We Should Be Working

Freelance Origins: Art School to Band Merch Design | WSBW 03

Episode Summary

Zach and Jeff talk about job search frustrations and the impact of AI on the creative industry. They reflect on their time at art school and Jeff discusses the origins of his Mylkhead brand. He talks about freelancing for bands, getting clients, and joining forces with Go Media.

Episode Notes

Zach and Jeff discuss the impact of AI on the creative industry and the future of creativity. They explore the challenges of job searching in a competitive market and the increasing demand for specialized skills. They reflect on their experiences in art school and the importance of collaboration and camaraderie. Overall, they contemplate the evolving landscape of creativity in the face of advancing technology. 

Jeff discusses his journey from being inspired by gig posters to transitioning to freelance work in the design industry. He shares how he built a network and found clients through online platforms and personal connections. Jeff also reflects on his time at Go Media and the origins of his brand, Mylkhead. The conversation concludes with a discussion on sports fandom and the impact of personal computers in the workplace.

Takeaways

- The job market for non-entry level creative positions can be challenging, with many employers seeking candidates with highly specific skills.

- AI tools have the potential to revolutionize the creative industry, allowing for faster and more accessible content creation.

- While AI can enhance creativity, it also raises concerns about the future of human creativity and the impact of algorithms on artistic expression.

- Art school provides a valuable environment for experimentation and collaboration, allowing artists to develop their skills and find their creative direction.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Catching Up

01:10 Job Search Frustrations

05:21 The Impact of AI on the Creative Industry

07:47 The Democratization of Creativity

10:09 The Future of AI and Creativity

11:35 The Impact of AI on the Entertainment Industry

13:55 The Role of AI in Creative Expression

20:24 The Experience of Art School

22:19 The Importance of Collaboration and Camaraderie

26:04 The Value of Experimentation in College

29:46 The Evolution of Computer Technology

31:38 The Influence of Music on Artistic Direction

42:30 Transitioning to Freelancing

45:15 Building a Network and Finding Clients

48:44 The Challenges of Finding Authenticity in the Creative Industry

52:30 Joining Go Media and Transitioning to a New Chapter

01:00:08 The Origins of Mylkhead and Its Influence

01:05:26 Exploring the Concept of Authenticity

01:09:10 Sports as a Religion and the Fascination with Fandom

01:15:18 Personal Computers to Work

 

Episode Transcription

 [Music]

Welcome to We Should Be Working. I'm Zach Hendrix. With me as always is Jeff. Jeff, good to talk to you. I'm happy to see you again. How was your week been? Hey Zach, good to see you. Well, the week's been pretty low-key, you know, just keeping it simple. How about you? It was a busy week. Busy, crazy, and I should have been working on a lot of stuff, but I guess technically I was. Had a lot of stuff going on with my hockey team that I coach, but won't get into two specifics, but it was exhausting.

But hockey is almost over and done, even though I love it. It's been a long season, and I think I've got one, maybe two more weeks left, then I'm all done with that, and then I'm really going to be sitting on my butt, so I'm not looking forward to that. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, so you got this hockey thing going on, but like, okay, so you had your last week of work last week, right? On our last episode, we talked about it was your last day. So where have you come since then? Have you been going on interviews, doing your resume, or avoiding all of that? So I did start working on resumes. I find every single time, maybe because I'm too much of a perfectionist, that

I will go... Speaking of perfectionists, this is going to be some nice live fix. I'm sitting here, and you can see this guitar, and then this guitar, and I'm like looking at my camera, and the camera is not level. So let's get this little dude here, see how level I am. Yeah, way off. Sorry folks.

There we go, way better. So I started working on multiple resumes. I see a job, and I'm like, oh they want a little bit of this, and then, oh this job wants a little bit more motion graphics, oh this one wants a little bit of that, and then every single time I have to go in and tweak it, and I'm finding myself spending like two to three hours to apply for like two to three jobs.

And I'm like, I just don't... And then you'll go and you get the auto reject, and you're like, well of course, because this job has been posted for more than a week, and they've got 300 applicants on this job. They're like, what am I even putting in for? And so it's weird, you keep hearing about how the economy is doing good, and everybody's this, and there's tons of jobs, but I have the feeling that for people like me and you, at least for me, what I'm finding is that non-entry level people, there's not a lot of jobs out there, and a lot of what they're asking for is one very specific thing. So I found one job that I was like, oh man, I'd be great at this. This is actually a company that I've worked with before. I still know a couple people here, this would be great, and I check all the boxes except one, and I'm like, well that's a pretty big box to not check, and they're like, requirement, you know, fluent in Apple coding languages and Android coding languages. I'm like, well I've never done that, but it's like everybody wants you to be such a generalist these days that they're like, do you know graphic design? Do you know motion graphics? Do you know how to film? Can you publish this? Have you worked in communications? And do you code? Do you know CSS? Do you know HTML? And I'm like, you're looking for a unicorn here. Like you're never going to be able to check all of these boxes, and if you do, they're not, they're probably not going to be good at any of these things. Yeah, it makes me wonder, how, who is this person that they're hiring? Like, well the person that actually gets the job, like are they some talented wizard or something?

Exactly. Well, it makes me wonder, again it comes back to brought up last week that we should really talk about. Sometime I've been talking with a lot of my friends about is, what is the state of creative going to be in two to five years with everything that's happening with AI? I don't know if you saw what happened with the new render engine, or the new AI, I think it's called Sonoma or Sona, the video AI generating? It's a general AI. Oh, it's Sora. Sora, yeah, yeah. OpenAI's video, yeah. It's unbelievable what the stuff that they released. I mean, it's just unreal. I couldn't believe it. And I was like, okay, this whole industry is going to change here soon. And me and one of my buddies were saying how some way it was really, really cool, because we're like, man, imagine the movies that we're going to be able to spit out in like three days.

That I can just go do this scene, do this scene, do this scene, do this scene, and it's just there, and it looks realistic. I'm like, we can just crank a movie out. So in some ways it really speaks to like the young video creative to me, where it's like we've got our handycam and no budget. And I'm like, now we can make high budget films, you know, in our rooms with our buddies and all of this, and really make our imagination come to life. At the same time, I'm like, Zack is a video creator. I'm like, well, my job's going to be done here soon. They're really not going to need me in the same ways that they did before, but and so I really think, you know, I don't think you'll ever get rid of video or creative altogether, but I'm, I really think it's going to go the way of people like Christopher Nolan, where he's using IMAX film and nobody else is. He uses it, he uses it well, it's not gone, but nobody else is doing that. Like film is pretty much dead, for lack of a better term. I really believe that nobody shoots on film anymore.

Some people do, but the business of film in the 90s versus the business of film now is pretty much gone. And so I'm really, really curious about where this industry is going to go. What were your reactions when you saw that sort of thing?

Well, I'm kind of like, okay, well, this is expected, you know, it's a matter of time before they came out with something like that.

