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Idle Thumbs 299: Somebody, Somewhere, Somehow, Something

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Idle Thumbs 299:

Idle Thumbs 299


Somebody, Somewhere, Somehow, Something
Somebody once told me the following on a podcast: Somewhere a moth is happily driving a car around a room, hunting for things that smell nice. Something deep in a crocodile whispers "you could have been a bird." Somehow these are the things that interest us. Hey, everyone needs a hobby.

Discussed: The Idle Thumbs Podcast, Mouth Moods/Mouth Sounds, the evolution of dinosaurs and birds, Jurassic Park III, Jurassic World, cyborg moth cars, Bubble Tape, XOR, hobbies, cooking, cocktails, Dark Souls 2

 

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Here's a great video on split brain research, as was clumsily referenced in the episode:

11 minutes ago, Jake said:

Cheers, I hopefully copped to how clumsily I was alluding to it.

You did, but it's really fascinating stuff and I felt like sharing it now that science news and discussion is starting to be a thing! :tup:

 

Edit: Woah, you really did rerecord a bunch for this episode.  Maybe I responded to something that's erased from history.

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Just now, SL128 said:

Here's a great video on split brain research, as was clumsily referenced in the episode:

 

Cheers, I hopefully copped to how clumsily I was alluding to it.

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I didn't post about the show's new direction last week, but the Mouthmoods talk was great, and a good sign that you can do the podcast format without games being the specific focus. Just talk about what interests you and fun chats like this will come out. 

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My favourite Neil Cicierega project is haircut (it's a CYOA thing so you'll need to watch with annotations on):

 

 

Art is by his sister Emmy

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Yeah I think the Mouth Moods discussion served as a great introduction to the new podcast format. You approached it from some clever angles, provided some interesting insight, and then had some fun with it. The moment when Jake starts his sentence with "Some.." and Nick/Chris interjected killed me, because my brain had the exact same response!  

 

Again, as I mentioned last week, this is coming from someone who was listening to Idle Thumbs before despite it being about video games, but I loved this episode. It kinda feels like an episode-length Reader Mail segment. I don't think it would work if you had just started the podcast out of nothing, but because you have this base of weird topics (Robot News, Jurassic Park, etc.) that only seem to further compound onto themselves each week as readers sends in new input, I think it works great. Sometimes, it feels like the equivalent of "outsider art" but for science, if that makes any sense. 

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Gravey over on gamerswithjobs raises a good point re: the theme song with this new shift in topics:

 

Quote

now that the Idle Thumbs pod is officially branching out from video games, what does mean for the new theme which, if history is any indication, will be coming next week? Games, video games, long form TV, contemporary lit, robot news, Jeff Goldblu — u — u — um

 

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The resistance of the general public to the idea of feathered dinosaurs has always reminded me of the resistance of the general public to the idea of buildings and statues in ancient Greece and Rome being painted in bright primary colors.

 

448px-Semper_Parthenon_1.jpg

 

Historians have known about this, literally for decades, but I've given up on ever seeing it reflected in any modern media. People just think it's too ugly! I think that there are two semi-contradictory reasons for that reaction. First, people expect the past to be dignified, because it was a simpler and more grounded time. In the modern era, that means muted colors, clean lines, and a general lack of ornament. Second, people expect the past to resemble the present, because one leads to the other. That means that, on a fundamental level, their buildings should look like our buildings and their lizards should look like our lizards. I understand where both of these impulses come from, but I've always been a big fan of advancing the weirdness and inaccessibility of the past, so it'd be really great to see a talented artist or filmmaker tackle feathered dinosaurs or a painted Rome.

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I found Mouth Sounds to be technically impressive, but I really didn't like it as music. I appreciate the skill and knowledge it took to put it together, but you can almost hear all the seams and the glue holding it together as songs are layered over one another and more or less left at that. Listening to Mouth Moods last night was a completely difference experience. That's an excellent album, and at times I was melting into it and forgot that it was a remix. There are actual amazing original creations in that album, rather than just mashups.

