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Episode 268: Overcoming Bad Viewing Hygiene with The Ringer's Alison Herman
167 Plays3 years ago
Alison Herman (@aherman2006) is a critic for The Ringer. Her piece on David Gelb, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and the Chef's Table industrial complex prompted this great conversation.
Social media: @CNFPod
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes/links: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Allison Herman
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Maybe I'm not a total idiot. Maybe people actually can see me as a peer and not some like, twerp who doesn't know what she's doing.
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That's this week's guest for episode 268 of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Allison Herman, that's right, and now we are in our ninth year. It's a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Allison Herman is a TV movie critic for The Ringer. She's the last in a long line
00:00:35
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of ringer people i've had on the show we're looking at katie baker claire mcmear rob harvilla eric ducker i don't know why they're uh they're podcast savvy writers so they make for great guests on on the show i have awesome insights in any case it was her piece about david galb
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the filmmaker, documentary filmmaker, in the 10 year anniversary of the debut of Giro Dreams of Sushi that prompted this conversation.
Podcast Sponsorship Details
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Support for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan College's low residency MFA in creative writing.
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Now in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Recent CNF faculty include Randin Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and CNF potalums Sarah Einstein. There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty there include Ashley Bryant-Phillips and Jacinda Townsend, as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple.
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No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit mfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
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And support for the podcast is also brought to you by Hippocam 2021. It is back in Lancaster, PA. It is right around the corner. Registration is still open. It is a conference for creative nonfiction writers and creative nonfiction craft.
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Marion Winnick is this year's keynote speaker and we've got debut CNF author panel featuring Lily Danziger, Greg Mania, Carol Smith, and Janine Millett. It's August 13th through the 15th. And if you use the promo code CNFPOD21, you get $50 off your registration fee. You dig? I do.
00:02:30
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So I'm recording on my second string microphone, the ATR2100. So I've had it for several years. It's remarkably good for how much it is. I think this microphone back when I bought it, it was right around 60 or 70 bucks. And I think it's still around that price. It's actually a really nice microphone. It doesn't look like much, but it sounds good. And that's all that matters, really. It's not one of the, what is it?
00:02:58
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Mb7 I believe that's the one from sure like that's the Cadillac of mics and I might Save up for one of those but this guy's good in a pinch I'm recording from the East Coast as I'm out here to see family. I haven't seen in years I haven't seen my mom in close to two years and she's
00:03:15
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82 years old and kind of losing her mind as might happen. And she's a very isolated person too. She's always been that way. And so when those kind of dementia things start settling in, the isolation just
00:03:34
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It's like an enzyme that catalyzes that reaction. So in any case, I might walk through the door when I see her and she'd be like, who the hell are you? And I'll be like, we had a good run, didn't we, Mom?
00:03:51
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I haven't seen the old man in three years and I don't think I'm going to get up to the Cape to see him. You always have to go to him. And he's 77 and about as good a health as anybody might be who can't really move much and drinks a lot of good beer and eats a lot of shitty food. He tells me I eat, sleep, eat and sleep. I'm no personal trainer, but I know that's not much of a recipe for optimal health and longevity, though I don't think he's too concerned with longevity.
00:04:19
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All that said, I don't think I'll have a chance to get up to the Cape from New Jersey as I still have to work and we have a billion other people to see who we haven't seen in ages because pandemic and people like us for some reason that I have yet to pin down. Anyway.
Impact of Streaming on TV Culture
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So Alison Herman is here and we talk about how streaming TV has affected recap culture, bad viewing hygiene, imposter syndrome, the privilege of having great editors and working with great editors.
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show notes and links to Allison's work, as well as other ways to support the podcaster at BrendanOmero.com. If you hate ad reads, you know I keep them pretty minimal and germane to the audience, I think. Consider becoming a patron of Patreon. The way I can make this 100% listener supported is building up that well of people. Patreon.com slash CNF pod. I want to give a three-way shout out to three new $10 a month patrons.
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Sam Jeffries, David Yamane, and Michelle Huell. That pledge gets them some real estate on my website as well as some other goodies. Those generous pledges will help level the show up more and maybe I can afford eventually that Shure MB7 microphone to make this sound all the more professional.
00:05:41
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You know it and also make the audio magazine a more lucrative place for people's work And allow me to perhaps consider making the show like I said 100% listener supported I'm thinking if we got to like 500 to a thousand dollars per month in patreon funding We could do away with ads and keep this real lean and mean man lean and mean like like the minimalist podcast like
00:06:05
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This episode is brought to you by nobody because advertisements suck and that's always kind of funny and that's something we can exercise if you have more patreon support. I'm deeply grateful for the 17 patrons and if we can get that up a little more that'd be wonderful. So tell a friend get some good stuff. Actually I'm gonna have a parting shot at the end of this episode for the first time in a while so stay tuned for that but in the meantime here's my lovely conversation with Allison Herman.
Technical Challenges in Journalism
00:06:46
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and of course you could lose some wonderful reparce between guest and host. I mean I haven't had that happen but I have had the total nightmare scenario happen where I interviewed someone on the phone and I used tape to call a nap with which I'm sure you're familiar and it just gave me like 12 minutes of completely silent tape
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And from that day forward, I have to double, if not triple record every single interview I do because I've just had the absolute worst case scenario come to pass. I know. It's the worst. Sometimes I've talked with reporters and journalists over the years about the tape recorder, the voice recorder, and how it's great on the one hand because it does capture everything.
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and then you're able to be selective later knowing that you've caught everything. In theory, because batteries can die, apps can flare out, and suddenly you're like, man, I wish I was just like John McPhee back in the day and just never relying on recorders and just using a notebook and figuring it out later with my bad penmanship. Right. I mean, this scenario, I also got lucky in that it was like a secondary, if not a tertiary,
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interview for a larger piece. And I did email and was like, I'm so sorry, I know this is insane, but would you be willing to do this again? The person rightfully did not respond. But I feel like because I didn't absolutely need the interview, it was like, the universe has taught me this lesson. And this way for higher stakes interviews, I will never do something this dumb again, and I will be set for life. So hopefully that remains true.
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Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. So for, for say, you know, a big, big interview, however you dub that big. So you're, you're using probably two or three things to make sure you have all your bases covered. Well, the era of Zoom interviewing has weirdly been amazing for this because it means that usually I'm doing an interview out of my laptop. So it means I can record on my phone and my laptop at the same time.