You can't really use it yet, right? No, it's not open to the public. It's just, they just showed some examples from their in-house team of, so it's like, we really don't know what it's going to be like, but we've seen what happened with Mid-Journey and you know, Dolly 3 and stuff. So it's like, okay, that's been out for a year. Everyone's had their hands on it. I haven't really seen anybody really make good use of it other than showing you what it can do is like potential. So the only thing that's really created is a cottage industry of AI influencer types who are using this software and showing other people how to use it and making cool stuff with it as like an example. And they're getting followings off of Twitter and so there's like a whole cottage industry of like AI news and development. But I don't know exactly what people are doing with a lot of this stuff. I know that a lot of people hate it and don't like it. And it's fucking with a lot of artists and you know, the whole copyright thing that, you know, it's like it's trained on a bunch of data from actual artists work. And you know, I've tried using it myself, but I feel like I end up wasting a lot of time like just with the possibility that greatness is just on the other end of another round of prompts. And I can never get it quite right. But as far as like, I feel like it's good for stock. Like okay, I just need like a header image for this blog post. All right, I could go to Unsplash or I can just type in what I want to see and it's just like a background thing. That's fine. That's fine with me. And but as far as video is concerned, I feel like it's probably good if it does anything that mid-journey is doing or the democratization of how social media has allowed everybody to post stuff and to share stuff and to write and to make videos. We thought that it was going to revolutionize and give everybody a chance to be like a writer, a self-published author, or a video content creator, but it's kind of created this weird creator economy where everyone's sort of forced to do that stuff to try to make a living. And there's so much competition. And so no one's getting seen unless you hit the algorithm. So yes, we can have the ability to create a movie in your pocket in three to five years. Who knows? Like I want to see a movie about xyz character doing this and like I can have my own personal video. But if everybody's doing that, it's going to be so saturated. And in order to get your stuff seen, it's got to suit whatever algorithm is going to push it out to people or you have to market it or whatever. And I don't know, it's probably just going to go the way of the lowest common denominator, outrage stuff, fake news, like weird BS, trickery.

That's where it if I look at the very paranoid side of my brain and cynical part of my brain is that the part where I get afraid of AI is when it's linked with gen AI with like a TikTok algorithm, meaning or like a Netflix algorithm type of a thing. But I think TikToks is probably I'm not much of a TikTok user, but seems to be the most famous one right now as far as curating content. But if you link those two together and you plug that into Netflix, I can easily be watching shows that are only made for me that you don't ever see. It's generating content in TV shows and movies just based off of what I like to see and what I want. And then you add that in and add another step and you start talking about news and all of that. And it's curating news content and stuff that's happening in the world that is not even real. And you can get so far into a bubble that it's like that's the part where it really starts getting scary with me is that if the AI starts running generative AI as well, like right now all of generative AI is being run by human beings. But if you plug an algorithm into that and it starts making its own content on its own, that's when it starts getting really freaky to me. And people have posted they start having conversations with AIs and stuff like that. It really does remind me of a lot of different movies and it's kind of curious as far as which one you're going to get. Do you end up with a Matrix? Do you end up with the movie Her?

Do you end up with the movie Wally type of thing? Exactly. And I really feel like there's probably going to be a mix of those. I just saw a meme sent out that I thought was great. What it was, you know, in the 90s it's two different pictures and it says in the 90s what we thought AI was going to be and it's Terminator and all the robots and they're you know killing human beings and all this. It's that you know apocalyptic future of the machine apocalypse and all that. And they go what we're actually doing with it. And it's a Gen AI picture of like Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, Megan Fox and these just like hot chicks in dresses. And it's like here's what we're actually doing with it though. Like I'm like well eventually it's going to just get sexualized. And all that they go the robots are in it for the long game. You know they they know people will just succumb to this and you know it'll just basically just be another form of pornography type of a thing. Yeah that's happening too and you know not a big surprise. Yeah exactly. In some ways it's hilarious and then in other ways like I said it's it's a bit terrifying. And so I mean when you've played around with any of this AI I've messed around with some Dolly, some chat GPT of course, and a few other things. And then obviously seeing the Sora. 

 

Do you have you gone down that rabbit hole? Because I know myself I haven't. That's where I was kind of like yeah stock images, stock footage for video I think is kind of going to be gone here soon. Especially with the stuff from Sora where I'm like yeah stock image, stock photography and photos and image sequences and video is pretty much gone here in the next few years. Movies might take longer in TV shows. But do you have any like fun inspiration with any of that? Is there like oh this is cool I'm doing like like I found myself on time doing crazy cats with sunglasses and stuff.

Yeah I went through a period where I was you know experimenting with mid-journey for a while. I paid for a subscription to get more credits out of the thing. And I was trying to generate a header image for my home page on my website. I was in the middle of trying to redesign it. And I was trying to get like some Frank Frazetta inspired 70s fantasy art with you know and so I was having fun experimenting with that trying to create that look of like a paperback book from you know 70s paperback book. And I was getting some interesting results but like I couldn't get the same results other people were getting with it who I was seeing on reddit or something. And I was having fun with that and but and then I also so I did actually use it for Christmas gifts this year. You know instead of like I printed someone a card but instead of a card like an e-card or whatever I generated like some inside jokes like in a character. So like my girlfriend's mom we like to think of her as a bumblebee and she and she likes coffee and so I and and they like to think of me as a sloth. So I just generated an image of a bumblebee and a sloth sitting down for a cozy cup of Christmas coffee. And so like you know I had the image and when I printed it out like her mom was like blown away like where did you get this? It's like well yeah I generated it you know based off of my text. But so she was like impressed with the thought that I put into it. Like I thought of her and us this way to create this idea that we can now see. So that is where I feel like it's useful and it's impressionable. Like I think people of all ages can be can do that. Like I just want to see this idea in a visual form. There it is. Okay great. But if you have anything specific that you're trying to do

