Finding Favorites with Leah Jones

We loved Twitter with Monica Reida and John Morrison

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 Yourself
David Carr
Magic the Gathering
Gapersblock
Jewish Jerk of the Wrestling World
Television Without Pity
Abbott Elementary
Severance
Arcane
Twitter @monica_reida 
Pillowfort  
Mastodon @SentientCabbage@eldritch.cafe
Part 2: John Morrison (aka Local Celebrity)
Twitter is Ruling SXSW
Flickr Chicago Tweetups
ChicagoNow is Chicago history
Matt Ryd 
Jess Godwin
Lindsay Ellis
Best Day on the Internet
Spiderman Turn Off the Dark
Twitter @spideyonbway
Subism.com/links

Jasmine Davila and Indoor Fun for Winter

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/jasmined
https://www.instagram.com/jasmined/
Show Notes
Music Box Theatre
the Logan Theatre 
Medieval Times
Medieval Times union efforts 
Namit Cafe 
King Spa
Aire
Interview with director of RRR
RRR

Glengarry Glen Ross with Matthew David Brozik

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
@HrishiHirway
HDTGM Podcast
Helix Mattress
Thuma bed frame
Comphy Sheets
Big Fig Mattress
Middle Grade vs Young Adult
18 Wheels on a Big Rig
18 Wheels in Roman Numerals
Glengarry, Glen Ross
David Mamet
The Usual Suspects 
XTC
TLC
R 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 this play, your play anything else? Or the joke among the actors, I understand was that they used to refer to it as death of a fucking salesman, because there is so much cursing in this. I once brought the DVD with me to work, when I was working on a weekend and I figured, you know what, I'll just, I'll keep this on. I was really just at the office on call more than anything. And I figured, I'll just have this play in the background, and I must have forgotten, how much cursing is there and I didn't have headphones on and just like within the first 30 seconds, I realized, Oh, nope, nope, nope. can't play this at work.
 
Leah Jones  43:00
Not even on a weekend.
 
Matthew David 43:02
No,  Or at night, but it is. It is. I really, I want you to watch this movie. Tonight. And it just hit a streaming service. With most movies, it comes they come and go off streaming services, and I of course have the DVD, which I didn't buy recently, but and I burned it onto or I ripped it in, it's on my computer. So it goes where I go most part. So I can always just fire up Glengarry Glen Ross. But I think it's on Hulu.  So it is so wonderful.
 
Leah Jones  43:45
Really incredible cast.
 
Matthew David 43:46
Oh, the cast is phenomenal. And the one problematic thing about it. And this is beyond the scope of this podcast, I'm sure but what's his name? Spacey. Kevin Spacey plays a major role. And I love this movie. And as it happens, one of my other favorite movies is the usual suspects also starring Kevin Spacey.  Kevin Spacey in recent years has become problematic. And it always raises the question well, what do you do when you love something that involves or was produced by someone who
 
Leah Jones  44:22
You later that find out as trash.
 
Matthew David 44:24
Allegedly trash. We’re  talking about a lot of different people.
 
Leah Jones  44:30
You are Attorney, use the word allegedly.
 
Matthew David 44:32
No, but I'm saying we don't. Right  now we're talking about Kevin Spacey. But it could be anybody. It could be Michael Jackson. It can be what do you do? And do you have a moral obligation to not watch a movie with Kevin Spacey? Do you have an obligation one way or the other to not listen to Michael Jackson's music and I'm of the mind that I know that it's out there. You're not sending money to this person. You're perfect personal, Kevin Spacey is not getting any more money from Glengarry Glen Ross. That's not the way it works. But regardless, there's something out there,  I don't think a consumer needs to deprive themselves of the joy of consuming product. I'm not going to deny myself the sheer joy of watching Glengarry Glen Ross, once a week or whatever it is, because Kevin Spacey might be, on our shitless right now. It's for me and I love this movie. I'm going to watch it. But as it happens, two of my favorite movies star Kevin Spacey. He's not one of my favorite actors, as it happens, but he is into my favorite films and I really I like him very much, but I'm not going to go so far as to recommend Kevin Spacey to anybody on this podcast. But as it happens, he's in this film, Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alan Arkin - who is amazing, Ed Harris. Every  person in this movie is fantastic. There's one woman, but she's just in the background, is very much a man movie. It's just angry, frustrated, cursing men.
 
Leah Jones  46:27
1992
 
 
Matthew David 46:28
Yeah, it is It stands the test of time, but it's very dated. In that it's men selling land by cold calling prospects. And the play actually took place in the early 80s, I believe. So they needed to even move up the timing when they filmed it. So there's a lot of phone calls, there are payphones in the movie. It's  very much a product of its time. But the characterizations and the frustrations and the motivations are timeless. Basically just people having a really shitty two days, partly of their own making.
 
Leah Jones  47:13
And then but specifically, you love the last 10 minutes. We confirmly go into the spoilers on this movie is, 1992 to 2002. So it's almost 30 years.
 
Matthew David 47:28
If you haven't seen it.
 
Leah Jones  47:31
That’s impossible because I went and graduated high school in 1995, which was no more than 15 years ago. How 1992 was 30 years ago.
 
Matthew David 47:41
Yeah, the math doesn't line up. But let's not worry about that, right now. The main conflict of the movie is that these salesmen are having these new leads sort of dangled before them. And they're all having a hard time making sales and closing sales, and they're all afraid that they're going to lose their job. Ed Harris's character is probably the angriest of all of them. And he essentially decides that he and one of the other salesmen should burglarize their office and steal these new leads and make it look like random burglary. And they're going to take these new leads, and they're going to sell them to a competitor, who will then also hire them. So there's a bit of a twist in the movie because you  see and hear Ed Harris's character, Dave Moss, enlisting Alan Arking’s character, George  to go in with him on this. And that's one of the major scenes and that's one of the three scenes of Act One of the play, essentially their conversation in which Dave convinces or tries to convince George to be his partner in this burglary. And the second half of the play is the following morning when it becomes apparent that the office has been burglarized, and the leads have been stolen. So now it's a mystery, who did it because you know that the only thing you do know is that it Harris's character, didn't do it, but you don't know who did it. And you have a lot of reason to suspect that Alan Arking’s character, didn't do it. Throughout the movie, Jack Lemmon’s character, Shelley, The Machine Levene is very, very dismissive and abusive of Kevin Spacey, his character who is the office manager. And this is just an incredible performance by Jack Lemmon. It's just you watch this and you can't believe that any of these men are acting like this is beyond acting. It's like the way you felt, watching Heath Ledger play the Joker. There's a moment when everybody else feels like an actor, but they're acting with the Joker. Every actor, every person in Glengarry Glen Ross is a real person, you forget that, you know these people from other movies, they are their characters and it's completely immersive. And there's a moment at the very end of the movie in essentially the last 10 minutes and it may be even later than that, when Jack Lemmon has just paraded Kevin Spacey’s character and he's  just given him shit for ruining Al Pacino’s sell. And he says, he has this throwaway line. He says, you should know if you're going to make something up, you'd better be sure that it helps. And Kevin Spacey is just kind of not even listening to Jack Lemmon. He's kind of just looking off to the side. And then, in this incredible moment of acting, he just refocuses his eyes. He just looks from the floor to Jack Lemmon who's in the distance and he's kind of like looking right past the viewer. And you see, it clicks in his mind. He realizes that Jack Lemons character that Shelley just said the wrong thing and revealed all and it all falls into place into Kevin Spacey’s character mind. And he realizes that the only way Jack Lemmon  character would know that Kevin Spacey’s character had made something up, was if he had robbed the office. And he just looks up and he says, How do you know I made it up. And then there's this immediate switch in Jack Lemons  character's whole demeanor. And he gets completely flustered and says what are you talking about? And Kevin Spacey very slowly and very deliberately says, how do you know, I made it up? And then he spells out exactly for Shelley where all the pieces fit and, and explains exactly why the only way Shelley would know that he had just made something up was if he had been in the office last night, robbing the place and it just turns the entire movie on his head. And everything just it's a mystery solved. It gives me chills every time. And even  in the play a few years ago, I picked up a copy of the play as a book. And I keep it in my bedroom and I will read it just every so often, if I'm not watching the movie, I'm reading the play and that moment still gets me it clearly, it doesn't have the same effect as just words on a page. As watching Kevin Spacey delivered these lines and Jack Lemmon but in a movie that's just an hour and a half or two hours of just phenomenal performances. This moment is just the top of the mountain. Sometimes this is bizarre, but sometimes I will just watch those 10 minutes. Yeah, I will just watch that end of the movie.
 
Leah Jones  53:51
I don't think that's a weird.
 
Matthew David 53:52
Good and also are you familiar with Ghostbusters?
 
Matthew David 54:09
And we're back.
 
Leah Jones  54:10
And we're back.
 
Matthew David 54:11
Should we tell people about Ronnie now?
 
Leah Jones  54:14
We will. But before we get there, I would like to time travel. What was your first interaction with this movie or play? Did you see it in the theater?
 
Matthew David 54:25
I don't remember.
 
Leah Jones  54:26
It just always was.
 
Matthew David 054:28
Yeah, but I think, it wasn't because when you reminded me just now of when it came out? I definitely did not see it. Then. What do you say? 1992. I was, I had just begun college. And I don't remember, I have no idea and I also don't know, why I would have seen it. It doesn't seem like the kind of movie that I would have been interested in for a long time. It very well might have been a recommendation from a friend. I probably had no idea who David Mamet was. And I had never read any of his other plays. I recently, probably at the beginning of the pandemic, read all of his plays. Okay, at least a lot of them. I went to the library and grabbed everything I could. I'm sorry, David. I got them at the library.
 
Leah Jones  55:22
Authors from what I see love libraries.
 
Matthew David 55:25
Yes libraries are terrific. So, David Mamet's not making any money off of me. But the only other movie of his, that I've seen, I think is the Spanish Prisoner. Although I believe, he wrote a movie that most people don't know that he wrote. Except, I don't remember, what it was. So you're looking it up now. I can hear you typing.
 
Leah Jones  55:48
The Untouchables. The Postman Rings.  Wag the dog, Hannibal.
 
Matthew David 55:54
David Mamet very accomplished writer, playwriter, screenwriter. And but  I did not see it when it first came out. And I don't think, I ever saw him in the theater. And so, I do not know. And it would be nice. It would be fun for me to remember. Or maybe have my memory jogged and know why I first saw it but I think, I loved it as soon as I saw it, it was unlike, it still is unlike almost any other movie out there. It's all everybody talks about how it's all dialogue. It's just all talking and it's very in that regard is very different from most movies today, at least that that are wildly popular. There's no special effects.
 
Leah Jones  56:40
Right, it’s not even like multiple set pieces.
 
Matthew David 56:45
It's it takes place in a Chinese restaurant, in an office. And again, a lot of it on pay phones. And the dialogue as much as David Mamet is known for his dialogue, the dialogue is not realistic. People don't talk the way David Mamet characters talk, but it's so much fun to watch them and listen to them talk the way they do. That it doesn't matter.  I mean, we watch movies all the time.
 
Leah Jones  57:17
[Not Audible] and  Sherman Palladino,  You don't always want to watch shows with people talking the way you talk. Sometimes you want to watch elevated wordplay and like highly structured. Like, I am big pentameter. You want to watch things with rhythm and vocabulary that you don't grasp in everyday life.
 
Matthew David 57:40
Absolutely. And there's a lot of crosstalk, especially in scenes with Ed Harris and Alan Arkin. There's, a terrific scene with him at a Donut shop and a coffee shop. And Alan Arkin, he's very much a secondary character. He stills the scene, his speech pattern steals the scene, the way he keeps trying to, I guess, get a word in edgewise with Ed Harris, but he doesn't really have anything to say. So he's just delivering these half lines or these single words at a time. And it's very well done and very specialized. I think that's not the word, I would have chosen. But it's very specialized dialogue and ends very virtuosic.
 
Leah Jones  58:40
Precise.
 
Matthew David 58:41
It is.
 
Leah Jones  58:41
David Mamet is not going to, I think, allow people to riff on his word.
 
Matthew David 58:48
I don't think there was much improvising, going on is very strict. But because it serves a purpose. You really you can't break like, each character is very, very well defined, and the way they talk and what they're, what they're talking about, and their motivations, and I think you can't stray far from that. And also, it's clear, if you read the play that it's, he clearly took what he had written, translated it and then flushed it out with more of the same. Fortunately, it's so good that more of the same is more of a good thing.
 
Leah Jones  59:25
Did you know that he wrote a Torah commentary with Rabbi Kushner of the wicked son?
 
