Michael Cera presents: Brazzaville Teen-Ager
G R I M E S: I don't want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living
i dont want my words to be taken out of context
i dont want to be infantilized because i refuse to be sexualized
I’m not afraid of flying. Never have been. If anything, I’m too fearless about flying. The idea makes me over-confident. When I walk onto a plane, I head straight towards the cockpit. “Pilot School? What’s that?” I’ll say, “I’m in 13B. Why don’t you head back there and take it easy. First drink’s on me. I’ll make sure we get to Dawson City, sure and steady.” And of course, instead of a pilot’s message to passengers, we’d play this podcast.
Jurassic Park
No Age - Miner
Cold Warps - Science Fiction
Speakeasy with Paul F. Tompkins - Nick Kroll
Elevator to Hell - Why I Didn’t Like August 93
Fair Ohs - Katasraj
Marnie Stern - Winktester (Year of the Glad Demo)
Buck 65 - Blood of a Young Wolf
My Mad Fat Diary S01E05
Belle & Sebastian - If You’re Feeling Sinister
Joni Mitchell - My Old Man
Rhye - Open
Jennifer Castle - Misguided
St. Vincent - We Put A Pearl In The Ground
Bored to Death S03E08
FINAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: TORONTO STRIP SHOW
We’re kicking off this year’s festival with a kick ass art show and we TOTALLY NEED YOUR HELP TO MAKE IT HAPPEN.
Opening May 1st, “TCAF presents the TORONTO STRIP SHOW” is a month-long gallery show and fundraiser hosted by the Steamwhistle Gallery featuring a decades’ worth of TCAF talent. Any artist who has exhibited at TCAF in our 10-year history is encouraged to participate. TCAF doesn’t fundraise often, so we’d appreciate if you’d help us out this one time.
The thematic link for the show can loosely be described as “Toronto / Comic / Arts / Festival”. We don’t want to limit your creativity as you interpret the festival, the city, and the medium, so interpret that as you will. Of course, we love comics, and submitted works that make use of the medium will be appreciated.The deadline for submissions is April 22nd and must be delivered to The Beguiling Books and Art. For full details and to let us know if you want to participate, please email miles@torontocomics.com.(Feel free to reblog this too ;)
wheelr.tumblr: Why I Write an AudioBook
I write Valentin & The Widow, a 1920s pulp adventure serial in which a feisty young English widow and her burly gay Russian valet travel around the world dismantling her late husband’s evil and oppressive secret society. (Find it on iTunes, RSS, Tumblr.) It’s big, plotty, proudly…
Barring any last minute evidence, I think it’s safe to say that my imagination never left the realm of the possible. To this day, most of the time that I’ve spent spaced out was time spent theorizing conversations with people the people in my life, in places I’d been before, doing things that were reasonably within the real of possibility. Now, please don’t think about this as me having a boring mind. Clearly. What seems more likely is the idea that I’m really just trying to do everything right, and I could use the practice.
Enlightened S01E04
The Orwells - Lays at Rest
Turbo Fruits - Poptart
Balacade - California Frown
Burning Love S01E05
Smith Westerns - Boys are Fine
Hidden Words - Paradise of the Placeless
Bob’s Burgers S03E16
The Hidden Cameras - Hump for Bending
Depressive Reality
Women - Group Transport Hall
New Buffalo - It’ll Be Alright
Charlyne Yi - Reincarnation
Here’s the Thing, “Lena Dunham”
Joanna Newsom - On a Bad Day
Stuart Warwick - Man with a Pussy
Save the Date
Lady Lazarus - Lapsarian
Preparing Give Up Spring 2013 mail out. These are free. They can be sent anywhere in the world. Let me know if you’d like one. andrewt.press@gmail.com
You Are Boring
Here’s the full text of a piece I wrote for The Magazine a few months ago. I really enjoyed writing it, and would like to thank Marco once again for publishing it there. If you haven’t checked out The Magazine yet, you should. Anyway, here’s why you’re a total snooze:
Everything was going great until you showed up. You see me across the crowded room, make your way over, and start talking at me. And you don’t stop.
You are a Democrat, an outspoken atheist, and a foodie. You like to say “Science!” in a weird, self-congratulatory way. You wear jeans during the day, and fancy jeans at night. You listen to music featuring wispy lady vocals and electronic bloop-bloops.
You really like coffee, except for Starbucks, which is the worst. No wait—Coke is the worst! Unless it’s Mexican Coke, in which case it’s the best.
Pixar. Kitty cats. Uniqlo. Bourbon. Steel-cut oats. Comic books. Obama. Fancy burgers.
You listen to the same five podcasts and read the same seven blogs as all your pals. You stay up late on Twitter making hashtagged jokes about the event that everyone has decided will be the event about which everyone jokes today. You love to send withering @ messages to people like Rush Limbaugh—of course, those notes are not meant for their ostensible recipients, but for your friends, who will chuckle and retweet your savage wit.
You are boring. So, so boring.
Don’t take it too hard. We’re all boring. At best, we’re recovering bores. Each day offers a hundred ways for us to bore the crap out of the folks with whom we live, work, and drink. And on the internet, you’re able to bore thousands of people at once.1
A few years ago, I had a job that involved listening to a ton of podcasts. It’s possible that I’ve heard more podcasts than anyone else—I listened to at least a little bit of tens of thousands of shows. Of course, the vast majority were so bad I’d often wish microphones could be sold only to licensed users. But I did learn how to tell very quickly whether someone was interesting or not.
The people who were interesting told good stories. They were also inquisitive: willing to work to expand their social and intellectual range. Most important, interesting people were also the best listeners. They knew when to ask questions. This was the set of people whose shows I would subscribe to, whose writing I would seek out, and whose friendship I would crave. In other words, those people were the opposite of boring.
Here are the three things they taught me.