I mean it's super annoying. I find myself generating and generating and six hours go by and I'm like frustrated and I've got like you know a hundred different images I've generated but nothing's quite what I'm looking for. And then I'm like why did I just why don't I just make it from scratch like I used to? I don't know. I'm just using trying to get used to all these AI tools and like my other skills of actually being able to draw and build this stuff are like diminishing slowly over time as I'm just getting more used to prompting and trying to develop this right skill start get the AI to do what I want. And then I've got to buy more credits because whoops I ran out. So now I'm just like sucked into this weird subscription process with these guys and it's like enough. Like I don't want to have to do this. It's it's annoying. It's not that fun. After a while it's it's fun in the beginning and then I just feel like it gets really annoying after a while. Yeah it's not interesting. I had a couple times where it's just like I remember I was really really close to what I was looking for and then it had an image with this woman with glasses but her glasses were not drawn well. It's kind of like the problem with the fingers. It was like half on her offer was going into her head and so I did you know woman not wearing glasses and then all I get is women wearing glasses and I'm like no not wearing glasses. Like I'm trying to get you know office worker woman sitting in chair desk you know and then everything I'm getting is like messed up and screwed up and it keeps getting like progressively worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. So I think like if they can start spitting out you know and I think it'll get there eventually. It's not that hard to do. I mean even illustrators had live trace for a long time but you start spitting out a vector file with handles and stuff like that that then you're like okay well that's close enough. I'll go and tweak that change this color do all that. Right yeah yeah yeah. I think that'll eventually get us there. So that did make me think as far as this is kind of a a new tool a new renaissance for us where we've got these ideas that these ideas were ahead and finally we have a tool to be able to get it out that is not a ridiculous amount of money where before we needed tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars to get our idea to come to life or we didn't know how to do it and hence that's why we were at school. When you were at school was that kind of still a time of inspiration for you? Like was it fun to see all of your ideas to be able to come to life or were you still struggling with I'm not being able to get these ideas where where I want them to. Yeah I think it was tough at school because well you know you just start off as an artist who draws and now I'm using digital tools to try to create this cool stuff but the stuff that I was inspired by as far as video games and movies I'm creating a shitty model in 3D Studio Max and it looks absolutely nothing like what I see on tv. I'm stuck with this like crappy poorly rendered designed a 3D structure that that you know absolutely looks amateur at best and it takes a while a long time like a lot of practice to get anything remotely close to what you see on tv as far as animated films or special effects. I just don't think that nobody in my art school even the best of the best on the graduating class produced anything that looked what you could see on tv in movies or video games it just was a pale comparison and it was like do we just not have the software that other people have that makes their stuff look realistic and good or are we just you know playing with tools that are five years out of date I don't know it just kind of sucks so that was another thing that that made me feel like 3D wasn't really for me is because the best I could do was make something that looked like a crappy infomercial for local tv you know with like a poorly animated character you know derping around it's or like a number five that just comes in and spins or something like that oh yeah harsh and yeah okay doing like text or something like that that's fine doing 3D extruded text that's cool you know but if I had to do a person or anything realistic or do a scene I mean that was it was not really fun to design something and then be like okay this isn't even close to what I could think I'd do it but yet you spent weeks and weeks and weeks doing it so I'm like I just want to do graphic design yeah in retrospect do you think it was a lack of knowledge from teachers because I feel like especially in 3D if you don't know how to make it realistic um it's uh it was almost like for me in 3D when somebody told me that you do this in 3D the exact way that you would do it in real life and you have to simulate real life and the thing that you don't realize is that it's like I remember somebody told me like you know uh whenever you build a shape all of the edges are harsh it comes to an exact 90 degree angle so all of your primitives like a square or something like that if you have an edge it comes to an exact edge but when you look around even everything that you see that you think has a sharp edge actually has a little bit of a curve on it just a tiny little curve and that's what catches that light it makes that look a little bit more realistic so it's like every single thing you work on you should have a slight rounded edge on it just ever ever so much unless it's maybe like a knife or a razor blade type of thing then maybe you're coming to a point where you're like oh yeah you're right this is why your desk doesn't look right it's because you don't have that slight rounded edges the keys on your keyboard stuff like this and you really kind of need that lesson from an instructor to then talk about well here's how it works in the real world and this is why yours doesn't work um it was that mindset that I was like okay now I know why it's not there it's because my lighting isn't good um it's not because of lack of the program or anything like that so was it anything as far as lack of understanding from teachers do you think or just a lack of like we didn't have enough time we didn't have enough capabilities and it was art school like you got to develop those skills over years yeah I mean I think the teachers did a fine job of you know they told us about the chamfered edges too you know that isn't good and a lot of working in 3d is really like you said understanding how real life works how lighting actually works how things bounce off each other and you know so it wasn't for lack of understanding I just think it's a lot to take in and when you when you start to get into it you just are quickly hit with the realization that you are so far away from being able to do that and that's why it's maybe I just didn't have the patience for it maybe because so did you find that when you got to school was it with a lot of students was it somewhat inspiring to be around other art students and things along those lines was or did you find other people kind of quickly came to the realization that you did that you're like I'm not quite able to get what I want out of this and maybe I'm much more of a graphic designer yeah I think it was fun and inspiring to be around other artists and you know it's nice to have other people in your cohort that are doing the same thing that are at a similar level as you because you know I can produce something that doesn't really look very good but I'm still like doing a good job in the class like the teacher still giving me an A because I did the assignment and I'm at the level at the expected you know skill level for where I'm at so and you can see other students in the class doing something similar so you kind of see how you stack up and you're like okay I'm not like really far behind now obviously if you're comparing yourself to what you see on tv then you're like oh I'm so far behind you know so that would totally kill any of the inspiration which you know makes me think about today how a lot of people are learning on youtube and trying to figure things out through tutorials and their level of comparison is just the internet and it's like the best of the best and and they're like where do I stack up I feel like I suck I can't do this there's nobody at your level that you're seeing doing the actual grunt work of producing every single day you don't see that so it's discouraging online but back in college it was fun because you're like oh hey we're all doing this together we all kind of suck but like hey good job you did that and then this kid needs some help so he's asking me for some tips I'm giving him some tips and you know the teacher's grading it you get a good grade you feel like you're progressing you know that was all good but I think that's some of the best advice out there and you know not that what we've been talking about has been creative focus and here's how to make it into business but I do think that that's some of the best advice is especially as somebody that was mostly self-taught um in 3d I was one of those people that learned mostly off of tutorials and stuff like that but I had one friend helping me um I had one person that knew what he was doing that was a few steps ahead of me um and I would encourage anybody that is learning or being self-taught try to find somebody um out there whether they're an expert or not to let you know yep you're doing this right no you know try it this way but can at least encourage you because I know it was really intimidating for me the first time I put a demo reel out there that I was like this thing sucks but it's like I'm looking at you know agencies like the mill and buck and stuff like this they're like some of the best in the world I'm like my stuff sucks compared to them uh and of course starting out it's going to but to have somebody be like no this is good or maybe put something in like this it's one of the best things and that was one thing for me at art school that that I got out of it was all of a sudden I had all this camaraderie of like man everywhere I go everybody's an artist um and maybe in a different discipline but we're all kind of here trying to make it in this weird industry so when you were at school did you um did they have dorms for art institute did you live in the dorms at all or well they had dorms that they shared some dorms with point park college or thing but I didn't live there I lived in um another student sponsored housing apartment complex that was like a half an hour walk away um but then I just lived in apartments with a bunch of roommates like scattered across pittsburgh different areas you know they didn't have real I don't I don't know they had dorms but I don't remember anybody who stayed in them they weren't art institute dorms they were just like kind of there that you were living with were any of them artists or going to art school or anything like that oh yeah yeah yeah everybody that I was living with was also students at the same school and okay I remember we would be in our living room with five desks and giant crt monitors everybody was like working on their animation you know it was it was crazy that's the greatest thing for me I mean I think the the weird thing for me that was great about art school as well it was it was weird to go to a place to go for all of the artists especially kind of didn't really matter the discipline because school I went to they had you know sculpture photography acting film painting drawing it was just whatever but pretty much the only people that went to the school were art students even though it was a liberal arts actually it was actually a liberal arts education I think we had two science majors there and I don't I don't know what they were doing but everybody was an artist but as a filmmaker it was really handy because you're like I have my actors here you grab some theater kids and go hey do you want to come act in this sorry absolutely like we're looking we're dying to do anything and you're like I need help with storyboarding like grab somebody that's in painting or drawing like hey could you help me draw out some storyboards and do all this is that that was one of my favorite things about it from an art perspective everything I needed was right there and so some of the friendships it was like it's such a great melting pot that everybody just wanted to work and nope and people didn't care about getting paid and all that it was just part of being at school and oh I want to be a part of his project and I'll be a part of yours did you have any of that camaraderie or any mixing around as far as like students helping each other out was that some of the first time that you got to work with other people yeah that's a good point I had forgotten about that I mean it really did have some of that being in my apartment where we had graphic design majors web design majors culinary people and everybody's kind of doing their own thing but the best part about it was having people with a lot of time looking for projects to work on things to do and with a lot of creative ambition you know they have they have not been burned out or jaded by the industry so they're all excited about like making stuff and even even even my friends at different colleges you know had I was still connecting with them and they were similar it was like we were putting our skills together it's just having all those creative people in like one room or one area to combine it's like people are forced to work with each other the access is just right there yeah I mean I think that in in today's day and age the best that I've been able to come up with is that you know I've heard both sides of it and there's been one or two people that I've kind of mentored a little bit or have asked me for advice as far as going to school and all this and you know like man I don't think I want to go to school can I still hack it in this industry and it's like actually the creative arts is one of the best industries to not go to school when like they nobody really cares all they care about is your work for the most part if you have good work and you have a good portfolio they don't necessarily care that much if you went to college or not or do you have your degree or master's that's much more of a corporate thing um yeah getting your foot in the door is much more do you have good work but also college is one of the best places you know that's my only regret with leaving early is that college is one of the best places to experiment um where you don't have a you know you don't have these guidelines you don't have a client hounding over you you can kind of make what you want to do make your mistakes figure out how to do it learn somebody else's perspective before you get spat out on your own is that I wish I would have utilized that experimentation a little bit more if I would have stayed a little bit longer that might have been uh an opportunity there but because I think the thing I missed most about leaving college was leaving all the other people behind is that I was like man I really wanted to work with them I really wanted to work with them did you maintain any of your relationships or did you have any thoughts like that where it's like hey this is our good time to experiment stuff like that and then maintain any of those relationships afterwards kind of I mean I had a really good relationship with my um roommate who stayed with me from the from the very beginning all the way to the end until he graduated he graduated a year before me but

