I was in Seattle and Vancouver this past week. I took a week off from drawing, instead showing my girlfriend the majesty of my hometown. Meaning showing that I wasn’t joking about Wal-Mart being one of the prime places to spend time at. And taking the 40-minute trip to the nearest mall.
To keep things running this week, I had a post pretty much ready to post once I got back. I didn’t have it scheduled. I wanted to add this short dispatch section to keep everyone tuned into what I’ve been up to. Here are a few quick updates.
I finished a book this week — The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance by Steven Kotler. It’s about flow how it helped action sports progress rapidly in the past few decades. I enjoyed getting away from my usual echo chamber. It’s got me thinking I should be a lot more deliberate in the books I choose to read.
Anyway, it feels like the first time in a while that I finished a book in a week. Flights help with that. I took a quick look at my reading in the past couple months and realized I hit my goal of 52 books this year. Longer recap to come.
Thanks to my girlfriend, I now have a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones. I’ll write some thoughts about my first week with them. After a couple days using them, I only wish I had them earlier.
I also have these drawings of Conor McGregor and Mike Tyson. They had to do with something Joe Rogan said about knockouts.
What you see happen in the ring is only the beginning. Recovering from that is something that can take weeks and months. Eventually I’ll write something comparing this to burning out mentally. By the time you realize you’re burned out, it’s going to take a bit of time to recover from it.
I wish this was for a better topic, because I liked how this illustration turned out. (Though my struggle with faces continues.)
I’ve already started on a few drawings for the next post. A few will be expansions of the quick updates above. We’ll be back to the regularly scheduled program this Sunday.
What I’m Reading: What in God’s Name
I finished What in God’s Name a couple weeks ago. It was the last of Simon Rich’s books that I hadn’t read. In the book, God is a CEO and heaven is his company. Angels are employees and are able to make things happen on earth.
A few of the scenes involve a server that stores all of history. You can search and watch things like it’s YouTube.
That got me thinking about what places I would want to check out if I had access to the server.
The pyramids
I was very interested in the pyramids as a kid. Anytime I had a choice of topic to do in a school project, I tried doing something on the pyramids. I’d tell everyone I knew that they’re set in the earth following Orion’s Belt. There’s still speculation about how they were built and who built them. It’d be great to just go and see for myself.
Feudal Japan
I grew up in Japan (sort of). It’d be cool to see what it was like when samurai were prevalent. What in God’s Name describes the server as showing things that end up underwhelming. People aren’t as beautiful as the legends say. I have a feeling this is what it would be like without any specific battle to go to. I’d just see them practicing a lot.
The coliseum
Another cool time and place would be Ancient Rome. A lot of things in the server end up being reminders that modern cities are really great in many ways. One big landmark from then is the coliseum. This wouldn’t be as fun as watching Gladiator.
Things seemed to be getting more and more violent and I don’t handle gore well. Time to lighten things up a bit.
Macho Man proposal
The coliseum lives today through sports stadiums. It’d be great to go back in time to buzzer beaters, walk-off home runs, or successful hail marys (maries?). But those are a thousand times better if they’re for teams you root for. Nothing sticks out all that much for teams I root for.
But I’ve definitely rooted for babyfaces in wrestling. And plenty of things stand out. Macho Man proposing to Elizabeth would be a great non-violent palate cleanser.
(Or the Ultimate Warrior returning to help Hulk Hogan. Steve Austin returning to help Mankind would’ve been great too.)
2001 Slam Dunk Contest
Back to sports. I do root for Team USA. The 2008 final against Spain could be cool to see as an entire game. Then I remembered Vince Carter jumped over a guy a few years before that, which would be very very cool to see in person. Then it hit me that the 2001 dunk contest would be great to see from end to end.
I remember watching it live. I remember re-watching it in my dorm room with a few guys on my floor a few years later. And I don’t remember all the individual times I’ve re-watched it in the YouTube spirals after that. I just know I’ve seen it a lot. Seeing it live would be great.
Now I’m realizing I’ve mixed this up a bit. The server in the book lets you watch things like YouTube. It doesn’t let you jump into the place. And I can already watch these modern things on YouTube.
Consider the first three good answers and the wrestling and slam dunk ones answers if we’d be able to have some kind of VR experience of the event.
And of course
You have to see you parents when they were younger, right? There was a Sinbad special I used to watch over and over. One of his bits is reminding us that our parents used to be cool. We’re the ones that made them uncool.