Tech-Hater Merch, Book Recs, and Thoughts on Jack Black
Newsletter #018
This blog was adapted from my monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
Happy Fall, Y’all! (Pretty sure my mom has about three Hobby Lobby signs that say that.) Here’s 10 things worth sharing:
With all the talk about data centers, algorithms, and metaverses I caught a streak of activism. Check out the Tech Hater button set, starring lines like “To Hell with the Screens”, “The Internet Used to be Fun”, and “I Still Love Paper Books.” They’re available on our website, as well as Faire Wholesale.
(These were inspired by a picture of John Lennon wearing a button that said, “I Still Love the Beatles.”)
-Our family bookstore, Monstera’s Books, recently expanded into the space next door. Congrats to Kate and team for the huge level-up, and congrats to me and Molly for getting to paint a fun retro mural on the wall, “Share the Joy of Books” 😃
-“The Lord in his wisdom gives money to very curious people, perhaps because they'd starve without.” I just finished East of Eden (the longest book I’ve ever read!) and loved every bit of it. The characters are so interesting and funny, there were so many storylines to be invested in, and I love the way Steinbeck can pack so much impact into one short sentence.
Keep an eye out for the upcoming TV adaptation on Netflix!
-We were watching Weather Hunters on PBS one day before school and I learned that Fall and Spring were originally called “Fall of the Leaf” and “Spring of the Leaf.” I have always had a hunch it was something like that, but never actually knew where the words came from!
-“They don’t think I know bull crap about the gospel, but I do!”
Honestly, I thought Jack Black was overrated but we have watched some real bangers lately. Nacho Libre is a perfect movie. It is quirky and hilarious (same director as Napoleon Dynamite), plus you can never have too much accidental farting. Gulliver’s Travels was pretty good and the giant-vs-tiny-people effects make it very fun for kids. School of Rock gets me emotional every time. “One great rock concert can change the world.”
-We were telling our 8 year old about “Stop, Drop, and Roll” a few days ago and she had never heard of it. I was SHOCKED – I feel like we rehearsed Stop, Drop, and Roll at least once a week when I was in school, as if it was common for your clothes to just catch on fire. (This came up because Jack Black’s monk robe accidentally catches fire in Nacho Libre 🤣)
-“Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius…” I am enjoying Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power, which sounds really intense, but it is a wonderful collection of anecdotes about the different ways people gain or lose power. Many of the principles conflict with how I want to live my life, but I can clearly see how certain people use them, which makes it very interesting.
-Is email going to die? Seth Godin ponders how we might deal with the relentless spam on phones and email:
"Multiply spam by AI and the cloud… and it’s obvious that open networks can’t survive. 30 junk SMS notices in one day is more than enough to turn off your notifications. How many voicemails about an approved business loan need to show up before the signal-to-noise ratio becomes simply noise?”
-I watched Angels in the Outfield so many times as a kid, but I never understood the MAGNITUDE of the star-studded cast. Danny Glover and Joseph Gordon Levitt, obviously. But also: Matthew McConaughey, Tony Danza, Adrien Brody, Brenda Fricker, Christopher Lloyd, Dermot Mulroney, and several others you would recognize as that guy that was in such-and-such. “And you call yourselves professionals… I have never, EVER seen a worse group of twenty-five players! You don't think as a team, you don't play as a team, you don't even LOSE as a team!”
-It’s the end of baseball season (for the Royals, at least), which means it’s time for my bi-annual reading of The Green Fields of the Mind:
”It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.”
-Please scroll down for Molly’s 11th thing ⬇️☀️
Cheers,
Justin
Molly’s 11th Thing:
Alongside all our other projects, I've been making a series of mini Risograph prints, featuring cute little guys, for our print and sticker machine going into Monstera's this weekend!
The designs may be simple, but RISO printing isn't. A Risograph is a cross between a standard copier and a screen printer, carving stencils into thin master paper and pushing soy-based ink through the stencil, outputting fun textures and vibrant colors, one layer at a time (therefore every pass is a chance for misalignment at the whim of the 80s era machine.) I spent many hours wrestling error codes and nudging registration for the love of the (frustrating, yet rewarding) printmaking process. Running a mini print machine has been a dream of mine for years, and these mini-risograph-prints are now trimmed, signed, and smudge-free, and are days away from being sold for just $1 in the best bookstore in America.
- Molly