‘funny,’ not funny

For music makers, a producer/engineer can be a unique sort of friend. For all of us, except Lionel in this conversation, that unique friend came with the name "Ducky Carlisle" and helped us make the best music we could make, all while having the time of our lives. Bleu McAuley, Shaun Wortis, Mike Gent, and Jim tell the tales of the studio days and nights with the late great Duck Carlisle and we play some of examples of the songs he helped us bring into the world as recordings. Thanks so much to our guests for this episode.

This week we were fortunate to have songwriter, singer, producer, creator, Jeff Tareila on the pod. Jeff has toured internationally with his band and solo, has recorded and produced "tons of records" in his words, and shared a history back in the distant past with Jim, stomping around the SoHo folk scene in New York City. He talks about the creation of his own releases as well as work he's been doing in the Virgin Islands with Dan Ackroyd, Motto, and G-Love. This was a really fun podcast to record. I hope you enjoy it.

This one was recorded while Jim was in New York City at Rivendell (Peter Cooper Villiage) in the last homely house (his mom's apartment) with his daughters visiting his mom. We talk about Norman Cantor's In the Wake of the Plague, and touch on some other books about similar subjects before veering off to discuss Napoleonic surgeons, The Watchmen, and Lionel's idea for R.U.N.A.I.Refrences

This week Lionel and Jim talk about the TikTok algorithm, Roy Casagranda, AB testing at PayPal in the 2000s, Survey Groups and Polling, The Bonfire of The Vanities ny Tom Wolfe, the real date of the Fall of the Roman Empire, The Printing Press As An Agent Of Change by Elizabeth Eisenstein, and Autonomous by Analee Newitz.References here: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S5~dot~02-Bang-on-Killer-Virus/

We start our fifth season by considering a change of genre for our podcast, either to sports or economics, but ultimately settling on not giving a crap. We move on to considering the difference and origins of both Science Fiction and Fantasy, and then ponder the origins of Vanishing Point Perspective Drawings and whether human beings are biologically the same from a few thousand years ago to present day.References coming soon.

In our final episode of a very long Season 4, Jim and Lionel talk about soundtracks, synthesizers, the limits of AI growth, political assassinations, and communication skills. From Ennio Morricone to Vangelis, from the Yamaha CS-80 to the Oberheim OBX, from Ed Zitron to The Paris Peace Talks, from Condoleezza Rice to the George Clemenceau shooter, we cover everything.References coming soon.

IMPORTANT: This was recorded July 17th, 2024. We have an enormous backlog of shows right at the time when everything is changing rapidly. So Kamala was not the candidate at the time of this recording.Lionel and Jim talk about riding bikes along the Empire Trail, The Watchmen franchise, Gattaca, Ernest Borgnine, and more. References forthcoming at funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/

Jennifer Kimball, songwriter, performer, singer, horticulturalist and landscape designer joins the pod. One upon a time, she was in a legendary band called The Story with Jonatha Brooke and now she lives on an island, making music, and designing lawn free (or almost free) gardens of local flora and fauna. We also talk about her wintery songs project which is just outstanding, and growing up in NYC.References here.

A lazy summer conversation between Lionel and Jim in which Jim talks about his adventures in recording his band’s new album and checks in with Lionel to discuss books, movies, and tv shows of interest. Check the references for information and links for each item discussed.

Jason comes back to talk more about his life in games. During his time at Gamewright and now at Happy Camper, Jason has explored the world of perfect logic games, cooperative games, games of chance, but always board or analog games, not the digital variety. We wonder what the first game ever played was, and Jim comes up from a past-life regression with a suggestion. We talk a little about Soul Coughing's new tour and the problem of playing what the fans want to hear vs. what the band wants to play. Examples of games and more are listed in the references section of the website for this episode.Thumbnail for this episode by Elmir Jafarov

The multifaceted Jason Schneider joins us to talk about his life in fun and games. Jason has started his own game company after working for decades at someone else's. Jason started studying philosophy, then went to clown college. From there, he worked on Sesame Street, Zoom, and Fetch! with Ruff Ruffman. He discovered scores of games at Gamewright, and helped develop them into popular products for the company. His own company is called Happy Camper Games. Check them out.References

I chose this episode to encore because the amount of data centers in use for AI has recently been in the news. Damien was talking about this a year and a half ahead of time. - JimBrothers revisited! This week, Lionel’s brother Damien joins us to talk about big construction, data centers for crypto mining and AI, modern art in the Hudson Valley, The M1 Abrams Tank, hybrids vs. electric cars, problems with money and guns, the end of work, and what’s still great about the United States of America.References: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S3~dot~04-Damien-Cassin/

