Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sober strip clubs are horrible. When you are sober you see the matrix code behind a strip club. You're paying girls to pretend to like you until you run out of money so they can walk away.
Bowling is all physics and energy distribution. It's F = ma. So it is actually one of the most science-y sports, because it literally is just a ball and a surface and objects to knock down.
Comedy has sort of been my life-long obsession. I literally obsessed over comedy. I really didn't play sports - for me it was just comedy, computers and chess club; those were my big things.
Every time I finish a record, it's sort of feels like, "I can't believe that I'm hanging out and having a conversation, and people are gonna listen to this." It's an odd thing, but it's really cool.
Comment threads are the new therapy for people. They just go and post the worst things they can think of because they feel bad, and then other people start attacking them, and then they attack back.
When I was in school, if you wanted a computer, you had to build one. But today, computers are everywhere. We're all obsessed with technology and having the latest gadgets. Nerd culture is ubiquitous.
I think the mistake a lot of people make with new media is they just focus on one thing. But any one thing - just doing podcasts or just having a website or just doing television - isn't enough anymore.
I think people have this stereotypical idea in their head of what a nerd is. People have said to me before, "You're not a nerd!" because I think they think of the classic Revenge Of The Nerds archetype.
Comic-Con is interesting because there's so much going on at once, it's literally impossible to do everything. You need clones and some sort of hoverboard so you can surf over the crowd of packed-in nerds.
I've always had a fondness for that satirical, Terry Gilliam - esque evil corporate megastructure, the kind of business that hangs banners that say making your life better as it throws kittens into the gears.
I made a lot of changes in my life between my twenties and thirties, and it all sort of revolves around how I think people with nerdier brains tend to problem-solve and approach things differently then "norms."
I don't know if I'm a Twitter addict. That seems kind of harsh. I would say it's more that I'm seriously involved. That it's a long-term relationship - like a girlfriend, which my actual girlfriend loves to hear.
When you don't take an aggressive role in shaping your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, you become a helpless passenger floating through the universe like a ghost ship, merely reacting to wherever it takes you.
The idea of the archetypal nerd is totally blurred these days. So many people of this current generation have grown up with technology and video games. It's just a part of the world now, a part of our shared culture.
Stand up straight. If you stand up straight, you will instantly feel better about yourself, and you will project a better image to the world, one that says you don't feel like you have to be hunched over and closed off.
As someone who's very nerd-minded, whenever I see a lot of cross-platform stuff when I get bonus material on either side, then it makes me want to dive deeper, sort of like tearing apart the different pieces of the pie.
I love the South. Although I grew up primarily in Memphis, my family moved around a ton when I was a kid. I guess I never stayed in one place long enough to pick up the accent, but I definitely identify as a Southerner.
My father was one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time. Seriously. Billy Hardwick: PBA Hall of Fame, Player of the Year in '63 and '69, and the first winner of the triple crown of bowling, among other things.
Even before I had an assistant, my calendar was color-coded and I had all these different e-mail rules for how to prioritize e-mails, so I made it a point years ago to figure all that stuff out because my life was a mess.
American television constantly tries to co-op British comedy and create their own version of it. Most of the time it doesn't work; obviously, in the case of 'The Office,' it did. But a lot of times, it doesn't really work.
Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.
We are in niche consumption mode, but 'niche' doesn't mean 'small' anymore. Niche can mean focused, and particularly with the Web, which is a global audience you can have something niche and still get 10 to 15 million views.
Just as someone who's been interested in radio and programming for so long, I can usually tell when an interviewer is doing a segment just to fill a programming slot. They ask questions, but they don't care about the answers.
I've seen nerdists make tributes to their obsessions out of Legos that are like works of art. It just goes to show you how pervasive this stuff has become in our culture. It really is an ideology that you can subscribe to now.
There are certain parts of a classic nerd's brain that can destroy that person - obsessing about things to the detriment of everything else in your life. But those are the same tools that you can use to turn everything around.
We are in niche consumption mode, but 'niche' doesn't mean 'small' anymore. Niche can mean focused, and particularly with the Web, which is a global audience... you can have something niche and still get 10 to 15 million views.
I think some of what makes it a good podcast is that it's organic. It doesn't feel forced. If we can say anything about ours, it's that we're not faking it at all. We're genuinely interested in the people that we're talking to.
