In order to be good at a craft, we need to accept and embrace the fact that we are an intelligent conduit for that craft. We are nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
Hanks says basically that in a gajillion little different ways here, and each is worth hearing.
OK, those scare quotes are unfair; this is indeed art, even if the creator is phoning in bits where he or she could certainly have applied a small amount and greatly improved their work.
Yes, “Pooky Park” is credited like so:
This is an AI-generated 1950s TV commercial for a family theme park called Pooky Park, where customers are chased by giant, somewhat terrifying puppets. Script: ChatGPT Photos: Midjourney Video: PikaLabs, Runway
That leaves the impression that someone typed “Make a 1950s TV commercial for a family theme park called Pooky Park, where customers are chased by giant, somewhat terrifying puppets” into ArtGT, hit the GO! button, and it pooped out this short, festive romp whole.
But that’s not how any of these tools work. For example, I can tell you from experience that Runway only gives you three or so seconds of footage at a time. The creator is eliding the fact that a lot has gone into editing the visuals and creating the audio. Yes, the script sounds like it’s straight ChatGPT (“Colossal howdy-doody-type puppets”? 🙄), and us thus hella week. But this is still an excellent creative application of new artistic tools—evidenced by the fact that I watched it and shared it not because of the gimmick (“AI made this!!!1!“), but because it captivated me and entertained me and unsettled me and made me want to share it with other people so they could be captivated and entertained and unsettled, too. And that, my best belovéd, is what art is all about.
Just before Xmas we closed out the project, having raised a bit more than $10,000 with your help. The end result was the abolition of $1,114,133.50 in shitty medical debt, freeing 2,006 Michiganders across 17 counties from one more dumb late-stage capitalism headache:
Bummed that you missed out on this project? Then I have excellent news:
You and your pals can start your own! The folks at RIP Medical Debt are super sweet and helpful, and it’s a blast.
I want that to be the takeaway here: there are plenty of religious and moral and political and ethical reasons to work on a project like this, but I still believe the best reason to do it is that it is fun. Every day, multiple times each day, it would occur to me: We’re going to nuke a million dollars of medical debt. And just that thought, that a bunch of us regular folk going about our regular lives could do just a little something more and move such a big goddamn rock—it’d make me laugh. It literally tickled me, that notion. And it worked! And that cracks me up, every time it comes to mind.
Good job, all! When you start your project and need a little dough to nuke a little bad medical debt, hit me up.
These lil fellas were created by English engineer John Ambrose Fleming in 1904, and used for the first transatlantic radio transmissions. My son characterizes them as “Bacteriophages, but with the personality of the Pixar lamp.” Agreed. 🦠🤖💕
This is always a fraught time of year for grade-school music teachers: they wanna sing Xmas songs, most of the kids wanna sing Xmas songs. But they know that the constant wintertime Othering grinds away at the Jewish kids. (It’s even worse when teachers try to “include” you be singing the “Dreidel Song”; that song is crap, and we know it. The Xmas songs are way better.)
Back during the pandemic I eavesdropped on the most brilliant piece of classroom third-rail navigation I’ve ever seen in my life, and I wanna share it here again, for any that need help (esp. in what’s become an extremely fraught year for Jewish kids in America).
This was early in the pandemic, when our community was pretty locked down (my kids didn’t have in-person school for 400+ days). My daughter was then a third grader, and I was sitting nearby during her Zoom music class (we’ll leave for another day any discussion of the crime against humanity that was “grade-school Zoom music class”).
A few slides into the lesson, the teacher show a picture of an unremarkable middle-aged White dude, “Mitchell Parish.”
Who the heck is Mitchell Parish? Well, he was born in Lithuania, and brought here by his parents, who were Jews (my daughter immediately perked up; Jews! Like us!) looking for a better life. Mitchell Parish was a popular songwriter in New York in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s—and he wrote the lyrics to …
My daughter felt seen, gentiles got their Christmas carol, and no one had to sing the goddamned “Dreidel Song.”
So there’s the trick to getting to sing Christmas carols in public school in what has been the worst year for Jews since 1945:
Start out with a brief bio of the Jews who wrote your Xmas song
You could do a whole Winter Concert—featuring “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and “Run, Run Rudolph”—on just a single bio slide: All four of those classics were written by the same Jew (the inimitable Johnny Marks, whose Jewish brother-in-law was the guy who created Rudolph to begin with).
![“Three vintage vacuum tubes with various internal structures, mounted on stands with visible wiring and components.” [AI-generated description, which I love!]](https://www.davideriknelson.com/sbsb/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/URS-OURS-OND-1024x630.jpg)