I still stayed in touch with him for a while everybody else not so much I I kind of feel like in my particular case I went to school for like four days a week and then I left and I went home back to Ohio for the right throat the weekend so I could work at McDonald's and hang out with my girlfriend who uh you know was like my high school high school girlfriend and so that's I didn't have the same college experience that like other people did where they stayed there on the weekends and they got to party and hang out with each other I didn't party I kind of cram in all of my work into four days and then try to get it done so then I can go home on the weekend and you know because of that I wasn't as attached to my classmates as I could have been did you so you said that you guys were all sitting around there with computers crt did you buy a computer did you have uh did you save up enough money to get yourself a computer because I was gonna say for me when I was at college computers were like such a commodity like you were we had maybe three computers on my dorm floor of like kids that owned computers and really they weren't available then you had to go to the library or the media lab or something like that to go use one of theirs but you were just hoping that your buddy's computer was available so you could go type your paper up or go edit a video real quick like so did you bring your own oh yeah I mean we uh my friend is my friends and I were got we're into like the pc building hobby so they were going to school for it um some of my high school friends were going to school for it and then I went to art school but they knew how to like build computers and I was like kind of nerding out about that too they taught me what how to build one and so through that I built my own pc and but I didn't everybody in my uh in my house had computers um so it wasn't hard to come by at all for us but we were there from what 2000 so I don't know when when you when did you go to school what was it like for you how come nobody had computers yeah I graduated 99 so I think I was just one year ahead of you

but yeah it was it was nine it was that still that 99 2000 era where yeah people building their own PCs was just starting to take off but you have uh apple and I think the the g4 max were starting to come out or something like that yeah that's right um and those big gray towers were coming out and um and stuff like that and then the black macbooks were out because I know one of my friends had the black macbook and we were big apple fanboys and all that but it's kind of funny that I don't know why it never occurred to me like a computer was a big deal in my house I was a big computer nerd um and liked a lot about it but I remember going off to college I don't think it even ever occurred to me to save enough to get a laptop I was like I was like there's no way I could ever save a thousand dollars like thousand dollars for an 18 year old I was like I might be able to save like 200 bucks but then I'm gonna like have to go buy some sunglasses or something like that like my ability to save money back then was pretty minimal uh it was it was bad at best but since my best friend uh had a had a mac laptop I think I probably just leaned on him and I was like I'll use yours but like I didn't go to film school with a camcorder uh I don't think I was but that was one cool thing about that school is that you could as a freshman you could rent out a camera um and stuff like that so we were getting our hands on like 16 millimeters and then I did a work study program with the school where I worked in admissions and I would give kids tours of the school and then some of those kids sometimes would stay the night in my room if they were doing an overnight tour and stuff like that so that I had kids staying in my room all the time but really I was just using that money to like buy film to a million millimeter a thousand dollars I that's unheard of I don't think I spent that much on my computer I mean we had a I mean we had a family computer I think a lot of families started to have theirs there was like a Packard Bell 486 I think 16 megs of ram or something like that um but and so like that's what I would be working with but then when I actually went to school and got to build myself a 3d modeling computer um with photoshop on it you know a cracked version of photoshop at least um I don't I don't know I don't I don't think it's very expensive I think maybe three or four hundred dollars oh my gosh that really that reminds me there was this um computer store that my friends would shop at it was like not even a store you you have to call them and order the parts or something like that so you had to know what you want and then they would have it for you it was like I remember walking in there and there was like this really hot like Romanian girl working at the desk she and she would go back and grab the parts from the warehouse and it's like a processor some ram fan case and it's like that's how we got our parts and we built it I relied on my friends who knew how to do all that stuff and I just kind of asked them what to do they told me what to get and then I put it together I don't know what my other friends did I know that my roommates they were into Macs I wasn't I was a pc guy but yeah that's why you were saving so much money and not having to spend a thousand dollars is that right I was one of those uh idiot young kids back in the day it was like if it's not a Mac it sucks and I'm not going to windows and windows is dumb and all this and I was like yeah but you're paying a premium to have this Mac and I wish I would have realized a little bit sooner it wasn't until I got into 3d that I started building my own PCs where it's like now I'll keep the Mac laptop but my desktop is always a windows machine like and in my opinion Apple's kind of left their pro customers in the dust a long time ago it's probably right about when I was in college was right around the time when they were still like a professional device and they were the fastest or could be the fastest and best out there with their next machine but now they're just not anymore once I realized that I was like oh okay and this it's not as big of a battle as I thought that it was I was like I don't mind working in windows I also don't mind working in Mac either one is fine I can do either one but yeah I was I was I was there was no way I was going to buy anything that wasn't a Mac computer and uh which was yeah it was you know you know a funny story that I used to when I would go home every weekend I would carry my computer home so I would take oh yeah with the monitor I would every every weekend I would take my computer home with me and so I would unplug everything carry the carry the case out and I lived up like Pittsburgh's full of hills and if you you're on the sidewalk you have to walk up some steps to get to another platform where you walk up more steps to get to your front door and then we lived on the third floor inside the steps so I was carrying all these things down going around parking on the street so I had to walk across the across the street up the hill to get to my car with my CRT monitor in my hand and I'm putting it in the back seat of my car come back go get my PC come back go get like my mouse and my peripherals and my keyboard and stuff and that we would take it home and we would set it up at my friend's house he had it rigged for like uh PC gaming so he had like he had installed ethernet ports all around the house you know and a big giant table so we would all plug in and we play unreal tournament um and so that that was exciting back then I mean he's like yeah I'm taking my PC home I mean I could have done it with a laptop but no no you got all that giant ass yeah you got to play unreal and you had to have the giant ass CRT monitor that weighs like 50 pounds for us we would go and rent we'll not rent out we would just go check the media lab so like the basically it was kind of like just a bunch of um computer set up on desks that were for video editing and stuff like that and they were probably teaching graphic design and stuff like that in there in the media lab but on the weekends and stuff and out of class surprisingly there was barely anybody in there we'd go in there and play starcraft and uh that was okay for us because they were all linked together and like all right we got to go in and we're playing starcraft together and all that and that was uh that was the best because that was the only like land set up uh on campus and you couldn't do it between rooms and stuff like that so unless we're playing like dreamcast um or something like that in the media lab yeah dreamcast played played so much at tony ox pro skater on dreamcast oh yeah yeah that was good um yeah power stone i had this game called power stone that we love that was a good one wow those were the good old days yeah because then you then you evolved into halo and stuff like that and the xbox parties oh yeah yeah yeah together and all that it is funny looking back on all of that um you know i think it's great for uh to uh as far as a theme for our podcast too because i remember a lot in college and i think that was kind of my impetus to leave colleges that i was like i was barely working on stuff all the time like the longer that i was there the more i didn't want to go to class i didn't want to do this it's like uh zach you get your uh paper done and i'm like i'll get started on the it's a 20 page paper and it's due tomorrow and i'm like oh it's tomorrow oh crap and it's like i'm just sitting there playing video games i should really be working on other stuff or i really should have been like you know trying to make more content or do all this but i was like i was so fed up with their rules and their ideals of what they wanted filmmaking to be and i just wanted to go mess around with my friends