Long ago you may have given up control of your brain and set it on autopilot either because it just felt like too much work. And it is work! But for me, this work was well worth it for the prospect of not waking up sad every day.
Twitter is basically text messaging. Twitter is a guy you can always elbow in the side and say, "Hey, look, a guy in a clown suit just threw up!" And I don't have 400-800 words to say about that, I just wanted to say that one thing.
For me personally, I have a fear of, 'If I stop, I'm going to die.' If I stop doing the things that are enriching to me or creatively exciting to me or if I stop creating, then I feel stagnant. If something isn't growing, it's dying.
The nerds provide the toys that distract the morons. So the nerds are sort of the new drug-dealers. We're the drug dealers of the 21st century because we provide all the brain candy for the mouth-breathers, for lack of a better word.
Both my parents recognized early on that I wanted to do something in comedy, and they were really supportive. They're the ones who bought me Steve Martin records and let me watch R-rated comedies long before they probably should have.
When I was younger, my parents used to say, "Trust us on this. We have more experience than you." And I was like, "Shut up, you don't know anything!" But I was an idiot. They did know more stuff because they'd experienced more things.
I feel like being nerd is not about the superficial quality; it's about how nerds approach life. It's much more emotional and mental than it is you're some fat guy living in your mom's basement, which I think is just a hacky stereotype.
When you look at your freelance career, it's really like a mall. And if you look at a mall, it's a self-contained system that has a flow and logic to it. You'll probably have one or two really bigger jobs, those are like your anchor stores.
While the liberal media elite depict the bowler as a chubby guy with a comb-over and polyester pants, the reality is that bowling is one of the most tech-heavy sports today. Robotic pinsetters and computerized scoring were just the beginning.
I think when I look out and I see there's so much negativity in the world and a lot of people are unhappy and a lot people are anxious, it just feels like that's one view of the world. But you don't have to always focus on that view of the world.
If you have laser-like brain it's not always focused on the most productive things. If you want to play Halo: Reach all day, that's fine, but if you want to accomplish some other things, here are some ways to do that using your innate nerd gifts.
I was very competitive growing up. I can't even play chess anymore because I used to play tournament chess in school. There's too much sense memory of sitting in front of a chess board and getting super intense about it. It's ruined the game for me.
I think for a lot of people, bowling is sort of a joke. But I love it, and it means a lot to me, so any chance to help promote it or celebrate it or not make the hackiest jokes - 'Bowlers are like plumbers and they wear the craziest shirts!' - I'm way into.
Being constructively critical is good, as long as your purpose is to improve your methods for future endeavors. Lying in bed and replaying failures and telling yourself you're stupid is a tremendous disservice to your efforts and what you can offer the world.
In the end, all that time I spent in the 'Star Wars' universe fostered galaxies of creativity and made me a better person here on Earth, because it taught me that everyone counts. That's why I can sincerely and with a straight face say: 'May the Force be with you.'
No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who's always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don't exist.
You don't need 30 million people to listen to your podcast. If 10,000 people listen to your podcast, which is not a hard number to achieve, then 10,000 people are listening, and you can build a community, and literally change the world just recording into a microphone.
If you're able to build from your falls you'll be unstoppable and damn near fearless. You see, every time you fall down and get back up, you add another piece of body armor to yourself. You learn what not to do, how to do better, and how to create comfort through practice.
When I was growing up, I was as socially outcast as any nerd could possibly be. I was in the chess club, I brought D&D stuff to school, I had every game system you could imagine, I spent countless hours at arcades, computer camp, loud presence in the Latin Club. All that stuff.
Videogames make you feel like you're actually doing something. Your brain processes the tiered game achievements as real-life achievements. Every time you get to the next level, hot jets of reward chemical coat your brain in a lathery foam, and it seems like you're actually accomplishing stuff.
Television and movies just take so long. If you pitch a show or develop a project, it can be a year before your show even gets on the air, if it gets picked up. Just the concept of "I had this idea" and within a week it was in the world, that was a part of why it felt weirdly empowering as a performer.
We will continue to address things, but in as much as I want to talk about politics as they are related to social media, I don't necessarily want to be a political show. I want it to cover everything, everything in our culture through social media, politics, pop culture, entertainment, science, everything.
For podcasters, people are just being themselves in a public fashion. So when someone is attacking a podcast, they're really attacking the person, because the person is the podcast. So I think that's why podcasters take it to heart. It's a very personal form of media, probably the most personal form of media.