00:08:52
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also without looking like an insane person because I'm not physically in the room with these people. So that's been one of the unexpected silver linings of this whole situation we've been in.
Pandemic Reflections and Emotional Processing
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Oh, for sure. And that's something I kind of wanted to even, aside from asking what you're reading and everything and what's going in, I wanted to just get a sense of, you know, as these pandemic restrictions are starting to lift, you know, like how you've processed the past, you know, year and a half or so in this as we transition out of it.
00:09:24
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You know, not to be too self-promotional three minutes into this interview, but this is actually something I wrote about pretty recently in that, you know, like many people, I watched Bo Burnham's Inside and I thought it was incredible. And it's one of those reviews that I feel like is the hardest kind of review to write, where you're like, this thing is so amazing. There's so much I could say. It's operating on such a high level. And I feel like to do it justice, I also have to be operating on a relatively high level.
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But one of the things that I really loved and appreciated about it is it tells kind of a complete narrative, which in itself is very cathartic. It's a story with a beginning and a middle and an end. But also it kind of arrives at this point where we're not in the thick of the pandemic, but we haven't actually done the work of trying to process like what it means and how it's changed just going forward in part
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because we obviously don't know yet, and this is going to be a long term thing. And we also don't know if it's completely in the past yet. But, you know, there's that kind of forced switch. And I feel like a lot of people just wanted to pack up and move on with their lives, including, you know, politicians and leaders and that kind of thing. And I think having something that's about the pandemic and how it affected us mentally happened.
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or drop kind of in the spring of 2021 was like, oh, I really need something right now that's gonna like hold my hand emotionally as I do what to me is like very necessary emotional work to get myself past this.
00:10:58
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It's really thorny, thorny ground. I know where I am up in Eugene, Oregon. It's like you can, in certain places for sure, like you don't necessarily have to wear a mask anymore. And it just feels really weird to now wear one in this kind of weird, I don't know, this kind of
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judgment ballet that you know is going on between other people, like some people who have eschewed the mask are like, well, you don't need to wear that anymore. Or, or are they the anti-vaxxer people and the people who are electing to wear them? Are they saying like, well, are you that there's just this whole like mental gymnastics that is just like really discomforting and it just actually makes me want to stay home all the more even though things are opening up. Yeah, I think judgment ballet is a really good word for it. Although I feel like, you know, mentally and psychologically, that's weirdly been one of the
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great improvements since I've been vaccinated and since most other people have been vaccinated. I think for the last year there's just been, in addition to how awful it feels just knowing how terrible the world is and being deprived of social contact, there's also that reflexive tensing you do whenever you open up social media and you would see other people who were with other people and you would just go through that calculus of
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Are they in their pod? Is that their house? Are they inside a restaurant? Are they in a city where they don't live? And you would just automatically run through that checklist and then deliver some sort of conclusive moral judgment on this other person. And you would do that hundreds of times a minute. And just not having to do that every single time I look at my phone for stimulation has been the biggest sea change, I think.
00:12:39
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So give me a sense, Allison, of what you're reading these days. What's going into the tank that you're happy to synthesize, whether that be for entertainment or even some of the stuff that you do for the wringer? Consumption is kind of a prerogative of what we do. It's true. Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I was actually on the road for the last week. I was in New York and Philadelphia doing some family stuff and doing some just visiting other people stuff. I used to live in New York. And so whenever I go there, it's always great to see a ton of people.
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But that meant that I wasn't necessarily like watching a ton of television. And instead I, you know, brought a few books along. And the most recent one that I've been really enjoying is, Ladies Who Punch, which is Ruby Institute's kind of behind the scenes breakdown of the drama at The View and the kind of conflict between the co-hosts. And I really enjoy it because I think it does a really good job of threading the needle between like,
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This drama is really fun and we obviously really enjoy just hearing
00:13:41
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you know, what Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters have to say about each other. Um, but also not necessarily like reveling in it or buying into cheap catfight narratives. And also it's just very clear that like the show is very important to Romine and he's very forceful about arguing, like, obviously people to mean the show a lot as, you know, just a talk show of women spouting off their opinions, but it's really influential. It's occupied a really important place in the culture. It did very important things both for,
00:14:11
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its hosts and its audience. And as someone who has really not been a daytime TV viewer throughout my life, I've really enjoyed reading more about it. And it's also just like very compellingly written. I'm like two thirds of the way through when I started it like maybe three days ago. Nice. And speaking of compellingly written, what is it about a particular journalist or novelist when you're able to sink into the language of something? What are the fireworks that go off inside your head?
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You mean like what sort of attracts me in something that I tend to really enjoy? Yeah. Kind of like what lights you up, you know, when you're really locking into a book or an art long article or something. I mean, weirdly, I think with books, there's just so many different sources of pleasure for me, whether that's, you know, new information or, you know, recognition or the way something's phrased. But I think
00:15:04
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kind of the way, where my brain automatically goes when you ask something like that is actually more to TV and movies, which is obviously where most of my professional concerns lie. And that to me is kind of, I think what I get out of art in general is sort of what I've understood as an adult, other people get out of a religious experience, for example. It's like the reminder that you're part of something bigger than yourself, that you can connect to other people, that what you're going through is not,
00:15:34
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you know, something you are doomed to be trapped with inside of your head forever and instead you can kind of connect with other people through the fact that you mutually experience it. I think that's, you know, not to go back to Bo Burnham again, but like that is what was so special about that to me is that it was simultaneously like a very specific story about what this thing meant for this one person, which I think is sort of the way you have to go into it when you're talking about something as big as the pandemic.
00:16:01
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But it's also just in the way that I think art is able to do when it's doing something creative and additive as opposed to just digesting and rephrasing what's already out there. I think it really dramatized the experience of the pandemic in a way that you were able to think about it a little more and it wasn't so unpleasant to put yourself back in that head space. But you also felt that real recognition of like, oh my God, I've totally felt this way. It feels so good to have someone
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mirror my emotions back at me in a way that reassures me that I'm not alone. And so how do you get the the writing bug and the journalism bug as a younger person?
Allison's Path to Journalism and TV Criticism
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Well, I think it just started the really lazy way, which is that I read a lot and that I was like, well, what if I were able to just do that? But, you know, I grew up in like a very intellectual humanities oriented household. My mom is a lawyer. My dad is an academic and
00:17:00
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Obviously that came with a lot of material comforts that I think meant I had the capacity to think about what do I want to do with my life as opposed to what do I have to do with my life. I was surrounded by books.