and things like that what was what was the change of process like for you realizing that you didn't want to do 3d and then you wanted to do more graphic design oh yeah so graduating i had i graduated like the top three of my class i did okay with the 3d my demo reel looked pretty good um i had that cg breakdancer b-boy thing going on in the music video but that that music video that i did i did with more or less was a project i did with my friends who were not at that art school but they were going to case western reserve up in cleveland and so this my music that i was doing with the breakdancing and with this uh music video like kind of spike jones inspired that was felt more true to me than what my classmates were trying to do with the assignments and like so i felt like i wanted to move in this direction that felt more true to me and so i i kind of put that feather in my cap i had the whole milkhead.com branding that as like a follower of my box of milk music was we called it a milkhead so this i just started to lean into that direction right and then right around that same time i had discovered uh the sort of post hardcore emo punk rock scene um of music there was when i worked at mcdonald's i had

noticed that there was like a binder of CDs that someone had left in the back room i don't know if it's a customer but i was flipping through it and it was like a goldmine of like all of this music like afi um you know blink 182 their whole discography like all of these bands that i'd never really listened to but i've always heard about them so i was like i took the whole thing home and i started downloading and ripping all the CDs put them all the mp3s onto my burn all these mp3 discs so i could listen to them and so i got so obsessed with this music i was really into it had bands like the used and um you know these screamo bands poison the well post hardcore stuff um and then my girlfriend at the time was also into this kind of music so i was like this is cool and then my music that i was making started to take that direction but there was a magazine that they had uh that covered this music called alternative press ap magazine i don't know if you've ever heard of it okay yeah okay and they're based out of cleveland and so i would get ap magazine at the bookstore like at barnes and noble i'll be like always looking through it i was like oh look they're covering under oath this year this month oh you know here's here's the used on the cover cool fallout boy awesome so i was getting really into these bands and when i would get these magazines i would see it was covered with artwork like the t-shirt designs and the album covers that these artists um or that these these bands used for their cover art and their merch was really appealing to me and i saw one of these artists who had a really really really strong figure drawing skill uh with this like loose kind of sketchy drawing and he and it was his name was derrick hess and derrick hess is a cleveland based artist that had done a bunch of gig posters for the hardcore scene in the in the late 90s and the early 2000s he started doing the post hardcore stuff and so these concert posters i started to see and i was getting really inspired by how they looked and i was like i want to be like him i want to be just like derrick hess so i wanted to do gig posters and so when i would look up derrick hess online there was a website called gig posters.com and that featured poster art from all over the world and i got to see not only his work but the work of others like artist names like justin kimmer or angry blue or um rob dobby was another big inspiration for me at the time and these guys i was like had a name for themselves they were doing their work on their own terms they were creating this kick-ass art for these bands that kind of developed the visual language for this music that i was into and i was like i just want to do that that is so much more true to me it felt deeper true deeper in my body than doing any of the cg animation and combined with that phone call i got that i mentioned in the last episode where the guy's like 3d studio max yeah that's your future fuck your future if you want to learn 3d studio max i was like you know what fuck you i'm gonna go do this with the music that i like the these artists and i would connect with them on aol instant messenger and we were talking and there's uh you know an online community around it and i just was like i'm gonna do that so i started drawing in photoshop getting my doing some mock-up gig posters and that's where it started trying to emulate that grunge style of like the early 2000s photoshop brushes getting into that getting into just that raw that gritty aesthetic you know i think there was the bowda design lab i think was a popular um popular company at the time we did a lot of the layouts for these bands so yeah that's that's where i was like i'm headed that direction screw this cg animation corporate world did you did you ever get to do any work with bands on posters and stuff like that like were you able to make that a reality pretty quickly or how where did it go from there yeah absolutely i um so there's website deviantart was really popular at the time and um and i gig posters i put some stuff up there there was absolute punk.net which was a punk news blog that was where you would go to find news about fall out boy and on the any of these bands and so i had was a theater forum and i posted on that forum a lot but i did get some work so what was it 2004 to it was when i graduated high school or college and then i didn't i quit mcdonald's in the fall of 2004 i don't remember exactly when i first started but basically 2005 is when i said i'm freelancing i'm not going to get a real job i'm going to find some clients and then i got a couple clients i'll probably off deviantart or um myspace or something one of these like forums or whatever and i would be charging like $50 $25 to insert some free work eventually i got the attention of a record label charging $25 for free work $25 or doing some free work or whatever i don't see free work i was like charging $25 for free work no i did do some bands so some some bands local i don't even remember who my first band client was to be honest but also independent clothing companies were starting to pop up that were like inspired by this punk rock music scene so i think like an art a brand name called unspoken clothing hired me and i was doing i sucked at doing this stuff but i was like trying to figure out on the fly actually derek has had had a clothing brand called stress which was spelled s-t-r-h-e-s-s um had his last name in it and and i had to contact them and says hey i'm looking to do teacher designs i'm just getting started so his manager like sent me some work and i tried to do some shirts with using his art and you kind of like complemented with some textures and graphics and i did okay i don't think i did a very good job i'm learning still learning photoshop i don't really know how to use the vector pen tools and illustrator and i can't believe i got work i mean i'm getting work even though i'm not that great but i think my drawing portfolio from my college years was really good and people were like cool i want like stuff like that so they i was getting people i think uh it was a deviantart it was other people my age in similar cohort that were finding me online eventually things started to take off i found deviantart pretty late were you just posting on there like hey i'm available to work were you kind was it kind of like a little bit of a cold call or were people seeing your portfolio out there and saying hey i'll give you 20 bucks for this or was it a little bit of both i mean did you do you think you were reaching out to a lot of people looking for work yeah i was i i reached out to i remember reaching out to rob doby when before i even got started basically asking him how he got started we were chat over aam um there was a um yeah i think i reached out to a lot of people because they had their aol instant messenger handles like there and you could talk to them and so i would be talking to people who were also doing work i really tried to connect with a lot of other artists um that's i got in touch with justin over at angry blue and since i like to cite there was a thing that we would do like called uh well affiliate linking you know it wasn't really affiliate programs as they were today but back then it was like you had a list of other sites that were similar to yours or your friends and you would link like kind of like a web ring so we would have little 88 by 31 buttons that we put on our website that advertise their their site so it's kind of like you go to someone's site and you kind of see who their friends are at the bottom of the page you know all their little logos of like others similar and so i would reach out to all those people being like man i really love your work this is so cool you want to trade links so i would put their button on my site and they would put mine on theirs and so i think through that i started to build this network