 

I think it's a little hand-wavey to say "this is better than Weird Al" without acknowledging that he started making parody songs (googles) Holy shit 40 years ago, and that Cicierega's work is built on top of his foundation of decades of goofy stuff.

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I've gotta say, I found Mouth Moods to be pretty far behind the cutting edge of mashups. If there's less then 20 different samples in one song I can't really endorse it. 

 

That's mostly a joke, but I still found the choices to be kind of uninspired on the whole compared to some of the other stuff floating around online. The actual combination was probably better-executed for the most part though.

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You guys sure you weren't thinking of "Annoyed Grunt" when talking about a track made up of interstitial mouth sounds? The first track has a couple in it, but is much more about fulfilling the name (Starting Line), with full clips of the starting lines from a bunch of songs.

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I want to weigh in on the new direction of the show. I feel that video games has always been and should continue to be the big frame within which the podcast operates. You came together in the video game industry, you continue to work in video games, and the whole idea for idle thumbs was always focused on video games. That's what makes me and many other listeners/readers love it. So I kind of hope you will continue to bring that perspective into the podcast every week. But who ever said it had to be reviews of games??? Every other podcast on earth has a "what we've been playing" segment, so by all means, don't give that another thought as some kind of obligatory, defining characteristic. But it would be a huge loss for all of us who care in any form about games to not hear from the makers of the Walking Dead I and Firewatch among many other projects  about some aspects of the industry, of your work, and of how this does inform the other things in your life. There are now, finally, other smart podcasts about video games, but none with your particular set of experience and personalities. Please keep games in the picture.  

 

Your pal,

 

Caspar

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I have loved Weird Al for a very long time, but your description of him as making "safe" versions of pop songs made me wince with recognition.  As a kid, I always thought of him making fun, humorous versions of songs that I enjoyed listening to more than the "dumb stuff" the original songs were about.  But you could definitely also think of it as Weird Al taking songs about teenage sex, suicide, date rape, and racial profiling and "nerdwashing" them into toothless songs about bologna, bus queues, grammar pedantry, and Star Trek jokes.

 

On the gripping hand, Weird Al was hardly purging the airwaves of songs about those topics.  More like offering a tiny handful of nerd humor surrounded by an endless ocean of songs about the same stuff as the ones he was parodying.

 

But I also can't help noticing how many songs by black artists that I only ever knew Weird Al's parody version of. 

 

In conclusion, Neil Cicierega's is a mouth of many moods. And sounds.

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3 minutes ago, Urthman said:

I have loved Weird Al for a very long time, but your description of him as making "safe" versions of pop songs made me wince with recognition.  As a kid, I always thought of him making fun, humorous versions of songs that I enjoyed listening to more than the "dumb stuff" the original songs were about.  But you could definitely also think of it as Weird Al taking songs about teenage sex, suicide, date rape, and racial profiling and "nerdwashing" them into toothless songs about bologna, bus queues, grammar pedantry, and Star Trek jokes.

 

On the gripping hand, Weird Al was hardly purging the airwaves of songs about those topics.  More like offering a tiny handful of nerd humor surrounded by an endless ocean of songs about the same stuff as the ones he was parodying.

 

But I also can't help noticing how many songs by black artists that I only ever knew Weird Al's parody version of. 

 

In conclusion, Neil Cicierega's is a mouth of many moods. And sounds.

 

Oh I had the same experience as a kid. I spoke from personal familiarity. I probably should have been more explicitly clear about that; I wasn't trying to call people out, just make an observation in retrospect.

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Paused the cast to check out Mouth Moods on my drive home; ended up cracking up the entire ride. Awesome plug! 

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Where in the podcast did they talk about split brain stuff?

 

edit: actually it was probably in the opening that got cut, right? I'll check Twitch some time.

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I'm fine with a new direction for things. Like with a lot of other things in life, if you're forcing yourself to do that's supposedly fun, you should probably take a step back and reassess whether it's really what you should be doing in the first place. I am curious what the episode 300 theme/Jake's secret project will be, though. :)

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