00:17:13
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My, you know, we obviously like had a New Yorker subscription because, you know, what else do a bunch of Jews in Southern California read to feel connected to home? And, you know, I just I read a bunch of stuff and I was like, you know, I would like to continue learning things the way that I learn things by reading. And I got the sense that, you know, if you're a journalist or writer, you get to, you know, focus on a what broad
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a wide variety of topics like you're not totally trapped in one project or you can't be for like years at a time, but in general, the career path involves, you know, looking at a lot of different subjects over time. And so I just knew like loosely that I wanted to be a writer, a journalist of some sort. And then I went to college at Columbia in New York and
00:18:07
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One of the great things about going to college in New York City is that you're able to intern while you're there because everything is just a subway right away. It was funny, like the summer after my freshman year, I read Chuck Closterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, which includes an essay about friends as a TV show and kind of the purpose of TV in our lives. And I remember being like, oh my God, I didn't realize art was something you could really think seriously about. Obviously I,
00:18:36
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like was an avid consumer of art myself. And I went to college at a moment that coincided with both this sort of weird golden age of television we're in and also the rise of Netflix. So like I binge watched Mad Men the first time. This totally makes me cringe. I was a TV critic, but like I would watch like 20 minutes in between classes and then I would just like go off and do whatever. And then I would watch
00:19:00
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I would finish the episode and then do halfway through another episode and then get up and take a break and do something else, which now I'm like, that's bad viewing hygiene. You got to sit down and just watch one episode front to back. I was engaging with TV both as an individual for the first time and also I realized that that was something that
00:19:24
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people spent their professional lives doing, and so that affected the kind of internships I tried to get, and that then led to eventually my first jobs in journalism, which was great. Nice, and so what was the path for you? What was the internship, and then what was the doorways that started to open up to get you sort of on the path that you're currently on?
00:19:51
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I mean, I got really lucky in that, you know, kind of the first like cultural journalism internship I did ended up being the one that did open a lot of doorways for me. So I started working at a now defunct site called FlavorWire that was kind of culture focused. And at the time that I was working there, they decided to
00:20:13
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you know, staff up pretty seriously and start expanding. And that meant that I worked with a lot of people who, you know, I'm still in touch with now and are all wonderful and specialized in everything from like music to books to TV. And I naturally gravitated towards TV a little more. And the then editor in chief of the site, who's a woman named Judy Berman, who is now the TV critic of time, actually,
00:20:38
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had the brilliant idea to let me start recapping Game of Thrones because I was the only person on staff who had also read the books and had very passionate opinions about those books. And that ended up being, you know, the season where the Red Wedding happened, I think.
00:20:56
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That really got me excited about it, but also Judy had the amazing grace to offer me a part-time job when I was still in college after the internship. So I was technically an editorial assistant and that then led to a full-time job. And then when the TV editor left, I kind of inherited that role because Judy knew that I was interested in that subject.
00:21:24
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Really, all credit goes to her, and it's so incredible that an older experienced person actually thought to extend the opportunities that I literally did not know to ask for. And it was definitely incredibly lucky, right place, right time stuff, which I always feel weird talking about, but that's how it happened.
00:21:46
Speaker
And would you say that, you know, you said you were around a lot of books growing up, you're a big reader, but of course you ingest and digest a lot of, you know, movies and in television. Were you more attracted to, you know, the visual storytelling versus written or was it kind of equal?
00:22:08
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I mean, I grew up in a very classically liberal household where TV was kind of the idiot box and children's access to screen time was extremely limited. So, you know, it's super funny. Like for a really long time, basically the only TV I watched was with my dad and every night we would watch the like 7.30 PM rerun of The Simpsons on Fox, which is both very limited. But if you're going to let your kid watch one piece of pop culture, The Simpsons is really
00:22:40
Speaker
Because, you know, like through the Treehouse of Horror episodes, I knew like The Shining and through the, oh my God, my co-workers are going to kill me. I'm forgetting to like Hank Scorpio. Through the Hank Scorpio episode, I like knew all the Bond villain tropes. And like later I would watch stuff and be like, oh yeah, like that's what that's referring to. But that was kind of my foundation. And then like as I got older, I started expanding and
00:23:05
Speaker
watching a little more stuff like out on my own. But honestly, my real serious engagement with art didn't start as much until college until I had a bunch of time on my hands and the ability to waste that time should I so choose. And so I did and I watched a lot of kind of classic Golden Ages, my dorm room.
00:23:25
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more of my background is in sports writing, and I grew up playing sports and everything, and then sometimes when you pivot into covering sports, it can almost kind of sort of taint or ruin the thing that you used to love, and given that you love TV and watching that and movies,
00:23:44
Speaker
And now that you write about it as part of your career, how have you navigated that sort of that push and pull of here's this thing that I love, but it's also my job? I mean, I would say the main way that manifests for me is more like time anxiety, like especially with how much TV is out there in the world today. It's just like any time I'm watching something, I could be watching something else. And like, am I watching something that I could write about?
00:24:11
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If not, should I be watching a thing that would work better? What should I be using these finite 24 hours a day to actually focus my attention on? Which is at a certain point, you just kind of have to throw up your hands and say, no one can watch everything. And I just need to do what I need to do to write confidently and from an informed perspective. But I actually don't find that it really interrupts my
00:24:38
Speaker
personal relationship with art and I don't know if that's because my brain is broken or that's just kind of how my mind naturally reacts to stuff but to me kind of the highest way that I can pay a work of art a compliment is to like engage really deeply with it and think about it and if I'm going to be doing that anyway I might as well
00:25:04
Speaker
channel that into something I can write about for public consumption. But yeah, maybe it's just that my critical faculties and my relationship to art developed relatively close to each other relative to my friends who've been watching nonstop TVs since they were six years old. Yeah, I guess to me, the instincts are paired closely enough now that I don't think it interferes. If anything, it amplifies the way I'm able to relate to the stuff I write about.
00:25:32
Speaker
How is or what does your your setup look like when you know you're going to be watching something that you're that you plan on writing about? You know, what's your are you notebook in hand or you or you just walk in and then sort of take notes afterwards? It varies. I would say the most common system is that I literally just have notes up open on my phone. So it's like I don't want like a whole second screen like my laptop or something, although I'll definitely use that for like award shows or stuff like that.