yeah it was it was a just actual networking and connecting with other artists and bands and i would go up to bands that show saying like hey i do t-shirt design can i do some stuff for you and then i would get work by doing that and at that point it was i don't know how i had i had the gumption to go up to bands after their show and and promote myself a lot more than i do today i just was yeah no that's and i think that that's the impressive thing or the interesting thing about that because for me connecting creatives to work is some of the most fascinating part of the business and even for us right now you know and some of the impetus for this podcast that we should be working it's also some of the most undesirable part of the job of man getting work that i like and enjoy is turned into such a grind now that you're right it's like i can't just go to you know a smaller little venue for some new up-and-coming band or i mean i could but i'm really not going to make any money and the level of effort that i'm putting in to design this band the t-shirt it's not really worth it they're going to give me maybe like 50 bucks a hundred bucks or something and i'm putting way more time and effort in because now i've got 15 20 years of experience behind me to make this artwork and it's severely undervalued then yeah and there's been hundreds of people that have come after you that are doing it better and faster and cheaper and they're just you're just not as interesting anymore you're just old news yeah well i i wouldn't even say that as much as maybe like at least i wouldn't say for for you i still think that you know um your art and your perspective is still very valued in some way even more so because i don't see anybody i don't see many shops doing it as well anymore um as well as you guys were doing it back in the day that kind of grunge style that was really inspiring to me as well but i think the weird thing or some of the difference for me was i had such a hard time in the video industry understanding how do i get from here i'm a student i have a camera or i have an idea and i want to make this how do i get somebody to pay me to do this how do i go like i would watch these music videos and be like man i'd love to do a music video i can't get a hold of spike jones i can't get a hold of these guys that are making all these music videos like i can't just look them up they came in how's it going like uh there was such a disconnect there that i remember the closest that we got was my buddy had written a script for there was a band that we were big into back in the 90s garbage and speaking of ap press i think that they were on the cover one time and um and we were big into garbage and he had wrote and uh written a treatment for a music video for them for one of their songs and all that and then sure enough after we went to one of those shows and after his show got to meet the band and all that he was like we were talking with this dude who's the bass player who's technically not even in the band garbage has a lead singer two lead guitar players and a drummer they don't the bass player is not a part of the band just records and goes on tour with them but it's technically not in the band i thought that that was so weird it's funny of them that they brought this guy along for years and years and years to record but like yeah we're not gonna invite you in the bed um but so like we meet this dude afterwards like hey it's so important can you give this script to the rest of the band we'd love to make this video for you guys it's like that was how we thought we were gonna make it and start making music videos is that we had to start pitching these bands ideas and stuff like that but then the other thing was is that unfortunately a lot of the music that we were into was kind of more mainstream music as well and so it that idea probably would have worked if it was more smaller local up-and-coming bands then it's like hey go to the local like shows and that are doing like 45 minutes and stuff like that and those guys would probably be like yeah man we'd love for you to make us a music video we don't have a lot of money and we're like we don't care we're just young and hungry we want to go make music videos exactly they're trying to connect those two worlds for me but then i also got to the point where for you at least like you started reaching out to artists and all that i don't know why and it sounds so dumb to say now but i remember being a kid and almost being intimidated to ask people it almost like never even occurred to me to ask people that i didn't know to be like how do i get to do this job how do i get there can you give me some advice like i want to do this where do i go how do i do it i think i was so intimidated by them that i didn't want them to think that i was like bothering them or leave me alone or all of this and that i was like if i just keep working with them long enough it'll just happen um i think is how i thought that it would go like all right well i'm working in the movie business so any day now i'll be making movies and it just you know it never really connected that way so the fact that you reached out and started asking uh to me as weird as it sounds is pretty genius that i was like i was it was so weird to me um to do that so that you saw a path there because for me i didn't see a path i thought i like filled out a job application and somebody would hire me it's how young and naive and dumb i was i was like i don't know how do you get a direct star wars i don't know right yeah it's a weird it was a weird thing so as you're starting to make more of all this where is that taking you are you starting to make any money or are you going man i can make money at this or is it just more the passion that you're like i can't believe i'm getting to make band posters and band t-shirts and stuff like that yeah i it was it was both because i was so excited that i got to do with this stuff and i was getting paid for it um i had to find my own clients you know i didn't work for anybody who was giving me clients on the regular so it was like kind of stressful that like okay yeah this 50 t-shirt design is going to help me this week but like what about next week you know i did get a few like longer term clients there was a record label that found me called corporate punishment records they were like a band that had um metal artists like mashuga or i can't even really remember some of them but some of them eclipsed into into sort of the mainstream they had tangential connections to like uh slipknot and bands like that and like roadrunner records but they're like an offshoot from people who used to work for them i don't know so the guy running it he hired me as uh to do his website and do a bunch of stuff for his his artists but it was kind of like free if i can promote myself on the materials so i would do an ad layout for them and i would put like art designed by milkit on the bottom of it or i would do a t-shirt design and they would promote me on their website so it was kind of like pro bono free spec work um and then that led to more things down the line and it was funny because they had connections they were a little bit higher level than i did so they worked with a music video guy named um duh no uh oh i i can't remember it now but he did music videos for these artists these metal bands and so they needed a place to shoot a video and i offered up my family's house my we lived on this like giant property that had like in the countryside basically on top of the hill and they um came over and shot the video over at my at my parents property and like that was a really cool experience but like that guy was also like kind of a diy he had a camera you know high quality camera and he was shooting videos for these bands there's another music video director named darren donne at the time he had a dvd called like the shape of videos to come the videos of darren donne and it was like punk rock it was like a punk rock mixtape but his music videos so you can imagine how like once you start doing a few bands it's like people start to recognize you as like the band music video guy and you're especially if you're helping them out and you're cheap and a lot of there was a lot of other kids too my age they were who were trying to get into music videos and trying to do the same work for these for these pop punk bands so they would just contact them put it out there offered to do it for free and then of course the video is like on absolutepunk.net they're getting the and he's getting all sorts of publicity for doing the video even if he didn't even get paid but that's how we did it at that point i just don't know if it works the same today in this day and age it just doesn't seem i'm not sure i don't know i think it was so novel at that at that point this was before myspace yeah i think before myspace and now that you've got youtube and all of this that it's like it's turned much more into you just go make it yourself as opposed to even asking other people and things like that and then you get big enough um that's pretty fascinating though that then you get into it that way that's because that's a pretty big deal then as well but you were were what were you getting by with for work were you making enough money for an apartment and stuff like that doing yeah i mean was it websites graphic design video was it just the gamut like hey give me anything and i'll do it so yeah it was websites logos gig posters t-shirt designs album covers um yeah that's pretty much all i did i didn't do video i got you i really didn't do video i had some video skills but not enough to please any of these folks but you had a property that was great for video yeah yeah i mean my parents just lived in the country and i was like hey you could shoot it there and they're like okay for free yeah my dad'll love it like he was all into it like they loved it but we didn't get paid for that um there is so well