Matthew David 59:33
I did not. Maybe I did. But like so many things that were touching upon I forgotten.
 
Leah Jones  59:39
Right. So Ronnie, who we have mentioned, people who listen to the podcast regularly have heard about because he accompanied me on many of the shenanigans of having cancer. He was often along for the ride.
 
Matthew David 59:57
I knew that.
 
Leah Jones  59:58
He was my original hospital husband, which is people that took me to the hospital. Any man who went with me to the hospital was immediately turned into my husband by the nurses. And any woman who took me to the hospital was not immediately upgraded to wife. So it was just funny. So I made people that said, today's hospital husband, so that they could claim the role, that they were.
 
Matthew David 1:00:31
I know that while this was nothing that Ronnie would ever want to do. I know that it was something that he was proud to be able to do and glad to be able to do for you. Even if nobody wants to have to do that.  And you probably, can't do better than Ronnie, which is not to disparage any of your other husbands or hospital sisters or what have you. But…
 
Leah Jones  1:00:56
My hospital husbands and Sister Wives.
 
Matthew David 1:00:59
So I know, Ronnie and I went to college together and I've known Ronnie for 27 years. And I may officially make this the last time that I say this, because it's getting a bit old. But Ronnie and I did not like each other, when we first met. And we reminisce about this. And I think as the years have gone by, especially the most recent years, I think both gotten a little tired of remembering that we didn't like each other when we first met.  So we've been very much moving the emphasis from that mutual dislike to how good friends we are. How do I want to say that? What good friends, we are now. And Ronnie is, this may be where Ronnie finds out about this. But Ronnie is one of my best friends. Ronnie would be anyone's best friend. And the problem was, when we first met, he was probably the best friend of the guy that I want it to be my best friend. So we were essentially competing for the attentions of a mutual friend.
 
Leah Jones  1:02:15
Have you now ousted the middle guy? And now you're just friends with each other.
 
Matthew David 1:02:19
No, we're all friends. But Ronnie and I probably do keep in touch more. But the three of us are all very good friends. And in fact, the three of us got together last summer with two other friends, two female friends of ours, five of us got together. Not this past summer, but the summer before, they all came out to Long Island where I am. It was very convenient for me. Not so much for them. But you know,
 
Leah Jones  1:02:43
You are the person who lives on an island.
 
Matthew David 1:02:47
I live in an island and island of 6 million but still.  We all got an Airbnb, and Ronnie's brother happened to be in the neighborhood. So it worked out very well for Ronnie. Ronnie got to see friends and family. And we all got to see Ronnie and yes, that mutual friend. We've all been friends for 27 years since we started college and Ronnie and our friend Brad were two of my first friends in college and I don't  remember when the shift took place because again, we're not we're not focusing on that.
 
Leah Jones  1:03:19
You are not focusing on that, I have heard stories of pun competition. Like a pun. Pun off maybe. And I don't know, if that means might just be the life, that might just be the story of your friendship. Is there a lot of puns, lot of work.
 
Matthew David 1:03:35
There are. There is a lot of wordplay and Ronnie and I make a lot of puns, a lot of wordplay in our emails, in our chats, and texts and Ronnie calls me every year on my birthday. He is the only person besides my mom.  Ronnie does that. He's a caller.
 
Leah Jones  1:03:55
He has a caller and he is a birthday…
 
Matthew David 1:03:57
No, he's excellent at remembering birthdays. And I think this year might be the first time, I didn't let it go to voicemail. Because I felt, he finally earned it. He'd been calling me so many years and I've been just pretending not to be near my phone for so long. This podcast might be the end of our friendship as it turns out, we had a good run, Ronnie. We had a really good run. So but   Ronnie is great. And at some point, Ronnie became someone that I would send every new thing that I've written to. He is one of my first readers. And he's an excellent first reader. In fact, just to loop back a little bit, Ronnie was at first didn't want to but then realized, he had to point out a problem with an earlier version of Odder Space. There was something a bit sensitive, that the details aren't important, but he was on the fence about whether to bring it up or not. And I'm glad he did, because it's a much better book for not just blowing past it, but hanging a lantern or putting a hat on this topic. And that's the only thing that might be considered, one of those more serious things. But it's still, it doesn't elevate it to any territory. But there's a little bit of a life slash history lesson that  it's not dwelt upon, but it is touched upon. And it was, Ronnie, and another one of our friends from that group of five who really made me think about it. And it was a little eye opening because I was kind of treating something a little flippantly. And I was glad that they didn't take offense. But they said, hey, someone could, and maybe don't present it this way. And it was fairly easy. Not that I wouldn't have done it, if it weren't easy, but it was the the solution presented itself pretty readily take this and turn it into a learning moment. And I was very, I still am really grateful that he did not say anything for fear of like bugging me. I mean, he probably remembered Hey, this guy used to hate me. So what's the worst that could happen now?
 
 
Leah Jones  1:06:43
It's always a risk.
 
Matthew David 1:06:45
I don't think, we're going to move backward. So Ronnie is a great guy. I strongly recommend Ronnie to everyone. So Glengarry Glen Ross, and then call Ronnie at 1888, Ronnie.
 
Leah Jones  1:07:05
It's my birthday. . He will always call on your birthday.
 
Matthew David 1:07:15
I'd love to tell something embarrassing about Ronnie, but I don't  know anything embarrassing about Ronnie. I don't know that he's ever shared anything embarrassing about him. He probably must have. But I probably filter that out and I just think of it only glowing terms.
 
Leah Jones 1:07:42
I think the other thing to wrap it up that I'm curious about and we're going to hold some that you're going to come back. Are you excited? Bands with Letters for names specifically REM ecstasy and TMGB ?
 
Matthew David 1:08:00
They Might Be Giants.  So one, that's a little bit of a cheat because we call them TMBG. But really, it's They Might Be Giants. So the rule of three, you got to have a third. But I don't  specifically like bands with names that are letters. It just  happens that three of my favorite bands. And it has been this way for a long time, our REM, XTC, and They Might Be Giants. And again, nobody needs me to tell them about any of these bands. If you're going to go discover REM because of me telling you then there's a problem. That said, if you are not familiar with REM, XTC, or They Might Be Giants, please do check them out. And I will say this
 
Leah Jones  1:08:51
I am very much realizing XTC is [Not Audible]. Who is a female Hip Hop band, I thought it was?
 
Matthew David 1:08:58
The female hip hop at TLC?  I'm a fan of TLC, but not in the way.
 
Leah Jones  1:09:06
Now I just want you to go into my brain and replace XTC with TLC and see how what an interesting mix of music it was, when it was REM, TLC and They Might Be Giants, as your top three bands, on everything we knew already about Mamet and just how confused that was.
 
Matthew David 1:09:27
Which is not to say that we don't sometimes ask Alexa to play TLC, which I might actually just have inadvertently done by saying that. Fortunately, I'm far enough away from the speaker that you won't hear them but no, XTC was a band from the late 70s, well into the early 90s, which started out as five guys and gradually was whittled down to two. Most people, if they know anything about XTC know the songs Making Plans for Nigel, which was probably their biggest hit, although I don't think it was their best song, and Dear God, or The Ballad of Peter Pumpkin Head or the Mayor of Simpleton. Okay, Leah, you have a lot of work to do. You might need to take tomorrow off from work.
 
Leah Jones  1:10:25
Okay, here's Making Plans for Nigel.
 
Matthew David 1:10:28
Yes.
 
Leah Jones  1:10:37
So in 2016, it ranked 143 on pitchforks list of the 200 best songs of the 1970s. So did it have a maybe a second?
 
Matthew David 1:10:53
I don't know that XTC had a resurgence. They've pretty much been defunct since, I want to say, very early 2000s.  And they're not coming back. Again, by the end, it was just two of them. And I'm pretty sure that the two of them don't speak anymore. But the engine behind the XTC was always, a man named Andy Partridge. I believe he turns 70. In fact, there was just an article in The Guardian, I think it was an interview with him catching up with him and what
 
Leah Jones  1:11:34
November 11th  was his birthday.  He'll be 69.
 
Matthew David 1:11:37
So he will be 70 next year. Andy Partridge is the main songwriter and the lead singer and he is just a gift. And he's got some, I don't know, there was something about his politics a few years ago that got him into a little bit of trouble and I've kind of turned a blind eye deaf ear to what his politics are. I don't know for certain that they're not in line with mine. And I don't want to know. I confess to being willfully ignorant. Because I simply do not want to have to be unhappy with the man, I think is the greatest songwriter that we've ever had, was the greatest modern day English songwriter. I don't know many others in other languages, but
 
Leah Jones  1:12:38
He has Synesthesia , which is always interesting to talk to people about.
 
Matthew David 1:12:42
Yes. I can't speak to his Synesthesia. It sounds kind of purple to me. But Ronnie, you'll appreciate that.
 
Leah Jones  1:12:52
I missed the drum, way, way. Wait, it sounds can't wait.  Where is it?  I going to  find it.
 
Matthew David 1:12:58
Tell me when it's queued up. I can't speak to Andy Partridges Synesthesia. All sounds purple to me.
 
Leah Jones  1:13:11
A little bit of a lag, doesn't need a one second.
 
Matthew David 1:13:15
We could have heard all of Making Plans for Nigel to get that time. But are we talking about purple? I like purple. Or do you guys know about purple? It's a big color.
 
Leah Jones  1:13:28
Yeah, a big fan of purple before I went to Northwestern, but like the more after.
 
Matthew David 1:13:32
It’s a charming color, it’s deep, deep purple. So Andy Partridge XTC, love them really sophisticated songwriting. And I think a few years ago, I started making a list of what I thought were the best pop or rock lyrics, song lyrics, and I came up with such gems as like, doo doo doo doo by the police, dadada.  But I think, the first prize goes to Andy Partridge for a lyric in the song, The man who murdered love, which might have been on their last album, either their last or second to last. And the line is, it's the middle of the song. In the middle of the song right about at the instrumental break, he sings it's the middle of the song. Genius, songwriting genius. And it's subtle. It's not easy to hear. And once I realized that  what he was saying, that was just that took it to a ticket to David my Mission proportions. David met Median levels.
 
Leah Jones  1:14:53
When we were kids, when we would our grandparents retired to Texas so we would drive from Indiana to Texas to see them.
 
Matthew David 1:15:01
Just to clarify, not our grandparents, yours and mine. We don't have any grandparents in common?
 
Leah Jones  1:15:07
Not that we know of.
 
Matthew David 1:15:08
Correct. So you and someone else used to drive to Texas to see your grandparents.
 
Leah Jones  1:15:14
To the Jones, drive to Texas.
 
Matthew David 1:15:18
Was everybody behind you trying to keep up with you?
 
Leah Jones  1:15:21
Especially in the years when we drove a hearse to Texas.
 
Matthew David 1:15:24
Really?  You should have a podcast.
 
Leah Jones  1:15:28
And so we're looking at the Atlas. Because it was map, paper Atlas, You drove cross country at the time. And we kept joking that we were about to get to the staple. We're going to get to the staple in the map. And  when we got there, we passed a ranch, whose gate looked like a staple.  It was so we were like, we're at the staple . And we looked over and there was a gigantic staple in front of a ranch.
 
Matthew David 1:16:00
And if that's the sort of thing that you would do on purpose. If you knew that there was if there was one Atlas, or one map that most people had, the Rand McNally Road  Atlas.  And you saw that you had the property that was by the staple, I would have to do that.  Like there's almost no amount of money that I wouldn't spend. There's no such thing as too much money to spend on that joke.
 
Leah Jones  1:16:26
It's a great joke. And we, I mean, it has been,  I don't know how many years?  So 30 years ago, I was 15. So, oh, my God, probably like 35 years ago.
 
Matthew David 1:16:44
Wow.
 
Leah Jones  1:16:47
It was really in that to me is at the level of it's the middle of the song,  Where's this staple in the Atlas? And you'd look up and you see a literal giant staple, like it's
 
Matthew David 1:16:57
It’s the Swing line wrench. It's like you press button on patronizing laughter. Hit that clip. He's telling a joke here.
 
Leah Jones  1:17:16
Just keeps going. It goes too long. Like the drum joke starts too late. And the lighting just goes too long.
 
Matthew David 1:17:22
Did you pay for these? These sound clips?
 
Leah Jones  1:17:27
They came with it. I paid for Riverside  as a service. And these are the bonuses. I feel like these are bonuses. Well, Matthew, this has been fun.
 
Matthew David 1:17:39
This has been a laugh riot. No, I've thoroughly enjoyed this. And I look forward to recording our next episode tomorrow. And our third one tomorrow afternoon.
 