00:26:00
Speaker
But sometimes I won't take notes for the first episode and I'll just get impressions and I'll rewatch it later or I don't know.
00:26:11
Speaker
You gotta like fit in so many stuff, so many things that I feel like I have different systems, but I would say the main one is I do have a nice little Roku TV that's pretty well fitted out with all my little apps. And then I just watch the thing on the main TV and then I try to take my notes on like a very smaller, a much smaller second screen so that I can devote most of my attention to what I'm watching and then I can just like frantically write down my impressions on the side.
Joining The Ringer: A Career Milestone
00:26:40
Speaker
Excellent. And so after you worked with Under Judy Berman, what was the next step there and what eventually gets you to the ringer?
00:26:48
Speaker
This is another truly insane right place, right time story in that I will always have this incredibly vivid memory of, I obviously was very aware of Grantland. I remember the night Grantland shut down, I came home to my three bedroom apartment where I live with two friends from college and was venting to them about how upset this made me, the loss of this great website.
00:27:14
Speaker
So it affected so many people and that was when it was locked down and shut down essentially. Yeah. And I might like later my roommates were like we totally did not understand. We were like why why is she.
00:27:26
Speaker
crying about this website, what's happening? I had a real relationship, and I was definitely aware that something was brewing. And I literally remember we had this podcast now called Jam Session that's hosted by Julia Lidman and Amanda Dobbins. And I listened to their first episode when I was hungover and getting an arepa in the East Village with some friends of mine.
00:27:48
Speaker
And then the next day I got an email in my inbox from Amanda Kay Dobbins and I was like, Oh, that's so weird. Like, isn't that the woman who was on that podcast I was listening to yesterday? And then I opened it up and it was like, Hey, like, would you like to get a drink and talk about work?
00:28:07
Speaker
And at the time I was, you know, 22. So of course I totally jumped at the opportunity. And also like Amanda was literally packing up her life to move to LA at that point and managed to squeeze this in. But it was a very like, hey, like, would you be willing to move to LA? Do you still think you want to do writing? Would you be interested in editing? Like, get to know you drank. And I literally like called my mom on the walk home. It was so dorky, but uh.
00:28:37
Speaker
Then, you know, things kind of like unfolded very quickly from there. I had a phone call with Sean Fennessy, who was our editor in chief and is now our head of content. I wrote a memo.
00:28:51
Speaker
It all just happened super quickly to the point where like I essentially found myself committed to move across the country in like a month and a half and did not really realize how I'd done that. But yeah, I sort of packed up everything and I didn't actually technically have to move to LA from New York because we did and still do have a New York presence, but it was just sort of like
00:29:15
Speaker
you know, this new thing is starting, I might as well be where the action is. If I don't like it, I can go back and I'm still here five years later. So you're here and it's basically, it's kind of like a Grantland 2.0 thing, sort of. And so what would you point to as an early win, like once you arrive there and started getting your footing and it became more of a key ingredient to what gets churned out on such a rapid basis?
00:29:42
Speaker
First of all, when we started, I was writing so much because it was just a very like startup pirate ship mentality of like, I'd move there for my job. So like my job was what I was going to be doing. I didn't really know anyone else. So it was pretty easy to just focus on my energy into it. So I was writing a lot more than I do now, like up to four to five times a week, which is so crazy to think about now.
00:30:06
Speaker
But I would say like a really big turning point where I remember being like, okay, I actually think I'm like not screwing up this opportunity that people have made in investing in a relatively young unknown person was.
00:30:18
Speaker
Obviously, The Ringer started in 2016, a year that is now infamous for a very specific reason. And I remember all the insanity around late night TV, which had just gone through this really seismic passing of the torch. Within two years, it was almost every major show had a new host, whether that was Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, what have you.
00:30:46
Speaker
And then this big test of like how they were going to act as sort of like public figures was handed to them. And obviously there was, you know, the hair muscling incident with Jimmy Fallon. It was sort of how Stephen Colbert found his voice, like Samantha Bee's show had launched.
00:31:08
Speaker
around that time and ended up really hitting its stride by just being like very vocally angry. And I wrote a piece that was something, it was an essay that was titled something like a
00:31:18
Speaker
Donald Trump has broken late night TV or something. That was more of a like survey of just how are all these different shows responding to this and what does it say about the state of late night? What does it say about the state of politics? And I have not reread it and I'm sure I would absolutely cringe if I did, but it was something that like
00:31:38
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people I respected really took notice of, and I remember feeling like, okay, maybe I'm not a total idiot, maybe people actually can see me as a peer and not some like, twerp who doesn't know what she's doing.
00:31:52
Speaker
Well that's so key about overcoming that imposter syndrome that plagued so many creative people. So how have you wrestled and wrangled that feeling and continued to dance with it because it is not something that just goes away the minute you have a successful piece that really gloms on to the culture.
00:32:13
Speaker
I mean, I definitely think like a little imposter syndrome is probably healthy. I think if you like totally silence that voice, you end up being an insane narcissistic girl boss and just a terrible person. And I think a lot of it is just healthy skepticism. But yeah, you know, I try to channel it into more, you know, pushing myself to, you know, put a lot of work in and be careful about
00:32:37
Speaker
what I put out in the world and try not to make it outward facing and comparative, which is obviously easier said than done. But I think it's something everyone has to deal with on some level.
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah, and as you're developing as a writer, you know, that nebulous thing called voice that is sort of hard to, it's hard to cultivate, and the only way to do it really is just through a lot of consuming of stuff, and then of course a lot of churn, a lot of writing stuff, and then eventually you kind of lock into what it is to be something that is uniquely you.
