Subscribe to Sincere, Positive Things if you want!Back in September of 2021 I wrote about Kirby Ferguson’s Everything is a Remix, a video essay about how culture, from the beginning of time, is built upon the works of others being reshaped and reinvented. It’s a fantastic piece of journalism that makes some fascinating points and insightful observations about creativity told through the medium of remixing. It practices what it preaches!
Well, not only is the full project finally complete, BUT ALSO, its creator has edited it all together into one super convenient 90 minute video, BUT ALSO it goes way beyond previous iterations and updates the world of remixing to also delve into the complicated and thorny issue of artificial intelligence and how it interacts (and infringes?) on the art of human beings. It’s a fascinating discussion and I don’t want to give you any spoilers, but I believe Kirby argues a position that you may not have come across yet.
Everything Is a Remix walks a very difficult line of being educational and super interesting and I can’t recommend it enough. I’m disappointed that it is over but excited that you will get to watch the complete work (right now! For free) if you click the button below.
Everything is a Remix (COMPLETE EDITION)
I love a good story about an unlikely creator of something that goes on to change the world. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are two such fascinating characters, not only because they created Superman, but because that creation was so important and they were then treated so poorly by the company that bought their idea. This article, by Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler is an excellent look at their story from a ground-level view.
Whether you know Siegel and Shuster’s story or are encountering it for the first time, this is a good read.
Hello! It’s been a little bit. I do have a reason, and I’ll let you decide if it’s a good one or not: I’ve been making things. And I’m not plugging those things here. However, I wanted to talk to you about the simple act of making things.
Recently, my podcast cohost Heather and I had to figure out some merch to send to a group of our listeners. I came up with the idea of a baseball-style pennant and got to work trying to figure out how much it would cost to have a company print custom ones. The answer: not insanely expensive, but not incredibly cheap either. Had it just been me, I probably would’ve moved on to a different idea, but Heather had a plan: we bought some blank pennants, we found a person on Etsy who made vinyl transfers, and we fired up Photoshop. (Luckily, Heather already owned an iron.)
It took some practice, but we soon became experts at ironing on incredibly intricate designs onto incredibly thin pieces of fabric. I won’t lie: it was occasionally stressful that we were going to mess up our limited supply of pennant crafts, but by the end of it we were having a ton of fun making pennants for a podcast.
So, in summary: we saved some money, we learned a new skill together, and we had a grand old time putting it all together. The Internet is super cool and gives you access to a number of different small businesses, large businesses, and individuals who will put together whatever crazy thing you want to put together. It takes more work to research and determine how to replicate that work on your own. And let’s be honest, the homemade canoe you make in the garage it’s going to be far crappier, and take far more time to make than the one you buy online. But, nothing is going to beat that feeling of having done it yourself. The one from Amazon might look nicer and might not immediately sink, but no matter what that’s never going to be the canoe that you built yourself.
Unless you’re a liar. Then you can say whatever you want.
Hey. Did'ja see Everything, Everywhere All At Once? Don’t worry. That’s not the recommendation. It already won Best Picture. In fact, it swept the Oscars so you probably already saw it and loved it, or you already saw it and thought it was overhyped. Those are the two options.
But, in the Best Supporting Actress category, Jaime Lee Curtis won, so that means Stephanie Hsu did not. She’s going to have many more cracks at winning, so it’s fine, but if you haven’t already seen her audition for the role of Joy, you really should. (I do not recommend watching it if you took the rare third option of “I haven’t gotten around to it, but I’ve heard good things. I’ll check it out, I will. Maybe this weekend!”)
Last month on the other Internet thing I do, a music-centric podcast called If You’re Listening, my co-host Heather proposed an episode of songs with a December theme. Because I am a delightful scamp, I selected the song “July, July” by The Decemberists.
But I have been hoisted on my own petard because I’ve fallen into a Decemberists hole, listening (and re-listening) to a band I loved in high school and then, for whatever reason, fell away from.
If you’ve never listened, here’s how I would explain them: you know pop music? Okay, now pretend it was written by a group of hyper-literate 18th century whalers. They can write a solid hook and a catchy four minute jam, but they’ll also allow themselves some flights of fancy and venture out into 8 minute epics, often adapting ancient myths or epic poems into catchy song suites. The always barbed Pitchfork kind of hits the nail on the head when Amanda Petrusich wrote in one album review: “The quirks that make them such a target for snickering, disaffected aesthetes (namely, stuffing their songs with arcane historical allusions and library language) are also what make them a boon for drama kids in three-button vests.”