Leah Jones  1:17:48
Great. In between, I will go vote. I tried to vote.
 
Matthew David 1:17:53
Oh, that's a good plan.
 
Leah Jones  1:17:55
I did try to vote.
 
Matthew David 1:18:01
Try harder now.
 
Leah Jones  1:18:02
I will. I got there. And it was an hour wait for early voting.
 
Matthew David 1:18:06
That's interesting. I was just talking to someone before this session about voting and waiting in lines. And I don't think in all my years of voting,  I'm in my late 40s, so I've been voting for like two or three years. And in all my years of voting, I don't remember ever having to wait on election day. Maybe I've just gotten very lucky or  I lived in very efficient places. But I know that  of course, waiting in lines, and especially in rural places and other places around the country can be a significant problem and is a significant problem. And I realized that this is maybe just where I've lived on Long Island in New Jersey and Boston, but I've never had to wait, if there's ever been a wait, it was just a couple of people. And I've never felt like, it was a shore or I was going to be here for a long time. And I had to make a decision about, is this how I wanted to spend my time? And only recently have I been thinking about that as a problem for people like you've been waiting in line an hour, that's an hour out of your day. And a lot of people don't have an hour to just stand there waiting to do something that takes 30 seconds. As important as it is, there's  an analysis you have to do and I've never factored that in. I've also never, I've also always thought of it as something that's so important that it doesn't matter if I have to wait. I'm going to wait.
 
Leah Jones  1:19:35
Yeah, I agree, if I have to wait, I'm going to wait. It's a beautiful sunny day in Chicago today, which is great. It's great weather for voting, it is great weather to get out of the house. And I went to an early voting site, and  I was truly everybody who got there was like, Whoa, this is the Whoa, right?  And so I can just get up early on Tuesday and go across the street to my precinct and just vote. Get in and out. 15 minutes. But it's also the first time, I voted since I have not. I can't. I can no longer stand for an hour like as I regain my strength after chemotherapy, like I can't actually stand in line for an hour, and I had my cane, but I have like, Birkenstocks on and I just like didn't think through.  Like, do I have the best shoes on? Do I have like a little stool with me? Like, I didn't think through what I needed to have with me to safely wait in line for an hour?
 
Matthew David 1:20:37
Sure. I think at this point, we will wind up voting on Tuesday, because I believe, we're going to vote at our children's school. And we're going on for parent teacher conferences. I mean, this is all designed this way. The schools out kids will be with us. We're going in for two conferences. We vote there. It's all actually very convenient.  And I don't imagine that we're going to have to wait. But if we do, we do. And  we did. We meant to vote early. But we kept not voting early. But, that runs out on Tuesday anyway, so  by Tuesday, we will have voted.
 
Leah Jones  1:21:23
Yeah, the good news is I did my cheat sheet because we have to vote for Judge Retention in Chicago and it's very confusing.  And in general, retain him, except for these five. But it's five out of 40. So you like going to find their names.
 
Matthew David 1:21:40
Wow. We don't  have that here in New York. At least I don't believe we do.  Caller I might correct. No. So yeah, no, it's a little simpler. But that, I don't I've never needed to really prepare much in advance. I'm pretty much an across the board in a straight line.
 
Leah Jones  1:22:01
Yeah, I am to the things I want to understand are there's like an amendment on the ballot, like the things that are always written to, to make you vote the opposite way that you believe. So I wanted to make sure I knew the right. Yeah, the vote and correctly on those.
 
Matthew David 1:22:20
Yes, that's important. And that's not enough people take that time. That's exactly as you say, there's a way to work things so that it takes advantage of the fact that people are not preparing in advance. And, back of the ballot may not even like, my wife and I were just talking that  there is one proposition on our ballot that we will need to remember to turn the piece of paper over for. And that's a lot of work. I mean, imagine having to wait in line and turn your piece of paper over. Come on. I could be doing other things. I could be watching Glengarry Glen Ross or listening to TLC.
 
Leah Jones  1:22:58
So Matthew David Brozik, The novel is Odder Space. It's available now on Amazon in print or digital. We want people to get print to see those nice, nice chapter headings.  Do you want people to keep up with you online? How do you want people to  know about you in the future?
 
Matthew David 1:23:16
I haven't been that. I don't know. I don't have that much to say or report on a day-to-day basis that most people would be interested in. Maybe if this book blows up as one of the spaceships does, then I'll need to. Funny thing is about two weeks ago, I had already shut down my personal Twitter account, not for to make any statement. I just got tired of it. And then about two weeks ago, in preparation for the launch of this book, I set up a new Twitter account. But I'm not even going to bother to tell you the handle because I literally have not posted one thing on it. So there's no reason to follow me in any meaningful way. I post on Facebook, I'm not doing anything on other social media. No, Insta, no TikTok. Because I'm not that interesting, If you don't know me. If you like to know more, you can always visit IMDB dot name and there's a link to send me an email. We can be email friends, and then they can become your birthday friend. And my phone number is 516. Now that's all you're getting. You already know I live on Long Island. So I got that. Tony 516 area code.
 
Leah Jones  1:24:55
Very fancy.  Well, my cat cowboy has John Time to my computer to tell me, it's I believe dinnertime or something with the time change. But Matthew, this has been a delight. Thank you so much.
 
Matthew David 1:25:06
Likewise. Thank you.
 
Announcer  1:25:08
Thank you for listening to Finding Favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five-star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your favorite things.

Author Eden Robins loves the Neverending Story

Chicago-based author Eden Robins is celebrating the launch of her debut novel this week and came on Finding Favorites to discuss her favorite book - The Neverending Story. When Franny Stands Up will be available on Tuesday, November 1, 2022 and is available for pre-order.
Follow Eden Robins online @edenrobins on Twitter and MonkeyThumbs.com
Follow @findingfavspod on Instagram and Twitter. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts
53:00 We enter Spoiler Country
59:15 Exit Spoiler Country
Early 2 Bed
Tuesday Funk
Anne K Yoder
Robbie Q Telfer
Hardback Folio edition of The Neverending Story?
All editions of The Neverending Story on Amazon
Neverending Story IMDB
Save Bell Bowl Prarie
Good Night, Oscar
Why birds do what they do

Benjamin Niespodziany: Intro to Surrealism

Chicago-based poet Benjamin Niespodziany, aka Neon Pajamas, joined Leah to talk about Surreal art including TV, movies, books and paintings. On the fly he designed a four-week community class on surreal appreciation that I think we would all enjoy taking. (Please run it on Zoom, Benjamin!)
His debut collection NO FARTHER THAN THE END OF THE STREET is available through Okay Donkey and already showing up in mailboxes around the country.
Follow Benjamin online everywhere as Neon Pajamas.
NeonPajamas.com
Twitter @neonpajamas
Show Notes
Surreal films: Borgman, Holy Motors, The Truman Show
Surreal TV: Atlanta, Maniac, Perpetual Grace LTD
Surreal books: Zachary Schomburg, GennaRose Nethercott, CAConrad
Surreal artists: Leonora Carrington, Wenyi Geng, Rhea, Raysa Fontana
Smino
Farther vs Further
Affect vs Effect
Fewer vs Less
The Truman Show
James and the Giant Peach
Edward Scissorhands
Jasper Fforde
EDtv
The_Real_World_(TV_series)
Big_Brother_(franchise)
Survivor (franchise)
The_Truman_Show
WandaVision
House_of_Leaves
Lobster
The Patriot
​​The Act of Killing
 
Surreal Art Benjamin_mixdown
1:22:49
SPEAKERS
Announcer, Leah Jones, Benjamin Niespodziany
 
00:00
Hello, my name is Benjamin Niespodziany, and my favorite thing is to surrealism.
 
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. It is fall, which means it's my favorite season, the season of new books and authors. So I am very happy this week to be talking with Benjamin Niespodziany. I'm so happy tonight to be talking with Benjamin Niespodziany ahead of his debut of his full-length collection No Farther Than The End Of The Street, which is releasing with Okay Donkey Press in November. Benjamin, how are you doing tonight?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 00:58
Doing all right. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited, very nervous and terrified for my book to be out in the world. But I'm also equally as euphoric and  giddy to see it out there. So yeah, thank you for having me and chatting with me tonight.
 
Leah Jones  01:10
Yeah. How long has this book been in the works?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 01:15
Well, I think at this point, close to four years. I think the oldest piece in the book is probably 2018. And then a lot of them were written in 2019, and 2020. And then during lockdown, I was really able to sit with all of them, and fine tune them and  tinker with them and make them all into one cohesive narrative. So, quarantined didn't allow for too much free writing, because I felt like my brain was mush. But I was really able to  look at what I'd already written and work on some edits, and really fine tune and stuff. So it allowed for a lot of great editing practice. So, yeah!
 
Leah Jones  01:49
And this is a book of poetry and micro flash. Micro flash. That is, overall is a story together or are they of a theme?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 02:01
Yeah, it's all  one. I guess cinematic universe as the Marvel fans tend to say, but the idea of the book is taking a little bit off of inspiration from the movies The Truman Show and from Pleasantville, where it's this artificial container where you're boxed into this little area. So the whole entirety of the book takes place on one long street. Every poem is either in the front of the person's yard, or in the backyard, or in their basement or down the street, seeing a neighbor. But it never strays further than the one neighborhood city block. But each piece doesn't nest, it's not necessarily like chapter one and then chapter two, the next day, it's  just a scatterbrain fragments and vignettes and little postcards and snapshots of this  neighborhood happening. And by the end, you get a 360 idea of what's really going on. So there's a little bit of a of a narrative arc and a little bit of  a thread through line. But it's also sparse and little short told and story short snippets. So, I don't know if it's a poem, or micro fiction, or flash fiction or prose poetry. It's all just everything rolled into one.
 
Leah Jones  03:09
That's really exciting. So did you realize during lockdown when you started to edit that these were all happening near each other? Or was there a point earlier in the writing process? When it came clear to you that these all these pieces were related geographically?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 03:31
I think it did happen during lockdown. I think I had so many different drafts and so many different ideas and sketches. So I started clumping everything together, either by theme or by surroundings, or by tone of voice. So I started realizing, oh, there's a lot of pieces that take place in the house, there's a lot of pieces that take place in a front yard. I have a lot of faith-based pieces and faith-based poems and weird nuns and priests. So that's  on a separate project. I have other ones that feel more like folkloric and woodland and fairytale style. So that was in a different folio. So these ones all started talking to each other, and I realized how they might work. And then once the idea blossomed after having them all together in 2020 - 2021, then I started  really creating that restraint for myself and that constraint where, okay, let's have this be in a front yard. Oh, this one contains an airplane or an airstrip. So let's have that be in the backyard. I really wanted to make sure that I wasn't compromising and getting rid of certain pieces if they didn't fit. But I also wanted to make sure that I could move around the language and move around some of the pieces even if they've been published online, just changing the story a little bit to make sure that they all have that same voice throughout.
 
Leah Jones  04:43
Here's one of the big conversations I've had over COVID Just I had a lot of fire pits and a lot of weird conversations with my friends. Do you have an internal monologue. Do you hear your own voice in your head?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 05:06
I think so. I think I do.
 
Leah Jones  05:09
And can you see images in your mind's eye?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 05:13
Yes, definitely.
 
Leah Jones  05:14
So can you when you read this, you imagine a street that you walk down as you go through the poems?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 05:21
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, by the time the book was finished, I really had an idea of  what the area looks like. The backyard, it goes into some abstract depths where there's a well, and there's a whale inside of the well. And there's a really big backyard where there's a tarmac for planes to land. So the backyard is almost an infinity space. And then I have a very clear picture of the front yard and  how long the street extends. But the inside of the house is very much a question mark. And I feel like each piece would be a weird morphing of that house where I think like halfway through the book, I mentioned something about the basement and the you character, the book is saying – “Oh, we had a basement?” Like didn't even know, until that point. So it's always  morphing and changing. But I think with each piece, I really gravitate toward the visual and focus on that image driven piece. So I think my photographic memory are seeing that image, or like one of them is based around a hollow tooth. So I really wanted to focus in on the idea of there being something inside of a tooth, and it ends up being a little written down little message wrapped up in some scroll, like parchment inside of the tooth. But almost all my pieces  start with a weird, strange, off kilter image. And then from there, maybe I developed a little bit more of the description, a little bit more than narrative, but very rarely do I have, dialogue or conversation that starts. It's almost always an image.
 
