JOP EP41 – “My ganglia remain unconvinced”

“What time is the stream supposed to start?” Dana inquired.

I replied, with all the confidence of an untrained lion tamer, “Ummmm… In…. 4 minutes.” 

This exchange was happening while sitting at one of our editing bays, endlessly scrolling through images, looking for an ounce of inspiration for the stream that obviously wasn’t starting in 4 minutes.

This tends to be my routine every Friday, right before my Joy of Pancakes stream. I come into the studio, with no idea what I want to do, I sit down at a computer and look at a bunch of stuff until something strikes a note… Or doesn’t and I just have to go in there and wing it. Neither is my ideal scenario, I prefer being prepared for the stream, I don’t enjoy the mad dash of desperately trying to string something together. Yet here I am, more often than not doing just that.

Nothing I was looking at really felt like something I wanted to do, so, I stopped scrolling for a second and thought about what I’ve been doing lately, which has mostly been writing code, sprucing up the backend of the website. Trying to make the workflow for everyone else less complicated so I have less work to do later, which equals more work now. So… Technology? I Googled technology art and a bunch of other things, just looking for something that caught my eye to go off of (not to copy mind you, just to serve as a foundation/inspiration of an idea)… Again, nothing really felt right and I was about just go in and wing it. But wait a second… Technology? Inspiration?? Oooooh, what about Star Trek? Particularly Star Trek Discovery. A quick search led me to a plethora of images that felt perfect and got me super excited to do the stream.

For the uninitiated Star Trek Discovery is the latest and greatest Star Trek series. It’s both wildly different from every Star Trek that came before and fervently true to the secular and progressive ideals that embody the series as a whole. I won’t bore you with the details, but I will say, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is the best Star Trek series since The Next Generation and one of the best shows on TV right now. I was pretty dead set against paying for CBS All-Access to watch the show, but honestly, at this point, the show itself is so good that I’m paying the $10/mo just because I desperately don’t want to see it end before it’s time. There hasn’t been an episode this current season that didn’t leave my partner and I in tears. And if I could just send my money straight to the show (how would that even work?) I would. Obviously I’m just a drop in the bucket, but aren’t we all?

I narrowed it down to two pancakes, the Kelpien – Saru, played by the man behind every mask, Doug Jones. How on earth this 60 year old man is able to convey so much emotion and physicality under a mountain of prosthetics is mind numbing to think about. The actor underneath is as inspiring as the character he portrays. The second was the communicator badge from this series, with some artistic flairs in and around it. A simpler piece, by far, but one that encompasses the full scope of the show itself.

Anyways, I’m really proud of both of these pieces and all considering I think this is a subject I’m probably going to spend the next episode or two focusing on. There’s a lot of great potential for some amazing pancake art in there. 

Until then, stay safe, wear a mask and do yourself a favor and watch some Star Trek.