00:33:12
Speaker
And what has that experience been like of synthesizing your influences to then churn out something that is wholly you on the page? I feel like it's not something I do very consciously. It's almost just like intuiting my strengths. I'm not like a super funny writer. I'm not a blogger. I can tweet and I can do small jokes, but I'm not really someone
00:33:39
Speaker
who can just do that sort of like freeform blog post. I think a lot of people enjoyed about stuff like Gawker and Grandland, for example. And I would say beyond like the negatives of like, okay, like maybe I can't do that, but like maybe I can do analysis. I would say something that's really clarified that for me is seeing like what
00:33:59
Speaker
compliments people will pay or like what compliments kind of resonate like I I find as a TV critic the thing that makes me the most feel the most validated and feel like I've done the best job is not necessarily like hey you told me about the show I didn't know about and I watched it because of you although like that has happened and it totally feels great it's more like hey I watched this show and I wasn't really sure how I felt about it and I looked up the piece you wrote and it really helped me articulate
00:34:29
Speaker
my feelings or really help me understand like why I responded to this thing the way I did and
00:34:37
Speaker
that kind of has helped shape the kind of pieces I write. I think something I'll do maybe a little more than other TV critics is my editors and I at The Ringer will hold reviews until one or two days after release, or especially for a streaming show that releases an entire season. It'll be like, okay, well, the season's dropping on Friday, so why don't we just wait until Tuesday and you drop what you think about it?
00:35:01
Speaker
And I think that's both reflective of like larger TV viewing habits and how they've changed with the rise of streaming. But it's also really just shaped how my writing and pitching process works and that I'm like, okay, I think this is what I do well. I think I will tune into something that other people are tuning into, but for whatever reason, I may have a perspective or just an ability to articulate my perspective that others may not have and find useful.
00:35:31
Speaker
I remember, this is going back to the Grantland days, when Breaking Bad was winding down, and that final season, that 5B season, and reading Andy Greenwald's reviews after that, there were just these really, just incisive, brilliant essays about the whole season. And it just, it deepened and made the experience of watching that show
00:35:58
Speaker
much more three-dimensional in a way. And it was something I just deeply looked forward to. The same with Molly Lambert's Mad Men reviews at that same time. It was nice to know that when you were done with that episode, it's like, okay, I can look forward to this. And is that something you kind of, I don't know, you try to embody too as a reviewer, but also as a consumer of this kind of
Recap Culture and Streaming Influence on TV Criticism
00:36:20
Speaker
content?
00:36:20
Speaker
I mean, both of those writers are people I looked up to and still look up to so much. I would also add, you know, people like Emily Vanderwerf, who was at the AV Club for a really long time, or Alan Steppenwolf. And, you know, to this day, I will look back at some of those pieces and be like, I cannot believe that they just fired this off in a couple hours after.
00:36:41
Speaker
the episode ended, like I feel like I need at least a little more time to digest what I just saw. But yeah, no, I mean, coming up at that time where recap culture was really huge, like totally shaped me. And I actually wrote a feature for The Ringer a few years ago that was kind of about the rise of recap culture and why for a lot of institutional reasons, we maybe passed the peak of it a little bit. Although I think like recaps are obviously still published and
00:37:10
Speaker
Maybe it's moved a little more towards like a whole season situation, just given how streaming works, but it totally, totally influenced the way I thought about TV. And I think like a high aspiration would be if I deliver the same level of insight that, you know, actually my favorite Mad Men recapers, Molly is definitely up there. I think Tom and Lorenzo, both their Mad Style recaps, which are super famous and just their straightforward analyses of every episode.
00:37:39
Speaker
were just incredible and brought so much knowledge and insight. And if I can deliver anything close to that, I would consider myself very fulfilled.
00:37:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's like even Wesley Morris's stuff, it was almost like the the review or the recap was its own art form and it was really like this almost a beautiful, not a standalone per se, because it definitely is tethered to that previous experience, but it was just like
00:38:09
Speaker
It was an experience unto itself and not just reliving what you just watched. It was like, oh, this is kind of a new thing, like a new water cooler thing, but a very elevated water cooler thing. It was just such a great experience. Yeah. I mean, I think the basic inside of it is just the whole idea that.
00:38:26
Speaker
your viewer or your reader has already watched the thing that you have also already watched and you can just talk about what happened and you can move past that very introductory level of like okay so here's what the show is about and here's who created it and here's why you should watch it and I can't actually mention everything that happens in it because I want to preserve a little bit of surprise for you but like I'm going to try to hint at it
00:38:49
Speaker
And the fact that you're able to just move past that when you're writing a recap or you're writing an ex post facto review, and you can just be like, okay, so we all watch that, let's talk through it together, is super liberating as a writer and I hope is fulfilling as a reader as well.
00:39:09
Speaker
And you've alluded to it a couple times in the last few minutes about how streaming is influencing how you go about the review or the recap or whatever you want to call it, sort of a post-consumption essay. So how have you thought about the way streaming influences the way you go writing about the work now? Given that it's not just episode, we have a week to digest it, recap, and so forth. So how do you think about it now?
00:39:38
Speaker
I mean, you almost can't talk about streaming as a specific thing, right? It's just swallowed the whole industry. It's just the water we're swimming in now. But I would say, like, first of all, everything has become so fragmented that it's almost easier to just talk to people about streaming services and what they subscribe to than it is to be like, let me sell you on this like tiny show on Paramount Plus. But also, you know, I think like one of the reasons why I'm so drawn to television as a subject and I find it so
00:40:06
Speaker
rewarding to think about is it's kind of the most pure fusion of art and commerce out of almost everything. I mean, every art has its industry around it, but TV, you know, started as being mass market and the whole rise of the, you know, kind of cable golden age was we discovered this like weird quirk in American capitalism where being kind of edgy and buzzworthy was incentivized as opposed to
00:40:33
Speaker
you know, selling soap ads. And I always just find thinking about streaming interesting, mostly frankly, just in terms of how it influences like what gets in front of us, right? Like the way getting a show onto Netflix takes a show like you, which started on Lifetime and no one knows that it started on Lifetime because everyone knows about it.
00:40:54
Speaker
because it landed on Netflix and then became a Netflix original. And watching the power of Netflix as both a distribution and a marketing mechanism has been really gobsmacking over the last few years. And then watching how the so-called streaming wars were in has led to Disney Plus and the rise in the Marvel shows and the weaponization of IP. And all of this is very big and lofty. And there are a lot of reporters who
00:41:22
Speaker
track the kind of behind the scenes machinations that go into these decisions a lot more closely than I do. But I mostly find it interesting in terms of being like, television is so shaped by corporate institutions. And even though I'm ultimately interested in the end product of that, you can't really think about that without also thinking of the forces that brought the object in front of your eyeballs, you know?
00:41:48
Speaker
you were alluding to it earlier about kind of knowing, knowing yourself as a writer, you kind of know the pocket you're in, like you're not, you know, writing pithy jokes and all that, you know, you've settled into a certain thing that is uniquely you. And I remember having a conversation with a former high-level ballerina, and I was picking her brain about how you would break through as a ballerina in New York City or something.