Leah Jones  06:41
If you want to ruin or make a dinner party more exciting, ask people that question. It just takes one person who either if everyone at the table has an inner monologue but one person, or everyone, nobody has like a mind's eye, but you're the only one with it, trying to understand how other people experience their inner world when it is silent or blank. Which doesn't mean they don't have feelings and thoughts and visions. It's like how they access them as different. We would talk about it for hours around the fire all of the pandemic.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 07:29
That sounds very terrifying. The idea of there just being that endless silence when you think about the ongoing thoughts of your head. I mean, going for a walk and not taking your headphones and listen to anything, I automatically imagine that I'm going to start talking to myself or having some type of reflection and some type of conversation in my head. But the idea of it being completely silent is that's like a horror film, which I guess is perfect for mid-October. But it's like, oh my gosh, if it was just a vacant space of just nothingness. I feel like my brain is constantly talking to myself, I'm constantly, I can't get myself to shut up. So the other opposite would be really interesting.
 
Leah Jones  08:04
Yeah. But they don't feel. I also have like a very, you know, I have like, inner monologue. I'm working on my responses to you. I have a soundtrack. Sometimes it's a looping. Like sometimes it's four measures on loop and sometimes like it's a whole, like it's the whole Hamilton cast recording. Sometimes it's just one line. So I always have it's a cacophony and talking to people and trying to understand how they experience understanding their own emotions or how they think about even just like how do you know when it's time to go to the bathroom? I  need to go the bathroom. I should. I should go to the bathroom soon. I'm feeling an urge, right? And they're just in my one of my best friends who lives upstairs. It's like, No, you just suddenly know that's what you need to do. And you do it and I'm like, I don't understand.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:07
You read you read your own mind without any communication or conversation.
 
Leah Jones  09:11
Yeah. Cowboy has really [Not audible].
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:16
Maybe they have more of a self-awareness, I guess, than we do. Where we're constantly talking to ourselves and thinking. Can’t get ourselves to be quiet.
 
Leah Jones  09:25
Yeah, it's wild. So your publicist also told me that you run the site Neon Pajamas?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:34
I do. Yes.
 
Leah Jones  09:35
Is that a collaborative site? Or is it this Is it where you share your work with people?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 09:42
Yeah, it's where I share my work. It's completely me, 100% me. My last name, as you've noticed, is very difficult to pronounce. So I had a friend in middle school who his dad couldn't pronounce Niespodziany, so, Neon Pajamas was the alternative for some reason that was created. I don't know why. So my friend's dad is the one for that name. But I started, from a very early age, I was really into music and really into message boards. So I was constantly doing little movie review write ups and music, write ups, even like, 14, 15, 16 years old. And then as it  progressed, my handle or my username that just continued throughout my years was Neon Pajamas. And I gave it a shot with SoundCloud, doing curated little mixes, trying to make instrumental projects, I had some projects where I would do long mixes under Neon Pajamas, or the occasional DJ set on Neon Pajamas. And all the while I was always  blogging for other websites or doing interviews for another website or doing contract work for another platform. And there'll be so many pieces that would  fall by the wayside, Oh, I really liked that book, or I really liked that movie. And it's not getting picked up, or I have too much to do on my own thing, I can't be pitching more and more stuff. So I just wanted to create a hub where I could share some of my own work, of course, but then also create this ongoing blog where I can talk to artists, and if there was a visual artist that I really liked, or if there was an author or musician, then I could had them on my platform to interview them as well. So the blog aspect of Neon Pajamas, it's fallen by the wayside a little bit, I still try to update it pretty frequently. But when I first started in maybe 2016, or 2017, it was about 90% music and then as the years have gone on, I got more into literature and more into poetry, more into collage art, more individual art. So there's a lot of coverage of multimedia as opposed to just music. Whereas I still cover music every once a while, but it's a lot more, I guess, diverse than it was five years ago when I started it.
 
Leah Jones  11:34
I mean, that's it. The wonderful thing about when you own this space, where you're publishing is that it can grow with you. Versus “No, this is your beat”, “We hired you for this beat. We don't care about your other opinions. We don't care how you’re growing.” As a critic, we only want your music opinions.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 11:55
I've done websites where it's yeah, just Hip-Hop blog, just hip-hop music. And that's great. For other we've done a little literary journals where it's just prose poems, and that's awesome. But my website is almost, I have no rules. I have no bosses, I have no one to report to if I want. If there's something that I'm reading on a Sunday, and I like to write about it, then three, four sentences, I post it, it's good to go. There's a lot less, not pressure, but it just seems a little bit more natural. Where there's nobody  I'm not taking submissions. I'm not getting stuff where people are saying, hey, we'd really love to for you to cover us on your blog. It's more so like, oh, that book was good. I'd like to not only put it on Goodreads, but also put it on my blog, or oh, I can't stop listening to this album. I'd love to write a paragraph about it.
 
Leah Jones  12:37
Yeah. What have you had on repeat lately, for music?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 12:43
Oh, my gosh. Everything.
 
Leah Jones  12:50
Stick iTunes and put it all on shuffle.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 12:54
I really like the hip-hop space, as well as  the instrumental Hip-Hop space. So I'm constantly listening to beats in the background. But I'm always looking for somebody new to listen to and some new projects. But another one that is actually not hasn't come out yet. So I can't say that I'm listening to it heavily. But there's a rapper from St. Louis, who came to Chicago and made it his own name -Smino. And his first project in four years comes out on the 28th. So I'm very, very excited for that project. It's been a long time coming. I feel like I'm still listening to his project from 2018. So I'm just really looking forward to him finally having some new music out. I think he was in a little bit of like label trouble and maybe there was some managerial stuff. But yeah, it's okay.  We need something new. And finally, it's coming. So.
 
Leah Jones  13:37
Nice. Now are you a St. Louis or Chicago person?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 13:41
I am in Chicago. Yes. I've been here for about nine years now.
 
Leah Jones  13:46
Oh, great. I'm here. I'm in Chicago too.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 13:48
Oh, okay. Where are you in Chicago?
 
Leah Jones  13:51
Ravenswood.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 13:52
Nice. Just a little bit north, I'm in Logan Square. So not too far further north from I guess too far farther north, the title of my book is “No Farther Than The End Of The Street”. And it was originally No Further Than The End Of The Street. And then we had to look up further versus farther to see which word was properly used. And I had no idea and it was always further but we learned that farther was actually more about distance. And further is more about after further investigation where it's a little bit more abstract. Whereas farther is down the street, down the way and further is, let's explore further whatever. Just made me think of that. I'm constantly correcting myself in my head now that I know the differentiation. I've gone this far in my life having no idea further versus farther. And I've talked to people about it, and no one really knew that unless you Google it.
 
Leah Jones  14:41
Yeah, and once you see it, you're like, right, there will be no further investigation. But yeah, you learn it by using it. But I couldn't have defined it. I would have looked at this and instead have been like ”No, I think this one should be farther” and I wouldn’t know why. The one I struggle with is fewer and less than. I think less than, less is if you can actually count the items and fewer is if you cannot count the items.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 15:22
Oh, okay, so fewer would be more of a guess.
 
Leah Jones  15:26
I think so. Okay, or it's exactly the opposite. And sometimes I just avoid, I just find a third word altogether. It's like an affect and effect. I generally know. But if push comes to shove, I will just find it out to use a different word.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 15:44
Right, exactly. It’s tricky. But yeah, the whole reason that I  had no further than the end of the street. That was the initial title is that I was using a quote from The Truman Show. And in The Truman Show, let me have here, they said, “You can't go any further away before you start coming back.” So I like that  that quote and that idea that you're stuck in this little loop, you can't really leave the street. But I even downloaded the screenplay to make sure and they just incorrectly had used further where it should have been farther. But I had it as an epigraph and I'm like, okay, well, they had it wrong. Do I let them like, do I acknowledge that there was a typo? Or do I just change my title? It was a very, very weird little surprise. I didn't expect when I first started writing this book.
 
Leah Jones  16:26
Well, you brought up the Truman Show, which to me is a great segue. Well, put a pin in that dear, when is the book available? And how can people buy it?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 16:39
So, the book, thank you. So the book comes out November 1st . And if you've already done pre orders, or pre, if you pre purchase it, then it's already getting shipped out. So I guess they're arriving this week, people have already started posting, I've been seeing like photos of people with the book in their hand. It just feels very, we're talking about surrealism later. But it feels very surreal, just to something that you've spent so much time on in a Word document or you get the occasional feedback from a friend, but to have this  complete book and you're like, wait a minute, that's in Connecticut right now and some guy’s reading it? It's just very strange. In a good way. But yeah, available November 1st  through Okay Donkey Press and then it's directly through their website. They have like a big cartel website that you can just buy it directly through them.
 
Leah Jones  17:18
Amazing. Are you going to have any launch events in Chicago or anything? Curating?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 17:25
You know, I've thought about it. Yeah, I've thought about maybe doing like a Zoom event and curating and having some friends read. I did a reading on Sunday that wasn't  related to the book, but just reading with some friends. And then this upcoming Wednesday, which I guess is tomorrow, I'm doing an in person reading at Easy Does It, which is a wine bar in Logan Square. I've never been there before. I had a friend that just was like “Hey, we're doing open mic, we can write your name or your name down.” “If you want to just read for five minutes.” So, I'm trying to do like little things like this, but I haven't had an official like quote unquote book launch or reading event. But I had another friend that read his book front to back on YouTube Live. So I thought that could  be an interesting thing. Maybe just set a nice ambiance, my backyard, have a nice drink. Just go through the book, and then maybe post it a few weeks after the release. Thinking about maybe doing that. But nothing's solidified yet.
 
Leah Jones  18:25
I asked people, as they're coming on to think about a favorite hobby, a favorite movie. Just an area topic that we can talk about and yours was surrealism, and  almost more specifically surreal films, TV. Let's start. Can you start with a brief definition. I like surrealism, it's Dolly and Rene Magritte. But I think there's more than that, because you've included The Truman Show, which I didn't think about as being surreal and I'm very excited to talk about. So let's start with how do you define that something is surreal? When do you know it's surreal?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 19:08
Anytime that reality is no longer the reality that we see when we walk down the street. So whether or not that means super in the future and post-apocalyptic or whatever it might be or somebody wakes up and instead of an arm, they have a tree branch. Or they wake up in their head falls off and rolls down the street. Or for Truman show’s example, everything's normal, everything's fine reality is as it seems, and then he realizes he's in a giant dome, and they're filming him. So it's not surrealism in the sense that it's artificial and fake. But it's surreal in the sense that what you think is reality is no longer your reality. So, anything that has people turning into different animals or people’s body parts turning into different objects, that’s always really fascinated me where you’re just the normal day to day is no longer there. If it's a book or a movie or a TV show, and it's, “Oh, this is exactly like how Chicago life feels”, then I have no interest in it because I can go walk down the street in Chicago. So those kinds of shows where it's hyper realistic have never really done much for my entertainment. But once I start to see like, oh, this person in a dream, or this person is really in this crazy rabbit hole of this weird investigation or whatever it might be, you know, a David Lynch film, for example, or Dolly, who you mentioned where these clocks are melting. That whole idea where something can always be a little bit off and a little bit strange, and your comfort level is not there and you're turning the corner expecting something weirder to happen. That's like, I'm hooked. I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm really interested. If it's like a, just a romance rom-com or something like that. That’s great. But it’s not going to like bring me to the page and get started writing or it’s not really going to inspire me or I don't know. But yeah, surrealism is always something that's just like the weird and the strange. I was thinking about having the word weird be my answer instead of surreal, but I think they both  go back and forth where things are just a little bit not what they seem.
 
Leah Jones  21:15
I will admit, surreal is easier to wrap my head around than talking about weird. So let's time travel. Do you remember the first whether it was you’re in an art class and you're being introduced to surreal art? Is it The Truman Show? Do you remember your first brush with surreal media that you were like, that really got you?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 21:49
Instantly, I'm thinking James in the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. I remember reading that book. And I remember that I think that was the first time that I can remember where I read a book and then I went and saw the movie. And it was the first time in my life where I'm watching the movie and I'm thinking, “Oh, that's not what the book did. Oh, this is different.” And for the first time, I'm like, finally, analyzing adaptation and maybe being really interested in that. But the overall idea just the idea of a Giant Peach and there being a bunch of people living inside of it, that, I mean, that's surrealism at its finest. All those movies Matilda, BFG when I was a child, those rolls on witches’ books were just huge Willy Wonka. All that stuff. Yeah.
 