Whether you’ve never heard of them or you’ve loved them for years, I’ve made you a playlist to help you test the waters.
More music! If Alan Rickman got you a Joni Mitchell CD for Christmas this year and you want to hear more of her back catalogue (or, for the rest of us, if you just want to listen to Joni Mitchell), she’s done you a solid. Now you can find her entire catalogue on her YouTube page for free.
Now there’s no reason not to listen to a side of one of her records, or, both sides, now!
The Thing: Marvel’s She-Hulk & Werewolf By Night Submitted by: Jonolobster Why It’s Great: “2022 was the year it finally happened. I got MCU fatigue. It’s not the dire medical condition it sounds like, I simply got a bit bored with the output of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But then, just when I thought of tapping out, in true cinematic fashion, they pulled me back in. Not through movies, but through a sitcom and a "special presentation.” I can’t explain why, but Jennifer Walters and Ted Sallis, along with their green alter-egos, are two of my favorite characters from the comics. Finally seeing them in live-action form, and very faithfully at that, was enough to respark the joy in making mine Marvel. Bonus: the new “Gargoyles” comic from Dynamite.
The Thing: Paramore “This is Why” Submitted by: TartTooth Why It’s Great: “I can’t stop listening to it.”
The Thing: The 1975 Being Funny In A Foreign Language Submitted by: Heather Hynes Why It’s Great: “This album came out in the fall and I still have not stopped listening to it obsessively. It’s the perfect combo of poppy, sad and produced by Jack Antonoff for my tastes. .”
The Thing: Tolkien Deep Dives Submitted by: Angela Workoff Why It’s Great: “I’ve loved Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films dearly since they came out, but was a dilettante for the written work, only having spottily read LOTR and The Hobbit in grade school. Last year, I finally read LOTR straight through, The Silmarillion (with a certain editor of certain Sincere Positive publications), and the Hobbit, listening to a lecture series by Corey Olsen, a medievalist known to y'all as the Tolkien Professor, throughout these three reads. I can talk your ear off about Tolkien after all this (and stop me, because Rings of Power was also great, not to mention the usual PJ LOTR extended version rewatches), but better than that was the joy of doing an obsessive deep dive, the kind you might as a nerdy kid, to scratch at trying to know everything about a thing you love.
Also Andor. Just, full stop, Andor. ”
Welcome to 2023, everybody. Let’s make it a good one.
Two things happened this week that have led to this somewhat unexpected choice for a SPT: yesterday was Dick Van Dyke’s 97th birthday. From his role as Rob Petrie on the (still charming and funny) Dick Van Dyke Show to this album of covers that is great for parties, Van Dyke is a treasure. The second thing was that my wife and I finally got COVID which meant we were stuck on the couch for much of the last few days, streaming an awful lot of television. For reasons I can’t articulate, my illness-raddled body wanted to watch Mary Poppins.
A delight. Just a movie of fun. Every single one of the Sherman Brothers’ songs are fantastic (except for the one about banking that you probably forgot existed. It’s funny, but not a toe-tapper.) Julie Andrews is fantastic, a beautiful singer, and very, very dry. Dick Van Dyke’s accent is derided, but it’s perfectly cartoony and his physical performance is unparalleled. Glynis Johns and David Tomlinson as Mr. and Mrs. Banks are ever so British. There are some special effects in here where you’ll say, “Oh, that looks good for 1964!” and some where you’ll say, “I have no idea how they did that one.”
I know you’ve probably seen this movie. But whether it’s the Mary/Bert subtext or the detail of the fox being hunted being Irish, I bet there are some details you’ve missed. Poppins is not a Christmas movie (if anything its about the end of winter into spring) but whether it’s the message of family or love over money, there’s something that makes this movie feel right for this time of year.
Plus, the bridge of “Feed the Birds” has this part that will never fail to give me chills.
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I would like to know what your favorite piece of media to come out of 2022 was. Movie? TV Show? Book? Song? Food? Whatever!
I plan on sharing a list of our readers’ favorite things at the start of 2023, and this is your chance to be a part of it! Just fill out this super short form and you’re a part of the official SPT 2022 Going Away Celebration!