00:42:16
Speaker
given how competitive that must be. And she said, the ones who really do make it are the dancers who know who they are. They have an identity and a style unto themselves that really helps them break through. And that applies to art and writing as well. So in a sense, how did you
00:42:38
Speaker
you know, start to find who you are and know yourself as a writer and, you know, get that into that sort of sweet spot of comfort in your own skin. I mean, a lot of it is trial and error, right? But I think, you know, going back to that first assignment that really unlocked a lot of this for me was like writing about the Game of Thrones recaps. Like a lot of that was, frankly, also luck in that I happened to love that series of books since I was like 13 years old.
00:43:09
Speaker
and had a lot of very passionate thoughts about how it made for source material and how that could be challenging, but also really rewarding. And I guess part of it was also like, I've always on some level thought about stuff the way I do and just realizing that hopefully that can be useful to some people and also that that's something I can lean into is something I try to do. And also I feel like I should probably say here,
00:43:38
Speaker
You know, obviously being a writer and Paul's working with an editor and writing is a lot more collaborative than I think the single byline gives it credit for and I was very lucky when I started the ringer I worked with. Sam should be was my first editor, who's now GQ Amanda still at the ringer. I now work with a guy named Eric Jenkins I worked with Andrew DiDaro and and working with editors who can just
00:44:00
Speaker
you know, come in and almost do that for you and be like, hey, like, we think you're really good at this. Like, you should try doing more of that is also, you know, a little better than just kind of endlessly digging, you know, looking in the mirror, narcissistically, I guess.
00:44:15
Speaker
Oh yeah, what a gift that is to have that kind of relationship. Many freelancer types are often working maybe with one editor on one piece at one magazine or one outlet as a one-off. Maybe if you're lucky you get to work with them on a repeat basis, but there isn't that sort of institutional collaboration where you can really sort of lock in together like a dance partner or something. So that is wonderful that you
00:44:43
Speaker
that you've got that backing to say, oh, this is a thing I think you'd be good at, and this is why. And go run with it, Allison. Yeah, for sure. I mean, one of the most fulfilling pieces I think I've done at The Ringer was in 2018 when John Mulaney had a new comedy special coming out.
Significant Career Moments
00:45:04
Speaker
Sean Pennisee, the editor-in-chief at the time, basically was just like,
00:45:08
Speaker
you clearly like this guy and like through pure happenstance he happened to have the same publicist as Bill Simmons who also represents a lot of comedians and he was like you should just like write the profile of this guy like you totally could and just having someone be like you know you should just go for it I think really you know gave me the guts to ask for it but also I think turned into one of my favorite pieces I've ever done just because like that's someone whose work I've engaged with very deeply in the past and
00:45:38
Speaker
I was just able to bring that to bear on the actual profile in a way that I hope was illuminating for those who read it. Yeah. Speaking of profiles and everything, I've been reading your work for a few years now, but it was the David Gelb one that maybe it was like, I really should, at this point, I really need to reach out to Alison because I really love Jiro or Yiro, Dreams of Sushi is one of my all-time favorite documentaries. I've watched it many, many times.
00:46:08
Speaker
especially when I need like sort of a kick in the pants about you know about focus and just doing the work because of the the shokunin insight that uh that gell was able to illustrate with the the titular uh character of that of that of that movie and so um i just wanted to maybe get a sense of how you arrived at you know writing about uh david and in the food
00:46:32
Speaker
industrial, the shift's table industrial complex, if you will. Yeah, I mean, you know, just to be totally transparent, it was one of those things where, you know, you're like, I don't know what else is on the calendar for this month, maybe I should just look up what happened 10 years ago in Wikipedia.
00:46:48
Speaker
and see what's coming up anniversary-wise. And, you know, it happened to be this really neat coincidence where not only was it the 10-year anniversary of Giro's premiere at a film festival that month, but also David had a new project coming out on Disney+, his sort of like mini documentary on Wolfgang Puck.
00:47:08
Speaker
just in terms of having access that made it very easy for me to just go to Disney and be like, hey, I want to write about this guy. And they were like, great, how much time do you need? Which is obviously music to any journalist's ears. And I just find it very interesting in that it's a story that combines a lot of recurring themes in my work. I think the intertwined nature of Gelb's career and Netflix is really fascinating. Giro's one of the first movies that got a huge lift because it was on streaming and also
00:47:38
Speaker
ended up playing a role, not just in food TV, but just in this rise of relatively cheap documentary content as this huge source of revenue and subscriptions for these streaming services. Also, frankly, I just really like food and I really like watching TV about food.
00:47:57
Speaker
I think David Gelb was really interesting to me in that, you know, I think in a lot of ways, like I wasn't expecting Gero to age very well and parts of it, I don't think have, not in the sense that either Gero or Gelb aren't masters of their craft, but like you mentioned, there's that instinct of like, my life is my job and I should give everything to my job. And I am personally pretty skeptical of that mentality. And also that feeds into a lot of
00:48:27
Speaker
you know, encouraging labor exploitation that happens in the restaurant industry or just the glorification of the chef figure in a way that obscures everything below him. And I think we've seen some pushback against that idea, especially in the last year. So I was really curious to go back and then I was really stunned that at the very end of the movie, there's a scene that like totally flips all of that on its head. And Juro's like, yeah, like I actually don't do most of the work at this point. Like everything's done before it comes to me and everyone thinks I'm the master.
00:48:56
Speaker
And I was so fascinated to see that and there are kind of ripples of that in the Wolfgang documentary. And I was also really pleasantly surprised like how receptive David was to just talking about that with me in addition to all the objectively amazing and cool work he's done over the years.
00:49:14
Speaker
Yeah, and he definitely has such a great style of the, you know, the slow motion camera and also the classical, the beautiful classical music that goes over the top. And it really is something that you can sink into if it's very symphonic and immersive in that way.
00:49:29
Speaker
Which is something I've always been attracted to with his particular style and approach. But getting to your point also about that head figure that gets lion eyes or idolized. But yeah, it was great to hear you unpack that with him.
00:49:49
Speaker
And it really starts to get to the sense of that even if it's directed or written by David Gelb or even by Alison Herman, that behind all that is such this collaborative process. And it was great to hear that conversation in the piece that you wrote. Yeah. And I mean, that totally carries over to everything else I talk about. I mean, there's a reason, you know, the era of TV that I kind of entered into this by paying attention to is famously, you know, summed up by Brett Martin's Difficult Men.