 
Leah Jones  22:28
It never even occurred. I read all of those. I grew up on Roald Dahl. So and it never occurred to me that those are surreal. But they are absolutely!
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 22:38
yeah, if you looked at your window right now and saw a Giant Peach rolling down the street and a bunch of talking bugs living inside you think to yourself hey, that's not my normal reality.
 
Leah Jones  22:47
It's not normal, right. It's either a Roald Dahl invasion or a Richard Scarry invasion either which I want to investigate.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 22:57
But yeah, those Roald Dahl books are great examples of surrealism. And then I think when it was turned into a movie, I think it was the production company that had done like a brain saying, Yeah, my brain was saying Nightmare on Elm Street, but it's.. What's the Christmas?
 
Leah Jones  23:11
Oh, Nightmare Before Christmas.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 23:12
Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton.  Yeah, Edward Scissorhands. Exactly.
 
Leah Jones  23:19
I guess like Edward Scissorhands would be surreal also. Absolutely. Yeah. So highly stylized. And he has scissors for hands, right? Yeah. And it's set in this like, very, it's such a beautifully styled movie
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 23:35
It's like perfect pastels and  soft colors. And then just a strange Gothic man cutting edge clippers with his hands. I do think that a large part of surrealism, at least in the narratives and the books that I  gravitate toward is that rarely is the main character, or rarely are the central figures recognizing this as being strange. So it's not like “Oh, my gosh, there's a giant thing rolling down the hill, there's a Giant Peach.” It's not, there's no way that could happen. They're thinking, oh, there's a weird peach, this'll probably be on the news. Or someone wakes up and their arm is a tree stump. They're not saying there's no way this isn't possible, I'm dreaming. They're saying “Oh, my gosh, how can I fix this?” So the acknowledgement of the strange is often not there, you're often just accepting what's happening as reality and trying to either solve it or fix it, or embrace it. But a lot of these shows and movies where surrealism is really well done. It's almost like the surrealist element is seen as normal through the person's perspective. And then it's the audience that's saying, “Oh my gosh, this is so weird.” But the main character on a show like Atlanta, for example, is saying, this is perfectly normal. This is maybe weird, and I might be dreaming, but this is very much reality. And how do I get out of the situation? Or how do I monetize off this or whatever the episode might be about.
 
 
Leah Jones  24:52
So with that lens, is Metamorphosis by Kafka surreal or not? Because he knows right away something's wrong and he's trying, he doesn't want to be turning into a cockroach.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 25:05
Right. But yeah, it's definitely surrealism because there's no way that that could ever actually happen or maybe, right years and years in the future that get some weird science labs. But yeah, I think that Colin often they, you know, at least in like some of the prose poetry workshops I've done and some of the stuff where I’ve worked with other writers, they often encourage you to not draw too much attention to the surreal element because you’re over emphasizing and then it loses its magic. But I think with his example it’s such a shocking morning after reveal that you have to  pay freak out so it’s a great attention getter, but from the rest for the rest of the time that’s the reality and he has to accept it. But it's  a fine middle ground between calling too much attention to and freaking out or acting like it's perfectly normal and seeing other reader response.
 
Leah Jones  25:55
I want to talk about Truman Show, which maybe I've only seen once in the theater. I don't know, it was  before reality TV really existed. Truman Show for people who aren't haven't seen it yet. Spoilers. We’re entering spoiler country.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 26:22
24 years after the release date.
 
Leah Jones  26:25
So is The Truman Show. Did you get to see it in the theaters? Or is it something you got on you rented or you saw on TV for the first time?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 26:35
Yeah, I saw it in theaters. I remember seeing the commercial when I was, I was 10 years old and the movie came out in 1998. If anyone doesn't know what that when the movie came out. So, I was 10 years old and I remember thinking that Jim Carrey was just the funniest person on earth. I really liked Dumb and Dumber at the time. I loved The Mask. I loved Ace Ventura, I thought he was just hysterical. And then for anyone that seen The Truman Show, it's not that  comedy, it's a little bit darker, it's a little bit more surreal as we're talking. And he just plays a little bit more of a straight roll character, where he's not going off the rocker and doing crazy stuff. He's much more this domestic, almost like a Stepford wife, but for a guy, where he's just  going through the motions of this monotony and trying to escape. All the while, he thinks everything's perfectly normal. He's just  down and out on his luck and suburbia, but all the while he's inside of this giant, manmade dome, and every single waking moment that he or even when he's sleeping, every single moment is being filmed. And people at home are able to watch him sleep, or watch him go to a restaurant or watch him talk to his friends. It's 24/7 reality TV, of the life of Truman. And obviously the conflict becomes when he starts to try to escape this area, he tries to go on a vacation, and his plane keeps getting delayed, he's not able to leave. And he starts to slowly realize, okay, this might actually be a simulation, or this might be something is being put up, you start seeing the same car goes down my street every week at the same exact time. And he starts  losing his mind a little bit, because you're wondering, "am I dreaming? Is this real?” And that's where the surrealism seeps in. Because everything's perfectly fine. You're walking down the street, the neighborhood's normal, but under the surface, it's a complete, it's a complete production to complete Hollywood setup. And there's  the quote unquote, director is playing God, essentially. And it just gets more and more bizarre until the climax at the end. I don't want to give it away. I mean, I guess it's been 24 years, so maybe you shouldn't. But he does reach the limits of this quote, unquote set where he got it was his, you know, this is his whole world. He was born here. He knows nothing else besides a set. And it's maybe the size of maybe like a city, a city block or not a city block, but yeah, maybe the size of the city.
 
Leah Jones  28:42
But literally every other person is an actor knows they're an actor. That comes and goes right?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 28:52
Right. So they're encouraging him like, Oh, you don't need to take a trip to stay here. Or his wife is really getting him to change the flight so that he never actually realizes that they can't leave because you're in a dome. But ever get everyone's in. They know their roles. They know when they're supposed to be in the cafe. They know when his schedule is to be at work. So they have to be acting. Yeah, it's all everyone's in on it but Jim Carrey's character.
 
Leah Jones  29:14
There's an author, I reference a lot in this podcast, and that's Jasper Ford. You’ve ever read his books?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:23
I have not, no.
 
Leah Jones  29:25
So, he's got one series called The Thursday Next series. Thursday Next is a she's a book cop. She's the book police and she goes in and out of book world to solve crimes that happened to manuscripts. So the original book, the first book in the series is called the Air Affair. The manuscript of Jane Eyre has been stolen, and whatever edits are made to the manuscript impact all copies of Jane Eyre on the planet. But also, in book world, all characters live in the library, the Cheshire Cat is the librarian. And when your book is not being read, you can do whatever you want in book world. But as soon as someone gets to your page, you've got to be in the book.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:19
Oh, wow. And so if you have a really popular book, and you're really famous, then you're constantly working?
 
Leah Jones  30:25
Yes. But if your book is hasn't been read in 20 years, like you're a nosy neighbor,
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:32
Yeah, quote unquote, retired. Yeah. You're a nosy neighbor.
 
Leah Jones  30:37
Or you're at risk of being recycled into a new book.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:38
Oh, right. Like a reboot?
 
Leah Jones  30:42
Yeah. But I don't, I'm gonna have to rewatch the Truman Show. Because one, right, I saw it in 1998 and never revisited it. Reality TV, live streaming, what has gone from being very difficult. Like we watched reality TV and real world in those early seasons because that was the only way you could access that sort of information. But now everyone has a tiny computer that can live stream in their pocket. And access to people's created realities has shifted so much since 1990, since 98.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 31:32
Very true. And I think at the time, the only shows that were really  getting off the ground running were Survivor and Big Brother, I think those are the only reality shows that were really I don't even know what year those started. But they had to have been around the same time. And then I know that that when the Truman Show came out around the same time was a Matthew McConaughey movie called EDtv. That one I haven't seen since theater. So that one, my remembrance of it is very minimal. But I know it was very similar. I think with that one, he knew what he was getting into. So he's signed up to be filmed 24/7. And then obviously, things get out of hand, he decides he regrets it. He does want to be on TV all the time. But he sells his soul to these reality television stations. The Truman Show and EDtv. I think they were  ahead of their time. But they were trying to hop on the bandwagon of the Big Brothers slash Survivors. Reality TV  coming into the into the mainstream for the first time.
 
Leah Jones  32:22
So as Truman Show is that a comfort watch for you is that when you revisit regularly?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 32:28
I revisited for the first time in college, and then I think I've seen it once or twice since. But I really liked the screenplay. I've downloaded the screenplay, I've read through the screenplay, I just really liked the idea of creating a constraint and boxing yourself in and then seeing what you can do in this area. So oftentimes, I'll open a blank page and try to do a writing session and I just get so overwhelmed by all the possibilities, or okay, I don't even know what I'm going to write about today, because there's so much that can cover. So I  started thinking to myself, Okay, what if this is only on one street, or what if this is just, I have another manuscript in progress, where everything is on stage, and I tried to only have two or three props, and two or three characters. So it's like, once my brain can acknowledge that I only have a few objects, I only have a few characters, then I can  run wild with those options, as opposed to being like, well, actually, I should have 5000 characters, and there's 10,000 objects, and let's write about all these different things. It's like, okay, let's just have a guy and a girl, a baseball bat, on the stage with a gallon of water and a pinata. And we're gonna scrap it's like, once I  boxed myself in like that I can really run wild. And I think The Truman Show is a great example of that, because it's doing the exact same thing where you're in this little suburbia, you can't leave and here's all the possibilities. Another that The Truman Show is one of the two epigraphs in the beginning of my book and Pleasantville is the other one, which also came out in 1998. And it's also the same idea where you're trapped in a television series. But you can't leave. And once you try to go back further beyond the main street, it just loops you right back to the beginning of the street, because you're trapped in this old-fashioned sitcom. They have no idea what the outside world is. So there's me, there's Main Street, there's the school, there's a police officer and the department and that's it. So that  boxed themselves in. And I really liked the idea of working with a constraint and not running wild and having this whole giant universe and just saying, “Okay, let's just focus on this little, hyper little area, and then nothing more, so I don't get too overwhelmed.”
 
Leah Jones  34:25
And then Pleasantville? Is it like, I'm trying to because again, saw it in the theater. Is it that everything's in black and white and one person gets in and they're in color? And that's like, they're from outside of TV and they're in color? Or is it reverse?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 34:44
It is Reese Witherspoon and whoever the first SpiderMan was I forget his name.
 
Leah Jones  30:49
Tobey Maguire.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 30:50
Tobey Maguire. So they come from the outside world into this television into black and white sitcom TV, and they're in black and white, everything's in black and white, the entire show is in black and white. But as soon as these two outside characters start calling attention to how they're in a TV show and start calling attention to the beauty beyond this little box in space, then the color starts to form. So I think one of the more iconic scenes is that everything's black and white, and a girl is blowing bubblegum, and it's pink. Or someone finally has red lipstick, because they found love. And they're so used to just being this one sided character within the sitcom. And then as the show progresses, I think by the end, it's almost entirely in color, because everyone is, quote unquote, woke, because they've  been shown the way and they've been realizing that it's more than just this one black and white street with the same lines and the same character and the same repetition. But yeah, that's one that I haven't seen since theaters. I should probably watch that one again, because I remember thinking that it was so. so strange and so interesting, even back then. And then that was one where I redownloaded the screenplay, and I was reading it, but I haven't actually seen the movie since ‘98.
 
Leah Jones  36:02
So I opened up the IMDb page and then I was thinking, Oh, I wonder if that I guess WandaVision, at some level is has some things that are surreal.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 36:15
I've heard about this. I've heard it's like very meta and strange. Yeah, but I haven't seen it.
 
Leah Jones  36:21
And then right away the two clips on the IMDb page for Pleasantville. One is the trailer and the other one is “What to watch if you love WandaVision”.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 36:32
So you're on the right, you're on the right wavelength.
 
Leah Jones  36:34
So, in WandaVision, every episode is a different era of television. Perfectly recreated. So the first episode is like an I Love Lucy or Dick Van Dyke Show like that feel the jokes, the constructs, it is a perfect reimagination of the Dick Van Dyke Show. But with Marvel superheroes in it. And then there's like a 1970s show, there's even the one where they do that the 1990s sitcom, where I was like, oh, yeah, the word Trump and the 90s. Like, that's not just like normal TV. So I you don't have to know anything about Marvel to watch and enjoy WandaVision.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 37:27
Nice. Which I don't so that's good.
 
Leah Jones  37:29
Yeah. Just, if you if you've watched enough TV of different eras, you will appreciate the costume design, how they shot it. They changed the format of the screen to match like what TVs were in different years. So it does not become a full screen. It doesn't take up your whole screen until like the fourth or fifth episode.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 37: 54
Wow, that's really interesting.
 