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We love a word game here at SPT HQ. Tumbleword is a new fun one that gives a few different tools to try and create the largest number of words using the fewest number of moves. It’s deceptively simple, but surprisingly tough. Sorry/enjoy!
What’s a song that you’re always glad to hear but you’ve never owned or dug deeper into? For me, that’s probably Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” It’s perfect: that opening riff on the synth-y thing, the steady drum beat with perfect snare fills, and the horns. The HORNS. The brass section three separate iconic riffs in this song. (Don’t believe me? To prove my point, I recorded this very low-effort clip of me impersonating three different horn riffs.)
Okay. So then why haven’t I listened to more Stevie Wonder? Instead I’ve just relied on the radio to occasionally play “I Just Called To Say I Love You” at me. Even better question, I subscribe to a streaming service: why haven’t I ever played Talking Book, the 1972 album that spawned this perfect song? I guess I’ve just never had Spotify open and thought about “Superstition” at the same time. And the loss is all mine.
The New York Times just published a look back at this album on its 50 year anniversary which details why it’s not just a great album, but also why it is such an important one. You’ll learn about how this album was on the forefront of synthesizers, utilizing an insane machine named TONTO (retronymed to mean The Original New Timbral Orchestra) and you’ll also learn that synth-y thing I was talking about earlier is called a clavinet (It’s from the 1940s and it’s both electronic and uses strings. It’s crazy.).
So here’s where I’m at: if you know “Talking Book,” you’ve gotta read this article. If you don’t know this album, you’re wasting precious moments of your life. It’s really, really good and it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. Get on this.
Talking Book
The blankets in our house have slowly been thrown away for various reasons over the years until only one has remained. Then that one was adopted by the cat and you can’t use a cat blanket.
So after years of not having a blanket to throw over my legs on the couch, I once again have a warm flannel blanket from The Vermont Country Store and I forgot how good life could be. Just call me Linus Van Pelt because I’m a blanket guy now and I’m not going back.
The link below will take you to my particular blanket, but let’s not overthink this: The thesis is a simple one. Get a blanket this winter.
Longtime readers of Sincere, Positive Things know that in addition to ingesting all things modern media, we are often looking backwards as well. Well allow me at this late date to be the first person of 2022 to inform you that the best thing to listen to while doing the dishes are celebrity interviews from Dick Cavett’s vast archives.
Should you never have encountered the interview stylings of Mr. Cavett, the experience could be rather jarring if you’re only familiar with the modern talk show. The host isn’t constantly interjecting with a segue to a pre-planned anecdote, there aren’t games, and the audience isn’t reacting constantly. Instead, there is space to discuss, argue, and debate. There are laughs, but they aren’t a constant requirement. Instead, there’s room for thought and depth. That’s not to say “aw shucks, they just don’t make them like this anymore.” I mean, they don’t, but this is, at times, slow television. This would absolutely not get made today, but it’s not a show for today.
Rather than extol the virtues of a show you’ll never click on and explore, I’m going to link to a number of worthwhile interviews to tickle your fancy. There’s something here for everyone (over 30).
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and Werner Herzog a German film director. They both have very distinctive voices and have recorded many hours of themselves speaking. Obviously, the next step was to feed many examples of their voice and their words into an AI to have them speak to one another on philosophy forever.
Across the previous 144 issues of Sincere, Positive Things, I have never recommended anything to you that I had not personally read, watched, heard, eaten or played. These are things that I am recommending full-throatedly, from personal experience. I will not lie to you, today’s Big Thing is sitting on a table in my house, ready to be read by my wife who purchased it and then again by me, but I am so confident that it’s going to be good that I’m just going to tell you about it now.
Katie Beaton is the cartoonist behind Hark! A Vagrant, a comic strip that I love so much that I recommended it here, years after she was done with it. It mixes history, fiction, and humor to create something truly original. She has been talking about her new book Ducks for quite some time. In this graphic novel, Beaton blends stories from growing up on Cape Breton Island, which is part of Nova Scotia (which is part of Canada, but I know you know that).
As I said, I haven’t read this book, but I did read the original, sketchier webcomic that it grew out of (still available here), and it is wonderful. It still has her sense of humor and storytelling, but with a more serious edge. If the book is half as good, I might just have to recommend it again in two weeks.