Jim Hood, a graphic designer experienced in naming and brand development, typography, communication, and environmental graphics joins the podcast to talk about typography. One important thing we learned is that it was his class in the 90s that developed the standard for the typeface pictogram on Wikipedia. We discuss this, and many, many typefaces. Jim Hood came to my (Jim I) office, so the microphone drifts a little bit. I (Jim I) did my best to fix it after the fact. Adding all typographical references to our website: https://funnynotfunny.bigego.com/links/f/S4~dot~45-Jim-Hood/https://hooddesign.com is Jim Hood's website.

Andrew Silver is a research affiliate at MIT where he leads a seminar on leadership and film. He is a film director, producer, and writer of many films including Radio Cape Cod, Next Door, and Profiles In Aspiration.Jim recorded his half of this podcast from his home, where champagne was added to the mix of the conversation. Andrew, Jim, and Lionel discuss a variety of films with regard to leadership in varying degrees, starting with Oppenheimer, but with attention paid to the previous attempts at a biopic of the "father of the atomic bomb," then Barbie, and Dune, which shared multiple attempts at telling the story, the latest being a huge success at the box office.The idea of the power of the box office comes up over and over again. Lionel and Andrew try to land on what can make a successful release of either music or a movie, and after an hour, we decide to have Andrew back to talk more about these topics.

Ben Solo rejoins the pod to talk about 1 book and two short stories. We start by discussing a book by Rory Sutherland. The full title is Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense, although, it was previously called Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life.We move on to talk about a short story by Jorge Luis Borges called The God Script, which we all felt was profound. Finally, we talk about a short story by Andy Weir called The Egg. There are spoiler for these short stories but a person could read them quickly before listening if a person wanted to.A theme shared by the two stories is the infinity of dreams. which reminded Jim of a song, which turns out to be a poem by Calderón de la Barca and you can hear a reading of it here.

First, apologies for missing a week. Producing these takes a lot of work and I needed I week off. - JimOur guest this week is Balazs Szelenyi, Associate Teaching Professor at Northeastern University.From his university bio: Balazs Szelenyi received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1998 and teaches classes on Philosophy, Globalization, Sociology and History for Northeastern University. His first major area of research was on urban history and urban development. Based on that research he published his first book called The Failure of the Central European Bourgeoisie (2006), and an article on the dynamics of urban development in the early modern period in the American Historical Review. His second area of research was on the origins and causes of genocide, for which he received fellowships from the National Endowment of Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Fulbright Commission, and the German Marshal Fund. In 2003 he was named a Fulbright New Century Scholar for his research on genocide and the Holocaust. He has published articles in the academic journals Past and Present, Theory and Society, Social History, and the Austrian History Yearbook. Balazs has also co-edited a book called Cores, Peripheries and Globalization (2011). Currently Balazs is finishing his book on the Holocaust called From Minority to Übermensch, as well as developing a new interest on the impact of technology on society and the moral dilemmas involved in the evolution of transhumanism.We talk about his work teaching with a focus on AI and transhumanism and the future of thinking/learning. We discuss mind-extension technologies such as AI and earlier, starting with writing and the telegraph. We touch on Kurtzweil and his singularity, the new purpose of higher education, and what happens when all the inputs and outputs are filtered by machines.Balazs says that rather than use AI for avoiding work, his program is developing AI to better interactively teach students how to delve deeper into a topic.We had a great time talking with Balazs, and this discussion went on for an additional hour, which will be released as bonus material on http://patreon.com/jiminfantino/ our Patreon member's site.

Peter Mulvey joins the pod in person, sitting side by side with Jim in the Slabmedia offices this week. We talk about his career in songwriting, hitting a little on themes and methods, but also on inspiration, and a long history of work. Jim mentions Peter's TED talk about his book Vlad the Astrophysicist. We talk about the creation of his recordings: Notes from Elsewhere and More Notes from Elsewhere and play some clips from recent albums, Are You Listening?, There Is Another World, and Love Is The Only Thing featuring SistaStrings.On the literary front, Peter talks about reading The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones, the works of Lorrie Moore, and the poetry of Tom Hennin, notably, Darkness Sticks to Everything and The Herron with No Business Sense.Jim mentions that Lionel compared some of Peter's work to the guitarist Nic Jones, especially his song, Canada-i-o. We talk about Norwegian prisons and the case of Anders Breivik being sent to a humane prison there, which, interestingly, he calls inhumane in this article.Our conversation continues to trend in increasingly philosophical directions, including some discussion of meditation and groundlessness until we land on the topic of redemption for the crimes of popular figures, specifically Louis C.K.'s apology. Peter mentions an interaction with Amanda Palmer on forgiveness in this vein.