Leah Jones  37: 55
Yeah. Because they're doing the aspect ratios of
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 38:02
Yeah, screen progression. Which I haven't really heard of. Okay, that's interesting. Yeah, I might, I might check that out. I knew about the old sitcom Dick Van Dyke style, but I thought that was what they stuck with for the entire season. I didn't realize that they're jumping around decades and jumping around eras. That's really fascinating.
 
Leah Jones  38:16
Yeah. And it's just so well done.
 
Leah Jones  38:31
So all I know about Atlanta again, spoiler country. It's fine. I know he's the Childish Gambino and he's all and Donald Glover, Donald Cooper's actor name. That's his name name. Right. So he's an actor. He popped on Community. He's a rapper. And then I just know that Atlanta is his TV show. But now you're telling me it's surreal. So I think one obviously have to watch it. Tell me more.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 39:12
So the show begins with Donald Glover's character fun finding out that his cousin is becoming a big rapper, and he is struggling with money and struggling financially. So he tries to pitch it that he could be his manager. So normal narrative, normal setup, right? And it's just  Donald Glover coming out of his slump and trying to get his finances back while helping out his cousin. But from that part, from that initial setup, everything is just a little bit off. Every episode, there's always some element where you're like, wait a minute, is this a dream sequence? There's standalone episodes where side characters go on these little quests just to pick something up that they found on Craigslist, and it turns into like a horror episode and you're like, I thought this was like an Atlanta rap comedy show. You never know when you press play, you never know what genre you're about to get into. You never know what's going to happen or who's going to pop out. It could be completely straight-laced normal Atlanta story, or it could be completely off the rails where by the end of the episode, they're eating human hand, which is one of the spoilers, spoilers. But it's very much it's been compared to like David Lynch and Twin Peaks, while still having like, you know, obviously more of like a modern hip hop aesthetic, but it's very surreal and strange and maniacal and full of political commentary and full of hysterical moments. And then the next scene, you'll start crying and then the next scene, you'll stay up overnight, because it haunted you and then the next scene is back to laughing. So it's, I'm not, I've never seen anything like that on television where you watch an episode and you're like, I just get done watching a movie, like that was perfect. That wasn't even Atlanta by the time it's done. You know, they have certain episodes where the entire cast and the entire setup is none of the reoccurring characters. There's nobody in the show. It's just like a standalone side short film, basically. But they really think outside the box, while still keeping you in this really interesting atmospheric tone. And it can be very by what sort of thing and very polarizing for people. Because some people really love it. And they love that weirdness. And they love not really knowing what's going on. And other people like just can't handle it, because it's too much.
 
Leah Jones  41:26
They just wanted their empire but led by Donald Glover.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 41:29
Right? Exactly, yeah. Or they want to be like, Oh, I just want to go back to him being in the studio and making a big or I really want him to win a Grammy. And it's like, that's not what the show is about. It is what that's about. But it's much more about their  inner turmoil, inner psyche. And I guess also just playing off of how strange Atlanta can really be from the day to day. But the idea I think initially with them was to have three seasons, they had the idea of start to finish, it was like a perfect story arc, and they were going to be done. And FX, I guess FX was like, because of COVID. And because of financial, whatever, and because of all the new attention that Donald Glover was getting, they settled on doing four seasons. And the final two seasons, both happened this year. So Season Three was in the spring. And then season four is happening right now. And it's about finished. But it's so rare to see a show that has two seasons in one year. And this is after like a three-year break. But it's almost like they have like this perfect narrative arc. And then Donald Glover has obviously probably as 100 other things to do. So he's probably trying to get this out, but also doesn't want the fourth season to struggle, because often a third, fourth, fifth seasons can get a little stale. But every episode  reinvents the wheel and just really, really throws me for a loop every time which is what I'm always looking for.
 
Leah Jones  42:40
Did you start watching Atlanta because say you mentioned you're into hip hop. So did you watch it because you're like, oh, it's gonna be a show about hip hop? Or did other people watch it and come to you and say, there's this new surreal show on and you are gonna love it.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 42:58
It was I think it was much more of the former, I think it was the angle that I think that I heard it pitched was there's a hilarious new show on TV called Atlanta, or there's a really cool new rap show called Atlanta, it was definitely pitched as more of a comedy and I thought it was going to be much more grounded and much more comedy focused. And it was almost, I think in the initial episodes, I was almost looking at it like entourage, but for a rapper, whereas you're  seeing him from the earliest stages and then become the superstar. That's what I thought going into it. And that's I couldn't have been more wrong. And I think but even if you rewatch the first season, I think the first couple episodes  give you that idea. You know, he's trying to read he's trying to reignite a flame with his cousin, they're trying to go back in the past or trying to make some money. They're trying to figure out their plan. And then things just get weirder and weirder and weirder, or there's like vision quests in the woods. And there's other ones that are complete dreams where the character wakes up at the end. It's really, really fascinating.
 
Leah Jones  43:52
Absolutely, 0% of people have said any of that to me.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 43:56
I was even gonna say the third season, they're doing like a European tour. And they're going to all these very strange places. And there's one episode that almost feels like watching midsummer, where there's this weird, European cult, murder tradition. And you're like, where is this episode going? You know, this is not in with the story arc at all. It just throws you for a loop every time which is wonderful. Atlanta. 100 out of 10. 10,000.
 
Leah Jones  44:23
Now what about so the three surreal TV shows you listed were Atlanta, Maniac and Perpetual Grace limited Ltd. I've heard a perpetual grace. But I've never heard of maniac and I don't think I know anything about Perpetual Grace. So tell me a little bit about these shows.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 44:46
So I think Maniac actually ties in perfectly to one division that you were talking about where it was just a one-off season that was  pitched as a miniseries on Netflix, and it's with Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, and they start just guess they're both  struggling trying to get their lives together. So they sign up for this dream  survey, I guess, where they  monitor your dreams. That's all they really know. And they're just trying to they're trying to make some extra money. So they don't really know each other in the real world. But there starts to be some type of spark. And as they're sitting next to each other in these like dream pods, they're like tied up in their monitor and all this stuff. There's some type of haywire situation and their setup start to mingle together. So every single episode is a new dream sequence. But where they're trying to monitor Jonah Hill's dreams and Emma stones dreams, they're jumping into each other's dreams and talking to each other, and falling in love while they're in their dreams. And then they're coming out of it. And they're so distraught because it's so strange. And then every episode  takes you deeper into those dreams. And it could be like Miami Vice style 1980s episode in their dreams or it could be a bank robbery. Every episode  has a new genre and a new style. And yeah, it's just one season so they  knew going into it. It wasn't canceled or anything. It was just almost like a miniseries. But really, really surreal. Very dreamy, very strange. And also pretty funny as well.
 
Leah Jones  46:12
I just feel like I'm I'm in an episode of pop-up video where I'm like, this thing you liked was surreal. This thing like the movie lobster that surrealism, right?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 46:24
that's definitely surreal. Absolutely. That's a great example.
 
Leah Jones  46:28
Not just a rom com.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 46:30
No. Oh, when you when you were talking about one division, I was like, that sounds just like Maniac. Yeah, we're each episode  has a new aesthetic and a new style. I don't think mainly, I definitely doesn't go full on where they're messing with the ratios for the cameras and they're not completely crazy. But in one of the dreams like, Jonah Hill as a mole ladies wearing like a football jersey, and he looks like he's straight out of the 80s. So there's stuff like that where he's like, calling attention to like, what is going on? What Okay, where am I? What's this new dream? Yeah, it's really fascinating. Definitely one worth checking out. It should still be on Netflix, I think.
 
Leah Jones  47:03
I'm sure. Well, I'm never sure about anything, but hopefully, it'll still be there. And what about Perpetual Grace? saying it out loud. Feels like it's probably churchy. It's like religious.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 47:18
You would think it's almost like it's such a hard show to describe and now I am even questioning whether it's surrealism. So this show is created by a Chicago director and writer Steve Conrad. I'm so glad I remembered his name, Steve Conrad, and he's best known for doing like he did the screenplay for that Ben Stiller movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. And he's done a bunch of other  like, pull at your heartstrings feel good films. And he has two shows that both  swept and went under the radar of most people. One was the Patriot which just lasted for a couple of seasons on Amazon Prime. And then he had Perpetual Grace, which just lasted for one season on like Epix with an X it was some platform that no one even really watched completely went under. But the whole idea is that a son is struggling financially. So he faked his own death, so that his parents go to the funeral and that while the parents are at the funeral, his body double can go back and rob his parents basically. So there isn't surreal elements where anything's out of the ordinary in the actual real world, USA. But what they're doing and the mind games that they're playing, and the way that the story goes, it all just feels very, like it's equally poetic and equally like a little bit just off kilter, like the quotes are very, like lyrical and abstract, and no one really talks like that. And every character just  is like this stoic, meta-Western character. It's such a weird show, and it's really hard to explain, but I think because it was so obscured just lasted for one season. But Ben Kingsley is absolutely wonderful on the show. And it's just like a really, really dark humor. It's a show that I've nothing I've seen is like that. It's like a Western mystery, dark comedy surrealist. Yeah, it's bizarre.
 
Leah Jones  49:18
So they're on Wikipedia, which is the arbiter of all things surreal. They say it's an American Neo noir thriller.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 49:28
Oh, okay. Definitely. Neo Noir. definitely has that the LA Confidential Dick Tracy style, but you're out in like the Nevada desert or New Mexico desert wherever it's filmed.
 
Leah Jones  49:41
Yeah, that is, I mean, I guess from the title my assumption was going to be  more along the lines of upload, where it's how do you have Perpetual Grace? So like, where does your soul go? How can you guarantee your soul goes somewhere that it has Perpetual Grace.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 50:05
Sounds like you just wrote your own surrealist TV show.
 
Leah Jones  50:08
But it wouldn't be like that often it would be like a in The Office or Parks and Rec sort of style like a straight to camera mockumentary about the place where you go to register for your perpetual grace.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 50:24
Oh, okay. It's like a almost like a DMV type place. I was looking up Stephen Conrad's Discogs or filmography right now. So, he did The Secret Life Of Life of Walter Mitty, which is obviously huge. And then the Pursuit Of Happyness with Will Smith, which obviously, if you've watched that movie, by the end, you're bawling your eyes out. And then the Nick Cage film, The Weatherman is another one. So he just has a lot of really strong, quirky movies. And then it seems like with that income, and with those, that money, he  has these little side projects that he's on TV shows, and they never really last too long, but they're just stunning and really beautiful and just unlike anything you really see on TV or film.
 
Leah Jones  51:04
I heard about the Patriot a lot during peak quarantine. Jason Mantzoukas and Paul Scheer would talk about it a lot on How Did This Get Made? Like they both really super got into it and we're just trying to beg anyone to watch it to try and get a third season.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 51:22
Yeah, I would almost I would praise that show just as much as Perpetual Grace. I think it's less surreal and a little bit more down to earth. But it's also it's absolutely hysterical. It's so weird, and so funny. And it's one of those shows where every single character, you just want to hug them and tell them like, everything's fine. And you're wonderful. Whereas I feel like there's so many shows where I'm watching like, I hate all of these characters. Why am I still watching?
 
Leah Jones  51:45
There's no I was here for there's no, like, yeah,
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 51:48
What was Steven Conrad show Perpetual Grace the same way like I love every single character, he gives these personalities and you just there's like an added warmth that really isn't there too often in TV.
 
Leah Jones  52:00
This is going to be I can already tell this episode is going to fill my cue and, I'm sure.
 
Leah Jones  52:20
Let's talk about surreal books for a minute because also here you've got a list of authors that are not I so this is gonna I think this is really gonna you're gonna know exactly how old I am by the two books I think of when I think of the surreal books, which are Infinite Jest and House of Leaves. So the first one is by David Foster Wallace. Thank you. And then the second one is Luke Danielewski, I think, no, that's not right.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 52:54
Hi, Mark Z Danielewski. Yep.
 
Leah Jones  52:56
Thank you. I got some of the letters Correct?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 53:02
Yeah, House Of Leaves is a perfect example where you  have this strange happening, you wake up one day, and you realize your house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. That's very surreal. And that was one of the first books, I don't think it's actually I don't know if it is still influential in my writing. But it's one of the first books where I read where I was like, oh, my gosh, this is what you can do inside the confines of a book. You can have pages where somebody has to look up into a mirror to read what's happening. You can have footnotes on top of footnotes. I was reading that book in high school, and I was just floored. And I think what he's done since it's been trying to  replicate that initial invention hasn't been as successful. But that first book, really groundbreaking. And that's another polarizing piece of literature where people either love it or hate it. But it really got me into like, Okay, what was he reading? When he wrote this book? And what where did this come from? And how you know, and I'm finding 10 other artists and 15 other authors and 10 other books to read. So yeah, that's a that's a good one. That's a good one to bring up because it feels very similar to that, Pleasantville or Truman Show where you're boxing yourself in and then when you're in that box, weird shit happens.
 