i made about eighteen thousand dollars my first year freelancing and so that was enough to afford a really crappy apartment with my girlfriend at the time so we split it but i remember when we moved in i was like just getting started and i said i had i wrote this letter to the apartment complex being like hey i'm just getting started with my business i just got out of art school i've been working on this i'm freelancing i'm trying to make you know it's kind of like a begging feel for like please let me live here and of course they approved us but i had no idea if it was because of my letter because i didn't have the proof of income to show them um and i didn't have a full-time job to say here's my pay stub so i was really scared that i wouldn't be able to get this apartment and but so i wrote this letter they gave us the apartment and then i managed to make it every month um i did also launch my own merch line called milkhead merch where i just had my own t-shirts and um t-shirts and stickers and stuff and i i've sold a few of those not really enough to make a living at all but enough to catch the attention and to promote myself and i just i just made it up every month to get by and it wasn't i guess i did that for a year um well i gotta remember i gotta tell you so this is where go media comes in because when i was living there up near cleveland i had went to a derrick hess art show to network not not even a network he was my favorite artist i wanted to go see his work in person so you know my girlfriend and i drove up to cleveland and we saw his work and i got to see him in person i met his manager you know that's when i got that stress clothing uh job but when i asked him i told him i introduced myself gave him like my business card and everything and so i'm trying to meet and little did i know inside that crowd there was like all of these artists from cleveland that i would eventually get to know they were hanging out in sort of the cleveland punk post hardcore scene i kind of still felt like it's a bit too cool for me but like that's where they were hanging out at this gallery and then i saw in like this rack of flyers you know where there's like flyers for all sorts of cool stuff and one of them was for go media and i picked it up i was looking at it and i was like that's cool that's really cool so i took all the ones that inspired me home and i ended up putting it on my wall it's like i decorated my wall with like you know posters and stuff that i do you know in my bedroom and the go media flyer was on there and i remember emailing them uh telling them that their work was really cool and i wonder if they're hiring because they look like a big company like a not a big company but like you know go media it's not just a freelancer so and then i contacted them and they wrote me back and were really impressed with my work and and so we had an interview and they and basically they let me know that they couldn't afford to hire me at that time they wanted to pay me ten dollars an hour and i was like i just i need to pay for this apartment i can't really do that i got to move to pay for this apartment so okay well we'll get you in touch maybe if we got some work we'll throw some freelance stuff your way so that's when i started said i said okay i'm going to do my milkhead stuff full time now and so i spent a year doing that and trying to make my money and i made eighteen thousand dollars my first year and it was after that go media made me the offer of bringing me on as a partner part owner and they were really impressed with how i promoted myself how i stayed in business for a year how i just the whole my whole level of growth from that time over that year so that's what led to the go media job that ended up taking up the next nine years of my life so no that's great and uh you know maybe next week we'll get to that a little better here in the future before we do and as we wrap stuff up where did milkhead come from what was so so milkhead when i first started making music this is my first semester in college first second semester i was still living in the very first department complex the student housing thing i told you about earlier anyway i downloaded a program on my computer called drums it was like a drum editor thing i've always kind of always wanted to play so i was like tinkering around with this like drum program made some music uh some drum tribally it was kind of ridiculous and i sent it to my friends who were like well this is so cool and so i kept making songs out of this and then i was like well i need an artist name what should i call myself and my friend dan he said uh call yourself box oh milk with a y and i said all right whatever like i didn't care so i just i just said i don't know just because they make it different i don't know milk my m y okay right right so i was like all right so i put box of milk on the stuff that i made and then i they would ask me when's the next box of milk song coming out jiff and i'm like all right well i got another one coming you know and then i started learning fl studio i downloaded that like my second year in college i think it was fruity loops version three um and so i'm like blown away i'm making beats i'm like trying to make stuff that sounds good i'm like making techno songs and then i'm bringing it home to these land parties that we would go to remember i would bring my pc home well those kids who were it majors he had the land area that he built in his basement and he also had a dance studio that he put up like a like a light because he would host parties there so he had this like big flashing like disco light thing he had a pc that he set up that was hooked to a sound system that he engineered and so he had a whole list of like itunes i think uh so you can drag all of your mp3s and he would play it and it would sound really good so i would we'd be like let's play your music on these speakers so we would play them we would dance to them and a friend of mine showed me the six step i was like oh shit how do you do that it was like this break dance move and i'm like teach me how to do that and that was the day that i got hooked on break dancing and so this idea of like taking my songs to this party every weekend and showing him my new stuff and then all just kind of nerding out and dancing that was this it's it's like it inspired that music video that i told you about the milkhead music video and so the idea of milkhead was somebody who was like a fan of box of milk because i was also into uh the film eraser head um by david lynch so because i kind of identified with eraser head for some reason as like my friends thought of me as like that guy who's into weird obscure films so they'd be like hey finny finny is what they called me they're like finny what's the what movie what weird movies are you into and i would always have something you know to show them and he played eraser head and there was always like well this movie's so fucked up it's so weird so eraser head with a milk box of milk milkhead and then that became my brand name for my freelance business milkhead.com and that's that's the story of that so when you did milkhead.com did you keep the y in there did you switch yeah yeah no i definitely kept the y in there yeah and i had some like image of a stock image that i found of a cat that was like soaked in milk like a kitten like it just was in a bowl of milk and the kitten was all wet and it looked weird and i like cropped it out and it like put some grunge filters on it and i like cut it out as my logo stuck it next to milkhead and then this like wet cat icon was like synonymous with milkhead it wasn't it was just a stock photo that i found on on geddy images i think i don't know but that became like my logo was just wet cat yeah that's uh that is weird hilarious that is great no i love uh the milkheads yeah all all the milkheads out there uh i'm a milkhead yeah box milk it was just some fantasy that i made up like i mean like we joked about it like i don't think they really existed but for that music video that was my final project i decided to put that idea to life so i took the breakdancing element and then i cut these milk jugs and made masks out of them so people had this like black hoodie with this like upside down milk jug mask and there were these goons that like chased around this guy and then and then at the end they like gave them a mask and then he like became one of them and they all started dancing it's like they're all breakdancing and it was like some ridiculous thing and and i showed that to my my class at my final my final project and they were like highly entertained by this it was like so so weird i just felt like it was something special yeah that weird obscure stuff from uh the art school classes yeah when you're doing like portfolio reviews or project reviews and all that yeah that sounds awesome um so as we kind of wrap things up here what uh what is inspiring you right now um so speaking of back in the milkhead days you got that you got your grunge music you're making t-shirts making posters what's inspiring for you right now you got anything any movies you're watching any shows any artists well you know the things that are inspiring you right now are not art and not not really music um but i'm reading a book called the authenticity industries by michael serazio i actually just finished his book called the power of sports media and spectacle in american culture um it's just like a critical look at media and the spectacle around it and sports as like a religion and the values that it proposes and we're all kind of sucked into it so like the psychology of it and i like listening to it as like this critical lens so this authenticity industry is fascinating because i've been somebody that's really been into the idea of authenticity as long as i can remember um that's what got me into films like uh verna herzog or harmony kareen or these filmmakers that had a more cinema verite style because it felt authentic to me and nowadays it's kind of like they talk about how authenticity is like this modern day moral framework that we all kind of live in especially with social media and our people being authentic like what does that even really mean also authentic is also like organic foods or like the uh bi-local phenomenon and how it intertwines and mixes with capitalism and it's like authenticity isn't really authentic because everything's a performance and it's just a really amazing nuanced look at the world of authenticity and i'm kind of questioning my own interest in it because i think because i'm so obsessed with authenticity it makes it hard for me to go out and get a job because i have to put on a performative identity that doesn't feel like me and so because of that resistance i have i feel like i can't function in society because i the way i am i have to be authentic um which is an interesting thing because i don't know if in cultures prior they actually felt like that like you know you go to work you get a job they don't care so much about authenticity but today millennials especially do so i'm just interested like where did that come from why are we like that and and it's almost like another to your point as far as saying how much did that exist before is i'm sure to a certain extent that it did um and maybe even more so and even uh eastern cultures and all that as far as like oh you're passing down the brush making business throughout the family and all of that and we make the you know the calligraphy brushes for the royal family and we've been doing it for generations like this is authentic but as you ask that next layer of well what does that even mean am i still who i am and as you break down to like here's what's authentic but then is this really authentic because am i just putting on a show um for all of this to put that out that i still don't really feel like myself but i've inherited this business i'm not doing what i want to do um how much questioning you're putting into all of that because yeah i mean just for us talking about getting jobs and all that is i think in today's day and age there is that other layer of you know before we were taught to go out and grind grind grind and if you're working you're doing good you're a good person you're doing all this but you don't feel like you're being yourself you don't feel like you're being authentic and then how can you find a job that is somebody else is asking this of you and that's not necessarily 100 of who you are how do you get to be who you are at your work um all the time and you know as things tend to grow you do this and businesses and company and companies corporations and because of capitalism now this thing that you started off that was authentic has become inauthentic um as it goes on and why are you even perpetuating any of it um it's really really fascinating to me and i loved what you just said about uh the thought of sports as a religion oh my gosh i've never even really thought about it that way too much it's like that would be a fun rabbit hole to get down because yeah are you much of a sports fan at all are you a browns fan oh yeah i'm definitely a sports fan i've been a browns fan my whole life um i'm sorry you know through thick and thin and they talk about that in the book like why are fans like that why why do they care if it's a product why you that continually upsets you it makes you angry and hurts you so badly why are you still going back it's like an abusive relationship where like you're investing all this energy and they're not giving you anything that you want except for the they keep promising it but they never really deliver but you keep going back and you keep dedicating more time and more money and more energy you know and sports as a religion it's kind of like um it's not really a religion in the same way but it's kind of an unspoken uh baseline secular way of life that we all agree upon that it's one of the few places where people can kind of come together and put their differences aside for a moment and just enjoy and kind of root for the same team and feel like they're part of something like you know you see a fellow person wearing your team's gear on the street and you're like hey you know we're bonded by something even though you don't really know them so it's kind of this weird cultural signifier that brings people together in a weird abstract way but it's all a commercial product and it always and it has been like like i just watched the NBA All-Star game uh a week or two ago and it was like the worst All-Star game of all time i mean it was it's an utter joke it's like a complete it's it's gone over to the point of it's past athletics and now it's too much on the spectacle side where they have to kind of razz it up a bit more and with with media and and and and spectacle and lights and the athletes don't even really care about winning they're not even trying and and it's so funny because there's a video online i saw the 1987 All-Star game was posted it's like the full version of it so i watched some of that and compared it to the modern day All-Star game and like oh my gosh just the way that they talk about the players that the way that they felt like there is real stakes that they're all it's the best 26 basketball players in the world there's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird all playing against each other and it was like everybody was there like this is some real thing nowadays it's kind of like a bunch of social media celebrities kind of jacking up threes they shot 168 threes in this in this All-Star game whereas in like 1987 i think they shot like 14 or something yeah exactly it's like what is the state so yeah you're in sports right so you have a first you're involved in it and oh and Kara and i love to watch women's basketball we're like obsessed with women's college basketball we watch games every week so that's great well and i think the other thing as far as uh you know sports being a religion is that you know like you said why are you watching it it doesn't make sense but then you're also evangelizing other people to join it like you're telling your kids oh this is our team like there's generations that get the team handed down to them or you know if a friend doesn't know anything about it um like i remember um i got into i got into hockey when i was younger and there was not a hockey team here in colorado and so me and one of my buddies just kind of latched onto the pittsburgh penguins because they were the best team at the time when we were playing right oh mario lemian we're playing on our oh yeah mario lemian hl on sega and like lemia just felt like a cheat code when you're playing that game you could just wrap around and put the puck in every single time and so i became a penguins fan well then even when the colorado avalanche came to town i'm still a penguins fan um i don't hate the avalanche i like them i think that they're a good team but i'm like i have to stick with the penguins i've got to stick with the penguins so it's like i've been indoctrinated into you know into the penguins religion kind of a thing and i will stand by them uh through thick and thin through all of that all because you know they just happen to be the best team when i was a you know a very uh easily influenced young youth

