‘funny,’ not funny Jim Infantino and Lionel Cassin

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

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

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

Julia Tenney joins us for what we are pretty sure is the 100th episode of our obscure podcast. Depending on how you count, considering that Jim forgot to press record on episode 2 of Season 1 (so, not counted) and there were some encore episodes (so, not counted) this one should be the actual 100th.
We start by talking about Jim’s new apple watch and then veer perpendicularly headlong into Pokémon Go. Then we discuss the recent eclipse and all of our various vantage points. Julia says that she thinks the dawn of science must have coincided with experiences of eclipses, which is an opinion shared by PBS.
We discuss The Midnight Library (referenced in a previous episode), as recommended by Julia, and the Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (to be referenced in a future episode), which was also recommended by Julia, which links back to our eclipse discussion. Lionel mentions The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (which we will discuss in the very next episode). We talk about the TV show Resident Alien, and the refreshing way the show deals with Native American communities and characters.
Julia talks about work she is doing for the Independent Film Festival, processing images for their website.
Of the movies that are coming to the festival, Julia is most excited about Janet Planet, which is playing at the same time as The Road to Ruane, about a person that Jim says he saw all around the Boston rock scene of the 90s. Janet Planet triggers Julia’s memory of ushering for the Boston production of Sleep No More, and we talk about that for a good long while before Jim and Julia bash out the details surrounding Jim’s band playing on Julia’s porch for PorchFest in Somerville, MA, May 11 at 2pm.
As if our conversation couldn’t get more self-involved, we shift deftly to discuss the merits of ice cream and beer. Then we hit again upon { feuilleton } and Johnathan Coulthart. In this way, we land on the topic of Optima, and other typefaces. We are reminded of the old press-type kits called Letraset, and long lost art of manual layout. At this point, over an hour in, we find our theme and play the intro music. Then we quibble and mumble on about waxers and typography until our 100th episode expends its final fuel and collapses in on itself.

This week we talk about The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. Suggested by Julia Tenney, this book deals with regrets we've felt throughout life and wishing we could go back and fix things. Lionel contrasts this book with The Curious Incident of the Dog In the Nighttime by Mark Haddon. The conversation turns to a book Jim wants to write about acceptance and meditation. We finish up by talking about the recent total eclipse, and our two vantage points, and how unlikely and precious our earth and universe is. Short description this time, but this pretty much covers our conversation this week.

This week, we welcomed Bing Broderick as our guest.
Bing Broderick comes to justBook-ish after years in marketing, community organizing, and nonprofit management. Early in his career, he marketed and sold music into niche outlets across the country (including bookstores) as Director of Special Marketing for the Cambridge-based record label, Rounder Records. Mid-career, Broderick shifted his focus to food justice, arriving at the Boston-based nonprofit Haley House to manage the newly launched social enterprise Haley House Bakery Café. Located in Nubian Square, Roxbury, the Café; provided hearty heathy food, a vital community space, and a workplace for men and women who faced significant barriers to employment. In December 2013, Broderick succeeded Haley House‘s founder as Executive Director of the non-profit organization, stewarding (in addition to the cafe) its soup kitchen, food pantry, housing, farm and educational programs. Bing transitioned out of this role in April 2022, having welcomed Haley House‘s new Executive Director, Reggie Jean. He will be opening justBook-ish in Dorchester with co-founder, Porsha Olayiwola, in Summer 2024.
We talk about his past and present projects, the history of Haley House, poetry slams, the business of running a bookstore, and his experience at Rounder Records.
For books, we discuss Bing’s reading of Morgenthau: Power, Privilege, and the Rise of an American Dynasty by Andrew Meier.
Lionel talks about reading Ulysses S. Grant: A Biography by Robert P. Broadwater and The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss by Edmund de Waal
We touch on Oppenheimer and Maestro, which Lionel asserts are variations on the same movie.
Bing says he read In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson.
In our discussion of Rounder Records, we mention a startup called Hear Music. The Wikipedia article omits most of its early history, but it was originally a music catalog that was eventually bought out by Starbucks.
During his time at Rounder, Bing met Iris Dement who was on the label for a number of years.
We end with a discussion of the summertime opening of justBook-ish in Fields Corner in Dorchester, MA.