Ben Soto joins the pod to talk about The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life which is an extensive conversation between Matthieu Ricard and his father Jean-François Revel. Ben found this book particularly fascinating, given his interest in Buddhism, science, and the nature of mind. We also talk about The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self by Thomas Metzinger and Jim and Ben get very heavily into the nature of mind, while Lionel listens and adds his thoughts at the end.

We begin by espousing the benefits of corduroy jackets, move on to quality problems at Jim’s childhood bagel shop, lambaste The Onion, and wave the flamethrower of curmudgeonliness at perceived modern production optimization techniques. We then talk about our varying perceptions of the state of Connecticut. Jim mentions Rein’s Deli, where a photo of his band hangs on the wall. Lionel remembers his time growing up in that state.On to the sujet de la semaine–The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., a novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. Jim is a fan of the character Grainne; a super powerful Irish witch who lives during the Elizabethan era, however, we feel that this book suffers from the caricatures in his other novels, regardless of Galland’s influence and writing. One of our key issues is the treatment of magic in the book, which is written like science fiction, but borders on fantasy. We praise his books The Diamond Age, and Anathem, but start to point to a common structure that speaks to the predictability of his plots. We compare his formula with other authors like Michael Crichton. Jim stops Lionel from spoiling the plot of Anathem which is a real surprise, even though it follows the Stephenson formula.We contrast this novel with our previous two reads: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and The Midnight Library, as well as Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel.The connection gets dropped and we pick up by talking again about 2010: The Year We Make Contact which was inarguably horrible and points back to the idea that we make the best decisions we can at the time.Lionel asks Jim to read a J.G. Ballard’s short story called Prima Bella Donna, and then we make promises we probably won’t keep about reading Ulysses, The Dubliners, and Finnegan’s Wake. We talk about not finishing Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Lionel says Ballard narrative is impossible to predict and the style has such a light touch, it’s easy to get disoriented in exciting ways. The Martian Chronicles comes up as well, and Lionel implores Jim to read the first story in that Ray Bradbury collection. Jim brings the conversation back to D.O.D.O. and the philosophical idea behind it, which he finds fascinating, but ultimately thinks were not fleshed out enough.Jim mentions that he’s been working on a short story called The Paradox Principal. Lionel says Jim has written lots of short stories the form of songs. They talk about the opposite sort of song that is generally not a short narrative but a kind of suggestion: the love song. Lionel talks about wanting to set up his home studio differently. We talk about our motivations for creating music and stories and everything we do in a world of abundance of creative effort and a relative shortage of audience. Lionel says Vangelis has one answer, which is we write so that we do not feel alone. We talk about how an audience of one can sometimes be enough.Lionel mentions watching Generation Kill on Max. The story is based on a book he read, which he liked. He says the show is worth a visit. Jim says his TV watching time is radically curtailed. We rifle through a series of TV shows and guage our reactions. Back to Generation Kill, we briefly discuss the history of the second Iraq war. We both say we want to watch Shogun. We both remember how the first TV series captivated America at a time when Japan was seen as threatening to our economy. This brings up the issue of having to subscribe to an increasing number of platforms to see everything we want. We talk about possible alternatives.We try our best to put an end to this madness, but end up relaunching a discussion of several more films before we lose our legs and topple over.

We start by talking about what we like and don’t like about the band Cheekface. It’s mostly like. Then we talk about the novel Heavy Weather by P.G. Woodhouse. We talk about the line through Red Dwarf from that author and style of writing. We go on to discuss The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Nighttime by Mark Haddon and we discuss what we find dark and light about that novel. Lionel felt a lot of the influence of the band XTC in the story, which takes place in Swindon.We move on to discuss Charade and somehow find ourselves comparing movies in the 1960s landing on the hit musical Singing In The Rain, which Lionel has not seen but will watch in the future.We make plans to talk with film maker Andrew Silver to compare 3 treatments of the J. Robert Oppenheimer story.We try to end by slamming 2010: The Year We Make Contact but discuss a book retelling the making of the original film, The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stephanie Schwam.Jim says he started reading The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. and we agree to discuss in a future episode.Lionel says what he wants to do is complete a reading of Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. The conversation devolves into two old men kvetching about various health concerns and this episode croaks.