roald Dahl, Bands with Letters For Names, English Madrigals, The Last 10 Minutes Of Glengarry Glen Ross and really clever comedians,   Matthew David 38:28 Can I ask you have you seen Glengarry Glen Ross? Like are you familiar with the film?   Leah Jones  38:32 I think, Glengarry Glen Ross is like always be selling and shut up and drink the coffee. Right? Like they're angry and they're [Not audible]   Matthew David 38:41 Both wrong. Well, I mean, you were close, but everybody listening is laughing now.   Leah Jones  38:47 Always be closing?   Matthew David 38:48 Always be closing. Excellent. And put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers. But yes, you're familiar enough to make everybody who loves this film cringe and that was excellent. But wait, have you seen it? Or are you just, my voice is cracked.   Leah Jones  39:11 I don't know, if I've seen it or if I just know, it from movie podcasts and Tumblr.   Matthew David 39:15 Wow!  We're here now. This is the moment. Glengarry Glen Ross is originally a play by David Mamet. It was successful as a play and mounted, I believe originally both in London and New York, I think first one than the other, and was then fairly quickly adapted into a film, which David Mamet then wrote the screenplay for and the original play. The play is just 2 acts three scenes per act, two locations. The movie is essentially those same two locations with others sprinkled in. He fleshed it out. Added much more dialogue, more characters and famously added Alec Baldwin's character who is a representative of the head office that these salesmen work for, who is sent to their office one night to give them a very abusive, motivational talk.   Leah Jones  40:23 Is he Glengarry Glen Ross?   Matthew David 40:26 No. I hate the title.   Leah Jones  40:31 It’s so hard to say.   Matthew David 40:32 It is. Yes.   Leah Jones  40:33 Glen Garry Glen Ross, Glen Ross.   Matthew David 40:38 No. It's one. Glen Garry is one word.  And then Glen Ross, two words, and they refer to two different land. So the salesmen are in the business of selling land, mainly and Florida and Arizona, basically just crappy land that they're selling to unsuspecting. It's like a boiler room operation of selling land. And that's just not worth what they're claiming it is. And Glengarry Farms is one of the parcels or one of the sets of land that they used to sell. And that's referred to at one point, and then, or Glen Ross farms and then Glengarry. Glen Garry is the new set of leads that they got, I literally watched this movie again two days ago, and I'm confused. But the new leads, the Glengarry leads is, what the movie is really all about. They're the new hot leads, the people who might be interested in purchasing land, and the salesmen all want to get their hands on these leads, but they're not allowed, because they're not good enough. So those leads will only go to the closers. And these guys are not. So I hate the title of this movie. And if I ever met David Mamet, and David, if you're listening, please email me. And explain to me why you couldn't have named