Leah Jones  54:07
I think it got too spooky. I don't I know. I didn't finish it. I think it got spooky. I think that really spooky and I couldn't handle it anymore.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 54:17
Yeah, it gets very spooky. It's a strange one. Definitely good for late October as we're talking.
 
Leah Jones  54:22
So what about so on the list that you sent me. Zachary Schoenberg, GennaRose Nethercott and CAConrad or so? Talk to me a little bit about these authors. Are they poets? Are they fiction? I mean, I guess can't really have a surreal documentary, can you?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 54:43
Maybe you'd have to  stretch the boundaries. There's a movie that I haven't seen a documentary called The Act of Killing or the Art of Killing. In 2012, documentary film about individuals who participated in the Indonesian mass killings, and they replicated how they did all of these, where they had these really large sculptures and really large stage setups, that they would  make these theatrical killing fields. So the entire premise of the documentary is horrifying. And I guess it's very hard to watch. But the settings that they're creating look like these Alice in Wonderland  dream lands where they're doing these horrific things, but they're turning it into like a presentation. So I guess that's when they came to mind as far as surveillance on the documentary scale, but I haven't seen that one. Well, yeah, for the books, Zachary Schomburg is both a novelist and a poet. So I think he has if six or seven books of poetry, and then he has one novel, and all of his stuff is very surreal. It's very tender, sensitive surrealism where he's often heartbroken and looking for his heart that is buried in the ground somewhere. Or he's there's often this  attachment to love and sensitivity, all the while weird things are happening. So it's like, very tender, touching surrealism, which I absolutely adore. And he was one of the people that was able to blurb my book. So that was like, icing on the cake.
 
Leah Jones  56:14
Oh, how exciting. Yeah, your first it was that your first interaction with him was going, I was asking for the blurb or had you been able to meet him at conferences or readings in the past?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 56:25
Yeah, I think it would have been more daunting if I just  cold called him, but I'd met him before. AWP, the writers conference was up in Portland in 2018 or 2019. And I was able to meet him there. And I'd interviewed him on my blog before. And then he had this. He called them two by four workshops, where it was four weeks, and then he worked with two people on his workshop. So I just signed up for like a Skype, it was Skype, even before Zoom was big. Yeah, there's workshops with me. And that was first when I was really trying to work on my poetry and work on my writing. So he was  not only an early inspiration and influence, but he was also giving me suggestions and feedback on my own poems and saying, like, Oh, really lean in here, or you can make this even weirder or oh, have you read this book? So a lot of the poems that were written in this book, no farther than the end of the street, were early in conversation with Zack Schomburg poetry and he was also  helping me out along the way as well. Huge influence. Huge inspiration. And actually, if you don't mind, I wouldn't mind reading the very first poem from his book.
 
Leah Jones  57:29
Oh, that'd be wonderful.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 57:31
It's called “Scary, no scary.” He has so many books, but Scary, No Scary. I thought it would be good for October vibes. Very short. You'll return to your childhood home, after a lifetime away to find it abandoned, its red paint will be completely weathered. It will have a significant westward lead, there will be a hole in its roof that bats fly out of the old man hunched over at the front door will be prepared to give you a tour. But first he'll ask scary or no scary, you should say no scary. And that's the opener of his book. So you just  know that it's going to be a little bit interesting, a little bit off. But really, really beautiful and very touching too. And then yeah, with the other artists, they're also  a similar style. So GennaRose Nethercott just released her debut novel called Thistlefoot, which I actually haven't been able to read yet. It's like a 400, page mammoth. But she has a really great book of poetry called The Lumberjack Stuff. And it's one long book length poem. And it's  broken up into little prose blocks. So it's, you know, you could see it almost as  micro fiction or short fiction, or you could also see it as poetry. But the entire premise of the book in the whole premise, I guess, was based off of a prompt that someone had given her where take one object in your everyday life, replace it with another object and go from there. So the idea of this book is that a lumberjack is chopping wood out and about accidentally cuts off his arm, and in replacement of that arm is a dove. So because he doesn't want his arm to fly away and needs to get help, he ties a string to his arm that ties to the dove. And then he's trying to find a witch doctor to get his arm back. All the while, you know, he's losing a lot of blood and losing his mind. But the entire book is one long poem. And it's  taking you through the process of this folkloric fairytale strange dream. Really, really beautiful book.
 
Leah Jones  59:35
Wow. That's such an interesting prompt to just replace an item.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 59:43
So simple, right? And I love the idea to create an entire book as opposed to like, oh, I was able to get a poem out of that. It's like no, I was able to get my debut collection out of that, right?
 
Leah Jones  59:52
It really feels like these poems can start at the same place of like stepping off the wall and an improv show.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:00:11
Totally.
 
Leah Jones  1:00:12
You’re just going to step off the show and see it, commit to it and see what happens. But also because it's improv, maybe there's chairs on the stage, literally anything can happen. And it's whether or not you allow anything to happen, and how you react and how your fellow improvisers react to it.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:00:38
A hundred percent. And there could easily be an evening where you're driving home that night, you say, oh, okay, improv was okay, and nothing really happened. Or you can be driving home and say, oh, my gosh, I totally wrote, it led to this joke, which led to this joke. And now I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna I have a whole movie in my head. One little sliver can really create this giant, or I guess a thread can really create this giant article of clothing or something like that.
 
Leah Jones  1:01:00
Also the question of, I was certainly you were gonna say, replaces arm with an axe. But instead of an axe, which can be a violent tool is replaced with a dove, which is like a symbol of peace. And right there, like you're just off and running. And I just really haven't thought deeply or even shallowly, about surreal art and a long time. So this is really so interesting. And what about CAConrad?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:01:35
CAConrad is another one who was able to blurred my book, another really early influence. They have a book called The Book of Frank, which is their first book and every single page and every single, I guess sliver is like a retelling of Frank. So you think of shows like, Adventure Time, or even like Family Guy where absurdities happen, and then the next episode, it  starts from scratch, and you're back to the beginning or on Southpark, Kenny dies every episode every other. And the next episode, Kenny is back. So, with Frank, the book of Frank, Frank could explode, he could chew dynamite, he could go through the gamut of horrible things and then the next page, he’s back up going to school, doing some weird stuff. So, it  just made me realize that it's like episodic, but you don't necessarily have to have it be a narrative through line. It's not like the next day, Frank woke up and the bomb no longer bothered him. And he was no longer exploded. It was just like, keep up with me as I continue to go down this really weird parallel of Frank. So with this book, when I was  working on it, I realized I had all these different pieces. And I'm like, in one particular piece, it's like, oh, the main characters fall into a well, so the next page, they need to be soaking wet, or they need to be drying off. And I was like, no, it can just be completely different episode. It has doesn't have to connect that way. You just need to know that there's these two characters. And every page is almost like an episode of WandaVision or an episode of Maniac where it’s a new reworking of what you're already have available.
 
Leah Jones  1:03:06
I think there are a lot of cartoons. Where right, they just reset like Bob's burger. burger of the day. And they are always at risk of going out of business. Like those are the stakes, the stakes are that they're gonna lose the business. And Bob will always have a burger of the day. The injuries don't stick around the fire, like the damage, nothing is permanent. But the menu, and the stakes.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:03:38
Exactly. When you know what you're getting into every episode, you know that it can go as far as it wants to go, and then you know that the next episode is going to be right back to square one. The end of CA Conrad's, the book of Frank is Frank road, the dandelion seed floating above the street. So, you know, that's not never gonna happen. That's not a realism. But, after all this stuff that happens to Frank, it's a really long, beautiful book, and it's very violent and grotesque and strange. And then at the end, Frank just rides a dandelion off into the sky, it's just like a, like a cleansing. It's a very, very strange book, but it's like a deep personality study. It's really, really cool.
 
Leah Jones  1:04:19
And CA also blurred your book?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:04:22
Yes, they did, thankfully. And yes, since that first book CAConrad's poetry has gone in the direction of like, more meditative and  like channeling like an inner spirit. So some of the poems are a lot more autobiographical, a lot more lyrically driven, whereas this first book almost feels like it's like a completely different project, completely different voice and I love the stuff that they're doing now, but the debut book of Frank is just like, it's just my bread and butter where I just know that things are just strange from start to finish, and you're never going to no matter what page you turn to, you'll never be in your comfort zone because you never know what’s gonna happen.
 
Leah Jones  1:05:03
Can I ask did you study writing in, like college or get an MFA? Or are you a self-studied, self-taught poet and writer?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:17
I guess a mixture of both. I went to Butler University for my undergrad in Indianapolis. I'm Indiana born and raised so I'm from my parents are from like, right outside of Notre Dame area.
 
Leah Jones  1:05:28
Okay. I'm from Terre Haute.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:33
Oh, okay. Which is mainly known …
 
Leah Jones  1:05:33
Crossroads of America
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:34
I was gonna say, Terre Haute’s mainly known for the high security prison, right?
 
Leah Jones  1:05:39
Yep. That shows your age.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:44
I was thinking of like the Oklahoma City bomber. I think he was in terror at the Terre Haute.
 
Leah Jones  1:05:48
Timmothy McVeigh was executed at Terre Haute. But we also it's where Larry Bird played college ball. And where the coke bottle was invented.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:58
Okay. Putting it on for better things than Oklahoma City.
 
Leah Jones  1:06:02
Yeah, there's also a Steve Martin had a long running fight with Terre Haute like a what's it called when two people like grudge or two people don't –
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:06:10
a beef?
 
Leah Jones  1:06:10
A beef. Had a long-standing beef with the with Terre Haute and there's an end of a movie, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid where the evil character tries to set off a nuclear bomb, fails. And one of the last lines of the movie is at least I got Terre Haute.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:06:36
Was there a reason for the original hate? Or was it just a bit that he was leaning into?
 
Leah Jones  1:06:41
It was a bit that he leaned into that then Terre Haute leaned back and like, invited him to come and get a copy of the city and a tour. So then maybe The Jerk premiered in Terre Haute at the Indiana theater. So, it was an escalating bid where when Vigo County had a better sense of humor. Before the prison. So so you're so you're from the region?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:07:09
So I went to undergrad at Butler and I studied journalism and Spanish as my double majors. And then I had my minor in English. So I always knew that I like to write I just never knew like what direction I was really gonna go. And the idea of English major felt very daunting. So I was like, Okay, I'll do journalism. There's at least newspapers and magazines, right. I've never worked for a newspaper my life. So that didn't really pay off.
 
Leah Jones  1:07:28
There were, there used to be?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:05:29
Yeah, there used to be. But yeah, right after college. Then I went to Ecuador for two years for Peace Corps. And I was just a community volunteer, I was helping out at a local library, always reading and writing the entire time that I was there. And then when I came back to the States, I really just wanted to do music, journalism and focus on Chicago's hip hop scene and focus on the music. So that's when I really got into blogging and writing and blogging. But never during any of this was I thinking surrealism and creative writing. And then I was working all along, when I got back to Chicago at the University of Chicago's library. And I just started learning about more and more writers, more and more authors and their books were just right upstairs. So, I'd go grab 10 books, 20 books, I guess my own self-taught education because I was in that environment where everyone's learning and everyone's studying and I felt like I needed to be doing something else as well. I was able to discover all these new artists and all these new authors, Zachary Schomburg, for example, Richard Brautigan, for example, who has really short, very tiny, little poems, and there isn't really an ending, and it just  stops. And I'm reading them, I'm thinking, I can do that, oh, my gosh, I can try and do that. It doesn't need to be a 400 page, bestselling novel, I can write these little sparse flash fictions. I was just  opening my ideas to all my possibilities, as opposed to just like, I can't write a book that's 400 pages, and it has to have the same story. And I have the attention span for that, where it's like, oh, wait, I can write two paragraphs and then tomorrow, I can write something completely different and doesn't have to be connected. So no MFAs is nothing like that. Nothing further, but a lot of Zoom readings I tune in on a lot of little online workshops. And I'm constantly either in conversation with other writers or sending poems back and forth, or finding out about a new book that I just checked out. So, there's constantly that need to be self-educated. And as soon as I find out about one author, I want to read 10 other ones, so there's always  like, just a giant stack of books of new people that I might find out about.
 