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
Perrenial Little Thing honeree, ThePudding is back with a cool little game called “Words with Strangers.” Each day you are pitted against one random person who also signed up for the game. You are both given a clue like “5 letter noun” or “word that starts with z” and you have to list as many as you can, with extra points for more obscure words.
That’s really it! Three rounds, one match-up per day. It’s a good time!
I have never in my many years of going to the movie theater said about a documentary, “okay, but you have to see it in the theaters.” I’m also not sure if I’ve ever said about any movie, let alone a doc, “okay, but you have to see it in IMAX.” Today I blaze a trail through both of these firsts.
The new David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream is not like other documentaries. It doesn’t follow any traditional “birth-to-death” narrative, instead focusing primarily on Bowie’s journey as an artist. We begin with him at the peak of his powers, we see him stumble, and then we see him find himself again. There’s a dash of family history, a dollop of his sex life, but otherwise: it’s about the art.
Unlike most music documentaries, this is a movie about music. Full songs are performed. Live takes you probably haven’t seen, familiar hits, and even songs from after Bowie’s peak that have been less in the zeitgeist are given center stage. Sometimes remixed slightly to fit the events on screen, sometimes not. And (again, I don’t work for IMAX) they sound incredible through the fancy movie theater speakers. When the drums on “Sound and Vision” kick in, you feel them kick.
And then the visuals. Bowie, according to the film’s director/writer/editor, Brett Morgen, was a hoarder. He saved every scrap of film he appeared on, every journal, everything. Morgen had a mountain of material to work with, and when you learn that he began working on this film in 2017, a year after Bowie’s death, it’s clear why: there are no newly recorded talking heads explaining Bowie. It’s just the man himself talking to you through archive footage. All of this is woven together through an intense montage of concert footage, filmed outtakes, movie appearances, but also art that Bowie didn’t create but help to illustrate. It is at times trippy and at other times intimate, but it is at all times relentless. After a brief intro, this movie grabs you and it refuses to let you go. (It is also 2 hours and 15 minutes, so try to time that bathroom break for right before the film).
I enjoy Bowie’s work, but I’m no expert superfan. That said, Moonage Daydream is a piece of art befitting this man who put everything he had into has work. If you can, see it on the screen and enjoy.
I’m an alligator!
The premise of this game is simple: you start on a Wikipedia page and you have to get to a different Wikipedia page using only links to other articles. How many clicks will it take you? How long will it take you?
This, of course, is a hard game. But it’s fun! Challenge your friends to a Wikipedia Speed Run!
Subscribe! But only if you want to!Hello! I went on summer vacation from newsletter writing without telling anybody. It’s like I’ve always said: I am the Don Draper of positive newsletter writing. Well, I’m back, I’m recharged, and I said hello to the widow of the man whose identity I stole in the Korean War.
One of my favorite kinds of Internet videos has the following qualities: someone has a crazy idea (like Nick Lutsko), builds an elaborate contraption (like Mark Rober), and devotes an awful lot of time to making it perfect (like Samara Ginsberg). I am happy to inform you that I have one of those for you today.
Swedish inventor, robotics enthusiast and video maker Simone Giertz had a dream: to turn bubble wrap into a musical instrument by somehow harnessing the small bubble explosion through a panflute. What emerged was a massive, crank-powered musical instrument that has never existed before and a glamorous music video to display it.
Whether you want to see the whole process that went into this creative act, or just get to the music video (which starts at 11:26), giddy-up to enjoy a whole new kind of sound.
Pop Pop Poppop Pop Pop Pop
If you’ve been on the Internet even a little bit in the last few months, you’ve probably encountered images created by Dall-E. If not, it’s basically an Artificial Intelligence program that takes a prompt submitted by a user and turns it into images. So, “an armchair in the shape of an avocado” would get you:
Blogger Max Woolf has used Dall-E to create professional looking photographs of insane foods and they are a pleasure (and a little scary) to look at. Enjoy the brave new world of fake food!
Faux gras
Ramsey Ess is a writer and comedian living in Brooklyn. He is a freelancer for late night television, writer of a weekly column about old TV for Vulture, a podcaster, and improviser. He is also the writer/star of the webseries "Ramsey Has a Time Machine."
The Thing: Marvel’s She-Hulk & Werewolf By Night
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The Thing: Tolkien Deep Dives
Ramsey Ess is a writer and comedian living in Brooklyn. He is a 
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