and all of that and i i will stand by that is that that's an okay way to go uh for the rest of my life as well um but it's a weird thing that you bring other people in and you're gonna fight other religions as well like if you like that team oh you're the enemy uh you know you don't believe with what we do we're the right way and you know we'll sit and argue about it it's a really fascinating uh analogy there yeah yeah i was i became a browns fan because i was born into a family of browns fans and sitting around watching it and rooting for it i mean i would literally cry when they would lose and i would pray to god and that god wouldn't answer my prayers so i'm like questioning god it's like it was ridiculous i mean as a young kid developing this sense of like moral scrupulosity or OCD around like praying and superstition and browns and sports i mean they were always loose they would always break your heart and they still do to this day and it's like you know why do i why do i keep watching i mean i i felt the same way with the cleveland cavaliers i was always a cabs fan growing up and i i was uh i lived like 20 minutes away away from where laron james went to high school so he was like a big superstar in high school you know and i remember when he was drafted by the cabs it was like a dream come true and i went to go see a cleveland cavaliers practice at ken state university when he was drafted and i got to like look at him in person as like this figure of light or whatever i don't even know what but he was like this this hero and uh so then we they took us to the finals and all that stuff and but we still we still lost and it was stressful watching them but i'm anyway i remember falling out of fandom and i moved away to austin and stopped watching cleveland sports and that year that i moved away to austin cleveland cavaliers win the national champion win the title they win the nba title i didn't watch a single game i was like fuck that shit why why why i didn't get to watch it and enjoy the the big moment that everybody been praying for because cleveland had been starved for a championship for all their sports teams so this was the first time in a while and i was not even in the city to enjoy it i was like so then i build in this like idea if i stop paying attention then they do good so maybe i'll just not watch you know why am i doing that it's weirdest it's the weirdest thing for all of that well um uh as we wrap things up um i'll tell a little story that you made me think about that you were saying earlier carrying your crt around instead of working at a job one time one of my first jobs at school i was interning at a tv station here in colorado that was owned by mark cuban it was okay it was one of the few uh things that he did that not many people know about but he started a tv channel and it was the first all hd channel in the nation so as as they're switching over from sd over to hd this was the first one that was running um high definition only um sometimes they would it's kind of weird they would switch like this program is in hd and then it would switch back to sd and all of that and this is around 2002 um i had bought an imac and i would carry the the come i was just an intern and i didn't need a computer most time i was just logging footage um or sitting in an edut bay with a producer working on a spot or something like that so i didn't have a computer so in between i was just like well i'll bring my own computer in so i would carry my imac in and out of work like the original imacs that oh my god the big crt montreuse treating it like a portable computer and it had a handle on the top so i was like that's right why are you carrying the thing around like it has a handle it's portable that's what it's for yeah i would i would carry it around everywhere in and out and back in the day speaking of like mp3s and all that i remember i was at work one time and i was downloading uh you know mp3s off limewire and stuff like that and i'm sitting at work and i'm just you know i think i'm working on some script or something like that and going or emailing some buddies listening to mp3s and all that and not really working i should have been working my main job there was to log footage i think i logged like two hours of sports the entire like time that i was i did not i i just tried to find other more fun stuff to do and all of a sudden i'm sitting in this room all by myself across like that the main studio and then that a little bit of an office building and barely anybody was in the office building and this guy comes running in his name's glenn and he goes is your computer on and i was like yeah he goes unplug that thing right now and i was like okay and i'm like he's like no no and yanks the plug out of the wall and i'm like what's going on he goes you're getting us hacked

and i was like what do you mean and he goes you have no idea how much stuff i'm getting blown up with right now because of your dumb computer and it was all because i had lime wire oh my god and i'm plugged in oh shit that works getting hacked and all this and so this is like 2002 before we even really knew what hacking was or how it worked and so like he's like trying to throw up firewalls it felt like that movie hackers i'm sure to me at the time where he's like i'm throwing up firewalls left and right we're getting trotting horses and all because of my dumb lime wire iMac that uh that i had to be in and if i would have been working uh you know i almost got fired for that one too but they're like you and that dumb computer that you bring in all the time oh my god so i would be mortified i would be like holy shit i'm sorry you're like i didn't know what to do like i was just so terrified that i was like i almost was the downfall of this entire tv station um and all of that like i don't know what they could have done or what they were trying to do but the tv station almost got hacked because of my so you didn't get fired did not get fired i should have gotten fired multiple times like i loved that job but i was kind of like it was things like that where it was just kind of like you're a little bit of a fuck up like you just didn't think like you know you're 19 years old i didn't know that lime wire plugging into the network would get them hacked like i don't know that nobody told me like you're just kind of young and computers are still kind of a new thing to you and how that but weren't they were they mad at you for uh downloading shit off their wi-fi like or off their internet not why they were just bad that they were oh okay and honestly i don't know if they realized i think i think he knew that it was lime wire because i think he said he was running around everywhere trying to shut stuff down and it was still there and so he's going around the studio where pretty much everybody is like i said that's where most people worked nobody wanted to be in the office building and i just happened to be in the office building that day and then he realized it clicked he's like sachs over there with his dumb iMac and then goes running over and was like unplug that stupid thing and then i sure enough like because i was like i don't know if it's because of me like i'm just working on this thing i'm just typing a script out and i'm like oh crap i have lime wire up and uh and all of that and i was like i was getting this hacked bad bad news that well it seemed like it worked out for you in the long run exactly it was fun and that's funny so yeah that's uh that's it for us this week everybody uh jeff great to see you and we will chat next week uh arm you should be working bye everybody

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 that's stupid i'm not doing that