Leah Jones  1:09:30
Well, if you haven't read him, Josh Bell. He's got two books of poetry out one called Alamo Theory, and one called No Planet Strike. He's from Terre Haute. And growing up he had the best Star Wars collection. But he's a he's a professor and a poet and one of these days I'm gonna get him on the podcast. So my mom will ask his mom and she'll pass along the news.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:02
Is he still in the Midwest?
 
Leah Jones  1:10:06
No, I think he's at he teaches at like an Ivy League school.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:11
Oh okay, so he's a big shot.
 
Leah Jones  1:10:14
Yeah, he's a big shot, but he shares a name with like that famous violin player. Josh Bell. He's not like yo, yo ma famous, but he's a famous violin player. So he's often I think for while his website might have been like, Josh Bell, not the violin player.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:35
I was gonna say what's more of an obscure passion and hobbies are more of a more obscure career to have either being a well-known violinist or well-known poet. I feel like both of them like you really have to know the scene to know any violinist and you really have to know your poetry not any other poets.
 
Leah Jones  1:10:50
Any other poet.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:10:53
It's like, oh, man, I'd be more well known if this violinist wasn't around. That's pretty good. Whereas there's probably like a baseball player named Josh bell as well. That's like, 10 times more famous.
 
Leah Jones  1:11:04
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. There's a track runner. There's a bunch of there's a bunch of when I first got on the internet, there are only two Leah Jones is on the internet. And now there's a lot of them. And they're all high school athletes. So my Google Alerts are like, the winning pitcher Leah Jones. I'm like, not me. Running hurdles? No.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:11:31
Podcast extraordinaire. There we go. Okay.
 
Leah Jones  1:11:33
Yes, that's the goal. So if someone came to you, and said if you are going to do, let's say, a community class on surrealism, that would be every week would like it four weeks, and every week as a different media or like media appreciation of surrealism? What would go in your curriculum?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:12:11
Oh, that's a great question. I think I would definitely put in The Truman Show, we've talked about it enough. And I think that that's a great one to go into, because, like you said, a lot of people don't really look at it as being surrealist. But I think it's very, very strange. And I love going into depth with that idea. Another movie that I had listed on here is Holding Motors. And that's one that really flabbergast me, and I still don't necessarily understand. And that's one that would, if you're trying to have a class on surrealism, and you're trying to confuse your audience, and you're trying to make your students outraged at what they just saw, I think that's a great one, because everyone's going to have a different interpretation to the ending, everyone's going to have a different, they're going to come away with something different. So it's a very experimental French film. And it's about a character who is playing, fill in roles for other lives. So he will dress up like a dad and then come home and talk to his wife and tuck his kids into bed. And then he'll go back outside to this limousine, and he'll change characters, and he'll be an actor on a romance film. And then he'll do that, and then he'll go back into his limo and change characters. And then he'll be a chauffeur.  He's  like playing all these different roles. But every single life that he walks into, is either unaware of what's going on, or there's already like a pre-arranged agreement, and that's not really discussed, I guess. It's very similar in tone to The Lobster, where it's like, so deadpan and so serious. But what you're watching is so strange that you're like, What the hell is going on? So yeah, that Holy Motors is completely off the walls bonkers very strange movie. But really, it's almost like told up in little sparks short films, because every time he gets out of the limousine to do another job, it's like its own little side story. So it's really interesting. But that would be one, if I had a four-week class that would put that when I think as the final of the class, just to have a really heavy mic drop for  like, I'm gonna leave you with this maybe not for discussion, right? I think Zachary Schomburg would be a great one to include, if we're going to talk about literature. I think his work is so sparse and short that you can get through it really quickly. So you can cover three or four of his poems and have enough time to discuss and talk go into segments of his novel. And apparently, is working on a second novel, so I'm excited to hear about that as well. And then two movies and a book that I've mentioned. And then I think, I mentioned here, Leonora Carrington for artists. And I think we haven't really discussed much of the surrealism behind Visual Arts and by no means am I like, educated in fine art or anything like that. But her work is very, very strange and very dreamy she writes beautiful short stories as well. She passed away quite a while ago. But she was roaming with the early surrealist and a lot of her stories are  her own take on surrealism, and they're usually disgusting and foul and grotesque and beautiful. But all the while she's doing these paintings that are accompanying her works or paintings off on the side. I just bought a tarot deck of some of her illustrations. Her style is really, really interesting. And she’s the grandmother of surrealist, I guess. But yeah, she has a short story where she is in love with a warthog, and they have like 15 warthog children. And it’s just all very, very strange. There’s one where this princess doesn’t want to go to like a really high end charity ball or whatever it is. So, hyena swaps places with her by ripping off her face, putting it over the hyena’s face, and then going to the ball pretending to be her. And no one at the ball thinks otherwise other than there's a weird smell. So like, her stuff is really great. I mean, she's known for I think, being more of a visual artist, but her stories are just as strong as her visual work.
 
Leah Jones  1:16:10
I Googled her quickly. And I was trying to figure out what I have heard, as I might have recognized, and I don't know if I've ever seen some of it like a little bit tickles a memory, but not really.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:16:29
She's very interesting. And I think as after she passed, which is probably about 10 years ago, at this point, she had a resurgence and attention and people revitalizing her life and publishing books that had been out of print for years. But she was, I think, married to or at least involved with Max Ernst, who's  one of the founders of the surrealist movement. I think her stuff is miles ahead of what he was doing. But he got all the credit for the early surrealist movement. And she was seen as, like, oh, that's just Max Ernst’s partner. It's like, but you know, 100 years later, it's like, oh, she was providing like, such stronger imagination. And she was bringing so much more to the table in the, in the surrealist movement and that now, I feel like people are talking more about her than maybe they were with Max Earnst. There needs to be like a, I don't know, a biopic or something about her life. As she traveled all over the world. She went from rags to riches back to rags back to riches. Really interesting person. You can't really talk about surrealism without Leonora Carrington.
 
Leah Jones  1:17:34
That's a solid four week class.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:17:38
Right? As long as you participate, you get an A. Because every answer is open to interpretation, right?
 
Leah Jones  1:17:46
Well, I really appreciate that you brought. I mean, other than the Truman Show, and Atlanta, all new films, TV artists, writers, people, nothing I have ever been exposed to. I love that. And that there are Salvador Dali had a film that involved cutting an eyeball. And I'm gonna say that turned me off from ever wanting to see anything called, identified as a surreal film, because that was that is just seared on my brain.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:18:29
Yeah, and I think a lot of surrealism, it's always there's that hesitancy or that warning, where it's like, okay, this could go grotesque and graphic and even some body horror films where someone gets infected, and they're turning into a bug or whatever that's an example of surrealism. But yeah, some of those Dali films are a little bit too close to seeing, like, is this real? Did he actually cut that in half?
 
Leah Jones  1:18:53
Yeah. So I really appreciate that. It also is, you know, I'm sure there's plenty written about compare, the difference between surrealism and magical realism when you look at Latin American authors, but this has just been a delight, Benjamin, I've really enjoyed getting to know you.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:19:13
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on the show and talking to me for a while about  my love of all things weird and all things entertainment. I was trying to think of one particular item to bring as my favorite and I was if I just talked about surrealism, I can talk for hours. I was trying not to box myself in.
 
Leah Jones  1:19:30
That is a good plan. Also, the things that didn't make the list won't be upset with you. Which is sometimes people have a hard time picking their favorite because they're like well, but my second might the thing that I don't pick will be upset. And I'm like I promised you mostly the hobby you didn't pick doesn't know you didn't pick it. Unless it does, in which case I apologize.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:20:00
And all we can hope for is that the previous writers and workers of The Truman Show hit us up and say, hey, we’d love to talk about this project. I don’t even know who that screenplay author is. But yeah, 20 some odd years ago wonder if anyone’s like oh, people are still talking about The Truman Show.
 
Leah Jones  1:20:15
Oh, I’m sure they are. I'm sure they still have Google Alert setup. I would. So your debut full length collection No Farther Than The End Of The Street. Available Now, technically November 1, but we're hearing now from Okay Donkey Press. We'll link to that in the show notes. Where can people find you on the internet?
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:20:37
So you can find me, my handle for everything is neon pajamas. So Instagram, Twitter and neon pajamas.com. And I think that's everything. I've thought about getting a TikTok, but I haven't done it yet. But yeah, neonpajamas.com and I tried to keep it updated in the blog, you can find all my poetry publications there as well as some of my electronic resources. There's some free writing prompts you can download, as well as  the links to my books as well.
 
Leah Jones  1:21:05
Outstanding. I don't recommend TikTok because it's so good.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:21:12
You won't be able to look away.
 
Leah Jones  1:21:14
Yes, I had to put limits on it if a timer is on it, but then I just kept breaking the timer. So I'm getting better boundaries with it. But it's so strange. The ways that people are coming up with if you think about the comedy of Vine, and how clever people got with comedy on Vine. Watching jokes evolve, and the speed at which a memes evolve on TikTok and the way that their visual and our oral is so interesting. But also very hard to look away from.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:21:57
Very entertaining but very time consuming.
 
Leah Jones  1:21:59
Yeah. Great. Well, Benjamin, this is this has been great. You can follow Finding Favorites appreciate if you let's not smash that subscribe button. That's what you do on YouTube. But subscribe, download, tell your friends, tell your families, tell your enemies. And if you've got time review it on Apple podcasts formerly known as iTunes, Spotify or wherever else you are listening to podcasts. Thank you so much, Ben.
 
Benjamin Niespodziany 1:22:30
Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time means a lot.
 
Announcer  1:22:34
Thank you for listening to Finding Favorites with Leah Jones. Please make sure to subscribe and drop us a five-star review on iTunes. Now go out and enjoy your favorite things.

Plia Kettner loves Kfar Saba and Cats

While host Leah Jones was visiting Israel, she met with long-time Facebook friend Plia Kettner to talk about Plia's lobbying to open the skies of Israel during Corona, her love of Kfar Saba, and her love of cats.
Plia collaborated with other citizens with partners or family abroad who were stuck abroad during Corona and is now part of an international team who shares information on how to organize around the theme "Love is not Tourism."
Plia Chetner on Facebook
Burial Alternatives in Kfar Saba
Qalqilya
Kfar Saba
Supreme Court case
We Want to Meet Each Other
Love Is Not Tourism
Feral cats in Israel 
Lion in the Living Room
Kfar Saba and Ranana love animals
transcript follows

Joel Haber loves Shabbat Stews of all flavors

Jerusalem-based tour guide Joel Haber joined Leah to talk about Shabbat Stews ahead of the release of his ebook Chulent & Hamin: The Ultimate Jewish Comfort Food. There is so much more to Chulent than beans and meat!
Follow Joel on Instagram and his blog Taste of Jew.
Follow @findingfavspod on Instagram and Twitter. Rate and review on Apple Podcasts
Show links
The Red Lady
Free Shabbat Stew Cookbook by Joel Haber
Machne Yehuda market
Gil Marks obituary
Ishtabach in Jerusalem
Shamburak
Birateinu
Beermiscuous in Chicago
Cardoon
Come for Cholent
Come for Cholent Again
Transcript follows

Gone Fishing: Back in October

Leah is going on hiatus until October, until then please enjoy the archives of Finding Favorites and pitch yourself as an interview when she returns this fall.

50 Years of Title IX with Veronica Arreola

Veronica Arreola is back to talk about the 50th anniversary of Title IX and how 37 words changed modern life for girls in the USA. We also talk about pay equity, Brittney Griner and the Chicago Sky.
Follow Veronica on Twitter and Instagram and all around the internet.
No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
Show Notes
Chairman’s Championship WNBA
Brittney Griner
Pay equity in US professional soccer
Quarterback Princess starring Holly Hunter
Three Prong Test of Title IX
Yellowjackets
@shereebekker twitter thread that Leah misquotes
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/28/sports/title-ix-anniversary-womens-sports.html
Candace Parker panel about Title IX

Bill Tilley is looking for his next favorite thing

Bill Tilley, co-host of Bill and Robs: An Excellent Adventure and social media lead for Greatest Generation, joined Leah to talk about the interesting buildings he's lived and worked in, before diving into his search for his next favorite thing.
Find Bill online
Bill and Robs Podcast
Greatest Generation
@BillTilley1973 on Twitter
Bill Tilley Cards
Show Links
Stadium Residence Hall at The Ohio State
Stephen J Cannell 
Robert B Parker
Hollywood Babbleon
Star Trek Las Vegas
Friends of DeSoto
Trancers
Adam West: Lookwell Pilot