00:50:18
Speaker
It's about anti-heroes, but also the guys behind it, you know, the HBO, David's, Matt Weiner, Vince Gilligan are all kind of single-handedly credited with the success of their shows. And honestly, it's something like I have to really fight against in my own work just because, you know, I'm convinced a huge reason why Auchreterie is popular is it's just easy and simple. If you're a critic, you're just like, this person did everything. So he's, you know, he or she is the only person I need to refer to.
00:50:47
Speaker
in this piece, and obviously that erases a lot of people's work in all mediums, but I think especially TV, which everyone will tell you is just incredibly collaborative, and as a viewer that can make it difficult to attribute choices to certain people, but I think it's just fundamentally more interesting than the idea of the solitary genius, even though the solitary genius is a really convenient framing for a lot of reasons, including for myself.
00:51:16
Speaker
Yeah, when I was real obsessed with Breaking Bad and even to some extent Better Call Saul, which is brilliant too, is listening to those sort of behind-the-scenes podcasts and even the way they talk about the writer's room and then putting up all the index cards and everything.
00:51:35
Speaker
and you get a sense, yeah, sure, like Vince gets a lot of the credit, but he's quick to say that this is usually a room of like 10 people. When we break an episode, it's like eight brains working really hard for a month at a time to break a single episode. So it's like there's a lot of cooks in that kitchen to get what is a 40-minute gem. But yeah, he gets most of the credit, sometimes the writer of the episode too, but it is,
00:52:04
Speaker
It's good to see how many minds are working to make this one little thing pop. I always like seeing that too, that creative process behind it. Definitely. It's so funny knowing more about the process of making TV than I did when I initially entered into this industry. It's so ludicrous to even put a single byline on a script if it comes out of a writer's room. That's just not how TV works.
00:52:31
Speaker
Frankly, it has as much to do with money as it does with actually attributing credit. I remember something that will occasionally float around is if the creator of a show has a byline on almost every script, that's always a red alarm because it means that they're not sharing money with their own employees.
00:52:52
Speaker
So, you know, I try to keep that in mind, although occasionally you'll end up with stuff like, I made a story where the white lotus that really are just written by a single person. And that is also incredible knowing how much work normally goes into that.
Overcoming Writer's Block
00:53:06
Speaker
In any writing endeavor, there's usually, you know, there's getting through, you know, ugly middles of drafts, you know, those that kind of self-doubt, that kind of nods at you when you're trying to crack the code of a piece. And I wonder for you, Alison, like, if you're just really, you're hitting your head against the wall, or you're just, you're in that middle part where the honeymoon phase of a piece has ended, and
00:53:32
Speaker
you're too far along to turn back and you gotta keep going. You know, how do you keep going in the face of that sort of nagging self-doubt?
00:53:39
Speaker
God, I honestly wish I had a better answer for this question, if only for myself. I mean, like, the honest answer is I am a beat writer and I write pretty regularly, which means, like, there's honestly not too much room to be precious about deadlines. And at a certain point, like, this thing just needs to go up at a certain time. And there is no better, you know, user inspiration than
00:54:03
Speaker
you have to. So that's honestly my main inspiration but I do think like the best pieces of art are the ones that like I find myself like itching or like compelled to write about and that's you know really fortunate because those are the things that I want to do the best at but you know the the subject itself
00:54:28
Speaker
can ideally be its own inspiration. And that's always the kind of dragon I'm chasing when I'm slogging through hundreds and hundreds of hours of television. And how would you say maybe your identity has changed as a writer in the last few years, if it has at all? I honestly couldn't tell you. I know I have a public reputation, so maybe
00:54:58
Speaker
one of my Twitter followers will tell me how my writing has changed over the years. But I just think, we alluded to this early on, I got this job when I was less than a year out of college, which is so insane for so many reasons.
00:55:15
Speaker
I would like to think I've just gotten more confident as I've aged into it and I've acquired more knowledge and I've worked really hard at acquiring knowledge. And I have a certain level of certainty that I can add something to a conversation that I don't think I have when I was fully just pinwheeling my arms and trying to stay afloat and just figuring out how to even write at a professional level, let alone how to write well.
00:55:45
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Allison. So as we kind of bring this to a close, I always like to ask a guest for a recommendation of some kind, and that can be anything. And I wonder what you might recommend for the listeners out there. You know, I'll just go with the last thing I wrote about for the website, which I think is
Recommendations and Social Media Presence
00:56:03
Speaker
great because it happens to be maybe the best show that's come out this year so far. It's called The White Lotus. It's on HBO. If you're the kind of person who's on Twitter as much as I am, I'm sure you've heard about it. But speaking of people who are just insanely impressive because they wrote the whole thing in one go, this guy, Mike White, both wrote and directed it and apparently
00:56:25
Speaker
So the show is about a bunch of rich white people on vacation in Hawaii and interacting with the service staff at this resort and chaos ensues, but it happened because HBO in like August of 2020 basically went up to Mike White and said, we need something that we can shoot in quarantine. Like what do you have for us? And he cranked the show out in like a month and they started shooting in October 2020 and they were wrapped by the new year, which is,
00:56:54
Speaker
Just so incredible even just knowing that really enhances it, but I didn't know that when I watched and I was like wow This is amazing. It must be like a masterwork that he's been working up to for years Because the acting is amazing the characters are so finely drawn. It's just six episodes So it definitely like should have been a TV show which I think is a common
00:57:15
Speaker
Medium confusion is a common problem these days, I would say, across both film and TV. But it really is meant to be the length it is, but it's also very concise. It's just six episodes. So I could go on about this forever, but I would like to be mindful of your time. So I will wrap that up.
00:57:32
Speaker
Well that's great. I love that medium confusion idea because I just read on the Ring of the Exit survey for Black Widow and one of the questions was like would this have been better as a Disney Plus six episode run and someone wrote under and was like
00:57:48
Speaker
everything needs to be a TV show. And so it's kind of like we're in this mode of if the movie feels too short, then maybe it should be six hours and TV show or if the TV show feels too long. It's like this should have been a two hour movie or something. Right. I mean, honestly, I totally feel for creators because like there are so many options. I feel like it's easy to get decision fatigue. And also a lot of it, I think, is just market forces where, you know, it might be easier to get something made as a TV show. So you just do that, even though it's really
00:58:17
Speaker
a movie-sized idea. I think, you know, something like The Queen's Gambit, I was like, I really like this as a TV show. I'm not sure it needed to be one. I've definitely watched movies where I'm like, I wish this had more room to breathe. And I totally understand why it happens, but it's definitely like a chronic issue that is not isolated to any one, you know, person or platform.
00:58:42
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, White Lotus is the recommendation. And Allison, where can people find you online if they're not already familiar with you? Well, my work is at the Ringer. And it's a great website. You should read it. And my tweets and other sundry postings are at aherman2006 on both Twitter and Instagram if you would like pictures of the food I make for myself. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, Allison, thank you so much for the time. It was really fun to get to talk shop and pick your brain a little bit. So thanks for coming on the show. Thank you.
00:59:19
Speaker
I just had another sip of coffee I had a little more coffee
00:59:29
Speaker
In case you don't know, I record my intros, my outros back-to-back. And so I had an extra sip of coffee and I'm singing about it now. Thanks to Allison, one of the stars over at the Ringer. She's wicked smart. Thanks for listening, CNFers. Thanks for the support. Thanks to WVWC, MFA in Creative Writing, as well as Hippocam 2021 for the support.
00:59:53
Speaker
and thanks for being along for this ride. I also want to give another shout out to those new Tier 3 CNF'ers, David Yamein, Sam Jeffries, Michelle Hule, and from the very start, Isidro Menkos, for being Tier 3 members at $10 a month. Unbelievable.
01:00:09
Speaker
So thank you. I put out a call on Patreon for some questions. So that's always something to keep an eye out for, that I can solicit questions from the Patreon community. That way you have a little section in the show if I get enough of them or any of them. They're gonna be like, all right, here's the questions from the Patreon community to the guests that I have on the show. So I put those out periodically. I have one out there right now. And so yeah, keep your eyes out for that. Good stuff.
01:00:37
Speaker
If you want to be a member and get access to all kinds of goodies and a chance to ask questions, like I said, and get credit for it, yes, patreon.com slash cnfpod.
Meditation and Goal Setting
01:00:48
Speaker
Okay, so I don't know how many of you use the Headspace app for meditation. I do. I love the Wake Up, which is a little video segment. It's usually like three to five minutes or so at the beginning of, on their little homepage. Anyway, which is a little bit about something intentional or mindful. Duh. So at times they put out a call for questions. And Keisanga is one of the teachers. And Keisanga Giscombe, I believe is his name.
01:01:15
Speaker
And I sent in a question and they selected it a few days ago. I must be decent at asking questions, you know? Anyway, my question was about this nagging feeling that meditation wasn't quote working despite having done it for a while. I asked what to do in the face of it feeling like it isn't working. You know, I had a certain expectation of trying to, you know, relieve stress, maybe help with sleep, maybe not feel so overwhelmed.
01:01:41
Speaker
and when it doesn't feel like it's working. And that was my question. I figured other people might benefit from that too.
01:01:47
Speaker
He went on this long, beautiful answer to it. I wish I recorded it so I could listen to it over and over again as a reminder. But the crux of it was to divorce any notion of expectation from the practice of meditation. Just be open to anything in the process. No pressure. Again, no expectation. Given that we're in such a culture that favors the end result at the cost of the journey. You know, even if you lose the 20 pounds, you want to lose them. Well, then what? You're still the same person. Still the same dude.
01:02:19
Speaker
So I got to thinking about goals and expectations or setting realistic goals and moonshot goals and leaning into the practice versus outcomes. Often outcomes we have no control over anyway. And something me and my wife were talking about in our cross country drive as well.
01:02:39
Speaker
There's a lot of time out there, a lot of time in those flyover states when you got to drive over them. For example, I've spoken about how aiming for the stars and landing on the moon leads to disappointment, at least for me, because you really wanted the stars to be out in the stars. So even if the stars were only there to stretch you enough to land on the moon, sometimes landing on the moon still turns out to be a bummer because you were expecting to hit the stars.
01:03:07
Speaker
in our, like I said, in our cross country soldier and I equated the stars moon thing to my baseball career, as everything always comes back to my sad, sorry, baseball career. And my wife was like, your goal all along should have been to simply enjoy baseball, have fun playing baseball. And you can have reachable goals, but I should have been grounded in the fact that I get to play or got to play this game and play it quite well for a time better than most, but certainly not pro caliber.
01:03:37
Speaker
The problem was that was woefully misguided and it's unfair to 18-19 year old Brendan to be angry at that kid for not knowing any better. So what's the point of this little rant? What does it have to do with writing or podcasting or creative pursuits? Just hang tight.
01:03:56
Speaker
So it's foolhardy, really, to have the expectation of, say, let's publication or hundreds of thousands or millions of downloads or publication a major publisher or that you'll sell 20,000 copies of your book.
01:04:11
Speaker
So what's a good goal, then? A good goal might be to simply write a damn good book. Yeah, but good by whose standards, B.O.? Well, just yours. Then let the cards fall where they may. No expectations of publication or anything. Just sit down and enjoy the process of getting to do this thing.
01:04:32
Speaker
And so no expectation, not even that bullshit expression of expect the worst and hope for the best. Like what horrible, horrible advice. Here's something better. Set realistic goals that stretch you just enough.
01:04:47
Speaker
I'd love to deadlift within a year, I'd say 500 pounds. Last IMAX it was like 405 and that was a rocky pull, but it was still 405, which was a record for me at the time. So I want to do that, but it's going to take me upwards of a year to train up to that.
01:05:05
Speaker
You know, but I'd also love to dunk a basketball on a 10-foot hood, but no amount of training is gonna get my 5'9 ass up the rim without Shaq picking me up. So, one is realistic based on my personal capabilities. One is not, obviously. I'm not Spud Web. I think he was 5'7 and could dunk. Aye, aye, aye. So, maybe what I'm trying to say is you audit your abilities.
01:05:33
Speaker
You find your 500-pound deadlift, whatever that is. And don't put artificial limits on yourself. You know, don't sell yourself shorter sandbag and call that a goal. Stretch. Stretch just enough and set a mark to aim at and realize all the while that the reward is the process and the practice. No expectations. So stay wild, CNFers. Bios is Sia.
01:06:33
Speaker
you